1
20
8
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1045ad28fb989efa411492b78e50d0df.pdf
04c5c16d1fb5be0c8c094cea3410f784
PDF Text
Text
•
STJoHN's CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 1671
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED 1696 As K1NG WILLIAM's ScHooL
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER - 1989-90
September 1
Thomas J. Slakey, Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
James Madison and the
Constitution
September 8
Mr. John Verdi, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Conversations and Arguments
September 15
Mr. Michael Fried
Art History Department
Johns Hopkins
Baltimore, Maryland
Courbet's Realism
Septemb er 22
Mr. David Bolotin, Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
The Concerns of Odysseus:
An Introduction to the
Odyssey
September 29
Ms. Edwina Cruise
Mount Holyoke College
South Hadley, Massachusetts
From Stalin to Glasnost :
The Literary Process
in Russia
October 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 13
Mr . Jon Lenkowski, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Meno 's Paradox and the
Zetetic Circle
October 20
Concert
October 27
All-College Seminar
November 3
Ms. Jessica Weissman,Alumna
Automation Consulting
Washington, D.C.
What Is A Computer
Program?
November 10
Mr . Robin W. Winks
Yale University
New Hav en, Connecticut
Why Modern Empires Rise.
Why They Fall. And
So What?
November 17
Concert
Novembe r 24
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
December 1
Mr. John White, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Imitation
December 8
King William Players
December ISJanuary 7
Winter Holiday
No Lectures
TELEPHONE 301-263-2371
�•
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 1671
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FOU NDED 1696 AS KIN G WILLIAM'S SCHOOL
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER - 1989-90
January 12, 1990
Mr . Stewart Umphrey, Tutor
St . John's College
Annapolis
Space
January 19
Ms. Elizabeth Blettner, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Generosity of the Good:
A Reflection on Plato's
Republic
January 26
Professor Drew A. Hyland
Trinity College
Hartford, Connecticut
When Power Becomes
Gracious: The Affinity
of Play and Art
February 2
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 9
Mr. William Pastille, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Meaning, Motion , and Music
February 16
All-College Seminar
February 23
Mr . Clifton Black
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas
"Who Do People Say That
I Am?" The Continuing
Quest for the Historical
Jesus
March 1-18
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
March 23
Ms. Ann Martin, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Adventures and Games:
Thoughts on Medieval
Romance
March 30
Mr. David Stephenson, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
Ion 's Art
April 6
Concert
April 13
Mr. Frederick Bohrer
Hood College
Frederick, Maryland
Art and Knowledge:
The Epistemology of
Visual Representation
April 20
Mr . Mortimer J . Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Research
Chicago, Illinois
The End of the Conflict
Betweem Capitalism
and Communism
April 27
Ms. Anita Kronsberg, Tutor
St. John's College
Inertia and the I dea
of a Body
Body
Annapolis TELEPHONE 301-263-2371
�LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER - 1989-90
Page 2
May 4
King William Players
May 11
To be announced
May 18
Commencement
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - First Semester - 1989-90 & Second Semester - 1989-90
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1989-1990
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1989-1990 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1989-1990
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
Slakey, Thomas J.
Verdi, John
Fried, Michael
Bolotin, David, 1944-
Cruise, Edwina Jannie
Lenkowski, Jon
Weissman, Jessica
Winks, Robin W.
White, John
Umphrey, Stewart, 1942-
Blettner, Elizabeth
Hyland, Drew A.
Pastille, William Alfred, 1954-
Black, Clifton
Martin, Ann
Stephenson, David
Bohrer, Frederick Nathaniel, 1956-
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Kronsberg, Anita
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/93aca8d61814859b2ba82d027814eac0.pdf
e2598c541cfc5be4a59b02d1670a5f51
PDF Text
Text
-~~
St. John's College
. . ·~
,...
T H RE E HUNDRED YE A R S
FOUNDED 1696 AS KING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL
II
•
~
PO. Box 2800, An napol is, MD 21404
410-263-2371, Fax 410-263-4828
LECTURE / CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1996-97
August 30, 1996
Ms. Eva T. H. Brann, Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Why Read Books?"
September 6
Ms. Patricia Locke, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"A Sainte-Chapelle
of the Mind"
September 13
Professor Frederick Crews
Department of English
University of California
Berkeley, California
"Freud: Harmful or
Fatal If Swallowed"
September 20
Mr . John Verdi, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"How We Do Things
With Words: An
Introduction to
Wittgenstein"
September 27
Mr. Christopher B. Nelson
President
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Foundation, Generation
and Immortality: Images
of Fatherhood in the
Aeneid"
October 4
Professor Peter Suber
Department of Philosophy
Earlham College
Richmond, Indiana
"Infinite Reflections"
October 18
Professor Judith Grabiner
Pitzer College
Claremont, California
"Methodological
Imperialism and
cartesian Geometry"
October 25
Mr . Jody Gatwood and
Mr. Brian Ganz
Concert
November 1
Mr. Stewart Umphrey, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Eternity"
November 8
All-College Seminar
November 15
Professor John T . Bonner
Professor Emeritus
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
"Social Amoebae:
The Advantages of
Togetherness"
November 22
Ms. Janice Macaulay
Tutor, Graduate Institute
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The End of Tradition?
Pluralism and Problems
of Contemporary Musical
styles"
December 6
King William Players
�St. John's College
.
•
P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404
410-263-2371, Fax 410-263-4828
FOUNDED 1696 AS KING WILLIA M'S SCHOOL
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER 1996- 97
January 10, 1997
Ms. Marilyn Higuera, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"Prelude to Vocation:
Eliot's Middlemarch"
January 17
Ms. Olivia Delgado de Torres
Tutor, St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Jocasta: A Wimple
of Widows' Weeds"
January 24
Professor Giuseppe F. Mazzotta
Italian Languages and Literature
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
"The Language of
Treachery in Lower
Hell "
February 7
Professor Vicki Hearne
Westbrook, Connecticut
"The Phenomenology
of Toto"
February 14
Mr. Eliot Fisk
Concert
February 21
Mr . Andre Barbera, Tutor
St . John's College
Annapolis
"Birdland:
21, 1954"
March 21
All-College Seminar
March 28
Professor Michael Davis
Sarah Lawrence College
"Euripides Among the
Athenians"
April 4
Mr . David Stephenson, Tutor
St . John's College
Annapolis
"Ptolemy 's Tr uth"
April 11
Professor Ronna Burger
Department of Philosophy
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana
"Health of Soul and
Psychic Medicine :
On the Argument of
Aristotle ' s Ethics"
April 18
Profe ssor Stephen H. Ke llert
Department of Philosophy
Hamline University
Saint Paul, Minnesota
"Chaos Theory a nd
Scientific
Understanding"
April 25
Pa l e strina Choir
Concert
May 2
King William Playe rs
May 9
Mr. John Lynch
Ringling Brother Barnum
& Bailey Cir cus
February
To b e 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.
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/Concert Schedule - 1996-97
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1996-1997
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1996-1997 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1996-1997
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
August 30, 1996. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="Why read books?" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/267">Why read books?</a> (audio)
August 30, 1996. Brann, Eva T. H. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1247" title="Why read books?">Why read books?</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Locke, Patricia
Crews, Frederick
Verdi, John
Nelson, Christopher B.
Suber, Peter
Grabiner, Judith V.
Gatwood, Jody
Ganz, Brian
Umphrey, Stewart, 1942-
Bonner, John T.
Macaulay, Janice Michel
Higuera, Marilyn
de Torres, Olivia Delgado
Mazzotta, Giuseppe F.
Hearne, Vicki
Fisk, Eliot
Barbera, André
Davis, Micahel
Stephenson, David
Burger, Ronna
Kellert, Stephen H.
Lynch, John
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/378e301521e5d214bf04258163226184.pdf
e2c8fc1a00b6f6ad221e56681b3ebe18
PDF Text
Text
The St. John's Review
Volume XLIV. number three ( 1998)
Editor
Pame/4 Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm Von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Anne McShane
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Harvey Flaumenhaft, Dean. For those not on the distribution list,
subscriptions are $15.00 for three issues, even though the magazine
may sometimes appear semi-annually rather than three times a year.
Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome.
Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box
2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1998 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole
or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. Jo~n's Public Relations Office and the St. John's Colltge Print Shop
��Contents
Essays and Lectures
Prelude to Vocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Marilyn Higuera
How We Do Things With Words:
An Introduction to Wittgenstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
John Verdi
Ptolemy's Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
David Stephenson
Reviews
A Forgotten Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Lucio Russo's La rivoluzione dimenticata
Curtis J#lson
Measured Passion, Golden Rationality . . . . . . . . . 117
Eva T. H. Brann's The Past-Present
Ronald Mawby
Mimesis on the Treacherous Slopes:
Joyce's Commitment to Community
. . . . . . . 127
Cordell Yee's The Word According to James Joyce
Albert Wachtel
��t
Prelude to Vocation
Marilyn Higuera
George Eliot's panorama of life in and around the small town of
Middlemarch, England in 1829 opens with a short Prelude. These
lyrical paragraphs are not a summary of some "offstage" event in the
lives of her characters that would be helpful to know before the reader begins the story proper; in fact, no character from the ensuing
story is even named. Nor are these opening words an apology or
admonishment spoken directly to the reader as reader by the author
as author. Instead, they consist of three paragraphs which articulate
a general problem, albeit dramatically and with vivid examples anc\
rhetorical flourishes. This Prelude is our first exposure to a voice we
will hear continually throughout the book: the voice of George Eliot
as thinker.
Her first words are a rhetorical question:
Who that cares much to know the history of man,
and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the
varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt at least
briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa. .. ?
Eliot, of course, tells us what she wishes us to know of St.
Theresa's story and engrafts her interpretation of Theresa's motives
and heroism. She asks her musing question in ordel;' to prepare us to
be the right sort of audience. Without lecturing us, she reminds us
that we ought care about the history of man, for it reveals something
of, man's nature. Immediately, we are drawn into the philosophic
activity of this careful observer. Later in the book (Chapter 11, p.
Marilyn Higuera is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This is a version of a lecture delivered
in Annapolis on January 10,1997 and in Santa Fe on January 23, 1998.
�2
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
65)1, Eliot will compare herself to Herodotus and call herself a
belated historian (Chapter 15, p. 96),
In her opening, rhetorical question, Eliot specifies her interest in
history as "how the mysterious mixture [of man] behaves under the
varying experiments of Time:' Time is to be regarded as a scientist,
establishing the conditions and variables under which man operates
and then observing the results. Eliot, too, can be likened to a scientist, establishing conditions and variables and watching them work on
her characters. But, of course, she doesn't really "watch them work on
her characters"; she crafts the characters and their responses.
In the second paragraph of the Prelude, however, we have a clue
as to Eliot's own view of her scientific role. She tells us in passing
that "common eyes" are not always able to penetrate the roiling surface of events, Sometimes, heroic internal struggles issue in no wellshaped event or deed. More properly than an historian, Eliot can
transform our "common" eyes into acute instruments of intelligence
by illuminating the definite thoughts and motives of her characters
and by permitting us to witness private debates and emotional consequences. The historical imagination may help us understand "how
triumphant opinions originally spread-how institutions arosewhat were the conditions of great inventions, discoveries or theoretic conceptions;' 2 but Eliot's literary effort is to school our sensibility to the tragedy imbuing some of the most ordinary interchanges
(experiments) of our lives.
Before we let her educate us, however, let's linger over the opening
sentence of the Prelude and those "varying experiments of Time:'
Eliot means more than simply that different circumstances reveal
different aspects of man's nature. She has in ll;lind a mutual dependence between these circumstances and his nature. As she says in the
Finale (p. 577), "there is no creature whose inward being is so strong
that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it:' Such interrelatedness further obscures the enigma of man's "mysterious" animal yet moral nature. Simultaneously, it increases the importance of
the "experiments of Time." For, as Darwin says, "when we regard
�HIGUERA
3
every production of nature as one which has had a history... how far
more interesting... will the study of natural history become." 3
Darwin's theory of evolution was just being formulated in Eliot's
era. She read The Origin if Species when it was first published in 1859
and again some years later; she had previously read Darwin's predecessors Lamarck, Chambers, and Spencer, and was already intrigued
by what was then called ~he Development Theory. Eliot began writing Middlemarch in 1870, long after these controversial ideas had first
engaged her considerable intellectual energy.4 She was keenly aware of
evidence that different situations and environments pressure an
organic being in different ways, that natural selection may continually be on the lookout to capitalize on the variation ever-present in the
species. You will note that, in the third paragraph of the Prelude,
Eliot speaks of the "limits of variation" being wider than one might
think in the nature of women. The title of the first chapter of
Darwin's book is "Variation Under Domestication" and the title of the
second is "Variation Under Nature:'
Eliot claims that the hidden variation in women's souls prevents
us from treating their "social lot" with "scientific certitude:' At first,
one might think Eliot thus distances herself from Darwin, who was
a new sort of scientist. However, instead of eternal species and fixed
laws of nature, Darwin had conjectured that "we shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web of affinities" connecting various
· organisms (Origin, p. 415). Images of the web, its radiating threads,
and entanglement pervade Middlemarch as well as The Origin if Species, 5
serving in both texts as a model for reality with two problematic features. The first is that individuals, while the most important element
of creation, are not strictly separable from, and indeed are quite limited by, their environment. The second concerns our limitation as scientific observers; we observe only a small slice of the present, which
masks the tree. of the history of descent. Both Eliot and Darwin see
threads of connection that radiate out through space and time in
such a way as to make interpretation and storytelling an endless. and
uncertain activity.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
However, Eliot's most profound explorations take place on a different plane from Darwin's. Already in 1856, several years before she
began to write Middlemarch, in her essay 'The Natural History of
German Life;' Eliot asserted that
the conditions which society has inherited from the
past are but the ,manifestation of inherited internal
conditions in the human beings who compose it; the
internal conditions and the external are related to
each other as the organism and its medium, and
development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both.6
Though Darwin's speculations comprehended the entire community of living creatures and embraced eons of historical development,
he was more concerned with physical changes of the species, changes
that could be gleaned from the fossil records (such as bone structure
alterations, the presence of a predator at a certain period, radical
alteration of the climate). Eliot, on the other hand, speaks of "soul"
in the Prelude. She envisions as severe a pressure on the soul, from
the social and cultural practices and habits into which one is born, as
Darwin hypothesizes concerning the geographical-ecological constraints on a given individual. Her interest perhaps determines her
formulation of man's nature as a "mysterious mixture" in the beginning of the Prelude. An individual's nature was something of a mystery to Darwin as well, but Eliot's emphasis on the "mixture" is further amplified in the succeeding image of young St. Theresa and her
brother as helpless as two fawns, "but with human hearts:' Eliot's
extension of the Darwinian problem of the struggle of an individual
nature, replete with soul and heart, born into an inhospitable environment receives its fullest exploration in Middlemarch.
In the Prelude, St. Theresa is spoken of as a type: "Many
Theresas have been born:' Eliot explores the conditioning and limiting imposed on an individual type from outside, the adaptation of
�HIGUERA
5
the self to the constraints of the social order. Eliot applies Darwin's
metaphor of the polity of nature7 to the polity itsel£ The models of
behavior evolved by a society, the premises of the local religion, technological advances, the responses of the social group to political
change, all make forceful appearances in Middlemarch, a book which
culminates with the thought that the "medium" in which St. Theresa
and Antigone accomplished their "ardent deeds" "is forever gone"
(Finale, p. 577). The "gradual action of ordinary causes" (Eliot's own
description of Middlemarch in an 1871 letter to her publisher) forces
major compromises by her two central characters.
These characters, Dorothea and the young Dr. Lydgate, are both
instances of the particular type Eliot distinguishes in the Prelude, the
St. Theresa type, namely, the ardent character, passionate to act upon
.d
an 1 eal. Every word .h ere, " ard ent," "'deal" and " act," becomes a
1
,
recurring motif in Middlemarch. For the moment, I would like to give
some depth to the first of them.
I want, then, to understand the "ardently willing soul" in paragraph 2 of the Prelude. Only the very best characters in this book are
"ardent": Dorothea, Lydgate, and, occasionally, Will. (Caleb Garth is
once called "ardent" in his generosity toward young Fred, revealing
Eliot's admiration for this down-to-earth character.) "Ardent" is a
word derived from the Latin ardere, meaning "to burn:' This etymological derivation is vivified in the Prelude by Eliot's description of
Theresa's "flame" burning up the chivalric romances of her time. We,
too, connect this word "ardent" to the fiery passion a lover may feel
for the beloved or, by extension, the words uttered by such a lover; we
may even use it to describe someone's pursuit of a goal when it is particularly single-minded and feverish.
Eliot is using this word "ardent" a little differently, for she means
it to describe a nature such as Theresa's and Dorothea's and Lydgate's.
Dorothea is introduced to us as "open, ardent, and not in the least
self-admiring" (p. 3); again, Eliot says, "The intensity of her
[Dorothea's] religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her
life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
intellectually consequent. .. " (p. 17). What does it mean for a nature
to burn with desire? Eliot most certainly does not mean that such a
nature will fix easily and quickly on the first object which presents
itself and pursue it heatedly. We have only to read the first book of
Middlemarch and become acquainted with Dorothea ( in all her youthful, faintly ascetic Puritanism) to realize she is not such a monster as
that. For Eliot, the ardent nature is one that reaches beyond its very
self, and therefore its desire is not, strictly speaking, a desire to possess. What sort of desire is it then? Let us turn to the writings of St.
Theresa and her confessor and friend, St. John of the Cross, for a
glimpse of such desire.
They are, in their own words, expounders of "mystical theology."
Perhaps it would be helpful at this point to remark on the great tradition of religious mysticism which views the soul's relationship to
God as best expressed by the relationship of a bride to her bridegroom. The Song of Solomon can be and has been read as expressive of
this relationship. Both St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa continue this tradition of interweaving the romantic yearning for the beautiful beloved with the soul seeking fellowship with God. St. Theresa
repeatedly speaks of Christ as her Spouse.8 St. John of the Cross
refers to the Holy Spirit as his Spouse. Let me give some examples of
how very seriously these two authors employ the image of erotic love.
This flame of love is the Spirit of its Spouse-that
is, the Holy Spirit. And this flame the soul feels within it, not only as a fire that has consumed and transformed it in sweet love, but also as a fire which burns
within it and sends out flame .... And this is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the soul that is transformed in love, that the acts that He performs within it cause it to send out flames, which are the enkindling of love, wherein the will of the soul is united,
and it loves most deeply, being made one with that
flame in love.9
�HIGUERA
7
And St. Theresa tries to articulate how the Prayer of Union with
God can captivate and enthrall the soul:
Have you not heard concerning the Bride.... That
soul has now delivered itself into His hands and His
great love has so completely subdued it that it neither
knows nor desires anything save that God shall do
with it what He wills.10
Or St. John of the Cross again (p. 41),
... the copiousness and abundance of (the soul's)
glory and delight. .. is the greater and the more tender
when the soul is the more fervently and substantially
transformed and centred in God. This is something
much greater than comes to pass in the ordinary
union of love, because of the greater fervency of the
fire, which here, as we say, gives forth living flame. For
this soul, which is now in such sweetness and glory,
and the soul that enjoys only the ordinary union of
love, are in a certain way comparable respectively to
the fire of God. ... For the soul in this state is like a
furnace enkindled, the vision whereof is, as we say,
the more peaceful and glorious and tender in proportion as the flame of this furnace is more vehemently
enkindled than common fire.
Perhaps, the intensity of the passion here and particularly the
representation of the illumination of the soul by God as the ecstasy
of erotic love is startling. (A moment's reflection, though, can trace
this idea as descended from Augustine and Plotinus, who were themselves altering Plato's picture of eros as the force pulling us toward
truth itsel£) I believe this eros for the divine is precisely the conception which moved Eliot when shaping Dorothea's "ardent" nature.
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The preceding passages reveal people capable of great passion, a passion the essence of which is glimpsed by most people only in sexual
relations. St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross long to be
consumed by God in a union of perfect Love. They are willing to die
to themselves and allow God to live through them. Although the
object of their love is transcendent, higher than any human being,
they view their love as ~kin to the longing of a man for a woman.
Probably, such yearning to be absorbed into another's essence is
infrequently felt even in relations between the sexes. Romantic love,
however, what we might call "being in love," does seem to me to have
that paradoxical desire for self-forgetful union at its center. For
"being in love" comprises more than a desire to possess; it is an
attraction felt by one whole person-mind, body, soul-for another
whole person. Calculations concerning needs and wants fall away in
the face of a being who embodies the good and beautiful.
Perhaps no human beloved can sustain being the vehicle of
goodness for long, and perhaps no human lover can sustain surrendering his identity-even to God-for long. But, in the Prelude,
Eliot urges us to reflect on the consequences of Theresa's "rapturous
consciousness of life beyond self' Theresa's moments of union with
God actively drew her away from herself even when the ecstasy had
subsided. They were a call from the divine, or-in the very oldest
sense of the word-a vocation. In her vocation, Theresa was both
ardent and dynamic. She was passionate, not only to experience the
joys of the other world, but to do God's work in this world:
love for God does not consist in... enjoying those
consolations and that tenderness which for the most
part we desire and in which we find comfort, but in
serving Him with righteousness, fortitude of soul
and humility. 11
In this spirit of service, of dying to her own will and following
God's will, St. Theresa reformed the Carmelite order of nuns; her
�HIGUERA
9
effort was to reject the comfort of a large and pleasant convent, to
reinstitute the strict Rule of living that had been mitigated by papal
authority, and particularly to embrace a life of absolute poverty,
denying concern even over necessities.
After this exploration of the Theresa-type, we can now deepen
our understanding of the problem of the Prelude. We have before us
a character longing to be transformed by a knowledge of the good,
yearning to transform .the p~ssibilities for life in society, yet
enmeshed in a Darwinian web where change usually occurs "by the
accumulation of innumerable slight variations" and there can be "no
great or sudden modification" (Origin, p. 444). Yet the model of St.
Theresa affords hope that under certain propitious circumstances of
the local ecology, the heart and soul can find some satisfying work to
accomplish. I am ready now to turn toward the story proper and see
how Eliot elaborates this problem.
In Middlemarch, the character Dorothea is not a member of a religious order, experiencing rapturous union with God. Still, Dorothea
is first shown us denying herself things: in Chapters 1 and 2, she has
"conscientious qualms" concerning the horseback riding she loves,
and Eliot's ironic voice informs us she "always looked forward to
renouncing it" (p. 3, also p. 10); Eliot gently mocks Dorothea's hesitation in renouncing her mother's jewels in Chapter 1, and portrays
her as momentarily deluding herself that her delight in the jewels is
"mystic religious joy"; Chapter 2 finds Dorothea fending off a charge
that she is fond of "giving up" in general. The triviality of these
denials might be saved by some encompassing scheme (some of St.
Theresa's denials were not more grand), but our reaction to these
renunciations is governed by Eliot's own ironic verdict on p. 2 that
Dorothea is "likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and
then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not
sought it:'
The difference between St. Theresa and Dorothea can be seen
clearly. Dorothea is flailing about, trying to figure out the right thing
to do. She has some vague feeling that self-denial is good, but she has
�10
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
no trustworthy guidance from anyone concerning what should be
denied and what embraced, nor any framework that tells her what
end these denials serve.
In the Prelude, Eliot tells us that Theresa's religious ideals "perform[ ed] the function of knowledge:' Since Eliot refers these ideals
to a "coherent social faith;' she must be referring not to Theresa's
direct revelations from God but to her self-confessed dependence on
guidance from priest-confessors, fellow nuns, fellow believers.U In
Eliot's time, no religion can adequately substitute for knowledge. To
find a true vocation (where now the word means only a directionnot necessarily from God-to a special work in life), Dorothea needs
some doctrine so firmly supported by a worldly structure that it can
manifest itself in society as powerfully and actively good. None of
the formal churchgoing and empty bickering about prevenient grace
in the town of Middlemarch can contend for this ideal. There, the main
import of religious sentiment seems concerned that "religion does
not require you to make yourself uncomfortable" (p. 340, see also p.
12); "the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that
opinions were not acted on" (p. 3). Such hollow reverence offers little to Dorothea in her struggle to find the "fullest truth, the least
partial good" (p. 141).
How can Dorothea channel her passion for divine goodness,
when the divine has no obvious manifestation? Lacking any liberating educational experience that might turn her to philosophy, the
nearsighted Dorothea turns toward her most obvious vocational
option. Almost inevitably, Dorothea's first marriage assumes the
aspect of religious fervor; her aim is to serve Casaubon, as maid if
necessary. Yet Dorothea dreams of being a secretary and even a kind
of graduate student to his professorial wisdom. Marriage is the one
model of fruitful self-denial that Dorothea has acquired. Dorothea
knows, however, that for marriage to be a vocation, lifting her life out
of the common and into a higher sphere, the man into whose life she
will be absorbed must be "above [herJ in judgment and in all knowledge" (Ch. 4). Only then will the self-denial be "glorious piety" (p.
�HIGUERA
11
4). She thinks, mistakenly as it turns out, that Casaubon's religious
connections and his scholarship concerning "the key to all
Mythologies" will unlock the secret of a good life.
But we would be wrong to picture Dorothea's relation even to
Casaubon as academic or abstract. Her connection with him is felt in
every fiber of her being. She "would have kissed Mr. Casaubon's
coat-sleeve, or... caressed his shoe-latchet, if he would have made any
other sign of acceptance than pronouncing her, with his unfailing
propriety, to be of a most affectionate and truly feminine nature ... "
(p. 138). Dorothea's nature requires that she make some such quixotic attempt to dedicate herself to a flesh-and-blood Dulcinea. In the
absence of direct revelation, she must reach out with affection to a
real person, and hope that the affection will carry her towards an
ideal directing her actions in this world.
During the course of her misbegotten marriage, Dorothea treads
a steeper path of self-denial than she had ever dreamed. She had
thought that she would be devoting herself to Casaubon's projeCt,
sacrificing only such dubious pleasures as dinner parties and interest
in fashion. When Dorothea's Dulcinea is recognized for the peasant
girl she is (i.e., Casaubon's empty pretentiousness and icy heart are
unmasked), duty becomes Dorothea's goal. But the word "duty" does
not, I think, adequately capture the transformation of Dorothea's
vocation. As she grows aware of Casaubon's limitations-his ignorance of certain advances in German scholarship, the empty,
labyrinthine corridors of his mind, his neurotic and unending organization of information never culminating in actual authorship, his
pathetic fear of criticism-she does not become bitter in her disillusionment. Instead, a new world opens up to her.
We do not immediately appreciate the vistas that are revealed to
Dorothea. For the new world she gains presents itself first as
Casaubon's dark, enclosed one. Dorothea has to surrender her
assumption that religious scholars have the wisdom to guide one to
virtuous action. Her solitary cry of faith (p. 190) is muted to a modest hope that the mere desire for the good may help fight evil (p. 270).
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
With no direction and little idea where to turn, she admits she hardly ever even prays after her disenchantment with Casaubon (p. 271 ).
In a book endowed with four different clergymen as characters and
an ever-present tension between Puritans, Methodists, Catholics, and
Calvinists, Dorothea's initial confidence in the power of religion to
do good in society simply evaporates. The previously noted absence
of a coherent social fai.th and the debunking of impartial Biblical
scholarship leave Dorothea stranded.
Thus stymied, the passion Dorothea had dedicated to her marriage and the pursuit of wisdom manifesrs itself as anger. Dorothea's
anger flares rather often; it is the obverse side of her ardency.
However, Dorothea's "ideal was not to claim justice, but to give tenderness" (p. 140). She repeatedly reaches beyond her very real anger
and repulsion. She becomes, not without tremendous effort and cost,
able to feel what Casaubon feels, to understand and pity him. Only a
nature longing to bury irself in the good could, at the very moment
when soul-hunger for knowledge is being stifled and affectionate
overtures are being rebuffed, ardently transform wifely duty into tenderness and pity.
The narrator betrays no trace of irony in her treatment of
Dorothea's renunciation of claims here, only admiration for her
"noble habit of soul" (p. 295) and faithful, loving compassion.
Dorothea's sacrifice for Casaubon is infinitely more serious than her
giving up of horseback riding or jewels-involving as it does a relinquishing of the just claims of a wife to respect and consideration
from a husband. Her self-repression now is founded on the very real
needs of another soul, needs which Casaubon has not even articulated to himself but which the narrator penetrates and Dorothea intuits. This sympathetic connection to another human being is new to
Dorothea. We readers, who have been continually exhorted by the
narrator to sympathy for the full spectrum of characters, recognize
this triumph over the self as a partial substitute for the failed quixotic attempt Dorothea has made to imitate St. Theresa.
In short, Dorothea matures morally. Without any authority to
�HIGUERA
13
obey, she is thrust upon her own resources. In the beginning of the
book, these resources were only able to dire£t her to establish a school
for the children in the village, to improve the design of cottages for
the poor. In the throes of her disappointment with Casaubon, a
whole different arena for doing good has opened to her. Mr.
Casaubon's "small hungry shivering self" has presented itsel£ mutely begging for sustenance, She realizes that misery of the soul can be
every bit as painful as hunger and cold, and she experiences the desire
and ability to assuage such pain.
Later, after Casaubon's death and her discovery of her own love
for the much younger and more romantic Will, this new power of
charity is dramatically and fully explored in Dorothea's intervention
to save Lydgate's marriage. At a time when she believes the man she
loves, Will, has betrayed her with Lydgate's wife, Rosamond, she
conquers despair, sets aside her own loss and determines to think
what Rosamond thinks, feel what Lydgate feels, and try to find some
influence, using sympathetically the wisdom hard-won from her first
marriage. Eliot conveys the power and magnificence of this action.
In a passage St. Theresa herself might have written, Eliot tells us
that Dorothea "yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might
make a throne within her, and rule her errant will" (p. 544). She cannot think of the "piercing trouble" that must be assailing the
estranged couple without abandoning her pride and attempting a
self-forgetful rescue.
.
In this novel, sympathetic action is more effective than rational
argument. Consider Farebrother's indifference to Lydgate's vote,
Caleb's rescue of Fred from the dangers of becoming a clergyman,
Farebrother's assistance to Fred in wooing Mary, Lydgate's support of
the publicly shamed Bulstrode, and Mrs. Bulstrode's loyalty to her
husband. The strange concept of sympathy as a vocation begins to
dawn on the reader. Perhaps instead of Theresa's faith in God and
Church, some moral guidance can be found in "an extension and
intensification of our sympathetic nature:' 13 Eliot formulates
Dorothea's progress as follows:
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her
now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in
the day of our ignorance. (p. 544)
Dorothea's newfound "knowledge" issues in a concrete good: she
does indeed save Lydgate's and Rosamond's marriage. She doesn't
wholly transform it from the miserable, empty union it is; in the
Finale, Lydgate employs the metaphor of the basil plant for
Rosamond, revealing that he thinks she is flourishing on the brains
of his corpse. Still, the marriage bond is never violated and they are
able to cultivate a family as well as most couples. We, who have stared
with Rosamond and with Lydgate across the intervening abyss, are
sensible of the great feat Dorothea's sacrificed pride and pitying fellowship has accomplished.
Yet Eliot admits in the middle of Dorothea's glorious scene of selftranscendence with Rosamond that Dorothea was guilty of her "usual
tendency to overestimate the good in others" (p. 551). Dorothea rightly has faith in Lydgate's integrity and insight into the tragedies of his
career and marriage, but her "believing conception" of Rosamond's
inner, natural pity for her husband's plight is wholly inaccurate. This
error is not as grave as Dorothea's earlier decision to commit hersel£
out of compassion for Casaubon, to a life of sifting heaps of fruitless
papers after he died. However, the "knowledge" infused by sympathy
is shown to provide dubious guidance. Readers have been taught,
through Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies, to be suspicious of binding
theories which might direct one's actions-but the absence of one is
also problematic.
Earlier, I discussed Eliot's serious skepticism concerning our ability to untangle the numerous threads of causes and effects at work in
a given individual. In Dorothea's actions, Eliot confronts the likelihood that even the least egoistical person will misread the individuals surrounding her, and so be "feeling with" a partly imaginary construct rather than a real soul. Even in Dorothea's relations with
�HIGUERA
15
Casaubon, where intimacy produced a fine attunement to his nervous
susceptibilities, she remained blissfully ignorant of his baser motives
for extracting her blind promise to do his bidding from beyond the
grave. When Dorothea steeled herself to submit to the grasp of this
dead hand, Eliot even faced the possibility that sympathy will urge
unreasonable and meaningless devotion to a task with no useful
shape in the world.
Fortunately the reader's shudder of dread was brief, since
Casaubon had already died at the moment of Dorothea's decision. But
Eliot must want us to contemplate the tragic spectacle of a fine soul
achieving nothing but sympathy. Eliot admires "magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is a condition of
good to others;' 14 but she lets us know that she is aware of its limits.
On a grand scale, such active fellow-feeling might reestablish a moral
community, but in an individual case, only the very temporary easing
of a rather puny heart's agony may result. Such chilling emptiness
makes it hard to consider sympathy itself a true vocation. Nonetheless,
in the later instance of communion between the two women,
Dorothea's selflessness and her noble expectations do work to dissolve
Rosamond's previously impermeable egotism and elicit some reflexive
sympathy. Considering Rosamond's self-righteous and self-serving
character, Dorothea's action constitutes true power. Even if we have
qualms concerning the ephemerality of Dorothea's effect and her misplaced sympathy, her generosity with Rosamond is her highest moment
of vocation in the novel and we momentarily soar with her above the
stultifying constraints of the town of Middlemarch.
Immediately after this triumph, Dorothea and Will build the
foundation for their marriage, a foundation which ends rather ominously with Dorothea's words, "and I will learn what everything
costs:' She is speaking of money, but we may wonder about her soul.
We must now ask how much this second marriage satisfies Dorothea's
ardent nature, how much it is a vocation. I have highlighted three
aspects of ardency: passion, self-denial and the pursuit of good works.
Dorothea does love Will. His open kindness has been like water
�16
THEST. JOHN'SREV1EW
in the desert to her. Their exchanges during her disillusioning honeymoon in Rome resulted in a teary-eyed communion of souls that
formed an oasis of goodwill for her in the middle of her barren marriage to Casaubon. Her childlike friendship with Will then metamorphosed into a yearning of heart that we cannot help but feel is a
deeper love than she harbored for Casaubon. Rather than seeking in
Will a potential father qr teacher-as she did in Casaubon-she and
Will stand with hands clasped, like two children (p. 559). This is
progress. Thus, when Celia makes one last attempt to reason
Dorothea out of marriage to Will, Dorothea does not even try to
explain herself; she merely says that to understand how this union
came about "you would have to feel with me" (p. 567). No theory
urges Dorothea toward this alliance, only genuine emotion.
Dorothea's real passion for Will provokes the renunciation of her
widow's fortune. But this renunciation is not clearly an ardent submergence of self in the good. From the beginning, she has viewed
Casaubon's money as a reponsibility rather than a desirable possession. True, Dorothea must give up her opportunity to do whatever
good such money might accomplish. Dorothea:s choice of marriage
over philanthropy may even seem a rejection of her ardent pursuit of
the fullest good But Eliot makes this renunciation rather less stressfUl than it might have been, since Dorothea's project to found a community of agricultural workers has already been advised against (p.
527). At the moment of decision, Dorothea is unclear about the role
of money in doing good in the world. Hence, we find her reading
books on political economy just prior to her final interview with Will
( Ch. 83). Perhaps it is Will's romantic nature, rather than the elusive
knowledge of political economy, that can widen Dorothea's vision of
what it means to do good in the world.
Can Dorothea's second marriage be a river in which the current
of her ardent soul might flow freely? But I've claimed that their love
would have to fUel a certain kind of spiritual passion, the spark of
which ignites Dorothea's persistent question "What could she do,
what ought she to do?" 15 For a nature such as Dorothea's, love should
�17
HIGUERA
clarify what constitutes virtuous activity. Can Will function as some
new, less illusory, Dulcinea for Dorothea?
Does Dorothea see in him a vision of nobility and beauty? I
think not. After Casaubon's providential demise, Eliot described
Dorothea's feelings towards Will with a story about a princess.
If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a
four-footed creature from among those which live in
herds come to her once and again with a human gaze
which rested upon her with choice and beseeching,
what would she think of in her journeying, what
would she look for when the herds passed her?"
(p.
372)
This story tells us much about Dorothea's affections. They are
born of her loneliness and isolation in the world and of Will's
delight in her heart and soul. But Eliot relegates Will to being a member of the herd at the same time that she allows him to establish an
especial understanding with Dorothea.
Will does worship her (p. 152). But she must scold him even during their last interview, which begins as a final "Goodbye" though it
advances toward romantic resolution ( Ch. 83). He complains about
the painfulness of separation; she tries to lift his eyes to some higher goal. He whines that she doesn't know how painful it is for him;
she gently reminds him (and us if we need it) that she has all too
recently known exactly what it feels like to be completely alone in the
world, tactfully referring to the fact that she had discovered
Rosamond and him in compromising circumstances. When she privately buried her love and hopes, she "wished to acknowledge that
she had not the less an active life before her" (p. 545). In comparison
with her noble act in the midst of gut-wrenching agony, Will's lack
of direction and motivation seem pathetic. He is incapable of
Dorothea's selfless devotion to the good; he is only capable of worshipping it in her.
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Still, the ability to recognize Dorothea's "genius for feeling
nobly" is a rare virtue in the book. We readers are relieved to see
someone respond to her inner greatness, Only Will and Lydgate, and
perhaps, for a brief moment, Rosamond, penetrate Dorothea's austere exterior and high-flown "absurdities" (p. 40), and Lydgate's eyes
are opened to Dorothea's fineness only after his painful misjudgment
concerning the feminine excellence of his wife. Most characters view
Dorothea merely as having capricious "notions"; at best they indulge
her, at worst condemn her. As I near the end of my inquiry into vocation, though, I am looking for more than awareness of Dorothea's
potential, Dorothea needs a beacon to follow and an opportunity to
shine hersel£ Is there enough quality in Will to illuminate "the higher inward life"?
Dorothea does impute more goodness to him than is really
there, and this tendency of hers to expect goodness and nobility
from others can itself work upon another to "baptise and consecrate" him into purity and rectitude (p. 532), So Dorothea can work
some kind of good upon WilL Then perhaps, even if Will cannot give
her "a binding theory which could... give the remotest sources of
knowledge some bearing on her actions" (p. 58), she has truly found
a vocation.
In a sense, she has. In the Finale, having become absorbed into
Will's life and being every bit as dedicated to him in marriage as she
was to Casaubon, Dorothea has a life with the requisite passion and
selflessness. Moreover, her influence has generated a desire in Will to
do some good in the world. This last goal has been a problem all
along, though. Is Dorothea better off now than when she designed
cottages? She seems to have given responsibility for finding particular work to Will. Now, Will becomes an "ardent" public man in the
Finale, working for political reforms, The transfer of Dorothea's
adjective to him elevates his own, and hence Dorothea's, potential for
a vocation.
Unfortunately, Eliot has undercut the effectiveness of political
reform in the noveL Not only has Mr. Brooke's political campaign
�HIGUERA
19
provided some slapstick comic relief in the novel, but provincial
Middlemarch has repeatedly shown itself resistant to all change not
directly connected with its pocketbook. Again, some of the more
humorous scenes in the book depict townspeople evaluating the newfangled doctor or landholders discussing the pernicious effects of railroads on the ability of cows to calve. While we hear several times of
distant revolutionaries, w~ see labourers armed with pitchforks driving
away those representatives of modernity, the railroad agents (p. 384).
In fact, Middlemarch is so resistant to change that the refoFmers of
the novel-Lydgate, Will, Dorothea-finally flee to London.
Eliot has chosen to set Middlemarch thirty years before the date of
authorship, in times of a great national struggle leading to the dissolution of Parliament and the passage 'of a Reform Bill which radically altered the extent of the franchise. One reason Eliot has selected
this time period is that she can remind us periodically how hopeful
those bygone activities were and how cynical the ensuing results have
made us. Thus, the "beneficent activity" that fills the lives of Will
and Dorothea in the Finale does not have much grander effect than
Dorothea's cottage-designing had earlier in the book. Indeed, at the
very moment when Eliot bestows "ardent" work on Will in the
Finale, she remarks that "in those times ... reforms were begun with
a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been much
checked in our days:' We infer that his activity has not produced
much satisfying fruit. Intervention in the laws which mold the medium of society may indeed result in progress, but the pace of that
progress will proceed at near Darwinian slowness.
More troubling even than the smallness of Will's political effect
is the weakness of his will. He stumbles into a political career while
lingering in Middlemarch and hoping for the occasional ray of
Dorothea's warm presence. He begins by saying "Why not?" to politics, then develops "as ardent an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or medievalism" (p. 318). It seems he can only be an "ardent
Will" with Dorothea to support him. His vocation depends upon
her faith in him.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
If Will is a channel for Dorothea's ardency, and to some extent I
think he is, the channel's course is determined in large part by
Dorothea herself.-in the absence of any clearly defined purpose. She
has the satisfaction of "rul(ing) beneficently by making the joy of
another soul" (p. 249), but she never has an epic accomplishment
comparable to St. Theresa's. Nothing emerges to take the place of
convents for Dorothea. Eliot does not mean us to see Will as an adequate substitute for a "coherent social faith:' Even if his head sprinkles sunbeams throughout the book,16 he is no god. And the clearest
sign of that is that he has no proper activity. Instead of depicting a
freely flowing current of ardency for Dorothea, Eliot's image of
Dorothea's nature at the end of the book is that of a river, or rather
a Brooke, which cannot be entirely dammed up; it seeps through in
"incalculably diffusive" little rivulets of charitable action.
Eliot intends us to see. this ending as a "tragic failure," even
though she has made us feel relieved that Dorothea marries Will and
even though she has opened our eyes to the "divine efficacy" of small
acts of fellowship. In the end, Eliot's recognition of other cases presenting "far sadder sacrifice[s ]" than Dorothea's only reinforces the
verdict that some life force has indeed perished even in Dorothea's
case. From what perspective can we truly see Dorothea's wistful contentment as tragic?
We must keep St. Theresa well in mind, I think. Eliot's hardest
task has been to depict a Theresa-like nature which is not allowed to
manifest itself at work. Eliot has, I think, succeeded in stimulating
our imagination to a keen vision of the possible sweeping effect of
the current of Dorothea's soul if allowed to gather up material and if
given a course towards the good. Perhaps then we may feel this ending as tragic, even if the tragedy concerns society more than
Dorothea. Middlemarch is not a tale of extreme suffering, but of an
unavoidable waste of the finest part of the human spirit. What is
Eliot's purpose in trying to give us a semi-historical perspective that
mourns the passing of certain possibilities? Clearly Eliot is not call-
�HIGUERA
21
ing for a reinstitution of some Golden Age of St. Theresa. Is she
hoping to motivate some social reform which would provide new
opportunitiess for the grandeur of a noble woman to express itself?
What would the opportunities be?
Now, many occupations are scrutinized in Middlemarch. I've discussed the limited possibilites of politics already, one of the occupations which Eliot considers at least a bit worthy. The only decent
clergyman in the book would rather be studying bugs. Businessmen
provide some of the crudest types, with Bulstrode's particular combination of business and religion providing an anti-paradigm. Caleb
Garth's "religious" (p.173) pursuit of the skillful application of labor
(he is an estate-manager) is "sublime" (p. 173); but his business has
failed shortly before the book opens (p. 160) and he is helpless in his
distress over the mismanagement of his neighbor's lands (p. 279).
Of the doctors in the town, only Lydgate is not altogether a common country doctor. Only he has "an intellectual passion" (his is for
anatomy), and only he has a "moment of vocation" (p. 98). He is
presented as no mere academic, but one pursuing "the most direct
alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good" (p. 99).
Despite Eliot's passing note that Lydgate is putting his question
"What was the primitive tissue?" (p. 102)-out of which the various
organs are compacted-in the wrong way (Hooke coined the term
cell in 1865), surely his recognition of primary webs (echoing as it
does the narrator's own emphasis on webs), his variation of perspective through observation of patients and research with a microscope
(also echoing the narrator's technique of shifting focus), and his
longing to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living structure and "help to define men's thought more accurately after the true
order"-surely all these are praiseworthy. However, even here, where
Eliot dearly admires his intentions and methods and even has some
hope for real progress, limitations are overwhelmingly present.
We can convince ourselves that Lydgate's little "spots of commonness" regarding women and furniture are separable from his research
�22
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
project; but the outcome of his project is dubious anyway. Besides
the warning about the wording of his question, many everyday pressures threaten Lydgate. He has bargained with the devil, in the shape
of the powerful banker Nicholas Bulstrode, even before he succumbs
to Rosamond. His fellow doctors and the patients themselves are
stubbornly resistant to innovation; out of loyalty and long-familiar
habit, they are as likely as not to disregard Lydgate's advanced remedies. The success Lydgate has with a few patients may be as fatal as
failure in the conservative and jealous town of Middlemarch ( c£ Ch.
45). Finally, as with politics, the narrator cynically comments,
"Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorisers
than the present" (p. 101).
I'm afraid no character in Middlemarch seems to have a vocation
with much more potential for radical effect than Dorothea's sympathy. But action is important in this book. Eliot takes as a grand
accomplishment Theresa's reformation of the Carmelite. order into
the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites. Though the Discalced
Carmelites cultivate the contemplative life in all its aspects, their dedication to the otherworldly is ignored by Eliot. She stresses only the
self-transcending action and the potential for self-transcendence
transmitted to others. The highest life for any Dorothea ought be a
life of action, improving the lot of others in this world.
Now, sympathy does not, stricdy speaking, qualifY as active work.
It may well be a mode of doing work, or a prerequisite for the work
of a reformer to take root. But I don't see how one can view sympathy
as an octupation. In that sense, Dorothea's entire history is but a prelude to vocation. Casting about for an example of active, hopeful work
in the novel, I turn finally to the narrator hersel£ Certainly, Eliot herself is a strong presence in the novel Middlemarch. My meager abilities
could not encapsulate the subdeties of her role even if I were at the
beginning of this exploration rather than the end. But I would like to
sketch my reasons for thinking the narrator is fulfilling a real vocation.
Eliot weaves into her plot commentaries on her characters, commentaries on human nature in general, and direct exhortations to the
�HIGUERA
23
reader. Examples of her attempts to involve and educate us, directly
and indirectly, abound. Let me illustrate first with a passage concerning the local busybody, Mrs. Cadwallader. Eliot pens another
paragraph (p. 39) beginning with a rhetorical question, this time asking, "why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy
about Miss Brooke's marriage?" She notes that a telescope following
Mrs. Cadwallader's comings and goings and trained on her features,
that is, tracing her current history, would never reveal the causes of
her interests. Eliot continues,
Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we
find ourselves making interpretations which turn out
to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you
may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as
if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger
lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make
vortices for these victims while the swallower waits
passively at his receipt of custom.
Eliot is clearly more interested in defining her relationship to us
than in analyzing Mrs. Cadwallader. Unseen worlds surround us,
worlds which may only be accessible to us with the aid of art, be it
the technology of telescopes and microscopes or the wisdom of an
imaginative experiment. Even then, the art may not penetrate to the
ultimate causes. But any interpretation which attributes independent
activity to a creature has not magnified its view sufficiently.
Eliot often informs us we might not understand events properly
without her. She not only interprets events in the book, but regularly makes us aware that she is so doing, insisting that we would misapprehend her characters if she gave us only a certain strength lens to
peer through. Yet she is the person in charge of the lenses. She must
want us to cultivate a certain kind of circumspection.
This thought is borne out in my second example, where Eliot
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
explicitly cautions us against a "too hasty judgment" of the numbingly cold pedant Casaubon, whose most fervently amorous words to
his fiancee Dorothea concerned her "elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labours and to cast a charm over
vacant hours:' Eliot urges us to consider that he too is the "centre of
his own world;' with dreams of genius, fears of failure, and consuming needs. Mysteriously,,she accomplishes the Herculean task of stirring our sympathies for Casaubon while consistently judging him
nevertheless to be a twisted, arid soul, inhabiting the catacombs of
once-potent traditions which move him not at all. Eliot's question
this time, "., , but why always Dorothea?" (p. 192), places us in an
uncomfortable position. We have been made to understand
Casaubon as a vampire draining Dorothea of her lifeblood, as a
demythifying pigeonholer, paranoid of all criticism, and as a man
incapable of the smallest signs of affection. Now, Eliot makes us see
the insurmountable barriers he would have to face in order even to
lay a reassuring hand on Dorothea's arm; she forces us to experience,
from the inside, his crippling anxieties; we suffer the intensity of his
longing for respect from the intellectual community. Casaubon's soul
is not a pleasant place to visit, hut even more disconcerting than its
ugliness is the fact that we can feel at home there.
In addition to fulfilling the usual tasks of a narrator, this oneoften by bringing to bear a wealth of scientific information, poetic
sense, and history-forcefully propels us into foreign perspectives.
She appeals often to us, urging us to reflect on our reactions, criticize them, possibly alter them. She continually exhorts us to be more
sympathetic. Most novelists want readers to feel connected to their
characters. Eliot's narrator reaches even beyond the book, though.
Her educative task includes getting us to perceive sympathy as a
moral act, in our lives as well as in our reading.
Hence, her continual irony is calculated to tell on us as well as on
a character-as when we learn that, "In his closest meditations the
life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's mind clad his most egoistic terrors
in doctrinal references to superhuman ends:' We smile in safe superi-
�HIGUERA
25
ority, but the smile fades to a grimace with the narrator's next generalizing sentence, "But even while we are talking and meditating about
the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our
movements to is the stable earth and the changing day" (p. 364). We
understand that we are not so safe from this charge of hypocrisy. The
narrator's generalizations have the overarching purpose of making us
at least as morally matur~ as Dorothea! as able as she finally is to see
the lights and shadows on another's life. Hence, she tells us, "We are
all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed
our supreme selves" (p. 146). Eliot is not merely reflecting what is; she
is attempting to re-form us at the deepest level.
Her aim requires more than that we merely look at a person or
event from many different points of view; else we might turn into
Mr. Brooke, always going into everything, but never too far. When
Eliot obtrudes herself in Chapter 27, she relates a scientist-friend's
account of the phenomenon that random scratches on a mirror will
appear to be arranged in concentric circles whenever and wherever a
candle is held against it. She moralizes: "The scratches are events, and
the candle is the egoism of any person.... "That is, any individual's
interpretation will mislead, and it will mislead precisely because personal desires and prejudices will attribute causes and tendencies
where there are none.
This narrator vibrates between exhorting to sympathy and executing judgment. We are called to understand the sources of human
action and yet condemn all egoism as we do. The potential in politics and science for reshaping our lives and communities so as to
lessen the general misery of our lot, this potential, can only come to
fruition when we have a disposition not just for improvement in general but for self-sacrifice towards the benefit of particular persons
and particular social duties. While sympathy itself may not qualify as
a vocation, writing a novel which transforms "the frozen stare with
which we look at our unintroduced neighbour" (p. 64)--that I think
does quality as a full-fledged vocation. In this theater of action, jolting readers out of self-absorption and cultivating judgment of
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
motives and ends, through the widespread reading of a morally
responsible novel, radical change may be possible. Eliot, at least, has
a vocation for an heroic achievement; she finds her "epos" in reforming novel-readers' sensibilities.
Notes
All Middlemarch citations are from the Norton Critical Edition
(New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977).
1.
George Eliot, "Leaves from a Notebook;' Essays of George Eliot,
edited by Thomas Pinney, (New York: Columbia University Press,
2.
1963).
3. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Penguin Books,
1983), p. 486. All Darwin citations are from this edition.
For a fuller discussion of the influence of Darwinism on Eliot's
writing, see Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1983).
4.
George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1977), pp. 41, 64, 80, 96, 102, 124, 208, 238, 280, 290,
5.
304, 343, 350, 426.
George Eliot, "The Natural History of German Life;' Essays of
George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1963).
6.
7. See Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (New York: Penguin
Books, 1983), pp. 132, 147-148, 150-154, 156, 162-3.
See, for example, St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1961), pp. 50, 117, 122.
8.
�27
HIGUERA
9. St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love, translated and edited by
E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1962), p. 33.
10. St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, p, 109.
11. St. Teresa of Avila, The Life
of Teresa of Jesus,
translated and edited
by E. Allison Peers (NewYork: Image Books, 1960), p. 131.
12. See The Life
of Teresa of jesus, pp. 105-6, pp. 220-221.
13. George Eliot, "Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet
Young," Essays of Geo'J:e Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1963).
14. Ibid.
15. George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1977), p. 17. See also pp. 52, 58, 189, 190, 199, 251! 329,
338, 556.
16. Ibid., pp. 142, 145, 250, 254.
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
How We Do Things With Words:
An Introduction to Wittgenstein
John Verdi
Ludwig Wittgenstei~ was born in 1889 and died in 1951. * He
believed that a serious philosophical work could be written consisting of nothing but jokes. I'm sorry to say that my lecture won't be
like that, but I have included a few jokes in it. I hope you notice
them. Which reminds me of the time Wittgenstein was attending a
lecture by a famous linguist at Cambridge. The lecturer was telling
the audience that while most languages have single words for the
affirmative and the negative, and most also use the double negative
as an affirmative, no language uses the double affirmative as a negative. To this Wittgenstein is reported to have said, "Yeah, yeah:' He
also believed that a serious philosophical work could be written
which consisted entirely of unanswered questions. His second
major work, Philosophical Investigations, on which I shall spend all my
time and yours, contains 784 questions, of which only 110 are
answered, and 70 of the answers are meant to be wrong. I'm happy
to say that my lecture will not be like that. Wittgenstein's style, however, is essentially dialectical, in a Socratic sense. That is, it is full of
supposings and questionings, not questions and answers.
Wittgenstein believes that the nature of the problems he considers
compels "us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in
every direction" and that the best he can present is "a number of
sketches of landscapes... made in the course of these long and
involved journeyings." (PI, p. ix) His thoughts are better explored in
the dialectic of conversation than in the monologue of lecturing,
*I would like to thank Mr. Radoslav Datchev for his many helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
John Verdi is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This is a revised version of a lecture given at
Annapolis, Sept. 20,1997 and at Santa Fe, April24, 1998.
�30
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and so I hope you will recognize that I offer you now both an introduction and an invitation,
The lecture comes in three parts. Part One is on language.
Wittgenstein believed that language could be compared to an ancient city,
a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new
houses, and of ,houses with additions from various
periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of newboroughs with straight regular streets and uniform
houses. (PI, 18)
About this city it is difficult to command a perspicuous, surveyable view. Consequently maps of its streets and terrain can be
hopelessly misleading, directing us one place while leading us to
believe we are somewhere else. We have no need for such maps in
ordinary discourse, for we generally know our way around. But it is
our fate to persist in drawing maps while we are enmeshed in the
"labyrinth of paths" (PI, 203) which is our language. One of these
misleading maps is constituted by a large part of the field of psychology, about which I'll speak in Part Two of the lecture. "In psychology," he says "there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion" (PI, 232), as when psychologists attempt to get dear about
what consciousness is, or thinking, or willing by studying the mind
and its contents or the brain and nervous system. Part Three of the
lecture is on philosophy. Philosophical problems, he says, have the
form: "I don't know my way about" (PI, 123). They arise when language is "like an engine idling, not when it is doing work" (PI, 132).
In Part One I present what I think is the core of Wittgenstein's
insight, and in Parts Two and Three some of its implications.
Wittgenstein once said that while he was not a religious man, he
could "not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view"
(Rhees, p. 94). Behind much of what I say lies my attempt to understand this remark and how it might help us discover what
Wittgenstein's place can be in our lives as a community of learners.
�VERDI
31
Part One: Language
What is the connection between language and reality? We all suspect that this question has no simple answer, but one picture might
come to mind. It is one which Wittgenstein himself cites at the very
beginning of the Philosophical Investigations, and it comes from St.
Augustine's Confessions. While it is a picture to which Augustine likely did not fully ascribe, if we consider what he says in an earlier book,
On the Teacher, it presents a tempting view of the way language originates and how it operates. Augustine is describing how he must have
come to learn language as an infant. He writes:
When my elders named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and grasped
that the thing was called by the sound they uttered
when they meant to point it out. Their intention was
shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the
face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other
parts of the body, and the tone of voice which
expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words
repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learned to understand what objects
they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to
form those signs, I used them to express my own
desires. (I, 8)
Augustine's words give a particular picture of human language,
namely, that the individual words in a language name objects, perhaps
also actions and qualities, and that sentences are combinations of such
wo rds. '" ds such as "soon," " not," "perhaps," take care o f t h emse1
vvor
ves.
In this picture of language Wittgenstein finds the root of the beliefs
that every word has a meaning that is correlated with the word and that
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the meaning is the object for which the word stands or an intermedi-
ary between the word and the object, such as a thought or idea.
To contrast with this image of language, let us place ourselves in
a simple situation. Let us imagine that I send someone shopping.
I give him a slip marked "five red apples:' He takes
the slip to the, shopkeeper who opens the drawer
marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in
a table and finds a color sample opposite it; then he
says the series of cardinal numbers-I assume he
knows them by heart-up to the word "five" and for
each number he takes an apple of the same color as
the sample out of a drawer.-It is in this and similar
ways [Wittgenstein says J that one [actuallyJ operates
with words.-"But how does he know where and how
he is to look up the word "red" and what he is to do
with the word five"'?- Well, I assume that he acts as
I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.-But what is the meaning of the word "five"?
-No such thing is in question here, only how the
word "five" is used. ( PL 1)
In this example Wittgenstein turns our attention to the possibility that the meaning of a word is the use we make of it, not some
object or intermediary to which the word refers. "For a large class of
cases-if not for all-the meaning of a word is its use in the language:' (PI, 43) The word "five" in the example is not used like the
word "red:' The shopkeeper does not consult a sample with the word
written on it. "Red" is not used like "apple;' for there is no sample
for "apple" as there is for "red:' These three simple words, "apple;'
"red;' "five;' begin to show us how words function in a variety of
ways, and that to imagine a "meaning" for each word apart from its
uses in particular circumstances is to misconstrue how language
works. Wittgenstein rejects any question about what the meanings of
�VERDI
33
these words might be apart from their uses. Such questions already
presuppose a certain view of what gives words their value. Instead,
Wittgenstein invites us to "think of words as instruments characterized by their use" (BB, p. 67).
Think of the tools in a tool-box. There is a hammer,
pliers, a saw, a s,erewdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue,
nails and screws.-The functions of words are as
diverse as the functions of these objects. (PI, 11)
And no one use characterizes all words. When we become confused about the meaning of a word or the sense of a sentence,
Wittgenstein wants us to ask: "on what occasion, for what purpose,
do we say this? What kind of actions accompany these words? ... In
what scenes will they be used, and what for?" (PI, 489)The variety of
the purposes for which we use words is bounded only by the variety
of human activities in which language plays a part.
The kinds of things we do with words, and the contexrs in which
we do them, Wittgenstein calls language-games. Wittgenstein hopes
the image of the game will give us a perspicuous view of parts of language, and emphasize features of language the importance of which
he believes is frequently overlooked. He means to "bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of a language is a part of an activity,
or a form of life" (PI, 23 ). Wittgenstein did not believe language was
a game; our linguistic activities are less trivial than games because of
the way they are interwoven into our lives. But he did think that we
could achieve some measure of clarity about language by comparing
it to games. Let's consider along with Wittgenstein the game of chess
to help ascertain some of the features of language he wants us to see.
We play chess according to rules that determine what moves are
permitted. They allow us to play the game, but not necessarily to play
it well, because they do not tell us what moves are best. The rules tell
us how the individual pieces can move, something which cannot be
determined by an examination of the shapes of the pieces or their
�34
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
places on the board. The pieces are defined by their use, by their role
in the game. (One would not say, for example, "I know what the
bishop does. Now tell me what it really is.") In language, too, rules of
what he calls grammar widely considered determine the limits of
what it makes sense to say. They demarcate the region of the sensible, in which the activities of language can take place, in which we can
actually do things with 'Yards. The functions of individual words and
sentences can be determined only by observing how they are in fuct
used in the various neighborhoods of our language, and in what circumstances and for what ends we use them.
Chess can be taught and learned, and in the process of teaching,
it must be possible to correct the learner, to tell him, for example,
that a pawn that has reached the last row cannot be promoted to a
king ( BB, p. 67), or to remind him that a bishop cannot jump over
other pieces. These are not moves in the game, though one might
imagine a variant of chess in which these moves were allowed. It
would then be for experience to tell us if such a game was worth playing, but it would no longer be chess. We teach and learn language,
too. We correct children when they say ungrammatical things, in the
narrow, school-book sense of grammar, as when in a sentence the
subject and verb don't agree in number. We also correct them in other
contexts when they speak ungrammatically in that wider sense of
grammar. For example a child who awakens in the morning and says
he was on a ship during the night might be told that he'd had a
dream, and he quickly learns to append "I dreamt" before such statements. We might suspend this rule of saying "I dreamt:' (We could
imagine children doing this as a kind of game: "Where did you go
last night?") The context would then make it clear that their travels
were dream travels and that they were not speaking nonsense.
Whenever Wittgenstein uses the word "grammar;' he generally means
it in this wider sense, into which are incorporated the circumstances
in which something is said. A sentence, therefore, may be grammatical in the narrow sense, but not grammatical in the wider sense.
Which reminds me of the man who came running into his doctor's
�35
VERDI
office, dragging a friend by the wrist, saying, "Doctor, doctor, I think
I have Parkinson's disease-and he has mine!"
Chess is also autonomous. That is, we are not tempted to think
that we must point outside the game to its meaning. If you follow
rules other than those of the game, you do not play chess badly (as
you might cook badly if you follow cooking rules other than the
right ones). You simply do not play chess (Z, 320). And this might
have consequences. Language, too, Wittgenstein wants to say, is
autonomous. It requires no justification. We do' not read its rules off
from nature. In that sense they are arbitrary. If you follow ru1es other
than those of your language, you do not say something wrong, but you
might say something nonsensical, or you might say nothing at all. But
to call the rules of our language arbitrary is not to say they are whimsical or pointless. To call them arbitrary is to say that "the aim of
grammar is nothing but that of the language" (PI, 497). And while
the rules for describing reality may be determined by convention, the
description of reality is determined by reality.
Among the many games that people play other than chess, we
find board-games, ball-games, card-games, Olympic games, related in
various ways, with various concepts of winning, various rules of what
is permitted, various contexts in which they are played and with various pieces of equipment. The multiplicity of language-games is no
less; Wittgenstein mentions the following:
Giving orders, and obeying themDescribing the appearance of an object, or giving its
measurements-
Reporting an eventSpeculating about an eventForming and testing a hypothesisPresenting the results of an experimentMaking up a story, and reading itPlay-actingSinging catches-
�36
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Guessing riddlesMaking a joke; telling itSolving a problem in practical arithmeticTranslating from one language to anotherAsking, thinking, cursing, greeting, praying. (PI, 23)
These language-gaf\les, and myriad others, belong as much to
"our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing" (PI, 25).
And so the observation and description of language-games, if it is
sensitive and detailed, can constitute a study of human life
(Malcolm, p. 77).
At this point someone might quite properly object. "You take the
easy way out."
You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have
nowhere said what the essence of a language-game,
and hence of language, is: what is common to all
these activities, and what makes them into language
or parts of language .... " And this is true .... I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,-but
that they are related to one another in many different
ways. And it is because of this relationship ... that we
call them all language. (PI, 65)
Just as we shall find no one thing common to all games on
account of which we call them all games, so, too, the various boroughs of language need share no common feature. We see instead "a
complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing"
(PI, 66). Wittgenstein characterizes these similarities as "family
resemblances," because the resemblances between members of a family in build, eye color, gait, temperament and so forth, also overlap
and criss-cross in the same way. Games-and language-games-form
such families.
�VERDI
37
The concept of language-game is central to Wittgenstein's thinking. Understanding what a piece in chess is requires understanding
the whole game, the rules defining it, and the role of the piece in the
game. So, too, we might say that the meaning of a word is its place
in the language-game, and it is its use in a language-game that
breathes life into a word, much as a hand can do work only while it
is attached to a living body.
We can also recognize in music many of the features of games
which Wittgenstein finds important to understanding language.
Different forms of music (such as Gregorian chant, harmonic,
twelve-tone, raga) are defined in part by rules which circumscribe the
bounds of the musically possible. These rules can be taught and
learned, and mistakes can be made and corrected. Music rules can
also be stretched, and new forms of music invented, though perhaps
not at will. Individual notes or groups of notes derive their meaning
from their use in the piece, and from the context in which they
appear. The same note might be heard as the tonic in one measure,
the dominant in another, as the beginning of a twelve-tone row or its
end, and so forth. Music, too, is autonomous. A melody or a piece
of music does not derive its musical meaning from something outside. When we attempt to bring someone to understand a musical
theme, or how to play a piece better, we do not point to some thing
or idea outside the music, but rather say things like: "'At this point
of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon; or 'this is ... the answer to
what came before"' (BB, 166) or "tell yourself it's a waltz and then
you will play it correctly" (PI, 167). Wittgenstein would like to say
that what the melody tells us is itsel£ but in order to understand the
melody, one must already be familiar with music. "Understanding a
sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than
one may think" (PI, 527). When we are tempted to say that understanding a sentence points to a reality outside the sentence, we should
instead say, '"Understanding a sentence means getting hold of its
content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence'" (PI, 167).
But just as we cannot get hold of what it is for a piece to be a bish-
�38
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
op in chess, or a tone to be a dominant in music without already
knowing chess or music, so, too, must we already be masters of alanguage before we can understand a sentence. And when we do understand, it is not because we see how the sentence points away from
itself. but because we know how it is used, which is to say, what we
can do with it.
By directing our att,ention to the analogy between language and
games and other rule-directed human activities, Wittgenstein emphasizes the social aspect of language, just as he emphasizes its pragmatic
aspect by comparing words with tools. At root these are the same,
though they provide different views of the functioning of language
in our lives. In an effort to explore language's social side and its
implications, Wittgenstein draws us more deeply into the problem of
what it is for someone to follow a rule. Games, music and language
are all rule-governed human activities, and their social character ties
up in important ways with rules. Following rules is involved in every
important activity in which human beings are engaged, in every activity in which there can be correct and incorrect ways of doing things.
Wittgenstein's discussion of rules leads him to talk about what
understanding a rule is and eventually to his extraordinary claim that
a private language is impossible. I'd like to follow this trail for the
next few minutes.
Is what we call 'obeying a rule' something that it
would be possible for only one man to .do, and to do
only once in his life? (PI, 199)
Wittgenstein's question, like all of his questions, is conceptual, that
is, grammatical in the broad sense and not empirical. He is not asking something like, is it possible for only one man, and only once in
his life, to swim the Atlantic? Rather, he's asking, does the concept of
"obeying a rule" make sense if applied just once? Wittgenstein
answers himself as follows:
�39
VERDI
It is not possible that there should have been only one
occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not
possible that there should have been only one occasion on which a report was made, an order given or
understood; and so on.-To obey a rule, to make a
report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are
customs (uses, institutions). (PI, 199)
Kant makes a similar observation about promises in the
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. A universal law that dictated that
I could break my promises whenever it was to my advantage to do so
"would make promising... itself impossible" (55/422). Under such
conditions no individual, no matter how sincere, could promise anything because the institution of promising could itself no longer
exist. Obeying a rule is such an institution.
What goes on when we learn rules and then follow them? Is a
rule a kind of "mental mechanism" that goes through.its motions
whenever it is, turned on? Or is it an abstract entity that already contains all possible workings-out, as we might imagine an algebraic
expression to be? Or does following a rule consist in intuiting what
your teacher wants you to do, as when you continue a number series
correctly? Wittgenstein rejects all three of these accounts. Instead, he
proposes that we think about reading as an example of rule-guided
activity. He has in mind what we might call "automatic reading;' that
is, reading in which comprehension of the text is not important, not
the sort of reading we encourage at St. John's. In this way one could
be said to read a language one does not know, say ancient Greek, once
one has mastered the sounds of the letters, diphthongs and accent
marks, even before one has learned any grammar or vocabulary.
Reading in this way seems to be rule-guided. Not just any sounds I
utter will be correct, but only those which are connected in some way
with the written words on the page. The possibility of making mistakes and of being corrected makes sense here, as it does in learning
how to play a game. But exactly in what way must the written words
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and the sounds I make be connected for it to be correct to call what
I am doing "reading;' in the sense of "rendering out loud what is
written or printed'? When one reads, says Wittgenstein,
his eye passes... along the printed words, he says them
out loud-or only to himself; in particular he reads
certain words l;>y taking in their printed shapes as
wholes; others when his eyes have taken in the first
syllables; others again he reads syllable by syllable,
and an occasional one perhaps letter by letter.-We
should also say that he had read a sentence if he
spoke neither aloud nor to himself during the reading but was afterwards able to repeat the sentence
word for word or nearly so-... Now compare a
beginner with this reader. The beginner reads the
words by laboriously spelling them out.-Some however he guesses from the context, or perhaps he
already partly knows the passage by heart. Then his
teacher says that he is not really reading the words (and
in certain cases that he is only pretending to read
them. (PI, 156)
Wittgenstein tells us that if we focus on the reading of the beginner, and .use it to determine what reading consists in, we may be
inclined to say that reading is a "special conscious activity of the
mind:' But Wittgenstein does not want to say this. "The same thing
may take place in the consciousness of the pupil who is 'pretending'
to read, as in that of the practiced reader who is 'reading' it. The word
'read' is applied differently when we are speaking of the beginner and of
the practiced reader" (PI, 156). Still, we are tempted to go on and say
that if the difference between the two is not in some conscious activity, then it must be in an unconscious one, two different mechanisms to
distinguish reading from not reading. "But;' Wittgenstein replies,
"these mechanisms are only hypotheses, models designed to explain,
�VERDI
41
to sum up, what you observe" (PI, 156). They are nothing that we can
know and consequently they can never be used to teach someone how
the word "reading" is used. This is to say that they cannot figure in
the concept of reading.
Wittgenstein's interlocutor persists. "But isn't that only because
of our too slight acquaintance with what goes on in the brain and
nervous system?" (PI, 158) If we knew more, we'd be able to say,
"Now he has read this and now the reading connection has been set
up:' But ask yourself, how much do you know about these things?
Aren't you approaching the concept of reading with certain requirements, such as that whatever connection is set up between the printed word and the read word spoken out loud must be a connection set
up inside the person doing the reading, a mental connection? If you
are wearing an analog watch, not a digital one,
try this experiment: say the numbers from 1 to 12.
Now look at the dial of your watch and read them.What was it you called "reading" in the latter case?
That is to say: what did you do, to make it into reading? (PI, 161)
Wittgenstein wants to answer this question by saying that "nothing
else happens when we say the [numbersJ than just saying them while
looking" at the numerals on the watch face (BB, p.149). It is not necessary, he thinks, that certain peculiar experiences more or less characteristic of reading take place while we are reading. I might be tempted
to say that when I am really reading, "the words I utter come in a special way" (PI, 165). But in what way? "Read the letter A.-Now, how
did the sound come?-We have no idea what to say about it" (PL 166).
The difference between reading and not reading does not lie in
conscious or unconscious mental processes. It does not lie in states
of the brain and nervous system. For Wittgenstein the difference lies
in the circumstances that make it correct in the one case and incorrect in the other to say of someone that he or she is reading. If read-
�42
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing is a rule-governed activity, like playing games, speaking, playing
music, it must be possible to teach someone how to do it. This means
it must be possible to correct his mistakes when he is wrong, to
encourage him when he is doing well, and thereby to teach him not
only how to read, but what reading is. And the possibility must also
exist for vagueness in the application of the rules, and for situations
to arise in which we WO!Jld not know what to say about how the rule
is to be applied. An inexact rule is not necessarily an unusable one, as
when I instruct someone to "stand roughly here" (PI, 88). Any social,
rule-governed activity hangs on what the person does, not on what he
feels or what he thinks he is doing. In teaching someone how to read,
we never point to our head or his and say, this is reading. We never
correct what might be going on in his consciousness or his brain. We
correct what he says, and we do so in the context of particular circumstances. If we know that Mr. Smith has never before seen the
Greek alphabet, yet on the first day of class can recite the opening
lines of the Iliad in perfect Greek, while his eyes run across the lines
of printed text, we know he is not reading. But we know this not
because we have special access to his mind, but because we know he
has never before studied Greek. That is, we know something about
his life, about his education and experience, not something about his
present mental state, which justifies us in saying, "He is only pretending to read:' What we might have been tempted to take as a mental activity (that of "reading" or "pretending to read") Wittgenstein
suggests we see as a public condition, available to all, because it is a
rule-governed public activity, and rules are teachable and learnable.
We might say that concepts, like people, require society.
Still you might object that automatic reading cannot be the paradigm of rule-governed activity. Following a rule often (and perhaps in
the most important cases) entails that we also understand the rule before
we can follow it. We are inclined to say that without understanding,
we are no better than mindless machines that act in a regular way.
Wittgenstein agrees that there is all the difference in the world
between saying a sentence with understanding and saying it without
�VERDI
43
understanding, but in what does the understanding consist?
Wittgenstein says that understanding is neither a mental nor a physical event, process or state, though there may be "more or less characteristic accompaniments or manifestations of understanding" (PL 112).
Wittgenstein offers at least two arguments for his claim that
understanding is no sort of mental or physical phenomenon. First,
no mental or bodily phenomena are necessary to my understanding a
word, a sentence, a mathematical formula, any more than they are
necessary for my understanding how to play chess or the piano. For
example, let's suppose that in order to understand a sentence one
must first have some kind of mental image. We might say that this
image serves the function of connecting the sentence to the world.
Wittgenstein writes:
Supposing I teach someone the use of the word "yellow" by repeatedly pointing to a yellow patch and
pronouncing the word .... I make him apply what he
has learned by giving him the order, "Choose a yellow
ball out of this bag." What was it that happened when
he obeyed my order? I say "possibly just this: he heard
my words and took a yellow ball from the bag:' Now
you may be inclined to think that this couldn't possibly have been all, and the kind of thing that you would
suggest is that he imagined something yellow when he
understood the order, and then chose a ball according to
this image. (BB, pp. 11-12)
Wittgenstein then asks, is imagining the yellow also necessary
when we command him to imagine a yellow patch? "Would you still
be inclined to assume that he first imagines a yellow patch, just understanding [theJ order, and then imagines a yellow patch to match the
first?" ( BB, p. 12) Wittgenstein does not deny that we sometimes do
imagine colors, shapes, and so forth when we understand a sentence,
but such imaginings are not necessary to the concept of understanding.
�44
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
One might understand without having any mental images at all, or any
other kind of experience which could constitute the understanding.
Neither are such phenomena sufficient to my understanding a sentence. Any image might cross my mind or I might feel something
when I hear or read a sentence, yet still not understand what I have
heard or read. Wittgenstein says:
Suppose that a picture does come before your mind
when you hear the word "cube;' say, a drawing of a
cube. In what sense can this picture fit or fail to fit a
use of the word "cube"? (PI, 139)
The picture alone lacks what we might call its method of projection,
that is, a rule which would connect the image with the use of the
word "cube:' The image alone cannot tell us how it is to be applied,
and according to Wittgenstein it is no more sufficient grounds for
saying "I understand" than would be a drawing or a model in front
of me.
What is essential is to see that the same thing can
come before our minds when we hear the word and the
application still be different. Has it the same meaning
both times? I think we shall say not. (PI, 140)
What, then, does Wittgenstein say understanding· is? When do
we say of someone that he or she understands? Wittgenstein wants
us to keep in mind that the word "understand" is itself teachable
and learnable, and that a learner (or even a fluent speaker) can make
mistakes in applying it and be corrected. Understanding a word signifies an ability that manifests itself in three ways: in how one uses
the word, in how he responds to its use by others, and in how he
shows others its use (Glock, p. 373). Understanding a sentence is an
ability to do something, such as get a yellow ball when asked, recite
the alphabet, continue a number series, translate a Greek passage,
�45
VERDI
help carry on a discussion in seminar. Understanding a language is
knowing what expressions of the language mean, knowing how to
use them in accord with the rules for their use. This entails knowing the difference between right and wrong ways of using words,
and in this sense understanding is an ability to do something in
accordance with rules.
But you might say this still does not sound like enough, for mere
acting in accord with a rule cannot be equivalent to following a rule, and
if the difference between the two does not consist in what goes on in
the mind or brain, then what is the difference? Anything that acts in
a rrgular way acts according to some rule, even if it acts without understanding, as perhaps the heavenly bodies do. To address this concern
Wittgenstein calls our attention to the social nature of language and
other rule-governed activities. We use rules as standards of correctness
in practice. The relation between a rule and what counts as following a
rule is given by how we employ the ru1e, how we would explain or
justif}r our use of it, how we wou1d teach it or learn it or correct misapplications of it.
A rule for the use of an expression and the acts that
[followJ it are not independent of each other, but two
sides of the same [conceptual] coin, two aspects of a
practice. ... There is no such thing as a rule without a
technique of application that is manifest in action
.... The phenomenon of language is part of the web
of human action and interaction the world. It presupposes as its stable framework certain pervasive regularities of the physical world and of human nature.
Understanding a language is not a mental state but a
capacity or array of capacities to employ symbols in
accord with rules in a myriad of speech activities. This
conception of language as Praxis, this emphasis upon
the primacy of the deed is a fundamental aspect of
Wittgenstein's philosophy. (Hacker, p. 250)
�46
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
It recalls the line from Goethe's Faust: "In the beginning was the
deed:' ("Im A>ifang war die Tat" Part One, line 1235)
All this may be true, you say, but you still have not told us what
account Wittgenstein gives of the importance of thought to language?
Language isn't simply rule-following language-behavior, which this
emphasis on action might lead one to think. What about my inner
life, my thoughts, feelings, hopes? These are mine and Wittgenstein
hasn't yet told us how language as action can have any connection to
them, or how we can talk about them at all.
Wittgenstein considers this a very serious question and his
response lies at the core of his reflections on language, psychology
and philosophy. He writes:
[ C]ould we... imagine a language in which a person
could write down or give vocal expression to his inner
experiences-his feelings, moods, and the rest-for
his private use?-Well, can't we do so in our ordinary
language?-But this is not what I mean. The individual words of this language are to refer to what can
only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot
understand the language. (PI, 243)
The question can be put this way: how can we ever come to talk with
one another about our sensations-about our inner life in all its
complexity-if they are truly mine and if language is concerned
about what we all can share, as Wittgenstein has implied? For isn't it
obvious ·that I cannot express what is inner by means of words whose
meaning relies entirely on what is outer? Wittgenstein believes these
deep concerns rest on a deep misunderstanding of how we actually
use words. In his argument against the possibility of private language
he uses pain as an example, but he means to include sensations in
general, visual impressions (PI, 277), imaginings (PI, 280), states of
mind and mental processes (PI, 290, 305-6).
�VERDI
47
Wittgenstein believes that certain conceptions of self-consciousness and the mind, and especially knowledge of other minds, are
incoherent and that their incoherence rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way language works. The assumption that the primary purpose of words is to name and of sentences to describe
undermines our attempts to understand "mental phenomena" when
we engage in philosophical speculation about them. We are led by
similar forms in the way we speak in different areas of language into
insisting on a contrast between "inner" and "outer:' We unthinkingly consider the former to be analogous to the latter, without frrst
understanding the "grammar" of expressions about "inner" and
"outer:' We thereby unwittingly let ourselves be led into confusions.
Wittgenstein begins by asking his interlocutor
in what way are my sensations private?--Well, only I
can know whether I am really in pain; another person
can only surmise it.-In one way this is wrong, and
in another nonsense... It can't be said of me at all
(except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain.
What is it supposed to mean-except perhaps that I
am in pain?
Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior,-for I cannot be said
to learn of them [at all]. I have them. The truth is: it
makes sense to say about other people that they
doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about
mysel£ (PI, 246)
Wittgenstein here says that if by "private" I mean that I have a
knowledge of my sensations available only to me, and that others
only surmise or infer my sensations while I can know them, then I have
committed a grammatical or conceptual error. If it makes no sense
for me to say I doubt that I am in pain, then it makes no sense for
me to say that I know that I am in pain. Where there can be no
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
grounds for doubt, neither can there be grounds for knowledge, says
Wittgenstein, and he believes our ordinary way of speaking confirms
this. He does not suggest that we revise the way we speak about
doubt and knowledge, but rather he describes what he takes to be the
actual uses of the words, or what the concepts of doubting and
knowing consist in. We, too, would recognize this if we paid attention to how we ourselves use the words in ordinary discourse, and
how we might teach others how to use them or how we correct them
when they are wrong. (Even the skeptic does not teach his young
child, "Perhaps that's a chair:') Words are learned within families in
conjunction with contrasting words, and while the head of a coin
may be forcibly separated from the tail, the result is only to remove
both pieces from circulation.
While language is doing its work-while we are at work with
it-we generally do not make such mistakes, except as jokes. Which
reminds me of this exchange between Blondie and Dagwood:
Blondie: Oh, I feel so blumpy today!
Dagwood: "Blumpy"? That word's not even in the dictionary!
Blondie: That's because no one has ever felt blumpy before!
(Fann, p. 109)
As soon as I disengage the gears and allow the engine to idle, I am
tempted to imagine that when I have a pain I possess something no one
else can have access to, and that in a sense my entire inner life is available only to me for my own viewing. But "no one can have my pain" is
a rule of grammar, just as is "no one can play solitaire with a friend:'
A thought that has probably occurred to most of you at some
time or other offers another avenue of approach to clarifying the
relationship of language to our inner lives. Wittgenstein lets his interlocutor say the following:
The essential thing about private experience is really
not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but
�VERDI
49
that nobody knows whether other people have this or
something else. The assumption would thus be possible-though unverifiable-that one section of
mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. (PI, 272)
Wittgenstein believes thatthis tempting suggestion of the unverifiable
possibility of an inverted spectrum is not empirically false, but conceptually incoherent. He thinks that he recognizes in it a paradigm for
the bewitchment that can be worked on our intellects by language, and
by theories of language. To understand why the possibility of the
inverted spectrum is no possibility at all is to have acquired a perspicuous view of one part of the landscape of our language, and thereby
to find rest from a whole host of temptations that can be forced on
us by grammar when we let language take a vacation.
But surely it makes sense to say that the road sign that I see as
green you see as red? After all, I can imagine the same sign as being
red, and when I do, I am imagining what you are seeing. Of course
we can never know this, because,. we both learned to use color words
in basically the same way, and so we now both call that sign
"green." Wittgenstein says this is as if "when I uttered the word I
cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to
say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it" (PI, 274). But
"imagine someone's saying: 'I know how tall I am!' and laying his
hand on top of his head to prove it" (PI, 279). Children sometimes
do just this until they learn that they really have not shown how tall
they are at all by this act, for we make no use of a concept of "private height," which each person might have for himself and which
is independent of measured height. The claim that my private sensation of green can be known only by me is analogous to the claim
that I am this tall, and like that claim is not in dispute because it is
a misuse of language.
Wittgenstein continues:
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How
blue the sky is!"-When you do it spontaneouslywithout philosophical intentions-the idea never
crosses your mind that this impression of color
belongs only to you. ... And if you point at anything
as you say the words you point at the sky. (PI, 275)
But how is it even possible for us to be tempted to
think that we use a word to mean at one time the color
known to everyone-and at another the "visual
impression" which I am getting now? (PI, 277)
The temptation arises in part because of misleading analogies
in the forms of our expressions. If we allow ourselves to think of
"attending to a sensation" as an inner pointing (as one might consider introspection to be an "inner inspection"), we might then
begin to mix the rules of one language-game with those of another. We do after all often direct our attention to things people point
out to us. Even the phrase "direct your attention to" leads us to
think of attending as having a direction. If in attending I am pointing, then by attending I can name, and thereby give my sensation a
place in my private language. And so Wittgenstein's entire account
turns on the impossibility of my pointing to my sensation for my
own use. We can point to someone else, the traffic sign or the blue
sky with a finger, but attending to our sensation is not a kind of
pointing. For Wittgenstein my effort to point to my private sensation is no effort at all, because what it is to point takes its meaning
from its use in our language, the language which I learned by being
taught by others and which in its everyday use is governed by rules
of correctness. The view that words stand only for things or ideas
lies behind the inverted spectrum puzzle. If my private sensation is
a something, then I ought to be able to give it a name. I can point
to the pain in my foot, can't I? Yes, we do talk that way, but we also
�VERDI
51
say, "my foot hurts" or "it hurts me there:' Once we remind ourselves of the different ways we talk about sensations (and by extension about the vast panorama of our inner life), we will be less
inclined to consider them objects to which we can privately point,
which can be privately named, and which can take their place in a
private language.
Wittgenstein compar~s the idea of a private sensation to a box
with something in it. He says:
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we
call it a "beetle." No one can look into anyone else's
box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only
by looking at his beetle.-Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his
box.-But suppose the word 'beetle' had a use in these
people's language?-If so it would not be used as the
name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in
the language-game at all; not even as a something: for
the box might even be empty... .That is to say: if we
construe the grammar of the expression of sensation
on the model of "object and name'' the object drops
out of consideration as irrelevant. (PI, 293)
Here, the beetle is analogous to a sensation, and to have a beetle
in a box is to have a sensation. When we are tempted to say that the
sensation must be something that we have, we ought to remind ourselves that we have thus far said nothing, unless we go on to say what
is involved in this having. It is "as if I were to say of someone: 'He
has something. But I don't know whether it is money, or debts, or an
empty cash register'" (PI, 294).
Wittgenstein believes a private language makes no sense even if I
am concerned simply about talking to mysel£ Our inner life is essentially shareable, and it can be ours only if it is possible for us to share
it with others. The real incoherence of the private linguist is that he
�52
THE ST. JOHN'SREVIEW
cannot achieve what he thinks he is achieving, namely, referring (even
for himself) to a private sensation (or private inner life). Hegel
expresses a similar insight in the opening section of the Phenomenology
if Spirit, "Sense-Certainty," which is
a view of our awareness of the world according to
which it is at its fullest and richest when we simply
open our senses... to the world and receive whatever
impressions come our way, prior to any... conceptual
activity. (Taylor, pp. 140-1)
When the subject of sense-certainty is asked to say what he experiences, however, he finds that his attempts are empty. If he tries to
speak of the "here'' and "now" that he is experiencing, not even he
.
,
h tmse If can k now w h at h e means by "here," " now," and "I" un1ess h e
means something universal, beyond the immediate place, moment
and person. The particular gives way to the universal, because as the
inexpressible, the particular is nothing other than the untrue and irrationaL Wittgenstein puts it this way:
'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place,
and 'this' is not a name. But they are connected with
names. Names are explained by means of them. It is
also true that it is characteristic of physics not to use
these words. (PI, 410)
I want to leave Part One of my lecture with some questions
which Wittgenstein himself asks and which I shall leave unanswered.
1. "The purpose of language is to express thoughts:... Then what
thought is expressed, for example, by the sentence 'It's raining'?" (PL 501)
2. "We do not say that possibly a dog talks to itsel£ Is that because
we are so minutely acquainted with its soul?" (PI, 357)
�VERDI
53
3. "'But doesn't what you say come to this: that there is no pain,
for example, without pain-behavior?"' (PI, 281) '"Are you not really a
behaviorist in disguise?"' (PI, 307)
4. "Make the following experiment: say 'It's cold here' and mean
'It's warm here: Can you do it?-And what are you doing as you do
it? And is there only one way of doing it?" (PI, 510)
5. "Imagine that you were in pain and were simultaneously hearing a nearby piano being tuned. You say 'It'll soon stop: It certainly
makes quite a difference whether you mean the pain or the pianotuning!-Of course; but what does this difference consist in?"
(PI,
666)
6. "How should we counter someone who told us that with him
understanding was an inner process?-How should we counter him
if he said that with him knowing how to play chess was an inner
process?" (PI, p. 181)
7. "Describe the aroma of coffee.-Why can't it be done? Do we
lack the words? And for what are the words lacking?" ( PL 610)
Part Two: Psychology
In this section I want to discuss briefly two concepts, thinking
and imagining. They serve to illustrate how Wittgenstein's conception
of meaning as use and his consequent radical revision of the innerouter dichotomy overcome obstacles to understanding and clearer
thinking. The section on imagining also contains some remarks about
experimental results in modern cognitive psychology.
�54
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thinking
Wittgenstein launches us into his discussion of thinking by this
exchange with his interlocutor.
In order to get clear about the meaning of the word
'think' we watc~ ourselves while we think; what we
observe will be what the word means!-But this concept is not used like that. (It would be as if without
knowing how to play chess, I were to try and make
out what the word 'checkmate' meant by close observation of the last move of some game of chess.)
(PI, 316)
When one looks at the last move in a chess game one is in a sense
seeing a checkmate. But there is much else that one has not seen if he
observes only this last move. He witnesses something the meaning of
which he can not know, because he witnesses only it, and not the context in which it occurred, the chess game. We cannot get clear about
what thinking is (that is, how the word "thinking" is used) by any
sort of introspection, but only by broadening our study to include
the circumstances in which we use the word and related words. Nor
would we follow the production process of a hammer to learn how a
hammer is used, or observe a piece of cheese to see how the price of
cheese rises.
Thinking forms a family of concepts with various meanings.
Wittgenstein says:
Remember that our language could possess a variety
of different words: one for "thinking out loud"; one
for thinking as one talks to oneself in the imagination; one for a pause during which something or
other floats before the mind, after which, however, we
are able to give a confident answer. One word for a
�55
VERDI
thought expressed in a sentence; one for the lightning
thought which I may later "clothe in words"; one for
wordless thinking as one works. (Z, 122)
What thinking is not, Wittgenstein believes, is some sort of accompaniment to thoughtful activities.
While we sometimes call it "thinking" to accompany
a sentence by a mental process, that accompaniment
is not what we mean by a "thought." (PI, 332)
If thinking and speaking stood in the relation of the
words and the melody of a song, we could leave out
the speaking and do the thinking just as we can sing
the tune without the words. (BB, p. 42)
But can't I do just that? Can't I think without speaking? I often
know in an instant what I want to say, but the saying of it takes
much longer than my prior thinking did. Wittgenstein agrees that
we can think without speaking, even to ourselves. But this does not
imply that thinking is necessarily a mental process, one which may
or may not accompany other processes like talking. He asks us to
ask ourselves, when would we say of someone or something that he
or she or it is thinking? How would we teach someone the rules for
using the words "thinking" and "thought"? Not by pointing to a
mental activity, distinct from other kinds of activities. Wittgenstein
gives us this rule of thumb to use whenever we are tempted to think
that there must be a mental process of thinking: substitute for
"thinking" or "thought" the expression of the "thinking" or
"thought" (BB, p. 42). This is not to say that a thought is identical
with its expression, say a spoken sentence, because we do speak
thoughtlessly, as when we read aloud automatically, or while thinking about something else. Wittgenstein says, however, that "speech
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
56
with and without thought is to be compared with the playing of
music with and without thought" (PI, 341). When I play a piece of
music with thought, there may be no "thoughts" accompanying my
playing. But my playing can be described in ways that playing without thought cannot. ("Notice how he phrased that passage to bring
out its connection with the opening theme:') To say I played the
piece with thought is t9 say something about how I played the piece;
that is, thinking has an adverbial character. My actions are described
as expressing thought, just as my gracefulness is expressed in my
dancing and my anxiety in my pacing.
It is true that we often speak as though thought and speech were
rwo separate activities, that we might do the one without the other as
we might hum the tune of a song and not sing the words. "Think
before you speak!" "What I just said didn't quite express my
thought:' "The English language uses words in the order in which we
think them." (BB, p. 148) What "accompanies" speech in those cases
might be modulation and tone of voice, certain gestures. But we are
not tempted to call them the "thinking:' No, what allows me to say
of someone else that he is thinking includes what he is doing now,
what has led up to it, what he would be willing to say when asked
what he was doing, and so forth. The psychologist who hopes to
learn more about thinking by asking people what goes on when they
think, or by observing their reactions to certain kinds of problems,
or by studying brain activity while people are thinking has involved
him or herself in a hopeless conceptual muddle. We discover more
about what thinking is by reminding ourselves what we mean when
we say that someone is thinking.
Imagination
The imagination appears to be a more fruitful landscape than
thinking for the work of the psychologist, in part because of the
existence of mental images, which seem to be entities that in some
way or other can be observed. The topic of the imagination is a vast
�VERDI
57
one, and if you really want to sink your teeth into the meat of it, you
ought to read Eva Brann's book, The W<Jrld of the Imagination. I shall here
lay out once again, this time for the concept of mental images, what
I think the implications are of considering the meaning of a word to
be its use, and the consequent impossibility of private language.
Wittgenstein says this about the imagination and images:
One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines anything, but how the word
'imagination' is used. But that does not mean that I
want to talk only about words. For the question as to
the nature of the imagination is as much about the
word "imagination" as my question is. And I am only
saying that this question is not to be decided-neither for the person who does the imagining, nor for
anyone else-by pointing; nor yet by a description of
any process. [The question, What is the imagination?] asks for a word to be explained; but it makes us
expect a wrong kind of answer. (PI, 370)
When we think about how we use words connected with imagining, Wittgenstein believes we discover that when we imagine something, we do not have an image that is just like a physical picture, only
private rather than public. Nor is imagining a case of non-sensory
perception.
Wittgenstein does not deny the existence of mental images or
deny that we can see things· iq the mind's eye. He does, however,
deny that we do the same sorts of things with mental image words
that we do with sense-perception words or with picture words. We
play different language-games here, but ones that he says "hang
together:' (Z, 625) The imagination does not require mental images,
even when I imagine something that I might express in a rough
drawing. That is, I might draw something from imagination that is
in no sense a copy or a likeness of any image I might have in my
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mind. I might have no image at all in my mind. Regardless of
whether or not someone had a mental image, we would still say that
his drawing came from his imagination. It might in fact turn out
that having mental images facilitates doing certain things for some
people, such as making drawings. But the absence of those images
would have no effect on our rule-governed employment of the conu.
.
.
,
cept, tmagmatmn.
Wittgenstein says that images are not just a private sort of physical picture. The concepts of "mental image" and "picture" are not
alike, though they are intimately connected. We do not see, look at
or observe our mental images. This is not an empirical remark which
experiments might someday disprove, but a conceptual one, one
about how we speak and think about pictures and mental images. I
can look at a photo of McDowell Hall, I can look at the same photo
again, or look at it more closely or under different light. But only as
a sort of joke would I say I was doing any of these things with my
mental image of McDowell Hall.
Another difference between pictures and mental images is what
it means to say that a picture or a mental image is the same as it
was, or identical to another picture or image. We say about a picture, perhaps a photo, "that it remains the same not only on the
ground that it seems to us to be the same.... In fact we shall say
under certain circumstances that the picture hasn't changed
although it seems to have changed (BB, p. 171). We say it hasn't
changed because we know something about how it has been kept,
how photographic images fade over time, and so forth. This, of
course, doesn't prevent us from talking about imagining the same
thing from one day to the next or saying things like: "A picture of
him swam before my mind:' But from such usage we should be slow
to infer either that pictures can swim or that images are pictures.
"In part of their uses the expressions '[mental] image' and 'picture'
run parallel; but where they don't the analogy which does exist
tends to delude us" (Hallett, p. 372).
Imagining is also unlike seeing for at least two reasons. First,
�VERDI
59
-
r:::::: -...
-...J
......
.....
......
images are voluntary, says Wittgenstein, while sense-perceptions are
not. He says
[w]hen we form an image of something we are not
observing.... The coming and going of the pictures
is not something that happens to us. We are not surprised by these pictures, saying "look!" (Z, 632)
While we don't always succeed in conjuring up the images we
want, "trying to imagine something which isn't present" makes sense,
while "trying to see something which isn't present" does not make sense.
Second, because images are voluntary, they tell us nothing that
can be true or false about the world; that is, they have no cognitive
content. Some experiments by psychologists might be construed as
indicating that Wittgenstein was simply wrong about this. I want to
talk a bit about one of these experiments to give you an idea of the
sort of very influential work many psychologists and other cognitive
scientists have been doing in recent years and to try to interpret their
results in the light of what I have presented as Wittgenstein's thought.
Roger Shepard published a study in 1971 on the speed of mental
rotation of figures. The subjects were shown pairs of drawings such
�60
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
as those you see below and asked whether or not the two were different views of the same shape. Shepard varied the angular distances
between the two figures so that some were only a few degrees different, while others much more. He then measured how long it took
people to tell whether the two figures were the same or different.
What he found was that these reaction times were proportional to
the angles which separated the figures. It took twice as long to decide
that one figure was the same or different from the other if the angle
of separation was twice as great. Many studies have produced similar results, some even providing evidence for "inertia" and "momentum" effects (Freyd, 1989). Other experiments seem to indicate that
mental images take place in a mental medium which possesses texture
and boundaries.
Shepard's results have been interpreted to mean that subjects
rotate a mental image through mental space in a way remarkably like
the way a real figure might be rotated through real space in an effort
to solve the problem. Mental images, it seems, can tell us something
about the world. How might we understand these experiments?
Wittgenstein believes that his own work is entirely descriptive, not
explanatory, because his interest lies not with phenomena, but with
concepts, that is, with the workings of our language. The problems
that engage him "are solved, not by giving new information, but by
arranging what we have already known" (PI, 109). This implies that
questions like "Can mental images tell us anything true or false about
the world?" will not be answered by experiments such as Shepard's, but
by reminding ourselves how we use words like "mental image:'
You ought to object immediately. For don't we come to know
more about moving bodies through observations of bodies in
motion, and electricity by observation of the phenomena of electricity? We don't explore how we use the words "motion" and "electricity" in our language in order to understand what motion and electricity are, do we? We do experiments. Shepard's work is no different
from Galilee's and Faraday's, except in the objects he studies, you
might say.
�VERDI
61
Wittgenstein might respond like this. Philosophical or conceptual problems are in principle immune to solution by means of advances
in science. The sciences either employ the concepts which create conceptual perplexity (such as "seeing" and "thinking") and hence presuppose an understanding of them, or they create new, different concepts (such as "force" and "electron") which tend to bypass the puzzle, not solve it, and may perhaps even generate further conceptual
questions (Hacker, p. 157). The sciences do make new discoveries,
and add to human knowledge about the world both by revealing new
objects and properties hitherto unknown and by providing new
explanations of hitherto inexplicable phenomena. But they are not of
use in resolving conceptual problems, which, according to
Wittgenstein, arise from the workings of our language and are
resolved only within language.
Wittgenstein would say that Shepard's experiments reveal a deep
conceptual confusion. "The existence of the experimental method
makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which
trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by" (PI, p.
232). While the physicist observes and reports on the phenomena of
that which he is investigating, the psychologist observes human
behavior, for example reaction times and verbal reports, not mental
images. But, you might say, scientists often draw conclusions about
what can't be seen from what can be seen. They devise experiments to
trick, cajole, or torture nature into revealing its secrets. William
Harvey, for example, by his experiments on the heart and blood,
could come to know what he could not see, namely, that the blood
circulates through the veins and arteries. And Galileo could discover
the acceleration of a freely falling body, which he could not measure
directly, by using inclined planes to slow the acceleration to a measurable rate. And so, even though the psychological experimenter can't
see his subjects' mental images, this should be no reason for thinking
that he cannot learn new facts about their nature. But, Wittgenstein
might say, a mental image, like a pain, cannot be observed because it
is not the kind of thing about which it makes sense to say one
�62
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
observes it. It is unobservable not because it is too small, or hidden,
or goes by too quickly, but because the grammar of the expression
"mental image" is not the grammar of any word referring to an
observable object, Our concept of mental image, Wittgenstein
believes, precludes its being the subject matter of any scientific experiment which purports to explore its nature. Many of the problems in
the study of the mind, ~uch as those of consciousness, thinking, and
willing are not empirical at all, but conceptual. The psychologist
must know what he is looking for before he can know where to look.
This requires first of all asking questions like, how does one learn to
talk about mental images, and what applications do we make of
words like "image" and "imagination"? For only then shall the psychologist know what a mental image is. Wittgenstein believes he will
then no longer be faced with questions like, do mental images exist
and what are they like? Rather the psychologist will be more concerned with the causes and effects of mental images. (It might be of
interest to discover, for example, that whenever people have a certain
mental image, their blood pressure drops. This would be a useful
result.) I'm reminded of the time that Meno and Socrates met one
another outside the baths in Athens.
Socrates: Hello, Meno! Have you taken a bath?
Meno: Why, Socrates? Is one missing?
What then makes an image of him into an image of him? That is,
what connects the image with that of which it is an image?
Wittgenstein's oblique reply is, "Not its looking like him" (PI, p. 177).
The same question applies to the expression "I see
him now vividly before me" .... What makes this
utterance into an utterance about him?-Nothing in
it or simultaneous with it ([orJ "behind it"). If you
want to know whom he meant, ask him.... His answer
[will] be decisive. (PI, p. 177)
�63
VERDI
I imagine McDowell Hall on fire and someone asks me how I know
it is McDowell Hall. Couldn't it be some other building very much
like it? The question makes no sense in this context. If I show a
friend a photo of one of my identical twin brothers and tell him it
is a picture of my brother Homer, he can ask me how I know it is
Homer and not my other brother, Vergil. When I tell him that I took
the picture, the matter i~ settled. But if I say that I am imagining my
brother Homer, then his question, how do you know it is Homer and
not Vergil you are imagining?, makes no sense. I cannot answer simply, it looks like Homer, because it also would look like Vergil, if it
"looked like" anyone at all. Not even God, could he look into my
mind at that moment, would be able to tell of which brother I was
thinking. Yet no one would question my authority in this matter.
What makes the image into an image of him, Wittgenstein says,
is "perhaps what I later [say or do]" (Z, 14). This could include
descriptions I might give or drawings I might make about the image.
Such descriptions can even simply take the place of the image. No
image carries along with itself a reference to that of which it is the
image. The image becomes an image of something determinate only
by what we say and do, that is, by becoming part of our language and
our form of life.
Part Three: Philosophy
Philosophical questions and problems, says Wittgenstein, like
many of those in psychology, arise largely through a misunderstanding of how language works. They are "linguistic" or "conceptual"
problems, which is not to say that they are silly or unimportant.
These problems
have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes;
their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language. (PL 111)
�64
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Wittgenstein believes that "a main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words"
(PI, 122). And because philosophical problems have the form "I don't
know my way about" (PI, 123), it is precisely the perspicuous representation of how we use words that is of fundamental significance to
any effort to answer philosophical questions and to solve philosophical problems. We are led to philosophical problems when we confuse
the forms of our expressions with their uses. "Words like 'thinking'
and 'thought' alongside words denoting (bodily) activities, such as
writing and speaking make us look for an activity... corresponding to
thinking" and to a product of thinking analogous to the products of
writing and speaking. "When words in our ordinary language have
prima facie analogous grammars we are inclined to try to interpret
them analogously" (BB, p. 7). Similarly, for each substantive we tend
to seek a substance and so are led to ask, for example, "What is
length? What is meaning? What is number?" instead of "How are
lengths measured? What is an explanation of meaning? How are
numerical expressions used?" (Hacker, p. 169)
Related to this source of confUsion is our, tendency to mix up language-games. We might imagine, for example, that certainty, be it about
the weather, a geometrical proo£ or my own pain is the selfsame concept, and differs only in degree in these cases. Instead, we ought to consider it to be more like the concept of winning, as we find it in football, in chess and in solitaire. We also easily succumb to the temptation
to project grammar onto reality, and to think of words as names and
sentences as descriptions. It is a short step to the conceptual confusions of psychology, where "I" becomes the name of a person who has
privileged access to his own mental objects, states, and events, which he
then describes when he says "I have a pain;' "I am anxious;' "I am
thinking:'
What Wittgenstein offers to help solve these problems is "not a
philosophical method," but "methods, like different therapies" (PI,
133). For "the philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (PI, 255). That is, if we consider what
�VERDI
65
Wittgenstein is doing also to be philosophy, then the Wittgensteinian
philosopher's task differs in important ways from that of most of his
predecessors. His job is to "to show the fly the way out of the flybottle" (PL 309). The fly-bottle is a humane apparatus for catching
flies. The fly is drawn in through a hole in the bottom of a bottle by
means of beer which sits in a trough surrounding the bottle. The fly
thereafter flies only upw;:~rds or sideways, n~ver down, and is effectively trapped in the bottle, which has no other opening. This could
be Wittgenstein's inversion of the allegory of the cave in Plato's
Republic. The new philosopher's job is to lead us out of this prison,
which consists of philosophical problems and questions themselves.
How does the Wittgensteinian philosopher liberate us?
Wittgenstein's approach is like that of Socrates in that both attempt
to bring people to remember what they have forgotten, since it is still
somehow present in them. Both try to elicit from others the consequences of their own words, and both frequently do this by asking
questions. But Wittgenstein's philosopher treats this illness of chronic forgetfulness by assembling reminders of how we actually use
words and what we do with them in ordinary language. He says:
"When [someoneJ use[s J a word-'knowledge; 'being; 'object; 'I'... and tr[iesJ to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask
oneself: is the word ever actually used this way in the language which
is its original home?" (PI, 116) We might say that according to
Wittgenstein, "it is the whole of philosophy to realize that there is
no more difficulty about time than about [a] chair" (L, p.119).
This image of philosophical problems as a kind of forgetfulness
that must be treated with aids to remembering reminds me of the
Meno. But first let me tell you about a conversation between two boys
in a comic strip. The first says: "Everyday I ask myself those age-old
philosophical questions-Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here?
That, my friend, is philosophy:' Whereupon his friend responds:
"Sounds more like amnesia" (Fann, p. 108). Meno poses a famous
paradox about coming to know anything: if I don't know what I am
looking for, how can I recognize it when I have found it? And if I do
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
know, why do I need to look for it? As a solution to the paradox,
Socrates suggests that in a previous life we learned all things and that
in our present life what appears to be learning is really recollection of
what we knew but have forgotten. Wittgenstein is saying something
similar. Birth may be a protracted process: we are perhaps not fully
born until we have mastered our native language. The time before our
birth, that is, the time b~fore this mastery is achieved, is the time during which we were learning how to talk, when we first learned how to
do things with words. Later, especially when we philosophize, we
tend to forget what we know and need to be reminded of it. Once we
are, the problems which trouble us dissolve. We once again can operate with words according to their true grammar, which expresses the
essence of things. The consequence of this Wittgensteinian dialectic
is to lead us out of the fly-bottle of philosophical problems and
questions and restore us to our ordinary ways of speaking. Imagine
that you are trying to describe in words to a friend how to do a dance.
At a certain point in the description you get stuck-you just can't
remember if the left foot or the right foot moves at that moment.
The answer to the question will come as soon as you grab a partner
and do the dance. Wittgenstein might say that philosophical problems come on the scene whenever we stop dancing, that is, whenever
we stop using words in their ordinary ways.
This, however, shouldn't lead us to think that philosophical questions and problems are avoidable. Most of us cannot spend all our
time dancing; we find other activities attractive, too. And sometimes
using words in extraordinary ways, like in poetry, is just what we want
to do. It is also instructive to ask what use a word has in a particular
author, which may not be an ordinary use. But to someone enmeshed
in a philosophical problem it is never a useful answer to say simply:
we don't talk that way. Wittgenstein puts it like this:
You must not try to avoid a philosophical problem by
appealing to common sense; instead, present it as it
arises with most power.... Philosophy can be said to
�VERDI
67
consist of three act!VIttes: to see the commonsense
answer, to get yourself so deeply into tne problem
that the commonsense answer is unbearable, and to
get from that situation back to the commonsense
answer. ( BB, pp. 108-9)
Wittgenstein always ~ried to work his way into and through a philosophical problem with his students, which is reminiscent of a Zen
master's technique (Fann, p. 104). D. T. Suzuki writes:
Before you have studied Zen, mountains are mountains
and rivers are rivers; while you are studying it, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers no longer
rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers are rivers.
Wittgenstein also believes that the work of the philosopher is
descriptive, not explanatory. He says that "philosophy simply puts
everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For
what is hidden ... is of no interest to us" (PI, 126). The descriptions
Wittgenstein gives of how we use words are not meant to be even hints
of explanations, nor calls for scientific clarification. Wittgenstein is
interested not in causes, but in reasons, because he is concerned not
with phenomena but with concepts. Causes can be discovered by
experiment, but reasons cannot.
The descriptions Wittgenstein paints are attempts to provide
overviews of the landscape of language, surveyable representations
which help us find our way about. In a sense his work is aesthetic: he
draws our attention to certain features of language, and places things
side by side so as to exhibit these features. The hoped-for result is a
change in the way we view things. Goethe attempts something similar
in his essay and poem on the Metamorphosis of Plants, with which
Wittgenstein was familiar. Goethe's fictional primordial plant is an
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
archetype by means of which he hopes to understand all plants. He
thereby achieves an overview that he hopes will bring us to see plant
development differently, but which eschews all discussion of causality.
It is time that I bring the lecture to a dose and return to a remark
of Wittgenstein's I cited at the beginning. Wittgenstein said that he
was not a religious man, but that he could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view. What did he mean by "a religious
point of view") Three of Wittgenstein's favorite authors, those to
whom he turned again and again, were St. Augustine, Kierkegaard
and Dostoevsky. (He is reputed to have known The Brothers Karamazov
almost by heart.) All three share a conviction in the importance of
what cannot be said, a conviction Wittgenstein himself expressed when
he was young and which remained with him, I believe, until his death.
He agreed with Kierkegaard that the most impottant things are best
shown, not said. "If only you do not try to utter the unutterable,
then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be-unutterablycontained in what has been uttered!" (Engelmann, 9) Of his own work,
Wittgenstein writes:
Where does our investigation get its importance
from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it
were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of
stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing
but houses of cards and we are dearing up the ground
of language on which they stand. (PI, 118)
Next to this we may juxtapose Kierkegaard's remark from one of
the short discourses.
It is true as the understanding says that there is nothing to wonder at, but precisely for this reason is wonder secure, because the understanding vouches for it.
Let the understanding... dear the ground, then won-
�VERDI
69
der comes in in the right place, in the changed man.
(cited by Drury in Fann2, p. 70)
The changed man is one . who now sees differently. At the
moment Augustine hears the voice of a child as a ~omrnand from
God, while in the world everything remains the same ind nothing has
changed, for him everythjng has changed, nothing remains the same.
He is a changed man. As Socrates first taught us. there is no prescribed set of rules for bringing someone to see differently. For
Wittgenstein the religious point of view is the one which approaches a philosophical problem with the belief that its solution lies in
radical re-collecting ar1d re-visioning. The new vision is not a truth
to be proved any more than faith is taking someone's word for it, even
God's. And our new eyes cannot be given to us by another, and certainly not by any book. Schopenhauer, whom Wittgenstein read early
in life, puts it this way:
When we read, someone else thinks for us .... [W]hen
we read, the work of thinking is taken away from us
.... In addition to this, is the fact that thoughts
reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the
footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that
we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw
on the way, we must use our own eyes. (Parerga and
Paralipomena, Chapter 24, Number 291, translated by E.
F. J. Payne)
�70
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Some questions for Part Two
1. Is it a fact of experience that trees and stones are not conscious?
2. Why can I interrupt your thinking, but not your believing?
3. "Does it make sense t\) ask, 'How do you know that you believe?'and is the answer: 'I know it by introspection'?" (PI, 587)
4. Why can I not be mistaken about my intentions, but can lie about them?
5. "Why can't a dog simulate pain? Is it too honest?"
(PI,
250)
6. "We say a dog is afraid his master will beat him; but not, he is
afraid his master will beat him tomorrow. Why not?" (PI, 650)
7. "Why does it sound odd to say 'For a second he felt deep grief'?
Only because it so seldom happens?" (PI, p. 174)
8. Why can I play-act fear, but not hope? "Is hope a feeling?"
(PI,
545)
9. "One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy,
startled. But hopeful? And why not?" (PI, p. 174)
10. "Why can a dog feel fear but not remorse? Would it be right to
say 'Because it can't talk'?" (Zettel, 518)
References
Wittgenstein's Works
Philosophical Investigations. NY: Macmillan, 1958. (PI)
Blue and Brown Books. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1958. (BB)
Zettel. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. (Z)
Lectures, 1932-1935. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. (L)
�VERDI
71
Secondary Sources
Baker, G. P. and Hacker, P. M. S. An Analytical Commentary on
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983. (Baker)
Engelmann, Paul. Lettersfrom Ludwig Wittenstein, with a Memoir. Translated
by L. Furtmuller, edited by B. McGuinness. Oxford, 1967.
(Engelmann)
Fann, K. T. Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy. Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1971. (Fann)
Fann, K. T. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Man and His Philosophy. New Jersey.
Humanities Press, 1967. (Fann2)
Freyd, J. "Dynamic Mental Representations:' Psychological Review, 94
(1989)
Glock, Hans-Johann. A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
(Glock)
Hacker, P. M. S. Insight and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986. (Hacker)
Hallett, Garth. A Companion to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. (Hallett)
Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1994. (Malcolm)
Rhees, Rush ( ed). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Personal Recollections. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1984. (Rhees)
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
Ptolemy's Truth
David Stephenson
Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air
A wheel within a, wheel, way in the middle of the air
-Traditional spiritual
Aristotle splits the world in two: heaven and earth. This is not a
matter of religious belief, but merely of observation. Above us in the
sky bright objects describe circular paths near whose center we dwell.
Every night the circle is completed as the stars return along their
courses. But here near the surface of the Earth things head downwards or sideways, and for the most part in paths as straight as possible, as if trying to arrive at their goal by the quickest route. Whereas
whatever we kindle into light soon burns out, heavenly lights appear
to last forever. Whatever moves on Earth is born, changes shape and
size, ages, and dies; above the clouds sameness and permanence rule.
Thus it is hard to imagine our being made of the same stuff as the
stars, or of responding to the same causes, for our modes of motion
and existence are very different-so different that the sublunar
sphere we inhabit is connected with those overhead only by our
thoughts and imaginations.
And yet there are reasons to hope that the heavens are not so alien
as to escape understanding altogether. For one thing, a few of those
"stars" do exhibit a more erratic progress along their orbits than do
the majority, as if they had wills of their own like ours. They are
called "planets" because of their tendency to wander in their traces,
sometimes falling behind the crowd, and at other times catching up.
Indeed, the first kind of explanation of their wandering must have
David Stephenson is a tutor on the Annapolis campus of St. John's College. This lecture was
delivered at Annapolis, April 4, 1997.
�74
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ascribed some of our own terrestrial willfulness to the celestial, and
hence allowed one to hope that those shining beings might regard us
with greater affinity and affection than can the rocky, gassy masses lit
by the hydrogen bomb we think nowadays has usurped those gods:
the cold reflections of an indifferent fire.
But even in Aristotle's time, one who sought patterns among the
stars by careful observation of their courses over months and years
could see more of rule than whim in their careers, a rule based on
recurrence, and hence on the period, on the circle. Ptolemy puts it
thus: "it is first necessary to assume in general that the motions of the
planets... are all regular and circular by nature... and their apparent
irregularities result from the positions and arrangements of the circles
on their spheres through which they produce these movements, but no
departure from their unchangeableness has really occurred in their
nature in regard to the supposed disorder of their appearances:' That
is, appearances are deceiving: the mind must see behind planetary
meandering to the perfect circles out of which it is composed. I say
"must;' for, according to Ptolemy, this hypothesis of regular circular
motion is the only one that willleadlls to the "study of things which
are always what they are;' that is, to changeless truth itsel£ and this
truth, he assures us at the very beginning of his treatise, is the aim of
astronomy, as it is of every science worthy of the name.
One might even say that Ptolemy's principle is what allows his
science to gain the clarity of mathematics, which is largely absent
from Aristotle's description. For the astronomer builds his orbits
not only out of circles, but out of circles rotating uniformly about
their centers. The uniform angular motion now can represent time
itsel£ and thus subject moving things to the static science of
geometry.
Once we insist on looking behind appearances, however, certain
terrestrial things, too, reveal rational forms of motion to someone
properly prepared to look for them. The discovery attributed to
Pythagoras that simple numbers underlie harmonic combinations of
tones could well have been the absolute beginning of natural philos-
�STEPHENSON
75
ophy, since, like Ptolemy's circles, these numbers imply a form and
measure accessible to reason underlying the sefming randomness of
narure. It is no accident that Plato's Timaeus, although primarily an
astronomer, sings the diatonic musical scale of Pythagorean numbers
into his myth of the creation of the entire universe, including the
Earth and us its inhabitants in his melody. Ptolemy himself did write
a very Pythagorean treatise of music, but it is separate from his System
of the World, because the srudy of music begins in the sublunar sphere,
and the world of circles he sees only in the heavens.
Examples of such terrestrial harmonics lie ready to hand in the
form of most musical instruments, even the most primitive.
Examples of bone flutes have been found in burial sites preserved for
twenty thousand years: hollow tubes pierced by holes spaced with at
least approximate arithmetic regularity. And if one just compares the
lengths of pan pipes-one of the simplest and oldest of instruments-it is hard not to notice the harmonic proportions they
exhibit. They are even more apparent in the musical divisions of a
string stretched on the frame of a harp, guitar, or violin, and hence
manifest themselves in the construction and use of modern as well as
ancient instruments.
It is part of my task to show how far beyond the seemingly specialized sphere of music these harmonics can reach, and to connect
them more clearly with Ptolemy's circles. From the vantage point of
Ptolemy or the Pythagoreans, mathematics can find its proper place
within narure, and itself reveals truth to us through geometry and
number. Thus arises the famous "quadrivium" of learning: astronomy
gives the sky a geometry and sets it spinning; music embodies arithmetic in the vibrations of earthly elements.
Ptolemy & Pythagoras: The Joining of the
Celestial and Terrestrial
Whenever Ptolemy discovers an anomaly in the motion of a
star-a deceleration or acceleration that apparently destroys the con-
�76
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
stancy of its intent-his hypothesis stands ready to explain away this
irregularity. Upon examination, each anomaly reveals its own period
to which Ptolemy can ascribe a circle. By combining these circles he
obtains the erratic courses we observe. But the hypothesis takes several possible forms.
Either we are not really at the center of a star's circular course,
so that uniform progre~s looks more rapid to us when the star happens to sweep closer to us; or its circle rides upon another circle, so
that the combination of the two simple circular motions together
make up the irregular one we see; or the uniformity with which the
star describes its circle cannot be judged with respect to its own
center, as one would normally do, but only with respect to some
other point. The first of these forms is known as the "eccentric"
hypothesis; the second the "epicyclic" hypothesis; the third the
"equant." Ptolemy expresses indifference about which form to
choose, especially with respect to the first two-they are equivalent:
we have neither the means nor the need to choose between them.
He is not interested in some imaginary mechanics that could push
the planets along their paths, but only in finding explanations that
will arouse what is divine in our own minds. Any of the three will
cause us to think beyond superficial appearal}ces. It is hardly necessary, therefore, for Ptolemy to adopt a different manifestation for
each anomaly. Nevertheless, when a planet, such as Mars, exhibits
three anomalies, he grants it all three types of explanation, one for
each: an eccentric, an epicycle, and an equant. It seems strange at
first that he should prefer variety to uniformity in his explanations,
and this preference inspires speculation. I will return to it later and
speculate.
But the three forms of explanation are not perfectly equivalent.
Epicycles are obviously more adaptable than either of the others,
since epicycles can rotate in directions the same as or opposite to
their deferents. Moreover, epicycles can be added on to epicycles, so
that there is no end to the number of anomalies that could be produced in one composite motion by the repetition of this single
�STEPHENSON
77
hypothesis. One can imagine a chain of circles riding on circles riding on circles... ; and ultimately be moved to ask whether any motion
whatsoever could be analyzed into such a concatenation.
Ptolemy does not link epicycles into such a chain, but
Copernicus does, and before Copernicus others, like Oresme, sometimes adopted the epicyclic hypothesis exclusively as. the most flexible one. For consider: any error which recurs can be assigned to a circle with the appropriate period and size; if another error remains
after this supposition, tack on another circle; should this too fall
short, add another, and so on. A nonrepeating error, of course,
would not submit to this kind of synthesis, but, then, exactly because
it does not recur it would be considered accidental to the natural
motion that we are trying to explain. Thus such a singular astronomical phenomenon as a comet or a nova or a meteor would most likely have been ascribed to atmospheric accidents: to the sublunar
sphere and the notoriously capricious whims of the weather. The
celestial world was the world of rule and order, and hence of regular
cycle and recurrence.
Nevertheless, such circles can illuminate terrestrial phenomena
as well if they recur periodically, even those which seem to have no
connection with the sun or stars: the pendulum; the vibrating
string; the sounding tube of air in an organ pipe or a trumpet.
When a single circle does not suffice we can superimpose others to
represent and explain these motions as closely as we please. Of
course, the circles usually appear in the form of sine waves, but
what else is a sine wave but the shadow of a rotating circle stretched
out uniformly along a straight line? Take the straight line as a portion of a very large circle, and you have adopted a procedure 'very
much like Ptolemy's to some earthly phenomena. Add a series of
sine waves in much the same way as Ptolemy's successors tack on
epicycles and you have a complex vibratory pattern like that present in a musical sound.
But harmonics arouse the understanding in another way as well,
even before they are formed into music. In the vibrating string, arith-
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
metic complements Ptolemy's geometry. The circles of musical vibration are not just chosen randomly for the sake of explanation; they
are related to one another as simply as are the counting numbers,
since they correspond to the subdivision of the string into whole
numbers of parts. Each fraction produces a musical interval: half
sounds the octave; a third adds a perfect fifth; a quarter, a fourth; etc.
The existence of thes~ intervals in a tone has long been apparent,
even before physics confirmed their significance. An attentive ear can
pick out in a single musical tone the array of pitches that have combined within it, a plurality that most often we ignore as such, preferring to think of it as a whole with harmonic parts. But through
analysis we discover the simple ratios essential to the connection of
these component vibrations, ratios that once more confirm the
Pythagorean faith, by joining number to the Ptolemaic patterns of
shape and motion.
There are two impediments in the way of the full pursuit of this
Pythagorean principle. First of all, it seems perhaps too limited.
Remarkable as is its discovery of discreteness within the continuum,
of number at the heart of our physical science (which otherwise
seems more subject to geometry than arithmetic); wonderful as is its
implicit synthesis of Ptolemaic circles and musical sound, and hence
of the celestial and terrestrial worlds, the phenomena that immediately reveal such a natural unity are few, and seem to be limited to
those connected to music. The second difficulty could have been
anticipated by Ptolemy: time inevitably figures into terrestrial phenomena. The stars' motions show no obvious signs of decay; Ptolemy
sees them as eternal. But musical and other movements we see near
to hand always die. If Ptolemy's celestial mathematics is to be
brought down to Earth, there must be some way of adapting it to
earthly dissipation.
The extension of the Ptolemaic and Pythagorean projects to a
natural world not obviously musical has been accomplished only in
the last few centuries, as part of the project of mathematizing nature
to which Newton gave such an impetus with his Principia. Newton
�STEPHENSON
79
and all reputable scientists at least since the time of Kepler and
Galileo disagree with Ptolemy in one important respect. No, I do not
mean in their belief that it is the Earth rather than the Sun that
moves; I mean in their conviction that the stuff of the Earth and the
stuff of the planets or stars is not essentially different. It is a pity that
they all abandoned Ptolemy's search for circles along with his geocentric bias. Otherwise, . someone might have anticipated Joseph
Fourier in his discovery that Ptolemy's circles might not only guide
the heavens, but motion on the Earth as well-in the form of sine
waves. A straight, curved or arbitrarily zigzag course all can emerge
from a combination of sine waves.
Now wait! Would anyone seriously suggest that a straight line
could be formed from curved ones? Yes, this is exactly what Fourier
did. Or rather, with even greater generality, he claimed that any shape
whatsoever, even one drawn freehand, even one with certain gaps and
disconnections, can be built out of a series of sine waves, that is, ultimately, out of circles: not just little bits of circles that might look
straight, but a whole chain of circles rotating at different rates and of
different sizes; and all complete, so as to leave sinusoidal traces in
their wakes. This is Fourier's Theorem.
The resemblance between the sums of sines and circles raises the
question: to what extent can we consider Fourier to be Ptolemy's heir
and disciple?
Fourier
Fourier was interested in a very earthly problem: how do we
understand the way in which heat flows in bodies? Nothing to do
with the heavens, where heat must travel in a different way, because
of the emptiness of space; nothing apparently to do with music
either. Fourier, like virtually everyone since Newton, followed
Newton's footsteps. When a force acts on a mass it accelerates proportionately, says Newton, and this acceleration is derivative from
distance traveled in time. Unravel the acceleration equation and you
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
will be able to find where the body will be at any time. Physics thereby becomes a problem in mathematics.
Even though heat cannot be said to move like a Newtonian
mass, nor be subject to Newtonian force, Fourier adopted the basic
procedure that physics has derived from Newton's more geometricseeming model, viz., cast all motion into the mathematical form that
the calculus calls a "gifferential equation;' and then "solve" this
equation. That is, in this case, the fact that the rate of heat transfer
between bodies is proportional to the difference of their temperatures-which can be verified by experience-is sufficient to determine an equation describing the instantaneous flow of heat in any
body generally. To find the temperature anywhere in a particular
body, we need to know its shape and the manner in which it is heated or cooled, and then solve the general equation with these conditions in mind.
The problem of time's decay he resolved very simply. One can
maintain the temperature differences in an object artificially until the
flow of heat setdes down into a steady state. Then focus on the now
unvarying temperatures as functions of position within the object.
Factor temporal cooling back in again after the spatial analysis is
complete, if you wish to.
Fourier's analysis depends gready on a device he inherited from
medieval philosophers like Nicolas of Oresme.
Whilst the temperatures are permanent and the
source [of heatJ remains, if at every point [of a mean
plane in the object-a ring in this case J an ordinate
be raised perpendicular to the plane of the [object],
whose length is proportional to the fixed temperature
at that point, the curved line which passes through
the ends of these ordinates will represent the permanent state of the temperatures, and it is very easy to
determine by analysis the nature of this line.
�STEPHENSON
81
That is, the curved line formed in the imagination out of the
parade of temperature within the object discloses what Oresme
calls "the quantity of this quality:' What is so original and illuminating about Oresme's procedure is that all kinds of problemsespecially problems in the physical world-become by this means
problems in a special geometry: the geometry of representation. It
is a geometry that we tend to assbciate with the name of Descartes,
but perhaps owes even more allegiance to the world of Galileo,
whose constructions sometimes resemble those of Oresme very
closely. In the geometry of representation, lines stand for and measure nongeometric quantities, and the geometric relationships
among these lines tell us facts about objects that have nothing
directly to do with their geometry, facts normally couched in the
language of velocity, or heat, or power. It has its roots, of course,
in the physical treatises of Archimedes, and even in Book V of the
Elements. But under the aegis of more recent mathematical techniques, and especially of the calculus, representative figures introduced virtually a new science. A geometric construction such as a
tangent now acquires a meaning very different from its meaning in
the world of Apollonius or Euclid, a meaning that depends on
interpretation of its geometry.
So when Fourier discovers that "a curved line arbitrarily drawn"
can be built out of an infinite series of sines or cosines, his discovery reaches far beyond the topic of heat. It encompasses anything at
all that can be represented by such a curve. Nevertheless, Fourier
must have drawn his initial inspiration in large part from the analysis of the vibrating string, in which representation and portrait coalesce in the same figure.
The vibrating string had been the subject of great interest and
even hot debate for nearly a century before Fourier began to work on
heat. Two very different solutions had been proposed. Fourier chose
one, and then had to defend himself against the advocates of the rival
solution. He did so by showing that the two solutions, for all their
differences in appearance, were in fact equivalent.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
What do these two rivals look like? Euler and d' Alembert insisted that any function whatever will satisfy the differential equation for
the string, provided that its argument have the form, x-Wt or x+wt.
Daniel Bernoulli cited aural evidence to support his claim that the
function must be a series of sine (or cosine) waves, independent of
time, each of them corresponding to a harmonic component within
the musical timbre.
'lj!(x,t) = F(x-wt)-F(x+ wt)
(1)
'lj!( x,t) = (a 1cosx + a2cos2x + a 3cos3x
+ a4 cos4x + .. , )sin cot
(2)
Euler's equation describes waves of arbitrary shape moving to the
right and left along the string; Bernoulli's an accumulation of simple
waves in the form of cosine curves which do not progress either right
or left but only grow and diminish periodically. Euler and
d' Alembert cite visual evidence; Bernoulli, musical experience. The
first solution seems too general; the secon'd too specific. It is hard to
see how two such different kinds of function could solve the same
problem. Hence the debate, which engaged many mathematicians of
that time. Fourier's choice of Bernoulli's solution, when the same
equation turned up in his analysis of heat flow, inevitably thrust him
into the same fight. Consequently, the Parisian Academy of Science,
dominated as it was by members of the opposing sect, summarily
rejected his first memoir on heat. It took fifteen years to win acceptance for his theory.
But Fourier's defense of the sine series did more than exonerate
Bernoulli, it also unconsciously restored Ptolemy's vision to science.
For a sine wave, we have already shown, is a kind of rolling image of
a circle (not of a rolling circle-that would be a cycloid-but of the
displacement of a point on a rotating circle stretched out along a
time-line1). While this is not precisely Ptolemy's scheme, it shares with
Ptolemy one essential point: all motions can be derived from uniform
�STEPHENSON
83
circular motions by simple superposition. And rc. recasting Ptolemy's
by
project in the form of functions and equations;J'ourier enabled himself to prove what Ptolemy seems to have believed, though without
proo£ namely that any i:urved line whatsoever can be constructedfrom the sum of
circles of the appropriate size moving at the appropriate rate. So the demonstration of this proposition makes Fourier not only Ptolemy's heir, but his
champion as well, assuming for the moment that Ptolemy would have
considered such demonstration as grist for his celestial mill.
Fourier's Theorem may be stated in the form of an equation,
<j>(x)
= a1sin(x) + a2sin(2x) + a3 sin(3x) + ...
(3)
where the function, <j>, is arbitrary. It may even correspond to "a
curved line arbitrarily drawn;' according to Fourier. The range of x
for which this equivalence holds is also arbitrary, though if <I> is not
itself periodic, the series will match it only over some finite interval.
We can substitute cosines for sines, or include both kinds of trigonometric functions without changing the essential nature of this series,
provided only that we alter the numerical coefficients, a1, a2, a3, ...
appropriately.
In its formulaic form, however, the proposition may look more
daunting than it is. Let me therefore make full use of his liberty of
graphical representation to illustrate its meaning. The equation above
will exhibit several of its features clearly in graphical form. Thus, each
sine term in the series has its own wave, with loops increasing in number as the multiple in its argument, and size as its coefficient. The sum
itself is the sum of all the ordinates of each of the component sines
to form the ordinate of a composite curve, and it is this curve that
Fourier says will match that corresponding to the function <j>.
Consider the example of the musical string from Fourier's point of
view. It may be sounded by plucking, that is, by being drawn up at one
point and releasecl. The initial shape of this string, therefore, would be
a triangle, and this triangle must itself therefore be one of the shapes
that can be synthesized out of sine waves.
�84
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
1.5
0.5
.25x
0
.75x
F~.l
1.5
Fig.2
1.2
1•
Fig. 3
�STEPHENSON
85
Let us begin the synthesis. The loop of a single sine wave approximating this triangle obviously falls short in the middle and exceeds
at each side. (fig. 1) Add in a second sine wave of one third the wave
l~ngth and see how much closer to the triangle this composite has
become (fig. 2).
Note how the approximation improves with' the addition of
another of one fifth the }"ave length (fig. 3). Now the algebraic representation of what we have just done is as follows,
sin(x)- (1/32 )sin(3x)
+ (1/52)sin(5x)- ... ,
(4)
which clearly reproduces the form of sine series projected by
Fourier's general equation (3). But in this example another feature of
Fourier's series emerges with remarkable clarity: not only are
Ptolemy's circles contained within it in the form of sine functions,
Pythagoras's numbers also ornament its expression. Here one only
sees the odd numbers, but other curve matches include the even as
well. Let me, to commemorate this ancient insight, call any series of
whole number multiples of a variable a "Pythagorean series:'
For an equation describing the shape of a plucked string such a
harvest of harmonic numbers may not be surprising, since
Pythagoras anticipated this aspect of Fourier's theory in a musical
context. Yet once we recall that the triangular shape we have been
approaching with our series can measure the intensity of many different physical quantities-including the temperatures at the end of
a heated bar, for example, which is a problem specifically probed by
Fourier-then the true compass of his theorem should reveal itsel£
Fourier becomes more than usually rhapsodic in describing this theoretical transformation of heat into music:
The problems of the theory of heat present so many
examples of the simple and constant dispositions which
spring from the general laws of narure; and if the order
whieh is established in these phenomena could be
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
grasped by our senses, it would produce in us an impression comparable to the sensation of a musical sound.
He seems to have united the astronomical and musical spheres,
and extended the domain of both to the entire physical world.
Functions and the Infinite
To explain the nature of Fourier's argument in more detail, I must
examine two concepts essential to it, If there is a convincing purely
geometric argument that any line whatever can be formed from the
sum of an infinite number of circles, I do not know it, and Fourier
relies on the concepts of "infinite series" and "fimction" for his proo£
There is a long and interesting history connected with these ideas,
Return for a moment to the quarrel among Fourier's predecessors
over the mathematics of the vibrating string. Much more was at stake in
this debate than just the phenomenon of vibration itsel£ Euler claimed
that <I> could be any function whatever, even a discontinuous on~ whereas
Bernoulli's appears to be as continuous as the sine waves that make it up.
But with continuity the very meaning of the word "fimction" comes into
question if it is to replace line and figure as the central object of mathematics. Ever since Leibniz first used the Latin junctio with a special significance, this substitution has been a noticeable tendency in that science,
In his early works the term retained a geometric character, and
included lines, such as tangents and perpendiculars to tangents under
the same rubric. But later Leibniz seems to have forgotten these early
experiments with the term, or else decided that its true sense emerged
more in algebraic expression, Towards the end of his life, he goes so
far as to claim that it was the very concept of function that completed the Cartesian revolution, by extending geometry into a region
that requires the differential calculus to complete it:
Now it certainly never entered the mind of any one else
before Leibniz to institute the notation peculiar to the
�STEPHENSON
87
new calrulus by which the imagination is freed from a
perpetual reference to diagrams, as was made by Vieta and
Descartes in their ordinary or Apollonian. geometry;
moreover, the more advanced parts pertaining to
Archimedean geometry, and to the lines which were called
"mechanical" by Descartes, were excluded by the latter.
But now by the calrulus of Leibniz the whole of geometry is subjected to analytical computation, and those transcendent lines that Descartes called mechanical are also
reduced to equations chosen to suit them, by considering
the differences [differentiaeJ dx, ddx, etc., and the sums
that are the inverses of these differences, as fimctions of
the x's; and this, by merely introducing the calrulus,
whereas before this no other fimctions were admissible
but x, xx, x3, vx, etc., that is to say, powers and roots.
This excerpt comes from a work called Historia et Or(go Calculi differentia/is, that is "the History and Origin of the Differential
Calculus:' It was written towards the end of his life by someone purporting to be a friend-but most probably by Leibniz hirnself.-to
defend him against the accusation of plagiarism made by Newton
and his followers. Much is said in this interesting-if polemicalwork about the significance of Leibniz's notation (the d's and elongated s's still in use today), about the relationship between the finite
and the infinitesimal, and about the various mathematical insights
Leibniz claims to have discovered during his life. The question of
who best deserves credit for the discovery of the calculus is an interesting one, but outside my purpose. Whether or not it decides this
issue, the Historia does articulate some of the ideas that (though from
hindsight, to be sure) Leibniz considered to have been essential to the
development of the new science. Among these ideas, his insistence on
the importance of replacing geometry with symbolic or algebraic
forms dominated the calculus for the next two centuries, centering
around the function concept original to him.
�88
TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
But the most striking phrase in the portion of Leibniz's defense
which I have just quoted is the claim that by his notation "the imagination is freed from a perpetual reference to diagrams:' What, afi:er all, is
wrong with diagrams? A mathematics textbook without a single picture
is a bleak landscape indeed to the beginner. Nevertheless, many textbooks
and treatises have prided themselves on just such pretended purity.
Now we do .not havr to look very far to find philosophers as well
as mathematicians who distrust the senses. To rely on notoriously fallible organs to decide matters of consequence is to build our scientific
house on shifting sand. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is just a
moderns preference for logical purity that moved him to propose his
notation. Leibniz loves logic and symbolic language, yet it is not so
much their rigor that delights him, but rather their power to reach
broadly to the whole universe of mental objects. He does not worry so
much about the senses deceiving us, as about them limiting us. For
Leibniz did not attend to the rigor of his calculus even as much as
many of his contemporaries would have liked. There are times when he
blatantly calls his differentials "infinitely small;' and then, apparently
unsure of their status as such, claims that anyone who wishes can give
them finite magnitude, for it is only their proportion that matters.'
I wish I had the time to say more about Leibniz's calculus; to examine, for example, his claim that "the infinitely small" is "a kind of useful fiction"; the implications of admitting fiction into the realm of
mathematics, and the ways in which fiction might fit into his general
philosophy. But this pursuit would distract us from my present goal,
which is to explain how Fourier might be said to fulfill Ptolemy's project, and how the concept of "function" plays a role in his argument.
Without pictures, what can we rely on? Logic and magnitude: the
correlation of quantities. These are the province proper of the function. Even so, it took a long time for it to rid itself of some unexamined mathematical traditions it had inherited from geometry and even
from algebra. It took a long time for someone like Bolzano, for example, to realize that the continuity of a function need not and should
not presuppose the same kind of intuitive "betweenness" as did the
�STEPHENSON
89
continuity of a line. It took a long time for someone like Fourier to
decide that a function need not be the expression of a single, simple
law, that a function could be made up out of other functions, even an
infinite number of them.. For Fourier to complete his argument, he
had to make room for an unlimited number of sines or cosines.
Series give us a way of embracing the infinite as old as the ages
of Euclid or Aristotle. O~e can, says Aristotle, divide a line infinitely in potentiality but not in actuality. That is, we can imagine the operation
of dividing-say bisecting-a line as a repeatable process. We do not
have to stop and ask for new instructions at every division, since the
instructions are always the same: just keep on dividing by two. If
Achilles can't catch the tortoise it is only because he traps himself
mentally in such endless bisections. But our own failure ever to reach
an ultimate half becomes transformed into a triumph over the infinite by the very uniformity of procedure and our certainty of being
able to make the remaining pieces of our line as small as we please by
continued subdivision. Inability to know the infinite dissolves into
perfect comprehension of any step along the way.
A familiar example from geometry is Euclid's filling of the circle.
Take a regular polygon inscribed within it, he says. It will occupy most
of that circle. If we double the number of its sides it will increase in
size, but never become larger than the circumscribing circle itsel£
Nevertheless, he establishes by careful reasoning, a sufficient number
of doublings must bring us closer to that circle than any given magnitude. Hence another potential infinity arises, a sequence of essentially identical operations by which a polygon draws ever closer to the
circle without surpassing it. And in the ratio and number books he
also confronts infinity: there are an unlimited number of primes;
ratios are the same when the infinite sets of equimultiples of their
terms always bear the same relationships to one another.
But let us be precise. Euclid never uses such language. The number
of primes he proves to be greater than any given number. The equimultiples of the Fifth Definition of Book V are "any;' not "every"
equimultiple. The "infmite" is not a noun. It is not even an adjective.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
90
"Greater (or less) than any given magnitude" is the phrase that recurs
where we are tempted to read "infinite:' As Aristotle says, there is no
actual but only a potential infinite. Thus an "infinite series" would be
a misnomer for Euclid or his predecessors and successors. Much is
concealed by the ellipsis or the "etc:' when we see a series written so
provocatively with their aid: "1 +2+3+4+5+6+7+ ... etc:' But the misnomer and the deceptive language gained advocates nonetheless.
The contemplation of the potential infinite in the form of a
repeated operation might give us hope of demonstrating Fourier's
Theorem. Numbers are not the only possible components of infinite
series. Since we want to add circles or sine waves, we will have to
move up from numbers to functions. But before we do so, please note
one characteristic of the examples given so far that we should not
take for granted: we have embraced the infinite in the form of a
repeated process but we should not therefore tacitly believe that the
operations must always be of the same kind. A difficult quantity like
Jt can often be approximated by a series that seems to build rationally. Leibniz was so proud of his discovery of the series:
:n:/4 = 1 - 1/3 +
1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...
that he called it numerus Dei without a hint of any arrogance: "the number of God:' Yet a decimal expression for Jt is itself an "infinite series":
3
+ 1/10 + 4/100 + 1/1000 + 5/10000 + 9/100000 +
...
and no sequence of its digits will ever repeat continually. It should
remain a question for us whether every "infinite series" can be recast
into a repeating form.
The Proof
Armed with functions and a grip on infinite series we can at least
sketch Fourier's proo£ Without invoking many of the technical tools of
�STEPHENSON
91
the integral calculus, we can glimpse its power through the graph of a continuous fUnction. Fourier himself relies on this imagt,. Now look again at
the series (3) that he claims will approximate any function whatever:
<j>(x) = a1sin(x)
+ a2sin(2x) + a3sin(3x) + ...
All that distinguishes, one Fourier series from another is the size
of the coefficients a1, a2, a3,••. of the sine (or cosine) terms. His
demonstration, therefore, depends on the assurance with whicll these
numbers can be found for any gi~en function. Now multiply both
sides of this equation by some one of the sine terms, and integrate
the product between 0 and :n:. A small bit of labor in the fields of the
calculus will convince you that every term on the right will become
zero except the one corresponding to the particular sine we have chosen. That is,
the integrated series reduces to the following simple equation:
J;(x)sin(nx)dx = anf: sin2(nx)dx =an :n:/2
which tells us that any coefficient an is proportional to a definite
integral based on the original function, <j>, and a sine. Since <j> is arbitrary, you might think that we can say no more until we know its specific form. However, Fourier thinks of a definite integral as a number that can measure the area surmounted by a curve. If <j> is any drawable function whatever, he says, multiplying its values by the simultaneous values of a sine function in Cartesian fashion will not destroy
its ability to defme areas. And that is all we need to know to be convinced that the definite integral exists, that it equals some real number, and therefore so does the coefficient proportional to that integral. That is, a Fourier series for any sucll function can be established
even without actually calculating its coefficients. The existence of the coefficients guarantee the validity of the series, so to speak.
This concludes the only truly technical part of this lecture. From
this sketcll of Fourier's argument I hope you can gather at least this:
any drawable function whatever, any function whose graph is made up
�92
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of continuous pieces (and that includes most functions you can
name, and most that you can't) can be approximated as closely as you
please by a Pythagorean series of sines or cosines with numerical
coefficients (see fig. 4, below).
Before I conclude with some speculations about the greater significance of their work, let me compare and contrast the ancient and
the modern champion of circles. Both find an underlying simplicity in
nature in that form, but they do not regard this simplicity In exactly
the same way. For Ptolemy the hypothesis of circular motion amounts
to a necessary condition for knowledge. He never draws the orbit of
a planet that results from the compounding of circles. A separate consideration of each anomalistic circle will give us a glimpse of the
divine, he believes, and so lead us into the Platonic world of Being and
Truth. Fourier makes no such declaration of faith. Unlike Ptolemy he
is interested in the paths and shapes corresponding to functions.
Circles confront him from within the phenomena willy-nilly, or rather
spring unexpectedly from the mathematical analysis of these phe-
X
�93
STEPHENSON
nomena. He seizes the opportunity to generalize this analysis far
beyond its origins in the study of heat; however, he insists that "the
profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical
discoveries" because it excludes "vague questions and calculation without issue:' The very first phrase of Fourier's Treatise is, "Primary causes are unknown to us:' I do not know whether Ptolemy would share
this declaration of ignorance without qualification, or disparage
"vague questions" as impatiently as Fourier, but he does not attempt
to find the source of the celestial movements he describes so carefully. Despite his introductory homage to Aristotle, who devoted a good
part of his Physics and Metaphysics to the discovery of causes on Earth
and in the sky, Ptolemy seems content with the analysis of the form
of those motions. Both he and Fourier ultimately rejoice somewhere
just short of cause, in the knowledge that the world is fruitful in ideas,
and hence will lead us to pursue the truth. However complicated the
analysis which discovers them, the outcome raises our sights in a satisfying way. But is there more to circles than meets the eye?
Aristotle again: Circles of Thought
One of Aristotle's deepest insights illuminates the edge of his
physics. The circular motion of the heavens--of the starry sphere that
bears day and night in its revolutions, he says, can rise only out of the
desire for knowledge. There is a connection at its periphery between
the world of nature and the world of thought, and the longing of the
one for the other moves it. But since truth has no direction, the only
kind of movement appropriate to such a desire is circular: rotation,
movement in place, which is both motion and motionlessness.
Can we take Aristotle's vision seriously? There is, after all, no
edge to our universe, so we have been told. Nor can Copernicus's
arguments fail to persuade us that the stars do not really revolve
around us. Nevertheless, that thinking does involve a circular motion
of some kind, and that it can move the world: these are both propositions that I think can and should be defended.
�94
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The latter is obvious. Thought changes things. We see that in most
of the objects around us, and in ourselves. "All men desire to know;'
and that desire moves us to explore and build and observe and draw
and measure and calculate and read and write and tame and talk. It's all
very unnatural, if by "natural" I mean merely the thoughtless spread of
matter and energy. But once a being capable of thinking begins to act
on nature.and on his O!Vn nature, then the whole world changes.
You might want to object that I have distorted Aristotle's conception, that he intended the stars rather than us to be moved quite
literally by their lust for truth. That is why they circle so swiftly:
because they are the closest to and have the clearest perception of
knowledge. But I do not think that Aristotle meant the stars to be so
separate from us. Of a different stuff, yes, one that does· not impede
their vision and their action as much as ours does. But it is not just
the distant stars that are spun by the unmoved mover, it is the world
as a whole. After all, the circuit that brings round the same constellations every night also brings us cycles of the suns warmth and light
that inspire all living creatures to birth and growth. The "world as a
whole'' includes the sublunar sphere, which, even if it itself does not
rotate, does participate in the desire that continually brings everything capable of embodying a specific virtue and excellence into the
maturity that realizes those ideals in a cycle of life.
I do not mean that Aristotle believes in progress beyond the individual, except incidentally. That is, the "world as a whole'' does not get
any closer to the object of its desire. He can see no providence in history. Perhaps that is because the ttuth is infmitely far away or infinitely
rich, so that whatever knowledge we human beings acquire is insignificant with respect to what remains to learn. Or perhaps Aristotle is a historical pessimist: whatever progress our race achieves is bound to be
undone by war or some other disaster. Or perhaps the bits of knowledge that we acquire and pass on to our heirs does accumulate, but this
accumulation does not count as progress, because it does not change our
essential nature. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that the world both
moves continually and stays the same. That is why its motion is circular.
�STEPHENSON
95
But even without these arguments from Nature, one might be persuaded that thought in itself requires a kind of circular inotion, especially if by "thought" one means self-conscious thought. There may be, as
Aristotle insists, a kind of thought that does not move at all: contemplation, the present enjoyment of truth known and grasped in itsel£ The
embrace of such moments, when for an instant we glimpse the truth,
and which Aristotle calls t)le most divine and happy activity possible, is
VO'I]O't~ voflcrero~ What better circularity could be found than such an
expression, "thinking of thinking;' even if it is not a moving circle.
Most of our thinking does move-from step to step in an argument, from one perception or apperception to another. Each of these
steps should form a unit, a momentary resting place like the primary
one of contemplation. But the motion of a whole argument also does
close upon itself the way a circle does. Any sentence ends with.a period, that is to say it is periodic, and to utter a meaningful sentence is
to "have in the beginning the end in mind;' as Aristotle says.
Sentences necessarily mirror thought; some would even say that we
think in sentences. Speech, therefore, corroborates the claim that even
discursive thinking is a circular motion.
The self of self-consciousness, or of self-evidence are one and
the same. Even when we engage in the deepest kinds of thinking,
when we "lose ourselves," the unity of self accompanies the activity.
You need not attend consciously to the self that thinks for it to be
present and for it to take part in forming the thought, in making it
one thought, your thought. The same circularity that is evident when
we do contemplate ourselves is always there at the periphery, if not
in the center, of our thinking.
Ptolemy claims that the study of the stars will bring us closer to
"the things that are always what they are:' Aristotle's metaphysics
should make it clear why movement in circles forms a necessary part
of this dialectic. By analyzing the motions of the planets into component circular motions, we expose the nature of thinking itself, and
thereby bring nature and humanity together into a single science. A
book or a lecture becomes a world, with its own intellectual stars and
�96
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
planets, and the world becomes a dialogue. Each moment in this
dialectical chain is a tiny mental circle, adding to and correcting the
scientific legacy and conversation that precedes it.
What does science look like through Ptolemy's eyes? An endeavor
to discover thought in the universe, that is to say, ultimately: objects of
contemplation. To find a simple circle of movement within the celestial manifold is to focu$ on the truth that causes that movement, and
it is always the pleasant reward of our effort to dwell with that truth
until some other anomaly beckons us to find its center and compass.
Fourier's world appears both similar to and different from
Ptolemy's. Circles churn beneath its surface, and numbers as well, and
it is through these that our understanding comes to understand, much
as Ptolemy says. But for Fourier the process is essentially infinite: the
truth lies not within these units of thought, as it does for Ptolemy, but
in the whole that we can never reach but always approximate. The
musical tone that led him to his theorem requires such an infinity: the
ideal vibrating string pulses simultaneously in all its infinite parts.
The vibrating string is not yet music, only musical: the promise of
music. Thus perhaps Fourier's world is a world still to be composed
and never finished, whereas Ptolemy faces us immediately with the
true and changeless world behind appearances at each moment of discovery. Since nature mirrors the world of thought for both these men,
however, the science of circle and synthesis, of trial and error, of hit
and miss and correction, of guess and refmement always reaches
beyond physics into the realm of everything that thought can touch.
Notes
1. The "sine curve" in its first incarnation was called "companion to
the cycloid:' C£ Roberval.
2. This is almost exactly the procedure of Newton, who recommends
a kind of imaginary microscope in lemma VII of his Principia to display the relationship of vanishing quantities.
�t
A Forgotten Revolution
Curtis Wilson
This book is about the mathematics, science, and technology of
the late fourth, third, and second centuries BC. In its detailed argumentation, it challenges many long and widely held views. Its thesis
is extraordinary.
The "forgotten revolution" of Russo's title signifies nothing less
than the first emergence of science, both exact or deductive science
and experimental science. It took place, according to Russo, not in
modern times but in the Hellenistic Age, with the work of Euclid,
Aristarchus, Eratosthenes, Ctesibius, Herophilus, Archimedes,
Apollonius, Seleucus, Hipparchus, and others. Conventionally the
Hellenistic Age has been dated from the death of Alexander in 323
BC to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans in 30 BC, but in science,
according to Russo, it may be said to have essentially ended by 145
BC, the year in which Ptolemy VIII, for political motives and possibly
as an agent of Roman policy, systematically destroyed the Greek scientific community in Alexandria (see Polybius, History, XXXIV, 14).
A 180-year efflorescence of science, virtually extinguished not only as
an historical phase, but also in historical memory: such is Russo's
theme. Fragments of and clues to this efflorescence survived, but
often distorted by later misinterpretation. The science of the 17th
century, according to Russo, came about in considerable measure as
a recovery of Hellenistic science.
Prongs of this thesis that may astonish are the following. Russo,
while granting that articulate rationality was an achievement and
legacy of the Greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and that this
rationality was an essential element in Hellenistic science, argues that
Lucio Russo, La rivoluzione dimenticata. Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1996.
Curtis Wilson is tutor emeritus at St. John's College.
�98
THE ST. JOHN'SREVIEW
it evolved into exact science only in the time of Euclid. (This claim
presupposes Russo's definition of "exact science," which I'll come to
shortly.)
Secondly, exact science according to Russo emerged out of the
interaction of Greek rationality with the technical cultures of the
empires that Alexander conquered-above all the Egyptian empire.
Egyptian technology at the time, an affair of lore and tradition that
had accumulated over centuries, was superior to Greek technology.
Alexander's aim was to Hellenize the world. In the newly conquered
empires, as ruled by him and after his death by his successors, Greek
intellectuals were put in administrative roles. Under the beneficient
reigns of Ptolemy I Soter (ruling from 323 to 283 BC) and Ptolemy II
Philadelphos (ruling from 283 to 246 Be), Greek administrators were
challenged to rationalize and improve upon the technological
processes they were required to supervise. Russo sees the invention of
both exact and experimental science as a response to that challenge.
Thirdly, according to Russo, as the Romans, scarcely out of barbarism and totally ignorant of science, conquered the Mediterranean
world, the maintenance of scientific culrure became increasingly difficult and finally impossible. The transmission of scientific culture by
oral instruction was thus interrupted; and when post-Hellenistic
writers like Vitruvius, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, and Seneca came to
write of science and scientists, they failed to understand the terminology and methodology of the Hellenistic works that had come
down to them, and remained largely ignorant of their true mathematical and experimental content. It is a mistake, in Russo's view, to
paint a picture of a unified Greco-Roman culture, as Plutarch did in
his Parallel Lives.
To argue for such a sweeping thesis, Russo has to be a textual
archaeologist, a detective who ferrets out and connects together a
multitude of small dues. There is much in his book that is admittedly conjectural; much that the reader may wish to investigate further. In the following, I give references to relevant pages to help the
reader in locating the pieces of Russo's argument referred to.
�WILSON
99
An early question must be: What does. Russo mean by "exact science"? His definition is rather restrictive (p. 31f£). "Exact science;' as
he proposes to use the term, has to do not with concrete objects of
the real world but with specific theo'retical entities, for instance angles
and segments in geometry, or temperature and entropy in thermodynamics; these do not exist in nature, but are cultural products, originating in human activity., The theories of "exact science" have a rigorously axiomatic-deductive structure; they start from a few fundamental enunciations (postulates or axioms or principles), and deduce
consequences from them by strictly logical inference. Expertise in a
theory of this kind means being able to 'pose and solve exercises or
problems formulated within th~ theory's ambit, and agree on the correctness of the solutions; the existence of such expertise is an identifying characteristic of "exact science:' Finally, applications to the real
world are made possible by "rules of correspondence" between the
entities of the theory and concrete objects. Technology and exact science, in Russo's understanding, are distinct bu1; go hand in hand.
Is there a documented use of "exact science" in classical, preHellenistic times? Russo says No (p. 39). Eudemus, a disciple of
Aristotle, wrote a history of geometry (known only through references to it by Proclus in his commentary on the first book of Euclid's
Elements), in which he assigned the discovery of certain geometrical
theorems to earlier thinkers (p. 51£). For instance, he makes Thales
the discoverer of the theorem that triangles with one side and the
adjacent angles equal are equal, because Thales is said to have used
this proposition to calculate the distance of ships observed at sea.
But, counters Russo, one could use this proposition, accepting it as
true, without having formally proved it. More generally, Russo
doubts there was a motive for demonstrating apparently obvious
truths (like the equality of vertical angles, or the equality of the
halves into which a diameter divides a circle, "theorems" that
Eudemus also assigns to Thales) before it was discovered that deductions could lead to quite unsuspected truths. The deduction of theorems probably began in Plato's time, but the notion of a unified
�100
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
axiomatic-deductive system hadn't yet solidified (p. 55). None of
Euclid's five postulates is attested in pre-Euclidean geometry, nor are
there any alternative sets of postulates documented as having been set
forth before Euclid (p. 65).
It is thus Russo's view that one author, Euclid, with a unitary
aim, put together Euclid's Elements, which became the paradigm of a
deductive system for a\1 succeeding ages. But he suspects that the
text as we have it contains interpolations. Among these may be the
definitions of u point," uline," u straight line," u surface;' and u plane
surface" at the start of Book I, which possibly stem from Hero of
Alexandria, of the first century AD (pp. 235-44). These definitions
are "realistic;' implying the existence of their objects in the world,
rather than nominal like the other definitions of Book I. Euclid,
Russo believes, had a "constructivist" rather than a "realistic" conception of his geometry (pp. 71-75). The first three postulates state
the allowable operations: to draw a line from any point to any point,
to extend the line, and to describe a circle. These operations are the
clear and explicit transposition to the level of mathematical theory
of the operations normally executed on papyrus, using pen and ink,
straight edge and compasses. To be sure, there is an enormous difference between mathematics and engineering design; but the postulates "model" what the actual instruments do, so that it is perfectly
clear whence the postulates derive and what the "rules of correspondence" are that permit the mathematics to be applied. By means
of his unitary starting point and strict adherence to deduction, the
mathematician becomes independent of both philosophical speculation and immediate engineering concerns (p. 57). But the relevance
of mathematical science to engineering applications, Russo believes,
was something Hellenistic society was unlikely to let the mathematician forget.
According to Russo, it is an indication of Euclid's constructivism
that he uses the term <IT\JlELOV (sign, mark, token) for "point"; the
earlier term had been <nt'YJ.la. The latter term, Russo states, has like
the Latin punctum the realistic sense of a prick or stab, whereas a
�WILSON
101
01)fJ£tOV or sign is a cultural construction or an interpretation of one
thing as meaning another. Archimedes, Apollonius of Perga, and
apparently Hipparchus continued to use 01)flEtov for "point:' but in
the post-Hellenistic period there was a rerum to the earlier term with
its realistic connotation (pp. 72-73).
Another indication of Euclid's constructivism is that all entities
in the Elements are constr';'cted on the basis of the initial postulates
(pp. 73-74). His inclusion of the fifth or parallel postulate among his
postulates, without any attempt to demonstrate its truth or otherwise
comment on it, is consonant with a high level of sophistication. He
had evidently found the postulate to be necessary for the derivation
of the properties of the figures constructed. His formulation of the
posrulate is sparing, ascetic; it does not speak of infinity ( c£ pp. 61,
331). The ascetic choice of basis suggests an artfulness that has
reached mature self-awareness, that knows it can proceed only by
construction.
But what about the often alleged 'platonic' inspiration of Euclid's
Elements? Let us distinguere, as the schoolmen used to say.
Mathematicians, in pursuing their deductions, discover truths hitherto unsuspected. One such discovery was that there were five and only
five of the so-called 'platonic bodies; the convex polyhedra that the
Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus uses for the imagined construction of
the universe. Do such 'platonic bodies' have an "independent existence," whatever that might mean? Not independent of the constructivist starting point, if Russo is right. He is urging that the
Hellenistic mathematicians were conscious, and perhaps even proud,
of their independence of metaphysical speculation.
At the same time, Russo believes, they were sharply aware ofthe
engineering relevance of their propositions. Euclid's Elements had widespread application to the solution of architectural and engineering
problems. The standard method for solving a problem was to dra'f a
diagram, and apply the propositions of Euclid's Book II (which
Russo, like Heath, calls "geometrical algebra"). The method can be
comparable in accuracy with the slide rule, the standard engineering
�102
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
calculative device before the age of the digital calculator. The modern
complaint about the ancient'aesthetic' preference for straight lines and
circles is thus, according to Russo, badly misplaced (pp. 57-60). In the
technological context in which Russo places it, the constructivism he
sees in Euclid's Elements fits comfortably. Russo finds evidence of the
same constructivism in Apollonius of Perga (pp. 72, 113-14).
Russo's sense of tl,e technological context is supported by the
surviving Hellenistic mathematical treatises that are explicitly concerned with sciences we would call "applied." Euclid's Optics is a
deductive science having to do with visual perception, and permitting
the quantitative determination of the apparent sizes of objects seen
from a given distance and given standpoint (pp. 79-83). The fUndamental 'elements' to be considered here are il\vet~, straight lines collocated in a cone with apex at the eye. It is by considering how
objects are placed in this cone that we understand how they appear
perspectivally. The term OIJIEt~ in Euclid's treatise has usually been
translated "visual rays:' Beginning in the fourth century AD, we find
complaints about Euclid's claiming that vision occurs by visual rays
issuing from the eye, rather than by rays of light entering the eye. But
this, says Russo, is misinterpretation. Euclid is not proposing a physical cause of vision, but a geometrical theory of how things appear,
which requires a consideration of the visual cone, the Oljlet~ or lines
of sight with apex at the eye. The use in paintings of geometrical
rules of perspective is documented for Euclid's time, but not earlier;
geometrical perspective was rediscovered during the Renaissance in
the context of an interest in Hellenistic culture (p. 81 ).
The treatise "On the equilibrium of plane figures" by
Archimedes (ca. 287 BC- 212 Be) gives us what we call the "law of the
lever;' and shows how to determine the "centers of gravity" of variously shaped plane figures (pp. 91-94). Archimedes' choice of "plane
figures'' rather than "weights'' is perhaps a way of insisting on the
quantifiability of his subject matter. In this treatise he lays the basis
for the determination of the "mechanical advantage" of simple
machines, making possible the quantitative design of machines for
�WILSON
103
the lifting of a given weight through a given distance with the avail"
able force. Aristotle had asserted that a single rna!"' could not move a
ship; a century later, Archimedes showed how by an appropriate
machine the single man could do it. Don't believe, says Russo, the
picture that Plutarch gives us of Archimedes as an otherworldly theorist; Plutarch was writing two and a half centuries after Archimedes
was killed by a Roman soldier, and knew little or nothing of
Archimedes' mathematics.
Similarly, Archimedes' treatise "On Floating Bodies'' laid the scientific basis for naval architecture, leading, according to Russo, to a
major increase in size of ships (pp. 94-97, 125-27). Other Hellenistic
sciences had similar engineering relevance: hydraulics, for instance,
for the delivery of water under pressure to elevated citadels as in
Pergamon (pp. 130-33); and catoptrics for the construction of parabolic mirrors, employed in the lighthouses that now came to be built
in the larger ports of the Mediterranean, including the great lighthouse on Faro in the harbor of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders
of the world, projecting a light that could be seen for 48 kilometers
(pp. 127-29).
The Hellenistic Age, Russo believes, saw an unprecedented
development and application of technology. He reviews the evidence in his Chapter 6 (pp. 179-200); it comes mainly from administrative records and twentieth-century excavations. A good deal of
it was assembled by Rostovzev in the early decades of this century
(see his Social and Economic History ?f the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 1941).
The early Ptolemies energetically pursued a policy of increasing
agricultural production. The areas cultivated under royal control
were increased by the draining of swamplands and the irrigation of
the edges of the desert. New machines, with iron parts (possibly
including geared wheels, which are first documented for this time),
were introduced for the raising of water and the sowing and reaping
of grain. New kinds of wheat were imported; old and new kinds
were hybridized. That this policy was successful is suggested by the
following facts (p. 190):
�104
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(a) In late Pharaonic (pre-Ptolemaic) times, the population of
Egypt is estimated at three million.
(b) In 1836 it was estimated that the agricultural lands of Egypt,
if utilized to the maximum, could support a population of eight million; by 1882, ·as a result of economic reforms, the population of
Egypt had increased to 6,800,000,
(c) Alexandria, fo4nded by Alexander in 331 BC, had in .50 BC
about 500,000 inhabitants; it was the largest city in the Mediterranean
world. In the first century AD, the population of Egypt was estimated on the basis of fiscal records to be 7,500,000.
And Egypt during the Hellenistic period not only consumed
grain but exported it on a large scale, along with many industrial
products such as glass, ceramics, paper, textiles, perfumes, and pharmaceuticals (pp. 190-95).
Economic prosperity led to a large increase in wealth, not only of
the Hellenistic rulers but of an expanding middle class. In the first
century BC Diodorus Siculus described Alexandria as "the first city
of the world, by far superior to all others for elegance, size, riches and
luxury:' Its broad avenues were illuminated by lamps throughout the
night; its houses were supplied with running water; its theaters and
baths provided entertainment and recreation, All the genres of painting that would later be developed in the 17th century-portraiture,
landscapes, still-lifes-appeared here in the third century BC.
And by royal policy scientific research was richly supported. The
Ptolemies created at Alexandria the Museum, the first public institute of research known to history (p. 182). There, just as at our
Institute for Advanced Study, meals were served in common, and
mathematicians and scientists exchanged ideas. At the disposition of
the Museum's guests was the famous Library. Ptolemy II
Philadelphus not only bought books from merchants but requested
copies of new books from all the states with which he had diplomatic relations. Ships docking at Alexandria were required to list all
the books they carried and to allow them to be copied. Within a few
decades the Library contained a half million books. A separate sec-
�WILSON
105
tion of the Library was open to the public, constituting the first public library. Pergamon under the Attalid dynasty (263 - 133 Be) followed similar policies, instituting a library and art collection, and
fostering interchange of ideas between mathematicians, scientists,
and engineers. At Antioch, too, mathematical and scientific research
was supported under the Seleucids.
In the sciences of .hydrostatics, hydraulics, and pneumatics,
experimentation was a prerequisite for formulating postulates or
principles, since the latter did not emerge as obvious truths from
ordinary experience. Again, in the breeding of plants and animals,
experimentation was the only avenue for advance. Active experimentalism, according to Russo, emerges naturally out of a constructivist
"exact science;' self-consciously pursued.
Russo makes much of the experimentation of the anatomist and
physiologist Herophilus, active in Alexandria at the start of the
Hellenistic period (pp. 154-69). He it was who first introduced the
taking of the pulse as a diagnostic procedure. For this purpose, an
accurate clock was required. At just this time, his associate at the
Museum, Ctesibius, had modified the ancient clepsydra or water
clock by making it a constant-level device (by means of constant
inflow combined with an overflow trough), so as to insure a constant
pressure on the water issuing from the orifice at the bottom (pp. 12122). This orifice was lined with gold or gemstone, to avoid corrosion
or incrustation. The water issuing from it was collected in a second
receptacle and measured by a float that moved an indicator over a
graduated scale. With such an instrument Herophilus determined
average pulse rates for persons of different ages.
Herophilus dissected human bodies and carried out physiological experiments. A century after Aristotle had declared the function
of the human brain to be that of cooling the blood, he had recognized it as the central organ of the nervous system; and by experiments (perhaps on condemned prisoners-horrible thought!) had
distinguished the motor and sensory nerves issuing from the spinal
cord. He had discovered the reticular structure of the retina, sug-
�106
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gesting the discrete nature of the visual receptors; and this discovery
may underlie Euclid's assumption, in his Optics, of a discrete set of
0\j/Et<; as forming the cone of lines of sight. Denying the adequacy
of ordinary language-an adequacy on which, according to Russo,
Aristotle had depended-Herophilus invented special names for various anatomical organs that he discovered, such as the epididymus
and the Fallopian tubes; many of these organs would. be rediscovered
only in the 16th century.' Galen (second century AD) expressed disapproval of Herophilus's raising strong objections to every proposed
cause of a physiological phenomenon, then proceeding to make use
of such causes; to Galen these actions seemed self-contradictory. In
Russo's view, Herophilus was merely being critical and self-aware in
his use of hypotheses (pp. 165-66). The school of Herophilus persisted into the first century AD, but was then extinguished amidst
growing incomprehension of Hellenistic science.
Russo's account of Hellenistic astronomy (pp. 99-109, 251-84) is
not the least daring of his reconstructions. Only two works. of
Hellenistic astronomy, both minor, have come down to us:
Aristarchus's On the Dimensions and Distances of the Sun and the Moon, and
Hipparchus's commentary on Aratus's poem Phenomena. Neither tells
us anything about the motions of the Moon or planets. But a passage of Archimedes's Sand-Reckoner states that Aristarchus (fl. 280-264
BC) had produced "demonstrations of the [planetaryJ phenomena:'
Plutarch (first century AD) in his De facie quae in orbe lunae apparel states
that Aristarchus had sought to "save the appearances'' by assuming
the Earth to have motions of rotation and revolution; Aristarchus's
theory was evidently heliocentric. This theory appears to have made
little immediate stir, and it has been generally assumed that it
dropped out of sight for 1800 years, until revived by Copernicus. Not
so, says Russo.
One myth to be rejected is that Aristarchus, because of his heliocentrism, was accused of impiety; the story comes from a misreading, by the 17th-century philologist G. Menage, of a passage in
Plutarch's De facie (pp. 104, note 101). That absolute rest is not
�107
WILSON
detectable by observation was a commonplace among Hellenistic
writers: Euclid ·in his Optics states that the appearances of motion
depend solely on relative motion between observer and object
observed; a similar statement by Herophilus is reported by Galen;
and Lucretius in De rerum natura makes much of the same point.
Heracleides of Pontus and others in the fourth century BC had proposed accounting for the daily apparent westward motion of the stars
by assuming an eastward diurnal rotation of the Earth; such an
assumption already challenges the naive belief that we can observe
absolute rest, since it implies that the inhabitants of Mediterranean
cities are being whirled eastward at. speeds of around 1000 km/hr.
Mathematicians, being constructivists, would not have made a realistic or exclusive claim for the heliocentric theory; its excellence for
them would have been in the elegance with which it accounted for the
appearances. Archimedes mentioned Aristarchus's heliocentric theory
without raising physical objections to it.
We know that Archimedes constructed a planetarium; its design,
Russo argues, must have been essentially heliocentric. Cicero saw it
two centuries later, and said of it that "the invention of Archimedes
is to be admired in that he thought out how a single conversion could
reproduce dissimilar, inequable, and contrasting motions" (p. 104).
Cicero's stress on the unicity of the
11
conversion," Russo urges, is
incompatible with a mechanism of Ptolemaic type; it suggests a single center about which the revolutions occur. Assume a mechanism in
which all planets revolve about the Sun in the same direction; to show
what the appearances would be for a terrestrial observer it would suffice to hold the Earth fixed while the 'conversion' continued. Another
planetarium is credited to Posidonius of Rhodes (first century Be),
and Russo believes that it, also, is likely to have been heliocentric in
the sense just explained. By contrast, an apparatus of the type
described in Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses, incorporating a totally separate epicyclic mechanism for each planet, would be difficult to construct and unrevealing as an object of contemplation.
Russo believes the Hellenistic scientists went beyond the mere
�108
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
proposal of a heliocentric scheme, to a consideration of mechanical
concepts that would be compatible with it. Let me cite some key
pieces of the evidence he brings to bear.
Hero of Alexandria, now dated to the first century AD, is viewed
by Russo as reflecting Hellenistic ideas and discoveries. In his
Mechanica (I, iv, 20-21) he announced: "We shall demonstrate that
weights placed on a fric~ionless plane can be moved by a force smaller than any given force:' The demonstration consists in approximating the horizontal plane by means of a series of inclined planes with
ever smaller inclinations (pp. 251-52). Here we would seem to be
close to Galileo's experimentation with inclined planes, and to the
modern idea of inertia, according to which a body set in motion continues its motion without the application of force. This discovery
crucially depends on the recognition of friction as a force that under
ordinary terrestrial conditions brings motion to a stop.
That gravicy causes acceleration was well-known to the ancients,
including Aristotle. Strato of Lampsacus (d. ca. 270 BC), successor of
Theophrastus as head of the Peripatetic school in Athens, according
to a report of Simplicius (commentator on Aristotle, fl. ca. AD 530),
noted that this acceleration was observable in a stream of falling
water, which after a certain point in its fall breaks into
separate drops. In the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems (not
datable, but presumably late- or post-Hellenistic), immediately after
the explanation of the parallelogram rule (for what we would call the
vectorial combination of motions), it is observed that a point moving in circular motion is subject to two simultaneous displacements:
one described as according to nature ( Kma (j>ucrtv ), along the tangent, and the other contrary to nature (napa (j>Ucrtv ), directed to the
center (Mechanical Problems, 849a, 1417).
Plutarch's De facie is a dialogue in which one of the interlocutors
takes the side of the mathematicians while the other opposes the
mathematicians' "paradoxes." According to the first of these interlocutors, "Certainly the Moon is kept from falling by its own motion
and the rapidity of its rotation, just as objects in a sling are kept from
�WILSON
109
falling by circular motion. In fact, motion according to nature guides
each body, unless it is deviated by something else. For this reason the
Moon does not follow its weight, because it is equilibrated by the
effect of the rotation:' Plutarch's source evidently assigned weight
(heavine~s toward the Earth) to the Moon, and appears to have had
a dynamics based on the principle of inertia. Russo (pp .254-55) gives
evidence tending to date the theory reported by Plutarch to the time
of Hipparchus (second half of the second century Be).
A passage in Seneca's Naturales quaestiones, VII, xxv, 6-7, can be
interpreted as expressing the same theory, but now extended to all the
planets: "We have met with those who say to us: You err in judging
that any star can stop in its path or go in reverse; the celestial bodies
cannot stop or turn away; all advance; as they are once launched, so
they proceed.... Should they be stopped, the bodies now conserved
by their regular motion would fall the one on the other. What is then
the cause why some seem to turn back? A falling in with the Sun, and
the nature of their circular paths, so positioned as for a certain time
to deceive the observers, impose the appearance of slowness on them.
Thus ships, although moving under full sail, yet seem to stand still."
The passage, Russo admits, may allow of a non-heliocentric interpretation, but he believes the heliocentrism of Seneca's source is
detectable in it. And that source may well have been Hipparchus, who
may also have been the source of the mathematical "paradoxes" discussed in Plutarch's De facie. Pliny in his Natura/is historia (II, 95) says
that Hipparchus had an ingenious theory for explaining planetary
motions, and laments the failure of anyone to exploit the Hipparchan
legacy.
Archimedes's discovery of the buoyancy principle, Russo argues,
made Aristotle's theory of gravity untenable (p. 273). The discovery
showed that there was no such thing as absolute lightness, opposed to
gravity. All terrestrial bodies are heavy, but bodies float in water or rise
in air because they are less dense. In face of this discovery, Aristotle's
theory of the elements becomes unsustainable, and a major reason for
supposing celestial bodies qualitatively different from terrestrial ones
�110
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is removed. In his treatise on floating bodies, Archimedes derives the
sphericity of the ocean's surface from the symmetry of gravity about
the Earth's center. Later, as reported by the historian Diodorus
Siculus, it was suggested that the Earth was initially fluid, and that the
Earth's spherical form is the result of the gravity of its parts. The
apparently spherical forms of the Sun and the Moon were explained
in the same way; thus Plutarch in his De facie reports the notion that
the Sun draws to itself the parts of which it consists, just as the Earth
does (p. 274).
According to the geographer Strabo (first century BC ),
Eratosthenes (third century Be) objected to Archimedes' claim that
the form of the oceans was exactly spherical; the tides, he believed,
were due to the Moon's attraction, which thus altered the spherical.
form (p. 275). Also according to Strabo, Seleucus, a mathematician of
the first century BC, studied the tides of the Arabian Sea, and found
an annual cycle: the two daily tides differed maximally in size when
the syzygies (full or new moon) occurred in the solstices (in midwinter or summer), and differed least when the syzygies occurred in
the equinoxes (in spring and autumn). The effect suggests that the
Sun's attraction as well as the Moon's is involved in producing the
tides, and that the effect of these bodies is maximal when they are at
the zenith or the antipodal point (see Appendix).
Pliny in his Natura/is historia (II, 212, 213, 216) seems to be referring
to Seleucus when he says that the Moon and Sun cause the tides, and
mentions that the difference between the two daily tides becomes nil
at the time of the equinoxes. He also remarks on the retardation of
the tides with respect to the positions of the Sun and Moon: a
remark that makes sense only in the context of a gravitational explanation. That Seleucus believed in the Earth's motion is shown by a
passage in Plutarch's Platonicae quaestiones ( 1006 c), where he mentions
the idea that "the Earth was projected, not confined and stable, but
revolving and rotating, as successively affirmed by Aristarchus and
Seleucus, the first only assuming it by hypothesis and Seleucus rather
proving it:' Russo's suggestion is that Seleucus based both his theory
�WILSON
111
of the tides and his proof of the heliocentric theory on the hypothesis of a gravitational interaction with the Sun (pp. 276-78 ).
Hipparchus (second century BC) was a younger contemporary
of Seleucus, and according to Strabo accepted Seleucus's findings
on the tides (p. 278). Hipparchus is known from Ptolemy's Syntaxis
to have discovered the precession of the equinoxes, determined the
distance of the Moon as, 59 Earth-radii from the Earth's surface (a
good value), and developed an accurate theory for the Sun's motion,
and a theory giving accurately the Moon's positions in the syzygies.
From other sources we know that Hipparchus wrote on gravity, and
Russo is of opinion that Hipparchus's theory was one of universal
gravity, in which the Sun kept the planets in their circular courses
by attracting them out of their inertial paths.
Of the several items of evidence that Russo assembles in support
of the idea that such a theory had been developed in the late
Hellenistic period, I shall cite only one, a passage from the De arcbitectura of Vitruvius, a Roman engineer of the first century BC. The
passage (in De arcbitectura IX, I, 12-13; Russo, p. 267) is obscure; Russo
assumes that, like much else in Vitruvius, it stems from a Greek
source (possibly Hipparchus), one that Vitruvius found difficult to
interpret. Here is the translation of the passage given in the Loeb
Classical Library:
... the mighty force of the Sun extending its rays in
the form of a triangle draws to itself the planets as
they follow, and, as it were curbing and restraining
those which precede, prevents their onward movement
and compels them to return to it and to be in the sign
of another trigon.
Perhaps it will be asked, why does the Sun cause
delay by these heats, in the fifth sign away from itself
rather than in the second or third? I shall therefore
explain how this seems to happen. Its rays are spread
out in the firmament on the lines of a diagram of a
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
112
triangle with equal sides. Now each side extends neither more nor less than to the fifth sign...
This text, it will be granted, is not very illuminating. Russo believes
that the meaning of the original Greek passage can be reconstructed
if we realize that Vitruvius's signum, by which he seems to understand
a zodiacal sign, can h:)ve been his translation of the Greek word
OTIJ.lEtOV, and further that the ordinal numbers "second;' "third;' and
"fifth" would in Greek be expressed by the second, third, and fifth letters of the Greek alphabet, B, r, E. On this understanding, we can
suppose that the original Greek passage had to do with vertices of .triangles labelled "point B;' "point r;• and "point E." (In another passage at IX, vii, 3, Vitruvius shows that he did not understand OTIJ.!E'iov
in its technical geometrical sense as a point: he gives "signum et littera
C" apparently as a translation of "O'l]jlEtOV r;• taking 011JlELOV to
refer not to a point but to the concrete letter written on the page.)
H
E
A
B
�WILSON
113
The original diagram, as Russo envisages it (Figure 1), would
have the Sun (H) at the center, and the planet initially moving Ka'ta
~ucnv along the straight line AB but being drawn back rcapa ~uow
toward the Sun, and so arriving at r rather than B; the same composition of motions would be repeated in the next adjacent triangle, so
that the planet moving ;>.long ril would .arrive at E rather than Ll.
Thus the Sun, by pulling the planet toward itself, would cause it to
follow a circular path, and the intent of the diagram would be to
show how the circular orbit is produced dynamically. Russo believes
that we can see here the foundation of celestial mechanics, eighteen
centuries before Huygens and Newton.
It is generally maintained that Ptolemy's Syntaxis rendered earlier
works on astronomy obsolete, so that they ceased to be copied (see,
e.g., Toomer, Ptoltmy's Almagest, p. 1). This view, according to Russo,
gives too little weight to the interruption of an active astronomical
tradition between the time of Hipparchus and that of Ptolemy. In
the Syntaxis, the last observation of Hipparchus cited is dated 126 BC,
and the next astronomical observation cited, taking them in chronological order, is an observation of the Moon by Agrippa dated AD
92--an interruption of 218 years. According to Russo, Ptolemy's
adoption of Aristotelian 'realistic' cosmological premisses, as in his
insistence on the Earth's being at rest at the center of the cosmos, is
evidence of a deep gulf of incomprehension separating him from his
Hellenistic predecessors. Russo derives a similar conclusion from
other aspects of Ptolemy's work (pp. 259-62).
(Russo has given his reconstruction of late Hellenistic astronomy in a lengthy article in English published in Jilstas in Astronomy,
vol.38 (1994), 207-48: "The astronomy of Hipparchus and his time: a
srudy based on pre-Ptolemaic sources:')
Russo's book is a multiply-pronged argument with many parts,
and it is impossible here to give anything approaching a thorough
review or critique of the whole. It is to be hoped that an English
translation will soon appear, and lead to detailed assessments of the
�114
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
several parts of Russo's argument by competent specialists. Here a
few general conclusions will be ventured.
If Russo is right, the mere survival of some books into the postHellenistic period was not sufficient for the maintenance of an ongoing scientific and mathematical tradition. Pace Hegel, the choice of
books for copying and preservation showed little in the way of geistreich intelligence; one has only to think of Heiberg's accidental discovery, in 1906, of a palimpsest giving Archimedes' On method to know
that important works did not necessarily survive. Science itself was a
fragile growth, dependent on oral tradition and financial support
from beneficent rulers. Such bits of Hellenistic science as made their
way into the works of the literati of the imperial age were transmitted
only in distorted or ambiguous form.
If Russo is right, Hellenistic science discovered many experimental facts and reached many deductive conclusions that have previously been regarded as special achievements of modern science as founded in the 17th century by Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes. The
assumption, often made within the St. John's community, that modern science presupposes certain philosophical doctrines first articulated in the 17th century, thus comes into question. The question
deserves the radical inquiry called for in a recent lecture at the
Annapolis campus (Grant Franks, "'Everything Aristotle Has Said is
Wrong': The Authority of Texts and How We Got This Way;'
February 6, 1998).
As we have seen, Russo attributes to his Hellenistic mathematicians a self-conscious, methodological constructivism, leading them
deliberately to avoid "realistic" definitions. Is the attribution of so
sharply defmed a methodological stance to ancient authors-whose
statements about methodology, if any, have not survived-an imposition of modern views? In a recent article Russo has argued in detail
for the hypothesis that Euclid's first seven definitions are an interpolation, perhaps due to Hero of Alexandria ("The Definitions of
Fundamental Geometric Entities Contained in Book I of Euclid's
Elements," Archive for History of Exact Science 52 (1998), 195-219); and I
�WILSON
115
believe he has made a cogent case. He is himself clearly a passionate
methodological constructivist. He views the widespread realistic
acceptation, in the schools and in the press, of such concepts as "elementary particle" and "black hole;' as a transmogrification of science. I am inclined to agree: we understand these concepts only when
we understand both that and how they are human constructions. But
had the Hellenistic mathematicians and engineers arrived at so
sophisticated a view? I believe it is a fascinating possibility, worthy of
our consideration.
See Appendix next page.
�116
A
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
endix
Why do successive tides at the solstitial syzygies differ most in
height, while those at the equinoctial syzygies differ least? Russo
gives the explanation on p. 277, note 139, Suppose the Sun to be initially at the zenith of a point A on the Tropic of Cancer, while the
Moon is at the zenith of a point B on the Tropic of Capricorn (see
Figure 2). If we ignore the delay of the tides, we can say that there
will be high tides at A and B. Twelve hours later, the Earth will have
rotated through 180°, carrying the meridian CEB into the position
formerly occupied by the meridian AE'D; we shall have high tides at
C (not B on this meridian as twelve hours earlier) and at D (not A
on this meridian as twelve hours earlier). Thus in the solstitial syzygies the point of high tide on the meridian CEB shifts from B to C
and back again; and the point of high tide on the meridian AE'D
shifts from A to D and back again, At a particular point on the
Earth's surface like A, successive tides will therefore differ in height.
In the equinoctial syzygies such a shift does not occur, because the
Sun is aligned with the Equator, and the Moon is either accurately so
or not more than 5° off the Equator,
N.P.
c
A
E'
E
B
D
M
S.P.
Figure 2
s
�t
Measured Passion, Golden Rationality
Ronald Mawby
The Past-Present is a welcome collection of thirty-one writings by
Eva T. H. Brann. Ms. Brann has been a tutor at St. John's College for
four decades, and served as dean of the College from 1990 to 1997.
The title, unexplained in the book, presumably has two senses. The
minor sense is personal. These writings, some from twenty-five years
in the past, continue to express Ms. Brann's present views. The major
sense refers to her stance toward books that are both old and great.
Ms. Brann, the very type of a civilized mind, resembles in one respect
that least civilized fellow, Huckleberry Finn, whose interest in Moses
vanished with the discovery that Moses had been dead a considerable
long time, for Huck "don't take no stock in dead people:' Ms. Brann's
professional career might seem to have consisted mainly in taking
stock in dead people, but the truth is othetwise. In a recent essay in
this journal Ms. Brann stated that as a student of the St. John's program she has no interest in the past at all. "For we study these books
not insofar as they tell us of bygone times but because they tell us of
the present. They are not absent in time, as is the past, but present
(and perhaps even out of time altogether). They are in the past insofar as it is present; they are effectively present; they are ... the PASTPRESENT" (St. John's Review, 43, 2, p. 52, 1996). What is properly
ancient is not old in years but antecedent in the order of things, and
by delving under the world that is merely current we meet with
shades from the past who, for a potion of lifeblood, will presently
speak and lend the world within and without a "well-defined significance" (p. 339).
The present volume is so striking in its variety that the only
direct way to convey its contents is to list them. The collection is
Eva Brann, The Past-Presmt, Edited by Pamela Kraus (Annapolis, MD: St. John's College Press, 1997).
Ronald Mawby teaches at Kentucky State University, Lexington, KY.
�118
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
divided into eight sections. The first, "On Prose and Poetry;' contains an essay on the poet of the Odyssey, a loving articulation of the
perfections of Jane Austen, an interpretation of the manifold silences
in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn;' and an exposition of the artistry
of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice:' The second section, "On
Philosophical Texts and Subjects," contains five essays. The first
argues that Socrates' offensive defense in the Apology is intended by
Plato to display Socratic philosophizing as a dangerous activity at
once enticing and publicly indefensible. The next, called ''Plato's
Theory of Ideas;' traces seven paths-excellence and commonness,
speech and dialectic, answers and questions, opinion and knowledge,
appearance and being, same and other, original and image-all of
which lead to the eidos. The following two-part piece describes a cluster-concept Ms. Brann calls "Philosophical Paganism;' whose features "make a plausible and intellectually attractive whole" which is
"in very sharp opposition to a number of current views" (p. 129).
Paganism combines the following features: a conception of knowledge as having a present object and images as having being through
their originals; the will downplayed in favor of habit and intellectual attention; a philosophical divinity that neither creates the world
nor issues commands to it, but that is a lure for thought; a view of
human goodness in terms of personal virtues rather than universal
morality, and a sane inwardness of thoughtful passion rather than
subjectivity emotionally expressed; communal life, with a distinction
of public and private, as the locus of happiness; and a conception of
time as an inessential, derivative aspect of human life (p. 123 and p.
129). A companion essay on "The Roots of Modernity" argues that
certain characteristically modern themes are derived from a Luciferic
twist or "perversion" of the Christian notion of creation. "Kant's
Imperative" tries to help us understand what Ms. Brann suspects we
can neither accept nor forget-the Categorical Imperative. "The
Second Power of Questions" surveys the conceptual landscape of the
realm in which questions are raised about questions. The last essay in
this section is an illuminating reflection on the terms of its title,
�MAWBY
119
"Intellect and Intuition:' The third section, "On Political Texts and
Subjects;' consists of a rhetorical analysis of an address by James
Madison against the entering wedge of a religious establishment. The
section "On Current Issues" contains musings on gender considered
as an essential accident of humankind, a tiny (two page) essay on taking offense, a discussion of whether liberal education and multiculturalism are friends or en,emies, and a piece containing a dozen preconditions and precepts for a way of reading whose gently hortatory
effect may bring some student of literature back from fashionable
ways of treating books toward "mere reading:' The five essays on
"The College Community" include a commencement address, three
Dean's opening lectures entitled "Depth and Desire;' "Telling Lies;'
and "Why Read Books;' and a "Statement of Educational Policy"
that gives an excellent account of the radical practices of St. John's
College. The "Reviews" section brings to our notice books by contemporary writers Paul Scott, Patrick O'Brian, Cynthia Ozick,
Vikram Seth, and Douglas Allanbrook, and reviews the film High
Noon. Five other pieces, categorized as "Occasional" or "Ceremonial;'
include an imaginative speculation on the consequences for human
experience of living extraterrestrially in a confined space, and a piece
for students culminating in the claim that "odyssey" is the proper
name for the life of learning.
The list of writings suffices to show the sweep of Ms. Brann's
odyssey of learning, though my brief annotations fail to suggest the
rich perceptiveness and vivacity of her travelogues. This book contains many wonderful things. The unifYing thread is the quality of
mind of the author, which despite the variety of subjects is in a certain sense everywhere the same. Ms. Brann is a lover of the logos, and
these writings are permeated by a measured passion and golden
rationality. They are knowledgeable, masterfully self-aware, generous,
and lucid. Whitehead remarked that style is the ultimate morality of
mind, and Ms. Brann's style is scintillating-it emits quick flashes of
insight, of formulation, of pixie humor, that sum up to a luminous
glow. She is a delight to read. That emphatically affirmed, I wish only
�120
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to add some desultory comments on the sources of that satisfaction,
I notice first that Ms. Brann's view of thinking as attentive receptivity leads her to respect the integrity of her topics. Topics are not
sealed apart, but each is conceived distinctly enough so that it can
have real relations with others. Often those with a dominant interest
use an essay on one subject as an occasion to pursue another. Ms.
Brann's intellectual passjon is polymorphous enough to let each topic
be what it is and not another thing.
Her writings are, in the main, essays of elucidation, and one general comment to be made is that they elucidate. Whether she is propounding the perfections of Jane Austen, or cataloguing various
approaches to questions and questioning, or defining the St. John's
educational policy through sixteen statements of what it is not, or
explaining why Gary Cooper's marshall is a fit mate for Grace Kelly's
Quaker in High Noon, Ms. Brann sheds light.
The light she sheds is not idiosyncratic, but the broad-spectrum
illumination of a common understanding greatly enlarged.
Mathematician Mark Kac distinguishes the ordinary genius from the
magician. The workings of the magician's mind are incomprehensible
to us-his ways are orthogonal to ours. The ordinary genius, in contrast, is what you or I would be, if only we were many times better
than we are. Ms. Brann stands to us as an ordinary genius. These writings will not, I think, turn your life upside down, or wrench you into
a new world of thought or feeling (although if you think the Western
tradition began with Descartes, you will discover a new world). Ms.
Brann provides what is very rare, the perfection of the common
undersranding. Where we have muddled heads and awkward tongues,
she is clear and articulate. She is more intelligent, more widely and
deeply read, more adept at discerning differences and collecting similarities than most of us, and commands a deft and spirited pen that
can say what she sees. Although, unlike her, I am not properly civilized, she and I share many presuppositions and preoccupations, so I
often found reading her essays to be like talking with a better version
of myself, in which what in my mind is inchoate is set out in lively
�MAWBY
121
and lucid fashion. Ms. Brann clearly expresses what I vaguely glimpse,
and observations that with me are scattered and schematic are developed by her into a rounded and orderly array, so that when we
approach the same topic in the same way her results are finer, fuller,
and crisper. It is a little disheartening at first, but that soon passes
into gratefUl pleasure.
Her general method is that recommended by T.S. Eliot, namely,
to be very intelligent. This intelligence is remarkable for its selfawareness. Part of the pleasure of reading these writings derives from
the sense that Ms. Brann knows what she is doing. She is mindful of
language, being especially attentive to the largess of meaning lying on
the skin of phrases that we often hurry over. Ms. Brann savors them,
and a characteristic of her elan is to use such linguistic unburied
treasures to make penetrating observations. For example, she writes
that one danger of literary explanations is that the critic drags the
author down to his own level, and concludes "to make something
plain is to flatten it out:' Again her playfulness delights when she
writes of the carping that goes over too well in conferences "devoted to cutting edges and similar dangerous devices;' or when she
organizes an essay around the precise ambiguities of the phrase
"telling lies:'
Ms. Brann's self-awareness extends to her practices and presuppositions. In "Plato's Theory of Ideas;' for example, she begins by
warning us that this apparently respectable topic is completely
wrong-headed, for the doctrine is not Plato's but Socrates', the
notion is not a theory but a hypothesis, and the term 'idea' is misleading for the 'invisible looks' in question. Thus she reforms her
topic into' "Socrates' hypothesis of the eidos" and gives us the impression that, whether what she says about the hypothesis of the eide is
right or wrong, she knows what she is about. Likewise when writing
about that intellectual cloud-formation or configuration of features
that she calls philosophical paganism, she warns the reader about the
dangers of taking in the wrong way such fabricated terms, and thus
by defining its limits justifies her procedure.
�122
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Every lover of the logos knows that all things work within limits, and the limits of these writings are mainly those intrinsic to their
genre. Most were originally given as lectures to undergraduate audiences, and that format imposes restrictions on where one can start
and where one must stop. These writings are jargon-free attempts to
help us think from wherever we happen to be into the midst of
things, and are more often orienting first words than final ones. Ms.
Brann excels at sorting out. She sifts our common experience and her
considerable learning and incisively sets up alternatives. But it is
sometimes frustrating when she breaks off before the end-I wish I
could have been at the question period after the lecture to hear her
extend, supplement, or revise. I will give one example. Near the end
of the lecture on the hypothesis of the eidos, she admits that the doctrine of images as interweavings of being and non-being "in no wise
solves our greatest problem: how the eidos drops down from the context of being to become entangled with non-being in a new and
world-making way-how there can be an eidos incarnate" (p. 114).
Now I am not one to deny that all things end in mystery, but if we
are offered a hypothesis put forth to make phenomena intelligible,
and we find that the hypothesis makes it unintelligible that there be
phenomena at all, what should we think? I am sure Ms. Brann would
have something to say about this, and, as I said, that she does not is
in part because she cannot tell us everything she knows in sixty minutes. Also, of course, Ms. Brann may be like the rest of us-regarding the ultimate issues she may not know either, and what we cannot
speak about we must pass over in silence. In any case in this collection, while Ms. Brann returns from her odyssey with charts that mark
the trouble spots, ultimate difficulties are more often noticed than
thoroughly explored.
The lack of closure in some of these essays seems to be in part
also a consequence of Ms. Brann's philosophical predilections. Ms.
Brann is in her own terms a philosophical pagan, a lover of sights and
images. To exaggerate a truth, she acts in order to see, rather than seeing in order to act. For the philosophical pagan life connects with
�MAWBY
123
thought by enabling us to peer over the rim of the world into a timeless realm of beautiful sights. For Ms. Brann, imposing a resolution
before the ideas resolve themselves is willfulness, an egocentric distortion that signals a refusal to take thought seriously. Thus she exhibits
to an unusual degree the intellectual virtue of fairmindedness and the
Socratic wisdom of knowing what one knows, with its concomitant
just apportioning of credence to what the evidence warrants. In consequence, though many positions are taken, many fundamental questions are left open.
Let me briefly contrast this with a non-pagan option, in part to
clarify Ms. Brann's views by the contrast, in part because of the
intrinsic importance of the issue, and in part out of "sheer honest
contrariness" (p. 191 ). I£ following Aristotle, we have enough ambition to attempt to live in accord with the divine element in us, we
immediately face the question of the nature of divinity. For the
philosophical pagan the divine element is perfect awareness of what
is first in being. For the Jews and Christians and their modern transmutated offspring, the divine element is creativity. As Goethe's Faust
translates the opening of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was
the act." For the pagan, method refers primarily to an open pathway
into a pre-existing domain. For the nonpagan modern, method refers
to a prior plan of action designed to bring about a result. If the modern inherits from Christianity the notion that salvation is a matter
not of obedience to a Law, but of right belief somehow freely chosen, and right belief results from thinking, then the one thing needful is rules for the direction of the mind. For the modern, thought
connects with life by illuminating the present moment of decisive
choice. Aquinas writes in a discussion of faith,
Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First,
through being moved to assent by its very object...
Secondly, the intellect assents to something, not
through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its
proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby
�124
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
it turns voluntarily to one side rather than the other.
(Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 1, Art. 4)
The speculative pagan admits only the former mode of assent as
proper to the intellect. The deliberative modern admits both as proper to the soul due to our invincible ignorance of what we would need
to know to act with perfect awareness. To remain suspended in matters of deliberation is nb virtue-to be lost in thought is to be lost.
When our apprehension of the proper object is inadequate for the
matter to resolve itsel£ and we must nevertheless decide, we impose
our resolve and choose one way or another, knowing we are acting
beyond our knowledge and holding conclusions so drawn as defeasible. What in speculative matters is unintelligent dogmatism is in matters of action integrity. From the modern viewpoint, then, to leave
certain fundamental human questions open seems like vacillation,
which, however attuned to the shifting look of ultimate things, looks
like a refusal to take thought seriously. The modern grows restive when
a pagan companion seems to be diverted into Lorus-land, captivated
by multifarious beautiful visions.
Ms. Brann grows restive, and rightly so, with claims to creativity
which amount to the production of novel trivialities. She thinks, and
rightly, that most efforts to be up-to-date end in being swept along
in a "thoughtless thought" that is too shallow even to be wrong. She
prefers the radical quest that leads to the "dearest freshness deep
down things" (Hopkins) and finds or seems to find or supposes that
as one goes deep down one meets the fresh appearance of an ancient
thing. Great books of the past can be present because, as Pound says,
literature is news that stays news.
I have only to add that the The Past-Present is by no means a complete collection of Ms. Brann's essays. Each of the eight sections concludes with references to further writings, which I hope will be collected in future volumes, for essays like these are to be celebrated. Ms.
Brann prefers clarity to obscurity, happiness to sorrow, knows that a
well-ordered soul is essential for good living, and awakens in us the
�MAWBY
125
pleasure that Aristotle defines as the "movement by which the soul as
a whole is consciously brought into its normal state of being:' If in
life's strange fascination she emphasizes the fascination rather than
the strangeness, if her gracefulness entails avoiding awkward tip-toe
stretches toward what we can barely discern, and if by my lights she
fails to take time seriously, well, these are deep matters, and a cloud
which to one glance looks like a weasel seems to another very like a
whale. Ms. Brann is one from whom we can learn much, and a mere
reading of The Past-Present both instructs and delights.
�126
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�t
Mimesis on the Treacherous Slopes:
Joyce's Commitment to Community
Albert Wachtel
There is real significance to Cordell Yee's The Word according to James
Joyce. He sets out to prove what no one would deny, that there is a
large representational element in Joyce's fiction, but his argument
leads him to a powerful insight: that the world of cooperative scholarship responding to the difficulty of understanding Joyce (the
accompanying pettiness and backbiting do not alter the fact) can be
seen as part of the author's contribution to harmony in the world.
Yee credits scholarship of the eighties for what was known from
the start about Joyce's work, that it draws from both high and low culture and that one of its unique qualities is its fidelity to the everyday.
By November of 1923, T.S. Eliot was praising Joyce's special way
of combining the high and low as a "mythical method:' Jung, less
felicitously but more viscerally, praised U~sses as a tapeworm that
consumes contemporary life, the resultant waste being the text of the
novel. Joyce's use of popular fiction has been obvious since the narrator of "An Encounter" mentioned stories of the Wild West and the
boy of "Araby" found "paper-covered books" in his house. Molly
Bloom's pleasure in soft pornography, Leopold's morning reading
and newspaper, and Gerty MacDowell's style of thinking leap from
the pages of· U~sses with the message that popular culture has a vast
influence on our lives. But the dependence of people of the eighties
on those who preceded them, whether Yee is aware of it or not, is
part of the large picture of cooperation to which he ultimately
comes. Moreover, he performs a service to Joyce studies and our fragCordeiJ D. K. Yee, The Word according to James Joyce: Reconstructing Repmmtation, (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1997).
Albert Wachtel teaches at Pitzer College, The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA.
�128
THEST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mented world in undertaking to explore the importance of,a selection of works from the high culture canon to the study of Joyce.
Great literature, Yee recognizes, like great science, is not great because
it experiments; it is great because its experiments have yielded
insights into our condition. To Yee's credit, he wants to explore "signposts" for "understand[ing] the issues raised" by Joyce's work. Yee's
responsible "contextu~st and historicist" commitments are welcome, and his reaching out to the community of scholars for acceptance-integral to his vision of what Joyce's oeuvre sets out to accomplish-may well be among the~ most significant contributions to
Joyce studies that The Wclrd according to James Joyce makes.
His "intentionalist" ambitions are less impressive, resulting in
pages of what Yee himself elsewhere labels "literary source
hunt[ing]:' as if the biographical tics that may have contributed to a
passage were its literary significance. Yee should have looked more
broadly at the canon. It has been clear since Homer and the Hebrew
prophets asserted that a god spoke through them that, as D.H.
Lawrence affirmed, tellers are less trustworthy than their tales.
Stanislaus Joyce's contention that his brother wrote stories to learn
from them is a version of the same affirmation. Unfortunately, Yee
seems unaware that texts can have certifiable intentions of their own
of which their authors may or may not be consciously aware. But it
is also true that Joyce was a most self-conscious writer, and to the
extent that Yee desires to discover Joyce's artistic, as distinct from narrowly personal, intentions his project can be endorsed; He believes
correctly that Joyce's works have significant constructive things to say
about human life and life in the modern world, that, if a deconstructor, Joyce is also a discoverer of truths, of moral, psychological,
and philosophical insights.
Yee's inquiry into Dubliners lacks the unrelenting dedication that
might open previously unnoticed routes of access. He does not
attempt to uncover the economy by which, say, simony, gnomon, and
paralysis are conceptually and psychologically related to each other and
fundamentally elucidate "The Sisters;' the first of the stories.
�WACHTEL
129
Apparently unaware that he is undergirding the "antirealists" (Yee's
term for deconstructors) he means to counterbalance, he accepts the
easy out of believing that the three are not vitally related but rather
intentionally introduce "uncertainty:' (How they relate and function
with a kind of scientific certainty in the story can be found in my
1992 book, The Cracked Lookingglass.) Still, in an effort to stay his direction, Yee competently r~views some meanings of the words and
attaches them to characters in Dubltners and life in Dublin. He also
has useful things to say about "Evelyn," "The Dead," and
"Counterparts:' He sees the word as it is used in Dubliners as both
representational C' mimetic, or u imitative/' a use described in
Aristotle's Poetics) and exhortatory ("deliberative, speaking urges:' a
use described in Aristotle's Rhetoric), a mirror with a purpose, and
thus opposed to what "antirealists" claim to find in it.
In A Portrait '!f the Artist as a Young Man, Yee reminds us, Joyce adds
internal mimesis to his imitation of the physical world, mirroring
not only people and their actions in the external world but the consciousness of the characters, their emotions and thought, which,
using Aristotle and quoting Aquinas, Yee ties back into things, '"of
which thoughts are likenesses:" That inward mirroring also characterizes the narrative of stories in Dubliners is also true, of course, and
it is also true that Tolstoy, unnoticed by Yee and many other contemporaries, dubbed the hardly revolutionary approach "infected"
writing, a more descriptive term than "Uncle Charles principle:' But,
certainly, one of the signal features of A Portrait is that its narrative is
alive with the mental and emotional states of the characters perceiving the world, and, Yee asserts, the inward, mirroring is accurate.
On the other hand, Joyce brought a distorted mirror to bear
on Urysses, Yee recognizes. He provides no profound payoff for the
observation (the why is insufficiently explored), but it is certainly
accurate, and Yee suggestively brings S.H. Butcher's commentary and
translation of Aristotle's Poetics, which Joyce owned, to bear on what
Yee claims to be Joyce's Aristotelian conception of music.
Bringing Butcher into the game to balance Walter Pater, whose
�130
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
prose anticipates contemporary logorrhea, is itself a service to interpretation, Having performed it, Yee slides back into repeating the old
saws of interpretation, The linguistic architectonics of Oxen of the
Sun "imitate... the development of a foetus;' he points out, as if such
merely factual observations add to our store of understanding. Yes,
Mrs. Purefoy is giving birth, but how does Joyce's so-called imitation
of gestation increase our wisdom?
There are other small-scale mistakes, Yee thinks, for example, that
Odysseus wrestled with Proteus, when it was Menelaus who did so,
He asserts that Einstein can be understood in mathematical terms
but not in language, when mathematics is itself a language and
Einstein goes a long way to making his theories accessible in everyday language in Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, to which Yee
himself alludes. More dangerous is Yee's assumption that an aesthetically important feature of representation is to be found in Joyce's use
of his fiction to "settle some scores" against personal enemies. Aware
that he is in perilous territory in thus relying on the author's life to
support the thesis that Joyce's fiction is representational, Yee asserts
that "no opposition exists" between "self-referentiality, or self-reflexivity, and extratextual referentiality:' But the assertion does not
change the facts, as Yee himself implicitly recognizes when, in his
reconsideration of Dubliners, he recognizes Little Chandler's failure in
"A Little Cloud" to write poems that are "extratextual" in their "referentiality"-about the grimy children of the street, for instanceinstead of creating self-referential, self-indulgent imaginary reviews
that praise the poet for his unwritten poems.
Self-indulgent exercises by a vexed writer fit cheek by jowl with
such neurotic and infantile behaviors. Not only does Yee (with the
saving admission that other interpretations exist) reduce the Finnegans
Wc!ke fable of the "Mookse and the Gripes" to an allegory of Joyce's
vexation with Wyndham Lewis, but he sees Joyce's life, not as a
source, but as the subtext of Ulysses-this rather than the implicit
lives of the characters, what I like to call the fictional base of the day's
events, including accidents which, because they affect the characters,
�WACHTEL
131
become psychologically causal despite their chance origins (" psychocausal;' I like to say) in the characters' lives, illustrating a like
process in our world.
What Yee has to say about Joyce's appreciation of Ernest
Fenollosa, on the other hand, tied as it is to the author's process of
creating the work, makes good sense. Yee's book is a useful biographical supplement for ~tudents of Joyce, shedding light on the
author's creative process by recalling some of the readings, some of
the personal vendettas, some of the relevant personal writings, conversations, and experiences that contributed to the creation of the
fiction.
The Word being more about Joyce's commitment to "imitating"
the "real world" in some permutation of Aristotle's conception of
the terms than about elucidating any profound insights that Joyce's
fiction contains, its survey of imitation in Joyce leads to no overarching insight. Yee turns instead to the issue of imitation as other
Modernists conceived of it. His argument here is supported by
telling quotations from some of Eliot's and Ezra Pound's and
Fenollosa's famous and not-so-famous essays. In a world that has
had almost a century to digest and amend the work of Ferdinand de
Saussure, there is a certain naivete in Yee's use of terms like signifier and signified. "What the poet as scientist strives to do is to dose
the gap between word and object, between signifier and signified," he
writes, as if words referred directly to concrete objects rather than
the ideas of such objects as well as utterly abstract ideas(the words
for which Pound counseled poets to avoid). But Yee's realization that
Eliot and Pound shared with Joyce a sense that poetry, "like science,
has an empirical basis" and Yee's further claims that William Carlos
Williams and Marianne Moore expressed related visions are undeniable.
Yee's concluding "Apologia" is in part a mystery. Why does he
find it necessary to defend, as if it were already being counter
attacked by "adherents of antirepresentationalist readings;' his presentation of Joyce as a flexible evolving writer grounded in empiri-
�132
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
cism? And how does he manage to move from the recognition that
empirical observation is a central characteristic of Joyce's work to the
unnuanced claim that Joyce "adhered to scholasticism"? However
that may be, there are some constructive observations along the way.
Yee's treatment of the argument between Bloom and the Citizen in
Ulysses, preceded by Bloom's misreading of "Blood of the Lamb" has
some merit. It vaguely harks back without reaching it to my recognition in The Cracked Lookingglass that Bloom, a modern day Christ, is a
greater Odysseus, one who tries to bring vision to a Cyclops instead
of blinding him. Moreover, the chapter ends usefully.
Yee's observation that Joyce seeks to "reshape his audience;' that he
"perceives his audience as multiple, not individual, and reading as a
communal .. experience" is empirically sound. It takes the lot of us to
come to terms with Joyce's oeuvre-its breadth, complexity and profound importance for our lives-and in the process we find ourselves
united in ways that transcend differences in interpretation. Cordell Yee
has made a significant contribution to this important work.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
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.
132 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
The St. John's Review, 1998/3
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
McShane, Anne
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Douglas
Higuera, Marilyn
Verdi, John
Stephenson, David
Wilson, Curtis
Mawby, Ronald
Wachtel, Albert
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XLIV, number three of The St. John's Review. Published in 1998.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_44_No_3_1998
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
St. John's Review
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4a7f9c74908e3cbdd0b9d3ef435bf3e3.pdf
bc0f977576f7d3132a91b3c975cf793a
PDF Text
Text
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- 1998-99
(First Semester)
August 28, 1998
Mr. Harvey Flaumenhaft
Dean
St. Jolm's College
Annapolis
"What Was New about
the New Republic?"
September 4
Ms. Eva Brann
Tutor
St. Jolm's College
Annapolis
"What, Then, Is Time?''
September 11
All-College Seminar
September 18
Professor Michael Zuckert
Department of Government
University of Notre Dame
"Crossing That Bridge into
the 21" Century: Can the
Declaration of Independence
Make the Trip?"
September 25
Professor Paul Rahe
Department of History
University of Tulsa
"Don Corleone,
Multiculturalist"
October 2
(Homecoming)
Mr. Wilfred McClay
Department of History
Tulane University
"Is America an
Experiment?"
October 16
Professor Jolm Alvis
Department of English
University of Dallas
"The Aeneid and Rule of Law"
October 23
(Board Meeting)
Mr. James Carey
Dean
St. Jolm' s College
Santa Fe
"The Discovery of
Nature"
October 30
(Parents' Weekend)
Dr. Leon Kass
Committee on Social Thought
University of Chicago
"Paternity and Piety:
Noah and His Sons"
November6
(Steiner Lecture)
Professor Imre Toth
Professor Emeritus of
Philosophy of Mathematics
University of Regensburg
"The Non-Euclidean
Fragments in Aristotle
and Their Interpretation"
�November 13
Chamber Music by the
American Chamber Players
Concert
November 20
Mr. Carl Page
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The Power and Glory
of Platonic Dialogue"
December 4
King William Players
�LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- 1998-99
(Second Semester)
January 8, 1999
Dr. Stephen Forman
Director of Hematology and
Bone Marrow Transplantation,
and Staff Physician in the
Department of Medical Oncology and
Therapeutics Research;
City of Hope National Medical Center
"The Care of Cancer Patients:
Scientific and Human Issues"
January 15
Professor Marc Witkin
Department of Classics
Middlebury College
"Thucydides' Argument with
Homer"
January 22
All-College Seminar
February 5
Lieder Recital by
Daniel Lichti, Baritone
Concert
February 12
Ms. Judy Seeger
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
"The Secret Art of
Newton's Principia"
February 19
(Steiner Lecture)
Mr. R. W. Apple
The New York Times
"Beyond hnpeachment"
March 19
(Newton Conference)
Knowledge
Professor Fran9ois de Gandt
Department of Philosophy
University of Lille
"Does Newton's Science
Disclose Actual
of Nature?"
March26
(NEH Lecture)
Mr. John Verdi
Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
''We Nietzscheans''
April2
Professor Christopher Kelly
Department of Political Science
Boston College
April9
Professor Richard V elkley
School of Philosophy
Catholic University
"Frmn Discourses to
Novels: Rousseau's
Literary Turn"
"The Metaphysics of
Practical Reason"
�Aprill6
Mr. Adam Schulman
Tutor
St. Jolm's College
Annapolis
"Francis Bacon and the
Socratic Turn"
April23
Choral Music: The Magnificent
Concert
April30
King William Players
HenryV
May7
(Reality Weekend)
Ron Holloway and the
Ron Holloway Quintet
Jazz Concert
�
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.
4 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - 1998-99
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1998-1999
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1998-1999 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1998-1999
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 4, 1998. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="What, then, is time?" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/268">What, then, is time?</a> (audio)
September 4, 1998. Brann, Eva T. H. <a title="What, then, is time?" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1249">What, then, is time?</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Flaumenhaft, Harvey, 1938-
Brann, Eva T. H.
Zuckert, Michael P., 1942-
Rahe, Paul
McClay, Wilfred M.
Alvis, John
Carey, James
Kass, Leon
Toth, Imre
Page, Carl
Forman, Stephen
Witkin, Marc
Lichti, Daniel
Apple, R. W. (Raymond Walter), 1934-2006
Gandt, François de, 1947-
Verdi, John
Kelly, Christopher
Velkley, Richard L.
Schulman, Adam
Holloway, Ron
King William Players
Seeger, Judith Leland, 1944-
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/762197996e87f8fd9e4162eb7a400867.pdf
4bf0764e67e9d4f6f66da6cf54944c62
PDF Text
Text
The St. John's Review
Volume XLVI, number one (2000)
Editor
Pamela Kraus
Editorial Board
Eva T H. Brann
James Carey
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. ltllliamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Blakely Phillips
The St. John's Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Harvey Flaurnenhaft,
Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptiOns are $15.00 for
three issues, even though the magazine may sometimes appear semiannually
rather than three times a year. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned
letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College,
P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at
$5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©2001 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in
part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's Public Relations Offiu and the St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
Essays and Lectures
Plato and the Measure of the Incommensurable
Part One: The Paradigms of Theaetetus ....................................... S
Amirthanayagam David
We Nietzscheans ............................................................................... 45
John Jfrdi
The Power & Glory of Platonic Dialogue................................. 84
Carl Page
The Discovery of Nature ............................................................ .! IS
James Carey
��Plato and the Measure of the
Incommensurable
Amirthanayagam David
Part One
THE PARADIGMS OF THEAETETUS: A fresh interpretation of the geometry lesson (Theaetetus 147c-148b) and its significance for Plato's development*
I find the grounds for a new reconstruction ofTheodorus's geometry lesson (Theaetetus I47c-148B) in the detail of Plato's prose. I shall
first present this reconstruction, and then discuss the significance of
the mathematics involved, both in itself and for the development of
Plato's later philosophy-nothing less than a revolution in his
thought-which is represented by the sequence of dialogues Theaetetus,
Sophist, and Politicus.
Early in the Theaetetus Socrates has already raised the animating
question of the dialogue: what is knowledge? Theaetetus answers by
pointing to different types and objects of koowledge, such as the
things Theodorus koows (geometry) and the koowledge of craftsmen
(I 46c). We did not want to count its sorts and objects, says Socrates
(I 46E), but to find out what "koowledge" itself is. He adds that if one
does not know what the word "day" refers to, if it is a mere name,
there could be no illumination in defining it as oven-maker's clay and
brick-maker's clay. Besides, the simple answer to "What is clay?" would
be earth mixed with water (147c). Perhaps Socrates is asking for an
account that connects a name to a nature. At any rate, Theaetetus
Amirthanayagam David is a tutor at St. John's Coilege, Annapolis.
* Many thanks to Ian Mueller and the members of the Ancient Philosophy Workshop at the
University of Chicago, 1990-91; to Howard Stein, University of Chicago, for a detailed critique;
to the members of the Theaetetus study group at St. John's College, Annapolis, in the spring of
1999, especially Curtis Wilson, Chaninah Maschler, and Joe Macfarland; to Eva Brann; and to
my late teacher, mentor, and friend, Arthur W. H. Adkins.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
6
thinks he has just encountered an example of such a thing in the course
of a lesson given by Theodorus, to him and his young friend also
called Socrates. (Theaetetus looks like the famous Socrates; young
Socrates bears his name; there is a third companion and fellow wresder
mentioned (I 44c), who remains an unknown.) What Theaetetus had
done in response to the lesson ofTheodorus was to come up with new
names-or rather, to apply old names in a new way-so as to demarcate for the first time two different kinds of square roots.
Some heretofore neglected particles occur in Theaetetus's description of Theodorus's lesson; here is John McDowell's translation:
El£.: IlEpi: 6vvafl£WV "tL YJflLV El£o0r.opo£ oO£
ifypmp£ "ttJ£ "t£ ,;pGwoo£ n£pL Kai n£v"tinooo£
ano<paivwv ClLL fl'f]KEL
oVflflE"tpOL "tTI
s:_/
...
(./
JtOuLUL<;t, KUL 0'\J"tW KU"tU flLUV EKUO"trJV
/
'
npompO'UflEVO£ flEXPL "trJ£
EJt"taKmOEKanoOo£.
ov
-
'/C./
Theaetetus: Theodorus here was drawing diagrams to
show us something about powers-namely that a
square of three square feet and one of five square feet
aren't commensurable, in respect of length of side,
with a square of one square foot; and so on, selecting
each case individually, up to seventeen square feet.
Note that "powers'' is misleading here. Wilbur Knorr points out
~/
~
/
that u'\JVUflL£ and u'\JVUflEL mean "square " an d "'m square "throughout Greek mathematical literature, including in Hippocrates of Chios,
who was a contemporary of Theodorus and Theaetetus; he shows that
Plato also uses the terms consistendy in this sense, citing the Republic
587D, Timaeus 54B, and Politicus 266B. 1
�DAVID
7
The use of 'tE-KUL in Greek composition signals a grouping by
the writer; the paired elements in this case are 'tTJs; 'tp Gtol\os; (the
square of three feet ) and JtEV'tEJtolios; (the square of five feet). The
balance and symmetry of the formulation, 't'ils; 'tE 1:pGtolios; JtEPL
KUL JtEV'tEJtolios; with JtEPL accented in postposition, seems to suggest a natural balance in flanking elements. I was led to wonder, could
there be something special about this pair of squares in the context of
Theodorus's investigation? Since he takes up each square individually
( Ka'tC't ~-tLav £Kclo-t'Y}V ), is there a reason why these two are paired?
On reading the linking particles with their natural sense, the connecting phrase Ka'L oV'Loo shades into a non sequitur: after proving something about a pair of squares, Theodorus "in this way" selects each
square individually. But if this pair served as paradigms for the later
squares,
a
better sense
can
.
be giVen
to
'
KUL
</
O'U'tOO ...
npoaLp01Jf.LEVos;: once he had proved something about the two paradigm cases, Theodorus could thereby pick out in advance
(npompEOf.LUL) each succeeding case, reducing them one by one to
either of the paradigm cases, up to the seventeen-foot square. This
reading would be consistent with Plato's phrasing: l(ypatj>E ... aJto<pai:vwv governs only the three- and five-foot squares, about which
(nEpL) Theodorus would have formally demonstrated something, and
npompO'Of.LEVos; covers each of the following cases, which he would
have only needed to "piclt our:'
A simpler reading of Kat OU'tW would suggest that Theodorus
covered only the odd number squares: having started with three and
five, he continues this way in order (the series being three, five, seven,
etc.). Certainly, the sense of npompEO[.LUL only demands that there
be some kind of advance selection involved, whether the cases of three
and five formed a paradigmatic basis for the selection or merely established a pattern of successive odd numbers. It may also be that the criterion of selection preceded and included three and five, not as analytic paradigms but simply as first cases; pe<haps Theodorus was pick-
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ing out individual numbers because they were already known or intuited to have incommensurable roots, and the object of his lesson was to
offer proofs of the fact. On this reading, one would need to explain
why he omitted the case of two. But on this reading as well, and indeed
on any other, one must still ask why three and five should be paired;
and we observe that only in these two cases is there an explicit reference to the giving of proofs.
The next sentence in the passage has caused a lot of trouble, most
recently in the unfriendly debate between Knorr and Miles Burnyeat in
the pages of Isis. 2
~
St"
,
1
EV uE 'tUU't'l']
'
/
ltW<; EVEO?(E'tO.
At that point he somehow got tied up.
The question comes to this: did Theodorus get "tangled up" in the
case of the seventeen-foot square, or did he merely stop (for some reason or no reason) at that one? Inference from the many examples in the
lexicon under EVEXO~UL suggests the former, but Burnyeat, following
Mansfield, argues that instances of this word which mean "get entangled" furnish in context an explicit cause for the difficulty.' Knorr's
reconstruction of the proofs, by means of Pythagorean triangles and
number triples,
... entails the division of the problem into classes of
numbers, represented by the numbers 3, 5, 6, and I?.
Each class requires a treatment differing from the
others. But the method, successful for the former
classes, fails at I 7.'
Burnyeat rejects this reconstruction, and the reading of nw<;
no evidence for the treat-
£vfcrxno that it implies, because he sees
�DAVID
9
ment by classes in the text. My reading would help to supply that evidence: the cases of three and five could be seen as paradigmatic for the
other cases, representing in Knorr's scheme all numbers of the form
(4N+3) and (8N+5).
There is no evidence, however, for treatment by jour classes. The
class of numbers represented by six in Knorr's solution need not have
been part of Theodorus's lesson as it is described in the text; we hear
only of three, odd-number examples (and this may in itself be evidence that Theodorus only covered the odd numbers). It is perhaps a
weakness of Knorr's reconstruction that the number seventeen does
not fall into either of the classes represented by three and five, but is
made to represent a separate class. It is a strength, however, that it
shares this class (8N+ I) with all the odd square numbers (nine, twenty-five, etc.); Knorr suggests that the failure of the method in this case
is what led Theaetetus to a new approach, precisely via the distinction
between square and non-square numbers. 5
There is a serious objection to Knorr's approach, however. His
proofs of root-incommensurability for the classes ( 4N+3) and
(8N+5) do not themselves depend on the proofs for three and five;
the general cases must be proved independently, with a dose of algebraic manipulation. Indeed, if Knorr wants to avoid the worst kind of
anachronism, involving the use of zero, the cases of three and five
(N=O) must be specifically excluded from the proofs. There is no hint
in the text, however, of this kind of generalization. My reading allows
only that the individual, concrete proofs for three and five may have
been the paradigms for the later cases. The generality would in that
case have to be contained in these very proofs.
...
, ,
Knorr argues cogently that 1tcpL <'lVVU[!EOlV "tL ••• cypmj>E means
that Theodorus "proved something [about squares J by means of diagrams;' rather than that he merely drew the squares or that he only
proved something about them. 6 Where moderns are accustomed to
express the generality of arithmetical solutions through algebraic for~/
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mulae, those Greek mathematicians whose work culminates in Euclid's
Book VII appear to have used geometrical diagrams in this capacity, as
themselves the immediate means to convey the universality of a proposition in arithmetic or number theory. I therefore sought something in
the structure of the possible diagrams for proving incommensurability of the side in the cases of the three- and five-foot square that made
them each essentially paradigmatic. The reconstruction requires successful proofs which suggest through the generality of their diagrams
an applicability to an infinite number of cases, but which appear to
involve a difficulty in the case of the seventeen-foot square.
The solution was surprisingly forthcoming: it requires but two
simple theorems, one for each paradigm case, which fall out from the
Pythagorean dot-arithmetic (also reconstructed in our time, with considerable elegance, by Knorr); and it satisfies all interpretations of the
activity implied by ypa<jlELv. In fact, each of Knorr's own criteria for
a reconstruction of the lesson' is met most elegantly by this method.
I constructed the roots by using pairs of successive integers, following Malcolm Brown's lead.' When each of these pairs-{I,2},
{2,3 }, {3,4 }, etc.-is taken as leg and hypotenuse of a right triangle,
the desired sequence of squares, equal to the sequence of odd numbers, is produced on the remaining legs:
1
4
9
�DAVID
11
The odd numbers therefore form a kind of natural sequence in
their square representations: they can be understood as the first "offspring" in two dimensions of the natural numbers in one, when these
are successively "mated" by means of right triangles. The objection
that the text seems to say that Theodorus proved something about
squares in general-and hence an assumption in reconstructions that
he covered the case of six and a puzzle as to why he left out two-can
be met by considering that in the context of a Pythagorean geometrical arithmetic, the odds beginning with three form a distinct and natural genetic grouping among the square versions of numbers. The text
bears without strain the sense of a movement &om general to specific.
Theodorus proved something about squares: namely, about that natural
sequence of squares which begins with three and five, that they are each
incommensurable with the unit length. Moreover, the allusive quality
of the description would suit an association with a well-known
Pythagorean construction such as the one drawn above.
The three-foot and five-foot squares are the first two constructed
by means of these pairs of the natural numbers. The form of proof is
reduction to absurdity. Take the first case: the side of the three-foot
square (or the "three-foot side") must be either commensurable or
incommensurable with the side of the unit square (or unit side").
11
Assume it commensurable. Then there exists some ratio of numbers,
A:B, between the three-foot side and the unit side. Take this ratio in its
lowest terms; then either A is odd and B is even, or B is odd and A is
even, or both are odd. But the hypotenuse is even:
B
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Therefore both A and B must be even (by Knorr's Theorem V.I4
about Pythagorean triples ).9 Hence either A or B or both must be odd
and even simultaneously, which is an impossible situation for a number. The three-foot side and the unit side cannot, therefore, have the
ratio of a number to a number, and they are incommensurable. 10
The generalization immediately follows &om the diagram: all of
the roots constructed by a triangle with an even hypotenuse-i.e., constructed byrhe pairs {I,2}, {3,4}, {5,6}, {7.8}, etc. yieldingv3, v7,
VII, VIS, etc, on the remaining legs--generate the same paradox (that
a number must be simultaneously odd and even) if they are assumed
to be commensurable with the unit side. Each of these triangles has the
following paradigmatic form in the diagram drawn in the course of the
proo£ on the assumption that there is some numerical ratio A:B
between the root and the unit:
A~<B
oddx B
The five-foot square, constructed by means of a triangle with an
odd hypotenuse, presents the only alternative paradigm produced by
these numerical pairs:
2
t~-·
evenx B
�DAVID
13
The right-hand figure represents the numerical relations between
the sides of the triangles in the proofs for all the cases involving an odd
hypotenuse-i.e., those triangles built with the pairs {2,3}, { 4,5},
{ 6,7}, etc., yielding v5, v9, VI3, etc. on the remaining legs. In each
case, assume that the particular root is commensurable with the unit.
Then it has a ratio of a number to a number with the unit side, A: B.
In lowest terms, one or both of these numbers is odd. If B is even, the
hypotenuse is even, and so A would also be even, as before; hence B
must be odd. Then A must also be odd, since it is a given that the other
leg is even; if A were even, the two even squares on the legs would
equal the odd square on the hypotenuse, which is impossible. But if A
is odd, the square on the remaining leg must be equal to a difference
of odd squares. This could only be true if it were a multiple of eigbt. 11 A square
that is a multiple of eight is also a multiple of sixteen. It must therefore have a side that is a multiple of four. Since B is odd, this side is
equal to a rectangular number, (even) x (odd), and the (even) side must
itself be a multiple of four, if the whole number is also to be a multiple of four. We must therefore pick out and examine each of the relevant cases in turn, to see if the even member of the number-pairs is
a multiple of four. If not, the condition is not met, A can be neither
odd nor even, and there can be no ratio of numbers A:B such that the
respective side is commensurable with the unit side. In the case of
{2,3} and the five-foot square, for example, we find the condition
unmet, since two is not a multiple of four: the five-foot side is therefore proved incommensurable with the unit side. In the next case-the
nine-foot square constructed by the pair {4,5}-the condition is in
fact met, and the nine-foot side (i.e., three) happens to be commensurable. Meanwhile, the side of the thirteen-foot square, constructed by
the pair { 6, 7}, is proved incommensurable, for six is not a multiple of
four.
This establishes the paradigmatic nature of the two proofs and
their diagrams. The cases of three and five involve the only two kinds
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of triangle produced by the constructiog number-pairs: those with an
even hypotenuse and those with an odd. For the former diagram we
must invoke the theorem that if the hypotenuse is even, both legs of a
numerical right triangle are also even; for the latter, that a difference of
squared odd numbers is always a multiple of eight. (These theorems
are easily demonstrated by means of dot-arithmetic.) The assumption
io each case that the constructed side is commensurable with the unit
side-that it has the ratio of a number to a number with the unit
side-leads to the violation of an underlyiog principle: in the threefoot case that a number cannot be both even and odd; io the five-foot
case that a number cannot be neither even nor odd.
But when we come to the case of the seventeen-foot squarewhich in this reconstruction does not constitute a separate paradigm,
but is an example of the construction iovolving a triangle with an odd
hypotenuse-the method appears to fail:
8B
8
Because eight is manifestly a multiple of four, we cannot prove, by
means of the second of our paradigm proofs, that the root of the seventeen-foot square is iocommensurable with the unit. This represents
a distinct entanglement,
Theaetetus next says, in McDowell's translation,
C..vJ_1,..,
,._)I
'I'][!LV O'UV ELO't']A{}i 'tL 'tOLO'tJ'toV, EltELC\'1']
lmetpot
.,
,
,;o nA.ip'Jos; ai C\uvaf!ets;
...
-
,.
C./
EqJULVOV'tO, rtELpa8'1'jVUL 01JAAa~ELV ELs; EV,
�DAVID
15
t.f
1
I
O't<{l naaa<; ,;av'ta<;
,
'
npooayonE'UOO[-IEV 'tU<; 1\'UVU[-IEL<;.
Well, since the powers seemed to be unlimited in
number, it occurred to us to do something on these
lines: to try to collect the powers under one term by
which we could refer to them all.
The o'iJv in the first line, however, is most naturally taken as continuative! and not as some kind of ambiguous disjunctive. Here is my
paraphrase of the above sentence, filled out to show how it follows on
the peculiar problem brought on by the case of the seventeen-foot
square:
Then [in our difficultyJ something of this sort
occurred to us: since the squares [equal to odd numbers which have incommensurable sidesJ were appearing to be unlimited in multitude, to attempt to collect them under one term, by which we shall in future
call all such squares [thereby distinguishing them
from squares equal to odd numbers which do have
commensurable sides].
It must be remembered that the seventeen-foot square foiled our
technique by behaving like the square of an odd number (e.g., nine), a
number with a rational root: the square on the even leg of its proof
diagram was a multiple of eight. It is therefore natural that the idea for
a new start, which occurs to Theaetetus in his perplexity over the
breakdown of Theodorus's method, involves first distinguishing
between those odd numbers with a rational and those with an irrational root (later classified as types, respectively, of square and oblong
number).
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Several kinds of interpretation of the passage must fall by the wayside. Theodorus's "lesson" is not a pedagogical exercise, where the
answers are already known and the cases selected for display. Nor is the
episode included by Plato merely to make historical concessions (however vague or however specific) to the achievements of Theaetetus and
his instructor. Theodorus's was a genuine investigation, which lighted
on a genuine perplexity; Theaetetus's new definitions, which keyed his
fUture researches, grew out of an attempt to resolve this perplexity.
We may now reconstruct Theaetetus's reasoning in full. Two
aspects of Theodorus's technique break down in the seventeen-foot
case, The first is the principle, which underlies the preceding proofs,
that a number must be either even or odd. In this case the principle
leads to no absurdity; indeed, the proof presents no obstacle to the
idea that the side of the seventeen-foot square is a normal odd number(!). The fUndamental Pythagorean clivision among numbers by even
and odd, which in a sense characterizes the UpL{}[.lbc; concept-the
"even and odd" is sometimes used as a synonym for apL{}[.loc; in
Plato-proves to be of limited utility in the study of incommensurable lengths. Theaetetus must look for a new fundamental characteristic of number in which to ground the investigation of incommensurability. The second breakdown occurs in Theodorus's method of construction. Each of the odd numbers is figured as a square. This is possible because every odd number equals a difference of consecutive
square numbers (in Pythagorean tenus, the odd numbers are the series
of gnomons which produce one square number from another). Our
method for generating the odd squares, by constructing right triangles
with pairs of consecutive integers (producing consecutive square numbers on the hypotenuse and remaining leg), works for this reason, But
when all the odds are figured as squares, one cannot make out the perfect, rational-sided squares among them (like nine, twenty-five, etc.)
from the rest. The method points this up by failing to distinguish
between such perfect squares and cases like seventeen.
�DAVID
17
Theaetetus tackles both problems in one deft move. He makes a
fresh division of all number (,;Clv apLElf!OV nav,;a) which will now
isolate perfect squares from the rest, in place of the distinction by even
and odd. If my interpretation is correct, an entanglement in a demonstration based on a geometrical representation of odd numbers by
Theodorus has led to a geometrical distinction amongst all numbers
by Theaetetus. The new name he was seeking for the odd squares
whose sides are incommensurable is "promecic;' or oblong; which is to
say, they are no longer thought of as squares at all. This category
includes, of course, many even numbers as well, and the new generality is marked by Theaetetus: three and five and na<; o<; al\uva,;o<;
>/
,
/
·""~·
.
LaO<; 'LOUKL<; YEVEOuuL, " every num b er wh'lCh ts una bl e to b e generated as equal-times-equal;' belongs to the new class (I48A). The
even-odd distinction belonged to number as such; the new one arises
from a geometrical interpretation of number. But the whole problem
of incommensurability arises in the interface between number and
magnitude: hence the new definitions might be expected to suggest
new solutions in this difficult domain.
Theaetetus for the first time exploits the breakdown of the geometrical analogy so that it becomes heuristic: whereas in geometry,
every rectangle can be reduced to a square of equal size, whose length
of side is the geometric mean in relation to the sides of the rectangle,
a promecic number cannot be reduced to a square number. The side of
the square which equals a promecic number becomes the new referent,
in Theaetetus's scheme, for the word 1\VVUf!L<;;, it is described by
"
Theaetetus as incommensurable with a f!T]KO<;, his name for the side
of a true square number. The geometrical analogy allows this
1\uvUf!L<; to be conceived of as the irrational geometric mean between
the rational factors of an oblong number.
Theaetetus first describes the promecic number, in relation to the
square number, as 't0v 'toLvuv f!E'ta¥;U 'tOU'toU, "the number which
is in between it:' (I47E) On the level of plane numbers, this makes
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sense; oblong numbers (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, etc.) are scattered in between the
square numbers (4, 9, 16, etc.). On the level of the associated lines,
however, this description becomes far more interesting. The
llvv6.f.lEL£ lies between the f.l~K'I] as geometric means which bring
them into relation. The unifjring power of the mean proportional is
one of its seminal virtues. Theaetetus's achievement is to conceive of
the irrational roots for the first time as mean proportionals. This
allows them to be seen no longer as perplexing and intractable, but as
types of beings that in fact unite all number-no longer stumbling
blocks to number theory, but the essential intermediaries that relate
I
numbers to each other. To describe both the f.l'I]KO£ and the ll'UVctf.tL£
~
as sides of squares is so emphasize their nature as mean proportionals:
a f.lTJKO£ is the rational geometric mean between the unit and a square
number; the 1\uvctf.tL£ is the irrational geometric mean between two
I
'
f.l'I]K'I], the ratwnal factors of an oblong number.
What was once unutterable and unreckonable can now give an
account of itself: a 6-Dva~-tLI;, lying . . in between," is commensurable
with f.t{]Kos; in square only. So successful was this account that such a
line, commensurable in square, is henceforward called p'l]'tO£ in the
ancient world, 12 though it is still irrational in modern terms.
Theaetetus's new definitions allow these kinds of irrational lines to be
seen not as the opposite of what is rational or utterable ( ct-'Aoyct or
.,
ctp-p'l]'tct), but only as "other;' different in kind. This classification
ofTheaetetus's may well be the specific paradigm for Plato's solution
to the Parmenides problem (see Sophist 257B f£). Not-being is not the
>
I
opposite ( EVctV'tLOV) of being, says the Eleatic stranger, but what is
, oth er, E'tEpov m reratton to b emg; moreover, t h e nature o f t he
·
·
other is proved to exist and "to be chopped up in small bits distributed over all beings in their relations to one another" (Kct'tctKEKEp~
~ \
,
I
ll
II'
f.lGt'tLOf.lEV'I]V £1tL 1tctV'tct 'tct OV'tct 1tp0£ ctAA'I]Act, 258D-E).
Behind the metaphor lies a mathematical paradigm: Theaetetus has
distributed the not-rational amongst all number (1:ov apt{h!ov
c''
)·
�DAVID
19
Jtdvt:a ). as the geometric means which define the relationships
between numbers.
The notion of the heuristic paradigm takes on a central
significance for Plato in the Politicus. It informs a new conception of
philosophical inquiry.~' One is to approach the unfamiliar and
unknown by placing it alongside the known and the familiar, so that
elements (G'tOL)(fLa) and combinations (G'VAAaf:laL) in the latter
become paradigmatic for possible ways of interpreting the former. The
whole analysis of weaving in that dialogue is meant to serve as an
instructive paradigm for the analysis of the statesman. Theaetetus's
classifications demonstrate this method. By bringing alongside something familiar from geometry-the reducibility of rectangles to equal
squares via the geometric mean-he is able to discern a new
classification of all number, one which elegantly circumscribes the irrational. The "paradigmatic method" is to characterize his future
researches as well. The commentator to Euclid's Book X (thought to
be Pappus implies that Theaetetus took the arithmetic, harmonic, and
geometric means, all of them now considered rational, as models for
three new, profoundly irrational lines, the binomial, apotome, and
medial. 14 At the end of Book X (Prop. I I 5), the last of these is then
shown to define a further, infinite class of irrational lines. At each
stage. the unfamiliar is made known by means of the familiar; the
appr]l:OV is analyzed and combined in terms of the elements and syl' '
!abies of the pr]l:Ov. At Theaetetus 202B, Socrates describes a dream
which teaches him that elements are af,oya, while combinations are
pr]1:d'L. It is therefore fitting that Theaetetus's act of combination
(G'VAAaf:ICLV EL<; EV, 147E), based on a geometrical paradigm, renders its object prrc:6v. The Eleatic stranger intends, at Politicus 278E,
that this kind of inquiry by means of paradigms may bring us to a
•
.
'"
t
"
state of wakmg, mstead of a dream (uJtap avt' ovupa·toc:;).
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The peculiar nature of the irrational geometric mean between
rational factors, Theaetetus's 1\vvcqw;, may well have served as the
paradigmatic inspiration for Plato's new solutions to the Parmenidean
and Protagorean paradoxes. This will become clearer as we examine the
peculiar ontological and epistemological characteristics of this
1\uvaf.tL£.
With regard to its ontology, viewed from the geometrical standpoint, the irrational mean offers no intrinsic difficulties; it is a stable
entity, a side of the square equal to a given rectangle, easily and elegantly constructed inside a circle.!' But with regard to the way it comes
to be known-the way it comes to be measured, from the arithmetical
standpoint-it turns into a very shifty thing. To measure a liuVUf.tL£,
we have to make a promecic number more and more square, so that its
rational factors (f.tllK1'J) come to approximate the root. We do this by
interpolating arithmetic and harmonic means between the two factors.16 It can be shown (as by ProclusY' that for any two factors A and
B, the harmonic mean C and the arithmetic mean D stand in this relation:
A:C::D:B
This means that the rectangle AB equals the rectangle CD. Since
AB is our oblong number, CD is an alternative representation of it. If
one then interpolates two new means between C and D, and continues
the process, one generates pairs of factors of the same number that
become more and more equal, which give successively closer rational
approximations to the geometric mean from above and below. Note
that however many means one interpolates, the rational factors remain
unequal, and oblong numbers never actually become squares. As
Theaetetus describes an oblong number, "a greater and a lesser side
always contain it:' (I48A) Brown argues, following Toeplitz, that the
use of "always" (O.c() is significant here in its technical sense (i.e., that
of Euclid's X. I and X.2), and implies the application of a continued
process. 18 (This technical" sense is in any case rooted in the everyday
11
�DAVID
21
usage of this adverb, whose sense is both distributive with respect to
instances of the subject, and frequentative with respect to the verb.)
The text may be seen to allude to the continued process of interpolations described above, and to the fact that it can never yield equal sides
for a rectangular number. The geometric mean stays in between: while
A: X:: X: B, so also is C: X:: X: 0, and C': X:: X: 0'.
The interpolated means "trap" the buvaru~ length within an
arbitrarily small interval. Each successive interpolation divides the previous interval between the rational factors by more than half: the new
arithmetic mean cutes off exactly half from above, and the new harmonic mean some more from below. By Euclid's X.I-a central theorem in applying the method of reciprocal measurement,
&vtlvcpa(pEOL~, which is associated with the mature Theaetetus-it
follows that the interval between the successive pairs of arithmetic and
harmonic means can be made to shrink smaller than any given magnitude. It is not only this interval that evanesces, but also the difference
between the geometric mean and each of the other two means respectively. This means that the difference between the true length of the
geometric mean and each of its under- and over- estimates is evanescent, and there is a strong inducement to see the irrational mean itself
as characterized by the narrowing oscillation of its extremes. This is
not a nai've interpretation of the measuring process: in the case of a
rational geometric mean, or [.lflKO~, there is a number inside the interval which the estimates approach; but in the irrational case, there
appears to be no normal numerical entity involved, and we do not
know how exactly the mean behaves inside the decreasing rational
interval which defines it. We only know that at each stage, it lies in
between the harmonic and the arithmetic estimates, while approaching
each of them in turn to less than any given difference.
There is evidence in the Epinomis that an irrational geometric mean
was thought of as oscillating between the arithmetic and harmonic
ones (see 99 lA-B). In a passage which extols. the ubiquity and power of
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
'tO bLltAdOLOV; "the double," in proportions, the Athenian stranger
turns to the means associated with this interval. He gives standard
definitions of the pair of rational means (amounting to the fact that
the arithmetical is equidistant from its extremes, and the harmonic
differs from its extremes by the same proportional part of eath one);
he then points out that in the interval between six and twelve, they are
'
., /
.
called the 'Y]~WALOV and the EltL'tpL'l:OV. He adds that m between
these same ones (to{rtOJV a{nffiv f.v 'tClJ !J.EOq:>) is a proportion
that has been given to the dance of the Muses, "which turns itself
about to one or the other of these two" (en:' a~cpO'tEpa O'tpE,/
'
cj>O~EV'YJ).
We first observe that the a'pLflWJ<; concept involved not just concrete assemblages, but also urepetition" numbers (i.e. &~£, 'tpL£, etc.). 19
Therefore if we investigate any example of doubleness, or utwice;' we
are just as specifically studying "the two" as when in studying a particular isosceles triangle, we can prove things about all isosceles triangles qua isosceles. The interval I2:6 is an example of 2:I, of 'tO
biJtAdOLOV bLdO't'Y]~U or the "double interval." 20 The practical
advantage of studying higher multiples of a given interval is that the
rational means can be interpolated without fractioning the unit. In the
interval I2:6, the arithmetic and harmonic means are nine and eight
respectively; hence the stranger describes their ratios with the lower
t..
/
)
/'
extreme as the 'Y]~LOALOV (9:6 reduces to 3:2) and the Em'tpL'tOV
(because 8:6 reduces to 4:3). If we then interpret the object which
turns itself about Elt' a~cp6'tEpa as the oscillating geometric mean
between the two rational means, the other phrase describing it
(mv'n.ov atl'tWV EV 'tt\) ~f'mp) becomes explicable; for we recall
that this object is not only the geometric mean in the interval I2:6, but
also in the interval 9:8, defined by the pair of rational means (the referents of 't01J'tWV atm:ov) inside I2:6. Since the division between
nine and eight happens also to represent a division in the seventeen
steps of the epic hexameter, the dance of the Muses, the writer draws
�DAVID
23
a connection between the dynamic geometric mean in the double
interval and the turning point in the dance.
At Parmenides 129B, a young Socrates asserts that "if someone
proved that similar things in themselves ( atna
O[!OLa) became
' /
dissimilar ( UVO[!OLa), or the dissimilar similar, that would, I think,
be a portent:' Theaetetus's lluva[!L~ is the portent made manifest:
insofar as it i~,the length of a square, the one which equals an oblong
number, it is O[!OLOV; but insofar as it is approximated to the point of
identity by unequal rational factors, it is forever UVO[!OLOV.
<
/
O[!OLWOL~ is the principle Theaetetus has applied to number; in the
new arithmetic, one makes unlike" ( &.vO~oLOL) promecic numbers
more and more square, or "like" ( O~OLOL). The upshot is that arithmetic becomes conceived of as a kind of geometry, and indeed, by the
time of the Epinomis, the entire activity of geometry is characterized as
the "making like" of numbers that are by nature unlike. (Epinomis,
990d) The Athenian stranger is led to describe this numerical geometry as a wonder, of divine and not human origin. Perhaps he is think'
ing about the 1\uva[!L~, the portent which it seeks to generate.
I earlier suggested that the relation of the 1\vva[!L~ to all number
stood in direct analogy with the nature of the "other" to all being.
This "other" was the basis for Plato's new conception of not-being; he
was concerned to show both that it exists and that it is distributed over
all being in its inter-relationships (Sophist 258D-E). This second characteristic seems clearly to implicate the &6va[!L~ as a paradigm; but
does Plato ever try to demonstrate its existence) If this object, like and
unlike, at rest and oscillating, is to be the object-paradigm which
recasts all the hoary debates and turns them on their heads, he must
have been at pains to show that it actually exists.
A key passage in the Politicus answers this expectation. The Eleatic
stranger highlights its importance by pointedly referring to the pivotal
argument in the Sophist about not-being: just as there the hunt for the
sophist was saved by the argument that not-being exists,
1:a
11
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
24
1.1
'
"'
'-
I
""
'
11.
OU'tW KaL VUV 'tO 1ti-.EOV au KaL el-.aTIOV
f.lE'tprJ1:a npooavayKame'ov yL'yveo8m f.l-.1
' ,, ' ' ,
J' ' ' ' ' ' r.
1tp0£ a~~,~~,'Y]~~,a f.lOVOV a~~,~~,a KaL 1tp0£ 't'Y]V 'tOU
I
I
,/
'
s._' S..
I
)/
f.lE'tpLOu yevemv; ou yap u'Y] uuva,;ov ye OU'tE
').
...
:1
)/i ').
...
.....
...
..
1t011,L'tLKOV OU't' a~~,~~,oy 'tLVa 'tWV 1tEpL 'ta£
npasEL£ fmO'ti](.lOVa Uf.l<jlLO~'Y]'trl'tW£ yeyovE/
'
,
VaL 'tOU'tOU f.l'Y] SUVOf.lOI-.Oy'Y]8EV'tO£.
(Politicus, 284B-C)
so also now, are we not compelled to say that the
greater and the less come to be measured not only
against one another, but also toward the generation of
the mean? For it is impossible at any rate, that either
the statesman, or any one else who has knowledge
about practical affairs, should indisputably come to
exist, if this is not agreed on.
Politics, practical undertakings, and works of art direct themselves
to what is fitting ('to f.lE'tpLov). If such a thing cannot be proven to
exist, the possibility of 'tt:XV'Y] itself comes into question. The stranger
proposes a new division of the science of measurement (f.lE'tp'Y]'tLK~
283o ). The first part involves measurement of greater against less; this
would determine relative excess or deficiency, and, presumably, whether
or not there was a common measure (by the technique of
&v8ucpciLpeOL£). The second part involves measurement towards a
.J
'
/
J
I
,...
mean separated from extremes ( EL£ 'tO f.lEOOV a1to;!KL08'Y] 'tWV
ioz6.,;wv, 284E); and it is likely that the geometric mean, the mean
proportional, is especially meant. Since this mean is the one which
squares the greater-by-less, bringing extremes into balance and making
the lxvof.lOLOV O'f.lOLOV, it must be the one whose preservation brings
beauty to works of art (284A-B); the famous "golden" mean is a
species of geometric mean. The method of interpolating pairs of
rational means as greater and lesser approximations of the geometric
mean admirably suits the terms of Plato's description:
�DAVID
25
,. /
..,
')'
""
.
flELl;;ov 'tE ct[lct Km EAct't'tov flE'tPELOfuL l-11']
' ~~'\ ").
,
' '
...
1tp0£ ct11.A1']11.ct [-!OVOV, ctf..f..ct Km
...,.
'
,....
I
I
npo£ 't'I']V 't01J flE'tpwu yEvEmv. (284D)
The greater-and-less are at the same time measured
not only against each other, but also toward the generation of the fitting.
Note that "greater-and-less" are paired off by 'tE-KctL, and that
they are to be measured "toward the generation" (y{vEOL£) of the
mean. At each stage of the interpolations, one is not comparing the
extremes with each other to find their common measure or their relative excess or deficiency, but one is manipulating the pair of extremes
to generate a number in between them. Take the case of B less than A,
for example; one does not subtract B fi:om A to find their difference,
but rather one adds the pair together and halves the result, generating
the arithmetic mean (D). (In the case of the double, 12:6, we get D
(12 + 6)/2 18/2 9.) Then one multiplies the pair together and
divides the result by the arithmetic mean, to produce the harmonic
mean C. (C (12•6 )/D 72/9 8.) C and D then become the
new pair of greater-and-less (D' (C + D)/2 (9 + 8)/2 17/2
8 I/2; C
(C•D)/D' (9•8)/(17/2) 72/(17 /2) 144/17
8 8/17). Notice how the product of eachpair({C,D}, {C',D'})
remains the same (72) and how quickly the interpolations converge
(the difference between C and D' is already only 1/34th part of the
unit). The whole process is continually generating the [-IE'tpwv, the
geometric mean which runs in the middle of them all (flE'tct!;u) and
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
unites the series of pairs into one
=
=
=
=
=
(cruf....A.af3el.v E~~ £~).
But if the mean is never reached, can it be shown to exist? The
proof would appear to depend on the ontological interdependence of
the arts, the [-!E'tp{ov, and the pairs of greater-and-less. The stranger
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
26
declares that we must suppose both that the arts exist, and that the
greater-and-less are measured toward the generation of the mean:
,,
'
/
,
,
....
/
'tOU'WV 'tE yap OV'tO<; EKELVU EO'tL, KUKELVWV
)/
' ..... 21
OVOWV EO'tL KUL 'tUU'ta, [.1.1']
'
' ,..
'-U
I
I
I/
'""'
liE OV'tO<; JtO'tEpOV 't01J'tWV OVIiE'tEpOV U1J'tWV
,,
'
EO'taL JtO'tE.
(284D).
For if this [the mean J exists, those [the greater-andlessJ exist, and if those arts exist, these [the greaterand-lessJ also exist, but if one of them [the mean or
the arts J does not exist, neither of this pair [the
greater nor the less J ever will.
The passage is admittedly very difficult, in text and translation,
because of a possible ambiguity as to the referents of the correlated
demonstratives; but it seems clear that an existence proof is at issue.
That the greater and the less exist, no one would dispute. But if we
deny the existence of either the [.LE'tpLOV, or the arts, each by means
of which the greater-and-less are made known and defined, we run the
risk of denying existence of this pair of fundamental opposites. Hence
we accept, provisionally at least (284D), the existence of the mean. The
greater-and-less measured against one another discover a common
measure or the unit-Plato's paradigm, perhaps, for that which is.
Measured toward the generation of the mean, they discover a measure
in between the greater and the less, which still is greater-and-less; a
measure that is always coming to be, in the relations between things
that are. In this relational mode of being, Plato has his paradigm for
the "other;' and a beachhead against Parmenidean ontology.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
�DAVID
27
Plato's answer to the Protagorean conundrums on flux is also based
on this new branch of f,I,E'tPYJ'tLK~, measurement toward the y€vEGL<;
of the mean. At Sophist 24 7D-E, the stranger sets it down as a provisional solution to their paradoxes, that whatever possesses a power
(6-tiva[,!,L<;) to act or be acted upon, even only once, is truly existent,
and then formally defines beings (t:a OVTU) as OUK a'A'Ao 'tL JtA~V
OVVU[,!,L<;, nothing else than OUVU[,!,L<;. It is highly unlikely that such
a word could be both novelly and proximately applied by Plato without some sort of cross-reference.
'
This answer, that being is O'UVU[,!,L<;, comes after the stranger has
cornered these thinkers into admitting that the incorporeal exists in
some way. The "flux theorists" have then to say what being is, in a way
that covers both the corporeal and the incorporeal (247D). I must
therefore show how Theaetetus's OUVU[,!,L<; is a saving answer on both
these levels. Let us turn to the Theaetetus, where a Protagorean theeory
of sensation based on mutual measurement gets a thorough setting out
by Socrates, and where once again the non-corporeal is required to
exist.
Brown has led the way, by showing that Socrates's version of the
Protagorean theory of sensation is modeled on the continued process
of interpolation to approximate the geometric mean.22 The odd
expressions in this passage of text become happily explicable on these
terms. Here are some of Brown's list of correlations: uthe object
sought is ... an 'in-between' (f,I,E"ta1;u n) (I54A), which ... is to be identified by a process of 'measuring and being measured' (n:apaf,I,E'tp01lf,I,E8a ...n:apa[,i,E'tpou[,i,EVOV) (I54B)"; "the object determined 'is nothing in itself, but is becoming for someone always'
Is;.\
'1'
l\
J
'
I
e. /
) '\"'.'
) \
,
8 )
( O'UuEV ELVUL EV av,;o Ka8 av"to, a~~.~~.a 'tLVL UEL YLYVEG aL
(I 57A-B; cf. I53E)"; and "the intermediate stages of the process are
'infinite in number, but paired off' (n:'A~8EL [,i,EV UJtELpa, o[O'U[,i,U
OE) (I56A-B):' In this last passage we can add some very telling details:
it is out of the coming together and rubbing against one another
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
'
,
'
/
'
v
(OfA.LALa<; 't£ Km 'tpLljJEW<; npo<; aA.A.T]A.a) of that which has the
power (lluvaru<;) to act, and that which has the power to undergo,
that the infinite, twinned offspring come; these paired offspring, the
sensed thing and the sensation of it, are "forever falling out together
.
'
'
') .
an db emg generate d"('' 01JVEK1tLJt'tOUOU KUL YEVVW!lEVT]For
UEL
O.eL O'UVEKn'Grcouaa, we could as well pave rendered: heing interpolated together, in a continued process:' The notion that an object of
sense and a sensation are mutually measured, and that they are infinite,
paired-off interpolations, can hardly belong to any "common sense"
11
theory of sensation; Brown can produce a concrete, mathematical anal-
ogy which could have motivated this otherwise bizarre formulation.
The key to this analogy is that Socrates's Protagoreans explain the
phenomenon of sensation as one of mutual measurement of object
and percipient. This way of thinking, by the old version of
!lE'tp'f]'tLKi], leads to their positions on the ultimate relativity of experience; measurement n:pot;
'
'"
af...A.'Y]Aa generates a common measure or
unit, but since each percipient and the entire world of sense are in constant flux, and their interaction with one another changes them both,
this unit is redefined by each sense event. Unity in sense-experience is
therefore dependent on the particular state of a human being at a particular time; man is the measure of all things. Plato's solution is to
apply the new theory of measurement: he accepts the premise of
mutual measurement in sensation, but he can now generate a kind of
unity that is independent of subject and object, at the same time that
it embraces them, To call the opposed poles of measurement
lluva!lEL<; (156A) is to signal their relation, not to each other, but as
first approximations of the mean proportional which defines and
unites them both. One has not done away with flux by any means;
Socrates ill and Socrates healthy each define different intervals with the
same wine, so that the series of interpolated means are also different
(yielding the sensation of sweetness in one case and bitterness in the
other, 159c-E). But one has analyzed sense phenomena in a way that
�DAVID
29
reveals unique classes within them; the geometric means define infinite
series of correlated sense experiences. The point of defining being as
liuvarw;, the capacity to act or be acted upon, even only once, is to
show that even the most random and isolated phenomenon, occurring
once to a single percipient, in and of itself defines an infinite class
through the mean it generates. The upshot is, Brown observes, that
"the flux of phenomena may after all be 'saved' for knowledge." 23 The
ingenuity of the approach is that the very fact which made such experience seem intractable for science, that the
11
tubbing" of perceived
object against percipient observer changes them both, is now made the
essential condition for generating unity in phenomena (represented by
the geometric mean) via a continued process. This is the same ingenu-
ity that Theaetetus displayed when he solved the problem of incommensurability by newly exploiting the relation between geometrical
figures and numbers, which had created the trouble in the first place.
The need to admit the existence of the incorporeal is demonstrated by the need for some faculty within us to account for our ability to
compare data, to recognize what is common to all and to categorize
experience in terms of the philosophical oppositions (i.e., being and
not-being, like and unlike, etc.). 24 Theaetetus is convinced that this is
done by the soul, and cannot be done by any one of the bodily sense
organs; for which he is called "beautiful" (KaAO£) by Socrates (185DE). If this faculty can compare sense data from different organs, then
its work consists in comparing means, which are expressed as ratios in
terms of their respective extremes (like the ~[J-UJAWV and lm:('tpt'tOV
in the Epinomis passage, 991B). Therefore this faculty compares ratios,
and its activity must be the calculation of proportions ( avaA.oy(snv). As strained as this might sound, Socrates' choice of words
\:>ears out the analogy: the word used to describe this faculty's ability is
auA.A.oytO[J-0£ (186D) ; the verb which characterizes its activity is
&vaA.oyfso[J-m (186A) and the products of its work are 'b.va.A.oyLO[J-a'ta (186c) . The theory of sensation had entailed that the
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
30
objects of sense be commensurable with their proper sense organ
(sU[t[tE'tpov, I56D). But one cannot hear through sight or see
through hearing (I84E-I85A). Therefore the faculty which has to
compare and to
u
square" the data from different sense organs, must
deal with problems of incommensurability. We have already seen how
Theaetetus's lluva[ttt; has helped to facilitate such studies,
The answer that being is llvva[ttt; is therefore shown to resolve
both the corporal and incorporeal aspects of flux theory as Socrates
presents them-in suth a way as to gather them into one account-if
an explicit reference is taken to Theaetetus's lluva[ttt;, and the new
branch of measurement science. Sense phenomena can then be shown
to have a ratio (ii"J(ELV A.oyov). because object and sense organ generate a mean, and the percipient soul becomes a kind of A.oytatLKOt; or
J.lE'tP11'tlK6; (uratio-" or umeasure-calculator") , because the new
techniques allow for the handling of incommensurability.
Clearly, the aims of Plato's application of measurement theory to
sense perception are not the same as those of modern science. No
actual measurements are generated, for example. (The whole thing
turns a bit silly if numbers are plugged in.) Plato's aim might rather
have been, in the spirit of ancient astronomy, to u save the appear11
ances:' As I understand this notion, it does not mean to reduce the
appearances to measurement!' To save the appearances is, in Brown's
phrase, to "save" phenomena for knowledge, by supplying a rational
construct in the form of a mathematical model that could account for,
or at least correspond to, the perceived data, This is the kernel of a
paradigmatic method. There is no necessary entailment of a claim that
the model has a causal relationship to the appearances, or that it represents the physical reality standing "behind" the appearances; it has
rather the free, associative illumination of a paradigm. This was true
even for Ptolemaic astronomy, where the principle of uniform circular
motion did eventually generate accurarely predictive models for the
perceived non-uniform orbits in the heavens. This achievement in
�DAVID
31
astronomy of predictive correspondence between hypotheses and phenomena set a standard thereafter for the saving of appearances. In
Plato's time, however, Eudoxus devised astronomical models which
could not have been accurately predictive; yet they could still have been
seen to u save" the appearances, in that such salvation might have been
seen to come through the ascent itsel£ from the spangled particularity
of sensual observation to the realm of the mathematical. Rather than
recording the movements of the decorations on the celestial ceiling,
which one perceives by sight-see Plato's disparaging remarks on the
current state of astronomy (Republic 529A f£)-Eudoxus was developing models for them, based on the mathematics of uniform circular
motion, which one grasps by argument and reason. To reduce the disorder and particularity of appearances in the sensible world to mathematical generality and principled order would be to save the appearances-for reason, and from chaos. The reduction requires at least a
qualitative correspondence between paradigm and reality; hence
Eudoxus's models had to be able to reproduce retrogressions in the
orbits of the outer planets. It took a considerable refinement in the
models and the observations-and possibly in philosophical outlook
as well-to achieve the quantitative correspondence in Hipparchus
and Ptolemy, where the retrograde motions were given by the models
in magnitude and in time. Even Ptolemy, however, is concerned to distinguish his work and discipline as mathematics, and not physics or theology, although it makes some concessions to these other fields. To the
mathematician, in contrast with the physicist or theologian, the existence of different, equivalent models, such as eccentric circles and
epicycles, or even heliocentricity and geocentricity, is a point of contemplative delight; for those others, a point of anxiety and dispute.
When it comes to the sublunary sphere, Plato accepts the premise
of radical flux. He apparently held this view all his intellectual life (see
Aristotle's biography, Metaphysics 987a30f£). All things are in motion,
and so are their measures (i.e., the individual percipients); hence the
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
measurements they take-i.e., individual perceptual judgements of
things as to their sensible quality or size-are also in flux, (The same
wind can appear hot and cold to different people, I52B.) The premise
of flux apparently entails the premise, "nothing is one in itself"
(I52D); this is the mathematical version of the relativist premise,
uthere is no objective measure:' Different percipients-and the same
percipient at different times-represent different measures, and hence
there exists a problem of radical incommensurability between individual perceptions. There can therefore be no question of a quantitative
application of measurement theory to the phenomena. The very fact
that perceptual events and judgements are judged to be completely
unique and individual (fl\tov-see, eg., I 54A) should suggest that
they are not susceptible to general treatment of any kind, let alone to
mathematical treatment. The world of sense, when approached in
terms of these kinds of premises, ought not to be salvageable for
knowledge.
All the same, for the metaphor of sensation as measurement, a
notion attributed in the Theaetetus ultimately to Protagoras (I52A),
there is life yet, The new branch of measurement science can supply an
intriguing model for at least a qualitative saving of the appearances,
Here, as in the sublunary sphere, we also have things and their measures, extremes and means, continually changing. But this does not prevent them from being related to a single magnitude-to two definite
magnitudes, in fact, for the size of the rectangle contained by each pair
of interpolations, as well as its geometric root, remains the same.
Hence there can be a kind of unity predicated of a continued process
of change; and so perhaps a predication of unity need not be precluded from sense experience, even in a world of unceasing flux, In addition, the measure of the root of this constant magnitude represented
by the rectangles, the geometric mean approximated by the arithmetic
and harmonic means, is a measure that is continually coming to be, but
never is. As such, it is uniquely suited as a qualitative model or paradigm for perception, which seems to share this property in the sensi-
�DAVID
33
ble world. That which is ("ta Ovta.) comes to be, as a perception, through
a continued process of measurement with the percipient. The first step
in applying the new kind of measurement as a theory of perception
would be to say, with the Eleatic stranger, that being (,;a bv,;a.) is
liuva.w~.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The vastly different implications of the two kinds of measurement
are brought out by Socrates' example of the dice (IS4c). If one compares six dice with four dice they look greater, but if one compares six
dice with twelve, they look less. This seems to involve a paradox,
because nothing can ever become greater or less in size or number
while it remains equal to itsel£ Two other postulates are said to contend with this one and with each other in our souls, when we think
about the six dice becoming greater and less: anything in respect of
which nothing is added or subtracted is neither increased nor diminished, but is always equal; and that which did not exist before could
not exist afterwards without a process of becoming (I54A-B).
Brown has pointed out that the way Socrates compares six with
four and twelve-that the difference in each case is half of the compared term (I 54c )--is an explicit recognition of six as the harmonic
mean in the interval defined by four and twelve as extremes. 25 He then
takes the reference to the harmonic mean as an allusion to the geometric mean in the interval, to which the three postulates mentioned
above apply in a mathematically interesting way-a way that justifies
Theaetetus's dizziness at such paradoxes (ISSc). This is by way of
defending Plato against the likes of Bertrand Russell, who refers to
Plato's difficulties in these matters as "among the infantile diseases of
philosophy:' 26 The text does not support Brown's defence, however.
Socrates and Theaetetus seem genuinely perplexed by any three-term
comparison, whether among dice or between the size of Socrates and
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
two stages of a growing Theaetetus (I55B-c). This is because the art
of measurement (but not necessarily philosophy) is in its infancy;
measurement n;po<; aA.A.l']A.a can only distinguish the greater and the
less, and the intermediate objects inevitably called up by a three-term
comparison become equivocal in a rather straightforward way. The
concreteness of the cited examples-remember that Plato always talks
about dice-may help to reinforce the odd intuition that an object
changes into its opposite while staying the same.
The new branch of f.tE'tpl']'tLKi), measurement toward the generation of the mean, legitimizes the intermediate. It generates objects that
are definitively ubetween" all rational numbers, as we have seen. Plato's
deft presentation points the way to the mature science of measurement. Comparing six dice to four and twelve is to measure tangible
quantities against one another, so as to cause perplexity about the relativity of six; seeing 6 as the harmonic mean in the interval 12:4 is to
see it as a generating approximation of the only non-relative, or utransrelative:' entity inside the interval: the geometric mean or mean proportional. As one generates it geometrically, it exists unchanged and
remains equal with itself. As one generates it arithmetically, it is now
greater now less, now increased and now diminished, continually com-
ing to be. The geometric mean is therefore an exception to each of the
three Protagorean assumptions about relativity, just as it was to the
Parmenidean ones about sameness and being; and we have already seen
how Plato tries to prove that it exists.
Brown was right, therefore, in recognizing the reference to the harmonic mean and its allusion to the geometric mean, but he was at least
partly wrong about the significance of the allusion, That the same
number or magnitude can be called both greater and less seems to be
regarded as a genuine paradox; the problem can be nullified by rethinking the process of measurement, as a generation of means, rather than
as a direct comparison of quantities. A mean is a mean in relation to
what is greater and to what is less; the greater and the less, in turn, are
�DAVID
35
so in relation, as extremes to a mean. Hence extremes and means can
only exist and be defined in terms of each other. A mean is therefore
a thing which demands to be comprehended on all these terms: it is
one thing remaining the same as itself, and it is greater, and it is less.
The concatenation of these properties is no longer paradoxical, but
rather uniquely definitive, in the case of a mean. The trick is therefore
to define numbers and magnitudes, where the purported paradox of
relativity is observed, as means. This is precisely what Theaetetus has
already done. Not just the incommensurable roots (buVU[.IEL~). but
,
all numbers and commensurable lengths (f.IYJKYJ) are recast as geometric means between the unit and square and oblong numbers (that is, as
sides of the square representations of all numbers). This is once again
to resolve a difficulty by redefining its terms, and to resolve a paradox
by exploiting its own conditions. Theaetetus can cure his dizziness by
turning the problem upside down. To reclassify rational and irrational
lengths as types of means is to make these relativistic creatures, with
their seemingly paradoxical mixture of properties, the very standards
of measurement; the
11
in-between, now takes on the substantive exis-
tence in measurement science which once belonged exclusively to number. By referring to the problematical, "in-between" six in such a way
as to identify it as the harmonic mean in an interval, Plato would seem
to be hinting at this kind of a solution during Socrates' very articulation of the paradox.
I do not mean to suggest, here or elsewhere, that the algorithm of
interpolating means is some kind of cryptic code to Platos meaning.
For one thing, a mathematical model needs to be interpreted before it
can be interpreted; in itself, the means algorithm is about measurement
in the abstract and nothing else. (Even here, however, as I have suggested, the question what is a mean?" and the follow-up does it
11
11
exist?" can have serious philosophical consequences, such as the postu-
lating of a relational mode of being.) What I do see is the persistent
heuristic and often playfUl application of a paradigm. The most seri-
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ous and striking interpretation of this paradigm is as a theory of sense
perception; but there are other exemplars in the Theaetetus. At I 80E,
Socrates, tells Theodorus that by advancing little by little (Km;a
Gf-UKpov), they have unknowingly fallen into the midway position
between the Parmenideans and the Heracliteans ( Et~ 'tO [.l{aov
JtE1t'tWK6,;E~-recall aE'i. CJ'UVEKJtLJt'tQUGct, I 56B); their plight is
compared to that of the people caught in the middle of a wrestling
school tug-of-war, who are dragged toward opposite sides of the dividing line. On the one hand, this image is amusing and self-explanatory,
and fully realized on its own terms. But one can discern behind it the
notions, entirely neutral in themselves, of incremental interpolation
toward the measurement of a mean, and oscillation around the meas-
uring line. The mathematical model can hardly be said to explain or to
interpret the image. The reverse is in fact the case: it is the tug-of-war
which interprets, and gives content to, the paradigm. But just as in the
case of Socrates's dice, an awareness of the underlying paradigm can
suggest lines of thought that are textually based, and yet not necessarily part of the literal intention of the interlocutors in the dialogue. A
mean is something which brings into relation and, in this sense, unites
its extremes. It is therefore of considerable interest for a student of
Socrates and Plato to wonder what a mean position between the
Parmenideans and the Heracliteans might be like. The means algorithm and the image of the tug-of-war can be seen to do a double duty:
conceiving of opposed positions no longer as opposites but as
extremes is the first step towards our some
day, as we still say, "squar-
ing" them, generating a solution in the mean between them; while at
the same time, the image of being caught in the middle and pulled to
either side captures the present predicament of the participants in the
dialogue.
A significant portion of the Theaetetus is devoted to an exhaustive,
case by case analysis of the possibility of false judgement, depending
on the premise that with regard to each thing one might have an opin-
�DAVID
37
ion about, one either knows it or one doesn't. But Theaetetus is forced
to adopt this premise of polar, or opposite conditions when Socrates
asks him to leave out the states which lie in between knowledge and
ignorance (ftE'tal;u 'tOlJ'tWV, I88A), such as learning and forgetting.
I think few readers would agree with Socrates's daim here that these
intermediate processes have no bearing on the discussion. Does not the
text rather invite the reader to consider, on his own at any rate, the
nature and the implications of such mean states as learning and forgetting? Are they not significant in themselves, and especially crucial as
a basis for the task at hand, an investigation of the cognitive mechanism which might result in false opinion? The midway cases of learning and forgetting exhibit the paradoxes we have come to expect of
means: it would seem that in the midst of these conditions, knowledge
and ignorance are both present in the mind at the same time and about
the same thing.
In the middle of the dialogue (I72c-I77B), Socrates digresses to
paint the portraits of two incompatible human types, the man of the
city and the philosopher. The opposite qualities of these figures take
on a new significance if the figures are interpreted not as opposites, but
as extremes. The reader will notice that the philosopher described is
not in fact like Socrates: he is rather a latter-day Thales (I 73E ff.), an
astronomer, physicist, geometer, and general investigator into the
abstract natures of things; a man more reminiscent of Arist.ophanes's
parody than Plato's Socrates. In the Socrates of the Theaetetus, we see
instead a mean between extremes, between the man of the law courts,
whose time and speech are strictly circumscribed, and the philosopher,
whose time and speech are all his own (I72D-E). Socrates has the
leisure, on the one hand, to pursue an investigation into the definition
of knowledge with Theaetetus, including time for fresh starts and
digressions (I 72D); on the other, we are reminded quite pointedly, by
way of ending the conversation and the text, that Socrates has to break
off until the next day so that he can keep his appointment in court, to
�38
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
meet Meletus's indictment. Socrates' time is not his own; and his life
will depend upon his ability to speak the speech of the law courts.
It is tempting to compare Socrates' two patterns, his "paradigms
set up in the midst of existence" (176E), with the paradigms of
Theaetetus. The divine and the perfectly just would be figured as foursquare and O[J.OLOV, and the. human and the political as inherently heteromecic. A tragic dimension emerges if one interprets Socrates's models as themselves an investiture of the models of the measurement paradigm. We are encouraged to become more and more like the divine
and the just; but it is a structural feature of the interpolation algorithm
that however equal it becomes, the rectangle can never become square.
The flight from our mortal nature toward the divine is described by
Socrates as ~[J.O'i:Wm£ or assimilation to god; ~[J.o(wm£ itself
(Socrates repeats the word, I 7 6B) is then explained as becoming
1\{Kawv and dmov in the com~any of <j>p6vrJOL£. But in the mathematical setting, the process of O[J.o(wOL£ can never be completed;
and the suggestion in this context may be that ultimately the divine is
irreconcilable with the human, that the life of pure philosophy is
finally incommensurable with the life of the city. The demands of the
philosopher, who asks "what is man?" (I74B), can never completely
escape the demands of society, and its conventional expectations of
man. The life and death of Socrates embody a paradigmatic dilemma:
however long and full the measure of his days, and hence however long
the process, through the purgations 'of philosophy, of assimilation to
the divine, of becoming truly just and holy and wise,-there will come
a day of reckoning by a different number, and the city will lay its claim
to him.
A further note about the dice: the interval I 2:4 is a species of the
Tp~.:rtA.amov 1\LaOTrJfJ.U, 3:1. The interpolated means, beginning
with eight and six, are therefore fourth-multiple approximations of the
side of the three-foot square. The full significance of the example is
.now manifest: it illustrates the new way to investigate incommensu-
�DAVID
39
rable lengths, taking up again the first ofTheodorus's cases, and applying the continued process involved in the squaring of Theaetetus's
oblong numbers.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
In addition to that portentous entity, the o-6va!H~. two methods
associated with my interpretation of the geometry lesson, proof by
reductio ad absurdum and the method of exhaustion, also become paradigmatic for Plato in this trio of dialogues. The former may have long
since been the inspiration for Socrates's familiar technique of reducing
his interlocutor to perplexity. It shows up at various stages of the
argument in the Theaetetus, as for example at I 54C-D, where Theaetetus
is reduced to both affirming and denying one of the Protagorean postulates we have just discussed. Whereas in mathematics, this method
achieves the positive result of refuting a hypothesis, and proving its
contrary, Plato romanticizes the notion somewhat for philosophy; he
is interested in perplexity itself as a heuristic state, and marks the wonderment that it brings on. in Theaetetus as a sign of his being a
philosopher (I SSc-D ). But Plato also relies on the rigorous conception
of the proof: at a crucial point in the Sophist, it is proved that some of
the forms and genera must mix with each other and others not, only
because the other two possibilities-that none of them do or all of
them do-have been reduced to absurdity (252E). The upshot is an
unexpected discovery of the philosopher and his science, while
Theaetetus and the stranger had been looking for the sophist (253c).
Dialectic is the science which divides things by form (?too~) and
genus (yrvo~). and he who is capable of this science is the one who
can best discern the complex interrelationships among the formswhich ones unite others, which are parts, which wholes, and which
stand apart from mixing (253D-E).
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The method of division, which characterizes the investigations
into the sophist and the statesman and which is identified with dialectic (253D-E), is based on the method of exhaustion. This is the postclassical name for the continued process of measurement we are now
familiar with, One "exhausts" a magnitude by continually cutting off
rational segments of it, each of them more than half of what is left.
If these rational u shavings" are strung together, one can approximate
the length, say of a geometric mean, to an arbitrarily high degree of
accuracy. Once again, as Plato invests the mathematical paradigm with
the dress of the dialectical process, he romanticizes it: at Sophist 261AB, Theaetetus complains that as they get closer to their quarry, the
sophist keeps throwing "problems" in their way, like successive defensive walls (npo~ArJ[!U'ta); the stranger assures him that any attacker
,
r
'
;
, '
who can rnake "contmuous progress rorward"(' 'tO rtpoa8EV act.
EL~
npmtvm) should be confident of success. And to be sure, while the
stranger never fails to string together the divisions which measure" his
subject (e.g., at 268C-D for the sophist), his main concern is at least
equally with the division process itself, and with the training it provides in distinguishing classes (see Politicus 285C-D). But there is still a
concession here to the mathematical: at Politicus 287c, the stranger
advises that in these procedures, one must divide by a number as close
as possible to two, This serves a double purpose; it maximizes the
number of divisions that will need to be made, thereby increasing a
student's experience with the handling of kinds, while also providing
the minimum subtraction required (more than half)," to guarantee the
11
u
exhaustion" of the subject.
The aim of the division process is still to produce a definition, and
in this sense it can be seen as a refinement on the original Socratic
methodology. But definition is here seen, perhaps for the first time
explicitly, as a kind of measurement; this is a return to the root mean-
ing of the term, which involves the setting of limits or boundary
marks (Clp'LsELV). The Forms only enter the picture as the necessary
�DAVID
41
terms of division, and the measures generated, to ''trap" the undefined
object in an exhaustive process. It would seem that a considerable point
of departure for this new vision of dialectic lies in the notion of forms
as measures.
That the philosopher and the philosopher's art can be characterized by these continued processes marks a stunning change in Plato's
thought. Brown draws the following conclusion:
... in Theaetetus, and apparently in response to a lively
sense of the mathematical achievements of this companion and colleague, Plato seems to be yielding
somewhat to an epistemological suggestion derived
from Theaetetus's notion of continued processes.
This would involve thinking that opinion, and perhaps even perception, if they can be processed in just
the right way, ought to be taken seriously. Further, it
would involve his thinking that knowledge is not fully
characterized by the fixed and finished objects (Ideas)
toward which it may proceed, but that it is at least
partly characterized by the approximating process
itsel£ This would mean that at least in one aspect of
it, knowledge is a continued process of learning.28
I would make a stronger claim for Plato's development: the more
usual theory of forms, which involved forms as paradigms in the sense
of ideals, has been reformed or even replaced in these dialogues, on the
inspiration of the new measurement paradigms created by Theaetetus.
That Plato himself recognized a development is evidenced by his curious wording at Sophist 248A: he there refers to certain idealists, who do
not believe in motion and mixing, as
nthe friends of the forms" ('to:U;
'tWV c'L6wv q)LA.ov~). That Plato could use such a phrase, in relation
to what is usually thought of as his singular philosophical achieve-
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ment, must have staggering implications for those who would chart the
history of his thought. Did these friends of the forms use to be friends
of his? Or were they the older gentlemen described somewhat
unflatteringly at 25Ic, possibly older, rival Socratics? If so, was the
original theory of forms perhaps a Socratic or a Parmenidean invention? However these questions are answered, and whatever is the true
measure of the distance between Plato and the "friends of the forms;'
the sum total of my arguments is that there was a revolution in Plato's
conception of epistemology and ontology, necessitated by the existence of the curious object at the heart of the new measurement science: the irrational geometric mean between rational factors,
Theaetetus's <'iuvarw::;. This object and this science serve as paradigms
for a brave new approach to some very old and perplexing problems.
Perhaps there are grounds for a revolution in our sense of Plato's
development, to match the turn in the man.
Notes
I. Wilbur R. Knorr, Evolution of the Euclidean Elements (Dordrecht and
Boston: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1975), 65-9.
2. Wilbur R. Knorr and Miles F. Burnyeat, "Methodology,
Philology, and Philosophy, Isis, I979, 70:565-70
3. Miles Burnyeat, "The Philosophical Sense of Theaetetus's
Mathematics:' Isis, I978, 69: 489-5I3, on pg. 5I3.
4. Knorr, Evolution, I 92
5. Ibid., 192
6. Ibid., 69 f£
7. Ibid., 96 (In full: "(a) The proofs are demonstrably valid. (b)The
treatment by special cases and the stopping at I 7 are necessitated
by the methods of proof employed. (c) The proofs will be understood to apply to an inhnite number of cases. (d) No use may be
made of the dichotomy of square and oblong numbers in
Theodorus's studies, either in the demonstrations or in the choice
�DAVID
43
of cases to be treated. (e) Theodorus's proofs utilize the special
relations of the lines in the construction of the dynameis. The geometrical methods of construction are of the type characteristic of
metrical geometry as developed in Elements II and are closely associated with a certain early style of arithmetic theory. (f) But the
arithemetic methods by which Theaetetus could prove the two general theorems , on the incommensurability of lines associated with
non-square and non-cubic integers, were not available to
Theodorus:'
8. Malcolm Brown, "Theaetetus: Knowledge as Continued Learning;'
Journal of the History of Philosophy, I969, 7:359-79, on pgs. 367-8
9. Knorr, Ewlution, I 58
IO. This proof is given by Knorr, Evolution, I84
I I. Ibid., I 59
I2. see Euclid's Elements X De£ 3
I3. see Plato's Politicus, 278b-e
14. see Euclid, The Elements, 3 vols., Vol. 3, ed. Sir Thomas Heath
(Annapolis: St. John's College Press, I947), 3
IS. see Euclid ILI4 andVI.l3
I6. Brown, "Theaetetus:' 371 f£
I7. Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, 3 vols., Vol. 2, ed. Ernst
Diehl (Leipzig: Teubner, I903-6), I73-4
18. Brown, Theaetetus;' 371
I9. see David H. Fowler, The Mathematics of Plato~ Academy (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, I 987), I 4 f£
20. see Plato's Timaeus 36A for this usage
2I. The reading of B and T; editors usually read touto
22. Brown, "Theaetetus," 3 7 6-7
23. Ibid, 377
24. see Theaetetus, I 85c
25. Brown, "Theaetetus:' 3 74
26. quoted in Brown, "Theaetetus:' 373, note 38
11
�44
2 7. Euclid, X. I
28. Brown, "Theaetetus;' 379
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
�-.::f We Nietzscheans
!ft- John Verdi
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844.* He went to good schools,
studied hard and by the time he was 24 had been appointed professor
of philology at the University of Basel. He abandoned the academic
world after about ten years, and began to live here and there in France,
Switzerland, and Italy, never remaining in any one place for more than
a few months. His life was solitary, but not unhappy. In 1889 he suffered a complete mental collapse from which he never recovered. He
died in I 900. While he flourished and was writing the books for which
we remember him, virtually no one paid any attention to his work.
Now it seems that everybody has something to say about Nietzsche.
What Martin Heidegger wrote of him a few decades ago might still
be true today, that Nietzsche is "either celebrated and imitated or
reviled and exploited:' I
Nietzsche has excited and polarized people throughout the twentieth century. Even now he remains as enigmatic as Plato: we are forever uncertain what he believes and what he intends. Consequently
everybody has something to say about Nietzsche, even Nietzsche. He
calls himself a ''godless anti-metaphysician;' a "very free spirit," an
11
irnmoralist;' an uartist," one of the umore spiritual beings of this
•
age, horne1 " II£ 1 " ptous, u•
ess, 1ear ess,
mcomprehenst'ble." An d m Ecce
Homo, his last book, he says: "I am not a man, I am dynamite ....! contradict as has never been contradicted and am nonetheless the oppo11
11
11
'
"
John Verdi is a tutor on the Annapolis Campus. This lecture was delivered on March 26, 1999.
*I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Hwnanities and St. John's for having
given me the opportunity to spend much of the last two academic years (1997-1999) studying
Nietzsche. I'd also like to thank the members of last semester's study group on The G191 Science for
their insight, enthusiasm and good spirits, and for helping me learn how to read Nietzsche more
carefully and more critically.
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
site of a negative spirit. I am a bringer of good tidings such as there
has never been." 2
I have kept in mind while preparing this essay that some of you
may have never read any Nietzsche, others may have been introduced
to him only recently or haphazardly, and still others may know him alltoo-well, What I have to say about Nietzsche shall focus on one of his
books, his most comprehensive, coherent, and accessible book, Beyond
Good and Evil, in particular on the Preface, because I believe that here at
St. John's our best public conversations usually focus on books, not on
people or "issues:' The essay comes in five parts, Each of the first four
parts begins with, and subsequently comments on, some of the
Preface, so that by the time I have finished the last of these, you will
have heard the entire Preface. In the last section of the lecture I shall
suggest that Nietzsche aims in part to re-establish, re-vivify, and
transmogrify an ancient tradition of spiritual exercises, going back at
least to Socrates, exercises which Pierre Hadot says had as their goal "a
transformation of the world;' and "a metamorphosis of our personal•
113
Ity.
Part One
Supposing truth is a woman-what then? Are there
not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers,
insofar as they were dogmatists, have understood
women badly? That the gruesome seriousness, the
clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually
approached truth so far have been inept and improper
methods for winning a female? What is certain is that
she has not allowed herself to be won-and today
every kind of dogmatism stands sad and discouraged.
1j it is left standing at all! For there are scoffers who
assert that it has fallen, that all dogmatism lies on the
�47
VERDI
ground-even more, that all dogmatism is breathing
its last.'
In the first line Nietzsche alludes to Machiavelli's remark in The
Prince about fortune. Machiavelli writes:
Fortune is a woman ... and one sees that she lets herself
be won more by the impetuous than by those who proceed coldly. And so always, like a woman, she is a
friend of the young because they are less cautious,
more ferocious, and command her with more audacity. 5
Machiavelli also says that "fortune shows her power where virtue
(virtU) has not been put in order [so as] to resist her;' and that the
prince is "prosperous who adapts his mode of proceeding to the qualities of the times" ( ch. 25). Later, Nietzsche says that Machiavelli
cannot help presenting the most serious matters in a
boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious
artistic sense of the contrast he risks-long, difficult,
hard, dangerous thoughts and the tempo of the gallop
and the very best, most capricious humor.'
Nietzsche's own style, which is inextricably interwoven with his
thought, can often be described in just such terms. "[T]here is art in
every good sentence-art that must be figured out if the sentence is to
be understood!"' Nietzsche wants us to recognize from the opening of
the book a certain kinship he has with Machiavelli in both content and
style.
Nietzsche continues the questioning by asking if all philosphers,
at least to the extent that they have been dogmatists, have not been
clumsy in courting truth and winning her heart. He implies that truth
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
48
cannot be discovered by some method, as Descartes had hoped, but
only won by someone able to command her. Nietzsche doesn't tell us
if all philosophers heretofore have been tactless dogmatists. He hints
that they have usually taken a fruitless approach to truth, but the allusion to Machiavelli, and the description of his style, suggests that he
at least was hardly a gruesome and awkwar~ suitor. Most philosophers,
however, have been too grave in their search for truth, not gay and playful enough to have gotten very far with her.
But what does Nietzsche understand by dogmatism anywayl Recall
that Kant had set himself the task of criticizing dogmatism in The
Critique of Pure Reason, where he characterizes it as
the presumption that it is possible to make progress
with pure knowledge, according to principles, from
concepts alone ... and that it is possible to do this
without having first investigated in what way and by
what right reason has come into possession of these
concepts.8
Kant believes that when we employ concepts dogmatically-that
is, to "yield strict proof from some principles a priori"-without first
having made them give an account of their origin and a justification of
their use, they lack the power to yield truth, but create illusion in its
place, Kant and Nietzsche both challenge dogmatism as that mode of
thinking which sets arbitrary limits to the questions philosophy may
ask.
Nietzsche disagrees with Kant in at least two important ways. Kant
believes in a class of truths which are both necessarily so and about the
empirical world of experience, not merely about logic or the relationship of pure concepts to one another. These synthetic a priori truths
constitute the substance of arithmetic and geometry, and also the
foundations of classical mechanics, namely, Newton's three laws of
�VERDI
49
motion. The examples Kant gives are that seven plus five equals twelve,
that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, and that
in every transfer of motion between bodies, action and reaction must
always be equal. For Nietzsche the central question of Kant's
Critique--how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?-leaves at
least one "truth" unassailable and immune from question, namely, that
there exist synthetic judgments which are true a priori. For Nietzsche
the prior question is, Why is belief in such judgments necessary? Why
must man believe them to be true? In fact, Nietzsche believes that
dogmatism exists whenever a philosopher needs to resort to any kind
11
of given;' any truth he claims is "evident," whether it be Descartes's
11
1 think;' Hume's "impressions and ideas," or Socrates' belief that the
search for truth will make us better people. He says,
There are still harmless self-observers who believe
11
that there are immediate certainties"; for example,
"I think;' ... as though knowledge here got hold of its
object pure and naked, as "the thing in itself;' without any falsification on the part of the subject or the
object. But that u immediate certainty," as well as
"absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself;'
involve a contradiction in terms; we really ought to
free ourselves from the seduction of words!9
The second way Nietzsche differs from Kant-and perhaps from
all other philosophers before him-lies in the very value each attributes
to the kind of truths dogmatists seek. For "the secret wish and hidden
meaning of all dogmatic aspirations" has been that their truth is supposed to be a truth for everyone. Yet,
11
whatever can be common,"
value:' 10
Nietzsche says, "always has little
And with this Nietzsche
catches all of us up short, for what else can truth be if not something
universal? Of course my truth" and your truth" can differ in trivial
11
11
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ways, in the sense that umy experience" can differ from yours. But
Nietzsche is talking about the truths of philosophers, that is, truths
about being and becoming, knowledge and ignorance, good and eviL
In fact, Nietzsche worries deeply about truth, and expresses this at the
beginning of Part One of Beyond Good and Evil, when he raises two
astounding questions: what is the source of our will to truth? And
what is the value of this will? The first question, Nietzsche says,
brought him to a long halt; but it was the second question that
brought him to a complete stop. "Why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?" These are the questions the Sphinx really put
to Oedipus, the questions behind the riddle. For Socrates, the answer
to both questions suggested in the Symposium and elsewhere, is that
truth is intelligible and that everything intelligible is beautifuL
Nietzsche, however, believes that our intellectual conscience demands
that we consider other possibilities. The truth as such about life may
be unintelligible; it may be ugly. He says:
Something might be true while being harmful and
dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a
basic characteristic of existence that those who would
know it completely would perish ...The question is to
what extent it is life-promoting, life preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating. 11
The dogmatists' belief in the value of truth, "truth for its own
sake;' must itself be scrutinized, in order to uncover its origins, which
may lie deep in the cave of human instincts and drives.
[F]or all the value that the true, the truthful, the
selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a
higher and more fundamental value for life might
have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness and lust,
�VERDI
51
[and that the J good and revered things [might be J
insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these
wicked, seemingly opposite things-maybe even one
with them in essence. 12
Having thus challenged dogmatic philosophers in the first three
sentences of the Preface, Nietzsche then suggests that perhaps dogmatism has already been knocked down, that it may even be dying. So
why the hoopla of the opening sentences? Well, not Nierzsche but certain uscoffers" or tidiculers" claim that the end of dogmatism has
arrived. I suspect that Nietzsche does not believe this himself for one
minute. The myriad forms dogmatism takes can become clear to us
only after we recognize the scope and implications of Nietzsche's
questions about the value of truth. Any activity based on a search for
truth "for its own sake" is dogmatic, because it precludes raising the
question, "Why seek truth?" And where questions are forbidden, dogmatism rules. In The Gay Scienee he puts it this way:
11
[w Jill to truth" does not mean "I will not allow myself
to be deceived" but-[ and] there is no alternative"! will not deceive, not even myself"; and with that we
stand on moral ground....Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem: Why have
morality at all when life, nature, history are "not
mora1"? 13
The scoffers who think they see all dogmatism in the throes of
death do not recognize what it really is or the extent of its presence.
These are perhaps the skeptics Nierzsche later criticizes, who believe
that their newly won "objectivity" demands that they refuse to affirm
or deny. "They no longer know independence of decisions and the
intrepid sense of pleasure in willing-they doubt the 'freedom of the
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
52
will' even in their dreams." 14 Nietzsche is not one of the scoffers, and
skepticism is not an adequate response to dogmatism. "[T]he worst of
harbors is better than to go reeling back into a hopeless infinity of
skepticism." IS
Part Two
Speaking seriously, there are good grounds for the
hope that all dogmatizing in philosophy, however
solemn and definitive its airs used to be, may never-
theless have been no more than a noble childishness
and tyronism; and perhaps the rime is very near when
it will be comprehended in case after case what really
has been sufficient to furnish the cornerstone for
such sublime and unconditional philosophers' edifices
as the dogmatists have built so far: any old popular
superstition from time immemorial (like the soul
superstition which, in the form of the subject and
ego superstition, has not even yet ceased to do mis-
chief); some play on words perhaps, a seduction by
granunar, or an audacious generalization of very narrow, very personal, very human, all too human facts.
(Preface)
Once Nietzsche rejects those cnttcs of philosophy who have
ingested the "gentle, gracious lulling poppy of skepticism;' he suggests
that dogmatism might manifest merely the growing pains of philosophy, the naive attempts of a youthful beginner, full of ardor and noble
ambition. When Nietzsche tells us there are grounds for this hope, he
has in mind such signs as the decline of belief in Christian dogma,
which he announced in The Gay Science with the pronouncement, "God
is dead:' 16 This decline has come about through the ever-increasing
�VERDI
53
severity of the Christian demand for truthfUlness, and along with it
has come a growth in pessimism, that is, in the possibility of raising
the very question of the value of existence. To Nietzsche these are
signs that philosophy is beginning to shed its worn out dogmatic skin,
one which had been needed, and had served a usefUl purpose, but may
have outlived its time.
Nietzsche views these events as full of hope for philosophy's
future. He cares about philosophy, and it means a great deal to him
that the so-called death of dogmatism not signal a death of philosophy itself. but a coming to maturity after the necessary naivete of its
youth. Nietzsche's philosopher is
the man of the most comprehensive responsibility
who has the conscience for the complete development
of manY
Unlike the scholar and the scientist,
a philosopher demands of himself a judgment, a Yes
or a No, ... about life and the value of life. 18
Nietzsche then holds out to us the further hope that soon we shall
be able to see on exactly what kinds of foundations "unconditional
philosophers' edifices" have up to now been built. He first mentions
"any old popular superstition," from which he singles out what he calls
uthe soul superstition;· one form of which is the subject and ego
11
superstition:· For Nietzsche,
11
superstition !I is not necessarily a bad
word. At certain times during the development of a people, superstition is "actually a symptom of enlightenment;' a "delight in individuality;' and a "sign that the intellect is becoming more independent:' 19
At those times superstitions can give rise to
11
individuals" who mark
the "highest and most fruitful stage" of a culture. But once a supersti-
�54
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tion has outlived its usefulness, its remains, deeply embedded in the
beliefs of a society, can function as a basis for the erection of colossal
fictions, which Nietzsche believes need to be exposed, weakened, and
dismantled.
Nietzsche's criticism of the soul and ego superstition begins with
a characteristically brief critique of "materialistic atomism" in Part
One of Beyond Good and Evil, an argument which rests ostensibly on the
suggestion made in the eighteenth century by Boscovich that atoms
might be understood not as particles or substances, but as centers of
force or fields of influence. Nietzsche compares him favorably with
Copernicus, when he says that
[wJhile Copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does not stand
fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in
the last part of the earth that "stood fast"-the
belief in "substance," in "matter;' in the earth-residuum and particle-atom.
Then he goes on.
One must, however, go still further and also declare
war, a remorseless war to the knife, against the
"atomistic need" which still lives a dangerous afterlife
where no one suspects it.... [O]ne must also, first of
all, give the finishing stroke to that other and more
calamitous atomism which Christianity has taught
best and longest, the soul atomism,
by which Nietzsche means "the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible:' He leaves the way open to a
new version of the soul-hypothesis, such as 'mortal soul; and Soul as
11
1
�VERDI
55
subjective multiplicity; and 'soul as social structure of the drives and
affects' :• Nietzsche then goes on to question the belief that we possess
uimmediate certainti' of the existence of the self" or the 1:'
11
11
When I analyze the process that is expressed in the
sentence, "I think," I find a whole series of daring
assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible,
to prove; for example, that it is I who think, that
there must necessarily be something that thinks, that
thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a
being thought of as a cause, that there is an "ego;'
and finally, that it is already determined what is to be
designated by thinking.
It was pretty much according to the same schema that
the older atomism sought, besides the operating
"power;' that lump of matter in which it resides.
Nietzsche even suggests that the soul superstition supports the
false distinction between ufree will" and "unfree will/' or between that
which is a cause of its own motion and that which is not.
When we project and mix this symbol world [of
cause and effect] into things as if it existed in itself;'
we act once more as we have always acted-mythologically. The "unfree will" is mythology; in real life it is
only a matter of strong and weak wills.
11
The second kind of foundation for dogmatism which Nietzsche
uncovers is language. He returns repeatedly throughout Beyond Good and
Evil to the theme of the power of language to falsifY, mislead, and
seduce. In fact the book has begun with a joking bit of grammatical
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
metaphysics, for part of the significance of the opening question"Supposing truth is a woman-what then?"-turns on the fact that in
German, as in the Romance languages and in Greek, the noun for
11
truth" is feminine. Nietzsche seems to be saying, let's see what we can
do with grammar, what we can spin out from an accident of language.
English provides no simple way of capturing this subtlety, an example
11
of Nietzsche's own capricious humor."
But grammatical jokes are deep, as Wittgenstein said. The falsifYing power of language, and the philosopher's responsibility to recognize it and make use of it, lie near the heart of Nietzsche's concerns
in Beyond Good and Evil. In section 20 he writes:
The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek,
and German philosophizing is explained easily
enough. Where there is affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar-l mean, owing to the unconscious domination
and guidance by similar grammatical functions-that
everything is prepared at the outset for a similar
development and sequence of philosophical systems.
Later, in section 34, he asks even more trenchantly:
What forces us at all to suppose that there is an
essential opposition of utrue" and ufalse"?...Why
couldn't the world that concerns us-be a fiction? And if
somebody asked, "but to a fiction there surely
belongs an author?"-couldn't one answer simply:
why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the
fiction, too? Is it not permitted to be a bit ironical
about the subject no less than the predicate and
object? Shouldn't philosophers be permitted to rise
above faith in grammar?
�VERDI
57
Even what he refers to as the "fundamental faith of the metaphysicians in opposite values" rests on the awkwardness of language
which "will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees
and many subtleties of gradation:'
In a short and unfinished early essay, entitled On Truth and Lying in
a Nonmoral Sense, Nietzsche argues that not only does language not adequately represent reality, but also that only through our collective forgetfulness of the origin of truth and falsehood are we led to imagine
that language does have this power. Nietzsche suggests that the concept of truth originated in a social agreement to end the "war of each
against ali;' which established "the first laws of truth:' The fact is that
"the creator of language ... only designates the relations of things to
men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest
metaphors:' 20 Language, therefore, is rhetoric, because it
u
conveys an
attitude or opinion, a partial view rather than an essential knowledge
of the thing" ( R, xiii). Concepts are formed through equating what is
essentially unequal. through seeing the individual as a representative of
a kind rather than in its full particularity, which would be closer to our
actual experience. Concepts simplif)r experience and therefore falsify it.
This seems to me to be a complete reversal of what Hegel says in
the section in The Phenomenology on Sense-Certainty, which is
a view of our awareness of the world according to
which it is at its fullest and richest when we simply
open our sense ... to the world and receive whatever
impressions come our way, prior to any... conceptual
activity. 21
Hegel argues that when the subject of sense-certainty is asked to
say what he experiences, he finds his attempts to be empty. If he tries
to speak of the 11 here" and unow" which he is experiencing, not even
.
,
he h unse If can know wh at h e means by "here" an d " now," an d "I"
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
unless he means something universal, beyond the immediate place,
moment, and person, For Hegel the particular is nothing other than
the irrational and the untrue. Nietzsche, however, believes that the initial effort to verbalize experience and thereby bring it to consciousness
constitutes the first falsification of experience, the first lie, the original
sin of language. "Fundamentally, all our actions are altogether incomparably personal, unique, and infinitely individual....But as soon as we
translate them into consciousness they no longer seem to be." 22
Thus, Nietzsche does not mean to say that language "falls short"
of reality, or that it could perhaps be improved to reflect reality better.
No,
even our contrast between individual and species is
something anthropomorphic and does not originate
in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond
to the essence of things: that would of course be a
dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as
indemonstrable as its opposite.
What then is truth)
A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and
anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically
intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which,
after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.2'
Nietzsche does not suggest that truth could be anything but a kind
of agreement about words, and therefore a falsification. He himself
uses every manner of grammatical and rhetorical device in his writing.
But we can become less forgetful of the origin of truth, perhaps to our
�VERDI
59
benefit. What he says in section 24 of Beyond Good and Evil might now
seem less paradoxical than it usually does on first reading. There he
writes that
only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far-the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will:
the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue!
Not as its opposite, but-as its refinement!
This account of language poses serious problems for Nietzsche's
own writing. He knows that he cannot remove himself from the "nets
of language" 24 except by remaining silent, which he might have done
by employing a different medium for his art. But the tradition he
intends to call into question has itself been established and nourished
through language, and so he believes his critique must also be accomplished through words.
The third cornerstone for the grand edifices of the dogmatists has
been laid by bold extensions of narrow, limited, personal human experiences. The naivete of the dogmatist allows him to create facts for all
mankind from a parochialist perspective. Nietzsche writes in a section
srx:
Gradually it has become clear to me what every great
philosophy has been so far: namely the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and
unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or inunoral)
intentions in every philosophy constituted the real
germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
60
"There are moralities;' he says in section I 87,
which are meant to justify their creator before others.
Other moralities are meant to calm him and lead him
to be satisfied with himself....With others he wants to
Wreak revenge, with others conceal himself....
Of Kant in particular Nietzsche says:
Even apart from the value of such claims as "there is
a categorical imperative in us;' one can still always
ask: what does such a claim tell us about the man
who makes it?
The answer Nietzsche puts in Kant's mouth is, "What deserves
respect in me is that I can obey-and you ought not to be different from
me."
Part Three
The philosophy of the dogmatists was, let us hope,
only a promise across millennia-as astrology was in
still earlier times when perhaps more labor, money,
ingenuity, and patience were lavished in its service
than for any real science hitherto: to astrology and its
"supra-terrestrial" claims we owe the grand style of
architecture in Asia and Egypt. It seems that all great
things first have to bestride the earth in monstrous
and frightening masks in order to inscribe themselves
in the hearts of humanity with eternal demands: dogmatic philosophy was such a mask, for example, the
Vedanta doctrine in Asia and Platonism in Europe.
�VERDI
61
Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be conceded that the worst, most lingering, and
most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist's
error-namely, Plato's invention of the pure spirit
and the good in itself. But now that it is overcome,
now that Europe is breathing freely again after this
nightmare and at least can enjoy a healthier-sleep,
we, whose task is wakifulness itself. are the heirs of all that
strength which has been fostered by the fight against
this error. To be sure, to speak of spirit and the good
as Plato did meant standing truth on her head and
denying perspective, the basic condition of all life.
Indeed, as a physician one might ask: "How could
the most beautiful growth of antiquity, Plato, contract such a disease? Did the wicked Socrates corrupt
him after all? Could Socrates have been the corrupter
of youth after all? And did he deserve his hemlock?"
(Preface)
Nietzsche does not deny the greatness of dogmatic philosophy, a
greatness at least as powerful as astrology, to which we owe the
magnificence of the pyramids and other grand edifices throughout
Asia. He implies that astrology is a mask, perhaps a mask which had
to be worn by what he calls "real science;' before it could expect
human beings to be equal to its demands. Dogmatic philosophy, too,
he hopes, has been simply the shocking and terrifYing mask philosophy has been required to wear, to allow it to make its way into the
hearts of men. The teaching of the Veda in Hinduism is an example
from Asia of such a disguise, while Platonism has been the European
version of the mask.
Nietzsche singles Plato out from among the many dogmatic
thinkers of European philosophy, because his error has been the worst
�62
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and most dangerous, that is, his invention of the pure spirit and the
good in itsel£ One might even be tempted to suggest that the sum and
substance of Nietzsche's negative teaching is that there is no pure spirit and there is no good in itsel£
Is Nietzsche's disagreement with Plato on these two important
matters enough to explain why he calls Plato's error the worst and
most dangerous? Other dogmatists have held similar views: Lucretius
comes to mind as a materialist who seems not to have believed in pure
spirit, and as for not accepting the good in itself, I can suggest HegeL
Nietzsche says that Plato's influence through Christianity has been
enormous; this might be good reason to take aim at him. But even this
seems not to be enough, especially considering with what great respect
Nietzsche always viewed Plato, who possessed, he says, "the greatest
strength any philosopher so far has had at his disposal" (I9I). Besides,
Nietzsche goes on in the Preface to say that the specific form of dogmatism Plato represents has been overcome, and that Europe is once
again breathing freely; But this release from the so-called Platonic
nightmare only allows us a more comfortable sleep. For the heart of
Nietzsche's struggle with Plato is that in order to speak of the spirit
and the good as Plato did, he had to deny perspective, which Nietzsche
calls "the basic condition of all life;' and which he often couples with
its correlative concept, interpretation.
Perspective, as Nietzsche understands it, is not equivalent to
"point of view" in the sense that one might be able to adopt other
points of view, positions from which to look at something-say, a
sculpture-but from which we might shift, to get a new take on things.
All ordinary seeing through the eyes is perspective seeing in this sense,
but is not what Nietzsche means by perspective.
Another more subtle view of perspective could be the experiences
of Leibnizian monads. Leibniz writes in the Monadology that
because of the infinite multitude of simple substances there are, as it were, just as many different
�VERDI
63
universes, which are, nevertheless, only perspectives on
a single one, corresponding to the different points of
of view of each monad. 25
[E]ach simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror
of the universe.
A monad differs from a body in that space and time are both qualities of the monad, and not extrinsic to it. That is, a monad is not in
space in any usual sense.
Nietzsche sometimes sounds like Leibniz, as when he says that
[i]nsofar as the word "knowledge" has any meaning,
the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise,
it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings ....It is our needs that interpret the world. 26
Just as each monad reflects God from a unique perspective, so, too,
we might think, we interpret the world each from our own unique perspective. Nietzsche's "will to power" might be one such perspective.
Perhaps some perspectives are better than others! just as some monads
reflect God more fully. And maybe Nietzsche believes "will to power"
is one of those better perspectives, perhaps the best one.
On either account-perspectivism as analogous to visual optics or
to the spiritual optics of Leibnizian monads-perspective would itself
be understood from a vantage point outside perspective. In the case of
the eye, one admits the existence of objects to be seen and space in
which both we and the objects co-exist. In monadic perspective, the
reflections are not essentially spatial but spiritual: God is the object
which the monads "view" or "reflect." And so on this account, too,
perspective in the end requires at least a viewer and a viewed. When we
turn to uinterpretation;' there, too, we would require a text, a scene, a
�64
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
clue to be interpreted by an interpreter, The number of possible perspectives and interpretations need not be limited in either account, and
it is imaginable many will exist alongside one another.
Nietzsche, however, for whom perspective is "the basic condition
of all life;' holds a different understanding of it, one which seems to
teeter on the brink of conceptual incoherence.
It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is
worth more than mere appearance; it is even the
worst proved assumption there is in the world. Let at
least this much be admitted: there would be no life at
all if not on the basis of perspective evaluations and
appearances."
And in The Gay Science, he says:
How far the perspective character of existence
extends or indeed whether existence has any other
character than this; whether existence without interpre11
tation, without "sense;· does not become nonsense";
whether, on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation-that cannot
be decided even by the most industrious and most
scrupulous conscientious analysis and self-examina-
tion of the intellect; .for in the course of this analysis
the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its
own perspectives, and only in these, 28
The paradox that haunts this account of Nietzsche's perspectivism
can be stated thus: Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that all understanding, all knowledge, is perspectival and interpretive. But if it is,
how could we know this, since the intellect would always possess only
�VERDI
65
a perspectival view of its own working, not the God's-eye or objective
view that it would seem to require? That is, if the intellect creates its
own world, it can never discover this, because any experience it has is
one which it creates. Kant side-steps this problem by accepting as given
the existence of necessary truths about experience, that is, synthetic a
priori truths. These serve to remove him from the total immersion in
perspective Nietzsche proposes. Kant achieves his perspectival success
along the same lines as does Leibniz, that is, by a conceptual dualism
which permits him to entertain the hypothesis that we create experience while not at the same time committing him to the belief that that
hypothesis, too, is a product of perspective. Nietzsche's thoroughgoing monism, if such we may call it, will not permit this because it does
not admit that there is anywhere to stand-or even to imagine-outside
perspectival knowledge. "Facts are precisely what there are not, only
interpretations:' 29 Truth always belongs to a perspective, much as all
language consists of metaphor and anthropomorphism. There can no
more be a final interpretation or ultimate perspective than there can be
a last style of painting or a last school of music. And just as there cannot be a painting done in all styles, or a piece of music written in all
schools, there can be no perspective or interpretation which encom-
passes all perspectives, all interpretations. Nor can one adopt a perspective at will, for perspectives represent forms of life, and it is only
through a new perspective that an old one can be seen as the simplification it was.
This truth-that truth is creative-is essentially life-giving,
according to Nietzsche, because it is itself a manifestation of the will
to power of all things. An interpretation imposes an order on what is
essentially without order. "Interpretation is itself a means of becoming master of something:' 30 This doctrine of perspective as will to
power is neither relativistic nor nihilistic: not relativistic because it
does not claim that every perspective represents merely an incomplete
or inadequate view of the world, as Leibniz attributes to his monads;
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not nihilistic because it does not claim that all interpretations are of
equal value, that all are equally life-promoting. Nietzsche's perspectivism has its roots in Heraclitus's aphorism, panta rei, ouden menei, every-
thing changes, nothing remains the same. The world as such possesses
no character to be discovered, but only characters to be created. 31
To return to Plaro: he is not alone among dogmatists in denying
the perspectival nature of truth, but he is the classic case. In fact all
dogmatism denies perspective. All dogmatism reserves at least one
truth as untouchable, one Vlh ich may not be ca!Ied into question and
which must therefore be considered binding on all people. The danger
Nietzsche sees facing modern man is that he shall continue to sleeppeacefully now, but sleep nonetheless. Modern man is characterized
especially by his belief that his freedom from Platonism and
Christianity implies that he is now objective and impartial, or can be
whenever he should so choose. The success of science and scholarship,
and the rise of the historical sense, only serve to encourage modern man's
conviction that he is on the right track to arrive at truths about nature
and man's place in it, even without the support of pure mind, the good
itsel£ and God. Nietzsche considers this "good conscience" of modern man to be merely another period of sleep, because the dogmatic
center of the scientist's and scholar's pursuits has not yet been honestly confronted. Even the anti-Platonism of empirical science has at its
core mathematical physics, and "mathematics has very much to do
with the pure mind of Plato:' 32 In The Gay Science Nietzsche says:
it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests ...that Christian faith which was also the
faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is
divine.-But what if this should become more and
more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine
any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie?
�VERDI
67
For Nietzsche the belief that truth has been found poses a threatening seduction, threatening because the denial of perspectivism can
hinder the future development and enhancement of mankind, which,
he believes, requires perpetual experimentation of the most radical and
dangerous kinds, including the continual overcoming of old beliefs
and ways of seeing by new ones. In The Gay Science he says that "the
secret of harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the
greatest enjoyment is-to live dangerously!' His concern is strikingly
similar to Socrates's concern in the Phaedo. There Socrates wants to lure
his friends away from the seductive nihilism of misology, the hatred of
the logos, of discussion, because of its repeated failure to arrive once
and for all at the truth concerning the most important things. For
Nietzsche the belief that one has arrived at the truth, or at a method
for finding the truth, threatens mankind as much as the misologist's
depressing belief that the truth can never be found. Both Socrates and
Nietzsche, while perhaps inhabiting opposite poles with respect to
what they consider the highest values for man, nevertheless stand
remarkably close in their fear that discussion and exploration about the
value of life might eventually die.
Part Four
But the fight against Plato or, to speak more clearly
and for "the people;' the fight against the Christianecclesiastical pressure of millennia-for Christianity
is Platonism for the people;'-has created in
Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit the like of
which had never yet existed on earth: with so tense a
bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals. To
11
be sure, European man experiences this tension as
need and distress; and twice already attempts have
been made in the grand style to relax the bow-once
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
by means of Jesuitism, the second time by means of
the democratic enlightenment which, with the aid of
freedom of the press and newspaper-reading, might
indeed bring it about that the spirit would no longer
experience itself so easily as a uneed:' (The Germans
invented gunpowder-all due respect for that!-but
then they made up for it: they invented the press.)
But we who are neither Jesuits nor democrats, nor
even German enough, we good Europeans and free, very
free spirits-we still feel it, the whole need of the
spirit and the whole tension of its bow. And perhaps
also the arrow, the task, and, who knows?, the goaL..
(Preface)
With the image of the tense bow in the first sentence Nietzsche
alludes to Heraclitus, one of his heroes, and perhaps his model for
Zarathustra. Heraclitus says:
They do not apprehend how being brought apart it is
brought together with itself: there is a connection
working in both directions, as in the bow and the
lyre. 33
Nietzsche admires Heraclitus for four reasons: Heraclitus does not
distinguish a physical world from a metaphysical one; he denies being
for becoming; he teaches the productive power of strife and rebukes
those who would seek to eliminate it; and he rejects any cardinal distinction between man and animal. 34
From the spiritual tension produced by the struggle between
Christian dogmatism and its opponents has now arisen in Europe the
possibility of shooting for "the most distant goals:' Christianity,
unlike Platonism proper, exists for the masses. For Nietzsche this means
�VERDI
69
that the struggle with it is one of noble men against "men not noble
enough to see the abysmally different order of rank, chasm of rank,
between man and man:' As a religion for sufferers, Christianity has
"preserved too much of what ought to perish." 35
Europeans have for a long time felt this tension as a discomfort,
something they would rather be without, so that they might sleep even
better. Nietzsche pinpoints two attempts to slacken the bow. The first
is the militant reformation of Catholicism by the Jesuits after the
Council of Trent in 1563. It "focused on the priestly magic of the
Eucharist... and the education of an elite loyal to throne and altar:'
Nietzsche calls Jesuitism "the conscious holding on to illusion and
forcibly incorporating that illusion as the basis of culture." 36 The great
opponent of this movement, not mentioned by name in the Preface,
but to whom Nietzsche refers elsewhere as uthe most instructive of all
sacrifices to Christianity" (EH, II, 3), was Pascal.
Jesuitism has been vanquished, but the second attempt to loosen
the bow continues still, and that is the democratic enlightenment,
which Nietzsche calls the heir to the Christian movement. Modern
democracy is
not only a form of the decay of political organization but a form of the decay, namely the diminution,
of man, making him mediocre and lowering his
value. 37
The Germans, who are responsible for the invention of gunpowder (according to Nietzsche) and are to be praised for this, perhaps
because it is a means of enforcing orders of rank, are nonetheless to
be condemned for their invention of the press, which has been perhaps
the single greatest cause of the spread of the democratic movement
through the dissemination of newspapers.
�70
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The danger democracy poses for the future of man, the danger of
the mediocritization of man, is, as Zarathustra says, that once the last
man has become dominant, "man will no longer shoot the arrow of
his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten
how to whir!...Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same:' 38
Nietzsche worries about the leveling effect of democracy because he
considers man's nature to be changeable, and that it is only through
culture that man's nature can be enhanced or diminished. The emergence of a higher humanity requires the flourishing of culture, which,
he says,
has so far been the work of an aristocratic society... a
society that believes in the long ladder of an order of
· rank and differences in value between man and man,
and that needs slavery in some sense or other. 39
Democracy seeks to obliterate these distinctions and thereby to
promote weakening of culture and consequently of the human species,
Life simply is will to power, that is, according to 259,
essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what
is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition
of one's own forms ....
Nietzsche is no democrat, but rather a good European and a very
free spirit. As a European he disavows nationalism, But while Europe's
democratic movement is making Europeans more similar to each other,
the conditions it creates "are [also J likely in the highest degree to give
birth to exceptional human beings of the most dangerous and attractive quality;' individuals whom he describes as "an essentially supranational ... type of man ... a type that possesses, physiologically speaking,
a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as its typical distinc-
�VERDI
71
tion:' As a good European it is "the European problem" that he takes
seriously, that is, the cultivation, perhaps from this group of highly
adaptable individuals, "of a new caste that will rule Europe:' 40
Nietzsche also calls himself a free spirit. Not yet a new philosopher, a philosopher of the future, but nonetheless living "beyond good
and evil;' the free spirit recognizes that "everything evil ...serves the
enhancement of the species 'man' as much as its opposite does:' Free
spirits are
[aJt home, or at least hav[ eJ been guests, in many
countries of the spirit; having escaped again and
again from the musty agreeable nooks into which
preference and prejudice, youth, origin, the accidents
of people and books ... have banished us. 41
The free spirit distrusts thought, is free of the prejudices of past
dogmatism, and is left witb only one virtue, honesty. The free spirit,
Nietzsche himself. still feels the whole tension in the bow, and perhaps
more than that. He may also have tbe arrow in his hand, the will for
tbe task, and the vision for tbe goal.
This goal is the philosopher of the future. These new philosophers
Nietzsche calls u attempters:' He goes on:
Are tbese coming philosophers new friends of
"trutb"? That is probable enough, for all philosophers
so far have loved tbeir truths. But they will certainly
not be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, also
their taste, if their truth is supposed to be a truth for
every man.
The task of tbese philosophers is to create values.
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
With a creative hand they reach for the future, and all
that is and has been becomes a means for them, an
11
instrument, a hammer. Their knowing" is creating,
their creating is a legislation, their will to truth is will
to power.42
These thinkers, writers, preachers apply "the knife vivisectionally
to the very virtues of their time...to know a new greatness of man:' They
will be men of action and the makers of events, but only because "the
greatest thoughts are the greatest events:' 43 Their work will be with the
creation of new interpretations, new perspectives on man, and their
tool will primarily be language. Perhaps there have already been
philosophers of the future, philosophers concerned with the future of
man. Nietzsche seems to imply that Socrates was one, when he says
that Socrates "cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as he did into the flesh
and heart of the 'noble: " Perhaps Machiavelli was another. I am very
uncertain about both of these. But Nietzsche I think is one, and Beyond
Good and Evil is an example in nuce of the work the new philosophers
will be required to do. The subtitle of Beyond Good and Evil, "Prelude to
a Philosophy of the Future;' means to remind us of Wagner, whose
music was called Zukunftsmusik, future music, and whose preludes contain the motifs of the operas they introduce,
The next philosophy of the future will be post-Platonic and postChristian, since it has been Platonism and Christianity which have provided the tension for the bowshot away from themselves. It will also
be post-modern in that it will have recognized the contradiction inherent in modern man's belief in detached objectivity. Finally, the philosophy of the future will be post-scientific, not in the sense that it will
demand the abandonment of science as a human activity, but rather in
that it will recognize that man cannot be advanced through science as
long as science seeks primarily his ease and comfort.
�VERDI
73
In Nietzsche's eyes the responsibility of philosophers for the
future of man is enormous. The possibility exists that they will not
appear, or will fail, or turn out badly. Nietzsche believes that as a
species we are "still unexhausted for the greatest possibilities;' but
there is no guarantee that we shall realize them.
Part Five: Spiritual Exercises
Nietzsche believes that all concepts, types, and species are fluid,
continually subject to shifting and displacement. This radically
Heracleitean stance, that everything changes, nothing remains the
same, leads him to take another step with Heraclitus, that all of nature
lies in its acts, and that there exists a perpetual interconnectedness of
things. "If we affirm one single moment, we ... affirm not only ourselves
but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves
nor in things:' "To say to an individual, .. .'change yourself' means to
demand that everything should change, even the past:' 44
Nietzsche also believes that all knowledge requires self-knowledge
first of all. In Beyond Good and Evil, 80, he writes:
A thing explained is a thing we have no further concern with.-What was on the mind of that god who
11
counseled: uKnow thyself!" Did he mean: Cease to
concern yourself! Become objective!"
Later, in 23 I, he says:
One sometimes comes upon certain solutions to
problems which inspire strong belief in us; perhaps
11
one thenceforth calls them one's convictions:'
Later-we see them only as steps to self-knowledge,
sign-posts to the problem we are-rather, to the great
�74
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
stupidity we are, to our spiritual fate, to what is
unteachable very "deep down:'
Nietzsche believes that knowledge is a creative act, and that selfknowledge is the act of becoming who we are,
human beings who are new, unique, incomparable,
who give themselves laws, who create themselves. To
this end we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in
the world.45
It seems paradoxical that Nietzsche should speak of the self at all
in the light of his criticism of soul-atomism and his sweeping
Heracleiteanism, The resolution lies in his notion of the eternal return
of the same, that is, the belief that all events and things have occurred
countless times before just as they are occurring now, and shall occur
again countless times to come. When he first introduces this uncanny
thought in The Gay Science, in a section entitled The greatest weight, he asks
how we would respond to the proposal that
"[t]his life as you now live it and have lived it, you
will have to live once more and innumerable times
more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every
pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and
everything unutterably small or great in your life will
have to return to you,
all in the same succession
and
sequence:' ... How well-disposed would you have to
become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more
fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and
seal?46
�VERDI
75
And in Beyond Good and Evil, 56, he represents "the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being" as one "who wants to
have what was and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da
capo...to him... who makes it necessary because again and again he needs
himself-and makes himself necessary:'
Nietzsche considers the eternal return his most incisive thought,
but not because it is a novel or startling hypothesis about the universe.
Nietzsche knew that it had been proposed before; he himself attribc
utes it to the Pythagoreans, and a form of it can be found in
Empedocles. As a proposal about the universe, it cannot be proved: by
hypothesis there can be no evidence for it, since any evidence would
require that there be a way to distinguish one occurrence of an event
from an earlier or latet one, which would violate the condition that
every recurrence be exactly like every other. According to Leibniz's
principle of the identity of indiscernables, any purported recurrence
identical in every respect to the initial event could not be a recurrence
at all, but would be the selfsame event.
But Nietzsche asks not simply, could you believe this eternal
return?, but rather, can you want it, desire it, will it? The possibility or
impossibility of the eternal return as a "fact" seems less important to
Nietzsche than the act of will it would take to embrace the very concept that all things might recur endlessly. But if all things are interconnected, then what I am now requires that the world have been just
as it has been, with nothing out of place. For I am a peculiar
confluence of events, an intersection of the activities which make up
nature. To will that all might be just as it is is to affirm myself just as I
11
11
am. To say Yes" to the entire past and future is to say Yes" to I who
am in the present. This act of willing the eternal return is the act. of
willing myself, of becoming who I am. It is not something I achieve
once and for all, but is a continuing process, a self- and world-affirmation that constitutes the continuing creation of myself and incorporation of the world.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
76
The self which is thus ever becoming itself is then not the atomic self Nietzsche rejects early in Beyond Good and Evil. It is instead an
ongoing act of will, and specifically of will to power, which in forever
making the self takes into itself the past, present and future. This creation is what Nietzsche means by knowledge.
If this account of the eternal return and its connection with the
self is not entirely wrong, then we now find ourselves in a position to
suggest that Nietzsche is engaged in a new form of spiritual exercise.
According to Pierre Hadot, spiritual exercises constituted part of an
ancient tradition which considered philosophy to be a way of life, an
effort at learning how to live, and not merely a search for truths or
11
construction of systems. These exercises correspond to a transforma-
tion of our vision of the world, and to a metamorphosis of our personalitY:' Stoic exercises involved investigating, reading, listening, paying attention, meditation, self-mastery, and indifference to indifferent
things. Meditation, for example, attempts to control inner discourse by
rendering it coherent. Epicurus, too, emphasized spiritual exercises,
such as the assimilation of brief aphorisms upon which one might
meditate, and the study of physics. Philosophy seen in this light is a
therapeutic activity, the purpose of which is to produce and maintain
health in the soul.
Hadot believes that Socratic dialogues are a kind of communal
spiritual exercise, because at stake in them is not "what is being talked
about, but who is doing the talking." Socrates invites the interlocutor
to uan exal:nination of conscience;' and this requires that at every
moment the interlocutor give his explicit consent. "The subject matter of the dialogue counts less than the method applied in it, and the
solution of a problem has less value than the road traveled in common
in order to resolve it:' For the ancients, according to Hadot, the goal
of spiritual exercises is
�VERDI
77
a kind of self-formation, or paideia, which is to teach
us to live, not in conformity with human prejudices
and social conventions ... but in conformity with the
nature of man. 47
In Nietzsche's hands spiritual exercises become the ceaseless activity of self-examination in order to create ourselves and thereby become
"he poets o f our 1· "
t
1ves.
One thing is nm!ful.-To "give style" to one's character-a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who
survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their
nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until
every one of them appears as art and reason and even
weaknesses delight the eye. 48
Nietzsche says that
[ t]he Greeks gradually learned to organize the chaos by
following the Delphic teaching and thinking back to
themselves, that is, to their real needs, and letting
their pseudo-needs die out.... This is a parable for
each one of us: he must organize the chaos within
him by thinking back to his real needs.49
This activity of thought and inner discourse can have the effect of
"[imposing] upon becoming the character of being;' which Nietzsche
11
says is the supreme
will to power:'
In Nietzsche's hands spiritual exercises again assume the character
of a way of life. Philosophy, "the most spiritual will to power;' thus
also becomes a way to live, a continual making and re-making of the
self and the world, an imposition of forms and unities on the essen-
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tially formless and chaotic. Our intellectual conscience also requires
that we recognize and acknowledge the values that ground our beliefs,
for every belief is determined by some value. Nietzsche believes that
"the only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves
something... [is) tryiog to live in accordance with it:'
The aims of philosophy thus conceived parallel those of education.
How can man know himself? ...Let the youthful soul
look back on life with the question: what have you
truly loved up to now, what has drawn your soul
aloft, what has mastered it and at the same time
blessed it? ... [T)hey constitute a stepladder upon
which you have clambered up to yourself as you are
now; for your true nature lies, not concealed deep
within you, but immeasurably high above you.... Your
true educators ... reveal to you what the true basic
material of your being is. 5°
The best educator offers the student no more, but no less, than the
opportunity to acquire iosight into his own nature.
However great the greed of my desire for·knowledge
may be, I still cannot take anything out of things that
did not belong to me before; what belongs to others
remains behiod. 51
We Nietzscheans believe that no educator, not even Nietzsche, is
in -a position to prescribe to us how we are to make our lives unique.
Zarathustra warns his followers:
�VERDI
79
go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even
better: be ashamed of of him! Perhaps he deceived
you.
In the last section of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche once again
recalls Plato, perhaps his greatest teacher and deceiver. Nietzsche says:
Alas, what are you after all, my written and painted
thoughts!...What things do we write and paint ... we
immortalizers of things which let themselves be written-what are the only things we are able to paint?
Alas, always only what is on the verge of withering
and losing its fragrance!...[O]nly birds that grew
weary of flying and flew astray and now can be
caught by hand-by our hand!
This reminds us of Plato's own warning in his Seventh Letter, in
which he says about what he himself has taken most seriously that
I certainly have composed no work in regard to it,
nor shall I ever do so in future, for there is no way of
putting it in words like other studies. Acquaintance
with it must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself and of dose
companionship, when, suddenly, like a blaze kindled
by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at
once becomes self-sustaining.
The "weakness of the logos;' that is, the inability of language to
capture the philosophical insight, is no more for Nietzsche than it is
for Plato a reason to abandon the activity of philosophizing. Still, profound differences separate Plato and Nietzsche, a separation made
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
forcefully evident by Nietzsche's iotroduction of Dionysos io the
penultimate section of Beyond Good and Evil, for Dionysos is a philosopher. "Gods, too, then philosophize;' contrary to what Diotima tells
Socrates io the Symposium (202C-D).
In closiog I would like to cite a passage from Emerson, whom
Nietzsche discovered while a teenager and continued to read and
admire throughout his life. It comes from his essay "Circles;' and the
description is one I would not hesitate to apply to Nietzsche and
which, I believe, Nietzsche would not refuse Plato, Emerson writes:
The key to every man is his thoughts .... Beware when
the great God lets loose a thioker on this planet.
Then all thiogs are at risk, It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man
knows what is safe or where it will end. There is not a
piece of science but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the socalled eternal names of fame, that may not be revised
and condemned. The very hopes of man, the
thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the
manners and morals of mankind are all at [hisJ
mercy.52
Notes
I. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. D.F. Krell. (San Francisco:
Harper, I979) I-II, 4.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. R. J. Holliogdale. (London:
Penguin Books, I992) I6, I.
3. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Wcty of Lift. (Oxford: Blackwell, I 995)
82.
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.
(London: Penguio Books, I 990) Preface.
J. Holliogdale
�VERDI
81
5. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I985) ch. IS.
6. Nietzsche, p. 28.
7. Ibid., p. 246.
8. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: St. Martin's Press, I965) B, xxxv.
9. Nietzsche, p. I 6.
IO. Ibid., p. 43.
I L Ibid., p. 39; 4.
I2. Ibid., p. 2.
I3. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufinann
(New York: Vintage Press, I974) 344.
I 4. Ibid., p. 208.
IS. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History
for Life," Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, I983) IO.
I 6. The Gay Science, p. I 08.
I 7. Beyond Good and Evil, 6 I.
I8. Ibid., 205.
I 9. The Gay Science, 23.
20. "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense," Philosophy and Truth:
Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's, trans. Daniel
Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, I979) 82.
21. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
I975) 140-I.
22. The Gtry Science, p. 354.
23. "Truth and Lie," p. 84.
24. 'The Philosopher;' in Breazeale, p. liS.
25. G.W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel
Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, I989) 57.
26. Friedrich Nietzsche, The JtJll to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Press, I968) 481.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
27. Ibid., 34.
28. The Gay Science, p. 374.
29. The Will to Power, p. 481.
30. Ibid., p. 643.
31. See Alexander Neharnas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, I 985).
32. Leo Strauss, Unpublished lecture notes for a class on Beyond Good
and Evil.
33. The Presocratic Philosophers rev. ed. G S, Kirk and JE. Raven
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I957) 2I2.
34. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans,
Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Press, I962) 5-8; See
11
also, Uses and Disadvantages," ix.
35. Beyond Good and Evil, 62.
36. See Lawrence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, I996) 33.
37. Beyond Good and Evil, 203.
38. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Viking Press, I966) Prologue, 5.
39. Beyond Good and Evil, 258.
40. Ibid., 242, 251.
41. Ibid, 44.
42. Ibid., 2I I.
43. Ibid., 285.
44. Will to Power, I032; Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale
(New York: Penguin Books, I990.
45. The Gay Science, 335.
46. Ibid., 34 I.
47. Hadot, 93, !02.
48. Gay Science, 290.
49, "Uses and Disadvantages;' 2, IO.
50. Ibid., 3,1.
�VERDI
83
51. Gay Science, 242.
52. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Essays, eel. Larzer Ziff (New York:
Penguin, 1982), 229-30.
�The Power & Glory of Platonic
Dialogue
Carl Page
In Book One of his Mtmorabilia, Xen'1phon reports Socrates conversing with the sophist Antiphon. Towards the end of their conversation, Socrates speaks of sharing wisdom with one's friends:
... just as someone else takes pleasure in a good horse
or dog or bird, so I take even more pleasure in my
good friends, and should I possess anything good I
teach it, and I recommend my friends to others from
whom I believe they will receive some benefit regarding virtue. And the treasures of the wise men of old
that they have left written down in books, unfolding
the scrolls, I carefully go through them in common
with my friends; and should we see anything good, we
single it out, and we consider it great gain should we
[thusJ become helpful to one another. (1.6.I4)
Xenophon comments: "When I heard these things, he certainly
seemed to me a supremely happy man and someone to conduct those
heeding him into a good and noble life:' Xenophon's testimony to the
value of books in their relation to friends is striking, given his upright
character and worldly competence-a man fully capable of successfully leading others in the grimmest of life and death circumstances. He
must have had rather special books in mind.
What, then, is involved in reading Plato's dialogues together as
friends, carefully turning their pages, seeking out the treasures that
have been written down by a wise man of old? What ought we be after?
Carl Page is a tutor at St. John's College. This lecture was delivered at Annapolis on November
20, !998.
�PAGE
85
What would Plato have us find? What would he have happen, as the
result of our reading? The answer to such questions cannot be straightforward, but the dialogue form of Plato's writings-graciously and
thankfully-makes unavoidable our consciousness of what it means to
read them. Looked at a little more carefully, they also make unavoidable the question of what it means to speak, write, or read in the name
of philosophy, and-from another angle-they encourage meditation
on what it means to speak, read, or write at all. To presume that we
already know what a dialogue is for, what philosophical speech really
aims at, and what we should be getting out of reading Plato, is therefore to ignore, perhaps even to violate what I shall be suggesting to you
are Plato's wise and manifold purposes. In particular, your single greatest practical failing as readers of Platonic dialogue will regularly be the
assumption that you can remain spectators of its dialectical drama,
disinterested onlookers, that you can remain aloof from its proceedings to pick and choose among the thoughts you imagine the drama to
be presenting to you. Your single greatest theoretical failing will regularly be to suppose that you know the nature of the philosophical life. I
do not doubt that Plato both understood and allowed for the fact that
many people would easily make both these sorts of mistake, each in his
own way, but that should not lessen your resolve to be counted among
the readers he most wished for.
Tonight I want to assemble some reminders to help stop you
falling short of Plato's potential friendship. I hope to do that, principally by recalling how thoroughly strange the dialogues are and by
reflecting a little on why that might be. From the very start, therefore,
you can see that my speech will be far more practical and erotic, i.e.,
aimed at nudging your habits and ideals, than it will be doctrinal and
theoretic-which is to say, aimed at informing you of something. In
this respect, my speech about Platonic dialogue reduplicates the central character of the dialogues themselves.
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
A few procedural observations, First, my main design is to present a
view of Plato and his philosophical activity, rather than to justify my
interpretation of them. I confine myself to presentation, partly
because of time, but mostly because I think justification comes up as
a serious question
only after one is convinced that something is inter-
esting enough to warrant that sort of effort-should circumstances
require, It is the interest I would like to provoke first. My second note
is a confession, Although much of what follows could be called
methodological, I ofi:en find myself impatient and ungenerous with
such reflections, with abstract worries about how one ought to do
things instead of getting on with doing them. Methodology, critique,
and meta-theory tend to be airy and undisciplined, they lend themselves to indecisive, apparently endless bickering, they encourage an
odious sort of intellectual smugness, and their attention to matters of
form is frequently at the cost of return to the concrete content (whose
understanding they were originally supposed to serve). Nevertheless,
any serious well-directed work does need orientation, does need some
understanding of what it's about, and this is especially important for
those who have only just begun, In philosophical matters, the Delphic
injunction to know oneself looms as large over Socrates as
it -docs over
Kant, notwithstanding their disagreements over how best to fulfill the
responsibility. It seems, therefore, one must at some point or other run
the risks of transcendental narcissism for the sake of self-knowledge.
Third, some of the topics I shall explore will sound like variations on
the familiar, perhaps even tired old Straussian themes of esotericism,
noble lies, persecution of philosophy, and the rest. But not everyone
here has heard these important refrains. I intend to repeat my versions
of a few of them eloquently and incisively, along with a couple of riffs
I hope no one has heard before. I deliberately refer to "my versions" of
these refrains because I disagree with an underlying assumption commonly at work in their interpretation: that philosophy is by nature
politically alienated and must therefore exercise a condescending
�PAGE
87
accommodation, compelled by necessity, to the city and to ordinary
human life. Some of my reasons for this deep disagreement are woven
into what follows, though I do not make them thematic. One last
introductory word. I shall not hesitate-rather shamelessly perhapsto speak on philosophy's behalf. By my acknowledging this presumption in advance, you can at least see that I appreciate what might be
questionable about my immodesty.
The Oddities of Platonic Dialogue
A moment ago I hinted that there is something important in the
very fact of Platonic dialogues, something that goes beyond and maybe
even upsets the conventional meanings typically associated with philosophy books and their academic study. This needs to be made explicit.
PLATONIC ANONYMITY. The dialogues are fully dramatic, i.e., they
portray logoi in action and deeds of speech but never disembodied
assertions. This form is unusual and was noted by Aristotle near the
beginning of the Poetics, where he speaks of "the Socratic conversation;' classing it together with the mimes of Sophron and his son
Xenarchus (I447biO). Sophron was a fifth-century Syracusan writer,
reputedly admired by Plato. His mimes were dramatic renderings in
verse of everyday people, designed to be revelatory of their characters.
Plato's dialogues are either directly performed, simply narrated, or narrated within a performed frame, but in all cases not a word is said in
Plato's own voice, except the titles. The dialogues not directly performed permit external comment by their narrators, but there is
never-unlike the passage from Xenophon with which I began-any
authorial comment from Plato himself.
In this respect, the Platonic corpus is like the body of
Shakespeare's plays. Just as we must wonder exactly how far Prospera,
for example, can be taken to speak for the Tempest's author, or Hamlet
or Lear, so too must we wonder how far Socrates or Parmenides or the
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
88
Eleatic Stranger or Timaeus or the Athenian Stranger can be taken to
speak for Plato. This question was known to Diogenes Laertius in the
third century a.d., though many contemporary readers seem to have
forgotten it. Despite the unremitting anonymity, however, it must be
added that the dialogues are known to be Plato's and were circulated
from the start under his authorship. We are therefore meant to notice
that the dialogues contain no direct word of Plato's own. He addresses us, but he does not declare himsel£ Ancient rumours of secret
Academic teachings notwithstanding, in his own time Plato was just as
reticent about his ultimate insights and purposes, providing almost no
other clues but the dialogues themselves. They are like "the lord, whose
oracle is at Delphi," that neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign"
(Heraclitus, Frag. 93) and, like the sibyl hersel£ "with raving lips,
uttering things unlaughable, unbeautiful, and unperfumed, they reach
with their voice across a thousand years, because of the god" ( c£
Heraclitus, Frag. 92). So, Plato whispers an intriguing name into our
ears-Phaedrus (whom everyone knows to be very beautiful), Theaetetus
(whom everyone knows to be very clever), Meno (whom everyone knows
11
to be very bad); either such names or sometimes a provocative title-
Socrates' Defense Speech, An Intimate Drinking Party, Civilized Order,
Regulations,-then he draws the curtain back, to disappear, not off-stage
but behind the masks, bringing life to each and every one of his dramatis personae-the personae Platonis.
LOGICAL DERANGEMENT. The god-inspired oracle at Delphi
uttered things "unlaughable, unbeautiful, and unperfumed;' the very
same qualities we meet with in Plato's oracular dialogues. Before fully
realizing that strange fact, an experienced and competent reader might
well approach the dialogues assuming that philosophy is meant to be
or at least ought to include the art of telling, insightful speeches, and
that a philosopher's discourse should be more accurate, more illuminating, more comprehensive, and more self-conscious than any of our
other ways of talking. Plato's dialogues, however, present quite a dif-
�PAGE
89
ferent face, despite their being finished works and despite how plainly
philosophy is their centre of gravity. Individually and as a whole they
are, at first sight, if not a conceptual chaos at least a tangle of conflicting and unresolved accounts, often at cross-purposes with one another, and sometimes in ways their speakers seem not even to appreciate,
let alone understand. I list the most obvious features.
Many of the dialogues are aporetic, i.e., they lose their way and
never seem to find it again, no matter how serious the resolve with
which they began. One tends to get used to this, but the failure of
comfortable closure-even in the manifestly great works, such as the
&public-reliably irritates any classroom of first-time readers; as,
indeed, it should. Some of the dialogues that seem more doctrinally
committed, more like "proper" philosophy, e.g., Parmenides, Sophist, are
experienced by many competent readers, at least initially, as rather boring through much of their length, occasionally to the point of unreadability. A good handful of dialogues hardly seem like dialogues at ali,
if "dialogue" be understood as an earnest effort at inquiry in common.
At crucial points in almost all of them, the philosophical argument
relies on images and metaphor, conventionally the tools of poetry.
Worse still, poetry itself seems regularly to be denounced, while
nonetheless used throughout. Even writing itself is declared some sort
of mistake. Also at crucial points, the speech will sometimes turn with
utter logical seriousness to myth, to what are acknowledged within the
conversation as fanciful tales (Republic, Gorgias, Phaedo, Phaedrus). And yet,
ali these myths and images rub cheek by jowl with the most abstruse
forms of technical argumentation and intricately developed analyses,
sometimes lasting for pages and pages-pages that cause painful conceptual squinting, even for the most discursively facile of readers. Yet
again, logical precision can at almost any moment give way to outrageous fallacy, blatant non-sequitur, and shameless ad hominem attack.
Occasionally, the whole show seems a logical farce-as in the Cratylus,
the Euthydemus, and parts of the Protagoras for example-yet everyone in
�90
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the dialogue keeps a completely straight face. There seems to be no
overall plan to the dialogues as a totality; one more or less would not
seem to ruin their effect, and there is no single dialogue that might
count as their culmination or key. Nevertheless, many are linked dramatically with one another, both temporally and topically. Worse still,
some topics seem to be treated inconsistently across different dialogues, and worse again, the topical coherence of individual dialogues
has seemed to many readers to leave much to be desired (Republic and
Phaedrus have given this impression for centuries). Neither can one help
but wonder at the apparent naivete with which the interlocutors so
often proceed, only infrequently stopping to "define their terms"-as
we like to say-often plainly making large and questionable assumptions, sometimes agreeing not to pursue deeper investigations, and so
on, all the while talking about precision and whether we really know
what we think we know, how different knowledge and opinion are
from one another, and what indispensable value there is in self-knowledge.
Finally, as if it were not sufficient that we never hear directly what
Plato himself thinks, the character of Socrates-dearly a protagonist,
though not for that reason equivalent to Plato-is depicted within the
dialogical drama as notorious for his irony. Let me say straightaway,
however, that Socrates' irony does not mean that he isn't serious in
what he does say or that he says the opposite of what he thinks, either
for amusement or social convenience. Socrates' irony is that he know-
ingly never says all that he has in mind, and that he will on occasion
knowingly let his speeches and his deeds contradict one another, both
in the present and across dramatic time. Plato's irony is similar, if not
identical, in spirit. It is an irony that Aristotle described as "graceful
and generous," an avoidance of pretension, especially in matters that
are "unclear and apt to cause no small impediment" (Nicomachean Ethics
II27b22-31).
�PAGE
91
In sum, the logical or account-giving, truth-telling face of the dialogues presents a confusing, sprawling, eclectic, thoroughly unsystematic gallimaufry of irritatingly teasing hints at philosophical depth and
meaning. Beware of becoming blind to this obtrusive fact. Everyone
has heard that the whole of Western philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato, so the dialogues must be magnificently crafted speeches. Right? Well, they are, but not in the way you might expect. Their
very ugliness, their rebarbative outward appearance is itself a manifestation of the greatest craft. It is great, because we have all-by which
I mean all serious readers since Plato wrote-kept coming back in
amazement and expectation to these astonishingly ugly things. You will
often hear it said that Plato is a master stylist, and indeed he is. He is
a master stylist because he can and regularly does with facility and conviction imitate everyone else perfectly, from Aristophanes' hwnour, to
Gorgias's na'ive urbanity, from Lysias's oratory to Protagoras's logic,
from Hippias's vanity to Alcibiades' disarmingly attractive hubris. Yet
the dialogues themselves remain lopsided, ungainly, "unbeautiful and
unperfumed:'They are nothing that we expect, either as ordinary readers or as readers with more sophisticated views about the nature and
tasks of philosophy. Plato's intensely ironic dialogues, then, are just
like the ironic Socrates, whom Alcibiades describes for us in the
Symposium. Completely ugly on the outside-short, snub-nosed, goggle-eyed-yet nonetheless suffused with a hidden harmony. Like the
Silenus figures Alcibiades goes on to mention, the dialogues are cleverly contrived statuettes, ugly satyrs of undisguised desire on the outside but on the inside filled with images of gods. Alcibiades saw the
gods in Socrates, but on account of his hubristic ambition to command Socrates' eros, he failed to make those gods his own. Likewise,
the reader of Platonic dialogues must abandon the urge to possess.
Blundering, thoughtless lovers, groping after the satisfaction of their
own, preconceived lusts,
will get nowhere.
�92
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
THE ABSENCE OF MATURE PHILOSOPHY. Socrates seems to be a
sort of conversational vulture, always hanging around to see if he can
turn the carrion of ordinary conversation into a philosophical feast,
More particularly, he seems to be a sort of psychic vampire as well, circling around all the promising young men, always whispering with
some one or a few of them off in a cor'ler, as Callicles for example
accuses him in the Gorgias. In both cases the hope and promise seem
never fulfilled. There is simply no Platonic dialogue between two
mature philosophers; Zeno and Parmenides happen to be present
together with an inunature Socrates in the Parmenides, while the mature
Socrates is present but does not engage the Eleatic Stranger in the
Sophist and Statesman. As for any dialogue that actively engages truly
potential philosophers, one might look to the Republic but Plato's dialogues furnish no clue as to the later fate of either Glaucon or
Adeimantus, while in the case of the Parmenides, the promising Socrates
is for the most part an onlooker-though he is undoubtedly educated
both by what he sees and by the brief exchange that crushes his fledgling account of Ideas. It is fair to say overall, then, that while Socrates
is forever interested in getting philosophy going and that as a mature
philosopher he is clearly superior to all those he actively questions, we
never really see philosophic conversation underway in full sail, top-gallants flying. Moreover, this omission is explicitly brought to our attention in the Sophist, whose intriguing prologue leads the eager reader to
expect a third dialogue, Philosopher, once Sophist and Statesman are done.
The apparent promise, however, remains unfulfilled. There never was
such a dialogue published, and we are provoked to wonder if it ever
could have been written. We are also invited to think about why
sophist and statesman should be the topics to eclipse so bright a sun
as that.
The common spectacle of the Platonic dialogues is at least the
deferral of fully realized philosophy and more often than not the outright failure of philosophy even to show signs of a healthy beginning.
�PAGE
93
On the other hand, Plato himself is standing somewhere beyond that
absence and failure, a position he underlines for us by writing himself
out of a scene in which everyone would most have expected him to
appear-and where he was no doubt present in fact-namely Socrates'
swan-song and death, the scene that Plato dramatized in the Pbaedo.
Whatever else, therefore, that Plato takes his own philosophizing to
be, it cannot be what is represented in the drama of his dialogues. In
particular, philosophy as Plato means it to be understood cannot be a
11
simple equivalent to Socratic conversation:'
I mean that last assertion to be a little shocking. The dialogues are
often thought to be mirrors or representations of real, living communications, or at least of some idealized version of living, philosophic
communication. Moreover, this mirror image is by itself somehow
supposed to draw us too into the same sort of living communication,
as if the imitation became the deed in us by our seeing it. But Plato
did not seek to encode the living communication of philosophy by
imitating it via the drama that is constructed in and as the dialogue.
This is worth stating bluntly: Plato did not write dialogues because he
thought that the proper form of philosophy was the Socratic flim-flam
that takes up so mucb of them. The dialogues are designed to make up
for the fact that Plato cannot be here to talk with us as he would most
desire. They are the monological half of a philosophical communicac
tion that must compensate for the fact that one of the interlocutors,
perhaps the wisest one, is absent. The dialogue is first and foremost a
logos, Plato's logos. That it is dramatic and so on, is all internal to the
fact of its having been written down and published as an artfully contrived speech by one man to the entire world.
This does not sit well with a common contemporary view that
there is nothing else that should emerge from Socratic inquiry except
more Socratic inquiry, that the full, mature form of philosophy-disappointingly but somehow only accidentally missing from the dialogues-would be a conversation between Socrates and his equal in
�94
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
logical refutation. To cut a very long and depressing story short, current intellectual orthodoxy claims that the best reasons available to
human beings are always and in principle immanent to the contingent
circumstances of their inquiries, that our deepest thoughts cannot but
be fully conditioned by tradition and circumstance in ways that make
them inevitably finite and parochial, that all insight can never be more
than a single perspective, a point of view taken from within a limited
horizon. This posture has the following peculiar result: to the extent
that there is nothing absolute available in the contingent play of opinions, to that extent it starts to seem absolutely better to be able to
refute an opinion than to assert or maintain it. Human life on the
practical level no doubt calls for provisionally acceptable conclusions,
but on the philosophical or theoretical level all assertions turn out to
depend on the critically complacent failure to have discovered their
refutations, which if not around today surely will be tomorrow-or so
the fallibilist predicts and insists with alarmingly fanatical, not to say
incoherent conviction. It thus also follows that the theoretically open
mind ought to be an empty mind, a mind fortified with a sturdy arsenal
of techniques for preventing any opinion from lodging within it. To have
any opinion at all is to risk the embarrassing accusation of intellectual naivete. Whatever its own merits, this is not the view represented by
Plato's Socrates or his dialogues. Although Socrates claims to lack wisdom-in the teeth of the fact that no one, either inside or outside the
dialogues, believes him when he does so-it is stili wisdom that he
loves, not the lack of it. Contemporary critical thinkers love the lack,
and this tempts them into making a fetish of transcendental detach~
ment and to indulge an infinite, unfalsifiable suspicion for what
Socrates in the Apology calls his "human wisdom" and which elsewhere
turns out to be the science, note that word, the science of erotics.
There is, however, a more substantial point of comparison.
Although both Socrates and the contemporary critical thinker agree
that most people are unhelpfully opinionated (which is by no means
�PAGE
95
the same as to say that all their opinions are wrong), the critical thinker
imagines that the fitting response is to work hard on disinterested
mind-skills for keeping all tempting beliefs up in the air, for keeping
the naivete of commitment at arm's length. For Socrates, on the other
hand, the fact that most people are opinionated is a much deeper,
murkier problem, tied up with what souls most deeply want and what
they most deeply fear they can't get. The examination of genuine opinions, i.e., the deep-seated convictions you have about what is true,
good, and beautiful, the convictions whose belief is not a matter of
choice, the examination of those sorts- of opinions is a far more
deli-
cate matter than testing for reasonableness-even if self-styled logicians knew precisely what that really is, which they obviously don't. I
say that so confidendy because I have never yet heard of a logician
helping anyone understand Plato, or Hegel, or Nietzsche, for example-all of whom I take to be entirely reasonable thinkers. They
haven't done much for Aristode either. Plato makes the need for something else especially clear by having his Socrates talk about two unusual and hitherto unrecognized arts: psychic midwifery in the Theaetetus
and philosophical rhetoric in the Phaedrus. The reader is also meant, of
course, to notice how often those same arts are portrayed at work
throughout the dialogues, both by the characters and by Plato himsel£
Philosophical inquiry turns out to be a far more complex activity than
tying people in argumentative knots or never being at a loss for a clever
or merely correct reply. It includes a moral, soul-tending dimension
that pays attention to pedagogical, rhetorical, ethical, and political
matters as well, in addition to the surface dimensions of logic, analytic technique, and epistemic responsibility.
TRANSITION. I have briefly considered Plato's artfully contrived
anonymity, the constant baffling of our logical expectations, and the
dramatic absence of philosophy in a mature form. These observations,
together with the phenomena of irony, both Platonic and Socratic,
plus a glimpse into certain soul-tending arts, all point to the partially
�96
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
hidden yet systematically intrusive presence of philosophizing in a
more complex, shadowy form than Socrates' public wrestling matches
or the Eleatic Stranger's diacritical gymnastics. Plato speaks through
indirection and means to indicate that philosophy cannot and ought
not to speak as straight as one might at first suppose, This initially
unsettling conclusion finds several well-known echoes in the Platonic
epistles. "There is no composition by Plato, nor will there ever be one,
but those now said to be his belong to a Socrates grown young and
beautiful" (3I4c). And then in a great and famous passage from the
Seventh Letter:
But this much I can certainly declare concerning all
these writers, or prospective writers, who claim to
know the subjects which I seriously study, whether as
hearers of mine or of other teachers, or from their
own discoveries; it is impossible, in my judgment at
least, that these men should understand anything
about this subject. There does not exist, nor will there
ever exist, any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For
it does not admit of verbal expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued application to the
subject itself and communion therewith, it is brought
to birth. in the soul of a sudden, as light that is kindied by a leaping spark, and thereafter nourishes itself
(34IB)
Nevertheless, Plato wrote dialogues all his life, taking astonishing
pains over their intricate construction. He cannot therefore have
thought them superfluous or trivial, despite his recognition of their
necessary limits. By all normal standards of truth-telling coherence the
dialogues are manifestly deranged; my task now is to address the partly hidden method in their apparent madness,
�PAGE
97
Philosophy in the Ironical Mode
According to the reports of antiquity, Aristotle wrote Platonicstyle dialogues in the earlier part of his career. They are, regrettably,
lost-all the more regrettably, seeing that Cicero praised them as golden (though what else should we expect from someone who spent the
greater part of his early years in the Academy teaching rhetoric?).
What we have from Aristotle are documents that may reasonably be
thought of as treatises or at least notes to treatise-like expositions. As
it happens, there is nothing in the Aristotelian corpus as we have it that
can confidently be taken as published writing in the manner of Plato's
dialogues and it is certainly the case that much of what we do have
presents an aporetic, tentative, less than declarative face. Even so, and
with all due allowance for hints at even Aristotelian indirection in what
seem to be far more straightforward texts, the Aristotelian writings
bear witness through much of their bulk to an expository, more recognizably academic style of philosophical speech than the baffling
Platonic form. The comparison shows that Plato perfectly well understood what it would mean to write philosophy in that more straightforward mode-and that Aristotle knew perfectly well what it would
mean to write in the ironic, self-deprecating dialogical mode. In neither case, then, is the form a stylistic quirk or an historically dictated
necessity. Moreover, for both Aristotle and Plato it was a conscious
decision to write at all, since Socrates, just as self-consciously did not.
DIALOGUE VS. TREATISE, What is at stake in this stylistic difference
between dialogue and treatise? At first glance, the Aristotelian style of
telling, philosophical speeches gives one reliably direct ways of talking
about and thinking about the ordered, eidetic structure of things, both
human and non-human. Even if one accepts none of his specific metaphysical results or if one prefers to emphasize the open-ended, aporetic character of certain of his inquiries, Aristotle's noetic tools and cat-
egories have proven themselves of permanent worth. The notions of
substance, essence & accident, form & matter, actuality & potentiality,
�98
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
together with Aristotle's interpretative specifications of aitia1 arche1 kine-
sis, psyche, phronesis, episteme, and praxis are all ingenious and virtually indispensable devices for anyone interested in the peculiar business of
philosophical articulation, Aristotle's insights constitute a huge fraction of our philosophical patrimony, and amount to a legacy we
should receive with both gratitude and respect, While at least equally
deserving of gratitude and respect, Plato's ironic form of philosophical telling does not emphasize in the same way the ordered structures
that may be seen and understood. Rather, Plato points to what it is like
to be seeing structure, what it is like to be moved by truth, to be astonished by beauty, to aim at and hope for the good. Not only that, Plato
also indicates the manifold ways in which human beings variously fail
and fall short in their attempts to be knowing and wise, Actuality and
achievement rule in Aristotle's philosophic art, eros and lack in Plato's,
The one emphasizes what may be understood, the other the fragile,
unsteady soul that does the understanding. Aristotle is thus the
philosopher of detachment, Plato the philosopher of integrity.
Correspondingly, the danger of Platonic philosophizing is self-obsession and the narcissism of intelligent desire, while the danger of
Aristotelian philosophizing is self-forgetfulness and the indulgence of
theoretical hubris. Strange as it may seem, although Aristotelian exposition puts a premium on truth-telling, in the end it is more guarded.
Aristotle tends to suppress the erotic, the madness of self-transcendence and the nuances of self-knowledge. In particular, he muffles
what is dangerous about philosophy, whereas Plato is comparatively
open about it. Aristotle provides many theoretical insights for which
one can be very thankfUl, yet it is worth recalling that on the death of
Alexander he had to flee Athens, pursued by an indictment for impiety. For help in understanding that disturbing fact, one will find more
extensive guidance in Plato.
In distinguishing an eidetic emphasis from an erotic one, I do not
mean to say that the two modes are rigidly correlated with dialogues
�PAGE
99
and treatises, as if Plato never really presented a philosophical idea or
Aristotle never worried about the integrity of thinker and thought,
Platonic dialogues can in places be as expository as Aristotelian treatises can in places be ironic and full of finesse. Both modes have their
relative purposes and merits. Sometimes, one is simply ready to hear
an idea, to be told how it is with things, to be shown where the joints
of the world are. At other times, and for different reasons on different
occasions, one needs to understand the circumstances of such truthtelling. "Aristotelians" and "Platonists" have quarreled over these mat-
ters for centuries and will, doubtless, brawl for centuries more. As a
matter of temperament, different human beings find themselves favoring one emphasis rather than the other, but both dialogue and exposition are equally flexible in the hands of masters. In fact, I am quite sure
that philosophic masters need to be masters of both. Let me just state
then that masterful philosophical articulation, in thought or in speech,
requires equal command of what I shall call eidetics and erotics. As just
suggested, eidetics correspond to the objects of contemplation, the
intelligible nature, structure, and wholeness of things. The dimension
of erotics includes how the soul is disposed to think and to act, and
how responsible it remains to itself and its conditions as it engages
both. As it happens, i.e., just as a matter of historical fact, the artful
irony of Plato's dialogues as we have them communicates far more
about philosophical eros-and its failings-in relation to the truth
than do the Aristotelian writings we have. No doubt Aristotle could
have told us more, and has probably told us more than is usually realized, but I think that the matter of fact rests on a matter of principle,
namely, that Platonic dialogue is truer to the manifold needs and realization of lucid, philosophical existence. In particular, it is Platonic
dialogue that can more reliably save us from ourselves, since it is with
respect to the erotic dimension of human endeavour that we keep getting in our own way. that we are the originating sources of our own
unnecessary wanderings and corruption. Eidetics tend, in comparison
�100
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
though by no means mindlessly, to take care of themselves-one sign
of which is that they're more teachable.
ORIGINS OF IRONY. Plato hides, though not with complete invisibility, behind his characters. Chief among them is a character, namely
Socrates, not only notorious among his fellow players for his irony but
plainly to us his spectators coy, manipulative, and far from even-handed. Taking courage from the apparent straightforwardness of
Aristotelian exposition, we can hardly forbear an exasperated cry: Why
all the fuss? Why the teasing, not to say irritating indirection? What
prevents philosophy from speaking forthrightly, from saying all she
means? Must philosophy always play false, or perhaps play games, with
our truth-telling hopes and ambitions? In short: what, if anything,
calls for Platonic irony? If we cannot answer such questions, then Plato
can be left to his idiosyncratic, sibylline whimsies. Unsurprisingly, the
dialogues themselves furnish many clues to a more generous understanding. Given that writing dialogues cannot be all there is to the
philosophical life, it will be helpful to consider such writing in light of
that living whole. As I read the dialogues, actual philosophical life has
four principal domains of responsibility: work, pedagogy, guardianship, and civics. By work I mean master-work, the full, unimpeded realization of philosophical insight. By pedagogy I mean the husbandry of
potential and apprentice philosophers. By guardianship I mean the
preservation of philosophy against both external assault and internal
corruption. By civics I mean philosophy's citizenly life and duty within the larger human community that gives it birth. All four domains
suggest good reasons for philosophical indirection, for less than
unqualified truth-telling, though I shall not here be able to pay full
attention to them all.
The most common initial excuse offered for Platonic irony, for
why the dialogues seem so ugly and manipulative and confusing,
appeals to pedagogy, to the requirements, as it is commonly formulated, of getting readers to think for themselves. Certainly, in any worth-
�PAGE
101
while education and a fortiori any philosophical education, mere
instruction is not sufficient for understanding. Instruction alone leaves
us, as Nietzsche put it, with a bellyful of undigested knowledgestones; enough to calm our hunger for a while perhaps, yet ultimately
unable to nourish and satisfy. To the extent, therefore, that the dialogues aim at guiding and training potential philosophers, it can safely be expected that they do more than instruct, that they challenge
when we get lazy, inspire when we are daunted, and that they somehow
aid proper noetic digestion. As usually understood, however, this
encouragement "to think for oneself" is interpreted as the develop-
ment of critical thinking skills, skills that may permit you to grind
down those knowledge-stones but which do nothing to help you assimilate whatever truth they may have contained. One must also be wary of
supposing that such pedagogical aims, even when understood in the
best sense, exhaust the possible reasons for dialogical irony, that teaching determines the boundary of Plato's communicative intent. It does
not.
There is another, deeper difficulty with the idea of thinking for
onesel£ Namely, that everyone already does; it's part of the problem,
not the solution. To quote from Heraclitus once more: "though the
logos is common, the many live supposing themselves to have a special
understanding" (Frag. 2). At the most important level, then, irony or
stimulating indirection is a proper part of philosophical pedagogy not
so much because young learners need tricky help with the hard work
of assimilation-which they certainly do-but because we human
knowers are constantly prone to collapse into that state of conscious-
ness Hegel identified as self-certainty. Once in such a state, we can usually only be levered out again with well-meaning, i.e., noble, lies. Being
in the know, the natural condition of the human soul, is so obviously
our greatest adaptive advantage that we keep getting entranced by partial realizations of our wonderful capacity, we keep generalizing our
local insights into global wisdoms. But how is such self-satisfied con-
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
102
viction to be moved, led out of itself. educated? How does one come
to recognize that one does not know? Hegel's dialectic, to the extent
that it may be thought of as containing a pedagogical response to the
problem, is a logical bludgeoning that has turned out to be all but useless, except in the case of a uniquely motivated not to say perverse few.
Socrates, in contrast, seduces many a complacent soul-though not
every one-out of its proclivity to noetic self-satisfaction with all
manner of charms and deceits, as does Plato in turn at another level
of refinement, The essential psychagogical trick in most cases is to
make the higher truth look somehow attractive within the perspective
of the lower, more confined horizon. Plato's Eleatic Stranger classifies
such tricks as belonging to that species of the image-making art that
works with phantoms (fantastics) rather than with likenesses ( eikastics). The distinction is made in a dialogue entitled Sophist (236c).
Philosophy's strictly educative concerns, however, have definite
limits, since not every soul is capable of fully realizing her promise. We
moderns do not like to hear things like this, partly because we tend to
think that reason ought by and large to be perfectible by methods universally available to all and partly because we hate to think that possibilities are limited or that freedom alone might not suffice for realizing the good. Plato is more hard-headed. Serious attraction to philosophy is no guarantee at all of its fulfilhnent, as may be seen, for example, in Apollodorus of the Symposium, who was at least wise enough to
know this fact about himself. Furthermore, while Socrates will converse with whoever comes his way, he does not undertake to teach
everyone, Some souls he passes on to others, often guided by the
admonitions of his daimonion, his divine sign:' His daimonion, of
course-his little daimonic thing-is an inflection of the daimon eros,
in whose affairs he is expert. So Socrates will sometimes help and
sometimes turn aside those who will never be able to manage all that
philosophy requires. As with most serous matters, it is a risky sort of
.discrimination, easily incurring public odium. In Socrates' case, that
11
�PAGE
103
risk is the essential meaning of the historical accident that wrapped his
erotic daimonion up into the civic charge of impiety, of importing new-
fangled gods, an innovation partly responsible for his execution. As a
final point it needs to be noted that infatuations with philosophy are
not always so benign as Apollodorus's. The tyrannical ambitions of
Alcibiades and Critias, for example, both gifted intellectually, were
blamed on their association with Socrates, while Plato's Seventh Letterfrom which I have already quoted-exists principally on account of
the havoc wreaked on philosophy's public, indeed international, reputation by Dionysius the Younger, Tyrant of Syracuse, in his efforts to
make Plato's wisdom his own.
My guiding question is whether or to what extent the irritating
indirection of Platonic dialogue can be understood as exercising philosophical responsibility. The particular demands of teaching provide
some plausible grounds, but there are others. Some of these are rather
easy to overlook, once inside the comforts provided by contemporary
academic freedoms. But not only are those freedoms hard-won and in
need of constant maintenance (a task for which philosophy, in virtue
of its disciplinary competence regarding the relation of theory to practice, is the proper guardian), neither is peace the uniform condition
within our necessarily parasitic Republic of Letters. Academic politics
is notorious for its pettiness and intolerance-itself a hardly accidental fact-but more significant are the manifold theoretical disputes over
demarcation, hierarchy, and methodology across and between the various disciplines. Regarding these foundational and procedural
reRections, philosophy's competence and even presence is held in deep
suspicion by the positive disciplines. Within the so-called university,
faction it would seem is the norm-no matter what ideals one might
prefer or hope to see there.
Not everyone can be fully philosophical, you might think that's a
shame; not everyone wants to be philosophical; well, that's their choice;
but not everyone wants philosophy around. That's dangerous. Hence
�104
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the need for what I called philosophical guardianship. Both philosophy
and what is philosophically best in all of us cannot rely on being left
alone. In either the personal or the political case, there are several
intrusive challenges to philosophy's well-being within its larger community: the psychic community of manifold desires on rhe one hand;
the civic community of individual agents on the other. The fights in
borh cases depend on a hunger for wisdom, The Platonic dialogues
emphasize two main sources of intrusive challenge, and though I shall
discuss them mostly in terms of the civic paradigm, the Republic's own
brilliant likeness of city to soul should keep the psychic paradigm
equally in mind. According to Plato's dialogical imagery, then, the
challenges come (I) from the other men of logoi, of whom the two
main classes are poets and sophists, and (2) from the men of the city,
who share wirh philosophy an ambition for the noble but disagree on
the location of its highest form. The latter challenge also has two arms:
that philosophy subverts decent, conventional politics ( Anytus,
Cleitophon), and rhat philosophy is adolescent, laughable, and unmanly (Callicles, Thrasymachus). Adeimantus, who stands for what is necessary and best within the large yet still limited horizon of the city,
bluntly restates these rwo accusations in the middle of the Republic:
philosophers are eirher useless or depraved. They therefore deserve no
place in human community, let alone to be enthroned as its only competent kings. Perhaps the clearest overall Platonic symbol of the political challenge is the dialogue entitled Socrates' Defense Speech, while an
emblem for rhe challenge from rhe men of logoi may be found in that
gigantomachy mentioned in the Sophist, that never-ending battle
between the hard-headed, aggressive ''motion men"-whose general,
so we learn in the Theaetetus, is Homer-and the gentler, more generous "friends of the forms:'
Plato's implied account of rhe nature and grounds of rhese several challenges, I cannot examine in detail here but it is, I think, tolerably clear rhat the predicaments are, in all cases, serious and abiding
�PAGE
105
ones. Astute Protagorean prudence, Hippian technical competence,
and effective Gorgian rhetoric all seem far more beneficial-both in
themselves and certainly to their practitioners-than Socratic elenchus
could ever be. Socrates' wisdom appears only to numb people and
make them angry or unhappy. Horner, Sophocles, and Aristophanes all
seem more inspiring and companionable than philosophy's austere
explanations and deflations, from which the gods are missing and in
which, if the divine be mentioned at all, it seems aloof and indifferent
to .human concerns. Too much talk, and talk for talking's sake, are
indeed shameful and unmanly, while delving too deeply into the origins of things does indeed run risk of undermining civic loyalty, familial respect, and even the self-confidence that is a necessary condition
for any worthwhile deed. All these tensions have a symbolic focus in
that disturbing scenario at the end of the Republic's most memorable
image: the philosopher returning to the Cave would be set upon and
killed by those still shackled there, if they could get hold of him. Their
opinions are not so true as they imagine them to be, formed as they
are by the shadows cast from artifacts and statues of real things carried above and behind them by poets, sophists, and politicians, and
they would react with hostile fear if they knew. Yet the lesson is not
that the Cave-dwellers are all contemptibly ignorant and wicked; it is
that pure wisdom is unbearable to the incompletely enlightened soul.
I say "incompletely enlightened" because too bright a light is unbearable, only to those who can already see. There is both a fire and muted
daylight in Plato's Cave. Athens that prided itself on its freedom of
discourse, its accomplishment in tragedy and its welcome to the
sophists, nonetheless executed Socrates and indicted Aristotle.
Philosophy cannot be an unqualified human good, because it is not
unqualifiedly safe to tell the truth. We all know this already. Frankness
is a gift and honour reserved for close friends, and even there it's
difficult. Nor should we be surprised to learn that the truth is dangerous, if-as we hear so often-that knowledge is power. Socrates let
�106
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
himself be executed to vivify these sorts of unsettling facts for all
thoughtful souls to come, knowing that Plato was there to write about
it in a way that would keep the recognition safe within the memory of
subsequent generations.
The several differences between what is philosophical and what is
not are none of them merely qualitative; they are &aught with threat
and anxiety of an order that civility alone cannot control because their
roots lie deeper than the city. Furthermore, Plato's sustained attention
to the various assaults on philosophy suggests that none are to be
regarded as accidental, that there are good if incomplete reasons why
philosophy should suffer from them and it is therefore incumbent
upon those pursuing her to understand the justice within such fates. To
the extent that the assaults are not accidental, the need for irony in
dealing with them is more than politic accommodation, Philosophy
needs to make a peace with politics and poetry, with the healthy decency of civic life and with the consoling charms of comedy and tragedy,
but such peace is at best a very unstable friendship of unequals,
Moreover, the instability is reproduced within the individual soul as
well. Each of us must make his uneasy peace both with the needs of
practical life and with the enchantments of art, if we are to live as
thoughtfully as possible, The ironical Socrates in Plato's ironical dialogues can be seen constantly negotiating these inequalities and their
attendant dangers. Budding philosophers can be thankful for the tips.
Guardianship and pedagogy deal, respectively, with the privations
and the potentials of philosophizing. Actual or fully-fledged philosophizing remains, Insofar as irony entails in some sense a playing false,
it might seem that irony could at best be only conducive to and never
constitutive of philosophy's focal activity-which might for the
moment be characterized as consorting with the truth. Yet irony
belongs here too, I think, at the heart of philosophy's defining concern.
�PAGE
107
Philosophical account-giving or truth-telling has to be ironical to
the extent that what philosophy is obliged to mean cannot in principle
be given all at once. Philosophical comprehensiveness entails primacy,
universality, and lucidity, i.e., its truth-telling must be a self-illuminated knowledge of ultimate principles in relation to what is. Among
other things, this implies that any philosophical account aims at simultaneous knowledge of the conditions that make possible and justify its
thematic claims; it must not only tell the truth, but somehow also tell
the truth of its telling as well. These conditions for the possibility of
a speech, however, cannot be given along with the content of the
speech-at least not in the same, linear, thematic way. Hence the logical necessity for a two-faced mode of speaking: one aspect to declare
what one wants to say, the other aspect to show that one knows exactly how and why one can say it. Such a two-faced mode of speech is
properly called ironic because it cannot state all that it means at once,
though it is not thereby prevented from evoking the wholeness of the
understanding it articulates-on the condition~ that is, of a generous
listener with an eye for reading between the lines. Failure to appreciate
that philosophy requires at least this sort of irony easily leads to measuring its discourse by a mathematical standard, since the latter is a reasonable measure for interim, though never for primary, insightfulness.
Similar failures have also been responsible for many a foolish trek
across the transcendental desert in search of presuppositionless beginnings. One further consequence is that philosophical speech, because
both primary and comprehensive, cannot be univocal in principle. This
is the deep ground of philosophy's ancient quarrel with poetry and
why metaphorical speech is so emphatically integral to the texture of
Plato's dialogues.
I have just argued that fundamental speech, and this would be in
whatever situation we
find
ourselves moved to give it, has to be two-
faced. It follows that univocal speech-i.e., the speech that gives the
appearance of managing to say all that it means-is not only second-
�108
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ary but also contingent upon that primary equivocation. Univocal
speech is therefore radically unstable, bounded and made possible in its
qualified way by a tacit agreement not to press inquiry beyond a certain point. Part of our human experience of this fact is the disturbing
discovery that plausible arguments can apparently be made on both
sides for virtually anything-the so-called dissoi logoi of the ancient
sophists-and that almost no one is ever persuaded by rational, i.e.,
purely univocal, words alone. In the absence of philosophy or fundamental speech, any assertoric stand thus depends as much on the will
to maintain it, on agreement to abide by the axioms that make it possible, as it does on the content of those axioms themselves. Perversely,
then, it becomes possible to take a stand in words without the corresponding insight and so too without the corresponding resolve or
choice that deemed the axiom worthy-or, rather, one takes a stand
with an alternative, unspoken resolve. That's why Aristotle said that the
difference between the sophist and philosopher lies in their resolve,
their proairesis, not in the arguments they give, Yet note that even philosophy cannot logically repair the breach caused by any such willful
detachment of speech from the soul's orientation and insight. In other
words, philosophy cannot in words alone compel the sophist to come
out of hiding. This is an important lesson of Plato's Sophist and it is
also the reason Thrasymachus blushed, for he eventually had to betray
his sophistry once he had committed himself to the theoretical probity of "precise speech:' It was a noble and educative blunder, In sum,
therefore, human logoi can never by themselves reveal the soul that
makes them-and so we must pay as much attention as we can to
deeds as well, One of the most important resources of Platonic dialogue is, I suggest, their ability to let us see how speeches are anchored
in a soul's resolve, despite the fact that a soul's true love cannot in principle be deduced from the things it says.
TRANSITION. Philosophical insight depends on a complex of conditions, both extrinsic and intrinsic, to which I have pointed under the
�PAGE
109
topics of work, pedagogy, guardianship, and civics. In their light, I
have sketched several ways in which irony is native to how philosophy
must deal with what is non-philosophical, with what is potentially
philosophical, and with the truth itsel£ Unlike Athena, human wisdom does not actually spriog fully formed from the head of Zeusthough what the myth means to say is that wisdom, once she has arisen, cannot be fully explained in terms of genealogy alone. Also unlike
Athena, human wisdom has no nectar and ambrosia with which to fortify itself against the many forms of mortal decay. This means that no
matter how like a goddess, pure theorizing on its own is by definition
irresponsible. It also follows that no part of erotics can be set aside on
the plausible yet mistaken grounds that eidetics are philosophy's only
proper concern. Socrates' erotic science may be shady and ironic, yet it
nevertheless belongs to philosophical life quite as essentially the rest.
With this granted, however, it will always remain to consider when and
to what extent one need or ought to talk out loud about such things.
I accept, therefore, that my entire speech, no matter how correct it may
be, remains vulnerable to being judged either tactless, or trivial-to the
extent that it does not emphasize eidetic content.
Why Plato Wrote Dialogues
Philosophical truth-telliog, the sustaioing activity of philosophical
life, has to be two-faced. Hegel's impressive dialectical logic is a concerted effort to smooth out this acknowledged need for irony, an
attempt to resolve self-illumioatiog iosight into a special sort of discursive linearity, into a proof that manages to demonstrate its axioms
as it deduces its theorems. His experiment in philosophical discourse
is weak, however, on two maio counts. First, the logic of Hegel's proof
\s io the end not as methodical as hoped for, indeed required.
Ingenuity is still needed io order to make the crucial transitions, an
iogenuity that Hegel from time to time facilitates with quite remarkable philosophical poetry. A further sign of this same weakness is his
�110
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
embarrassment over giving introductions, which he knows he should
not in all strictness use but which he writes anyway. Moreover, since
the introductions are where Hegel encodes the suppressed erotics of
his philosophic art, i.e., what he means to be doing as a man here and
now in love with philosophy, that's exactly why everyone finds them so
intriguing and often more interesting than what follows. Plato avoids
the dialectical inconsistency of such introductions, remaining truer to
Hegel's own insight that philosophy cannot ever in principle begin to
prove itself, that it cannot put itself on trial before the tribunal over
which it presides as judge. Perhaps Hegelian dialectic comes as close as
philosophical discourse ever can to an exhaustive, rationally systematic, univocal self-explicitation. The question, though, is when or
whether we really need such a thing. Plato wrote a defense speech for
philosophy, but he quite deliberately named it after Socrates, not himsel£ The second major weakness of Hegelian dialectic is it's being so
forbidding and dull. This is an important criticism. It says that Hegel's
philosophy by and large fails, as I noted earlier, to seduce, fails to
enflarne theoretical eros, fails sufficiently to help us make insight our
own. Platonic dialogue, in contrast, is remarkably seductive-the unattractive patches notwithstanding. In fact, part of its seductiveness is to
make itself confusing and exciting by turns, whereas Hegelian dialectic plods along in the same old difficult way page after page. Knowing
that Plato can be wonderfully lucid and inspiring from time to time,
forces the reader to seek a reason and so too a meaning for the times
when the text is experienced differently. There is nothing more inspiring than the suspicion of a hidden life, une vie inconnue, half-hidden
depths in which we might swim if only we can prove strong enough.
Platonic dialogue is a complex three-dimensional speech, rather
than a linear, discursive one. Its axes are drama) argument, and character, all
three of which follow their independent but mutually interpenetrating
logics. Take book one of the Republic. Why does Polemarchus interrupt?
How does his account of justice follow up on the account his father,
�PAGE
Ill
Cephalus, seemed to give? What is the relationship between
Polemarchus and Cephalus? Who is the better man and why? What
things seems good and best to Polemarchus? What things most noble?
What is there in a man like Polemarchus that inclines him to think of
justice and friendship in the way he does? How exactly did he get
talked into agreeing that justice is trivial and base? Are his mistakes
consistent with the partial goods for which he stands? What do
Socrates' examples tell us about Polemarchus's mistakes? What is
Socrates trying to do for Polemarchus? To what extent, if any, is he
successful? Why does he care about Polemarchus at all? Why does
Socrates argue so fallaciously in proving that justice does no injury?
What did he understand about Polemarchus to know he could get
away with the fallacy? Why is Polemarchus so enthusiastic in his final
agreement to be a "partner in battle" with Socrates? How does all this
relate to Polemarchus's action at the very beginning, when he waylays
Socrates and Glaucon? How does it fit with his later interruption, in
book five, when he objects to women and children in common? What
is Plato showing us about the limits of Polemarchus's understanding of
justice? About its merits? Why is Polemarchus there, between Cephalus
and Thrasymachus? And so on. Not until you have some reasonable
answer to all of these sorts questions, and scores besides, can you have
begun to understand Plato's meaning, his logos, in these four or five
pages. You need to become proficient in a multivariable calculus that
simultaneously integrates along the three dimensions of drama, argument, and character to produce a shimmering hologram of meaning.
This dimensional complexity allows the dialogue to mean more than
what it says in its arguments and to reveal more than its narrative
depicts. It opens up a maximum of triangulation between uncertain
souls and their shifty speeches.
Aporia, then, is superficial. It belongs to only one or two of the relevant dimensions and is therefore only an aspect of the whole. The
characters may be in perplexity, and maybe the reader is too, but Plato
�112
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is not. His pictures of perplexity are too finely drawn to be themselves
expressions of the depicted anxieties; they are too precisely located and
elaborated not to be the subject of a higher-order interpretation. What
foolishness would impel anyone to spell out ignorance and error so
intricately, and with such great pains at so great a cost of time, if he
did not have a view of what they meant? F,or all the reasons examined
above Plato conveys his interpretations obliquely, but that does not
mean the dialogues bear out no logos. On the other hand, Plato's logos
is a delicate and subtle thing, not easily separable from the theatre it
animates. It is a sure sign of having failed to understand Plato fully
when one is forced to leave or dismiss any single part of the dialogue
as incidental, as wrapping, as form rather than content. Plato does not
dress up otherwise independent, philosophically sober propositions in
gaudy, entertaining dramatic garb, as if through some aesthetic quirk
he liked to do it that way. There is indeed the thing that he means to
say, but it is not captured by the naked propositional bodies you might
take to be under the theatrical fancy dress. As I have just indicated, for
example, the philosophical meaning of Polemarchus is more than the
partially correct proposition that justice is doing good to friends and
harm to enemies. Among other things, he casts significant light on how
and why the proper discipline of spiritedness is integral to philosophy,
and why friendship is the soul of justice. Quite in accord with a principle Socrates announces in the Phaedrus, everything in the dialogue is
meaningful and everything serves the overall meaning Plato would
communicate.
This raises yet another matter of philosophical tact. According to
what I have just said, it should be possible to spell out Plato's meaning in non-dramatic terms. To be a correct translation, part of such an
exposition would have to be ironical and it would have to encompass
at least the sense of all the implied erotic elements as well as the eidetic ones. Nothing obvious prevents such a gloss, yet even if correct, it
remains to ask whether such a flattened out account could do all or
�PAGE
113
~ven much of the work Plato intended and which the dialogues have, in
fact, done and continue to do. The answer would have to be, I think,
no. In one sense, Ideas-by which I mean the fundamental archai and
intelligible structure of all things-are just not a problem; the predicament is that human souls for the most part fail to be ruled by them.
That's something no amount of theory can fix.
I asked the question: what, if anything, calls for the strangeness of
Plato's dialogues, what could justifY their indirection? A natural
instinct, on first hearing such a question, is to look for reasons that
might force or compel the response, reasons why things could not be
done in any other way. In the present case, however, the instinct is misleading. The serious grounds for Platonic indirection I have considered
do not, I think, necessitate the dialogue form. Without being necessitated, however, Plato's dialogues are a beautifully effective response to the
many things philosophy always finds needing to be done. In my own
view, they are the most beautifully effective response we have yet witnessed.
A beautiful, noble, and effective response to abiding necessities is
certainly grounds for praise, but this is not all there is to admire. By
the ambiguous testimony of his letters and by the seamless consistency of his dialogical irony, Plato could not have been writing as an intellectual to express his thoughts or as a scientist to circulate his results.
Perhaps it is hard to imagine there could be any reason for writing left,
besides vanity or madness. Yet, Plato worked at something, and no one
has ever doubted, despite the derangement and indirection of the texts,
that they' are all somehow for the sake of philosophy. I add: for the
sake of keeping philosophy alive and well. Plato wrote for the love and
care of philosophy, for its realization and well-being in living souls as
well as in real cities. He saw clearly in what senses its husbandry,
preservation, defense, and even its central truth-telling activity called
for-though without necessitating-something like his two-faced
books. Among other things, he aimed at philosophy's survival as a cul-
�114
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tural entity in the tradition we think of as Western civilization. In this
he was successful. Unbelievably successful, as may be seen in the fact
that two-and-a-half thousand years later: here we all are, still vitally
interested in what Plato had to communicate, in what a man like Plato
understood the life of wisdom to be. Moreover, we keep being affected by his enigmatic communication, both directly as we study and
through myriad historical reverberations at work behind the scenes of
our own present educations. Even after all this time, we keep taking
good things away from his amazing gift. The dialogues, then, are the
instruments of Plato's megalopsuchia, the unhurried means of a rare but
great and noble deed, the sort of deed yearned for by all men of the
highest human excellence, Plato's great-souled project was to create the
real, on-going world in which we are all now able to carry on with philosophy; he cleared the space, he gave the laws, he holds up the firmament.
As a great-souled man, all honour and praise are Plato's due but we
cannot expect him to be impressed by such external rewards, His ambition was for a deed large, beautiful, and impressive in itself. The reward
for such deeds is the overwhelming pleasure of actually doing them,
though that too is hardly the central reason for which they are undertaken. No great-souled deed can be great, if it cannot be described in
terms of a single-minded devotion that transcends selfish purpose, Yet
it does not follow from this that devotion to such an end is purely
selfless, The great-souled man is himself fulfilled by his devotion to
what transcends ordinary ambition, Thus, Plato wrote not only for
others. He also wrote for the love and care of philosophy in regard to
himself. in regard to his own glories and satisfactions as a wise, superior, and fortunate man. He also wrote his dialogues as an exhibition
of prowess, and for the sake of joy in the exhilarating exercise of his
own powers and command. In the end, Plato wrote dialogues for the
same reason God created the world: because he could. No one, absolutely no one, has come anywhere near matching him since,
�....:; The Discovery of Nature
fj:-- James Carey
On the orcular seal of St. John's College, enclosed within
the Latin motto, H Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque;' 1 are seven books and
a balance. The books stand for the quadrivium and trivium of the
seven liberal arts, i.e., arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, on
the one hand, and grammar, rhetoric, and logic, on the other. The balance stands for natural science. The founders of our program initially
tried to find a way of regarding natural science, or as we say today "science;' as contained implicitly within one or more of the seven liberal
arts. This attempt, which apparently involved such ventures of fancy as
interpreting mathematical physics as a subset of the liberal art of
music, was unsuccessful. The founders of our program carne to realize
that natural science needed a symbol of its own, and they settled on
the balance. This was a good decision, for, aside from allowing for the
elegance of the College's motto, it recognized a real distinction
between the seven liberal arts and natural science. As regards the correctness of this distinction it suffices to note that during the Middle
Ages there were many religious believers who understood themselves to
be committed to the seven liberal arts, even to be practitioners of these
arts. They did not see any conflict between being practitioners of the
liberal arts and belief in the Bible. None of the claims made by these
arts, even the claims made
by astronomy as it was practiced then, were
thought to be in essential conflict with those of the Bible. The case is
otherwise with the claims of natural science, not only with those of
modern natural science, which of course had not appeared yet, but
even with the natural science of classical antiquity. It is not for nothing that, as the introductions to physics, chemistry, and biology textbooks never tire of telling us, "science" stagnated in the Middle Ages.
James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John's College, Santa Fe. This essay is an expanded
version of a lecture given at St. John's College in Santa Fe on August 22, 1997.
�116
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Now, the object of natural science is, of course, nature. Natural
science is the knowledge of nature. I am told that there is no Hebrew
'
word that adequately translates <j>'UOL<;, the Greek word for nature, and
that the concept of nature is foreign to the Bible, at least to the
Hebrew scriptures. If this is true, it would suggest that the concept of
nature was unknown to the ancient Hebrews. And if those people,
who were aware of so much, were unaware of the existence of nature,
then the existence of nature could hardly be said to be self-evident. It
is not self-evident, then, that natural science has an object, Or, more
precisely, it is not self-evident that natural science has the object it
thinks it has.
We are often told that it was the Greeks who discovered nature,
and that this discovery is the origin of what is thought to be the
uniquely Western enterprise called philosophy. If something was discovered at some more or less identifiable point in the past, was until
then unknown, and continued to be unknown by those who were not
apprised of this discovery, then the existence of the thing in question
can hardly be called self-evident, since it pertains to the very sense of
what is self-evident that its existence is recognized and uncontested by
all, or at least becomes so once it is pointed out, The very discovery of
nature by the Greeks, if it really was a discovery, implies that the existence of nature is not self-evident,
But no lesser a thinker than Aristotle tells us that the existence of
nature is self-evident. In the Physics, we are told that animals and the
parts of animals, plants, the elementary bodies earth, fire, air and
water, and all such things have a principle of motion and rest within
themselves, and are distinguishable from beds, coats, and the like,
which have no such intrinsic principle of motion and rest, The latter
are caused by art, whereas the former have natural causes and exist by
nature. Having located the basis for the distinction between natural
and unnatural things in the presence or absence of an intrinsic principle of motion and rest, Aristotle proceeds to say,
�CAREY
117
As for trying to prove that nature exists, this would
be ridiculous, for it is evident that there are many
such things [i.e. things that exist by nature], and to
try to prove what is evident through what is not evident is characteristic of a man who cannot distinguish between what is known through itself and what
is known not through itsel£2
To try to prove that nature exists is a failure because it is self-evident that nature exists. Any propositions that one might invoke to
serve as premises from which one could deduce the conclusion that
nature exists would be less evident than this very conclusion, and for
Aristotle all so-called proofs that deduce the more evident from the
less evident are not really proofs at all. But, again, this consideration by
itself does not cast doubt on the proposition that nature exists. The
reason the proposition that nature exists cannot be proven is then,
again, not that it is false or even doubtful, but that it is self-evident.
Examples of self-evident propositions include certain propositions
of the broadest generality, such as the so-called principle of noncontradiction, and certain propositions of the most restricted particulari-
ty, such as that I have a headache right now. Neither of these propositions can be proven, but this is not because they are unknowable. The
reason these propositions cannot be proven is rather that they possess
such immediate evidence that they cannot be deduced mediately, so to
speak, from propositions possessing greater evidence. A self-evident
proposition is one that, to use Aristotle's expression, is
11
known
through itself:' It is not known through otherpropositions. According
to the passage from the Physics that we were just considering, that there
:rre things that exist by nature and that nature itself exists are propositions that are known through themselves, propositions that have the
character of being self-evident.
�118
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Of course, a proposition's being unprovable is hardly a sufficient
condition for its being self evident, for all false propositions are
unprovable and, to say the least, none of them are self-evident.
Moreover there is a whole class of propositions that cannot be known,
by the ordinary means of knowledge at any event, to be either true or
false, such as "He has a headache:' For if he tells us he has one we cannot prove that he is not lying, although we may have no good reason at
all to suspect that he is lying. There is some evidence that he has a
headache, but this evidence lacks the compelling character of either
demonstrative truth or unqualified self-evidence, We take it on faith,
so to speak, not irrationally and not without some evidence, not just
as a hunch or a blind guess, but still without apodictic certainty, that he is
telling the truth when he says that he has a headache.
So we have grouped unprovable propositions into four classes: I)
self-evident propositions of extreme universality, such as the laws of
logic; 2) self-evident propositions of extreme particularity, concerning
things I know about myself: my feelings, my reactions, and so forth; 3)
false propositions; and 4) matters of faith or, if you like, matters of
opinion solely. When Aristotle says that the proposition that nature
exists is self-evident, he does not say whether its self-evidence is due to
its extreme universality or its extreme particularity, but presumably he
thought it was one or the other, In either case, his contention is that
the existence of nature cannot be proven, And if Aristotle is right
about the unprovability of the existence of nature, but wrong in his
claim that the existence of nature is self-evident, as the alleged discovery of nature would imply, then the proposition that nature exists is
either a falsehood or something like a matter of faith,
Before proceeding further along these lines we need to look a bit
.
c1
oser at what 1s meant
by u nature."In common par1ance nature
II
"
refers typically to the whole order of things that are, as yet, untouched
by human art, things such as plants, animals, the sky above, the earth
below, and so forth. Since no one denies the existence of this order of
�CAREY
119
things, of thiogs not dependent on human ingenuity, the existence of
nature would indeed seem to be self-evident. And yet Aristotle himself
does not define nature merely as that which is not produced by art.
Rather he defines nature, as
a principle and cause of being moved and being at
rest in the thing to which it belongs, in virtue of that
thing and not accidentally.'
Aristotle presents this definition of nature about fifteen lines prior
to his claim that the existence of nature is self-evident, and indeed
alludes to it in the sentence immediately preceding the one in which he
makes this claim. So he is not saying merely that it is self-evident that
there is a difference between natural beings and artifacts, but more
broadly that it is self-evident that the former differ from the latter precisely by having nature within themselves, where nature is construed
precisely as "a principle and cause of being moved and being at rest;'
a principle that is essential to what these natural things are. It appears
to be Aristotle's teaching, then, that it is the existence of nature, understood as this very principle, that is self-evident.
The first attestation of the Greek word for nature occurs in a wellknown passage from Book I 0 of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus's companions have been bewitched by the goddess Circe. While treating
them to a feast she gave them an evil drug that caused them to forget
their fatherland, after which she cast a spell on them with her wand
and turned them into swine. When Odysseus hears of this catastrophe
he sets off to rescue his companions. But as he approaches the great
house of Circe, he is met in the sacred glades by Hermes, "of the golden wand and in the likeness of a young man:' Hermes tells Odysseus
that he has a potent herb (<j>ap[taKov e'aEJA.bv) that will keep Circe
from being able to bewitch (El~A.l;m) him. Hermes then draws the
�120
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
root from the ground and shows Odysseus its nature (qn)mv).
Odysseus says,
The root was black, but its flower was like milk. The
gods call it moly. It is hard for mortal men to dig but
the gods are capable of all things.~
When Odysseus afterward enters Circe's house, she attempts to
bewitch him as she has done to his companions. Her attempt fails, and
she exclaims to him in amazement that no other man has previously
been able to withstand the drug she has just given him. Her understanding of Odysseus's resistance to her witchcraft is that, the intellect
(voo<;) in thy breast is one not to be charmed (aK~A.orp:o<;). 5
We note that Hermes does not create this antidote to Circe's evil
drug. He does not produce it out of thin air with a wave of his wand,
so to speak. And though he knows the name that he and the other gods
call the herb, he is apparently not able to bring it into being or even to
make it emerge out of the earth by simply invoking this name. He has
L
to draw (pvnv) it out of the ground. The herb is not a human artifact. It is not even a divine artifact, i.e., a creature in the Biblical sense.
The herb grows in the earth independently, so far as one can tell, of
any contribution on the part of gods or men. By virtue of growing in
the earth independently of the making capacity of intelligent beings,
it has the nature that distinguishes it fi:om products of art, no matter
who the artisan might be. And, as most of you are aware, the Greek
word for nature, <j>vm<;, and the Greek word for plant, <j>V'tOV, are
cognate. Both words stem from the root <j>v- which means "to grow;'
" to put c th" as m u to put rort h buds" or even u to procreate," .
.
i
J.Ot
,
t.e., to
beget a like offspring out of one's own being. The nature of the herb
is its growing, the thrusting down of its roots into the earth and the
stretching out of its leaves and flower toward the light. It is this activ-
�CAREY
121
ity occurring independently of gods and men that Hermes shows to
Odysseus.
When Odysseus asserts that "the gods are capable of all things"
in this episode, we should not forget that this assertion forms one
clause of a compound sentence.
It is hard for mortal men to dig, but the gods are
capable of ail things.
All things are possible for the gods, even the digging up of this
plant, Odysseus seems to say. This, however, is a strange way of
expressing the omnipotence of the gods. 6 Moreover, it is not impossible
for mortal men to dig this plant up as well. It is only hard ( KaA.m6v)
for them to do so. What distinguishes the gods from mortal men, what
is advanced as an instance of the gods' omnipotence, and a support for
the ostensibly pious claim that "the gods are capable of ail things," is
the relative ease with which they can dig up the herb compared to the
greater effort required of mortal men.
So nature makes its appearance in Greek thought as an activity of
immanent producing, of development and growth, organization and
articulation, an activity that owes nothing to gods or men. And he who
knows it possesses a knowledge that renders him immune to certain
divine charms or bewitchments? We note that this whole episode is
not narrated first hand by Homer but by Odysseus. It is by no means
certain that Homer intended us to believe Odysseus's account of this
adventure. But he surely intended us to see Odysseus as a man whose
intelligence is illuminated by a knowledge of the natures of things, and
so to some extent by a knowledge of nature itsel£ Homer appears to
be representing Odysseus as a type, or prototype, of the philosopher.
Now it is a virtual dogma in the history of ideas that the discovery of nature by the Greeks was a unique achievement. But this dogma
is false. At least one other people discovered nature independently o£
�122
THE ST. JOHN'S REVJEW
and probably before, the Greeks, and yet understood it in essentially
the same way that the Greeks did. In ancient India there emerged a
wide variety of speculative schools of thought. 8 Some of these schools
contented themselves with merely extrapolating the consequences and
presuppositions of the reigning Vedic religion; others attempted to
penetrate to and think through the immanent monism that they discerned or claimed to discern as the implicit teaching of the Vi'das; others depreciated the authority of Vedas without rejecting them altogether, invoking their authority only when it was convenient to do so;
and still others rejected this authority openly and across the board.
Finally, one school of speculative thought subjected the fUndamental
claims of religion to a ridicule more explicit and vehement than anything comparable occurring in the West prior to the last century.
Prakriti is a Sanskrit word that is sometimes translated as "nature."
In general, this term names the material order of things, though construed dynamically rather than as mere extended and inertial stuff. The
prefix pra- could be translated as "forth" and is cognate with the Latin
pro- as in "project"-to throw forth, or "produce"-literally, to lead
forth. The root of the word prakriti is
which means to do or to make.
And the suffix -ti, like the Greek suffix -sis, the Latin suffix -tio, and its
English derivative -tion, with all of which the Sanskrit -ti is cognate,
refers to the process of doing something. Motion is the process of
moving, <j>UOL<; is the process of growing, or as we noted earlier the
process of putting forth, as in putting forth buds. And prakriti is the
process of making forth.
The Sankhya school of speculative thought regarded prakriti as one
of the two fUndamental principles responsible for the articulation of
the world. The other principle they held to be purusha, or pure consciousness, Neither principle is reducible to the other, so the Sankhya
school taught, and both are needed to account for the phenomenal
complexity of the world and the correlative consciousness of it. 9 It
.would be a mistake to regard purusha as a kind of ersatz divinity, as athe-
vkr
�CAREY
123
ism is one of the teachings of this sthool. 10 Because purusba is pure
consciousness it cannot act at all. It is just an inert, even impotent, witness. But it is still a co-original principle that does not derive from
prakriti any more than prakriti derives from it. Though there are a plurality of purusbas, there is only one prakriti, albeit internally differentiated and in a process of development, even evolution. This development
is provoked by the presence of the inactive purusba. The chief problem
with this account is making sense of how the unconscious prakriti could
be understood to be provoked to development by the presence of a
mere witness. This problem has an analogue in Greek thought. In the
,
passage from the Odyssey that we were considering, the <j>uaL<;, i.e., the
nature or growing, of the moly plant is an unconscious process that is
nonetheless presumably directed upward toward the light, though, to
be sure, only because it is at the same time directed downward into the
earth. Since nature is not art, this directedness is self- directedness. And
yet it is an unconscious self- directedness that occurs not only in the
presence of the earth but also in the presence of the light to which the
plant reaches out. For Aristotle, nature itself is a duality: it is both
matter and form. Matter is nothing actual in itself but is, rather, a
mere potentiality for assuming different forms, and hence is better
spoken of as "material:' It has no existence independent of form. The
prime formal and immaterial principle is the unmoved mover who is
pure intelligence, having only itself for its object, and moving the natural order as ultimate object of the latter's desire. Desire is all on the
side of the material component of nature, inasmuch as desire expresses
an as yet unactualized potentiality. There is a teleological directedness
not only in unconscious though living plants, but even in the inanimate
elements-earth air, water, and fire-where it is found as an impulse
( OP!!~) toward a proper end ('tEAO<;), this end being the natural place
of the element, the place in the cosmos where it belongs by nature and
to which it will return by nature if removed from it unnaturally, i.e., by
force. Just like the Sankhya conception of prakriti, qr(im<; as Aristotle
�124
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
presents it is a process animated from within. But it is so animated
only because its material principle is paired with something else, ultimately, as in Sankhya, an intelligence or consciousness not reducible to
matter, and to which matter in turn is not itself reducible.
Whether or not the irreducibility of the form-material distinction, and the separate existence of an unmoved mover that is pure
intelligence ultimately moving the whole natural order as well as the
cosmos itself, though only as object of desire, is Aristotle's last word
on the matter, it is surely his first word on the matter. But his first word
is problematic, for it is that nature is a principle (6.p)(rJ) of motion and
rest intrinsic to things that exist by nature. If nature is a duality of
form and material, with at least one formal principle transcending
nature altogether, it would seem that the two component members of
this duality, form and material, would be the real principles. Nature
would not itself be a principle but rather something derivative and secondary. Aristotle does not press this point, but the claim that nature is
a principle, an absolute origin and source of motion and rest, would
suggest that neither the material nor the formal conditions of motion
exist altogether independently of nature. 11
And it is in the concept of nature as a principle in the full sense
of the word, i.e., as a source immanent within the world, an original
and originating source that does not itself originate from another yet
more original source, that we reach what one might call the properly
philosophical concept of nature. For it is in this concept only that nature
is not reduced to the activity, to the artistic production of a transcendent artisan, whether this artisan be conceived as a separate intelli-
gence, a demiurge, or the Biblical God. 12
On looking back again at the passage from the Odyssey, we note
that nothing is in fact said about a source of light toward which the
moly plant grows. Nothing other than the growing itself is presented
as the cause of the growing. Nothing other rl1an nature is responsible
�CAREY
125
·for the directedness of nature. Moreover, right after reporting that
Hermes showed him the nature of the moly plant, Odysseus says that,
The root was black, but its flower was like milk.
The contrast, in this [tEV ... DE clause, between the blackness of the
root concealed in the darkness of the earth and the whiteness of flower
above, suggests that the two aspects of nature are less form and mate~
rial than the manifest and the unmanifest. The white flower, the
accomplished product of <jn)mc;, is visible to anyone who casts a casual glance in its direction. Without seeing the root, however, one might
well think that the plant was just propped up in the ground by a god.
The exposure of the black root at work in the darkness beneath the
surface of the earth, which exposure is accomplished only with a measure of effort, purports to show that the plant is not the product of any
artisan at all, but is the product of an activity of producing that is
immanent within the plant and not distinct from it. And, as we noted
earlier, it is this activity that is nature.
Now nature understood nonphilosophically and simply as the
order of what comes to be independently of human ingenuity, the
order of what comes to be ualways or for the most part," 13 needs no
special discovery. The return of the seasons, the rapid growth of plants
afi:er rain, the way in which animals beget their offspring, and all such
things happen in a manner manifestly different from man's production
of tools, clothing, and the like. The awareness of this difference is not
only prephilosophic, but prehistoric as well. This awareness is surely
not absent from the Bible, where some such conception of the natural
order, even if not named as such, is presupposed as the necessary background against which miracles stand out as signs of supernatural intervention from beyond. And, indeed, once the Greek way of looking at
things was encountered by members of the Jewish community around
the third century B.C., the word qromc; found its way into some of
�126
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
their writings. 14 The term "nature" also occurs several times in the
New Testament epistles. There it refers precisely to this regular order,
and even takes on a normative sense: the natural use of something as
opposed to an unnatural misuse of it:S Moreover, Aristotle had
already noted that nature, used more generally, can also mean the
essence (or being-----Ouo{a) of anything. 16 It need not have any immediate reference to motion and rest. And this use also appears in the
New Testament, at the culmination of the arresting formulation of the
Christian vocation that is found in the Second Epistle of Peter. The
addressees of this eP.istle are told that they have been called by Christ
to his own glory (&bsa) and virtue:
in order that you might become participants of the
divine nature. 17
Needless to say, this New Testament use of the word unature" has
only the most tenuous connection to the concept of nature that we
find in the Odyssey and in later Greek philosophical thought. The discovery of nature as the sole and immanent origin of the things that are
is, as we noted earlier, typically held to be an achievement of the peculiar genius of the Greek mind. Nothing really comparable to this properly philosophical conception of nature seems to have emerged elsewhere,
except under the influence of Greek speculative thought. After all, in
the Sankhya school in ancient India the starkness of the concept of
prakriti is mitigated by the concept of a complementary presence of a
multiplicity of pure consciousnesses, existing independently of prakriti and not derived from it.
But, in fact, we do encounter the properly philosophical concept
of nature, unmitigated, in another school of speculative thought that
existed in ancient India. This school is called Lokayata, from the
Sanskrit word loka, which means world. 18 The Lokayata teaching is
this worldly,'' with a vengeance. All that is, including consciousness, is
11
�CAREY
127
reducible to or derivative exclusively from the four material elements of
earth, water, fire, and air. The expression "my body" is merely a grammatical formula and the self it seems to point to as something distinct
from the body and its owner is a linguistic fiction. 19 There is only this
world, a hereafter does not exist, and death is exactly what it appears
to be:
There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul
in another world.20
There is no world other than this; there is no heaven
and no hell;
the realm of Shiva and like regions were invented by
stupid impostors ... 21
Moreover, there is no immaterial and invisible order of existence:
Only the perceived exists; the unperceivable does not
.
extst...
22
There is no divine artisan:
Who paints the peacocks, or who makes the cuckoos
sing? There exists here no cause excepting nature.23
.
Nature is the sole cause of the manifold things that are, at least of
the things that are not made by man:
The fire is hot, the water cold, refreshing cool the
breeze of morn; By whom came this variety? From
their own nature was it born.24
�128
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Sanskrit word that is translated here as "own nature" is not
prakriti but svabhava. The prefix sva- means one's own. The word bhava to
which it is attached means being, or becoming. Its root is vbhu, which
is cognate with <jru, the latter being the root of the Greek word for
nature. One might think, however, that being and nature should be
kept distinct, and that a more accurate translation of the above clause
would be,
By whom came this variety? from their own being was
it born.
Aside from the cognate relation of bhava and qn.Jm,;, there is the
striking fact that, as we just noted, the concept of nature got so broad11
ened in the West that it came to signify the essence, the what-ness"
of even eternal beings and relationships. One speaks, to repeat, not
only of the nature of plants and animals, but also of the nature of
mathematics, the nature of logic, the nature of ttuth, and even the
nature of eternity. Still, this way of using the word "nature'' takes its
departure, and is claimed to derive its justification, from an earlier conviction that what is fundamentally real is the immanent and temporal
order of existence, that being is nature, nothing more or less.25 This
conception that what is fundamentally real is nature, regarded as a
principle intrinsic to the world that lies before our eyes, a principle not
distinct from this world as its originator, is then a conception that is
not unique to the speculative tradition that originated in ancient
Greece. It is paraded quite nakedly in the Lokayata school of thought
that emerged in India around 600 B.C. If indeed the discovery of
nature, in this strict sense, and the emergence of philosophy are two
sides of the same coin, and i£ furthermore, philosophy is not a peculiar dispensation of a blind and inscrutable fate but a possibility coeval
with man, it would be surprising if nature were discovered within one
intellectual tradition only.
�CAREY
129
In any case, the discovery of something of interest leads naturally
to reflection on the thing discovered. And this holds true of nature as
well. The discovery of nature leads to natural science. And there was
natural science in ancient India just as there was in ancient Greece. We
have all heard about how primitive "science" used to be before we
moderns got it straightened out, by making it empirical, objective,
mathematical, precise, useful, and so forth. It is the case, however, that
the emergence of modern natural science, along with all its spectacu"
lar achievements both practical and theoretical, is accomplished in
large measure by ignoring and forgetting the questions that animated
premodern ·natural science. It is accomplished by getting down to brass
tacks, assembling some empirical data, taking some measurements,
crunching some numbers, and so forth, in a word, actually doing science
rather than just talking about it, as it is sometimes put rather irritably.
And one need only browse through a copy of Aristotle's Physics to see
how different both its subject matter and manner of presentation are
&om, say, a contemporary physics textbook. On the one hand, the latter is replete with mathematical formulas, and these are virtually absent
from Aristotle Physics. On the other hand, equally absent from the contemporary textbook, and propelling the argument of the Physics, are
questions as to what certain things are: What is motion? what is time?
what is place) what is the infinite? and the like. And, most fundamental of all, what is nature? Since the word "physics" comes from the
Greek word for nature, one would expect the contemporary physicist
to be more interested in trying to find out what nature is.26
But, the contemporary physicist might respond, we already know
what nature is. It is matter in motion. We have been exceedingly successfUl in determining the laws that govern matter in motion, so suceessful, in fact, that all premodern science reveals itself as useless in
comparison. And the contemporary physicist is right. The premodern
investigation of nature was virtually without utility. Utility, however, is
hardly an adequate criterion of knowledge. One repeatedly hears for-
�130
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
mulations of the kind, "we now know how to do such and such:' We
now know how to split the atom, we now know how to put men on the
moon, we now know how to cure such and such a disease, etc. This
"know how" that we have acquired is undeniably impressive. But the
knowledge of how to do something is not equivalent to the knowledge
of what something is, to knowledge of the nature of the thing in question. The philosophers who founded modernity were quite explicit
about the technological orientation that would characterize the new
science of nature. The plan was to conquer chance, to put nature on
the rack and torture it for the relief of man's estate-in general, to render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature. The philosophers
who founded modernity were hardly indifferent to the nontechnological, impractical, and intrinsically theoretical question of what nature
is. Were they indifferent to this question of "what-ness" they would
not deserve the name of philosophers at all. It has been argued, convincingly I think, that the unprecedented orientation toward utility
that characterizes modern Western science stems from a deliberate
decision on the part of the philosophers who founded modernity to
enlist the support of ordinary nonphilosophical human beings, i.e., the
overwhehning majority of human beings, for the theoretical enterprise.
Ordinary human beings should support the quest for knowledge
because of the material benefits this quest will bring to them, Prior to
modernity, the quest for knowledge was regarded by the nonphilosophic multitude as at best useless and foolish, at worst prideful and
impious. Today unimpeded theoretical enquiry enjoys almost
unqualified prestige in the eyes of the public, and consequently an
immunity from meddling, censure, and persecution by religious
authorities, whose political influence was incomparably greater prior to
the commodious living made possible by the achievements of modern
sctence.
Beneath the glitter of technology, however, and indifferent to the
public applause it evoked, genuinely philosophical speculation about
�CAREY
131
nature continued unabated. If nature were the fundamental reality, and
the source of all that is, including the human mind, how could it be
mastered by the human mind? How could the producer be mastered by
the product? The problem of the relation of mind to nature, or rather,
since nature deprived of form got reduced to mere material extendedness, the problem of the relation of mind to matter, became the most
vexing problem of early modern philosophy. Variants of this problem
were certainly entertained earlier, not only in classical antiquity but,
not surprisingly, in India as well. In the Lokayata school consciousness
was asserted to be a product of material interaction.
The consciousness that is found in the modifications
of nonintelligerit elements is produced in the manner
of the red color out of the combination of betel,
areca-nut, and lime. 27
The Lokayata school thus managed to assert a materialistic
monism.
All is
one, and this one is matter. But Lokayata seems never
to have gotten beyond simply asserting this monism. The Sankhya
school was unimpressed with the Lokayata assertion, inasmuch as what
it exhibited in boldness was not paired with an adequate appreciation
of the problem: exactly how does mere material interaction give rise to
something so apparenrly different from matter as consciousness? This
question appears to be unanswerable. The Sankhya school did not wish
to retreat from avowed atheism
by introducing a divine consciousness
as the transcendent creator of the multiplicity of individual consciousnesses that exist, nor to reduce this multiplicity of consciousnesses to different aspects of one immanent consciousness. And so the
adherents of the Sankhya school posited this multiplicity as an original and underivable given. 28 And they successfully offset the charge of
covert theism by making these consciousnesses absolutely impotent,29
attributing all action to prakriti, i.e, to material nature.
�132
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Aristotle's express teaching on this matter also is similar to that of
the Sankhya school. The first mover, or thought thinking itself or, better, intellect knowing itself, is indeed described as fully active, beyond
all potency but not thereby impotent. Its activity, however, consists, as
we noted, not in what it does to anything else, but in the autarchic unaffected self-activity of self- knowledge, and i11 what it only thereby, so to
speak, "inspires" other things to do. Where the multiplicity of individual human minds comes from, i.e., what the origin of human consciousness is, is not clear. Still, Aristotle's teaching that nature is a cos-
mos teleologically constituted and replete with forms, though hardly
answering the perplexing question about origins, at least keeps consciousness from appearing to be an anomaly within the natural order.
This teaching was not congenial to the spirit and intention of early
modern philosophy. For the mathematization of nature that was
required in order to reduce it to theoretical clarity and distinctness,
and to make possible the consequent domination of nature by art, i.e.,
to make possible technology, required reducing all apparent formal
causes to material causes, and eliminating final causes altogether. As a
consequence of this reduction, the philosophical investigation of the
relation of mind to nature ran right into the so called "mind-body
problem:' Most of the attempts at solving this problem seemed contrived, and some were so extravagant and unconvincing as to cast rea-
sonable doubts on the sincerity of the thinkers who proffered them,
Contemporaries could not help but wonder whether some of these
thinkers were not materialist monists disguising as mind-body dualists.
One early mbdern philosopher who advanced monism with as
much frankness as circumstances permitted was Spinoza. According to
Spinoza, there is only one substance, or real being, namely God. God
has infinite attributes, of which only two, namely, extension and consciousness, are possible objects of human knowledge and experience.
The bodies we see around us and our own bodies as well are but
modes, or modifications, of these two accidents of God. They are not,
�CAREY
133
however, modifications of the attribute of extension merely, for they
exhibit another feature in addition to just being spread out in space.
They resist being penetrated, being moved when they are at rest, being
brought to rest when they are in motion, and having their motion
accelerated, decelerated, or altered as to its direction. In a word they
resist any influence from without. This resistance of a body to influence
from without, to influence from another, can be expressed positively as
an endeavor (conatus), an exertion, a striving even, to preserve itse!f in
whatever state it happens to be in. Aristotle, as we have seen, had also
argued for a kind of striving ( op~t~) as propelling the natural motion
of even inanimate bodies. But Spinoza's conatus is not self-direction
toward an end, a "t[A..o;, that is at some remove from the present state
of the body in motion. It is not self-direction so much as self- preservation. This attribute of a body, its endeavor to preserve itself, which is also
called, misleadingly, uinertia;' does not exist separately from the
extendedness of the body, though it is, again, not reducible to the
attribute of extension. If bodies lacked this attribute of endeavoring
to preserve themselves and possessed instead only the attribute of
extension, they would not be bodies, material bodies, at all. They would
be three-dimensional geometrical figures only. If a body's extendedness
is the outwardness, the exteriority of a material body, the aspect that
can be perceived by an outside observer, then the endeavor to preserve
itself is its inwardness, its interiority. This endeavor to preserve itself
cannot be perceived by an outside observer though it can be more or
less deduced from the "behavior" of a body when subject to the pressures of other bodies from the outside or from the experience of the
observer when he stops merely observing this body and tries to do
something to it. The interiority of a body can be "expressed" when it
is provoked, so to speak, by something exterior to it. The endeavor of
a relatively simple body, such as a billiard ball, to preserve itself in the
state it happens be in, in spite of outside interference, can be rather
easily grasped, for it can be encountered as a felt pressure against one's
�134
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
own body. But all bodies possess this endeavor, the human body
included. And the much greater complexity of the human body,
including the complexity of the brain and nervous system, allows for
much more variegated expressions of the endeavor to preserve itsel£
But this endeavor to preserve itself is still the inwardness of the human
body, just as in the case of a simple body.
So two things, apparently, are claiming to be the inwardness, the
interiority, of the human body. They are, on the one hand, the mind,
and, on the other, the endeavor of the human body to preserve itself
in whatever state it happens to exist in, the inertia" that the human
body has in common with all bodies. Are these apparently unrelated
things, the mind and the human body's endeavor to preserve itself in
whatever state it happens to be in, in some way related? Spinoza offers
fl
a starding answer to this question.
The mind, both insofar as it has clear and distinct
ideas, and also[!] insofar as it has confused ideas,
endeavors (conatur) to persist in its being for an
indefinite duration, and of this endeavor (conatus) it is
conscious. 30
Since, as Spinoza goes on to say in the sequel to this passage, the
essence of the mind is constituted by both adequate and inadequate
ideas, the essence of the mind consists in its striving to persist in its
state, in its striving not to reach beyond itself but to preserve itself in
its present state. The essence of the mind is this conatus. And though
the mind is something altogether different from extension, it is not
something altogether different fi:om, much less separable from, body.
The mind is, rather, one though not the only instance of the conatus of
the complex human body, the attempt of this body to preserve itsel£
The conatus of a simple inorganic body, such as that of a billiard ball,
is then only the primitive prototype of the human mind." Inertia, it
�CAREY
135
11
turns out, is not quite so inert" as it sounds. After all, it consists in
resistance to outside influence and in the endeavor to maintain itself in
whatever state it happens to be in, regardless of how it got there.
Now, whatever one makes of the above account, in particular
whether the striving for self-preservation rather than, say, "will to
power;' best defines the inwardness common to all bodies, this account
does have the considerable merit, from the perspective of philosophy,
of maintaining an absolutely necessary, nonfortuitous connection
between mind and nature. 32 For although Spinoza says that the one
substance is God, and that we thinking human beings are but
modifications of its attributes, he also calls this one substance
"nature:' God is not a transcendent being, but nature itsel£33 Nature,
material nature, is however more complex than meets the eye. In fact, the
only attribute of nature that literally meets the eye is extension in
space. The other attribute, consciousness, has to be directly experienced or deduced. But Spinoza says that nature has many more attributes than just these two, an infinite number in fact. By this claim he
seems to point to a certain inscrutability in the workings of nature.
This comes out in his distinction between natura naturata, literally,
"nature natured;' by which he means the productions of nature, i.e., the
11
natural beings, and natura naturans, literally, nature naturing,, i.e., the
producing of the natural beings, or nature proper. It is this latter sense
that most closely corresponds to the distinction that we encountered
between a plant, a !j>utO'v, and the growing of this plant, its !j>vm~,
its nature proper. Spinoza also argues that this sole existing substance,
nature, is both the necessary being and necessary in all its operations.
Nature, natura naturans, does not freely choose to create its products, the
whole complex of natura naturata, as does the Biblical Creator. Nature,
again, is not transcendent to its products but immanent within them,
and so a sharp distinction cannot be made between natura naturans and
natura naturata, of the kind one must make between the transcendent
God and his freely created creatures. Accordingly, the necessity that
�136
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
holds for natura naturans-a necessity that Spinoza argues for at the
same time that he maintains it to be in large measure inscrutable-this
necessity has to hold for natura naturata as well. Nothing is contingent
in nature, neither its producing nor its products, Whatever exists has a
necessary connection with what came before, and this system of necessary connection in the world that lies qefore our eyes is inviolable
and eternal.
The indemonstrable and hence no more than hypothetical character of Spinoza's assertion, and similar assertions, of an inviolable
necessity of connection, or strict determinism, in the natural order was
exposed by Hume. Hume reasons as follows. The concept of an event,
of something happening in time, can be imagined without connecting
this event in the imagination to a preceding cause. For example, I can
imagine the sudden appearance of a second essay right next to this one,
though to_ be sure I have no reason at all to expect that such a sudden
appearance will occur. Furthermore, I can imagine this event taking
place without having to imagine a cause of it. 34 And what can be imagined can be regarded as possible, at least until it can be shown to be
impossible, by some kind of argument, one that does not beg the question. To put it another way, the idea of having a cause or, for that matter, producing an effect, has no analytic connection with the idea of an
event, an idea of something that happens. Having a cause is not part
of the meaning of an event, in the way that being a closed figure is part
of the meaning of a circle. And so I can think, without contradiction,
of an event as not having a cause in a way I cannot think of a circle as
not being a closed figure. Of course, from a consideration of the mere
concept of an if.fect I can indeed deduce that it must have a cause. This
is what is meant by an effect. But if.fect and event do not have the same
meaning. More is thought in the former than in the latter. And so from
a consideration of the mere concept of an event I cannot deduce, by
logical principles alone, that it must have a cause.
�CAREY
137
But even if one cannot demonstrate on logical grounds exclusively
that every event must have a cause, experience, at least, would seem to
teach us this. Does it? The cause of an event is not just something that
happens before the event, or even something that happens, so far as we
can tell, invariably before the event. It is not mere temporal succession
that is meant by the relation of cause and effect, but necessary connection. Now, according to Hume, though one can see temporal succession, i.e., one can see a certain event follow another, once, twice, or an
indefinite number of times, one cannot see necessary connection. If necessary connection exists at all it is invisible, a conceptual matter and
not an appearance. And so it is not directly accessible to experience. Nor
is it indirectly accessible to experience by means of an inference from
experience. For if I see two distinct events occur in a certain temporal
order on one occasion only, it would be a mistake to infer that they are
necessarily connected in that order. For example, if the first time I
observed someone carry an umbrella outside I observed a rainstorm
occur shortly thereafter, it would be a mistake to infer that carrying the
umbrella outside was the cause of the rainstorm. And if I observed
this same order of succession, this sequence, on a second, third, or a
fourth occasion, it would still be a mistake to infer a necessary connection between the two events. But how many times does this succes-
sion have be observed for one to be able to infer, logically, that the
prior event is indeed the cause of the latter? No number of successions,
no matter how large the number, really suffices to justify an inference to
a necessary connection between the two events. If it is a faulty inference to say that just because B followed A on one occasion they are
therefore necessarily connected, as effect and cause respectively, then it
is an equally faulty inference to say that just because B followed A on
many occasions they are therefore necessarily connected. To be sure we
come to expect the same succession to hold in the future that has held
many times in the past, but this expectation has no properly logical basis.
As Hume says, it is more a matter of habit than of reasoning. Reason
�138
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
finds necessity of connection not in matters of fact but rather in logical relationships only, in determining what belongs to or follows from
the meaning of a given concept, as for example an enclosed figure follows
from the meaning of the concept of a circle. 35
According to Hume, then, there is no way of determining whether
necessity of connection exists in nature at all. Now, to return to
Spinoza, the only evidence of an underlying self-contained necessity
properly called natura naturans, can be found in natura naturata, i.e., in the
productions of natura naturans and their ostensibly necessary intercon-
nections. The inability, then, to know with certainty that there are necessary interconnections in these productions, casts doubt back on the
necessity of the producer, on nature construed as the necessary being,
i.e. as natura naturans, thereby rendering Spinoza's whole system ques-
tionable.36
Finally, even if, contrary to what Hume attempts to show, one
could determine that a given event or even all events that fell within
one's limited sphere of experience had a cause, one could not infer
with certainty that absolutely all events, especially those remote in time
or space from the necessarily limited sphere of one's experience, also
have causes, much less must have them. And if one cannot know that
absolutely every event must have a cause, then one can hardly know
that absolutely every event must have a natural cause, a cause of the
same kind as the event, and that it cannot instead have a supernatural
cause. Hume, to be sure, argues against miracles. But his argument does
not get beyond trying to show that there cannot be a sufficient reason
for believing in miracles, particularly for believing in reports of miracles. This, however, is strictly speaking a theological matter, and one that
is open to dispute. Hnme's argnment about causality by itself pre. clndes a refutation of the possibility of miracles on scientific, i.e., naturalistic, grounds.
Natural science as such, then, lacks the wherewithal to refUte the
possibility of miracles, unless it borrows argnments from other
�CAREY
139
sources. For example, there is simply no way of knowing on the basis
of natural science alone that the world was not created by God only
several thousand years ago. All scientific arguments about fossil records,
geological findings, carbon dating, appeal at bottom to the principle of
cause and effect, to an absolutely exceptionless regularity within the world,
which natural science cannot itself validate but must instead presuppose.37 And to the nonscientific proposition that God surely would
not have created the world so that it would look, on scientific inspection, to be so much older than it in fact is, the nonscientific rejoinder
can be made that this proposition presupposes an understanding of
the particular intentions of God that, according to the Biblical
~"~hypothesis" itsel£ is not accessible to man.
All this is not to say that the endeavors of natural science yield no
knowledge at all. Rather, such knowledge, consisting as it does in large
measure of empirical generalizations, has an irreducibly hypothetical character to it. On the hypothesis of an exceptionless regularity within the
world, on the hypothesis that there are no supernatural causes, i.e., no
miracles, such and such consequences follow. And assuming that the
alternative hypothesis, namely, that there are supernatural as well as
natural causes, is itself not a matter of scientific knowledge but of
faith, there is also no way of knowing, with certainty, that the naturalist account of the world is not the true account. This, however, is a
much more modest and, I think, much more sensible claim than that
we know with certainty that the naturalist account of the world is the
true account.38
The discovery of nature is the event that inaugurates the emergence of philosophy, or the life of rational inquiry. Philosophy and
natural science were not originally separate enterprises. In fact, they
did not become separate enterprises until rather recently.39 Natural science is but the outcome of concentrated reflection on nature regarded
as an original, self-producing, immanent activity that is accessible to
reason and experience. Even if scientific inquiry c;umot penetrate into
�140
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the heart of nature, even if it cannot, to use the language of Spinoza,
know more than two of the infinite attributes of nature, what it does
know of these attributes is supposed to be sufficient to determine that
they are not ultimately based on the free sponsorship of the transcendent and mysterious God. And yet, as we have seen, it does not lie
within the resources of natural science to establish a claim of such
broad scope. If philosophy were natural science only, it would not be
able know that the discovery of nature was anything other than the
invention of a fiction stemming from human pride and self-delusion,
and so it would not be able to justify its conviction that its way, the
way of autonomous rational inquiry, is superior to the way of simple
religious piety.
Nor is this problem solved by the bold move of making nature the
product of an artisan, not the divine but the human artisan, i.e., the
human mind in its own transcendental dimension as what constitutes
nature, the human mind as transcendental subjectivity.4 For, apart from
other considerations, the avowal of a necessary ignorance of what
°
exists independently of the constituting activity of the human mind
leaves the door open, once again, to the fundamental claims of revelation. The necessary being is not the human mind, which we know in
our bones is finite, but the human mind's unknown cause. And precisely because this fundamental cause, this underlying though
inscrutable necessity, is unknown, there is no way of knowing that
it is
not intelligent, free, and providential. By making finite human consciousness and its constitutive work the primary "known datum;' there
is no way of knowing that the unknown source of this "given;' that
what gives it, is not the transcendent and mysterious God-unless it
turns out that the claims made about this transcendent and mysterious
God, i.e., the claims of revelation, are discovered to be self-contradictory in their own terms, or in contradiction with something else that
is self-evidently true, and hence are ultimately unbelievable.
�CAREY
141
Now, as most of you already know, and the rest of you are soon to
find out, nature as a term of distinction in Greek philosophy, is
opposed not only to art, but also to convention. This distinction was
known in ancient India as well. According to Lokayata, the school that
insisted on worldly things having no cause external to the world but
instead coming to be through solely their own nature, the Vedas, which
served as the basis for the normative character of dharma, the law or
sole right way of life, are
only the incoherent rhapsodies of knaves.4 1
The Lokayata school refused to regard the ancestral religious tradition as authoritative. The ancestral religion was the invention of
fools or impostors, more or less innocent foolishness or a deliberate
lie, but in either case a falsehood. The Lokayata discovery, if it is
indeed a discovery, that the things of the world come to be and are
governed not through the agency of supernatural causes but rather
"through their own nature" is inseparable from their rejection of the
ancestral religion as having an entirely human and this worldly origin,
and their refusal to place their allegiance in any other religion.
Now, since one and the same Greek word (vo[!b£) is used for
both law and convention, the opposing of nature to convention, as has
been frequently pointed out, renders the very expression "natural law"
problematic. A given law may well approximate the standard of nature
but, if the <j>1JGL£-VO[J.O£ opposition is absolute, it can never attain
this standard. Since, in the opposition nature vs. convention the latter
11
becomes mere convention, law too becomes something mere:' And
this is supposed to hold true even of what is called "divine law;' which
now, from the philosophical perspective attained by the discovery of
nature, assumes the aspect of something that could not hold the
unqualified allegiance of a fully rational human beingY
�142
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In the Phaedo, Socrates expresses his disappointment with the
inability of natural philosophy to give a convincing causal account of
the world of our experience, an inability particularly conspicuous in its
paltry account of the human concern with the good and the noble, and
the effect our conception of these things has on our lives. In the face
of the manifest inability of natural philosophy to make any sense of
the human soul and its concern for the good, Socrates did not advert
to religion. Instead he undertook a philosophical inquiry into the
human soul with his point of departure being A.6yoc:;, i.e., human discourse, particularly human discourse about the loftiest matters. This
specific inquiry has been called political philosophy. It distinguishes
itself from natural philosophy because it does not undertake an
inquiry into nature directly but, rather focuses on the realm of
specifically human concerns. It is a philosophical inquiry because it
does not appeal to the claims of revelation, but rather subjects these
claims to a rational critique. And it is political philosophy because, if
the divine origin of our idea of the good has been called into question,
the only to place to look for the origin of this idea, and thereby understand the idea itself, is in the human community, i.e., the political order
in the full sense of the expression. It is the ambition of political philosophy to expose what it takes to be the questionable character of
divine law by examining it in light of the opposition between nature
and law. 43
But this enterprise presupposes the validity of the distinction
between nature and law, where the former does not mean simply what
holds always or for the most part. As we noted earlier, nature construed merely as typical regularity of appearance is not only compatible with the Biblical belief in miracles as divine initiatives that are
exceptions to typical regularity of appearance, but is presupposed by
this belief. It is, rather, the bolder conception of nature as a fully selfcontained causal order, self-grounded and admitting of no exceptions,
that is required for an absolute opposition between nature and law, in
�CAREY
143
light of which absolute opposition the former is seen as the truth of
things and the latter as nothing better than a noble lie. And yet, as we
have also seen, this bolder conception of nature cannot be validated
within natural science, or natural philosophy. It therefore cannot be
uncritically or, strange to say, piously imported into political philosophy, but must receive its validation there, if it is to receive it anywhere.
It is in confronting the claims of revelation on the basis of what
we know first hand about the human soul. and the relationship of
human souls to one another under some sort of law, along with an
inquiry into the meaning of revelation itself as a possible experience
of the human soul, that the question of reason vs. revelation, or, more
accurately, the question of philosophy vs. piety-which is the most
choiceworthy way of life-gets joined in earnest. I have said next to
nothing about this side of things here. Instead, I have limited myself
to thinking through the meaning of natural science as a branch of philosophy emerging out of what is claimed to be the discovery of nature
and attempting to account for the world in worldly terms exclusively,
though prescinding from the specifically human experiences. I have
tried to show that natural science is constitutionally incapable of refuting the claims of Biblical revelation. From this it would follow that, in
the absence of a definitive resolution of the issues concerning the
scope of the specifically human experiences, the ultimate worth and
reliability of the naturalistic account of the world, the account of the
world in worldly terms exclusively, is less a matter of knowledge than
of faith.
Notes
I. "I make free men [or human beingsJ out of children by means of
books and a balance:'
•
c.
~·)I
-=
,
,..
,
2. Physics, I93a4. w<; u EO'l;LV 11 cjlum<;, 1tELpao8UL uELKVUVm
...
..
c,
,..,
....
..,
'
'
yEA.owv. cjlavEpov yap on ,;mau-ta ,;wv ov,;wv EmL
noA.A.a. 1:0 1)£ OELKVVvm ,;a cjlavEpa OLa 'tWV ~cjlavwv ou
�144
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
I
I
~
l'..,
''
(..'
6U';U[.IEVOU KpLVELV EcrtL 'tO i'lL'UU"to KUL [.111 6L'UU't0
yvwp L[.IWV.
.
3. Ibid., I92 b 20. Genitive absolute construction: OU011<; 'ti'j<;
.....
'
.... ,
"""'
.....
...,
,
~
<!>UOEW<; UPX11<; 'tLVO<; KUL UL'tLU<; 'tOU KLVEL09UL KUL 11PE,.,'l't./
/
.c.,,
..
'
[.IE LV EV qJ UJtUPXEL n:pwnu<; Ka9' UU'tO KUL !-111 KU'tU
OU[.l~E11KO<;.
4. Book IO, I. 302-306.
5. Ibid., I. 329.
6. C£ Leo Strauss, "Progress and Return," in The Rebirth of Classical
Political Rationalism ed. by T. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. I989), 252; also Seth Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre: A
Platonic Reading of the Odyssey (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield,
I997), 85-90.
7. Although Odysseus relates that he was shown, and therefore came
to see the nature of the moly plant, he does not say that he actually
ate the plant.
8. The Sanskrit word that I am translating as "speculative school of
thought" is darshana, which stems from the root vdrsh, which in
turn means "to see:' Darshana could be more literally translated as
uperception" or point of view:~ The word "speculative" captures at
least something of the sense of seeing contained in the Sanskrit.
The expression "school of thought" is appended to "speculative"
to express the historic reality that there were groups of thinkers
adhering to similar views, as in the West with the Stoics,
Epicurean, skeptics, and so forth.
9, Sankhyakarika 3.
IO. G. Larson, Classical Sankhya (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas,I979),
I 98: "Thus, the classical Sankhya recognized no absolute or creator God. To be sure, the gods may exist, but they too are simply
products of the interaction of unconscious mulaprakriti and the
11
conscious purusha:' For further discussion see the references to
"atheism" in Larson's index, especially fn. I 46. Mulaprakriti is origi-
�CAREY
145
nal or primary nature, as distinct from its derivative products or
states. This distinction is roughly comparable to that which
Spinoza makes between natura naturans and natura naturata. See below.
I I. Thomas Aquinas understandably resists regarding nature as a
principle in this strong sense of the term. (In Octo Libros De Physico
Auditu Sive Physicorum Aristote/is Commentaria), Liber II, Lectio I, 295:
H
Ponitur autem in definitione naturae principium quasi genus; et non aliquid
absolutum ... ": "Now 'principle' is placed in the definition of nature
as its genus, and not as something absolute ... " (English translation: Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, Yale University press, I963,
7I). The Greek allows for, though it does not mandate, this interpretation, inasmuch as Aristotle does not define <jrum<; as &p:xl] ...
etc., but as 'tL<; apxl] ... etc. Thomas acknowledges another tradition of interpreting Aristotle's definition in the immediate sequel
to the observation quoted above.
I2. Aristotle's God, though active in relation to himself as intellect
knowing itself (VO'Y]OL<; vo~crew<;), and as a consequence active on
others as the object of their desire and imitation, is not an artisan
(Metaphysics I 072 b I f£). He takes no interest in the cosmos.
Indeed, he is apparently unaware of its existence, inasmuch as he
thinks only of himself (I074b3I-34, Thomas Aquinas's elaboration to the contrary notwithstanding). And if, thinking only of
himself, he is unaware of moving things, he must be unaware that
he is the first mover. Being the first mover, then, does not pertain
to his essence, for of his essence, at least, he is fully aware. Cf
infra, note 37.
I3. Physics, I98b35.
I4. E.g., Wisdom of Solomon, 7:20 ( c£ I3:I!). The word occurs with
some frequency in IV Maccabees. Both these works were written in
Greek. They can be found in the so-called Apocrypha, which consists
of books that had enjoyed some standing within the Jewish community but did not make it into the canon that was established by
�146
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the assembly of rabbis at Jarnnia toward the close of the first century A.D.
I5. Romans 2:I4-I5.
I6. Metaphysics, IOI5ai2.
"'
'
/
I
I
I7. II Peter I:4, u ... LVU /\La ''W'U'tWV YEV'Y]00E 0ELU£ KOLVWVOL...
..h. I
'!''UOEW£ ... "
I8. Charvaka is another name for this school.
I 9. Sarvasiddhantasangraha, 6, quoted from A Sourcebook of Indian
Philosophy, ( ed S. Radhakrishnan and C. Moore, Princeton
University Press, I 957), 235.
20. Sarvadarshanasangraha, quoted from A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy,.22 9.
21. Sarvasiddhantasangraha, 8. 235.
22. Sarvasiddhantasangraha, 5. 235.
23. Ibid., 235.
24. Sarvadarshanasangraha, 233.
25. C£ M. Heidegger, vom l#sen und Begriff der <j>vm£: Aristoteles' Physik
B, I (l#gmarken, Frankfurt am Main, I 967), 370. (English translation byT. Sheehan in Man and World-Val. 9, No.3, Aug. I976,
268).
26. That the typical scientist is so taken aback on being asked the
most fundamental questions about nature leads one to suspect that
what motivates his research is less a love of truth than an infatuation with method. This suspicion is not much allayed by his few
attempts to answer such questions, e.g., by proclaiming that the
origin of all existence was a "big bang;' which was itself precipitated by a "fluctuation" in the "nothing" that preceded it.
27. Sarvasiddhantasangraha, 235.
28. Sankhyakarika, I 8.
29. Ibid., I9.
30. Ethics, Book 3, Prop. 9.
3 I. C£ Hans Jonas, "Spinoza and the Theory of Organism:'
�CAREY
147
(Philosophical Essays, Prentice Hall) I 97 4, 206 f£ On the relation of
mind to the organic body. Jonas argues that Spinoza is the only
early modern philosopher who can account for why the more biologically complex organism has the more complex inwardness.
32. However otherwise different Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Freud are
from one another, they all agree in regarding the mind as an essentially dynamic field of activity, as do Christians. (e.g., Matthew I2:4345; Ephesians 6:I2).
33. If nature exists of necessity, as Spinoza would like to demonstrate, then it can legitimately be called "necessary being," a formulation that the theologians had previously reserved for the transcendent God. But what exactly Spinoza gains, aside from the appearance of piety, by giving immanent nature, the world, or "the all" the
name uGod" is not easy to determine.
34. Indeed, I must imagine some events without having to imagine
their causes. For otherwise, since these causes would also have to
be events, I would have to imagine their causes as well. And so I
would be forced, in imagining any event, to imagine an indefinitely
extended series of antecedent events. And this I surely do not do.
35. Kant's argument for the synthetic a priori is inseparable from his
claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves, and
hence no knowledge of an underlying necessity such as Spinoza's
natura naturans. C£ infra, fn. 4 I.
36. There is no intrinsic contradiction in the concept of a necessary
beingjreely producing or, rather, creating other contingent, even
free, beings. But this conception ultimately presupposes, for its
cogency, the distinction between essence and energies that is developed
in the work of the I 4th century Orthodox theologian, St. Gregory
of PaJamas. (C£, e.g., The Triads 3; and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters
on Topics of Natural and Theological Science Intended as a Purgefor the
Barlaamite Corruption, Ch. 68 f£). It should go without saying that
this distinction would hardly have been congenial to Spinoza.
�148
THE ST. JOHN'S REVlEW
37. C£ Strauss, "Progress and Return;' 266.
38. And, indeed, scientists today are wont to emphasize the provisional character of science itsel£ Like many of their contemporaries they have doubts about whether there is such a thing as "the
truth;' whether there is such a thing as "Truth with a capital T'
Science is an ongoing activity of revision: ~~What is true today
may well prove false tomorrow:' uThe more we find out, the more
we know how little we know:' "No scientific account can claim to
be the final account:' This becoming modesty does, however, know
its limits. For there is at least one scientific account that is the final
account. This scientific account is the theory of evolution. We now
know, so we are told, that human life is necessarily the product of
evolution. This, at least is a Truth with a capital T. Unfortunately,
a satisfactory explanation as to why evolution is the scientific theory
that gets to lay unique claim to apodicticity and finality does not
appear to be forthcoming.
39. This fact is reflected in the somewhat anachronistic tradition of
awarding Ph.D's in the sciences-one can hold a doctorate of philosophy in, say, chemistry.
40. This, of course, is the tack that Kant takes in attempting to
refute Hume and establish, as a general principle, that every event
in nature "presupposes something on which it follows according to
a rule;' i.e., that it presupposes a cause. (Critique of Pure Reason,
AI 89; c£ B 232 f£). Whatever else one might say about Kant's
argument, it necessarily deprives nature, now reinterpreted as u an
aggregate of appearances, so many representation of the mind"
(ibid., A II 4) of any claim to be a first unconditioned principle.
In its stead the unknowable thing-in-itself assumes the character of
such a principle, entailing, according to Kant, an ascendancy of
faith over knowledge (ibid., B xxx.).
4 I. Sarvadarshanasangraha, 230. The distinction between nature and
convention in Greek speculative thought seems to have suggested
�CAREY
149
itself on the basis of travels and the consequent observation of the
variety of customs and laws under which different peoples live. (It
can hardly be accidental that Odysseus is a traveller. C£ Odyssey 9,
line I 72 f£) In the speculative thought of ancient India, a comparable distinction between nature and convention emerged, so far as
one can tell, without the benefit of travels to other countries and
solely as a consequence of reflecting on the possibility of a merely
human origin of the only known dharma: "The Agnihotra [an
obligatory rite for members of upper castes], the three Vedas, the
ascetic's three staves, and smearing oneself with ashes, - Brihashpati
[the founder of Lokayata, c. 600 B.C.] says that all these are but a
means of livelihood for those who have no manliness or sense"
(ibid.).
42. Though c£ 4 Maccabees, 5: I f£ Also, Romans 2: I 4- I 5.
43. For an illuminating appraisal of some of these issues from a
philosophical perspective, see the provocative study by David
Bolotin, An Approach to Aristotle's Physics (Albany: State University of
New York Press, I998), esp. I52-I53, and I 54, fn. I2.
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
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.
149 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
The St. John's Review, 2000/1
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kraus, Pamela
Brann, Eva T. H.
Carey, James
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Phillips, Blakely
Sachs, Joe
David, Amirthanayagam
Verdi, John
Page, Carl
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XLVI, number one of The St. John's Review. Published in 2001.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_46_No_1_2000
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
St. John's Review
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6b8d06ce38e6a21ddf56bf9ce5c6de77.pdf
10f3c0274f819bdc99f5ccb9601c60c5
PDF Text
Text
SPRING
.
2- 0
ANNAPOLIS
-..
0
5
�SPRING
THE
VOLUME
31,
0
THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JOHN 'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA
2,005
I SSUE
FE
{CONTE NTS }
PACE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
2
BOATHOUSE REPUBLIC
Spending a sabbatical at St. John's gives
the president of Randolph-Macon College
a glimpse of sports and the Program.
PACE
14
BROTHER ROBERT
He came as a visitor to learn more about
the great books program; he ended up
becoming a treasured member of the
St. John's community.
PACE
8
PAGE
14
18
PROFILES
30 On "Marketplace" David Brown (AGI95)
talks business.
34 Newspaper editor Julia Goldberg (SFgr)
Annapolis tutor John Verdi points to the
writers who most influenced Nietzsche,
including Emerson, Plato, and Pascal.
likes to make waves.
38 Nathan Wilson (AGio1) unveils shroud
mysteries.
PAGE
18
44 STUDENT VOICES
A Johnnic ponders what it means to be a
member of a community oflcarners.
NIETZSCHE HAUS
In Sils-Maria, a Johnnie revisits the ideas
of her senior essay.
PACE
28 BIBLIOFILE
21 ALUMNI NOTES
WRITERS
23
LETTERS
Annapolis tutor Eva Brann shares
aphorisms in Open Secrets/Inward
Prospects.
NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITE
PACE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
Michael Peters settles in.
A new dean in Annapolis.
A conversation across generations.
Grappling ideas-and more-in Santa Fe.
Warren Spector (A81) funds
Annapolis dorm.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
' FOREVER
48 ST. JOHNS
26
CROQUET
There's always next year.
PAGE
26
ON THE COVER
Nietzsche
Illustration by David Johnson
2
�{FROM
THE
{FROM THE BEL L
BELL TOWERS}
A NEW DEAN IN ANNAPOLIS
MICHAEL P ETERS
On the Job in Santa Fe
It's been a busy six months for
Michael Peters, president of the
Santa Fe campus. On January 17,
he arrived in his office in Weigle
Hall, and a few hours later,
donned academic robes to
deliver his first Convocation
address to January freshmen.
Then the college's Board of
Visitors and Governors arrived
on campus for four days of
meetings, and the pace has
hardly slacked ofT since.
In spite of a busy schedule,
Mr. Peters has made it a priority
to set aside time to get to know
students and the Program by
sitting in on seminar with the
January freshmen. Although he
is juggling a great deal of out-oftown travel, he's been able to
make at least one seminar a
week and hopes to continue
with the JFs through most of the
summer. He does the reading,
sits in the side chairs-as
prospectives and other guests
do-and takes in the conversation. As a West Point graduate,
former career Army officer, and
most recently, former executive
vice president of the Council
on Foreign Relations, he particularly enjoyed the discussions
on Thucydides.
"There is so much in Thucydides that directly paraUels the
world today," he says. " Right
now on the global stage we are
dealing with many of the same
issues and facing many of the
same challenges."
He also was a member of a
senior essay committee on
LIBERAL ARTS
AND CITIZENSHIP
From Mr. Peters' Convocation speech, January 17,
2005
" ....You and I will be participating actively in this intellectual
community-a community which believes chat a liberal education is good for its own sake, but is also crucial for citizens of
our country and our world if, as former Dean Scott Buchanan
wrote in the college catalog from the late '30s, we are to:
'Distinguish fact from fiction, between principle and case,
between opinion and insight, between propaganda and
instruction, and between truth and falsity.'
"These attributes of citizenship are as important now as
they were in the dark days prior to World War II. Today, our
nation honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, who
demonstrated that the ideas and character of one man can have
a profoundly positive effect on many.
"It has become almost a cliche to say we are part of an
interconnected and complex world-a world that faces profound
issues of war and peace, poverty and plenty, disasters, plagues
and pestilence both natural and man-made, to name a few.
These issues require thoughtful and informed public debate if
we are to come up with imaginative and workable solutions.
Dealing with these problems makes a liberal education not a
luxury, but a necessity. In the individual and collective choices
we must all make, bumper stickers won't do and you won't find
bumper stickers at St. John's." ♦
{T
THE
Co
LL
B .
The Brothers Karamazov-one
of the highlights of his St. John's
experience to this point.
Observing January freshmen
take their first tentative steps in
the Program and participating
in a senior's culminating experience gave him appreciation for
the growth a student experiences in four years at St. John's.
There's also a great deal
of work to be clone in cultivating relationships with the
community and the state of
New Mexico. A step in that
direction was hosting the
state's Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness on campus.
The event attracted state
leaders including Gov. Bill
Richardson and U.S. Sen.
Jeff Bingaman to the
St. John's campus.
The schedule for Mr. Peters
and his wife, Eleanor, won't
slow down much this summer.
He'll be busy greeting visitors
to the campus who come for
Summer Classics, hosting his
first Homecoming in July, and
getting ready for his October z8
inauguration. At his request,
the inauguration ceremony
will be simple and without
much fanfare.
St. John's College . Spring 2005 )
ELEANOR AND MIKE PETERS HAVE
BEEN ON THE ROAD, MEETING
ALUMNI AND FRIENDS.
"There isso
much in
Thucydides
that directly
parallels the
world today. "
MICHAEL PETERS,
SANTA FE PRESIDENT
St. John's students continue
to surprise him with their
diverse talents and extraordinary thirst for learning. " I often
reflect on these young men
and women and what their
contributions will be to our
world. They're learning,
through the Program and the
method, to address the most
important questions life asks of
us-helping them learn not what
to think, but how to think." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
Shortly after President
Christopher Nelson announced
that tutor Michael Oink (A75)
was selected dean of the
Annapolis campus, Dink
received both "congratulations
and condolences" from his
colleagues.
The congratulations referred
to the great honor it is to be
selected by one's peers for
such an important position.
The condolences-most meant
in jest-spoke to the burdens of
the job: long hours spent in
committee meetings, hiring
and tenure decisions, meting
out justice in disciplinary
issues, and making other
difficult decisions that affect
the lives of students. It's also
not easy to take a long breakfive ye ars-from the classroom.
"It's true that tutors regard
ourselves as model learners,"
says Dink. "And there's always
the sacrifice of giving up our
primary activity for a while.
It's probably love for the
community as a whole that
motivates any tutor to want to
be dean. You have the chance
to see that St. John's is the best
that it can be."
Dink looks forward to
moving into the dean's position
July 1, succeeding Harvey
Flaumcnhaft, who served for
eight years. " It's an opportunity for a more thorough and
deeper involvement with the
college," he says. "It's a
challenge."
He feels fortunate that
his predecessor made great
strides in his years as dean: in
faculty development, support
for students, and forging bonds
with Santa Fe. "I'm very grateful to Harvey- he's left things
in great shape," he says.
After spending a year-ancl-ahalf at Harvard, Dink entered
St. John's as a Febbie. A high
school English teacher had
suggested the great books
program at St. John's, but at
the time Dink believed, "I
could get the same thing at any
good school." However, in his
philosophy classes, Oink found
his professors lecturing from
notes or teaching their own
books. He wasn't reading the
books he wanted to read and
wasn't encountering many
students who were serious
about their studies.
He returned to Harvard after
an unsatisfying first year, but
by the middle of sophomore
year, his thoughts returned to
St. John's. "J spent the reading
period for my exams at Harvard
filling out the Febbie application," he says.
After St. John's, Oink went
on to graduate study in philosophy at Catholic University.
Five short years after graduating from the St. John's, he had
{ T THECo
.
TOWERS}
completed the coursework for
his doctorate and was back at
St. John's as a tutor in Santa Fe.
"I knew I would like to be a
teacher, and the idea of coming
back as a tutor had been in the
back of my mind through grad
school," says Dink. In the
summer of 1980,Dink received
a call from Robert Bart, then
dean in Santa Fe, who needed
to fill a last-minute appointment. Dink flew o ut for an
interview and joined the
faculty.
WHILE MICHAEL DINK (A75) WILL
MISS THE CLASSROOM, HE IS LOOK·
ING FORWARD TO THE CHALLENGES
OF BEING DEAN.
In 1984,he transferred to
Annapolis where he also served
as co-director of athletics, first
with tutor Bryce Jacobsen
(class of 1942), and later with
Roberta Gable (A78). He was
then and remains a big fan of
St. John's College . Spring 2005 }
3
the college's intramural
program. " Intramm·als allowed
me to play sports, and I became
a pretty active athlete," he says.
Dink received a grant from
the National Endowment for
Humanities that allowed him to
spend a year pursuing questions in the works of Plato and
a second year leading a faculty
study group and delivering a
lecture.
Dink's three-year term as
director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis from 1998 to
2001 was good preparation for
the dean's office, he believes.
"I t's on a much smaller scale,
but the responsibilities are
similar-you're involved with
other segments of the college
community, publications,
financial aid, transcripts, being
responsible for students. It
does give you some sense of
what's required in the dean's
office."
Dink looks forward to
working with "all segments of
the community, including
Santa Fe, supporting younger
faculty, and just hoping to find
ways to keep things running
smoothly." Among the changes
scheduled to occur in his
deanship is the discontinuation
of the Febbie program in
Annapolis, with the last class
entering in January 2006.
(The program will continue in
Santa Fe.) Does he have mixed
feelings, since the Febbie
program allowed him to enter
St. John's when he was ready?
While it's hard to see traditions
go, Dink says, the decision
was in the best interest of the
students.
"Febbies get a truncated
version of the Program, and it
puts a lot of stress on the students," he says. "In recent years
most Febbies have been students who would have come in
the fall ifwe had let them." ♦
-ROSEMARY HARTY
�4
THE
{FROM
THE
so-YEAR CONVERSATION
When women from the first coed graduating class at St. John's
returned to the college for a day with women of the current
graduating class, we did what we always do at St. John's: have
conversations. From a leisurely lunch to a seminar on John KeaLs'
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Virginia Woolf's "On Not Knowing
Greek" to a dinner at the Boathouse, a steady flow of conversation
continued, tying 1955 to 2005 as solidly as the conversation in a
freshman seminar ties new Johnnies to Socrates and Agamemnon.
Toward the end of the evening, Missy Skoog (Ao5), who
helped organize the day's events, spoke of the inspiration the
women of 1955provide for women of the current class. It was an
inspiration of which I was not much aware before meeting the
women from 1955. In my own experience at the college, I have
only recently thought of my presence as a woman in addition to my
presence as a student. The struggles I have experienced and the
ways I have questioned the Program and myself have felt very
personal. It is only recently that I have seen the ways I share those
struggles with others.
Over meals with Barbara Brunner Kiebler (A55), Cornelia
Hoffman Reese (A57) and Emily Martin Kutler (A55) , J saw that
the uncertainty I'm going through as I'm about to graduate is
perhaps a natural result of having a Johnnie's philosophical bent
and widespread interests. At lunch, Kiebler told Samantha Buker
(Ao5) and me a life story that included four children, graduate
courses in mathematics, and a law degree she earned in her 40s.
It put my own varied plans in perspective. I'm someone interested
in questioning and experiencing, like Johnnies have always been.
This interest is clearly what brought the first women to the
BELL TOWER S }
{FROM
college. Everyone I asked said t hey were not aware of making
history when they decided to come to St. John's. Though Kiebler
said she felt "on display" once she arrived at the college, the
decision co attend was based on a love oflearning rather than a
conscious effort to change the status quo.
Reese said she fell in love with St. John's as soon as she saw that
questions and answers were "part of the learning process ... for
both the students and the faculty." She said she had often been
told in high school, "That's a very good question, Miss Hoffman,
and I'm sure you realize why we don't have time to answer it." At
St. John's, she encountered a very different attitude toward asking
questions. "I felt like I blossomed," she said. "I felt like all my
eagerness to learn had a place to go, and a way to get there."
Talking to the first women at St. John's was fun and comfortable. We shared the common ground of the St. John's Program,
and therefore had a base from which Lo compare and consider
our life experiences. Carolyn Banks-Leeuwcnburgh (A55), who
couldn't make the event, but shared her memories in a phone
conversation, said she believes the Program produces this ease of
connection by being "so different and unique, it's timeless."
Though much of what I realized that day had to do with the
similarity of all women and of all Johnnies, I was also deeply
impressed by the courage the first women showed in coming to
such a deeply intellectual school at a time when there were doubts
on all sides as to a woman's ability to handle such a thing. Women
were alJowed to apply to St. John's in 1951 because of several
issues, according to Barbara Goyette (A73, vice president for
advancement in Annapolis). These included then-president
Richard Weigle's commitment to co-education, low enrollment at
the college, and a strong interest among women in attending
St. John's. When the women did enroJJ in 1951, they came in spile
of resistance from some
tutors and students.
Goyette said, " The men
were unsure socially
about how it would
change the campus, and
they were unsure that the
women could do the
work.AJ1ofthatchanged
very quickly once the
women came."
The women did
encounter some prejudice. Leeuwenburgh
remembers being Lold in a
don rag, in response to
the character of her
opinions, that she should
"go make babies." Reese
continued on p. 5
LONGTIME ST. JOHN'S
LIBRARIAN CHARLOTTE
FLETCHER (HA69, CENTER
TH E
B E L L
hornbcams, loblolly pines,
sycamores, dogwoods, red oaks,
and maple trees.
N EWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
In late March, the Santa Fe
can1pus hosted the New Mexico
State Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness. The summit
brought together senior
New Mexico business and
community leaders with national
economists, industry and policy
experts, and federal policymakers to discuss the state's
higher education and workforce
challenges in the new economy.
President Mike Peters gave the
welcoming remarks and introduced Gov. Bill Richardson and
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman.
The summit addressed one of
the state's thorniest problemsthe continuing drain of the
state's educated young people to
other states. After graduation,
the majority of college students
in New Mexico tend to leave
the state for better-paying jobs
elsewhere.
In his opening remarks,
Peters pointed out that St. John's
College actually helps reverse
this trend by attracting and
keeping college-educated people
in the stale. The college recruits
students from nearly every state
and several foreign countries,
yet approximately 25 percent of
St. John's graduates remain in
New Mexico after finishing their
studies. Currently almost 1,000
alumni live in New Mexico.
Approximately 31 percent serve
as teachers in public and private
high schools, as professors at the
state's colleges and universities,
and in the state's Department of
Education.
5
TO WE R S }
AP POI NTMENT S
In Annapolis: RUTHANDERSON
COGGESHALL
has been appoint-
development field. Arasteh
replaces RoBERTA G ABLE (A78),
who has moved from the Career
Services office co Admissions,
where she is associate director.
In Santa Fe: P ENELOPE
B ENEKOS (SF99) has been
named advancement officer.
Prior to her return to the Southwest, she taught English in
France, traveled throughout the
Mediterranean, and worked in
development at the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
St. John's in Annapolis received
a Plant Award (People Loving
and Nurturing Trees) from the
Maryland Department of Natural Resources for undertaking an
urban forestry program several
years ago. The inventory counted 118trees on the campus at the
time. Since then, another 90 or
so have been added, says Blythe
ed director of major gifts. Previously she was chief development
officer for the National Gallery
of Art, where she completed the
museum's New Century Fund
campaign and redirected the
gallery's development efforts to
solicit major gifts nationally and
locally. She also held leadership
positions at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine.
SrEFANlE TAKACS (A89) joins
the college as director of annual
giving from Abraham House in
the South Bronx, where she was
assistant director of operations
and development director.
Takacs had been a volunteer
fundraiser in Philanthropia
since 1998 and served as the
events committee chair for
Woods, the college's horticultur-
several years.
cation, "Girl Scout/STUDIO
ist. The college carefully tracks
the health of its trees, she adds.
Although the college and
community still miss the
magnificent Liberty Tree, the
campus is rich in American
is the
new Career Services director in
Annapolis. She brings to the
college more than six years of
experience in a variety of private
and p ublic settings in the career
2B Advisor Self-Study Guide."
The program was created for
older girls age II-r7, a group
that often loses interest in
ANNAPOLIS ENVIRONMENTAL
AWARD
SlWtRZAD ARAsTE:11
STUDENTS
ELIZABETI-1 V EGA (SFo6)
received an Excellence Award
from the Girl Scouts for a guide
she wrote to help orient leaders
of a new national program aimed
at keeping teenage girls in valved
in scouting. The award is given
annually co individuals whose
innovative contributions
significantly advance the work
of the council.
Vega wrote a 68-page publi-
scouting ♦
continuedfrom p. 4
remembers that some of her male classmates would make a point
of challenging women when they demonstrated propositions in
math class. Both women chalked this up to a lack of maturity on
the part of some of their classmaLes. Reese said that she felt "just a
little" hostility that seemed to come mostly from younger men
who didn't know how to handle the presence of women.
The women, regardless of these difficulties, acquitted themselves admirably. Goyette said, "They surprised everyone. I think
they surprised themselves." They returned to St. John's 50 years
laLer, confident in the abilities St. John's had given them, ready to
encounter another seminar. I hope to carry myself with that sort of
grace and ease someday. I hope I am as available to share questions and conversation as all these women did that day. I hope I am
ready to aim for the heart of any conversation, as Emily Kutler did
when she pursued the true intent of Woolf'sessay. I hope I will
walk, as Barbara Kiebler did when she accompanied me to a class
on Einstein and Minkowski, unhesitatingly toward any chance to
keep learning. ♦
TOP) JOINED 2005 AND 1955
CLASS MEMBERS FOR A
SAMANTHA BUKER (AOS) ANO SARAH CROOKE (A55) HAVE MUCH TO TALK
CELEBRATION OVER CROQUET
ABOUT DESPITE A SO-YEAR DIFFERENCE.
WEEKEND.
{ THE
C o COLLEGE
. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�6
{FROM THE
JOHNNIES GRAPPLE WITH
MORE THAN IDEAS
Jiu-Jitsu Takes H old in Santa Fe
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a new
addition to the martial arts
offerings on the Santa Fe
campus, but it's become
enormously popular in just a
few short months. C.J. McCue,
who joined the Santa Fe staff as
student activities coordinator
eight months ago, is an accomplished martial artist whose
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes
have attracted more than
30 students and inspired
several Johnnies to
enterand win-national
competitions.
During spring break,
McCue and seven ofher
students o·aveled to Las
Vegas. Nevada. to compete in a submission
wrestling tournament
for no-gi grappling and
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 1\vo
ofMcCue's students,
Alex Kongsgaard (SF05)
and Quinn Mulhern
(SF07), both blue belts,
took first place in their
divisions. McCue took
second place in the
women's advanced
~
division and third place ;
in the open-weight
!
women's division.
z~
]\1:,::Cue teaches
•
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in
the Gracie style, which was
created for self- defense. This
martial art relies upon body
mechanics and leverage rather
than strength, so a small person
can win against a bigger or
heavier competitor. That's one
reason the sport is popular with
women, says McCue.
There are two types of
Jiu-Jitsu: Brazilian, or modern,
was developed after 1900,
while Japanese Jiu-Jitsu is
considered traditional and dates
to pre-1900. Like many martial
arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu requires
a technical knowledge of
specific positions, development
of physical and mental strength,
and the use of strategy. However, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is
unique in that most of the
techniques involve grappling
on the ground. "Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu practitioners learn how
to defend themselves on the
ground," says McCuc. " Of
course this has enormous
real-world benefit as a selfdefense method for both me n
and women."
The clothing (gt) looks like a
traditional martial arts uniform
ofloose white pants and jacketstyle wrap shirt secured with
a belt.
"The gi is a very instrumental part ofBrazilian Jiu-Jitsu,"
says McCue. "Thegi can be
used as a way to control one's
opponent."
Most of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
techniques involve specific
positions. There are takedowns,
{ THE COLLEGE,
{FROM
BEL L TOW ERS}
self-defense techniques, and
striking, but the core of the art
involves mental so·ategy. That's
part of the appeal to Johnnies.
Competitors strive to improve,
maintain, or defend their
ground positions, along with
mastering submissions such as
chokes and armlocks.
Both Kongsgaard and
Mulhern apply themselves with
vigor to the martial art, as they
have with other endeavors.
After Kongsgaard graduated
from high school, he walked
500 miles from the CaliforniaOregon border to San Francisco, averaging 2,2, miles a day.
In addition to continuing his
wrestling training, Kongsgaard
ALEX KoNcscAARD (SF05) 1s
WRESTLED TO THE GROUND BY
QUINN MULHERN (SF07).
is an avid cyclist, a rock climber,
and a member of the St. John's
Search & Rescue team.
Mulhern aJso brings intensity
and dedication to his training,
says McCue. Mulhern's older
brother practices Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu and persuaded him to
take up serious study. "We
would wrestle, and I saw that
my brother's submission
St. John's Collese. Sprins 2005
}
movements were not angry, but
graceful and re laxed," he says.
He credits McCue, "a great
teacher," with helping him win
in Las Vegas. "She is able to
demonstrate something
physical in a way people really
respond to," he explains.
The psychological aspect of
competing is the most difficult,
says Mulhern, who practiced
breathing and visualization
techniques to enhance his
performance. "Adrenaline can
be one of your biggest enemies
because it can cause you to use
your energy right away," he
says. He credits his winning to
feeling calmer. "It's one thing
wrestling in class or wrestling
with your friends, but
another competing in a
tournament where you
have only four minutes
and you can easily
forget everything
you know. It's a lot
of pressure."
McCue looks forward to getting more
students involved in
sports at St. John's.
"While some Sc. John's
students are not very
physically active when
they first arrive at the
college, they find themselves in a community
of like-minded individuals and feel more
confident when they
discover the benefits of
physical activity," she
says. "You see students
make a connection to
something physical-whether
it is a martial art, climbing,
Search & Rescue, hiking,
skiing, winter camping, or
intramural activities. They run
with it because they've become
inspired by all this at a later
time in their life. For some it's
just the beginning." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
TH E
B ELL
TO WERS}
7
NEw DORMITORY Is A GIFT FROM ST. JoHN's ALUMNUS
Spector Hall to Open in January
Warren Spector (A81) has
given the coJJege a generous
gift to fund, in his father's
memory, the building of a new
dormitory on the Annapolis
campus. Spector Hall, as the
dorm now under construction
will be named, together with
Gilliam Hall, which opened
last fall, will allow the college
to house 80 percent of its
students on campus.
Mr. Spector, President
and Co-Chief Operating
Officer of Bear, Stearns &
Co. Inc., a leading Wall
Street investment banking
and securities trading and
brokerage firm, says his gift
was motivated by his appreciation for the education he
received at St. John's.
"St. John's provides a
unique educational experience," said Mr. Spector,
a member of the college's
Board of Visitors and
Governors. " Building
this dorm will help
preserve the intimate
learning environment that
sets St. John's apart from
other liberal arts schools."
The college needs new
dormitories for two reasons.
Overcrowding in existing
dorms required the college
to convert some double
rooms into triples and
appropriate a few common
rooms for housing. The
college also wants to better
nurture a community of
learners by ensuring that
students who want to live on
campus can do so. I mpressed
by the recent renovation of
Mellon Hall's classrooms and
laboratories, Mr. Spector was
pleased to provide a gift to
further improve student life.
"The St. John's educational
experience is not limited to the
classroom. The ability for
students to learn from each
other is greatly enhanced by
living together on campus."
Mr. Spector continued, " For
me the dialogue with my
fellow students was a crucial
part of my education. I could
not be more pleased to further
the education offuture
generations by funding the
creation of a place for that
dialogue to take place."
Spector Hall wilJ house
40 students when it opens in
January 2.006. The dormitory
includes spacious common
areas, suite-style rooms, and
a tutor's apartment.
The building will be named
Spector Hall in memory of
Warren Spcctor's father, who
died in 1990. Philip Spector
had forged over his lifetime a
AN APPRECIATION FOR HIS ST. J OHN'S EDUCATION PROMPTED WARREN
SPECTOR TO FUND A NEW DORMITORY ON THE ST. JOHN'S CAMPUS.
"One cfthe most valuable tools I
gainedfrom my St. John s education
was the abtfity lo think critically. "
WARREN SPECTOR, A8I
{ THE
COLLEGE·
St. John's Collese · Sprins 2005
}
successful career as a contractor who was responsible for
numerous residential,
commercial, and industrial
projects in the Washington,
D.C., metropolitan area. "I
very much wanted to find a way
to honor my father. It seems
fitting considering his long and
successful career as a builder
that a structure is named for
him. It is my hope that he
would have been extremely
pleased with the results,"
Mr. Spector said.
Ironically, both of Mr.
Spector's parents were
initially concerned when he
announced his plans to
transfer from Princeton and
start again as a freshman at
Sc. John's. " It did not take
long for my parents to see
that I thrived in the environment of St. John's College,"
commented Mr. Spector.
"By the time I graduated,
they were big fans of the
St. John's education and
were pleased that I did not
go to college anywhere else."
One of several St. John's
alumni working at the top
of the investment field,
Mr. Spector credits the
college with providing him
with skills that have helped
him succeed in the fastpaced and ever-changing
world ofWall Street.
" One of the most valuable
tools I gained from my
St. John's education was the
ability to think cri tically," said
Mr. Spector. "In the highly
analytical and technologically
sophisticated world in which
we live, the ability to think on
one's own and make sense of
the seemingly endless data
that exists should not be
underestimated." ♦
�8
{LETTERS}
{LETTER S }
VARIED VIEWPOINTS
I must respond to Mary Campbell
Gallagher's rejection of Martin A. Dyer' s
diversity initiative. Ms. Campbell's principal objection is that Mr. Dyer relies on the
premise that different "life experiences"
will somehow enrich the college's seminars. She insists that he "present proof."
Well, I can-and so, I believe, can any
St. John's alum.
....Anyone who has gone through four
years of the Program knows that people
bring their "life experiences" into the
seminar room. Male, female, veteran, gay,
married, black, Mormon, elderly, handicapped, Orthodox Jewish-can anyone be so
naive as to believe that such factors don't
influence how we approach a text? This
doesn't mean surrendering to subjectivity.
But it does mean expanding the Annapolis
campus beyond affluent suburbs of Washington-Baltimore and New York City, the base
for the student body when I was a student.
No one is advocating affirmative actionthat is, preferential treatment to someone
because of his or her background. But the
college effectively makes decisions all the
time about the makeup of the student body
by the way it recruits and where. If the
college makes a concentrated effort to
increase diversity, it can only result in
livelier class discussion by including
more and varied viewpoints.
STEVE WEINSTEIN, A95
ON DIVERSITY
I agree with three statements in the letter
from Mary Campbell Gallagher (A6o)
published in the winter 2005 issue of The
College: (1) "all men are fundamentally the
same ...."; (2) "All men are educable without regard to the peculiarities of their ethnic
and racial backgrounds;" and (3) " ... students' racial and ethnic characteristics
[make] no discernible contribution to
their being able to read and think well."
I disagree, however, \.vith other assertions.
I do not believe that the Opportunity
Initiative is inconsistent with the college's
mission of providing a liberal education.
Although the college makes its unique
program equally available to, and welcomes
everyone, its recruitment efforts have not
been equally successful in attracting all segments of the population. A major purpose of
the initiative is to determine the reasons for
this failure and to work with the Admissions
office in devising corrective measures. Our
goal is to broaden the college's appeal to
people who do not now seem to understand
learn to function well in both, to speak and
act according to the expectations of each.
They can competently participate in and
contribute to ongoing St. John's dialogue
seen through the lens of upper middle-class
people of European heritage. But to feel safe
enough to share the particular lessons life
has taught them and to relate their own
unique backgrounds to the topics and readings being considered in seminar would
require the safety of numbers and the college
community's appreciation of the richness to
be gleaned from different heritages.
I know college recruiters, with the
support of alumni of color, are making
good-faith attempts at increasing the
diversity of students and faculty. I hope they
arc successful for the sake of all students.
that its program is also intended for them,
not change either the program or admission
policies.
The great books are indeed teachers, and
close reading of them and good logic arc the
principal means by which conversation is
advanced. Other factors also play an important role. "[P]eculiarities [borne] of...race
and ethnic backgrounds" are among them,
as are differences in economic status,
religion, nationality and personal life
experiences...My views of freedom and
justice, for example, are affected by the fact
that I am black, am two generations removed
from slavery, and grew up in Baltimore in
the 1930s and 40s and attended college in
Annapolis when racial discrimination and
segregation were still the way of life.
Blacks were denied basic opportunities....
I suggest that interactions among students
both in class and in their day-to-day social
lives are a vital part of teaching and learning.
In other words, the encounter of individuals,
separately and in concert, \vith the great
books is indispensable to St. John's unique
education.
MARTIN
PATIENCE GARRETSON SCHENCK,
POETIC PLANCK
I enjoyed Anna Perleberg's poem "Relativity"
in the Winter 2005 issue of The College. As
" Relativity" did mention haiku in the last
stanza, Joffer one ofmy own in response:
Late autumn
Reading Planck
In the cold room ...
A. OYER, AS2
SHARING LIFE LESSONS
LUCIA STAIANO-DANIELS, SF04
A recent letter suggested that diversity has
nothing to do with learning at St. John's;
that, on the contrary, it is the books that are
our teachers. I disagree. If we learned only
from the books, students could sit in their
rooms and read them by themselves. Rather,
it is the exchange of ideas that leads us to
enlarge our understanding of what the books
can teach us.
An African-An1erican student who has
been stopped by the police for "driving
while black" understands the relationship
between justice and power differently than
the daughter of a judge who sits beside him
in seminar. Someone who grew up in a working-class church with a ministry to the poor
understands the parables ofJesus differently
than someone from a place of worship
attended by the privileged. A Muslim reads
Genesis differently than either a Christian or
a Jew. These differing backgrounds and perspectives can greatly enrich the exchange
that takes place around the seminar table.
The challenge for the college is to attract
sufficiently large numbers of students and
faculty from diverse backgrounds to affect
the culture of the college. Members of
minority groups have learned to live in two
cultures, that of their ethnicity and that of
the dominant group they have encountered
in school and other public venues. They
{ 1' n ll Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Cuss OF l'.959
WEIRD SCIENCE
... .Infatuation, it seems, is frequently
the outcome of a close encounter with
Dr. Einstein's work, but I think we would aJJ
agree that St. John's College strives not only
to expose its students to the works of great
thinkers, and to impress upon its students
the importance of giving those thinkers
their due, but also it strives to equip its
students to be critical of what those thinkers
have to say. Education, Plato reminds us,
involves entrusting the cultivation of your
soul to another, so it is only prudent to exercise some caution (Protagoras 312c-313b).
As a theory ofrelativity, Dr. Einstein's
work should be properly understood as one
of reciprocity.
...A strict interpretation of relativity,
however, is no longer tenable. Relatively
well-known experiments with muons and
atomic clocks have demonstrated tha t
"clocks" moving at high speed do slow
down. Here is where things get peculiar.
A strict interpretation of relativity would
require that people riding on high-speed
airplanes see the clocks down on Earth slow
down. When the travelers return to their
earthbound comrades, there should be a
grand argument as each group asserts that
)
the other group's clocks were rwming slow.
Instead, there is agreement: the travelers
are younger than they would be if they had
stayed at home, and the difference is more
or less what Dr. Einstein's equations predict.
It is, then, a matter of fact, that relativity
effects are not reciprocal.
Oddly, then, experiments of this kind
demonstrate that there actually is such a
thing as absolute space, for we obviously
can decide who was moving and who was
standing still by seeing whose clocks were
slowed and whose were not. Further, until
someone can find a place where clocks run
faster than they do here on Earth, relativity
actually supports the claim that the earth is
absolutely at rest. But wait! It gets stranger:
if the Earth is at rest, then, since we see the
sun , moon, stars, and planets moving across
the sky, the evidence suggests that everything revolves around the Earth. And jL1st
to top it off, if everything revolves around
the Earth, then, since the universe is now
regarded as infinite, there is no reason not
to regard the Earth as the center of the
universe. Oh! The progress we've made!
At this point, the door stands "vide open
to supplement Dr. Einstein's theorywhich indeed, provides nothing beyond
what Aris to Ile would label a formal causeby reintroducing the aether as the material
cause, and so take a step towards developing
an account on the level of the efficient cause
(which is what any of the natural sciences, as
studies of how the material world works,
should strive to achieve). It would be most
mysterious , however, to use the very theory
that killed the aether to resurrect it.
Weird science? You'd better believe it.
But, at some point somebody will feel
emboldened to declare it to be nonsense,
and, at that time, there will be some need for
clear heads who can distinguish the baby
from the bath water. We all, I think, not only
hope, but expect that St. John's will be the
institution o f higher learning where those
heads get clarified ...
}OHN NEWELL, A86
__________
-'-'-.;;.;.;.
EINSTEIN OMISSION
Your capsule biography of Albert Einstein
on the inside cover of the [Winter 2005)
issue omitted two critical facts. The first
is that Einstein was a Jew. Although this
omission can be excused because it is a
matter of general knowledge, it is widely
assumed that because Einstein was never a
"religious" Jew his Jewish heritage was of
merely accidental significance until the
Nazis decreed otherwise.
9
l CAN IDENTIFY ONE OF THE STUDENTS IN THE OCTOBER CALENDAR PICTURE.. .JANE D'AGNESE
(A74) IS STRIDING UP TO THE QUAD AFTER LAB. LOOKING AT THE PICTURE, AND JUDGING FROM HER
ENTHUSIASM, l CAN STILL HEAR HER SAYING, "CHESTAH, CHESTAH, ARE YOU GOING TO THE PAHTY?"
(YouR CAPTION ABOUT SEMINAR AWAITING IS WELL-INTENTIONED, BUT I LIKE MY STORY BETTER.)
BEHIND HER IS POSSIBLY ME, THOUGH THE DRESS DOESN'T RING A BELL SO l WILL GLADLY CEDE TO
SOMEONE ELSE'S BETTER MEMORY AND IDENTIFICATION. SrrTING IN THE FOREGROUND IS, I'M
PRETTY SURE, PATRICK D'ADDARIO (A7x), OTHERWISE KNOWN ASP-DAD. -DEB Ross, A74
I do not think so. The Bavaria of
Einstein's youth was hardly a hotbed of
tolerance. Not only was the young Einstein
exposed to anti-Semitism; even ifhe and his
family were not "believing" Jews, he grew
up surrounded by believing Christians
receiving mandatory religious education
. .. .It is fair to suppose that this experience
as an intellectual as well as ethnic outsider
contributed to Einstein's ability to "think
outside the box," his ,villingness to explore
counter-intuitive models of the universe.
Second, the biographical sketch totally
omits the fact that Einstein was a committed
Zionist. Despite his principled disapproval
of ethnic nationalism, Einstein recognized
that Jews could not be fully accepted citizens
of European ethnic states, and needed their
own hom eland where they would not be
merely tolerated guests in an alien culture.
Well before Hitler came to power, Einstein
helped raise funds to buy land for Jewish
settlement and to support the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. After the war he
pleaded for the creation of a Jewish state,
and in his old age was offered (and declined)
the largely-ceremonial presidency of the
State oflsrael.
It is important to remember that even
such a universalist and hlLmanist as Albert
{ 1' H
E
Co
L LE
c
E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Einstein insisted on the importance of a
Jewish state for the preservation of the
Jewish people and their unique contribution
to human culture.
KEVIN SNAPP, SF72
CALENDAR MYSTERIES REVEALED
The May photo in the 2005 Philanthropia
calendar was taken in '72 or '73. That's me,
third from the left with the scraggly hair and
beard, with my leg up on the bench. Kit
(Kathleen) Callender (SF73) is to my left,
and Bill Blount (SF73) is seated to her left.
Beyond that, I'm guessing-it's embarrassing
not to remember everyone's names.
My sons will get a real kick out of seeing
their papa "back in the day."
PtTER MEADOW, SF73
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters may be edited for
clarity and/ or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance of being
printed in their entirety.
Please address letters to: The College
magazine, St. John's College, Box z8oo,
Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
)
�IO
{ATHLETIC S }
{ATHLETICS}
''Bein.g out on the Severn River at dawn . ..
is about as close to heaven as you wtll ever get. "
BOATHOUSE
REPUBLIC
BY ROGER H. MARTIN
Roger Martin, president of Randolph-Macon College in the team. Everyone." Leo seems to be looking directly at me,
Ashland, Va., spent a semester at St. John :S lastfall. His goal perhaps because I stick out in this crowd of youngsters. I am not an
was to experiencefreshman year at the college, in part to gain ordinary freshman, but a college president on sabbatical.
I decide to go out for crew. Since I cannot live in a freshman
some insight that might be helpful in shaping the
residence haJJ, crew will provide the chance for me to have contact
freshman-year experience at his college. Martin sat in on
with students outside of the classroom and give me an opportunity
freshman seminar andjoined the crew team. In November, he
to explore the unique connection here between academics and
joined competitors 40 years younger at the annual Head of athletics.
the Occoquan Regatta. His experience broadened his views
On September 7, about 60 students turn up at six in the morning
about college sports.
for the first crew practice. I recognize some of chem: Julie, Justin,
reshman orientation ends at Iglehart Hall,
the college's ancient gymnasium. One hundred of us are greeted on this withering
August afternoon by athletic director
Leo Pickens (A78). We sit on the floor in a
wide semicircle as this man of modest build
and piercing eyes looks over us in silence. I
sense that we arc in the presence of a sage.
We are not seated in a gymnasium, but
rather in a sacred building- a temple, Leo explains. He talks about
how athletics was as much a part of Greek culture and society as
political discourse and debate and tells us chat athletics must therefore be taken seriously and with reverence.
After describing the intramural sports and activities at the
college, Leo says something you would not expect to hear from an
athletic director: "Skill and previous experience are not required
here at St. John's, just tlzumos. Passion." As he says "tlzumos," he
pounds his chest. He concludes: "Everyone who shows up will be on
{ T u E Co
LL Ec E .
Victoria-all members of my freshman seminar. No one is saying
anythi ng, and the eyes of many are glazed over, probably from latenight reading.
Leo, also the crew coach, wears blue thermal overalls, a red
sweatshirt that says "Johnnies" in white letters across the front, and
a well-worn baseball cap. I suspect he knows what is going through
our minds at this very moment. We are all wondering why any sane
person would get up at five in the morning to spend two hours
engaged in punishing physical exercise, often in foul weather. "I
can promise you," he says, "that being out on the Severn River at
dawn on a crisp fall morning, watching the sun rising from the east
and the geese flying to the south as eight oars move together in perfect unison over the glistening water is about as close to heaven as
you will ever get in this life."
We don't have Jong to wait. Next morning we all march down to
the dock. The sunrise over the Severn is spectacular. The novices,
including me, climb into an 18-person training barge. As we row up
and down College Creek the poetry of Homer's Odyssey, the book
we are now reading in seminar, provides a balm for the pain I begin
to feel in my lower back.
St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
THU/IfOS- PASSION- IS WHAT L EO P ICKENS DEMANDS FROM HIS ATHLETES.
{ THE
Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
�I2
{ATHLETICS}
{ATHLETICS}
The images and voices cfthe great books
are everywhere~ in the Boathouse as
we!f as on the Severn River.
ROCER MARTIN
When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
we hauled the vessels down to the sunlit breakers first ....
The crews swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks
And in rhythm churned the water with stroke on stroke.
And churn the water we do in a boat vaguely similar to the
Pentekontor that brought Odysseus and his crew to the ends of the
world. I am in first position in the barge and directly in front of me
sits a limber 17-year-old freshman. Mike, the assistant coach, who
is standing in the stern at the tiller, yells out, "Everyone in the
catch position, oars square and buried." Not knowing what the
catch position is, I lean back as far as I can-which is not very
far-and my oar immediately fouls the oar of my rowing
companion who is leaning very far forward. The result is a loud
noise and a huge splash as we start rowing.
The novices practice in this way on College Creek until we
become proficient enough to row in a proper eight. Over the next
several weeks, my rowing improves and as it does, I blend in with
the young men in my boat. I am no longer a college president, I an1
just another novice learning how to row. I keep my mouth shut, I
observe, and I listen.
Most student-athletes leave their studies behind when they go
to practice. Not at St. John's. The images and voices of the great
books are everywhere, in the Boathouse as well as on the Severn
River. It is now 6:30 in the morning and it's pitch dark. We are
rowing up the river to
the start of our race, past
the Naval Academy
bridge, past the Route 50
bridge. A month from
now, we will race against
other colleges on the
Occoquan Reservoir in
Northern Virginia, and
our practice races have
taken on a new intensity.
The sky is studded with
stars, still bright enough
to be seen above the dark
purple hew of the Chesapeake's eastern sky, and
there isn't a cloud to be
seen. Bobbing sailboat
masts look like black
sticks in the distance,
{ TH E
and I can imagine the port of Argos, and Agamemnon and
Menelaus leaving for Troy with the Greek armada to win back
Helen. Our own armada of two eights, two fours, and a single quad
docs a river turn just beyond the Route 50 bridge and at Leo's
command we race back to the end of the Naval Academy seawall, a
distance of some 5,000 meters. A gray-blue storm cloud suddenly
appears and empties its moisture into our low-lying shells, requiring the coxes to bail madly as they call out their commands. At the
finish, in complete exhaustion, I notice the geese Leo Pickens
promised several weeks ago, eight of them (like the number rowing in our boat), flying directly overhead toward Virginia, honking
loudly as they wing their way south. The vision suggests to me that
we will do well at Occoquan.
October is upon us. My seminar is reading Plutarch's Lives of
lite Noble Grecians and Romans, and my boat continues to
improve. Today, us our four racing shells approach the Naval
Academy bridge, rowing at a rather hectic pace over the usual
5,000-meter course, we see an armada of yellow Naval Academy
shells, approaching us from downriver. Laughter comes from one
of them as it passes to our starboard. The midshipmen are getting
a kick out of seeing this rather motley collection of}ohnnics. And
who can blame them? There they are, in their clean white t-shirts
with "NAVY" emblazoned on the chest, and dark blue shorts, all
looking extremely fit and athletic. Here we are, some of us in
multi-colored t-shirts, some obviously overweight, others rather
skinny, some men wearing earrings, others
sporting tattoos, and
one very tired 61-ycarold guy with a red beard
rowing in the numbertwo position.
This scene causes me
to ponder Plutarch's
biographies of Lycurgus
and Solon. As the leader
of Sparta, Lycurgus is
architect of laws which
are austere and unyielding. In Athens, where
Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
EVEN IN THE SHELLS ,
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
THE BOOKS PERSIST.
}
Solon is the lawmaker,
individualism is honored.
Sitting in my shell and
watching our two very
different crews passing
each other on the Severn
River, I see how two
philosophies of society
exist side-by-side in Annapolis: St. John's, devoted to diversity and
pluralism, as Athens; the Naval Academy, with its focus on loyalty
to the corps, uniformity, and order, as Sparta.
Our training continues as November and the Head of the
Occoquan approach. I am amazed not only at how hard my teammates practice, but also how the great books arc ever part of
their chatter. Before launching our shells, I often hear students
talking about seminars, tutorials, or the Friday lecture. Even in
the boats, where crew is not supposed to talk, the great books
cannot be denied.
Our extremely capable cox is out of commission for a few weeks,
so a loquacious sophomore replaces her. While our regular cox is
all business and hardly ever talks except to give commands, her
substitute offers a running commentary on everything from
his favorite movies to college gossip to the current topics in
sophomore seminar. "Do you know what my tutor told us last
night at seminar?" he asks crew as we row out of College Creek
towards the Severn. His seminar is reading the Gospel of John.
"He said that because he first read the Bible in Greek he thought
that the first words of John were, 'The origin was the principle'
rather than, 'In the beginning was the Word.' "
As we round the seawall and head toward the Route 50 bridge,
now rov,ing at a fairly fast pace, his commentary regresses. He is
now talking about the Phoenicians. "Do you know why the
Phoenicians were the fastest rowers?" We are stumped. "Because
they had nubile Phoenician women to row home to." I find this
piece of information intriguing until, off to my port, I hear Leo
Pickens yelling at me from the skiff, "You're not focused Roger.
Snap those legs back. Square the oar. Drop the blade."
On November 6, the morning of the regatta. Leo assembles the
team in the back of the Boathouse. "Are you all ready for the
Festival of St. Occoquan?" he asks the assembled group. "OK,
now listen up. I have something important to say. First, I want to
commend all of you for the time and devotion you have given to
this sport. No matter how well you perform this afternoon, you
should all feel a great sense of accomplishment."
He continues by providing some interesting statistics. "Those
{ TH E
ON THE SEVERN AND IN
~ -........... SEMINAR, RocER MARTIN
( CENTER) SAW DEDICATION.
of you who are the grizzled veterans have put in
90 hours of practice, the
novices 80. And you've done this while being students in an
incredibly demanding academic program. Few athletes competing at Occoquan this afternoon have had to contend with the
incredible academic load all of you carry. You should feel extremely proud. You have achieved perfection. I pronounce this boathouse a republic."
In just six words, Leo says that we have come together as a team,
each doing his or her part, but each contributing to the good of
our community. Unity, one of the ideals of Plato's Republic, has
earned Leo's highest praise.We are not only rowing much better,
but we also care about each other. And there is a spirit-a team
spirit-that is very special. Clearly, we are far from perfect in our
rowing ability. But we really are, figuratively if not in reality, a
republic, and everyone understands exactly what our coach has
just said.
The race itself is a blur. My boat does reasonably well,
losing to the University of Maryland by only six seconds but
beating three other universities. However, before the day is out,
J witness C\vo contrasting scenes that speak to intercollegiate
athletics both in America and at my adopted college. As my wife
and I walk down the hill toward the launching docks just before
my race, I overhear a coach lecturing the women on a
large university team who are preparing to race. "You didn't get a
medal last year, girls. It was a real embarrassment to me personally and to the university. So are you going to screw up again this
year or win something?" I don't hear the rest of this speech as I
continue walking down the path, but I see discouragement in the
faces of the crew.
As I return to the parking area, I witness a more pleasing scene.
Seated on the ground and leaning on a boat trailer, one of our
team captains is reading an essay by Thomas Mann for preceptorial. Nothing, not even Occoquan, is more important than
Thomas Mann.
This is the way intercollegiate athletics ought to be. ♦
Co LL E c E. St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�{THE
{TH E
TUTORS}
T U TOR S }
FAITH, FRIENDSHIP,
AND TEACHING
Brother Robert Smith u sail devoted to SL John:SBY ROBIN WEISS (SFG186)
rother Robert Smith (HA90) traces
his personal history-spanning
90 years-from his childhood near
the Golden Gate Bridge, through
adolescence in wine country, to
adulthood when, as a Christian
Brother, be stoked the fires of his
passion for educational reform: first
at St. Mary's College in Moraga,
Calif., then at St. John's in Annapolis.
"I just learned from a woman we both knew that Jacob
Klein told her that once I came here I would never leave.
This has turned out to be true," he says, reflecting on his
appointment to St. John's in 1972.
For Brother Robert, the Program is perpetually new.
"Each person is asking their own questions; that is the
heart of education," he contends. "There's a new conversation every time. You see the repeated miracle, each year, of
how students develop, with a renewal of life each time."
To generations of Johnnies, Brother Robert has served
"as practical advisor, career counselor, spiritual guide,
almost Any mentor-like role," says tutor emeritus Elliott
Zuckerman (HA95) . No one has been so unswervingly
devoted to the college, to the seminar in particular, and,
personally, to [former Annapolis dean] Jacob Klein."
During his graduate school years in D.C., tutor Michael
Dink (A75) enjoyed Brother Robert's standing offer of a
guest room in his Market Street apartment. "At breakfast,"
Dink recalls, " I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation, regardless of what kind of night I had.. ..These
talks helped me to keep a sane perspective on the sometimes trying world of graduate school."
{ THE
Devotion to faith, friendship, and the practice of teaching underlie Brother Rober t's story, which began in a "very
interesting part of Oakland," home to a flood of German
refugees fleeing the persecution of Catholics under Otto
von Bismarck, chancellor of the German Empire.
"At the beginning of the Prussian takeover, Bismarck
made life very difficult in Germany. A lot of these people,
specifically Franciscans, were aware of California because
that order had missions there." Brother Robert explains
how these "highly educated people started a parish in what
was then the edge of Oakland. Now it's deep in Oakland but
the parish is still there."
He remembers orchards near his grammar school, where
German nuns taught using methods "in advance of
Catholic schools anywhere."
"I benefited from that. I grew up in that parish and that
sch ool, and I'm very grateful. It was far-seeing, a wider outlook," he says. At a Christian Brothers high school in
Berkeley, he met the brothers and liked them. "I wanted to
do what they were doing-so I joined them."
In the fall of 1930, while a novice, he picked grapes
and was p art of the group who moved the Christian
Brothers Winery to their 400 acres in Napa Valley. During
Prohibition, because it was legal to sell alcohol for religious
pur poses, the ,v:inerywas allowed to stay open.
"As recently as 15 years ago, over half the brandy in this
country was our brandy," he recalls. Today, with their winery closed, the Brothers keep a small hospital on this land
high in the hills above Napa, but rent the remaining acres to
Stone Winery.
Founded in France in 1680, the Christian Brothers (an
order of teachers who are not priests) spoke to the needs
Co LL EGE. St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
FOR 33 YEARS, BROTHER ROBERT HAS REMAINED
"UNSWERVINGLY DEVOTED" TO ST. J OH N'S.
{ TH E
Co LL E GI!. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
�I6
I7
{THE TUTORS}
{THE T UTORS}
"THE BROTHER"
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH, SAY
of the working poor as these
HIS FORMER STUDENTS, "MADE
people made the transition
HIMSELF THE BEST OF FRIENDS."
from rural to city life.
According to Brother
we were at war and various
Robert, the founder saw "a
people said: 'You'll eventucrying need to provide free
ally get into this war, and it
education," which allowed
won't be a good thing for
for "the very beginning of
you.' " Instead, in 1943 he
the possibility oflower-class
went to Laval University, in
people rising." In this time
Quebec, where he studied
of Louis the XIV, with finanphilosophy.
cial support from nobility,
He doesn't regret that choice. " It
the Brothers initiated radically new
turns out they were right." He
schools, which were French rather
remembers studying with people
than Latin-based. These schools
who had started at Louvain and
were for shoemakers, shipbuilders,
had to leave. " Laval was extremely
and other working people who deslively. There were refugees from
perately needed the basics of math,
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH , TUTOR
other European countries," creatreading, and writing to survive in
ing an exciting mix of teachers and
the cities. The movement started in
students.
Rheims and quickly spread to Paris,
After returning to St. Mary's as a teacher, Brother Robert
Avignon, and Rome.
continued work on his dissertation: liberal arts from the
Almost two centuries later, when Pope Pius IX asked
point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas, completed and pubBrothers from France to serve in California, they were
lished in 1947. A grant allowed him to spend the following
reluctant to go. " In effect, the Pope gave a polite order to
summer at Edinburgh University. "I studied, amongst
get us there, and we've been there ever since," Brother
other things, Hume," he admits, laughing. " He's not my
Robert says. "We had to do things we didn't do in France,"
favorite philosopher, but he came from that university. So I
such as teaching Latin and Greek to a more affluent populahad a good taste of him there."
tion, that oflawyers, doctors, and priests. "We had to scrape
In 1953, after a year in Rome, he was back at St. Mary's
around and find teachers who were competent," he says.
teaching large lecture classes. "We already had seminars,
Thus arose St. Mary's College in 1863, which the
but these lecture classes were the usual ones. At St. Mary's,
Brothers took over in 1869 and run to this day. After attendwe always had our eye on new needs and new ways of doing
ing St. Mary's as an undergraduate, Brother Robert taught
things, and that connects ,vith St. John's."
in a Sacramento high school for a number of years, a
Innovation at St. Mary's had much to do with a layman
requirement of his order.
teaching there, James L. Haggerty, who was acquainted
He recounts that, when he joined the order, there
with the original committee who went to the University
were ten thousand French Brothers as opposed to three
of Chicago in pursuit of "the ideal form of education."
thousand non-French. He'd grown to love French and, for
Brother Robert tells how the partial successes at Chicago,
graduate work, wanted to attend Louvain, in Belgium, "but
"You see the repeated miracle.,
each yea0 cfhow
students develop. . "
{ THE
Co LL E c
E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman worked with Brother
Robert in many environments. "The most memorable
ti me I spent with Robert was when he accompanied me to
participate in a Touchstones program we had in prison.
He and I and six others joined 12 inmates for a go-minute
seminar. That day the men had selected a text in Touchstones, a selection by St. Theresa of Avila, on prayer."
Brother Robert didn't wear his collar and was quicl for
the beginning part of the conversation. But after about
five minuLes, Zciderman recalls, Brother Robert began
to talk about forgiveness. "The men were transfixed.
None moved when the warning bells sounded, and Lhe
guards finally came LO move them along to their lunch,"
Zeiderman says. "As we left, they referred to him as
brother-a title of friendship. However as the months
passed, each time I came into prison, they asked about
Robert and referred to him as Brother Smith. Finally they
simply began to ask after 'the Brother,' a phrase no one
had ever heard them use before. Ile simply, even when
looking like the resl of us, became BroLher Robert." ♦
such as changing the undergraduate
structure
but
preserving departments, didn't satisfy Scott Buchanan and
others working with him. So,
at St. John's in Annapolis,
"We started anew here, eradicating traditional departments
and transforming the lecture
system to education through
conversation.
At St. Mary's, Haggerty
introduced changes, as far as
he could, such as reading original sources and implementing the seminar. " He talked to all of us about the wonderful
thing that was going on at St. John's. We sent people to
St. John's to look at it," Brother Robert remembers. "We
became closer to St. John's."
In the fall ofx956, St. Mary's received a grant to explore
possibilities for educational reform. Haggerty, initially
responsible, became ill. "Somebody had to run it, so I was
put in charge all the sudden," says Brother Robert. "All I
knew was St. John's. By that time, I had visited a number
of times."
Visits were sweeter due to Raymond Wilburn, a former
St. John's dean, who befriended Brother Robert while
Wilburn was stationed at a naval pre-flight school, located
on the campus at St. Mary's during the war. Wilburn wrote
letters for Brother Robert "to be nicely treated" during
his visits.
He recalls one trip in particular, when he attended a
seminar taught by Jacob Klein. " I was overwhelmed by it,
so I made a point of getting to know him. We became
friends and we remained friends until he died."
While in charge of the new project at St. Mary's, Brother
Robert called on Klein, Richard Scofield, and others for
help. He describes "bold projects," such as bringing in people from outside St. Mary's to examine each senior on his
essay. " I would not do that again. I was matching important
{T
H E
Co L
L E
people, sometimes, with very
ordinary students. I thought
every student should have the
same chance."
He spent his sabbatical
year of 1964 in Venice studying Rabelais. "Rabelais
despised the system under
which he was educated and
decided to get free of it. I've
read him, cover to cover,
many times." After Brother
Robert returned to the states,
Klein invited him to give a lecture.
" I enjoyed it," he says. "I think the students did, too. I
was more rambunctious than I would be now." He admits to
quoting Rabelais "in all kinds of unseemly ways that I
wouldn't do now... "
But after lecture, " Klein told me I would probably be
invited to teach here."
And he was. Students of his first class, a junior seminar in
1966-67, made him an honorary member. He corresponds
with some of them to this day.
" By committing himself as a teacher to thinking together
with his students about what matters to them, Brother
Robert has made himself the best of friends," says Steve
Werlin (A85). " It has also led him to surprising places. He
can speak well of Aristotle, Montaigne, and Baudelaire, but
also about the Talking Heads." Now a teacher himself,
Werlin relies on Brother Robert's advice: "Start where the
students are."
For the remainder of the 1960s, Brother Robert returned
to his duties at St. Mary's. " I had to put the new project in
good enough shape" before getting permission to transfer.
But when the time was ripe for Klein's prediction to come
true, Brother Robert telephoned Klein, asking, " Does
it make any difference to St. John's if I come this year
or next?"
" It makes a difference to me," Klein replied. ♦
c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�I8
{ON
{ON NIETZSCHE}
Ig
N I ETZSCHE}
"Ourfavorite author.s are .simply
those we cannot escape. "
JOHN VERDI, TUTOR
NIETZSCHE 'S
FAVORITE WRIT ERS
BY JOHN VERDI
t is probably true that all of us
ought to read more books by
those authors with whom we
deeply disagree , because only
they have the power to force us
to rethink our comfortable
ideas. Most of us, however, do not do so,
but instead gravitate to those authors in
whose books we recognize our own
thoughts expressed more fully and convincingly, or so we would like to think. In
any event Nietzsche cautions us against
reading any author "of whom it is apparent that he wanted to produce a book,"
but urges us to read " only those whose
thoughts unintentionally became a
book." (The Wanderer and His Shadow ,
I2I) Perhaps we should trust no idea at all
{T n
E
that comes to us while we are reading; as
Nietzsche says, "only ideas won by walking have anyvalue." (Twilight ofthe Idols,
I, 34)
Still, Nietzsche himself read widely,
and while we may not always find his interpretations of his predecessors accurate or
fair, he certainly did h ave his favorite
writers, those in whom he heard echoes of
his own insights and struggles, or who
represented to him types of their age, distillations of the thought around them, or
who entered the great conversation with a
destructive impulse, in an attempt to
refashion thought after their own image.
Our favorite authors are simply those we
cannot escape, because they are too close
to us, for better or worse. Our favorites
Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
READING NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITES GIVES US MORE INSIGHT INTO A
PUZZLING AUTHOR, SAYS TUTOR JOHN VERDI.
{T
tt
s Co LL s c £.St.John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{O N NIE T ZSC H E }
{ON N I ETZSCHE}
2.0
reveal aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain
undetected, and so it can be valuable to reflect on them. For
a similar reason we might better understand what Nietzsche
means to us-what Nietzsche ought to mean to us-by asking
who the writers were that he could not leave behind. Nietzsche's pantheon of favorites is large, and I have chosen only
a few and not necessarily those who exerted the most
influence on him. In making this selection I am, to be sure,
revealing a favoritism of my own.
HERACLITUS
In the fragments of Heraclitus Nietzsche found a man who
was willing to live without the metaphysical comfort given
by belief in things that persistently endure. 0wqmjJuLorraorcavra peL, ouoev µevu: Everything changes, nothing
remains steadfast. Nietzsche says that around Heraclitus he
culture that after Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, becomes "pale
and ungraspable," even "immoral." (Daybreak, 103)
Nietzsche's praise ofThucydidcs makes me wonder if, in the
famous dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians
over the fate ofMclos, the historian even means for us to ask
whether it is the one or the other who are right. Might the
moral question be exactly the one Thucydides wants not to
raise? As if to suggest this, Nietzsche asks a rhetorical
question: " Does one reproach Thucydides for the words
he put into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when
they negotiated with the Melians on the question of destruction or submission?" (Will to Power, 42.9) The Athenians
argue from power, yet don't we find their words compelling,
if not decisive?
P LATO
felt "altogether warm and better than anywhere else. The
Nietzsche could never escape Plato. His relationship with
affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the
decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying "Yes" to
opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being-all this is clearly more
closely related to me than anything else to date." (Ecce
Homo, IV, 3) Throughout his life Nietzsche considered himself a disciple of Heraclitus. While St. John's does not try to
inculcate this reverence in its freshmen, we do ask them to
translate many of his fragments in the language tutorial.
Their depth and power, contained in such brief, aphoristic compass, invariably proves a remarkable springboard for
reflection on the depth and power of all language.
him and with Socrates often reads like a rocky love affair. On
the one hand he praises, saying: " One can conceive philosophers as those who make the most extreme efforts to test
how far man could elevate himself-Plato especially" ( Will to
Power, 973) and "What is needed above all is an absolute
skepticism toward all inherited concepts (of the kind that
one philosopher perhaps possessed-Plato, of course-for
he taught the reverse)." ( Will to Power, 409) On the other
hand he considers what has derived from Plato to be a sickness. "My cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli,
are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to
deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality."
(Twilight of the Idols, V, 2.) Nietzsche praises Plato as "the
most beautiful growth of antiquity," but one who invented
"the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors
so far... the pure spirit and the good as such." (Beyond Good
and Evil, 2) Nietzsche also complains that "since Plato
philosophy has been dominated by morality." {Will to
Power, 412.) Philosophy has lost the ability to blur the
boundary between good and evil, in the way that Nietzsche
believes Thucydides could do naturally, to the extent even
of denying that morality has any role to play in our understanding of human actions. Plato and Socrates represent for
Nietzsche the triumph ofreason and dialectic over intuition
and instinct. Nietzsche, however, struggles to make clear
that "one does not make men better when one represents to
them that virtue is demonstrable and asks for reasons."
T HUCYD IDES
T hucydides is another program author Nietzsche considered a favorite, because Thucydides "takes the most
comprehensive and impartial delight in all that is typical in
men and events and believes that to each type there pertains
a quantum of good sense: this he seeks to discover." (Daybreak, 168) While this reason for his love of Thucydides
might seem at odds with his praise for individuality and
transcendence, and his beckoning to the " Overman,"
themes that pervade his later work, still Nietzsche often
wonders "what might yet be made of man" as a species
(Beyond Good and Evil, n8), andhow"the type 'man'" can
be enhanced. (Beyond Good and Evil, 2.57) He believes that
in Thucydides we see the "last glorious flower" of " that
culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world," a
{ TH E
Co LL e c; E . St. John 's College . Spring 2005
)
(Will to Power, 441), which
is what he thinks Plato and
Socrates do. If our favorite
writers ought to be the ones
that do us the most good,
then perhaps we ought
to include Plato in our list
of Nietzsche's favorites,
though Plato did not give
him the sort of comfort we
often seek in our favorite
authors. But Nietzsche
rarely sought comfort.
2.I
NIETZSCHE RARELY SOUGHT
COMFORT IN THE WORKS HE READ.
Nietzsche thought that
honesty was the one virtue
left to "free spirits," among
whom he counted himself.
"So few writers are honest
that one ought really to
mistrust
anyone
who
writes." (Schopenhauer as
Educator, 2,) In Montaigne,
however, he found the most ~
honest of writers. Mon- 8
taigne's willingness to
explore his own character and the prejudices with which he
himself reads and writes is what impresses and stimulates
Nietzsche most. "Since getting to know this freest and
mightiest of souls, I at least have come to feel what he felt
about Plutarch: 'as soon as I glance at him I grow a leg or a
wing.' " (Ibid.) Montaigne's honesty also infuses what Nietzsche considers his other admirable quality: "a cheerfulness
that really cheers ...with certainty and simplicity, courage
and strength ... as a victor...for there is cheerfulness only
when there is victory." (Ibid.) Montaigne hides nothing and
because he is deeply interested in the world as it is and as it
has been reflected in great books, he serves for Nietzsche as
a kind of Thucydides of the soul.
them both, and for this Nietzsche loves him. " He has
taught me such an infinite
amount-the only logical
Christian." (Letter to Georg
Brandes) At the age of 16
Pascal wrnte a treatise on
conic sections, a text that
marks the beginning of his
very fruitful work in science
and mathematics, and which
students at St. John's read as
sophomores. T hen at the
age of 31 he experienced a
conversion and devoted the
rest of his short life to
religious matters and to
introspection . Nietzsche
consider s him "the most
instructive victim of Christianity." (Ecce Homo, II, 3)
According to Nietzsche,
Pascal carries Christianity to its logical conclusion, "selfcontempt and self-abuse" ( Will to Power, #2,52,), a condition
in which "everything is sin, even our virtues." ( Will to
Power, #786) In such a condition reason, too, is corrupt and
faith is needed for every kind of kno,ving. Furthermore, in
his writing Pascal seems to share some of the honesty that
for Nietzsche characterizes Montaigne. "One should not
conceal ...how our thoughts have come to us. The profoundest and least exhausted books will probably always
have something of the aphoristic and unexpected character
of Pascal's Pensees." (Will to Power, #42.4) Both writers tell
us not only what they think, but how they came to think so,
which can be enormously supportive for those of us who
struggle simply to try to think a few good thoughts.
PASCAL
H EIN RI CH H EINE
Nietzsche sees personified in Pascal the conflict between
science and faith. While Nietzsche attacks both, Pascal.felt
Heinrich H eine was a German poet, cnuc, and writer
of Jewish heritage who converted to Protestanti sm for
MONTAIGNE
{ TH B
Co LL E c
B.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{O N NIET ZS CHE}
2,2,
{ A LU M NI VOIC E S}
BEYOND THE BOOKS
practical reasons. Nietzsche admired his work immensely
throughout his life, and wrote of him: " T he highest conception of the lyric poet was given me by Heinrich Heine . ... He
possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine
perfection ....And how he employs German! It will one day
be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of
the German language." (Ecce Homo, III, 4) In Heine can
perhaps be found the seeds of two of Nietzsche's most
famous pronouncements, the death of God and the eternal
return of the same. In The History ofReligion and Philosophy in Germany, H eine writes: "Do you hear the little bell
ring? Kneel down. They are bringing the sacraments to a
dying god." (Book II) And in his Last Poems and Thoughts,
we find this: " However long a time may pass, according to
the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal
play of repetition, all meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and
corrupt each other again." (We also find the eternal return
suggested by another poet Nietzsche admired, Friedrich
Holderlin, in his unfinished play, The Death ofEmpedocles.
Empedocles speaks: "Go, and fear nothing. Everything
recurs./ And what's to come already is complete.")
R ALPH WALD O E MERSON
Perhaps the writer Nietzsche held dearest from early in life
to late, and the one he returned to again and again, is an
American, Ralph Waldo Emerson . Nietzsche read Emerson
(in German translation) while a student at Schulpforta, and
after he lost his much-annotated copy of Emerson's Essays
some years later, he soon replaced it. While in the end the
differences between the two men may be greater than their
similarities, there is no question that Nietzsche found much
to admire in Emerson's views of nature and history, of
the role of genius in human culture, and of the paradoxical
character of good and evil. The first edition of The Gay
Science quotes Emerson's essay " History" in an epigraph.
"To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed,
all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine."
What Nietzsche finds in Emerson is a thinker who, like
Heraclitus, sees the natural world as shot through with
impermanence. "There are no fixtures in nature. The
universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of
degrees." (Circles) He finds a man who recognizes that
"man .. .is that middle point, whereof every thing may be
affirmed and denied with equal reason." (Spiritual Laws)
H e finds a writer who acknowledges that "we do not see
{ TH E
directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of
correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are,
or of computing the amount of their errors." (Experience)
Nietzsche also discovered in Emerson someone who was
willing to say: " I would gladly be moral ... but I have set
my heart on honesty." (Experience) In general Emerson's
skeptical attitude toward custom and conventionality is
thoroughly Nietzschean. Of both thinkers one might say (as
Nietzsche does say of Schopenhauer by citing Emerson):
" Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this
planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is
safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but
its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary
reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that
may not be revised and condemned." (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator; Emerson, Circles)
A N EC L ECTI C LI ST
While I promised only to give my favorites of Nietzsche's
favorites, I ought also to mention some of the other writers
Nietzsche admired, though his attitude toward most was
ambivalent. The list is eclectic. There are the great aphorists: La Rochefoucauld, Lichtenberg, Chamfort, Leopardi.
There are the German giants: Kant, Goethe, Hegel,
Schopenhauer. There is Spinoza, the "purest sage," who
because he denied free will, teleology, and the moral world
order, also stands "beyond good and evil." There are the
Eastern influences, especially Buddhism, which Nietzsche
came to know largely through his reading of Schopenhauer,
and Zoroastrianism, founded by the Persian, Zoroaster, or
Zarathustra. (Could Emerson's description of Zarathustra in
Character have influenced Nietzsche's development of his
version of the character?) And then there is Dostoevsky.
Nietzsche considered his discovery of Dostoevsky in 1887 to
have been "one of the most beautiful strokes of fortune
in [his] life." (Twilight of the Idols, IX, 45) I wonder what
twentieth-century writers Nietzsche would have esteemed,
but then I realize that hardly one has not been affected by
him to some degree. Would not the literature of the last
century be to Nietzsche a mirror in which the reflected
image, while perhaps distorted, would nonetheless be a
familiar one? ♦
John Verdi is a tutor in Annapolis.
Co LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
Revisiting Nietzsche in Sils-Maria
BY JENNIFER A. DONNELLY,
A96
- - - • he rituals of opening questions,
seminar and don
rags vanish after
graduation from
St. John's. But the
night the bells of
McDowell Hall
tolled my class's
submission of our senior essays, an
aphorism by Nietzsche, on whom I had
written my essay, seemed co ring out like
an opening question to the rest of our
lives. " What good is a book," he asks in
The Gay Science, "that does not even
carry us beyond all books?"
As is often the case with Nietzsche,
the formulation is enigmatic: we know
that the man who articulated it was an
avid reader, a prolific writer and a professional philologist, and we notice that the
format used to question the value of
books is, well, a book. But for us,
students of the "great books" program,
the teasing becomes almost a taunt.
What good are these books to which we devote ourselves for four
years? And what does it mean to be carried beyond them?
After seven years of being nagged by these questions, I made
a journey to what could be considered their source: the Nietzsche
Haus in Sils-Maria, the remote village in southeastern Switzerland's Engadine valley where the philosopher spent several
summers and produced some of his most notorious works.
Despite having poured my heart into my senior essay on Beyond
Good and Evil, I had not pursued further studies on Nietzsche or
in philosophy. On that first visit, however, I lovingly toted my
careworn copy of that book, its marginalia ranging from smiley
faces to question marks to "Yes!"
The house in which Nietzsche used to board now shelters a
small museum, library, and archive that present elements of his
life and ideas, as well as some aspects of the remarkably rich
literary and artistic history of the region (which drew authors
{T
II E
Co LL E c
E.
THE VIEW FROM JENNIFER DONNELLY'S ROOM IN THE NIETZSCHE HAUS,
WHERE THE PHILOSOPHER STAYED REGULARLY IN THE I88os.
from Rainer Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse to Anne Frank
and Pablo Neruda). When co-curator Mirella Carbone mentioned
that a few rooms are allocated to artists, scholars, and writers, I
wondered whether the Engacline's reputed "champagne air" had
gone to my head. The prospect of unbroken space and time for
reflection stretched out wide and inviting like the glacier-topped
pea.ks, temperamental skies, and glassy lakes that inspired
Nietzsche's idea of"eternal return."
So return I did. One year later, the toy-like RhiitischeBahn train
was carrying me up an unending succession of misty switchbacks,
steep terrain that Nietzsche somehow covered in a horse-drawn
carriage. This stay in Sils-Maria was to last a month. Although I
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{ALUMNI VOICE S }
{A LUMNI VOICES}
was eager to reread Nietzsche
in the environment that had
so powerfully inspired him, it
wasn't my intention to make
a pilgrimage to his ghost.
Rather, having recently completed a master's thesis on art
museums in Paris, which for
five years had been home, I
was mainly seeking distance
from everyday life in order to
WTite and think about something else, such as where my
next steps might lead.
My room in the Nietzsche
Haus turned out to share one
wall with that of its more
famous resident. It also bore
the type of Spartan furnishings upon which he had
insisted-little more tha n a
single bed and a WTiting
desk-although I had the
benefit of electric lamps and
a sink instead of gas lanterns
and a washstand. I soon
determined that my ends
were best achieved not by sitting at that desk, but by setting out into
the mountains framed by the window
above it. As I climbed the trails, one
panorama wouJd unfold into the next
and high-altitude valleys would come
into view; peaks previously hidden
would rise up, compelling me to continue moving, often over snow fields
and glacier streams, in hopes of glimpsing whatever Jay beyond.
Just so, fresh perspectives on my life
down in the "flatlands" (to borrow
Thomas Mann's phrase from The Magic
Mountain , set in nearby Davos) suggested themselves. The insights sometimes evaporated, but other times they
REVISTING N I ETZSCHE SENT
DONNELLY BACK TO P ARIS WITH
NEW APPRECIATION FOR THE
PROGRAM IN GENERAL.
l
evolved into realizations about
how I had wound up where I
was and resolutions about how
to proceed forward. The sound
of the German verb for "to
hike," wandern, aptly captured this dual motion of
rambling across slopes and
" .. the texu on the Program
create a sort ofmental
landscape through which
we Johnnies-and all those
who reai debat~ and write
aboutthegreatbookshave earned thepassport
to wander. "
J ENNIFER A. DONNELLY, A96
{THE
Co
LL E
c
E .
John's College. Spring2005}
meandering through thoughts.
Furthermore, so resounding
is the echo between Nietzsche's writings and the Engadine landscape that the hiking
paths-wanderwege-turned
out to give as direct an access
to his ideas as did the wellstocked shelves of the Nietzsche Haus library and the
Biblioteca Engiadinaisa. Trail
guidebooks quote the philosopher on the scenery (he
described a lake as " milkgreen ") and designate his favorite trails
(rarely too steep, because of his fragile
health). At the tip of the Chaste peninsula jutting into the serene lake of Sils,
where he dreamed of living in "a sort of
ideal dog-kennel," a boulder is engraved
with a passage from Zaratlwstra: "AJl joy
longs for eternity...."
On one hike, the words fit the scenery
with an exactitude that was downright
eerie. Takjng a break, listening to cowbells ringing through the valley, I
opened On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. "Consider
the herd before you," the book begins,
t
I
launching a discourse on the dangers of historical memory by
describing a herd of grazing cattle.
Off the trails, the magnetic gcist of the Nietzsche Haus and
its centrality in the Engadinc's cultural and intellectual life
encouraged the conversations that, as all Johnnies know, round
out reading and reflection. I met a Scottish professor from
the University of
Hawaii writing the
preface to his translation of Zarathustra, a
Ziirich screenwriter,
and a Swiss-German
novelist. Even the
library seemed to hum
with the whispers of
the absent authors of
weighty dissertations
sent from all corners
of the globe like travelogues from the territory of Nietzsche's
thought.
The image of those
heavily footnoted theses loomed in my
mind when co-curator
Joachim Jung asked me to explain my link to the house's
namesake. As I rendered into clumsy German a 20-year-old's
interpretation of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future," I wondered whether my unmediated reading of that book was merely a
straying into a thick forest, and my senior essay for St. John's a
valiant but inexpert attempt to plot my haphazard steps back
through it.
I reread that essay, after descending to the flatlands of Paris, for
the first time since handing it in that cold January night in
Annapolis. Since my focus had been morality, religion, and dogmatism, the ending surprised me: "Art," I had concluded, "is
beyond good and evil. ..." Though I would no longer dare to
defend this proclamation as earnestly as I might have at my senior
oral, I like to consider it a portend to my later experiences of
studying and working in the field of the visual arts.
This perspective on my study of Nietzsche at St John's leads me
back to my opening question: what is the value of studying the
program books? Writing a senior essay on Nietzsche certainly did
{ THE
not make me an authority on his philosophy. But reading his work
in the Engadine years later reminded me that the texts on
the program create a sort of mental landscape through
which we Johnnies-and all those who read, debate, and write
about the great books- have earned the passport to wander. The
books (as well as the musical scores, the scientific papers,
and the mathematical
texts) can inform our
decisions, spark new
ideas, and color our
experiences long after
our formal studies
end. And we need not
become experts on
a book or its author
in order to be instructcd, entertained or
even annoyed, any
more than we need be
Alpinists to hike up a
mountain.
As for defining my
next steps, walking
through Nietzsche's
mountains convinced
THE MOUNTAINS T HAT I NSPIR ED NI ETZSCH E
me that reorienting
GAVE DONNELLY N EW INSIGHTS INTO THE
oneself
is a process
PHILOSOPHER'S IDEAS.
that never ends. "Der
Weg ist das Ziel, " ran
an ad in a paper I read over morning coffee at the Nietzsche Haus:
the path is the goal. The real challenge is not to stick to a narrow
trail but to keep climbing with all the strength in our limbs and
hearts in search of the most breathtakjng views. ♦
Notes: Nietzsche's description ofthe lake as "milk-green" isfound
in Eugen E. Hiisler's Engadin, Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2001.
His favorite trails are described in Paul Raabe 's Spaziergange
<lurch Nietzsches Sils-Maria, Arche Verlag AC, Zurich-Hamburg,
1994. Nietzsche's description of his retreat as a "sort ofideal dogkennel" is mentioned in a letter to Carl von Gersdorff, 28 June
1883, cited in The Nietzsche Haus in Sils-Maria, by Peter Andre
Bloch, Calanda Verlag, Eng. trans. Albi &Julia Rosenthal.
Co LL E c E. John's College. Spring 2005 l
�26
{C R OQ UE T}
{CROQUET}
NAVY PREVAILS!
Cold and Rain Fatl to Dampen Spirits
at the 23rdAnnual Croquet Match
BY ROSEMARY HARTY
eforc the match started, the
only thing to grumble about
was the weather: unseasonably
cold, windy, patches of rainthe kind of weather that calls
for abandoning the picture hat
and sun dress in favor of a down coat and
jeans. Nevertheless, the crowd of alumni,
students, and townies approached 500. They
enjoyed the party under umbrellas, tents,
and blankets.
But then, the unthinkable! With the score
tied 2-z, a Navy team edged past Chris Mules
(Ao6) and Tristan Evans-Wilcnt (Ao7) after
the Johnnies tried a risk)' move and ended
up "staked out" by their opponents.
In hockey, it was the equivalent of sitting
in a penalty box while the winning team
scores on a power play. Jn basketball, it was
like watching a three-pointer swish through
the net with your best player on the bench
after fouling out.
It was a well-played, competitive, exciting
croquet match-just what the two teams who
took the field were hoping for. The Mids
emerged from Woodward Hall to Queen's
"Under Pressure." The theme from
The A-Team played as the Johnnies came
out dressed like characters from the movie
Napoleon Dynamite, in badly stenciled
white t-shirts that said "Vote for Pedro,"
short-shorts, and geeky headbands.
The two teams were tied for most of the
afternoon, with St. John's clinching one of
the final games when senior Cara Lammey
hit a winning stroke.
"I knew it was now or never ifl was going
to play a match-I also know they needed a
token girl," she explained.
Imperial Wicket Nick Whittier (Ao5)
had nothing but praise for the Navy team.
Having beaten Navy in an intercollegiate
competition a few short weeks before,
Whittier wasn't expecting
an upset.
" Some of their best players had an ei,.traordinary
game, and some of ours had
one or two off shots-and
that's all it takes," he says.
"I think the Navy team is
excellent."
Overall, St John's has won
r8 matches co Navy's five
wins. The last time Navy
upset the Johnnies was in
zoor. Navy's captain, Adam
Todd, declared himself
"stoked" over the win.
{ T H E
Co
LL£ c £ •
St. John's College . Spring 2005
MIDSHIPMEN ADAM TODD (LEFT) AND
ALEX PLUMER GREET NICK WHITTIER (Ao5,
RIGHT) AND JOHN GERARD (Aos) FOR A
FIERCE BATTLE.
"It was a great match," he said. "The
Johnnies came out and played an excelJent
game."
The Navy team of Dustin Wood (next
year's captain) and Eric Watt succeeded in
"staking out" the Johnnies by hitting a rover
ball, a move the Johnnies had just tried
unsuccessfully. That forced the Johnnies to
sit out two rounds, allowing Navy the win.
Navy fans rushed the field in triumph.
Did the Navy team put in extra practice
this year? "We practiced less because of the
bad weather," he said.
A few days after the match, Todd was
unable to say where the Mids planned to
display the Annapolis Cup, the thrift-store
trophy awarded the winners of the match.
" I didn't even know there was a 'cup,'"
he said. "I had always thought it was just
a myth." ♦
}
SANTA FE CHILI
SAVES THE DAY
Alumni traveled from as far away as
California to attend the an nual Croquet
match against the Naval Academy, and
their spirits were only slightly wilted by
gloomy weather and ignominious defeat.
The weather didn't stop a group of Santa
Fe alumni from pulling off a pre-Homecoming reunion, or deter a grou p of young
Annapolis alumni from pitching a te nt
and enjoying a banquet of potato-leek
soup, vichyssoise, and salmon.
Tanya Hadlock-Piltz (Ao5) flew in from
Los Angeles to see her friends- all of
whom were dressed to the nines. "This is
homecoming for us," said Hadlock-Piltz.
The Santa Fe reunion class of zooo
used the annual party to stage a preHomecoming gathering in Annapolis.
Many alumni live on the Ease Coast, so
croquet gave them an impetus to get
together in case they can't make it back
to Santa Fe this summer. T he group
consisted ofr4 alumni from the class. and
even though their plans were somewhat
compromised by uncooperative weather,
they had a great time catching up, said
Alex.is Brown (SFoo, EC03).
The group rented lodgings in the
historic district and had Horseman's
Haven green chili, "a much-loved and
missed commodity from Santa Fe,"
shipped to the Annapolis alumni office
before the event. Their plan was to invite
any Santa Fe alumni and current students
(a group of about 20 made the trip) whom
they met during the croquet match to a
Saturday-evening barbeque. When the
match was postponed to Sunday because
of threatening weather, they partied
amongst themselves, ate more salsa, and
joined the Waltz party later that night.
All alumni got to sample the hoc stuff on
Sunday at the alumni tent.
"Evcr)one was very happy to have had
this opportunity to get back together,"
says Brown. "Some ofus hadn't seen each
other in six years.''
Amina Khattak (SFGI95) flew in from
Norther 1 California, bringing Annika, 3,
and CyT,1s, r4 months, to introduce them
to John me croquet. "I try to come out
every year, but this is their first match,"
she said. ♦
CLOCICWISE: ANNAPOLIS '04 GRADS IN THEIR
FINERY; MEGHAN HUGHES
(SFoo)
AND HER
BEAU, PATRICK; LAURENT MERCERON
(Ao8);
(Ao7).
AND JUDITH TORGERSON, MOM OF ERIC
PHOTOS BY MATTHEW BARRICK
{ TH£
Co
LL£ c E.
St. John 's College. Spring !1,005
}
�28
OPEN SECRETS/I NWARD P ROSPECTS:
REFLECTIONS ON WORLD AND SOUL
By Eva Brann
Paul Dry Books, 2.004
n her latest book, Annapolis tutor
Eva Brann has collected
observations and aphorisms
written over more than
30 years. Open Secrets/
Inward Prospects divides
into two sorts: observations about
our external world well known to
all but not always openly told, and
sightings of internal vistas and
omens, wherein Miss Brann looks
at herself as a sample soul.
In the preface to this beautiful
volume that fits perfectly in one
hand, Miss Brann describes her
manner of composition: "I wrote
these thoughts down on about two
thousand sheets, two to three
thoughts per paper, and I kept
them in some used manila
envelopes, the earliest of which
bore a postmark ofI972."
Most of the sheets lacked a
notation of when and where they
were written, she added. "Whether
about 5,000 articulated notion per
person per lifetime is about average
or over or below I cannot tell; they
certainly stacked up high."
Miss Braun's instructions for
approaching the book are these:
"Open anywhere and if it irks you,
try another page. This book can be
long or short-As You Like It."
Any Johnnie who has been lucky enough
to enjoy a conversation ,vith Miss Brannin seminar or outside of it-will understand
why this little book is a gem. For those
who haven't had the pleasure, these interesting thoughts-a sample of which are
provided below-wiJJ offer a glimpse of the
experience.
Some people's chatter, God bless them, is
actually self-expression, but for others it's
self-sacrifice on the altar of sociability to
join in, and betokens not so much interest
in what is being said as interest in the mere
expression of interest, that is, the desire to
show civility-and to look each other over.
Sometimes it gets screamingly boring, and
then you catch a glimpse of one of these
others feeling likewise-and start a real
conversation.
{BIBLIOF I LE}
{BIBLI OF ILE }
maunder on for a long, long time. When
the last judgment is ready to be made we'll
be Jong gone.
To love your country is to love it openeyedly, sometimes for its flaws, sometimes
with its flaws, and most often in spite
of its flaws. It's not so different from
personal love.
The heroism of maintenance is severely
underrated. It is the resistance to human
and natural eno·opy- that cosmic
downward trend (which Lucretius
symbolized in the fundamental fall
of his atoms), that tendency toward
deterioration and featureless
homogeneity that will obtain if the
world is left alone. (In Washington
State I Ltscd to see a dentists' billboard saying "Ifyou ignore your
teeth they' ll go away.") But it isn't
only nattue and humanity in its
natural course that needs to be kept
going against time's grain; we also
need a counterinsurgency against
mindless novelty. Between entropy
and innovation-that's where my
heroes a.re at work.
"Vacation" is a sad word, the
vacancy of time after the press of
business. "Leisure" is a lovely
word, the freedom of time for longbreathed projects.
No one has sufficiently said what a
feeling is. I tis pathos, something
passably suffered, affect. Yet it is
also motion, being moved out of
oneself, emotion. No more do we
know what pleasure is, especially
psychic pleasure: It seems to be the
aboriginal accompaniment, not so
much reaction as concurrent commentbut every analytic description covertly
involves the word "pleasant." All the
definitions I've read of feeling or pleasure
are either diversionary or circular: Even
my trusty Heritage Dictionary can do no
better than to lead me from feeling to
affect and from affect to feeling. And the
definitions given in books circumvent
saying what passions are by telling how
they arise and what they're good for-as if
origin and effect were what is wanted.
Miss BRANN's OPEN SECRETS COVERS TOPICS
INCLUDING MUSIC , INTIMACY, MEMORY, AND
IMAGINATION.
Many of us feel ourselves to be living on
the cusp of time: Great questions are about
to be settled: Is nature infinitely transformable, or does she collapse if her own
Jaws are used too intrusively against her?
Is human nature indefinitely malleable or
does it ttrrn monso·ous when pushed too
far? How much virtuality can the human
imagination absorb before it loses its own
actuality?, etc. I don't think anything wi II
be concluded in the short run: Both nature
and humans will accommodate to more
impositions than anyone imagined and
rebel at less provocation than one would
have thought, and that way things will
{ THE
Co
LL E
c
E .
St. John 's College. Spring 2005
"Questioning" this or that is an act of
covert aggression. Question-asking is an
act of persistent love.
)
P ROFILES IN TERROR: T HE GUIDE
TO M IDDLE EAST TERRORIST
O RGANIZATIONS
By Aaron Mannes (AGI97)
Rowman & Littlefield, 2004
incc global terrorism emerged
in the 2.ISt century, it has
spawned dozens of shadowy
groups with elusive leaders.
Aaron Mannes (AGI97) sheds
light on 20 terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the regional
groups that are affiliated ·with them in his
book Pro.files in Terror: The Guide to
Middle East Terrorist Organizations.
Mannes, who wrote his handbook for
journalists, researchers, and those who
work in counterterrorism, describes
aspects of each terrorist group, including
leadership, ideology, financial support,
targets and tactics, and areas of operation.
"The modern terrorist phenomenon
really started when the age of media began.
It is political theater," says Mannes, who is
careful to distinguish modern terrorism
from other insurgencies throughout
history. "Terrorists play off the nature of
our modern, wired society and use mass
media to spread fear and their agendas.
Terrorists legitimize violence. They say the
society is so awful that violence as a whole
is appropriate."
When beginning his research,
Mannes was fascinated by what he
calls "asymmetrical warfare," and
says, "First-world countries such as
the United States are unbeatable,
but terrorism has emerged as part
of a vast equalizing process." Looking to the future , Mannes predicts
more terrorism. "There are different evolutions - the terrorism that
achieves a goal, such as the Madrid
train bombings that effectively got
Spain to pull out of Iraq. And there
arc the catastrophes that wreak
major havoc, violence as a goal in
and of itself."
Mannes was inspired by his tutors
at St. John's to pursue his interest
in public policy and writing. "All
my tutors were terrific," says
Mannes, "but Leo Raditsa (now
deceased) helped me even after my
graduation from St. John's. He
taught me about the importance of
freedom, liberty, and governments
that protect and preserve that.
Governments that undermine
this are viscious."
Mannes served as director ofresearch
at the Middle East Media Institute in
Washington, D.C., from r998 until 200I.
He currently works at the University of
Maryland's "Mind Lab," where he models
terrorist networks. ♦
During times of public stress, like war,
certain mental illnesses and suicides are
said to decrease. That's surely not an
argument for the redemptive power of war
but an illumination of the human condition
in peace: Normalcy is the most stringent
tester of sou.ls.
A PUBLICATION
OF JINSA PRESS
AARON MANNES' HANDBOOK DETAILS
20 TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE
MIDDLE EAST.
"Open anywhere and
ifit irks you~
try another page. "
Contrary motions: The young at their best
are intensely introspective but all their
dreams are for the world. The old a.re in
fact rooted in that world but their meditations turn inward. -Like passing ships,
they send tenders across and board briefly,
bringing news and victuals. Less fancifully,
coming and going, we've got things to tell
each other.
EvA BRANN, TUTOR
Childlike and childish: the ever-young at
heart and the willfully infantile. The first
are quirky but lovable, the second just
irritating.
Some looking into themselves come to the
limit and say, "I am the ground." Others
see no end and say, "It hath no bottom."
But perhaps you shouldn't search in the
soul but through the soul.
"A friend is another self." If so, why
bother? One ofmc is enough. No, it's just
because souls are never transparent to each
other v-.rithout remainder that they see each
other at all. Mutual opacity keeps us two,
together but unmerged.
We humans a.re temporally rooted in the
world, atemporally in the soul. Good
communities mediate these two realms
of the secular and the transcendent: Their
members live their daily life mindful of
something beyond.
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005
Do my colleagues see themselves, mutatis
mutandis, as I see my sclf?-a being of
dubious gravity, urgently perfectionist
about small things and dilatory about great
ones, an everlasting amateur frivolously
suspicious of expertise, kept callow by the
luck of life that has preserved me from
chronic tragedy, extensively introspective
in leisure rested from responsibility-an
old woman with an unconscionably
young soul? ♦
)
�{ALUMNI
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
PROFILE}
THE HosT OF "MARKETPLACE" TUNES IN
David Brown (AGJ95) takes a liberal arts approach to business news
BY PATRICIA DEMPSEY
mid Brown (AGl95)
says the long oral
tradition in radio is
still vibrant and vital.
"There's more time on
radio to engage in the
art of this tradition, and there's more
room for nuance."
Brown is speaking from the Frank
Stanton Studios in Los Angeles, Calif.,
just a few hours before he goes on the
air to engage millions oflistcncrs with
his agile conversation as host of
"Marketplace," public radio's national
series about business and life. There's a
rustle of paper as an assistant slips an
urgent message under Brown's nose,
but right now his focus is elsewhere.
His meandering Southern speech downshifts, and Brown, who once customized
and sold Harley-Davidson motorcycles,
relaxes into a conversation about
road trips.
"When I think of favorite road trips,
one that stands out was the road trip of
the summer of '95, from Boston to
Annapolis to attend the Graduate
Institute," says Brown. "I was working
in Boston for Monitor Radio at the time;
Monitor is the public radio broadcast
produced by the Christian Science
Monitor newspaper. They offered me this
gig to host and I said, 'Hey, I'm happy to
do this hosting gig but this program at
St. John's is important to me.' "Brown
asked for the summer off to finish his
Graduate Institute studies. " I t is so vivid
in my mind, when I was finally crossing
the border into Maryland and feeling so
happy to be heading south of the MasonDixon again. And Annapolis as a place
has such resonance for me."
A native of Georgia, Brown lived in
Annapolis in the early 1990s when he
worked as Washington, D.C., bureau
chief and chief national correspondent
for Monitor Radio and Monitor
Television. In one of those happy
I
expand your perspective, you can see that
each point of view in fact is true."
"I also think quite often of
Tocqueville's Democracy in America,"
says Brown, who owns three copies of
Tocqueville's book and keeps one on
his bedside table. "When I look at the
domestic scene, so many of his
observations hold true today, such
as the religiosity of Americans, the
role race plays in the American
consciousness, the tension between
rugged individualism and civic duty, so
many of the things that made Americans
peculiar creatures in Tocqueville's time
continue to define us on the world stage
today." Of his three editions of the book,
Brown says "one is a precious, dog-eared
volume with my class notes, another is an
inexpensive paperback I can pack up and
take along as a casual read, and the third
is a library edition.' "
Brown offers another insight that he
culled from reading the great books.
"I think about art and science, how
radio brings these together and how at
St. John's, the concept of art versus
science, and the melding of the two, was
part of the curriculum discussion ," says
Brown. "Here in radio, you have storytelling-the art of telling-a-story-part of
radio-and then you also engage in the
science, the journalism, getting the
facts right. This is what we do here at
'Marketplace.' I t's a liberal arts approach
to looking at business," says Brown.
"At 'Marketplace' we have what we call
'front-yard stories' that touch a deep
chord, such as an issue of democracy and
justice. What's at stake when there's a
courthouse shooting in Atlanta? We look
at the social phenomena, the context
shaping the backdrop for the events that
are shaping the business news. Then
there are 'backyard stories' on topics like
bond prices that are not big on curb
appeal, but need to be included. Then we
mix it up-this is what makes us unique."
''.[fyoufree your.se!f
expandyourper.spective~
you can .see that each
pointefview in/act is
true. "
DAVID BROWN (AC195)
accidents that make a journey memorable,
when Brown was living in Annapolis he
stumbled upon St. John's, a perfect match
for his appetite for intellectual discovery.
" I was searching for something to keep
me mentally charged and stimulated,"
says Brown.
At a political function in Annapolis,
Brown met a recent GI grad. "He was
enthusiastic, incandescent even, about
his experience at St. John's. So I met
with [graduate admissions coordinator]
Miriam Callahan-Hean. At that time
the Graduate Institute was housed in
Mellon Hall and we walked around and
I remember thinking, 'This is extraordinary-there are conversations about
conversations going on here.' "
The ideas Brown encountered in his
conversations at St. John's find a forum
in his distinctive radio show today. "I ate
it up. I loved it. The reading, the being
exposed to ideas I wouldn't have exposed
myself to if left to my own devices," says
Brown. "I'm not a math person, but not a
week goes by that I don't think about
Lobachevsk.--y and Euclid and parallels.
You can see it, visualize it-the parallel
lines into infinity. I remember thinking,
'This is not possible. How can these
mutually exclusive ideas-Euclid's classic
definition of parallels and Lobachevsky's
vision oflines infinitely approaching
each other-both be true?' "says Brown.
"This opened a way of seeing things for
me in journalism. If you free yourself,
{ THE
Co LL EC & •Sc.John's College, Spring 2005
}
Brown recalls the skepticism
surrounding "Marketplace," when it was
a new show. "In 1989 there was this
cheeky upstart business program that
everyone said would fail," says Brown.
By 2000 Brov-m, who had just graduated
from Washington and Lee Law School,
was recruited to be senior producer of
American Public Media's "Marketplace,"
and du ring his tenure the show garnered
several awards, including the prestigious
Peabody Award for excellence in journalism. By 2003, Brown was host, a
challenge he relishes. "There is something that happens every day between
10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. when we go on the
air. I'm no CPA, so I have to synthesize
this, present it in an interesting,
engaging way co tell it to our listeners.
There's a pressure, but it's a good
pressure, and you spin out the story.
It's exciting, challenging, thrilling," says
Brown. "When I go home, I get calls from
friends and they say, 'That made so much
sense. I'm so glad you put it that way.'
That makes it meaningful for me-that I
got through, communicated. St. John's
prepared me; all the underlying conversations prepared me."
Brown is another hour closer to going
on the air, but he has one more story
about the GI. " Of the four GI segments,
I put off math until the last semester.
Lobachevsky, the logic, I wrestled with it.
One day I was having coffee with [tutor
': ..he [Mr. Kutler) knew
I was .straining. He told
m~ 'You 'fl.see this. You 'fl
get it. Give it time. ' "
DAVID BROWN (Ac195)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005)
DAVID BROWN WORKED BRIEFLY IN TELEVISION,
BUT PREFERS RADIO. "IT'S BEEN SAID 'THE
PICTURES ARE BETTER IN RADIO' ANO IT'S
TRUE."
emeritus] Mr. Kutler. I think he knew I
was straining. He told me, 'You'll see
this. You'll get it. Give it time.' He was
right. It was a loving, reassuring gesture.
He could see I was looking for an intellectually challenging experience. 'You
might really love law school,' he said to
me.'' He knew I was interested in talking
about ideas. He knew I was wondering,
'Where do I go from here?'"
Fortunately Brown ended up at
"Marketplace," adding intellectual spice
and artful conversation to evening
commutes. ♦
�{ALUMNI
1935
"1 'm very proud to have been a
II
graduate ofSJC," writes
MELVILLE L. B1SGY£R. "I'm a
very old man now (91+) and as I
look back, those four years are
among the highlights. The
memories of my fellow
students, the wonderful profs,
the staff, the old buildings, my
dorm-Pinkney Hall-the bell
rope running through a classroom atop McDowelJ, the
library, the gym, the proms.
Is the Sugar Bowl still in town?
The connict with Hopkins in
'35, the front campus, the old
Liberty Tree, which I know is
now gone. The All-American
lacrosse teams-all part of a
wonderful memory. A biologyzoology class of four students
and two profs-wow-other
memories we won't discuss, but
think about with many a
chuck.le. All the best."
s. WOODMAN is "still
practicing law here in upstate
New York and traveling quite a
bit to Jtaly and Australia in my
spare time. Would like to hear
from any classmates who are
still around."
R ICJWlD
Ii
I
{ A LU M N I
NOTES}
Q UITE IMMERSED
(class of1955) received the
"Conductor of the Year, 2004" award from the
Illinois Council ofOrchcstras. He is now
conductor laureate of the New Philharmonic
and Du Page Opera. He has accepted the
_ ~ _ ~ artistic directorship of the opera program at
North Park University in Chicago and is quite immersed in
composilion and painting. ♦
-
-
-
-
AROLD B AUER
-
1950
1943
has been
thinking about the college,
particularly about the reading
list, and especially about
Proust. " It seems to me," he
writes, "that since my time, the
Program has improved with the
two years of Greek and French,
the greater emphasis on writing
and laboratories without
Humphreys' sha1..-y floors. The
one disimprovcmcnt has been
the dropping of Proust from the
fourth year. Swann's Way,
although a part of a larger
whole, is a complete work in
itself. The author of a recent
article in The Atlantic Monthly
found it incredible that one can
graduate from Harvard without
reading Shakespeare or Proust.
How can a 'great books' program not include Proust? It is
time to include him again."
M ILTON P ERLMAN
"My wifeof 56 years, Phyllis,
(we were married two weeks
after graduation under the Liberty Tree) and I will be moving
to a Quaker-sponsored continuing-care retirement community,
Kendal on Hudson, on July
first," wTites P ETER D AVIES. "It
is close to New York and
Riverdale, so we will continue
to enjoy theater, concerts, dining, and city life, and friends in
Riverdale. We stayed with that
Republican, GERRY H OXBY
(class of1947); argued into the
night last August while in Ohio
campaigning for John Kerry!
I'm still representing the
United Nations at Safer World
(a British think tank) and working on a conference in July on
preventing armed conllict."
:
The eldest son of O SCAR L OUIS
L ORD, Lance W. Lord, an Air
Force four-star general, has
been made Commander of Air
Force Space Command.
1944
LINDSAY CLENDANIEL writes,
"I am happy to represent other
alumni who, like myself, didn't
graduate from St. John's but
from other institutions, yet
consider St. John's my alma
mater!"
{ TH E
Co
LL£
c
E.
A tribute from Eo LYNCH: "My
belief is that St. John's is one of
the finest educational houses in
the country. I did not graduate-I completed two full years
and did not return. I came to
St. John's from high school.
My classmates were men who
had attended other colleges,
gone to the war and returned to
St. John's to be enlightened and
truly free. I was intimidated by
their vast knowledge of the
world and the things in it.
Anyway, I guess I wasn't the
brightest bulb in the lamp,
nor the most energetic. I love
St. John's, and I always will.
I will never regret my time
there."
R OBERT G. HAZO
FREDERICK P. D AVIS: "We 3-Ds
in the low desert of Southern
California (son David, wife
Rita, and self) still plug along
respectively at a Riverside Nursing Home (broken, infected
legs), Rita on full-time oi,..-ygen,
and I without a driver's
license-revoked! But church
volunteers have supplied us
with food and rides to church,
etc., since this cruel blow of the
OMV on November 2.4, 2.004.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
is the most reliable and
strongest expression of real
love."
JAMES and AMY (class of1959)
JOBES are both retired. An1y
serves as an occasional supply
priest in Massachusetts. They
have three grandchildren now,
in Massachusetts: Amanda, 4; in
Georgia: Elijah, 2., and Sophia,
1 month.
is still writing
political books entitled Minorily
Rufe. "It goes slowly but well.
Publishing articles in the metropolitan newspaper here and in
the Washington Report on the
Middle East on doings in the
Middle East, especially Iraq and
Lebanon. Gave my annual
lecture on "Love" on Valentine's
Day to undergraduates. Attendance was good. Women outnumbered men by 2, or 3 to 1,
surpTising since maternal love
our regular lives and welcoming
friends in these more spacious
quarters."
M ARYFRANCES McCtrrCHAN is
retired from the National Park
Service. She lives in Annapolis,
is learning to play the flute, and
has three grandchildren. She's
also looking forward to her class
reunion in 2.008.
"I have finally found the Great
Hall ofSJC here in Santa Fe and
attended a wonderful concert by
Joan Zucker last week. Now that
I know where it is, my wife and I
will attend more concerts,"
writes MICHAEL TRUSTY.
1 959
H ARVEY and MARY (class of
1958) GOLDSTEIN are
planning ahead. "Members of
the class ofr959 are already
starting to plan for our 50th
reunion-log on to the class of
'59 Web page on the alumni site
for the continuing story."
1960
USAF, is
enjoying retirement. "Marie
and I are thoroughly enjoying
life in the slow lane. After many
years of high-stress/high-travel
jobs, having time to read, soak
in the spa, shoot pool, frequent
auction and estate sales, and
generally do whatever I want,
whenever I want, is wonderful!
The only downside is the great
blue heron that eat our fish, and
the deer that eat our shrubbery.
COL. JOHN J. LANE,
1953
1949
I
Lately "Seniors Helping
Seniors" (for a price) have
taken Rita and me to see doctors, get haircuts, etc., throughout this valley. But at 60 miles,
Riverside is out of their range.
It's over three years since we've
seen David. Rita and I shall
never forget SJC, where we met
at St. Anne's Church. I obtained
a classic liberal education."
CECILY SHARP-WHITEHILL
writes: "Along with the
seminars my colleagues and I
conduct several times a year for
senior executives of professional service firms on the topic
of management of PSFS (this is
a five-day course and qualifies
as education, not just training),
I continue to consult for firms
on the topic of business
communications, both spoken
and written. Having wearied of
relatively long, gray winters
and snow shoveling, I moved
permanently to Osprey, Fla.,
immediately south of Sarasota.
It's delightful here."
1966
"On December 10, we moved
into our new house designed
by us and our architect,"
reports J ULIA B USSER OU PREY.
"It has been an exciting, but
all-consuming project, and we
now look forward to resuming
{ THE
33
N O TES }
1968
ELIZABETH A. D OBBS (A) writes:
"I have an article coming out in
the Chaucer Review on an allusion to Ovid's Narcissus and
Echo story in The Franklin's
Tale. It's called 'Re-sounding
Echo.'"
G. K EENS (SF) is a professor of Pediatrics, Physiology,
and Biophysics at the Keck
School of Medicine of the University of Southern California
and a member of the Division of
Pediatric Pulmonology at Children's Hospital, Los Ange les. "I
was recently appointed Director
of Pediatric Subspccialty Fellowship Education at Children's
Hospital," he writes. "I have
crested a year-long course in
scholarship skills (research
methodology and proficiency in
teaching), which emphasizes
small-group interaction rather
than reliance on lectures. I conduct research in pediatric respiratory disorders and am investigating an innovative hypothesis
that the cerebellum has a majoT
role in control of breathing."
THOMAS
CllARL£S B . WATSON (A) writes:
"Anya Watson graduates from
Connecticut College this year
and has been awarded the Rolex
North American Our World
Undergraduate Scholarship
for 2.005, presented at the
Explorers Club in New York
City in April 2.005. It provides a
year's funding for undersea
research (and a Rolcx watch).
Her undergraduate major was
marine biology with a minor in
Russian and European studies
(age 2.1). Ivan most recently
reports from Kyrgyzstan for
NPR after recent travel to Iraq,
Beirut, Turkey, Iran, and other
newsworthy locations (age 28).
Michael, an avid scuba and
windsurfing enthusiast, is
working on Martha's Vineyard.
Other alumni are encouraged to
look us up in Connecticut and
Martha's Vineyard."
"Hello to H ENRY CONSTANflNE
(A) and his beautiful wife,
Christine," writes STEVE H ANFr
(A). "Thanks for the iospirational message-see you at the
reunion."
LIVING HISTORY
-
(SF74) continues to direct the Public H istoTy
program at New Mexico State University. His book
,_ ON H UNNER
Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth ofan Alomic
Communily came out last fall from the University of
Oklahoma Press. His program at NMSU has published
:_ •
books on Santa Fe and Las Cruces and conducts living
._. history events from the Spanish Colonial and Great
Depression era. Mary Ellen, his wife, is finishing a graduate
degree in nursing, and t heir son Harley is a first-year student at
Seattle University. ♦
Co LL E c £.St.John's College. Spring ~005 }
i
�34
{ALUMNI
NOTES}
{ALUMNI
SUSHEILA H ORWITZ (SF)
writes: "I'm still alive and still a
member of Madonna House.
I spent the last seven years in a
small city in eastern Russia.
I loved the people there and
would love to retllrn."
LIFE AT THE ALTERNATIVE
Julia Goldberg (SF91) and the Santa Fe Reporter keep an eye on the city
BY ROSEMARY
HARTY
here's a great deal of hard
work, long hours, and modest compensation attached to
the work Julia Goldberg
(SF91) docs as editor of
The Reporter, Santa Fe's
alternative weekly newspaper. So on a
recent winter's night, she was at peace
with relaxing her journalistic ethics just a
little to accept a free ticket to a sold-out
lecture by linguist Noam Chomsky.
Goldberg has always loved language,
and there's no better outlet for someone
in Jove with words than the satisfying
grind of putting out a weekly newspaper,
especially one as feisty and in-your-face as
The Reporter.
A life-size stand-up ofBuffy the Vampire
Slayer, adorned with Goldberg's press
pusses, overlooks the piles of newspapers,
files, and other materials stacked all
around Goldberg's office. After five years
as editor, she's had time to get comfortable in her job. Her path to The Reporter
was a simple choice.
" I wanted to WTite, and I didn't want to
leave Santa Fe," she explains.
Like many Johnnies, the Philadelphiaarea native was guided to St. John's by a
high school teacher who recognized
Goldberg's love of books. She loved the
language in the Program, especially
ancient Greek; however, " junior math
almost killed me," she says, shuddering at
the memory. She became a music assistant
and delved into journalism by editing
The Moon, the student newspaper, during
her junior and senior years.
Established in 1974, The Reporter is one
of the oldest independent weeklies in the
country. Given away free in boxes all over
town, it has a circulation of 21,000 and a
core of dedicated readers. "We have a
great relationship with Santa Fe, and we're
really considered a part of the city," she
says. On the other hand, Goldberg adds,
"we're always struggling to break even."
As editor Goldberg oversees two
reporters, a full-time art director, a
part-time assistant director, and a dozen
or so freelancers. 'Iwo other Johnnies
currently work for the paper: Andy Dudzik
(SFGI92) is the publisher; Jonanna
Widner (SFGloo) is assistant editor.
Many Johnnies have been on staff or
freelanced for the paper. Even when Goldberg's reporters are young and green, they
share a passion for breaking news stories
and digging imo complicated issues.
"I'm working with really smart people,"
she says. "We've broken a lot of stories in
the last year and a half."
"The Short Life of Jimmy Villanueva"
revealed that the county jail violated the
---
constitutional rights of prisoners by
failing to treat their health problems.
"Soldier's Heart" probed the psychological problems soldiers faced on their return
from Iraq. And a shocking lack of services
for autistic children in New Mexico was
exposed in "The Lost Ones." Goldberg
has won numerous awards from the New
Mexico Press Association and the National
Federation of Press Women. She created
and directed the Hip-Hop Voter Project,
designed co inspire young Hispanic
residents in New Mexico to vote.
The R eporter provides an importanL
alternative to the local daily, the Santa Fe
continued on p. 3 5
organic garlic farming. Visitors
are welcome at s Dodge Corner,
New Vineyard, Maine."
(SF)
has a short story in the online
journal VerbSap: http://verbsap.com/2oo5mar/sarai.html.
"Just got home from a threeweek wine and nature trip to
New Zealand," says LELIA
STRAW (A). "Love the Kiwis and
their homeland. We were there
over the U.S. election though,
and they're all mystified by the
outcome."
35
WORK AND PLAY
ARCO ACOSTA (A82) sends a hello to all his
1 973
(SF) reports:
"My daughter INDIA C L ARK
(SF01) and Challem Clark are
now living in Budapest,
Hungary, in a beautiful
apartment right over Vaci
Utaca, the main pedestrian
street. They are having a
blast and perhaps will stay
longer than the original
six-month plan."
INDIA WILL IAMS
SARAH (GANCIIER) SARAI
NOTE S }
1 974
and R ANDY P ENDLETON
(both SF) have news: "We are
delighted to announce the
marriage of our son, W ALKER
(A99), to R.Ac n EL V EDAA (SF99)
in April."
M AllTHA
"unique and talented" classmates: "I have
many great memories of our college years and
hope the best for you all and your families.
I continue to examine my life daily. Work is:
legal, filmmaking, public school teaching
K-12; Play/other: WTiting, guitar, music, recording, chess,
basketball. Personal: divorced. Peace and Prosperity to you allplease call when you're on the West Coast."♦
(A) directs, supervises, and interprets MRI
examinations of the brain and
body at 30 sites in 12 states.
"I teach and lecture on brain
development, brain imaging,
and brain pathology at
Georgetown University and
elsewhere. My four wonderful
children never cease to amaze,
amuse, confound, and inspire
me as they display the intricacies of brain development to
me, up close and personal."
JOIIN REES
1 975
C YNTIIIA Swiss (A) has been
elected to president of the
Maryland/DC Chapter of the
American String Teachers
Association. "I have organized
statewide certification exams
for young string players," she
writes. "I also schedule
workshops on Suzuki String
Teaching Technique. Our
chapter published a newsletter
called Stringendo, and I have
contributed several articles."
I RVINC WILLIAMS (A) is
"moving to the country estateroom for a pony-in July to start
continuedfromp. 34
New Mexican, says Goldberg. "They
cover what's happening; we try to be
progressive," she explains. Part of the
paper's job is to provide a guide to
enjoying Santa Fe, with special sections
on restaurants, art galleries, recreation,
and just living in the city.
The process of putting out a weekly
paper starts each Wednesday morning,
with a critique of the current paper.
Goldberg and her staff brainstorm new
story ideas, identify a cover story, and
plan what they need to report on in the
coming weeks. On Thursday, they start
working on a preliminary layout, Sunday
Goldberg spends editing the cover story,
and Monday and Tuesday are "slam days,"
as the final stories come in for editing,
headlines, and fact-checking. Tuesday
THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN
HER COMMUNITY KEEPS J ULIA GOLDBERG AT
THE REPORTER.
{THE
Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring2005}
night is the press run, and on Wednesday
it starts all over again.
The Johnnies and other reporters who
work for Goldberg tend to get good training at The Reporter. But they soon head
off to New York or other cities where their
editorial skills can earn them a better
salary. After interning at the Phi/,adelphia
City Paper, the New Mexican and The
Reporter, Goldberg earned her master's
degree at the University of New Mexico.
"J:re 've broken a lot of
.stories in the last year
andaha!f"
JULIA GoLOBERC (SF9:r)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005 }
She acquired valuable experience at one
of her first jobs, the Rio Grande Sun,
where she covered county government,
politics, and schools. It gave her a sense
that an aggressive local paper is an
important tool of democracy.
"You need to ask questions, and you
need to listen carefully-a lot like what we
do at St. John's."
In between deadlines, Goldberg manages to get time off to enjoy the beautiful
city she's living i n. She enjoyed a recent
Community Seminar at St. John's and
vows to get up the hill more often to enjoy
campus events.
But even with the long hours, it's hard
for her to imagine giving up the work she
does at The Reporter. There's always
another story to tell. " I can't say the
perfect opportunity isn't out there, but
right now, I can't imagine a better job." ♦
�{AL U M NI
NOTE S }
{ALUMN I
37
NOT ES }
I
Beginning April I, MICHAEL
will be serving as the
regional minister for Northwest
Connecticut, responsible
for oversight of about 50
United Cht1rch of Christ
congregations.
C IBA (A)
MAUYELLEN LAWRENCE (SF)
has finished her subspecialty
training in infectious diseases
at the University of New Mexico
and is practicing medicine in
Santa Fe. She writes, "It may be
that, at last, 1 have completed
my formal medical training!"
" I've been eagerly scanning the
class notes for 21 years now, so
thought it was about time I
made a contribution," writes
} ACK A RMSTRONG (SF). I live in
West Chester, Penn., of all
places, with my wife, Ca1·men,
and kids Michael (16) and Emily
(8). I am happier than I ever
expected or deserved. I'm
printing ballots for a living,
and writing stories for my soul.
I also have a theatre with
Carmen, the Philadelphia
Shakespeare Festival, which
is the 800-pound gorilla of
hobbies. l miss you all."
ANNE M CCLARD (SF) reports
1980
" I am delighted to let everyone
know that I am now the proud
mother of Emily Sierra," writes
Gmu GLOVEU (SF). "She came
to live with me from Memphis,
Tenn., and I will be ever grateful to her birth mom for helping
me create a family. Can't wait
for you all to meet her at our
next reunion."
that NOAH MCC LARD
LEDBETTER (SF02) and DAGNY
CHICOINE-STANGL (SF01) were
married in July 2004.
STEVEN T. R EYNOLDS (A) writes:
"Landry Tait Anders Reynolds
joined the gaggle August II,
2004. The family and the
garden continue to thrive."
medical staff on January r,
2005. He will serve as president
for two years. He was previously
the medica 1staff vice president
for two years and has been the
laboratory medical director for
four years. Thia is currently
working with President William
Harvey to build a proton
therapy radiation oncology
center at Hampton University.
She has also recently been
invited to serve on the Board
of Directors for the Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility, the American Physical
Society Division of Nuclear
Physics Program Committee,
and the Combined Theory and
Experimental Collaboration for
Quantum Thermodynamics.
Nothing but good news from
KATII EIUNE RowE (SF): "I am
still a preacher in the Episcopal
Church and still in a Denver
suburb. I'm still a speech and
language pathologist, and still
in love with my husband, Phil,
and my two ch ildren. I'm also
still glad that I went to
St. John's."
1985
writes,
"I continue to practice law in
Baltimore and am pleased to
announce that I have recently
set out on my own. Having my
own practice has allowed me to
do the cases I want to do, spend
ANNA L. D AVIS (A)
ERIN MCVADON ALBRlGHT (A)
welcomed his first grandson,
Patrick Alexander, into the
world one year ago.
News from BARRY H ELLMAN and
CYNT111A " TwA" KEPPEL (both
A): Barry became president of
Mary Immaculate Hospital
GoozILLA PHASE
STEVEN CRAMER (A) is an
attorney in private practice in
New York City. He lives in
Maplewood, N.J., with his
wife and two daughters, the
youngest adopted from China
in December 2004.
-
-
ife is "good and busy" for A LEX (AGI93) and
ELLERMANN. Alex works in the
national security field, flies C-13os in the Navy
Reserve, and is working toward his second
master's with the Naval War College's Distance
- - - - • Education Program. Vanessa practices Jaw with a
Georgetown firm that specializes in class actions. Son Alex, 5, is
going through a Godzilla phase at the moment, "which is pretty
fun," they write. ♦
V ANESSA (A93)
.J
{ THE
1:
Co LL E c
E.
S1. John's College. Spring 2005
)
more time on volunteering and
pro bono cases, and most
importantly, better balance the
demands of work and family.
My husband, Richard Gordon,
and children, Aaron (IO) and
Rachel (6), and l are all well and
would love to hear from any and
all Johnnies passing through
Baltimore."
TE1uu K. LUCKE'IT (SF) worked
for GE for a long time but left
for Honeywell in 2002. "I lived
in L.A. for one year, but moved
to N.J. a year ago to become
vice president of Business
Planning for HON. I'm hoping
to move out ofN.J. back to
points west as soon as possible,
but time will tell. Beautiful
Carolyn is 12, now and a true joy,
was diagnosed with diabetes in
2001, but we manage. We grew
weary of corporate nomadic life
and bought a piece of Santa Fe
to call our 'home away from
home.' Ping us if you are either
here or there: terri.luckett@
honeywell.com."
is vice
president of operations at a
mid-size software company in
Maine. " It's quite exciting and
very busy," he writes. " I am
happily married to a woman
from Maine who makes me
laugh a great deal. For those of
you who remember my interest
in music, I wrote an orchestral
piece around 1995-96 and went
to the Czech Republic and had
it performed at a workshop for
orchestral composers. It was
really fun. Haven't written a
note since!"
K ENNETH MARTIN (A)
1986
MELISSANETfLESHI P Br-.J',EDICT
(SF) writes: "Since July of 2000
I have been director of finance
at Santa Fe Preparatory School,
released her thu-d album, Live
at Blues Alley. Her Web site is:
www.mclaniemason.com
JOHNNIE FRENCH TESTED
-
ATRICE MCSHANE (SF02) was on her way to Africa
earlier this spring: " I spent the two-and-a-ha lf years
after graduation in Portland, Ore., working at a
Montessori preschool. I got ants in my pants, shifted
direction, and applied to volunteer for the United
....
States Peace Corps. I was accepted and leave for
Burkina Faso, Africa , on March 17' An unusual way to spend
St. Patty's Day, don't you think? I'll be there for over two years,
teaching secondary math to Bw·kinahe high school students.
Let's hope my SJC French rises to the occasion! I am mighty
excited and would be more than willing to discuss the Peace
Corps application process/experience with any prospective
vo lunteers. Or just write to say "hey, you!" patsymcshane@
hotmail.com." ♦
just down the hill on Camino
Cruz Blanca from the Santa Fe
campus."
1989
"After many years in San Francisco, I've been in Denver for a
year, spending much of my time
practicing Tibetan Buddhism,"
writes LARRY SEIDL (A). "I've
been remiss in my alumni
activities, though I saw many
shining faces at reunion
number ro in '96. Twenty is
just around the bend. A warm
general hello to the community
in general, and the class ofr986
and my tutors in particular."
BURKE GURNEY (SFGI ) is
married with two children:
Kyra and Elise, ages 15 and 13.
"I am an assistant professor at
the University ofNcw Mexico in
the Department of Orthopedics,
Rehabilitation, and Physical
Therapy. I teach physiology,
orthopaedic evaluation and
treatment, professional ethics,
and gerontology. I am an avid
traveler, reader, skier, and
parent."
JAN UNDERWOOD (SF) is working
as a Spanish instructor.
AL1ZA S HAPIRO
(SF) was
recently engaged to David
Mandel.
1990
JOHN SELLERS (A) is "married to
Becky Woods and teaching
grades 8-12 math and science,
including chemistry and
physics-challenging."
THE RFV. M'N SLAKEY (SF) is
now priest-in-charge at
St. Matthew's Episcopal Parish
in Ontario, Ore.
is a fuUtime blues artist, writing and
performing original blues-rock
material as lead electric
guitarist and vocalist for the
Melanie Mason Band. She
also performs and records
traditional acoustic blues as a
solo artist. She recently
KEN TuRNBULL (A) writes:
"My wife, Leslie, and Tare both
lawyers in Washington and are
enjoying our seven-month-old
daughter, Fiona."
Co LLB c
E.
'
(SF) and her
husband arc pleased to
announce the birth of their first
child, Emma Lee Ward, born on
January 4, 2005.
J ENNIFER R YCIILI K
1991
is a 2004
winner of the National Poetry
Series award, and her second
book, Starred Wire, will be
published by Coffee House Press.
ANGIE MLINKO (A)
N ICOLE l<ALMANOR LEVY (SF)
writes, " l n August 2004, I gave
birth to our first daughter, Eve
Simone Levy. She's the apple of
our eye! My husband, Rob, and
I moved to the North Shore of
Boston last year, to Swampscott,
which is a small town next to
Salem-the Witch Capital, and
Marblehead-a sailing capital.
A fon destination with some
cultural treats! 1 am working
on a master's in Jewish studies.
Got through Jewish mysticism,
now working on a translation of
portions of the Book of Exodus.
I wish I could go to more
alumni events, it's been great
connecting!"
MELANIE M ASON (A)
{ TH E
Alrnapolis to sec his wife, SARA
ScnROEOlNGER (A92), he is logging lots of frequent-flyer miles
on bt1siness trips to China,
Thailand, and Malaysia.
1993
The commute to work for K u1n
HECKEL (A) got a lot longer in
early September 2004, when he
took a position ,vith Border
Concepts in Charlotte, N.C.
When he is not traveling back to
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
1994
JANIE BOSWORTH (SFGI) and
GEORGE F. BING HAM (SF66)
were married July 3, 2004, at
the Audubon Center in Santa
Fe. Between them, they proudly
share six children and seven
grandchildren-with another
one on the way.
finished
writing his dissertation in May
2004 and spent the summer
backpacking in Montana. " T
hiked across the Bob Marshall
Wilderness once, enjoyed the
experience, and went back for a
second passage," wTites Kroll.
"Walking through the long
eveni ng light of summer in the
northern Rockies is not to be
missed. The bears keep things
interesting, too. Talso spent
numerous days floating the
Bitterroot and Clark Fork
Rivers, drinking beer and
formulating a master plan.
I completed my Ph.D. in
Wildlifo Biology from the
University of Montana in
December 2004 and accepted a
position as a research scientist
with Wcycrhaettser Corporation
in Federal Way, Wash.
I am responsible for habitat
plann ing for the company's
Wester n timberlands, as well as
general wildlife research and
operational support. I would
enjoy hearing from anyone, and
I am anxious to jump-start
ANDREW }. K ROLL (A)
I
I
I
I
�{ALUMNI
NATHAN WILSON
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
(AGl01) UNVEILS SHROUD MYSTERIES
BY PATRICL\ DEMPSEY
ike many Johnnies,
Nathan Wilson (AGlor)
is unwilling to walk
away from an ino·iguing
question. Five years
ago, Wilson became
fascinated with the origins of the
mysterious Shroud of Turin and began
to wonder how the images ofJesus on
the cloth-believed by some to be
authentic-could have been faked.
Ultimately, with a few simple tools
Wilson demonstrated how a medieval
might have forged the images on the
shroud. His simple experiment showing that glass, paint, and sunlight
could have been used to create a
"reversed" photonegative image
sparked a media frenzy, with Wilson
appearing on shows including ABC's
World News Tonight.
Wilson (profiled in the Summer
2.002 edition of The College for his parodies
of apocalyptic novels) ruminated over two
questions: how do we know the dark image
was imposed on light linen at all? Further,
how could a forger in the Middle Ages
lighten linen without chemicals, paints,
or dyes?
"A negative image can be easily produced using only large pieces of painted
NATHAN WILSON THEORIZES THAT
C H RIS D AVI S and CARMEN
(both SF) write:
"CHARLIE B REW and P AT
BOHAN, it's high time you
stopped reading so much
Kafka!"
H ERIJIIG
SUNLIGHT TRAVELING IN AN ARC OVER
PAINTED CLASS CREATED THE
3-D IMAGE
ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN.
glass," explains Wilson. "In the Middle
Ages, glass was commonly made in large
sizes: six-by-eight feet or even nine-by-five.
It was made in a long cylinder and unrolled
into a sheet as early as the noos, a technique perfected in the 12.oos and r3oos. As
the Shroud is roughly 14 feet in length, two
pieces of glass would be necessary, both at
least six feet long. The image of the front of
alumni activities in the Puget
Sound area. I can be reached at
ajkroll64@hotmail.com."
English, Italian, and Latin, and
where Greek and Sanskrit are
offered as electives.
PATRICK SCANLON (SFGI) will
be resident clirector of School
Year Abroad's Italy campus in
Viterbo, Italy. SYA Viterbo
offers a one-year classics
curriculum for American
juniors and seniors in homestays. He and his wife, Linda,
and their four children return
to the central Italian town
(population 60,000) where
Pat had taught English for two
years previously. Now he'll
oversee a program that requires
GREG WATSON (SF) writes, "l
live in Washington State on a
beautiful island with my dog,
Rusty, and wife, Karen. During
the week I am employed as
assistant harbormaster at a
local marina, and on weekends
I teach sailing in Seattle. So I
am still using my captain's
license. Also, I am getting ready
to embark on a trip to Costa
Rica with Solar Energy International, where we will work with
locals installing renewable
energy power systems."
{ TH E
Co
LL E
c
E.
the man would be produced beneath
one and the back of the man beneath
the other."
How would the forger create the
three-dimensional shading? "By painting an image on the top side of the
glass," says Wilson. "This leaves a gap
where the sunlight traveling in a 180degrec arc could penetrate at angles
that produce the 3-D shading."
Wilson used white oil paint to create
images on eight different window
panes and placed them over coarse
linen in the sun. The paint blocked the
sunlight from bleaching the darker
cloth, but everything around it was
bleached white. The results, Wilson
believes, point to one possibility for
how the shroud was faked. He detailed his
experiments in an article published in the
journal Books and Culture: "What I have
done is crudely demonstrate that such
an image could easily be produced in a
matter of weeks by wicked men with no
scruples, a little imagination, and a little
more skill." ♦
1 995
JEROME DuFFY (SFGI) is
working as an elementary
school teacher at the Chinese
American International School
in San Francisco.
ALICE BROWN and GREG
HODGES (A) are happy to
announce the birth of their
second child, Silas Wister
Hodges. "We are also pleased
to announce the completion of
Greg's doctoral thesis, "An
Ethnography Study of Lucan's
Bellum Civife," which has
St. John's College. Spring 2005}
arrived after a gestation of
many years and has earned him
a Ph.D. in classics from Ohio
State University. We arc
teaching and in the thralls of
Babydom in the Great White
North, and loving it. Fond
thoughts of all!"
CAMERON GRAHAM (SF) has
moved from South Carolina tO
the Defense Languages School
in Monterey, Calif. "I am a
specialist, and I will most Iikely
be there for a couple of years;•
he writes. "In the army, I
received an award for top
physical program at Fort
Jackson in South Carolina,
and now I am studying Arabic."
D AVID MALLEY
(A) writes:
"T didn't graduate from
St. John's, but my short time
there is a treasured memory.
For that, I am always grateful."
H EATHER (AGI)
my new company and will serve
as my launching pad for my
next year of helicopter flying,"
reports KI RA K. ZIELINSKI (SF).
"Happily, no more tourists. I'll
be flying as a utility pilot, which
means construction and
firefighting all over the western
U.S., just as Pericles would have
done had he not been occupied
with a higher calling. Same
e-mail: Hcrme5@juno.com."
and C HRIS
NOR.DLOII (AGI96) welcomed
Nicholas Nordloh into the
world on Dec. 24, 2004.
(A) and AolUENNE
(JAK0WSKI) RUIJENSTElN (A96)
have lived in the Washington,
D.C., area for five years, the last
three in Frederick, Md.
Adrienne teaches at the
Maryland School for the Deaf,
and Peter commutes to an
In tern et networking job in
Northern Virginia. Their big
news is the appearance on
the scene of Jonah Chester,
by far the littlest Rubenstein
currently extant. Born just
shy of Halloween 2004, Jonah
has made a splash among his
admirers. Blue-eyed and dark of
hair, he is considered by his
father to be "quite handsome."
Two-year-old beagle "Elway" is
said to be " adjusting well" to
the newcomer despite occasional lapses in respect for the
property rights of others.
P ETER
"Did I mention I'm engaged?"
writes APRIL I0AWALTERS (A).
"Getting married October r,
2005, to Travis Hopkins and
J'm keeping my name. Also,
I've been working at MICA as
the writing studio coordinator
almost as long as I attended
SJC!"'
1996
}ILL C111U!,'flNE NIENIIISER
(AGI ) writes: " T was recci:itly
promoted to director of strategy
at Mind and Media, Inc. in
Alexandria, Va. Last Friday I
had my first piano lesson since
1984. Upon leaving the music
store, I slammed my finger in
the car door. So far there is no
appreciable difference in my
playing ability, despite the
swelling! Hah ! "
1997
DAVID CANNELL (EC) dropped a
note from Japan: "Hidcko, the
three boys, and I are in Tokyo
for the next year or two on a
Japan Foundation fellowship,
praying it's enough to see us
thr9ugh the remainder of my
doctoral program (UC Irvine).
My thesis is on Matsuo Basho
and haikai poetry in late seventeenth-century Japan. Meantime, we're just enjoying being
here. The cherry blossoms have
come and gone-in a matter of
days! Can't wait for the next
sumo tournament. Would love
to hear from fellow EC grads
and know what's going on in
their worlds."
"I'm proud to say that I've used
up Las Vegas and am now off co
Tucson, which is the home of
{ THE
Co
LL E
c
E.
NOTES }
39
"My company, North Star
Games, is starting to pick up
momentum," writes DOMINI C
C1tAPUCHETrF.S (A): "Cluzzle
has won several prestigious
awards as a great family game
and our next game, Trivia
Casino, was picked up by a
larger game company. It looks
likely that both games will be
available at national outlets for
the 2.005 holiday season! If so, I
will finally get a paycheck after
12 months of working for nothing except a dream. WES DONEHOWER bought an apartment in
DuPont Circle so we have been
hanging out a bit recently. Give
us a call if you're in the area
and we'll get together: 202-2536070."
1998
News from ALEXANDRA D .E.
BOOZER (A): "Jam happy to
announce that I was ma rried to
Daniel Giguere ofWindham,
Maine, on September I9, 2.004.
Last year I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from
George Washington Univers ity,
with a specialization in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We are
currently living in Holmes
Beach, Fla., where I am
working towards obtaining
Florida psychology licensure.
I would love to hear from any
old friends or to link with other
students/alumni with an
interest in practicing
psychology. I can be reached
by e-mail at: alexandra_FL@
hotmail.com."
(SF) is teaching
fifth-grade math. He and his
wife, Sara, are pleased to be
homeschooling their four
ch ildren. "This summer we
will be flying to England, where
we will be learning to build
wooden boats."
D AVID BRADEN
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
MA'ITH£\V C. JOHNSTON
(SF)
sends greetings to his long-lost
classmates. "After stints as a
teacher, a college admissions
counselor (at SJC of course),
and a theology student, I'm
pleased to report that I'm back
at St. John's in Santa Fe, working alongside the assistant dean
to improve student activities
and services. My wife, A.NNE"ITE
P RA.PASI RI (SF04), and I are
expecting a baby in mid-April
and, ifwe can negotiate home
prices here, plan to stay in SF
forever. Drop me a line if you're
in town or needing the inside
scoop on SJC developments. I
can be reached at 505-424-3292
or mjohnston@sjcsf.edu."
1999
RACHEL VE0AA (SF) and
WALKER P ENOLEOON (A)
were married April 16, 2005,
at St. Mary's College in
Moraga, Calif.
2000
ANNE MCSHANE (A) is finishing
her first year at law school at
NYU. 'Tm spending the
summer at Nebraska's ACLU.
If anybody wants to chat about
going to law school, feel free to
write me at annecarolmcshane@
yahoo.com."
BENJAMIN SHOOK (SF) writes:
" I'm making beautiful furniture with a hint of Danish and
Asian influence. Visit
www.bcnshook.com to see
my work."
DE8EllNJERE } A.NET T 01Ul£Y
(AGI) is in Seoul on a Fulbright
fellowship, studying premodern Korean literature in
�40
{OBITUARIES}
{ALUMNI NOTES}
"A GIFT FOR FRIENDSHIP": REMEMBERING STUART BOYD
preparation for her dissertation
research in the Department of
Comparative literature at Penn
State University.
BY LYNDA MYERS
TuTOR, SANTA Fe
DAVE P ROSPER (SF) moved LO
Oakland and bas a new job. "I
also have a stack ofblack-andwhite Eexlebots comic books; if
anyone wants one. let me know.
Life is pretty sweet."
2002
ALANA and JOEY CHERNTLA
(both SF) had their second little
girl, Rose Isabella, on Feb. 25.
"Our first, Sadie Pearl, will be 2
in a few weeks. Besides enjoying
our intense domesticity, Joey
runs a daycare, and I work in
publishing and tutor homeschoolers in Euclid."
2003
NATE and REBEKA H (NEE
Go·rrtOB) EAGLE (both A) are
serving as Peace Corps
volunteers in Cameroon, West
Africa. They arrived at the end
of September for training in
agroforestry and moved to their
pose, the town of Poli, in
December. Their service will
end in December 2006. You can
view photos and a blog and find
out how to get in touch at
monadology.net.
KYLIE LIEBERMAN and ZEPJ-!Yll
(both SF) planned to be
married April 30, 2005, in Las
Vegas, Nev. See their Web site,
zheartk.com for pictures and
contact information.
R ENNER
2004
ENJOLI COOKE (A) is beginning
her second year as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the
National Institutes of Health.
"I'm beginning the graduate
school application process and
am planning to attend a Ph.D.
program in molecular biology."
RHO DA FRANKLIN (A) and
}All.ED 0 1mz (AGI05) were
married December 18, 2004,
in Annapolis.
LAURA MANION (A) was featured
as a "profile of the month" on
the Web site of the Mississippi
Teacher Corps. The corps is a
two-year program that recruits
recent college graduates to
teach in critical-shortage areas
in the Mississippi Delta, in
exchange for a full scholarship
for a master's in curriculum and
instruction from the University
of Mississippi. Manion teaches
ANNAPOLIS SENIORS COMBINED ENTREPRENEURIAL SP! RIT WITH
ALTRUISM BY CREATING A"WOMEN OF !l.005" CALENDAR TO HELP RAISE
MONEY FOR THEIR CLASS GIFT. THE STUDENTS PLEDGED MONEY TOWARD
PURCHASING LOBACHEVSKY MANUALS POI\ ALL SENIORS NEXT YEAR.
THEY HOPE THEIR GESTURE WILL INSPIRE OTHER CLASSES TO DO SOME·
THING SIMILAR, WITH THE COAL THAT ALL LAB MANUALS CAN BE GIVEN TO
STUDENTS. THESE TASTEFUL CALENDARS (MAY zoo5-MAY 2006) CAN BE
PURCHASED FOR $10 THROUGH THE ADVANCEMENT OFFICE IN ANNAPOLIS:
SEND ACHECK TO ALEXANDRA FOTOS, ADVANCEMENT, P.O. Box 2800,
ANNAPOLIS, MD 21404.
seventh- and eighth-grade
English at a middle school in
Arcola, Miss.
TATIANA HAIUUSON (A) was
married to Rob Harrison on
June 28, 2004.
RYAN R.lSING (A.GI) is attending
the University of Kansas School
of Law, where he hopes to
graduate on their fast track in
two years, rather than three.
He is at work on a novel that he
hopes to be the first in a ninevolume series. ♦
{ TH E C o LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
WHAT'S UP?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you're doing. The next issue
will be published in October;
deadline for the alumni notes
sect.ion is August 15.
Cla;;snotes posted to the college's online community will
also be included in The College.
IN ANNAPOLIS:
The College Magazine
St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 2r404;
roscmary.harty@sjca.edu
IN SANTA FE:
The College .Magazine
St. John's College
u6o Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
When Stuart Boyd retired from the college in
1988, he was presented with a scroll that read:
To Stuart Boyd, Artist, writer, healer ofsouls,
lover ofknowledge, and teacher ofthe Books:
A testimony to lzis contribution ofover 22
years to the intellectual and convivial delights
ofthe College. "He was a man... we shall not
look upon his like again. "
His humanity, wit, common sense, and love
of life were celebrated again at a memorial
held on the Santa Fe campus at the end of
January, a week after he died of a heart attack
at his home near Can1busavie, Scotland.
Mr. Boyd joined the faculty of St. John's in
1966, when the Santa Fe campus was still in
its infancy. In the words of his wife, Nan, "At
St. John's Stuart found his spiritual home."
Before coming to the college Mr. Boyd had
already led a rich and varied life. He was born
on January 3, 1922, in Aberdeen, Scotland.
In his memoir, The Wind.swept Child, he
describes his childhood in Scotland between
the two world wars as a precious, fragile, and
fleeting time.
When World War II interrupted his
graduate work at Aberdeen University,
he volunteered for the Parachute
Regiment and saw active service in
Sicily and North Africa before being
wounded and captured at Arnhem
in the Netherlands in September
1944. (The story of that disastrous
mission is recounted in the book
The Bridge Too Far.) He spent the
remainder of the war in prison
camps near the Polish-German
border.
After the war, Mr. Boyd completed
his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
clinical psychology, taught at
several universities in the UK and
the United States, and eventually
joined the faculty of New Mexico
Highlands University, where he
became chairman of the Psychology
Department. At Highlands he met
Robert Bunker (then chairman of
the Highlands' English and
philosophy deparonents and now
tutor emeritus of St. John's).
Ralph Swentzell (now also tutor
emeritus) was a student of both and
what the Confucianists would callJen or
benevolence for his fellow man."
Mr. Boyd's intellectual interests spread
quickly as he taught through the Program
and he became a loved and respected tutor.
Mara Robinson (SFGI83), a former member
of the college's Board ofVisitors and
Governors, first met him in a Community
Seminar, later studied with him in the
Graduate Institute, and became a close
friend. "Stuart was a brilliant, inspiring
teacher and a charismatic man whose classes
always overfilled with students cager to
'sit at his feet' and learn," she recalls.
" His knowledgeable and entertaining
leadership won over, not only many students
through the years, but an enormous number
of townspeople as well."
Faculty colleagues remember Mr. Boyd as
something of an iconoclast, as the faculty
meeting min Lites he wrote as faculty secretary
in :r974 show. According to Mr. Swentzell,
" Stuart, although loving the formal, was
always strongly sensitive about tendencies
toward pompous elitism or hypocrisy. He
valued straight, honest talk-preferably
accompanied by wit and eloquence,
both of which he had in abundance." Tutor Jorge Aigla remembers the way Mr. Boyd welcomed
him to the faculty: "Twenty years
ago it was my good fortune to be
paired with Stuart Boyd for my first
freshman seminar-a wonderful way
to be initiated into our educational
venture. I soo n learned with Stuart
to read honestly, carefully, sensitively; to respect the authors, to
laugh with them (I never managed
to laugh at them, as Stuart occasionally did), and to appreciate the
insights and awakening of our
students. His common sense,
wisdom, advice, courage, and sense
of honor were a great h elp to me."
In the early days of the Santa Fe
campus Mr. Boyd's gift for friendship and his capacity for fun were
cohesive forces among the faculty.
recalls a seminar co-led by "these Lwo most
philosophically exciting professors. I think it
had to do with science and religion, or maybe
it was
existentialism. Students talked about Stuart's
frequent exclamations in class whenever
Bunker would hint at the possibility of God's
existence, something to the effect that he
'didn't see any need for Easter Bunnies
running across his systematic reasoning.' "
In 1966, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Swentzell,
encouraged by Bob Bwlker (who had come
to St. John's the year before), joined the
fledgling Santa Fe faculty. Mr. Boyd served
both as a tutor and as campus psychologist.
As Nan Boyd observes, "Stuart always
managed to find time, and the right words,
when someone was in distress or in need of
wisdom. I know there are students without
number who have cause to be grateful to him,
not only for his role as a tutor, but also for
getting them through emotional problems to
graduation in one piece." Ralph Swentzell
adds, "What I most admired in Stuart was his
blunt honesty and genuine humani ty. He had
a great capacity for sympathetic compassion,
continued on nextpage
STUART BOYD WITH FANG IN
DoRNACH, SCOTLAND.
{ THE Co LL E c
B.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{OB I T UA RI ES}
continuedfromp. 41
According to Torn Harris, tutor emeritus,
"Stuart helped us form such strong bonds..
.we all resonated with his warmth and care for
us. Did we not dance beautifully and wildJy
then! With uncontained energy we danced on
into the night! He always had a wonderful
laugh. I hear it now." Nan Boyd adds, 'Tm
perfectly sure everyone of you remembers
occasions when the room was almost lit-up by
his laugh and general merriment-there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, he enjoyed more
than a gathering of good friends exchanging
stories and making each other laugh."
Mr. Boyd had a distinctive, very Scottish
presence on campus. Many remember his
military bearing-not quite a swagger-when
he arrived at waltz parties in full regimentals.
Even after 2.0 years, he found the bright sun
of New Mexico oppressive and lamented the
chill and clamp of home. Rumor has it that his
favorite philosopher remained fellow Scot
FACULTY M EETING MINUTES,
SANTA FE:
AN EXCERPT
Nov. 21, 1974
Stuart Boyd, Faculty Secretary
Dean Ncidorf, presiding, judging a
quorum to be present, asking for and
receiving, approval of the minutes of the
previous faculty meeting (noting the
objection by Mr. Jones, whose presence
and words had been reported but whose
absence and silence were the facts, ru1d the
correction by Mr. Venable who suggested
that something had been "evoked" from
Mr. Sacks, not "invoked" as reported nor
"provoked" as intended) invited Mr. Steadman to justify his request that a special
faculty meeting be called for Saturday,
November 2.3, a request to which
Mr. Steadman responded with zest.
Mr. Ncidorf then linked this specific
event with a request for Faculty discussion
of the suggestion that Facul ty Meetings not
be held at the time which had been agreed
on and which had become the tradition,
i.e. Thursday Afternoon, but that we tinker
with this arrangement, to find extra time
so that discussions could last even longer.
Drew wondered out loud if time could not
be saved by streamlining our procedures.
Robinson reminded the Faculty that the
AT 72, MR. B OYD DONNED HIS PARATROOPER'S SUIT FOR A JUMP IN THE NETHERLANDS.
David Hume. When Mr. Boyd retired from
the college, he and his wife returned to
raison d'etre for establishing the Thursday
Afternoon Faculty Meeting was to protect
Saturdays, and that to meet on Saturday
morning would see the remorseless,
insidious, and irrevocable engulfment of
all the hours of daylight and sunshine, in
accordance with Parkinson's Law. Dean
Neidorf finally pronounced that the
thought of rescheduling anything seemed
to involve great difficulty and pain, that
tradition must be respected, that he would
call Thursday afternoon Faculty Meetings
at l p.m. instead of1:30 p.m., and that he
would do what he could to streamline the
meeting procedures.
The Dean then asked for comments on
the recent All-College Seminar. There were
enthusiastic responses from some who felt
that it brought together those who would
otherwise not be so brought, with consequent excitements....Robinson, noting
the excitements that some had experienced, wondered if all seminars could not
be of this nature. The Dean paused, then
remaiked that of course such a suggestion
could be countenanced, but that he was
sure in his experience of the Faculty that
even in the event that a majority approved
such an idea, that that same majority
would reject taking any action. There was
some further conversation about seminars
and books, in which was heard the
{T
H E
Co
LL E
c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005 )
43
{OBITU AR I ES }
Scotland and settled in a small village near
the northern coast, cold and rainy enough to
satisfy even him. There he read, gardened,
worked on his memoirs, and painted in
acrylics, something he had begun doing while
at St. John's. In addition to enjoying quiet
activities near their home, the Boyds traveled
extensively and returned several times to
Santa Fe, where he gave lectures on topics
ranging from Shakespeare to T.E. Lawrence.
In 1994, at the age of 72., Mr. Boyd together
with several other survivors of the Arnhem
mission repeated their parachute jump over
the Netherlands to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and to
raise money for the Airborne Forces Charities
of his regiment.
Mr. Boyd voice lingers on for many friends
like Jorge Aigla: "When Stuart retired in
1989, he asked me to take over his office. In
that space, I still sometimes hear him laughing, telling me (and us): 'ALL is well, my boy,
andallSHALLbewcll! '" ♦
predictable, conditioned suggestion that
Pavlov be expunged from the senior
reading list.
Dean Neidorf reported that the
Annapolis Faculty, in response to student
sentiment, was considering whether or not
to abaJ1don the practice of awarding
honors. After a lengthy silence, Harris and
Jones asked qu estions of Dean Neidorf,
wondering ifhe meant the Annapolis
campus of St. John's, and ifhe meant there
was consideration of whether or not to
award honors at graduation, and received
solemn assurances that all was as he had
said. The Dean went on to say that the
graduating class on the other campus had
registered the complaint that the system of
awaiding honors was oppressive and
offensive. Mr. Sacks remarked, somewhat
cryptically, that the oppressed should not
feel oppressed.... The discussion about
honors continued, with considerable time
spent on Descartes aJ1d "warm, effusive
feelings" and other comments which flew
too fast for this reporter to catch either
their significance or their relevance,
terminating in a masterly synthesis of
Greek ru1d Christian worlds by Mr. Long,
who urged us to think of honors as like
some Olympic Garnes to which many were
called but few chosen ... ♦
MICH AEL C. S LAKEY, C LASS OF 1985
Michael C. Slakey, Annapolis class ofI985,
died of cancer on January 30, 2.005, in
Lannion, Brittany, a region of western
France. He was 42..
Michael met his wife, Victoire Devaud
Slakcy, a French citizen, in Washington,
D.C., and they spent most of their married
life in France. Michael had a full life as a
painter and musician, and as an organic
farmer especially devoted to the care of his
land. He leaves behind his wife and three
children, Theo, Fay, and Yarrow.
H e is the son of Marion and Thomas
Slakey, a tutor emeritus and former dean of
St. John's, and the brother of Tom, Jr.
(SF81); Bill (SF88); and the Rev. Anne
Slakcy (SF88).
"Michael had an exceptional capacity to
take pleasure in what he was doing at the
moment, whether it was in the hard work of
cutting his own trees with an axe and
smoothing planks with an adze, weeding
and planting his garden, sitting and playing
his guitar or his Irish flute, or painting,"
his father wrote.
M UNTt;F. 8U UIIJAJLY, JK., CLA:>i> ot· 1947
Monte Ferris Bourjaily, Jr., who had been
the publisher and editor of Globe Syndicate
since 1977, died Jan. 4 at his home in Front
Royal, Va., after a heart attack.
Mr. Bourjaily was born in ClevelaJ1d, Ohio,
and raised across the country as he accompanied his journalist parents on their
assignments. He served in the Army Signal
Corps in Europe during World War II.
Early in his career, he was a reporter for a
newspaper in Floyd County, Va., and worked
in the U.S. House of Representatives radio
gallery. From 1952 to 1966, he worked for
Army Times as an associate editor and
author of the " Kibitzer's Corner" column.
He then was an executive assistant in
Washington for the Oklai1orna-based architectural, engineering, and planning furn of
Hudgins, Thompson, Ball and Associates.
Survivors include his wife of 61 years,
Marietta Dake Bourjaily of Front Royal, Va.,
and six children.
MARGARET NEUSTADT RANooL
Maigaret Neustadt RaJ1dol of Baltimore,
who was married to former St. John's Dean
John 0. Neustadt, died at her home in
Baltimore in December 2.004. She was 83,
and had been a longtime civil-rights activist
in the city. She was well known for her work
with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., the
Maryland Commission on Human Relations,
and American Civil Liberties Union.
MI CHAEL TOBCN, FORMER BVGMEMBER
Michael E. Tobin died April 2.1, at the age of
79, at his home in Tesuque, New Mexico.
He served as a member of the college's
Board ofVisitors and Governors from
1994-2000.
Mr. Tobin was born in Philadelphia. He
lettered in fencing and soccer at Central
High School. He attended the University of
Pennsylvania until he was drafted into the
U.S. Army, where he served in Europe.
After the war, he remained in France to
study classical piano. Although mus ic
remained one of his passions throughout his
life, Mr. Tobin returned to complete his
studies at Penn's "Wharton School of
Business. He inoved to New York to launch
a career in finance, later joining the firm
of Arthur Young and Company. There he
worked in bank and securities consulting
and became partner in charge of the
Chicago and Western offices.
As president of the Midwest Stock
Exchange, he pioneered automation for the
exchange, making it the second-largest
market in the U.S. by dollar volume. He later
became chairman and CEO of the American
Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. That
bank became the sponsor of a program that
sent teachers in Chicago's Paideia program
(which introduced Socratic seminars to
public-school classrooms) to the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe.
Throughout his life, Mr. Tobin was actively
committed to the arts, and when he moved
to Santa Fe, he became an ardent supporter
of the Santa Fe Symphony. He also continued to cultivate a lifelong interest in world
history and Western literature at St. John's,
where he took part in comm unity seminars.
Mr. Tobin is survived by his wife, Judith
Brown Tobin; his children Michael, Jr.,
Allegra Love, and Corey; a stepson, Brett
Sylvestri and wife Virginia; and four
grandchildren.
EMIL MAsSA, FlUEND OF T HE MEEM LIBRARY
Dr. Emil J. Massa, who died in October
2.004, took an interest in St. John's College
as early as the mid-197os. Perhaps he fust
visited on one of his regular trips to Santa Fe
to attend the city's world-famous opera. By
1992., Dr. Massa had included the Meern
Library in his estate plan. Now, his bequest
{T
H E
C o LL E c
E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
will fund an endovm1ent for maintenance of
the library's collections.
Dr. Massa settled in Denver, Colo., as an
orthopedic surgeon in 1960. Born into a
first-generation immigrant family in the
Cleveland, Ohio, area, he attended
Dennison College in connection with his
military service, followed by medical school
at Northwestern University. Dr. Massa was
keenly aware of the value of a good education-not only professionally, but spiritually
as well. Following his formal schooling, he
became an avid reader and bibliophile of
broad and formidable intellect, drawn
especially to the humanities ru1d liberal arts
and sciences.
Dr. Massa was always questioning,
confronting his ideas with those of others
and trying to discern the best way to live.
He found it in his appreciation of fine workmanship of all kinds-books and the craft of
bookbinding, art, music, fine automobiles,
and wine-but most of all in his ongoing
personal search for truth. No great idea, he
believed, can flourish without serious
conversation, one of the highest activities in
which humans can engage. To enter the
conversation in earnest, we must know what
has been said already. For this, as Dr. Massa
knew, the best education is a study of the
greatest books ever written.
A LSO NOTED:
FRED ALEXANDER (class ofi937) , December
2.2., 2.004
LurH ER BLACKJSTON (A68), January 18, 2.005
MICHAEL B LUME (A78) , February 7, 2.005
} A.MPS H. C 1moERS (SFGI70), October 9,
2.004
WJLLL\M C. H ALL (class of1946), December
18, 2.004
ROWLAND ALFRED JONES (class ofx949),
February 2.1, 2.005
GEORGE L YON, JR. (class ofx940), January
14, 2.005
D UNCAN M CDONALD, former An napolis
tutor, January 2.4, 2.005
ERICH NUSSBAUM ( class of 1945), March 18,
2.005
HAROL D OAV1 0 Runm (Ao4), December
2.004
DEBORAH MICAEL TIIIELKER (A79), April 17,
2.005
J AMES TINDALL (class ofi949), March 2.4,
2.005
)
�44
COMMUNITY
F OR T H E
S AKE
O F
Miss HucHEY-COMMERS LEAVES ST. JOHN'S
WITH A PASSION FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION.
LEARNI N G ,
LEARNING
FOR T H E
SAKE
OF
COMM UNI TY
sv Ea,,. Hucttsv-COMMEas, A05
hroughout.high school my
image of college was a place
where people came together
to explore the knowable
world with gusto; I envisioned lively discussions and
a feeling of fulfilJment when I turned in
each assignment. I was interested in a kind
oflearning that would involve my whole
being- that would inform not only which
answer I put dovm on the test but also teach
me how to live in a more thoughuul way
once I stepped outside the classroom. And
I was interested in sharing this kind of
learning with other people who were
engaged in the same activity. I was fortunate
to find St. John's.
As an underclassman what I loved most
about the Program was the discussion.
How well I remember staying up until one
in the morning after my first seminar talking with my hallrnates about the character
of Odysseus in Homer's Iliad, or, much
later, my euphoria after reading Plotinus,
who, in his way of speaking about God
without personification, gave me just the
insight I needed to begin to talk about the
word of God in the Book ofJohn for my oral
examination. I learned what an amazing
thing it is to have a really good seminar, in
which the conversation takes its own
course, free of any student attempting to
determine its direction, and in which something completely new and unexpected is
clarified out of the chaos of my own reading.
Long after the newness of St. John's wore
off, I continued to find myself in unexpectedly thoughtful conversations, often in the
lunchroom with someone I didn' t know, or
with the girls on my hall while brushing
teeth after seminar.
Many of the books we read deal with the
question of what it means to live a good and
virtuous life. Reading and discussing these
T
books changed, among other things, the
way I thought about my future. When I
came to St. John's, J knew that I wanted to
be a teacher. In my previous teaching
experiences, I had enjoyed helping students
discover the fun of learning, and showing
them that they were capable of more than
they had believed. After coming to
St. John's and reading so many books that
applied directly to my life, I became interested in finding a way of teaching that would
provide students with the opportunity to
make the clear connection between what
they were learning in class and their lives
outside of school. Before, it had seemed
enough for me to help students bring themselves as whole people to their learning, and
what I had hoped to accomplish as a teacher
had rested in empowering individuals by
helping them enter the world oflearning;
now I saw it was equally important that they
turn back to their daily lives as snidentsthat they thus learn how to live thoughtfully
as well as learn vibrantly. Teaching enlarged
its scope then; I came to see it as the work of
strengthening a society.
As a resuJt, I became interested in the
Waldorf School, which is based on the
writings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf
Steiner. The summer following my sophomore year, I was fortunate to get a Hodson
internship to work in a Waldorf School for
the remainder of their school year. In the
process of giving its students a balanced
education, including art, music, and
handwork, the Waldorf School also seeks
to awaken in students an awareness of
themselves as a part of a social and natural
whole-and to prepare them to make
thoughuul decisions about the way that they
act as citizens of this whole. In addition the
Waldorf School is an example of the way
that philosophical ideas can be implemented in the world. It turned out that it
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring aoo5 )
provides an education much like the one
that Socrates describes in the Republic,
the education of the future philosopherk.ings: certain kinds of music arc played and
stories told based on the students' level of
development.
The summer after my junior year, I
received another Hodson grant to intern
with the Nelson County Museum of Rural
History in central Virgina, where I learned
about the work of educating an entire
community. Dttring the internship, J helped
lead an oral-history workshop for fourthand fifth-graders, in which we invited senior
citizens to be interviewed on tape. Everyone
benefited from this experience: the older
people were happy to share their stories and
spend time with the students, and the
snidents showed surprise and pleasure at
what the seniors told them about life during
the Depression. History became real for
these students through conversations with
their elders, once again demonstrating the
importance of dialogue to meaningful
learning. I believe that such dialogue is not
only important for education but also
essential for seeing oneself as part of a
larger whole- as a citizen of a locality where
one's actions have a direct and tangible
effect on the community.
Since becoming a student at St. John's,
I have been impressed by how much
learning depends upon interaction with
other people. One night in seminar, toward
the end of the semester, I felt weighed down
and found myself participating little in the
discussion. I was stopped after class by
another student who asked me my thoughts
on the conversation. I expressed my frustration, and we shared anecdotes about the
tension we felt while sitting in seminar,
often caught between interrupting the flow
of conversation and wanting to clarify a
particular point for ourselves. It was so
45
{ ST U D ENT V OI CES}
{STUDENT VOIC E S}
refreshing to talk to a classmate like this
that I began to speak more vigorously and to
feel more impassioned about our seminar.
When I returned to my room that night I
had gotten my energy back for the Program.
There is something amazing about the
power of conversation. Not only do we
uncover ideas and get co ask ourselves
questions we would never have thought
about on our ovm, but we are also able to
discuss the learning process itself, to realize
what is standing in the way, and above all to
become connected once again with our
passion for learning. When we learn
through dialogue, our relationship to
learning is not distinguishable from our
relationship to ocher people. Through that
human relationship, we are able to pursue
truth and knowledge as whole beings.
In the Republic Socrates divides the soul
into three parts: the highest is the intellect,
the lowest, the desiring part, and that which
connects these is the spirited part, or
thumos. When I said at the beginning of my
talk that I wanted to bring my whole self to
learning, I meant that I wanted the spirited
part of me to be just as involved in the
conversation in its own way as the intellectual part. Spiritedness not only asks but
embodies the question, "Why is this
important to me?" Even in the most
abstract discussion, something must be
at stake for the conversation to live and
breathe, for us to find ourselves in it.
That's the thing about St. John's- through
our interaction with the people around us
and, by means of the texts, with the great
thinkers of our culture, we enter into
learning with all parts of the soul and we
discover that there is little chat does not
interest us.
At St. John's we call ourselves a community of learning. My time here, as well as my
summer internships, has driven home for
{ THE
CoLLBCE,St.John'sCollege,Spring2005}
me the truth that in order for either to be
ftilly what it is, community and education
must not be separate. Thinking along these
lines, during my fall and winter breaks this
year I have worked with teachers, students,
and community leaders in Nelson County
to design a program for high school
students in which they will learn about
the workings oflocal government by
conducting research, attending meetings,
discussing issues, and writing articles
for the newspaper about what they are
learning. Starling this fall, I will coorclinate
the program for a year; beyond that, I am
excited about making community education the focus in my career. Indeed, I am
indebted co St. John's for helping me
find such a strong focus for my career as
a teacher.
When my parents told me they would be
unable to help me pay tuition at St. John's,
I began to fill out application forms for as
many local and national scholarships as I
had time to apply for. I knew that St. John's
was the right school for me, and I believed
that somehow it would be possible for me to
go. I was extremely fortunate in chat a
Ruritan club, a local church, and a private
foundation assisted me at different times.
At first it seemed awkward co be receiving
money from others; however, after the first
time that I went to the Episcopal church
service to thank the parish for its help, the
experience of being a scholarship recipient
changed. When I stood up to telJ the
congregation about my work at St. John's
and saw so many smiling faces looking back
at me, I realized I was not alone in my
endeavor, financial or academic.
It is easy for us to consider our education
as something we obtain ourselves, for
ourselves. What I've realized in the course
of talking with my sponsors is that this is
not true. An education is brought about
through the efforts of many people and if
all goes weJJ, many people will be the
beneficiaries of that education. To put it
more strongly, an education is a gift from a
community to a community. I've come to
the place of being able to accept help with
deep gratitude, joyfuIJy looking forward to
the time when I can give back, and aJJowing
the boundary between myself and my
community to become less distinct. ♦
�{ALUMNI AssocrATION NEws}
FROM THE ALUMNI
AssoCIATION
PRESIDENT
•
•
•
Dear Alumni,
•
Even at St. John's
College, technology
changes quickly.
Last year, the
college and the
Alumni Association
instituted an online
register, which provided little more
than contact information for alumni from
both campuses and all programs. Thanks
to all of you who registered for your commitment and patience during a bumpy
implementation process.
This year, the online register is being
replaced with an Online Alumni Community, a user-friendly, flexible, and powerful
tool to help you connect with fellow alumni
in many different ways. This new virtual
community offers:
• Powerful search features to help you
find and connect with other alumni.
The site is designed to allow alumni
to conduct a search for special networking-for example, look for alumni
working in the Jcgal field in New York
City. As more alumni become
•
•
•
•
•
• Phoco galleries from special alumni
events, such as chapter picnics,
outings, and Homecoming, can be
posted here.
It is a wonderful and flexible tool for
staying connected with others and with the
college, and we' ve only begun to use just a
fraction of the features available. One area
ripe for development is a Career Services
section that allows Johnnies to learn of job
openings, post resumes, and advertise
positions that are just right for Johnnies.
If you're concerned that the list could be
used for "spamming," don't worry: the
system has safeguards built in to avoid
alumni or unauthorized users from
creating lists from the system.
Your friends can only reach you through
the Online Community if you have registered as a member. As of May, close to r,600
alumni have joined the community, with
our younger alumni really taking the lead.
It only talccs a few minutes, and approval is
most often automatic-so do it today. You
should also encourage your friends to
register, so you can reach them through this
virtual "Johnnie homecoming."
members, this search feature will be
more helpful.
Announcements for alumni and other
college events around the country.
Member forums where you can start a
conversation or enter one in progress.
Information about Alumni Association
chapters' contact information and
activity schedules.
Faculty listings from both campuses
with e-mai l addresses.
" Meeting space" for special groups of
alumni. One current group is Military
Family Alumni, for alumni who are
either serving in or associated with
the military. Mary Ruffin (Ao4)
started the group after marrying a
Naval officer.
"Personal space" where you can share
information about yourself with ocher
alumni, including your personal page,
buddy list, web log, photo album, and
resume.
Class home pages, class notes, and
e-mail lists to help you stay in touch
with members of your class. Alumni
notes from The College magazine will
be posted here, and classnotes you
submit through the online community
will also be printed in the next edition
of the magazine.
Instant messaging.
A process that allows you to easily
upload your photos of special events
(a wedding) or special people (the new
baby) to share with your classmates.
It was a busy year for Alumni Association
chapters across the country, with the usual
mix ofhmchcons and receptions, potlucks,
picnics, and seminars. (With or without
a potluck, Johnnies still turn out for a
seminar.)
Here's a look at what's happening:
• Albuquerque had six seminar/
potlucks; Austin had IO seminars,
Baltimore enjoyed five seminars and
hosted a networking seminar for
juniors and seniors with the Annapolis
and Washington, D.C., chapters.
• The revival continues for the Boston
chapter, which reported an "excel{T
tt &
Co LL E c e . St. John's College. Spring 2005
GRANT PRESERVES
GYM PLAQUES
le talces 2.0 laps around the suspended
wooden track in Iglehart Hall to complete a
mile. That gives determined joggers and
walkers ample opportunity co read the
plaques lining the wall of the gymnasium in
Annapolis, reminders from past generations
of}ohnnie athletes that every sport requires
the best effort every time.
Thanks to a grant from the Alumni
Association, the plaques look better than
they have in years: 23 of 38 plaques in the
collection, commemorating the alumni of
the years 1871-192.8, have been cleaned and
restored. The association provided a grant
for the work, which cost $3,800. These
plaques are of both nostalgic and historic
value to alumni, being among the very few
publicly displayed relics of the college's postCivil War through post-World War I period.
A ss O C I A TI ON
N EWS }
The class of 1889 left behind the motto
Respice Finem- "look to the encl." The class
ofr916 was a bit more Spartan in its athletic
philosophy: Aul Vince,-e Aut Mori- "co conquer or die, death or victory." The Latin
phrases embodied by those athletic teams of
years past represent a time when St. John's
competed with the likes of Navy and Johns
Hopkins in football and lacrosse, and usually
won. Lofty values that transcended athletics
were also emblazoned on the plaques:
Omnia Vinci, Veritas, "truth conquers all
things," declared the class ofr927.
The plaques were cleaned and oxidized to
a dark statuary finish, with an architectural
coating applied. "Now you can really sec
chem- even read the names-and from the
court floor no less," says Athletic Director
Leo Pickens. "Until the cleaning they were
just like dark holes on the wall. The details
on many of them are almost architectural
and quite lovely." ♦
47
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in
the St. John's College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board
meets four times a year, twice on each campus,
to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of
the association. This newsletter within
The College magazine is sponsored by the
Alumni Association and communicates
association news and eve ms of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76
'freasurer- Bill Fant, A79
Cetting•tlze-Word•OutAction Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mai/i,,gaddress-Alumni Association,
St. John's College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or n6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
To register, go to:
www.stjohnscollege.cdu; click on "alumni"
and follow the directions from there.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda H. Eoyang
President
St. John's College Alumni Association
lent" year with 13 well-attended
seminars, many of which attracted
new faces. Boulder enjoyed a poetry/
reading potluck along with 10 seminars; Chicago had seven seminars,
and there were six seminars-one with
dinner-for the Greater Puget Sound
chapter.
• As one of the largest chapters, New
York is very busy: five seminars, seven
movie nights, a reception picnic, and a
holiday party. The chapter expanded
its Web site significantly this year.
• In Northern California, eight seminars
and a seminar/picnic at Stag's Leap;
one seminar and one outing to the
Philadelphia Sha.Jcespeare Festival for
Philly, and 12 seminars for Pittsburgh.
• In Portland, alumni have been meeting
regularly since October and have had
AROUND THE
CHAPTERS
{AL U M N I
four seminars since July. A tea party
and six seminars took place in Santa
Fe, six in Southern California, r2 in
the Twin Cities, where the chapter
completed a yearlong plunge into the
theme of ""Who are we as Americans?·'
• A highlight for the Washington, D.C.,
chapter was "A Day in the Country,"
hosted by Sharon Bishop (A65), with
Eva Brann leading a seminar. The
chapter will return this spring to
Bishop's country place for another day
in the country with a great book.
• In seven other areas, reading groups
are considering organizing chapters,
or the association is reaching out to
alumni to gauge the interest in getting
a group of Johnnies together. ♦
- COMPILED BY CAROL FREEMAN, AGl94
}
PLAQUES LINING THE WALLS OF IGLEHART H ALL
ARE GLEAMING ONCE AGAIN, THANKS TO AN
ALUMNI AsSOCIATION GRANT.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
actfrities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
BALTIMORE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
Deborah Cohen
505-275-9012
410-472'-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
John Strange
210-39 2-5506
Bev Angel
512,-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Ligh tburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
817-i21-9rx2
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
72~46-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST.PAUL
Carol Freeman
612,-822-3216
{ THE
Co
LL E c E.
NEWYORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-g49-68rr
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works.com
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-i31-8804
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619•423-4972
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
St. John 's College. Spring ,ioo5 }
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465"'7781
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562,-426-1934
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jean Dickason
301-699•6207
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
�{ST.
JOHN'S
FOREVER}
"COEDS INVADE
ST. JottN's"
n the fall of 1950, the faculty
of St. John's College voted to
admit women the following year.
As Richal'd Weigle later recounted
in his book Recollections ofa
St. Johns President, the vote was
to be kept secret until the college's Board
ofVisitors and Governors t0ok up the
matter. One eal'ly plan suggested the
possibility of establishing a women's
college with the St. John's PI"ogram.
The enrollment of women was in pal't
a response tO the college's difficulty in
building enrollment and achieving
financial stability. But the overriding
reason, Weigle said, was that women
wanted to be here.
When the news leaked out shortly after
the boal'd's approval of the matter, he
wrote, "students were in an uproar.
A protest meeting was held in the Great
Hall of McDowell ...just before students
left for Christmas vacation .... Students
believed that discussions in serninal's and
tutorials would suffer and that women
were not up to the rigors of the St. John's
Program," Weigle wrote.
The banner headline in the Evening
Capital was set in type just a bit smaJ ler
than the news of a big development in
the Korean Wal'. It read: "Local College
to Offer Program to Limited Number
of Girls."
A yeal' later, the Washington Post
greeted the arrival of women with a photo
spread and the headline, "Girl Students
First to Enter Old College." The article
quoted some male students as saying, "we
were afraid... that they were going to be a
bunch of giggly girls, only interested in the
Naval Academy." The men, the article
concluded, were pleasantly surprised to
note that the women took the rigors of the
Program as seriously as they did.
This fall mal'ks the 50th anniversary of
the 1955 graduation of those pioneering
women. Several members of the class are
expected back for Homecoming in
Annapolis this fall, where their role in
forever changing the face of St. John's will
be celebrated. ♦
{ TH E
Co LL E c
&•
St. John's College . Spring 2005
FEMALE STUDENTS LEAVE CLASS IN MCDOWELL
HALL WITH TUTORS AND CLASSMATES,
DATE DUE
I
}
I
�S!JOHN'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS• SANTA. f'&
PUBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P. 0. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND z1404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
PERIODICALS
POSTACE PAID
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
thecollege2001
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
48 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The College, Spring 2005
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 31, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2005.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Hartnet, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Goyette, Barbara
Hughey-Commers, Erin
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Weiss, Robin
Martin, Roger H.
Verdi, John
Donnelly, Jennifer A.
Myers, Linda
Hughey-Commers, Erin
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/fa3fbda03f280dc26ee990e9ad15ed3c.pdf
035967152d83e3029b0ac8127000a7e9
PDF Text
Text
S!JOHN'S
College
November 28, 2005
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- FIRST SEMESTER 2005-2006
ANNAPOLIS · S ANTA FE
26 August 2005
Mr. Michael Dink
Dean
St. John's College
"In the Eyes of Others"
2 September
All-College Seminar
Kant - "What is
En I ighterunent?"
9 September
Mr. Thomas May
Tutor
St. John's College
"Finding Perspective and
Staying in One's Room:
Thoughts on Several of
Pascal's Pensees and
LaTour's Repentant
Magdalene"
16 September
Professor Nelson Lund
Alumnus
George Mason University
Law School
"The Roots of Our
Supreme Court's
Preeminence,
and Its Troubles"
23 September
Play - St. John's Tutors
"Othello"
30 September
(Homecoming)
Mr. Charles A. Nelson
Alunmus, Class of 1945
Annapolis, Maryland
"In The Beginning ... The
Genesis of the St. John's
Program, 1937"
7 October
Long Weekend
No Lecture
14 October
Nordic Voices
Norway
Concert by six singers
21 October
(Cochran Lecture)
Professor Sir Michael Berry
Physics Department
Bristol University
United Kingdom
"Making Light of Mathematics"
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.I404
4 Io-6z6-zsn
FAX 4W-2.95-6937
www. sjca. edu
�28 October
Mr. John Verdi
Tutor
St. John's College
"On Seeing Aspects"
4November
(Parents' Weekend)
Mr. N. Scott Momaday
Member of Board of
Visitors and Governors
New Mexico
"Language, The Fifth Element"
11 November
Mr. J. Jonathan Schraub
Independent Scholar
McLean, Virginia
"Job and the Jewish
Tradition of CounterTestimony"
18 November
Professor Wendy Allanbrook
Music Department
University of California
Berkeley
"Rising to the Surface:
A Reading of a Mozart
Piano Sonata"
25 November
Thanksgiving
No Lecture
2 December
(Steiner Lecture)
Professor Freeman Dyson
School of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton
"Gravitons"
9 December
King William Players
"The Lion in Winter"
16 December 8 January
Winter Break
No Lectures
�LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE- SECOND SEMESTER 2005-2006
S!JOHN'S
College
13 January, 2006
Mr. Karl Walling
U. S. Naval War College
"Thucydides on Strategy: The
Case of the Sicilian Expedition"
20 January
Mr. David StalT
Tutor
St. John's College
Santa Fe
"Person and Divinity"
27 January
Mr. Mark Sinnett
Mr. William Braithwaite
Tutors
St. John's College
"The Mathematics of
Motion Versus The
Mathematics of Change"
3 February
Long Weekend
No Lecture
10 February
New York Chamber
Soloists
Conce11 - Chamber Music
Strings and Winds
17 February
Mr. Michael Comenetz
Tutor
St. John's College
"Literature"
Spring Break
No Lecture
17 March
Szymanowski Quartet
Warsaw
Concert - String Quariet
24 March
Ms. Jacqueline Pfeffer MelTill
Tutor
St. John 's College
"Polity in Aristotle's Politics"
3 1 March
Mr. Jeffrey Smith
Tutor
St. Jolm's College
"Pity and Rousseau's
Three Savages"
ANNAPOL I S· SANTA FE
OFFICE OF
THE DEAN
P.O. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2.1404
41o-6z6-zsn
FAX 410-2.95-6937
www. ~jca. edu
24 FebruaryMarch 12
�7 April
Ms. Joanna Tobin
Tutor
St. John's College
14 April
All-College Seminar
21 April
Capital Campaign Kick-Off
No Lecture
28 April
King William Players
Shakespeare's As You Like It
5May
Reality Weekend
No Lecture
12May
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
"A Liberating Restlessness:
Emerson and Tocqueville
on Democracy and the
Individual"
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture/Concert Schedule - First Semester 2005-2006 & Second Semester 2005-2006
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-2006
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 2005-2006 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 2005-2006
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dink, Michael
May, Thomas
Lund, Nelson
Nelson, Charles A.
Berry, Michael
Verdi, John
Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-
Schraub, J. Jonathan
Allanbrook, Wendy
Dyson, Freeman J.
Walling, Karl
Starr, David
Sinnett, Mark, 1963-
New York Chamber Soloists
Comenetz, Michael, 1944-
Szymanowski Quartet
Merrill, Jacqueline Pfeffer
Smith, Jeffrey
Tobin, Joanna
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/54baa02add32b2db9862251c5a6a702f.pdf
4b60716e2fc2ebee5e546c6a043baf29
PDF Text
Text
The St. John’s Review
Volume 52, number 2 (Spring 2011)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Barbara McClay
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
©2011 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at
www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml.
�Contents
Essays
Reading Landscapes: Maternal Love in
Classical Tamil Poetry ....................................................1
Anne David
The Tocquevillean Moment ................................................19
Wilfred M. McClay
On Seeing Aspects ..............................................................45
John Verdi
Reflections
Full Fathom Five: A Tutor’s Sea Change ...........................73
Louis Petrich
Reviews
John Verdi’s Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on Aspects ........83
Eva Brann
Paolo Palmieri’s A History of Galileo’s Inclined Plane
Experiment and its Philosophical Implications............91
Curtis Wilson
�1
ESSAYS
READING LANDSCAPES:
MATERNAL LOVE IN
CLASSICAL TAMIL POETRY
Anne David
Pu!an"#$!u 2781
The old woman’s shoulders
were dry, unfleshed,
with outstanding veins;
her low belly was like a lotus pad.
When people said
her son had taken fright,
had turned his back on battle
and died,
she raged
and shouted,
“If he really broke down
in the thick of battle,
I’ll slash these breasts
that gave him suck,”
and went there,
sword in hand.
Turning over body after fallen body,
she rummaged through the blood-red field
till she found her son,
quartered, in pieces,
and she rejoiced
more than on the day
she gave him birth.
This poem was composed nearly two millennia ago in
Tamil Nadu, South India. It belongs to a corpus of more than
Anne David is an alumna of St. John’s College and the University of Chicago, and is
currently a research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced
Study of Language, where she works on South Asian Languages.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
two thousand exquisite, tightly constructed lyric verses written in the Tamil language. Tamil is one of the two classical
languages of India; the other is Sanskrit. Along with Greek
and just a handful of other languages, Tamil has among the
longest continually attested written traditions in the world,
one that began around the second century before the
Common Era, when literature flowered in South India in the
form of these lyric poems of love and war.
They are called the Cankam2 poems, from the belief that
they were composed at a legendary center of art and learning, a Cankam, that was patronized by the south Indian
kings. What we now call the Cankam period of classical
Tamil extended until about the fifth century CE. We have
well over two thousand of these poems, ranging in length
from three lines to about eight hundred, probably only a
fraction of what was actually composed. They were preserved on palm leaf manuscripts, which are susceptible to
humidity, fire, and insects; and because of their largely secular and often erotic content, they have also been subject to
human negligence and even malice. We also have a contemporaneous grammar, the Tolk"ppiyam, which describes
both the language of the poems and the elaborate semiotic
and aesthetic system on which their descriptions draw.
There were about four hundred poets, of whom some two
dozen were women; though still small, this proportion is
unusually high among classical corpora.3
The poem above depicts a mother’s elation when she
learns her role in society has been fulfilled because her son
has died with honor in battle. Her triumph is underscored by
the stunning image of her standing in a blood-soaked field
of bodies. Vivid portraits of battlefields are common among
the Cankam poems, where setting is integral, and they are
often depicted through metaphors of other landscapes:
agrarian, desert, sea.
ESSAYS | DAVID
3
Classical Tamil poetry has two genres. Poems of
romance and eros are classified as akam, meaning ‘inside,
interior’, while poems on all other subjects are called
pu!am, meaning ‘outside, exterior’. Akam poems address
our inner life, the life of heart and home. Pu!am poems
address all aspects of public life: they praise kings, recount
battles, sing of famine and death, lament the dire poverty of
poets.
Manifest in the Cankam works is a tension between
these two worlds—public and private, political and domestic. We gain insight into both kinds of poem, their
language of landscape, and the tension between them, when
we examine the one female character who, in Martha
Selby’s words, “may cross the membranous boundary between akam and pu!am,”4 who alone has been given a voice
in both genres—the Mother. We see the mother as a
powerful voice in both the akam and pu!am poems, facing
two kinds of maternal loss: that of her daughter to a young
man and that of her son to the warpath. While prominent in
the akam poems, the mother is a rarer character in the
pu!am world; nevertheless, she is fiercely present in a small
pu!am sub-genre on mothers and warrior sons.
The civilization that produced this exquisite lyric poetry
of love, war, and kingship was suffused with savagery. At
the turn of the first millennium of the Common Era, South
India was dominated by three great dynasties reigning over
many smaller leaders—a world of kings and chieftains who
patronized the arts and waged brutal wars against each
other. Poetry served as a vehicle of patriotic persuasion.
Through the voices of the pu!am poets, the ancient Tamilians glorified courage and ferocity. They regarded death in
battle as a moral obligation, and as the greatest of honors.
One pu!am poem, spoken by a mother, is a lyrical list of
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
societal duties: her duty is to bear sons, the father’s duty is
to make them noble, the blacksmith’s to furnish them with
arms, the king’s to exemplify good conduct—and the son’s
duty is to make war.5
In other verses we hear how the bodies of stillborn sons
and the elderly male dead were slashed with swords so that
they too might carry the honor of battle-wounds into the
afterlife. One poem describes a frenzied hero on the battlefield thus: “Like an elephant in chains, he is hindered only
by the guts that are entangling his feet.”6 Still other poems
describe a post-victory ritual in which the conquerors build
a hearth of severed heads, then boil the remains of the vanquished dead. And there are poems like the one above
whose common theme is the prideful, bloody-minded mother of a slain warrior.
But the pu!am anthologies also include poems celebrating life, poems about hospitality, drunkenness, the joy
of fatherhood. So we see in this literature a society struggling with this universal human dilemma: how do we live
well and raise happy families in a world filled with peril?
And in these poems, no figure embodies the conflict between a desire for domestic tranquility and an ethic that
glorifies slaughter more than that of the king. Kings are
central to the pu!am poems. They are vital to the world they
rule. One poem says, “Rice is not the life of this world nor
is water the life! / The king is the life of this world!”7 A king
was expected to be brave and ferocious against the enemy,
but kind and magnanimous to his people.
George Hart has talked about the Tamil king as the
mediator of sacred power: the modern Tamil word for
temple, k%yil, is etymologically ‘place of the king’, and the
indigenous Tamil word for ‘god’, i!aivan (literally, ‘he who
is highest’) originally referred to the king.8 The king’s
ESSAYS | DAVID
5
power extended both to taking and giving life; his control
over the sacred depended on his ruling justly.9 Likewise, the
fertility of his land and the well-being of his people depended on his maintaining that connection to the sacred.
So these violent warrior kings are also praised as loving,
nurturing givers of life: the king is called the life-breath of
the kingdom;10 other poems liken him to the sun. And he is
explicitly compared to a mother: an adoring subject is
drawn to the powerful king “like a child that runs to suck his
mother’s flawless breast.”11 The two landscapes of his kingdom—martial and agrarian—often merge into one, as fields
of battle are likened to fields of harvest. The poems startle
with metaphors of soldiers tilling the earth with their spears
and piling up haystacks of corpses, or of an elephant’s head
rolling along the soil “like a plow.”12 Even the warrior with
enemy guts entangling his feet is compared in the next line
to a mother cow defending her calf, as he fights for his comrade.
The family is in some ways a mirror of the kingdom.
Like kings, women were also regarded as vessels of sacred
power, power that was no longer benevolent if they cast off
their chastity and domestic virtue within marriage, just as
royal sacred power was harmed by kingly vice.13 And just as
a virtuous king brought prosperity to his people, a virtuous
wife brought fortune and fertility to her family. Where a superior king is compared to the sun, a wife who has produced
a male child is said to “light up the house” like a lamp.14
The family appears most frequently in the akam poems,
which are love poems composed under the guidelines of an
intricate and highly structured rhetorical system. The poet
always speaks in the persona of one of the characters in a
generic love story: a young woman or her lover, her friend
or his friends; her mother or nurse; occasional passersby; or,
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
in the poems that take place after marriage, the husband’s
mistress. Each poem depicts one of five stages of love, as
well as certain moods, emotions, and situations that are
characteristic of those stages.
No one is ever named in the akam poems; the characters
are all types, abstractions of the sort of people commonly
caught up in any tale of young, romantic love. (Pu!am
poems always identify kings and eminent personages by
name; for that reason they are more useful for dating the
poems.) The hero and heroine are known simply as the
talaivan and talaivi, the ‘main man’ and ‘main woman’.
This anonymity emphasizes the universality of the events
and emotions depicted in the poems.
Each poem is a single soliloquy, spoken to one of the
other characters or sometimes to the world at large—never
to us. We, the audience, are always in the role of eavesdropper. The focus is usually on the woman’s experience of
love; the most frequent speakers are the heroine and her
girlfriend confidante. Common themes are her grief, anxiety, suffering, and most of all her helplessness in the absence
of her lover. The poems make it clear, however, that her
helplessness arises from societal constraints; hers is not an
emotional or physical helplessness. She has to stay put most
of the time: we see her confined by village gossip, parental
control, and later, motherhood.
Paradoxically, it is these akam poems that are most imbued with representations of the objects of the outer world.
Highly stylized rules associate the exterior landscape with
the interior landscape of human passion. Such associations
transform the different Tamilnad landscapes—desert and
seascape, wilderness and paddy, mountain and plains—into
an entire poetic language, where all the plants, animals, and
human beings not only connote, but often denote the emo-
ESSAYS | DAVID
7
tions and situations that engulf their two young lovers.
Here’s an example:
Ku!untokai 35615
A man who wears a hero’s anklet
keeps her safe as she hurries
through scant, dry lands
where the shade shrinks and dies.
At the bank of a scorched pool,
she sips at muddy, steaming water.
Where does she find the strength,
this girl, soft as a sprout,
with her tiny, curving bracelets?
She had refused even to touch milk,
mixed with fine puffed rice
in a bowl clad in blushing gold
that I’d held out for her,
saying that it was too much.
There are three important elements in this lyric vocabulary. The first is landscape, of which there are five types.
This poem’s landscape is p"lai, the wasteland, which conveys a theme of hardship and separation. The second key
element is the native constituents of that landscape: flora,
fauna, local people, and gods. These two elements—the
landscape and its denizens—constitute the setting and
evoke the third element, the mood or situation. So when a
love poem mentions stagnant water, midday heat, lizards,
cactus, or bandits, the experienced reader recognizes the
desert wasteland, and knows that the situation here is elopement—two young lovers are enduring danger and deprivation for the sake of being together.
The speaker is the young heroine’s mother or wetnurse.
There are several of these desert elopement poems in which
the mother reminisces about feeding milk to the daughter
now lost to her. Typically she contrasts the girl’s youth and
delicacy with the hardships she is surely suffering in the
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
8
barren waste where the couple has fled. In all five akam
settings, the mother of the young lovesick heroine worries
for her daughter’s safety, happiness, and reputation:
Ainku!un$!u 37916
United with the man
with the gleaming white spear,
is going through the forests
where herds of bull elephants roam
on dew-covered slopes
sweeter to her
than the pleasure
of a good marriage
in the company of her dearest friends,
I wonder?
The forests, elephants, and dew-covered slopes tell us
that this poem’s landscape is kurinji, the cool, wild hillcountry, the setting for premarital love and secret midnight
trysts. These kurinji poems, of course, tend to be the most
sexual of the poems, although the eroticism is implied
through proxies; for instance, her lover’s gleaming spear.
The roaming herds of bull elephants also suggest uncontrolled male lust; the mother is implying a contrast between
what her daughter has chosen and a “good marriage,”
approved by those who truly care for her. (Most comparisons
in Cankam poetry are by implication. Subtlety is the norm.)
In the pu!am poems, we see the mother of a young
warrior grumbling about her loss of control over him:
Pu!a#"n$!u 8617
You stand against the pillar
of my hut and ask:
Where is your son?
9
ESSAYS | DAVID
I don’t really know.
This womb was once
a lair
for that tiger.
You can see him now
only on battlefields.
But more often she has lost him utterly, in poems exhorting mothers to proper pride and joy at his brave death. The
message: it was her duty to produce him and her culminating duty to give him up to war. But these are highly sophisticated poems, and as the exterior and interior landscapes of human life speak to each other in them, there are
sometimes signs of ambivalence towards the desirability of
death on the battlefield.
Earlier I alluded to a pu!am poem that lists people’s duties—the mother bears sons, the father teaches them nobility, and so on—ending with the son’s duty to make war. That
poem is more complicated, however, than I suggested.
Whereas everyone else gets one duty and one line of verse,
the son’s battle-duties are several and take up two lines: the
mother enjoins him to wage war with his shining sword, kill
enemy elephants, and come back home, not seek death in the
field. In a similar vein, a mother defiantly rejoices at the safe
return of her son as she recounts the warriors’ ritual drink
before battle:
Pu!a#"n$!u 28618
Like white goats, the young men surrounded him
and a cup was passed above the heads of many
to my son and yet it did not lead to his
being laid out on a legless bed
and covered with a pure white cloth.
And in another poem, we see a mother beholding her
badly wounded son, who has been laid out on his shield. As
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
10
he denies that he can feel the arrow in his flesh, she remembers his childish fear when she had once scolded him for not
drinking his milk. These lines directly recall the bereft
mother of the akam poems who compares her daughter’s
stoicism in the desert with her childish distaste for milk.
This allusion in the mouth of the mother bending over her
wounded son suggests that she is not proud, but grieving
and bewildered.
A marvelous intersection of interior and exterior landscapes occurs in the following pu!am poem about a slain
warrior’s garland:
Pu!a#"n$!u 27819
The chaste trees, dark-clustered,
blend with the land
that knows no dryness;
the colors on the leaves
mob the eyes.
We’ve seen those leaves on jeweled women,
on their mounds
of love.
Now the chaste wreath lies slashed
on the ground, so changed, so mixed
with blood, the vulture snatches it
with its beak,
thinking it raw meat.
We see this too
just because a young man
in love with war
wore it for glory.
So a warrior has been killed—killed so brutally that the
wreath he wore on his head looks to a vulture like bloody
flesh. This powerful poem uses the image of leaves in
several ways to blend akam and pu!am themes. First, the
poet invokes the landscape of akam poems by reminding us
that nocci leaves, used here as battle attire, also cover young
ESSAYS | DAVID
11
women’s sexual parts. Those leaf garments were believed to
protect chastity,20 and elsewhere in the poems, the image of
destroyed garlands and other plants can signify that a sexual
act has taken place.21 We have a similar metaphor in English: the blood on the leaves suggests here the deflowering
of a virgin, reminding us of the akam mother’s worries for
her daughter’s virtue. Further, the leaves of the nocci tree are
a common motif in akam poems, where the mother of the
lovesick heroine remembers her little girl in happier times,
playing by a nocci tree.
So again a pu!am poem about a wounded young warrior
invokes an akam poem about a nostalgic mother grieving for
her lovelorn daughter. This is how the Cankam poems speak
to one another. To an audience steeped in this imagery, the
mixing of akam and pu!am through the juxtaposition of a
bloody battle wreath with images of happy little girls and
chaste, bejeweled young maidens would be both obvious
and jarring.
All these poems gainsay the poems that glorify combat,
extol ferocious kings, and speak of inflicting sham warwounds on males who die in peacetime. Moreover, they
challenge the implicit injunctions on mothers to desire and
celebrate the death of their sons in battle.
With this in mind, let us look at one last poem:
Pu!a#"n$!u 29522
There, in the very middle
of battle-camps
that heaved like the seas,
pointing at the enemy
the tongues of lances,
new-forged and whetted,
urging soldiers forward
with himself at the head
in a skirmish of arrow and spear,
�12
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
cleaving through
an oncoming wave of foes,
forcing a clearing,
he had fallen
in that space
between armies,
his body hacked in pieces:
when she saw him there
in all his greatness,
mother’s milk flowed again
in the withered breasts
of this mother
for her warrior son
who had no thought of retreat.
This poem is by Auvaiy!r, one of the two most famous
of the Cankam poets, and one of the few women among
them. Auvaiy!r also wrote the poem of the mother rejoicing
that her son has not come back on a cloth-covered bier, so
we have some idea where her sympathies lie. On the
surface, this poem seems yet another portrait of the proud
mother of a dead war hero. If we examine this joy more
closely, however, we will find that the poem suggests a different theme.
Let us look first at the prosody. This poem is full of the
sound of grief. Tamil poetry uses internal rhyme: in the transcription of the poem provided in the appendix, you can see
that the poet has a quadruple internal rhyme in lines four,
five, and six, and further, that the vowel sound in that
rhyme—/ai/—is frequent throughout the poem. (An unscientific sur-vey of a few nearby poems of similar length
shows that the sound /ai/ occurs about 30 percent more
often in this poem.) You can also see that its long-voweled
counterpart /!i/, a much rarer sound in Tamil, occurs three
times, and the long vowel /!/ seven times—also higher
counts in comparison with other poems. A common Tamil
ESSAYS | DAVID
13
interjection for grief and pain, still used today, is the word
aiy%, which contains /ai/. Even cross-linguistically, these
three sounds, /ai/, /!i/, and /!/ are onomatopoeic sounds of
wailing.23
Now let’s turn to the poem’s diction. The other poems
depicting proud mothers of dead sons all use the word
ci!uva# for ‘son’. Outside of those poems, this word is a
relatively uncommon locution for a ‘boy-child’; its literal
meaning is ‘little one (male)’. It is otherwise used sentimentally to refer to actual little boys. So the battle-death
poems are actually describing a mother’s joy at seeing her
“little one’s” body scattered all over the battlefield. Here
sentimentality has turned maudlin. Auvaiy!r has taken care
to avoid this tone by pointedly not using the word in her
poem. I say “pointedly” because first, everyone else uses it,
and second, because it would have been more metrically
suited to the line. Her choice of vi&alai ‘youth’ over ci!uva#
‘little boy’ means that the final syllable must be long by
position rather than by nature, because in Tamil prosody, /ai/
is considered short.
Let us look next at the imagery. The poem begins with
the word ‘sea’ (ka&al) and ends with the word ‘mother’ (t"y).
The oncoming armies are twice likened to the rising, heaving ocean, while the mother’s breasts are initially described
as v"&u ‘withered’—a word associated with the desert. But
then her breasts begin to spring or flow, and after that, to
gush or surge, like the wide, swelling, deep sea. The word
used to describe her son’s body, citai ‘scattered’, refers elsewhere in the poems to sand on a beach. So the mother starts
out like a desert and then, as the poem culminates, she
becomes like the ocean, which reclaims scattered sand as it
surges forth.
Linking an ordinary human being with vast and
powerful landscapes such as the desert and the sea is almost
�14
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
unheard of in the language of these poems. People are
frequently compared to things in the landscape, especially
animals: young men are often likened to tigers or elephants,
young women to does, flowers, or ripe fruit. But integral
parts of the landscape are reserved for the king, who is
compared, for example, to the sun. We are reminded again
that both the king and the virtuous mother are vessels of
sacred power. Her flowing milk is a further reminder of this,
because mother’s milk has sacred powers; indeed, husbands
are portrayed as fearful of being touched by it.
So this breastfeeding imagery itself, rather than conveying the standard image of a joyful, patriotic mother, supports
an interpretation of this poem as iconoclastic. For if the conventional reading is the only one, then this female poet is
taking liberties with the biology of maternal love. The old
mother’s breasts spurting forth milk at the sight of her dead
son portrays the let-down reflex that all nursing mothers
know. It is triggered inexorably in mothers by their baby’s
cry, and powerful sense-memories of it linger years after
weaning. The image is first of all an allusion to other
Cankam portraits of grieving mothers nostalgic for the longgone days of milk-fed little ones. This mother is neither
pleased nor proud her son has died. Furthermore, any mother knows that the maternal let-down reflex is not accompanied by joy or pride, but by anxiety for the baby, together
with an intense desire to soothe the infant, and to banish its
hunger, sadness, fear, or pain. As her grief cries out in the
sounds of the poem, this mother’s despair amplifies her
sacred powers in response to a futile wish to succor her lost
son.
The raging mother of our first poem is certainly not a
weak or passive figure as she echoes her son’s war deeds,
rampaging through corpses on the battlefield, sword in hand.
But in her violent mania and ultimate joy, she is complying
ESSAYS | DAVID
15
with society’s expectations. In contrast, all the authorial
choices of this last poem—weaving the sounds of grief
throughout the verse, rejecting histrionic clichés, attributing
uncharacteristic primal powers to the mother—suggest that
it is a subversive rejoinder to Pu!an"#$!u 278 and the other
poems that share its bellicose theme. While a sanguinary
attitude towards maternal loss prevails in the pu!am genre,
the mother’s anguished voice in this poem and a handful of
others offers a compelling counterweight to the glorification
of war those poems celebrate.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
16
ESSAYS | DAVID
17
NOTES
APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTION OF Pu!a"#n$!u 295
1
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 182.
Pronounced sung-gum. Sometimes transliterated as Sangam.
3
Dr. Stephanie Nelson, private communication.
4
Selby 2000, 101.
5
Pura 312.
6
Pura 275; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
7
Pura 186; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
8
Hart 1975, 13.
9
Hart 1975, 15.
10
Pura 186.
11
Pura 379, Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
12
Hart 1975, 32; Hart and Heifetz 1999, xix; Pura 19, 342.
13
Hart 1975, 93ff.
2
ka"al
SEA
ki#ar-nt-a$$a
vent-u
BE.HOT-CVB
t("u
CROWD
ka""%r
v!y
EDGE
ukai-ttu
DRIVE-CVB
varu-pa"ai
COME-ARMY
i"ai.p-pa"ai
MIDDLE-ARMY
n!ppa&
MILITARY CAMP
RISE-PTCP-LIKE
MIDDLE
va"i-tt-a
v'l
SHARPEN-PST-PTCP
e)u
RISE
tar-%u
GIVE-CVB
p()n-tu
PASS.THROUGH-CVB
a)uva-ttu
DEEP.SEA-OBL
ci*appu"ai.y-!#an
SUPERIORITY-POSSESSOR
talaippeyar-i
SPEAR APPROACH-CVB
tura-ntu
DRIVE-CVB
e*-i
SHOOT-CVB
v!yppa"-a
FIND.A.WAY-INF
citai-ntu
BE.SCATTERED-CVB
m!&pu
GLORY
ka&-"u
SEE-CVB
DESTROY-CVB
v'*!k-iya
BE.SEPARATED-PTCP
aru#-i
REJOICE-CVB
mulai
%*-i
BREAST
FLOW-CVB
cura-nt-a$a
WITHERED
oo"-!
p%"kai
vi"alai
t!y-kk-'.
STRENGTH
YOUTH
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
3PL:
CVB:
DAT:
EMPH:
INF:
OBL:
NEG:
PST:
PTCP:
third person plural
converb
dative
emphatic
infinitive
oblique
negative
past tense
participle
BATTLE
vila+k-i
v!"u
FLEE-NEG
ñ!"pi$
GUSH-PST-3PL
MOTHER-DAT-EMPH
14
15
Pu!a 314; Aink 405.
Translation in Selby 2000, 194-5.
16
Translation in Selby 2000, 193.
17
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 184.
18
Translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999, 168.
19
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 186.
20
Hart 1975, 93.
21
Hart 1975, 172.
22
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 183.
23
These three sounds are highlighted by red type in the transcription
of the poem.
REFERENCES
Hart, George. (1975). The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and
their Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Hart, George and Heifetz, Hank. (1999). The Four Hundred Songs of
War and Wisdom. (Translation) New York: Columbia University
Press.
Ku!untokai. (1983). A classical poetry anthology edited with
commentary by U.Ve. C!minataiar. A&&!malainakar: A&&!malai-pPalkalai-k-Kalakam. [In Tamil].
Lehmann, Thomas. (1994). Grammatik des Alttamil. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag.
�18
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Lehmann, Thomas and Thomas Malten. (1992). A Word Index of Old
Tamil Ca(kam Literature. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Mahadevan, Iravatham. (2003). Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. (= Harvard Oriental Series 62)
Chennai: Cre-A and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University.
Pu!a#"n$!u, Vol. I (1962) and Vol. II (1964). A classical poetry
anthology edited with commentary by Auvai Cu. Turaic!mi-p Pillai.
Fourth ed. Chennai: South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing
Society.
Rajam, V.S. (1992). A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Ramanujan, A.K. (1985). Poems of Love and War: From the Eight
Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil [translation
with commentary]. New York: Columbia University Press.
Selby, Martha Ann. (2000). Grow Long Blessed Night: Love Poems from
Classical India. (Translation) New York: Oxford University Press.
Selby, Martha Ann. (2003). Circle of Six Seasons: A Selection from Old
Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit Poetry. (Translation) India: Penguin.
Shanmugam Pillai, M. and David E. Ludden. (1976). Ku!untokai: An
Anthology of Classical Tamil Love Poetry. (Translation) Madurai:
Koodal Publishers.
Tamil Lexicon. (1982). Madras: University of Madras. 6 vols.
Zvelebil, Kamil. (1973). The Smile of Murugan on Tamil Literature of
South India. Leiden: Brill.
ESSAYS
19
THE TOCQUEVILLEAN
MOMENT
Wilfred McClay
I am delighted and honored to be back at St. John’s again,
and to have the privilege of addressing this community of
which I feel so enduringly a part, a community built around
a great shared enterprise: the serious reading and re-reading
of old books. Returning to the College is always a pleasure
because it is a return to my intellectual and moral roots, and
to the themes that have preoccupied me ever since I graduated. Few things are more renewing, more rejuvenating.
I find that the word “rejuvenating” is particularly apropos, provided that you understand what I mean by it. I am
not using it as one does when talking about taking a pleasant stroll down memory lane, waxing sentimental about the
past. I am using it in its original etymological sense of
“being made young again.” Returning to the College can be
rejuvenating in that sense because of something that you
tend not to realize when you are a student here (although you
might catch a glimpse of it), but that becomes much clearer
with the passage of time. As you get older, you come to see
that the deep appeal of old books is not only that they are
wiser than us, but also that they are younger than us. Let me
explain this seeming paradox. The word “archaic” is generally used as a pejorative meaning “out-of-date” or “obsolete.” But as every Johnnie knows, the word comes from the
Greek arch', which refers not only to the antiquity of things
A lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland on 12 November
2010. Mr. McClay is an alumnus of St. John’s and Professor of History at the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of
Excellence in the Humanities.
�20
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
but also to their foundational character. An arch' is a deep
spring from which all else emanates. The truest form of
“archeology” would not be merely a search for what is older,
but a search for what is primary, for what is closest to the
origins, for what undergirds and sustains us, even if sometimes it is buried or otherwise hidden from our sight.
Hence at St. John’s “the shock of the new” has never
been the specialty of the house. After all, the shock of the
new can be had any hour of the day, and indeed can hardly
even be avoided in today’s world. In fact, expressing one’s
admiration for the shock of the new has become so routine
that it has acquired the aspect of a solemn bourgeois obligation. I have even read letters of recommendation from staid
dissertation advisors who praise their doctoral students for
having written “highly transgressive” doctoral dissertations.
I am not sure what that means. But I am confident that it is
not really very shocking. Instead, what you seek and savor
here at St. John’s is the shock of the old, that electric and
uncanny sense of communion, across space and time, with
countless others who have shared our human condition. And
that can be very shocking indeed, because it is so often a
strange and unpredictable encounter, an interplay between
what is familiar and what is unfamiliar.
Let me give an example of what I mean. In the 1930s,
journalist Rebecca West and her husband described their encounter with remote Yugoslav tribesmen who still sang and
recited oral epics in the Homeric fashion. These bards recounted actions that “must have been made a million million
million times since the world began,” but in each new telling
seemed “absolutely fresh.” Thus, when one reads in the Iliad
of a man drawing a bow or raising a sword, “it is,” West
wrote, “as if the dew of the world’s morning lay undisturbed
on what he did.”1 An “archaic” book, such as the ones upon
ESSAYS | McCLAY
21
which you lavish your attention here, draws its abundant life
from its greater closeness to the origins of things.
I deviated somewhat from the true path by becoming a
historian—but not really very much. I never aspired to be a
prodigal son. Indeed, from the very beginning I appreciated
the fact that my tutelage at St. John’s would keep me safe
from the worst temptation of my field, which is to reduce
ideas, writers, and artists—and more or less everything else
worthwhile—to being nothing more than a product of their
context. In that sense, I remember a moment in my
graduate-school days at Johns Hopkins in which it became
clear to me that I would always be different from my
historian peers in firmly rejecting such reductionism. It was
a seminar on a paper dealing with the art and life of El
Greco, and I was stopped short by a casual, slightly apologetic comment from the distinguished paper giver: “Of
course, the point of studying El Greco so closely is for the
insight it affords into the Toledo in which he lived.” I realized in a flash that, of course, he was entirely wrong. In fact,
he had it precisely backwards. So far as I was concerned, the
point of studying Toledo was the insight it gave one into the
life, and ultimately the work, of El Greco. Having come so
firmly to that conviction, I have stuck to it ever since. And
the firmness of that conviction is something I almost certainly owe to St. John’s. The study of history, for me, should
always strive not to reduce ideas but to dramatize them, to
put them up on the stage of life and put them into motion, to
make vivid the ways that certain extraordinary individuals
have wrestled with the conditions of their existence and
have attempted to order them and make sense of them—
with a view to how we might do the same.
I have tried to follow that pattern in these remarks on the
great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville. His work can
certainly be read profitably without very much reference to
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
22
the particulars of his life. But the work takes on even greater
importance, I believe, when understood dramatically, as an
instance of precisely the sort of wrestling that I have just
described. My title, “The Tocquevellean Moment,” refers to
a moment that he both described and experienced. It is the
moment of profound social transition, in which entire ways
of life are in the process of being transformed inexorably,
but in which also the precise manner, character, and extent
of the transformation are yet to be determined. In what
follows, therefore, it will be both useful and valuable for me
to mingle historical and biographical elements with my
discussion of Tocqueville’s ideas.2
*****
Tocqueville (1805-1859) was one of the most eminent
European social and political thinkers of the nineteenth
century, and is still regarded today as an incomparable
analyst of the prospects and pitfalls of modern democracy.
He was the child of an aristocratic French family, some of
whose members had suffered death or devastation as a result
of the French Revolution. Consequently, he was haunted all
his life by the fear of revolutionary anarchy, and by the
specter of ideological tyranny that such a sweeping social
revolution leaves in its wake. But such fears never led him
to advocate the wholesale restoration of the pre-revolutionary French social order. He was an aristocrat at heart, but he
was never a reactionary. Instead, those fears led him to look
closely at the change that was coming, in hope of finding a
way to direct it toward a more felicitous end.
A concern with the characteristics of modern democracy
is the guiding preoccupation of his Democracy in America
(1835-40), the work for which he is best known among
American readers.3 It was, of course, the product of a visit.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
23
Tocqueville was only twenty-six years old when, accompanied by his friend and sidekick Gustave de Beaumont, he
came to America in 1831.4 He was ostensibly being sent
here on official business for the French government, to study
the American prison system. But that was a ruse and a
pretext. In reality, he came to America intent upon “examining, in detail and as scientifically as possible, all the mechanisms of the vast American society which everyone talks of
and no one knows.”5 Tocqueville was extraordinary in the
extent of his ambitions, as in everything else, and it is clear
that he always intended to write a large and groundbreaking
book about America, which he hoped would make his reputation and launch a successful political career.
After touring the country for nine months, he returned
home with a bushel of notes and a head full of ideas. The resulting book, Democracy in America, which would be published in two successive volumes in 1835 and 1840, turned
out to be perhaps the richest and most enduring study of
American society and culture ever written. If one were permitted to read only one book on the subject, Democracy in
America would almost certainly be one’s best choice, even
more than a century and a half after its initial publication.
In this book, Tocqueville envisioned the United States as
a nation moving in the vanguard of history, a young and vigorous country endowed with an extraordinary degree of
social equality among its inhabitants, and without any feudal or aristocratic background to overcome. In America, he
believed, one could see embodied, in exemplary or heightened form, the condition toward which all the rest of the
world, including France, was tending. In America, which
was the only example the world then afforded of a large republic, one could gaze upon “the image of democracy itself,
of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions.”
And having so gazed, one could perhaps take away lessons
�24
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
that would allow leaders to deal more intelligently and
effectively with the democratic changes coming to Europe.6
He was firmly convinced that the movement toward
greater social equality represented an inescapable feature of
the modern age, a hard fact to which all future social or
political analysis must accommodate itself. There would be
no going back. Indeed, one could say that the one great idea
in Tocqueville’s writing was this huge sprawling historical
spectacle, the gradual but inexorable leveling of human
society on a universal scale, a movement that he identified
with the will of God, so pervasive and so unstoppable did it
seem to be. Even those who try to impede it or reverse it end
up contributing to it all the more. Listen to his description:
Everywhere the various incidents in the lives of peoples
are seen to turn to the profit of democracy; all men have
aided it by their efforts: those who had in view cooperating for its success and those who did not dream of
serving it; those who fought for it and even those who
declared themselves its enemies; all have been driven
pell-mell on the same track, and all have worked in
common, some despite themselves, others without
knowing it, as blind instruments in the hand of God.
The gradual development of equality of conditions
is therefore a providential fact, and it has the principal
characteristics of one: it is universal, it is enduring,
each day it escapes human power; all events, like all
men, serve its development.7
The entire book, he confessed, was written “under the
pressure of a sort of religious terror in the author’s soul,
produced by the sight of this irresistible revolution. . . . To
wish to stop democracy would then appear to be to struggle
against God himself.”8
*****
ESSAYS | McCLAY
25
Aristocracy’s day was done, then, however lamentable that
fact might seem to those who shared Tocqueville’s background. He accepted equality as a modern condition, even if
he never warmly embraced it. For although Tocqueville was
a keen analyst of democracy’s unlovely or dangerous features, he insisted that the most effective response to them
was not sullen withdrawal, but the development of a “new
political science,” designed not to reverse democracy’s progress, for that would be futile, but instead to refine democracy’s crudities and counter its pathologies.9
The book, then, was no mere work of travel literature,
and in fact, the narrative elements of the book are probably
its least interesting parts. Instead, Tocqueville was sketching
out a philosophical framework for the understanding of democracy, and for that reason, arguably deserves to be considered alongside such political philosophers and theorists
as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Marx. It would be a stretch, I
believe, to call him a philosopher himself, since he was
neither systematic nor comprehensive, and left largely
unexamined many of the traditional objects of philosophical
inquiry. In fact, the book’s relatively casual style of organization is part of its appeal for many present-day readers; you
can pick it up almost anywhere, and profitably read a short
chapter in complete isolation from the book as a whole.
But one should not be misled by that casualness.
Tocqueville was interested in far more than the relatively
narrow subject of American democracy in its political
forms. He argued that a democratic regime would manifest
its effects in every facet of human life: not merely in procedural and institutional ways, but also in family life, in literature, in philosophy, in manners, in language, in marriage, in
mores, in male-female relations, in ambition, in friendship,
in love, and in attitudes toward war and peace. It was not
just the outward forms of democracy that concerned him. He
�26
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
was an especially acute analyst of democracy’s innermost
effects, finely attuned to the ways in which a society’s political arrangements are not matters that merely skate on the
surface of life, but are in fact influences that reach deep
down into the very souls of its inhabitants.
He accomplished this analysis, mostly in the book’s
second volume, by contrasting the different forms assumed
by each of these phenomena in aristocratic societies and in
democratic societies. Those two terms, “aristocratic” and
“democratic,” represented for him what are sometimes
called “ideal types” because, although they are generalizing
abstractions that rarely occur in anything approaching their
pure state, their sharpness and coherence make them highly
effective as analytical tools.
For Tocqueville, an aristocratic society was one governed by a small, privileged class, a society that insisted on
the necessity of social hierarchy grounded in the authority of
tradition; a society in which one’s status was ascriptive,
assigned at birth, retained for life, and bound up in the identity and place of one’s family; a society in which families are
permanent fixtures in the social firmament; a society in
which there was a permanent diversity of types and classes
of persons.
In the ideal democratic society, however, matters are
quite different. There one finds a general “spirit” of equality;
the people are sovereign and the right to vote is widely extended; hierarchies are disestablished and any legal status or
privilege extended to the well-born few is abolished; rights
are universal, or tending toward universality, as is literacy
and access to education; families are comparatively weak
and mutable, even ephemeral; there is a constant pressure
toward the dispersion of inherited wealth, aided by laws that
break up large estates and large fortunes; and there is a
resulting tendency toward social and economic leveling,
27
ESSAYS | McCLAY
together with a fading of class distinctions—all leading to
universal sameness and homogeneity.
Although the two volumes of the Democracy differed in
significant ways, taken together they presented a coherent
and memorable image of a distinctively democratic American social and individual character. Tocqueville’s America
was a strikingly middle-class society: feverishly commercial
and acquisitive, obsessively practical-minded, jealously
egalitarian, and restlessly mobile—a constant beehive of
activity. Tocqueville saw many things to admire in this
energetic, bumptious democracy, but also much to fear.
Chief among the dangers was its pronounced tendency
toward individualism. Tocqueville saw in America the peril
that citizens might elect to withdraw from involvement in
the larger public life, and regard themselves as autonomous
and isolated actors, with no higher goal than the pursuit of
their own material well-being. He acknowledged that in a
modern commercial democracy, this was a particularly
strong possibility, since self-interest would inevitably come
to be accepted as the chief engine of all human striving. But
where then would the generous and selfless civic virtues
needed for sustaining a decent society come from? How
could the individualistic Americans of the 1830s prevent
self-interest from overwhelming all considerations of the
public good, and undermining the sources of social cohesion?
*****
Before trying to answer that question, it will be helpful to
flesh out more fully Tocqueville’s understanding of individualism. It differed in subtle ways from what generally goes
by that name. It was closer to what today might be called
privatism, a complete withdrawal from public life and
society at large in favor of almost exclusive involvement
�28
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
with a small personal circle of family and friends. As such,
it was quite distinct from the age-old vice of egoism or
selfishness. It was not merely a prevalent emotion or
passion, but a settled, more or less consciously held attitude
in the moral outlook of Americans.
In aristocratic societies, things were different. Families
remained in place for centuries. Every man remembered his
ancestors and anticipated his descendants, and strove to do
his duty to both. Paternal authority was formidable. And yet
such families were not private enclaves set apart from a
larger public world, but crucial and visible elements in the
makeup of society as a whole. The different classes of
society were distinct and immobile, and citizens occupied a
fixed position in the social pecking order, with tight bonds
to those in their same social niche. So enmeshed was the
individual person in this comprehensive social order that it
was literally nonsensical to imagine him or her apart from
it—as implausible as swimming in the air, or breathing
beneath the waves.
In democratic societies, however, where the principle of
equality dictated a more generalized and fluid sense of
connection, such duties and fixities were lost. Tocqueville
describes this new condition hauntingly in one of the most
unforgettable passages in the Democracy, conjuring the
specter of an individualism carried to its barren logical limit:
In democratic peoples, new families constantly issue
from nothing, others constantly fall into it, and all those
who stay on change face; the fabric of time is torn at
every moment and the trace of generations is effaced.
You easily forget those who have preceded you, and
you have no idea of those who will follow you. Only
those nearest have interest. . . . Aristocracy had made of
all citizens a long chain that went from the peasant up
to the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each
29
ESSAYS | McCLAY
link apart. . . . As conditions are equalized, one finds a
great number of individuals who . . . owe nothing to
anyone, they expect so to speak nothing from anyone,
they are in the habit of always considering themselves
in isolation, and they willingly fancy that their whole
destiny is in their hand.
Thus not only does democracy make each man
forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants from
him and separates him from his contemporaries; it
constantly leads him back toward himself alone and
threatens finally to confine him wholly in the solitude
of his own heart.10
One should add, too, that the prospect of this atomized
condition, in which families, neighborhoods, communities,
and all other forms of intermediate human association are
rendered weak and listless, leads Tocqueville to express, at
the book’s conclusion, a fear of democratic despotism, an
all-embracing “soft” tyranny which relies upon dissolving
the bonds among its members, and their consequent inability to act together as citizens, to smooth the way toward
a massive bureaucratic state that would rule over every feature of their lives.11
*****
So we return to the question that we left dangling a moment
ago. How does a democratic society, in which all the formerly reliable defenses against anarchy and anomie have
been lost or removed, still find a way to order itself, and
produce the kind of virtuous behavior and commitment to
the common good that is required for it to be cohesive,
successful, and free? Or to phrase the question in a slightly
different way: Can a society in the grip of a massive and
inexorable change nevertheless find ways to import into the
new order some of those things that were most estimable in
�30
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
the old, while leaving behind the elements that were either
pernicious or inadequate? Does great historical change require that the slate be wiped entirely clean? Or is there a way
that the best of the past can be carried over into the present
and future?
This is, it seems to me, a question of the first importance
to those of us who believe so fervently in the importance of
reading old books. And it is also a question that provides the
optimal opportunity to explain more fully what I mean by
“the Tocquevillean moment.” It is the moment when an old
order becomes conscious of the imperative to give way to a
new one—and the particular dilemma that this change
presents to thoughtful individuals, like Tocqueville, who
seem destined to ride the crest of a monumental transformation knowing full well both what is passing and what is
to come. The Tocquevillean moment makes two contradictory demands: first, that it is essential to accept the inevitability of sweeping changes, however difficult that acceptance may be; and second, that it is equally essential to find
ways of incorporating into the emerging new order that
which was wisest and best in the passing order, no matter
how much the new order may resist.
This way of looking at things makes several important
assumptions. It assumes the fact of contingency, and the
possibility of free and meaningful choices. Tocqueville was
emphatically opposed to any and all forms of determinism,
partly because they sapped the will and extinguished the
spirit of liberty, and partly because they simply failed the test
of truth. All is not foreordained, and there are clearly better
and worse ways of managing the transition to democracy.
The outcome depends upon the ways in which change is
directed, and that in turn depends upon the prudential
judgment of wise and skilled leaders.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
31
Let me make what I am saying clearer by offering another example of what I am calling “the Tocquevillean
moment” taken from outside Tocqueville’s work and his
immediate context. A similar moment of profound political
and social transition is described with great vividness in
Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard.12 The
book relates the story of a proud Sicilian prince, Don Fabrizio, who is thoroughly steeped in a venerable and traditional
social order at whose apex he stands, but who must nevertheless find a dignified way to accept and yield to the winds
of change. When the Risorgimento, the movement for
Italian national unification, intrudes upon his island world,
he is surprised to discover that his well-born, talented, and
ambitious young nephew Tancredi has decided to sign on
with the revolutionaries, who have set their sights on the
overthrow of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its replacement by the Kingdom of Italy. Why, the Prince wonders, would a young nobleman like Tancredi desert his king
and stoop to make common cause with a ruffian like Garibaldi and his mob of redshirts?
But Tancredi is moved by more than a young man’s hotblooded desire to be in on the Big Event. He also has a persuasive explanation for his choice. Change was inevitable.
But without the participation of the older elite classes, the
nationalist movement could well be taken over or supplanted by something immensely more destructive, a radical
republicanism that would sweep away every vestige of the
life that the Prince had known. “If we want things to stay as
they are,” said Tancredi, “things will have to change. D’you
understand?”13
And yes, the Prince did come to understand, and the
book is about his gradual and methodical accommodation to
the new order, albeit one laced with intense melancholy and
regret, and occasional doses of cynicism. That process of
�32
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
accommodation culminates in his embrace of a marriage
between Tancredi and the beautiful daughter of Don
Calogero, a man of lowly birth, who had made himself into
a wealthy landowner and influential businessman, and who
was a strong supporter of the nationalists. Don Calogero
perfectly embodies the emerging democratic order in all its
callowness and vulgarity. The very idea of linking his family
to Don Calogero’s was a change that the Prince’s ancestors
would never willingly have contemplated, and it was certainly a change that the proud Prince would rather not have
had to make. But he recognized that there was much good
that could be salvaged in some areas, if only he were willing
to make a strategic retreat in others. Such a union would
allow him to retain his social authority and the prestige of
his house, and along with it the commitment to refinement
and culture that were the distinguishing mark of his class,
since Don Calogero and his offspring would now have an
equal stake in the perpetuation of these things. Some things
changed, precisely so that other things could stay the same.
This story neatly encapsulates what is meant by “the
Tocquevillean moment.” It involves discerning those cases
in which change is inevitable and accepting that inevitability, while also recognizing the possibility of carrying over
what is essential or desirable—just as Aeneas fled from his
ravaged Troy with his household gods and with his father
Anchises on his shoulders, carrying the most precious relics
of the past with him as he struggled toward the founding of
something new and unprecedented.14 It involves recognizing that the change can occur in many ways and understanding that, within certain limits, many things are possible.
There is no one way for history to flow. So much is contingent and uncertain. So much is up to us.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
33
Many of Tocqueville’s contemporary readers failed to
see this aspect of his work. In particular, the reception of the
second volume of the Democracy was a tremendous disappointment to Tocqueville. Reviewer after reviewer criticized
the book, or praised it only blandly. Evidently its ambitiousness, its scope, and its abstractness put them off. Only John
Stuart Mill, whom Tocqueville had come to know during a
visit to England, seemed to grasp the book’s intentions. His
long and careful review of the book brought forth a grateful
letter from Tocqueville, one that showed how deeply the
book’s poor reception had stung and frustrated him.15
Another letter Tocqueville wrote to an uncomprehending
French reviewer is worth quoting at length, because it offers
a remarkably clear explication of Tocqueville’s goals and
beliefs, and tells us much about the dilemmas that an intelligent and high-minded political Frenchman faced in his time.
We do not know for certain whether this letter was ever received, or even sent. But it is as clear a statement as Tocqueville ever provided of precisely what he was up to with the
Democracy:
I cannot help expressing to you the painful impression
[your review] has made on me. It does not do justice to
the most important point, the principal idea, the
governing thought of the work. . . .
I had become aware that, in our time, the new social
state that had produced and is still producing very great
benefits was, however, giving birth to a number of quite
dangerous tendencies. These seeds, if left to grow
unchecked, would produce, it seemed to me, a steady
lowering of the intellectual level of society with no
conceivable limit, and this would bring in its train the
mores of materialism and, finally, universal slavery. I
thought I saw that mankind was moving in this direction, and I viewed the prospect with terror. It was essen-
�34
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tial, I thought, for all men of good will to join in
exerting the strongest possible pressure in the opposite
direction. To my knowledge, few of the friends of the
Revolution of 1789 dared point out these very frightening tendencies. . . . Those who saw them and were not
afraid to speak of them, being the sort of men who
condemned in one fell swoop the entire democratic
social state and all its elements, were more likely to
irritate people than guide them. The intellectual world
was thus divided into blind friends and furious
detractors of democracy.
My aim in writing [my] book was to point out these
dreadful downward paths opening under the feet of our
contemporaries, not to prove that they must be thrown
back into an aristocratic state of society . . . but to make
these tendencies feared by painting them in vivid
colors, and thus to secure the effort of mind and will
which alone can combat them—to teach democracy to
know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain
itself.16
It would be hard to imagine a fuller expression of what
I am calling the Tocquevillean moment, the moment when
social change arrives at a crossroads, and awaits further
direction. Two things are particularly worth noting. First,
Tocqueville’s words make clear how uncomfortable he felt
having to choose between the hard-right monarchism of his
aristocratic friends and the hard-left republicanism of his
democratic ones; neither of these options, he believed,
offered hope for the preservation of liberty—and the preservation of liberty was, for Tocqueville, the highest and most
fundamental of political goods. Second, the letter gives the
lie to those critics who attribute to Tocqueville a fatalistic
view of democracy as inevitable decline, a view reflective of
his ingrained elitism. It simply wasn’t so. For one thing,
Tocqueville had the asceticism that most great thinkers
ESSAYS | McCLAY
35
share, the ability to think against his own sentiments in the
pursuit of the truth. But more importantly, he always wrote
with the idea of contingency, and of the freedom of man’s
will, firmly in mind. The Tocquevillean moment is a
moment of decision—a decision conditioned and structured
and hedged about by large social changes, but a consequential decision nonetheless. In this respect, Tocqueville’s
view was dramatically different from that of his younger
contemporary Marx, for whom the relationship between
large structures and individual action was hopelessly
muddled. Tocqueville was an ardent foe of any and all determinisms, and he would never have countenanced the view
that his writings discredited democracy in toto.
Indeed, a fundamentally Christian view of man’s freedom was at the heart of Tocqueville’s vision. As he wrote at
the very end of the second volume of the Democracy:
I am not unaware that several of my contemporaries
have thought that peoples are never masters of themselves here below, and that they necessarily obey I do
not know which insurmountable and unintelligent force
born of previous events, the race, the soil, or the
climate.
Those are false and cowardly doctrines that can
never produce any but weak men and pusillanimous
nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely
independent or perfectly slave. It traces, it is true, a
fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but
within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too
with peoples.
Nations of our day cannot have it that conditions
within them are not equal; but it depends on them
whether equality leads them to servitude or freedom, to
enlightenment or barbarism, to prosperity or misery.17
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
36
The Tocquevillean moment calls forth all the capacities
we possess for coming to terms, not only as individuals but
also as citizens and societies, with that fatal circle.
*****
Now we can give a fuller answer to our long-dangling
question: How did Tocqueville believe that the Americans of
his day had managed to counter the dangerous aspects of
democracy and create a relatively free and vibrant society?
He identified a number of factors. First, he gave credit to the
pervasive influence of religion in American life, noting to
his astonishment the numerous ways in which American
religion supported democratic values and free institutions.
Such a development seemed particularly surprising, coming
as it did at the very time when educated Europeans were
abandoning religious faith and practice, in the mistaken
belief that the “spirit of liberty” was incompatible with the
authoritarian “spirit of religion.” Tocqueville’s visit to
America convinced him that the opposite was true. In
America, religious beliefs and institutions restrained selfassertion in ways that made the exercise of freedom more
stable and more effective. Although religion took no direct
or official role in governance, it was, he declared, “the first
of [Americans’] political institutions,” for all Americans
regarded it as indispensable to the maintenance of republican government.18
Tocqueville was always deeply concerned about materialism, connecting acquisitive materialism—the unrestrained
desire to possess more and more things—with philosophical
materialism—the belief that the soul is perishable and only
matter truly exists. As a social philosopher committed both
to the power of free will and to the ideal of self-rule,
Tocqueville found the deterministic implications of philosophical materialism intolerable, and condemned it force-
ESSAYS | McCLAY
37
fully as a “dangerous malady of the human mind.”19 Fortunately, he believed, the Americans had so far proven
resistant to its temptations. But without the countervailing
force of religion, and in particular, without a belief in the
moral responsibility of an immortal soul, democratic institutions could easily be overwhelmed by their own tendency
to beget an uncontrolled passion for physical gratifications.
And there were other factors that he believed countervailed against democracy’s dangers. Tocqueville applauded
Americans for their talent in forming voluntary associations,
and for their federal institutions, both of which tended to
disperse pow er and encourage the involvement of citizens
in the activity of governing themselves—and both very
much in contrast to the centralizing tendencies of French
politics. “Local freedoms,” he wrote, “which make many
citizens put value on the affection of their neighbors and
those close to them, therefore constantly bring men closer to
one another, despite the instincts that separate them, and
force them to aid each other.”20
As this description implies, such a scheme did not depend upon selflessness. Indeed, the axiomatic principle that
made effective political and social association in America
possible, he believed, was the principle of self-interest rightly understood or well understood (l’intérêt bien entendu). To
ask an American to do virtuous things for virtue’s sake was
quite possibly to waste one’s breath. But the same request
would readily be granted if the prospect of some personal
benefit could be shown to flow from it. The challenge of
moral philosophy in such an environment, then, was demonstrating repeatedly the ways in which “private interest and
public interest meet and amalgamate,” and how one’s
devotion to the general good would therefore also promote
his or her personal advantage. Belief in that conjunction—
belief that one could do well by doing good—was exactly
�38
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
what Tocqueville meant by the “right understanding” of
self-interest.21
The prevalence of this belief could be seen in the characteristic forms of moral discourse Tocqueville encountered in
America. In the United States, he wrote, “it is almost never
said that virtue is beautiful. They maintain that it is useful
and they prove it every day.” They do not care about virtue
for its own sake, but are completely convinced that it is in
the interest of every man to be virtuous.22
Tocqueville was quite willing to accept this deal in much
the same spirit that the Prince accepted Don Calogero. After
all, the Tocquevillean moment involves making a calculation, whereby the transition into the new democratic order
could be effected with the least possible loss of what was
precious and estimable in the old ways. “I shall not fear to
say that the doctrine of self-interest well understood seems
to me of all philosophic theories the most appropriate to the
needs of the men in our time,” because self-interest was
destined to “become more than ever the principal if not the
unique motive of men’s actions.”23
Hence, it was imperative to educate citizens to understand this. “Enlighten them, therefore,” wrote Tocqueville,
“at any price; for the century of blind devotions and instinctive virtues is already fleeing far from us, and I see the time
approaching when freedom, public peace, and social order
itself will not be able to do without enlightenment.”24
Lamentable as the loss of these older virtues seemed to be,
their loss was not the end of the story for Tocqueville. The
American example made him hopeful that there might be
ways for the principle of self-interest to be so channeled,
hedged about, habituated, and clothed as to produce public
order and public good, even in the absence of older and
more venerable motives.
39
ESSAYS | McCLAY
*****
“Enlighten them, therefore, at any price.” Éclairez-les donc
à tout prix. Or, as the older Phillips Bradley translation
expressed it, “Educate them, then.” This exhortation brings
us full circle, back to where I began in reflecting on what is
being done here and now at this particular college. For
whatever else we may believe about the applicability of
Tocqueville’s ideas to the present day, and there is a lot of
room for debate there, we can be in no doubt that he was
right in his emphasis upon education. But not just any kind
of education. He is talking about liberal education, in the
strictest sense of the term, meaning an education that is
designed to make men and women capable of the exercise of
liberty, and of doing so within the context of the particular
society in which they find themselves. Such an education is
likely to require a serious and sustained encounter with old
books.
Modern Americans are likely to assume that the value of
such an education is mainly contemplative. And I say this
without any hint of disparagement. Many of us believe that
an education aimed at contemplative truth is a very high and
worthwhile endeavor. I don’t think I need to make that case
here at St. John’s. But I do want to argue that such an education also commends itself on very practical grounds, for
reasons that seem to me quite thoroughly Tocquevillean.
For, to borrow from the very words Tocqueville used in his
letter to his French critic, liberal education is the kind of
education that seeks to teach democracy to know itself, and
thereby to direct itself and contain itself. Such an education
can help equip us to negotiate, with both intelligence and
wisdom, the multitude of Tocquevillean dilemmas that are
presented to us by our times—changes that are too formi-
�40
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
dable to be resisted entirely, but at the same time too fluid
for us to refuse the challenge of influencing their direction.
This only serves to underscore the profound importance
of that process I described at the beginning, the process
whereby we pass on to the present and to the future the most
worthy and enduring elements of human ages that have
passed or are passing away. This is why the theory of strict
historicism is so wrongheaded and impoverishing, because
it denies us that very benefit by demanding that everything
be perpetually bound to its immediate context—as if every
cargo had to remain forever in the hold of the ship that transported it, and as if no child could ever make his parent’s
legacy into something of his own.
When, for example, we accord Plato’s Republic our high
respect as a great text warranting a lifetime of study, this
does not imply that we approve or ignore the many defects,
cruelties, and inequities of the Athenian society in which it
was produced—let alone that we prefer such a society to our
own democracy. We do not study the Republic merely for
what it tells us about Plato’s Athens. We study the Republic
partly, and far more importantly, because its criticisms of
democracy remain enduringly valid and troubling—and
because in reading it, we are teaching our democracy to
know itself better, thereby contributing to its ennoblement.
It is neither elitist nor ahistorical for us to seek to perpetuate,
not a way of life that is past or passing, but the things in it
that remain estimable and enduringly valuable.
There is much reason for hope, then, in this vision of
things. And yet, to be faithful to Tocqueville, I have to end
on a somewhat more somber note. Tocqueville was himself
prone to melancholy, and worried that the task of democracy’s ennoblement would prove too difficult, too exacting,
and too exhausting to perform. There is always in his work
the sense of an uphill challenge, with the issue very much in
ESSAYS | McCLAY
41
doubt. And it does not take much imagination to find, in his
description to his French critic of the “downward paths
opening under the feet of our contemporaries,” a description
that applies very much to our own democracy today.
But what remains still, both in Tocqueville and in the
present day, is the imperative of freedom. Remember his
words at the end of the Democracy: “[Providence] traces, it
is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave;
but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too
with peoples.”25 It is hard at any given time to know where
our containing circle is drawn, and we are just as likely to
err in presuming to cross over the line as we are in shying
away from it out of timidity and fear. Yet Tocqueville clearly
thought the danger of the latter outweighed that of the
former, and that we have far more power to shape our lives
and our destinies than we allow ourselves to believe. That is
why the Tocquevillean moment is, at bottom, an occasion
for the exercise of the profoundest human freedom.
It is not an unlimited freedom, of course. But what could
such a thing mean? What, after all, is a radically unconditioned state, other than a state of utter randomness and
inconsequentiality? “To live without let or hindrance would
be life indeed,” observed George Santayana, “Yet there is a
snare in this vital anarchy. It is like the liberty to sign
cheques without possessing a bank account. You may write
them for any amount; but it is only when a precise deposit
limits your liberty that you may write them to any purpose.”26
No, the difficult and complex freedom of the Tocquevillean moment is precisely the sort of freedom for which we
humans were made, and it provides the opportunity for our
finest qualities to flourish. The fatal circle is also the ground
of our freedom, the horizon that gives focus and purposefulness to our efforts. History may delimit our choices, but
�42
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
it does not dictate what we should do with what is set before
us. For that, Tocqueville asserted, we must look to ourselves. It is bracing but encouraging counsel.
NOTES
1
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through
Yugoslavia, 2 vols. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 1044.
2
The reader who is interested in knowing more about Tocqueville’s life
and times can consult two excellent English-language biographies:
André Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, translated by Lydia Davis with
Robert Hemenway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988); and
Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2006).
3
De la Démocratie en Amérique is the book’s French title, a title that
conveys far better than its English translation the fact that Tocqueville’s
greater interest was in “democracy” rather than in “America.” I have
used the scrupulously literal and reliable recent translation by Harvey C.
Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), and all quotations and page numbers
refer to that text. I confess to retaining a fondness for the often more
graceful (if less accurate) translation by Phillips Bradley, based on the
Henry Reeve text as revised by Francis Bowen, published by Alfred A.
Knopf in 1945 and still widely available, which was generally considered the standard English translation until being supplanted by the
appearance of the Mansfield/Winthrop edition. There are other worthy
English translations in circulation, including a most welcome bilingual,
French-English, historical-critical edition edited by Eduardo Nolla,
translated by the distinguished Tocqueville scholar James T. Schleifer,
and published in four volumes in 2010 by Liberty Fund.
4
On Tocqueville’s journey, see George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and
Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938).
5
Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, Paris, February 21, 1831, cited in
James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,
second edition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 3. Schleifer’s
book is a meticulous and fascinating account of the book’s composition.
6
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 13.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
7
43
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 6-7.
9
Ibid., 7. Here I acceded only reluctantly to the Mansfield/Winthrop
translation of une science politique nouvelle as “a new political science,” which is literally accurate but seems to me to run the considerable
risk of being conflated with the use of the term “political science” as the
name for a particular academic discipline that did not exist in Tocqueville’s time. The Bradley/Reeve/Bowen translation, “a new science of
politics,” is less literal but seems less liable to that confusion.
10
Ibid., 483-4.
11
Ibid., 661-73.
12
Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, translated by Archibald
Colquhoun (New York: Pantheon, 1960); originally published as Il
Gattopardo (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1958).
13
Ibid., 40.
14
Cf. Aeneid, Book 2, 624-804.
15
Mill’s review, which appeared in October 1840 edition of the
Edinburgh Review, is described in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography,
274-5.
16
This unpublished letter written by Tocqueville to Sylvestre de Sacy is
in the Tocqueville family archives but has been translated and quoted at
length in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, 272-3. Brogan also refers to
this same item, characterizing it as a “blistering letter” which “it is to be
hoped that he sent,” given the fact that “here, in a couple of sentences,
he expresses the central concern which drove his investigations . . . and
explains why posterity has argued over them ever since.” See Brogan,
Tocqueville, 368-9.
17
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 675-6.
18
Ibid., 280.
19
Ibid., 519.
20
Ibid., 487.
21
Ibid., 500-503.
22
Ibid., 501.
23
Ibid., 503.
24
Ibid.
25
See note 17.
26
George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty,
Society, and Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), 241.
8
�44
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
ESSAYS
45
ON SEEING ASPECTS
John Verdi
Introduction
If philosophy, which seeks to encompass all of being in
thought, has a question as its source and its guiding principle, that question might be, What is there? To this question
we can give a disarmingly simple and obviously true answer: What is there? Everything. There are particles and
waves, brains and consciousness, nations and peoples, Hamlet and Hamlet, and on and on. There is . . . everything. The
“everything” answer—which in the end may show itself to
be the only true universal answer available to us—delegates
to various disciplines and modes of thinking the task of determining what there is, each in its own way. The physicist,
the psychologist, the historian, the poet: each receives his
share, with perhaps nothing left over for the philosopher.
Somewhat like Meno’s paradoxical question to Socrates
about the futility of seeking either what one does or what
one does not know, the “everything” answer tries to silence
philosophy at it source.
But we philosophers retain the belief, perhaps even the
conviction, that in spite of everything the effort to comprehend the unity of things is still worthwhile. Philosophy’s
subject matter is precisely not one thing among many others,
but rather the interrelatedness of all that is. We philosophers
believe that the fundamental questions—beginning with the
question, What is there?—can continually bring into light
the inexhaustible being of things and can place us, as thinkers, squarely in its presence. The essence of these questions
is to open up possibilities and to keep them open. This is
John Verdi is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay was first
presented as a lecure on 28 October 2005.
�46
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
why there is philosophy in life. In this essay I would like to
show, in a very preliminary way, how the concept of aspects, and especially our experience of seeing aspects, can
help us think about being, and about the meaning of philosophy’s opening question, What is there?
We can turn to Aristotle for an entry into the idea of
aspects. In On Memory and Recollection, he raises a question about what goes on when we remember something. For
Aristotle all perception involves an image of some kind,
present right now, in the soul. He call such an image a phantasma. The question of how the past can be present is the
problem of memory. Aristotle writes:
[I]t is clear that one must conceive the sort of thing that
comes about in the soul as a result of sense perception
. . . as something like a picture (z%graph'ma), the active
holding of which we assert to be memory. . . . But if
what goes on in the case of memory is of this sort, does
one remember this experience or the one from which it
came about? For if it is this one, we would not
remember any of the things that are absent, but if it is
the earlier one, how, while perceiving this later one, do
we remember the absent thing that we are not
perceiving (450a25-31, 450b13-16).
So if what I have now is a present image, a phantasma, how
is it that this image can be of the past?
To overcome this impasse Aristotle distinguishes phantasmata from eikones, that is, images from representations
or likenesses. (We see this also in Plato’s Sophist [240b12c2], and passim throughout the Republic.) He says:
For example, the picture drawn on a tablet is both a
picture (z%on) and a likeness (eik%n), and one and the
same thing is both of these, although what it is to be
these two things is not the same, and it is possible to
behold it both as a picture and as a likeness; so too one
ought to conceive of the image that is in us as being
ESSAYS | VERDI
47
itself something in its own right, and as being of something else (450b21-26).
We can say that the memory image I have of something I
experienced in the past can display at least two aspects, depending on whether we see it simply as a phantasma, that is,
as an image fully present in its own right at this moment, or
as an eikon, a reminder or pointer to something else—something that may in fact no longer even exist.
One reason, then, for investigating the seeing of aspects
is that we might come to understand how it is possible for
something absent to be represented by something present.
Put in broader terms, how can one thing stand for another
and be its representative? In the broadest terms, we might
ask how anything comes to have meaning at all.
I have had another, more personal, reason for getting
involved with aspects. Some years ago I had occasion to
read and discuss Augustine’s Confessions both in one class
during the summer and in another class the following fall. I
was profoundly moved by these encounters with Augustine,
who at the time he was writing would have been about the
same age I was while reading. I felt certain that if I were to
read the book yet again soon after I would begin to see
things in the world—things I hadn’t seen before or had
stopped seeing long ago. I felt sure I would experience some
sort of change, both in what I would see and in the way I
would see it. Whether it was from prudence or cowardice—
I still don’t know—I did not pick up the Confessions again
until years later. But my near encounter with conversion left
me wondering what conversion is and how it comes about.
I’ve come to suspect that conversion, whether religious or
otherwise, sudden or gradual, toward or away from, has the
power to change what one sees in the world—perhaps even
to change one’s answer to the question, What is there?
Whether I come to see the world as “charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins says, or I say along with Words-
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
48
worth that “the things which I have seen I now can see no
more,” in either case, my world becomes different.
This essay is in three parts. In the first part, I will look at
some pictures and discuss some of the apparently simple
phenomena associated with aspect-seeing. In the second
part, I will present the beginnings of an account of aspects
and their significance to the question of what there is. In the
last part, I will examine a painting by Caravaggio, The
Calling of St. Matthew. There is also one joke in the essay.
49
ESSAYS | VERDI
This is the duck-rabbit.
Figure 3
Part One: Ducks and Rabbits
This is a duck.
We can see the duck-rabbit either as a duck or as a rabbit. When we see it as one or the other we are seeing one or
the other of its aspects. When we see it first as a duck and
then as a rabbit, we experience a change of aspect. It is also
possible that a person might never see anything but a rabbit
in the picture. That person could be said to be seeing the
rabbit aspect continuously (PI, 194).
Here is another example of aspect-seeing and change of
aspect.
Figure 1
This is a rabbit.
Figure 2
Figure 4
Figure 4 is called the Necker cube. Look at it for a moment. Do you notice a change in the cube while you are
looking? Most people will see the cube jump, seeming for a
while to have its front side pointing down to the right, and
then for a while to have its front side pointing up to the left.
If you’re still not seeing this change of aspect, you might be
helped by Figure 5, in which the two ways of seeing the
cube are emphasized by dots.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
50
Figure 5
First imagine the black dot as closer to you than the
white dot. Then reverse this relationship and try to imagine
the white dot as closer. Now look one more time at the original cube. Even with the assistance of the dots, there may
still be some people who do not see the cube jump between
aspects.
Consider next Figure 6. How many cubes are there? The
correct answers are six or seven, depending on which aspect
one sees while counting—six if the black squares seem to be
on the tops of the cubes, seven if they seem to be on the
bottoms. Those who can count only six or only seven may
be helped by the additional drawings in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Figure 6
The paradoxical quality of these examples lies in the
awareness that what is seen has not changed at all, and
nevertheless what is seen is quite different. In what does this
difference consist? If I asked you to draw what you saw in
both instances, and you were to represent both by exact
copies—and wouldn’t those be good representations?—no
change would appear, because the copies would be congruent (PI, 196). If I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, I might
ESSAYS | VERDI
51
point to other pictures of ducks, and say that I’m now seeing
something like that. This, however, is not a description of
what I see, but rather an expression of it.
These simple examples raise once again the question,
What is there? What is seen are contraries: rabbits that are
not rabbits, corners both closer and not closer, cubes both
six and seven. These apparent contradictions can lead us
into a dialectical inquiry. In Book XII of the Metaphysics
Aristotle suggests that dialectic begins not from what there
is, but from contrary assumptions about what there is (1078
b25). The object of our concern itself opens a road of
inquiry for us, and coaxes us along the path (984a17-20).
If the difference between what is seen before the change
of aspect and what is seen after it did not lie in some sense
in the object I was looking at, we might be tempted to think
that our eyes and heads are responsible, that something has
changed in us. While the new aspect seems to appear suddenly out there, we nonetheless feel that we must have had
something to do with it. The image on my retina, the way my
eyes follow the figure, the organization of impulses in my
brain: any one of these might be the source of the change of
aspect. But the fact remains that what I see is still out there.
Seeing an aspect is not like having a hallucination, because
it is a true seeing of something that is, even if we can’t all
see it simultaneously, and even if some of us may never see
some aspects of things. Furthermore, I am not aware of what
is going on in my eyes and brain while aspects change. So,
while these physiological events may be causally related to
my experience, they necessarily fail to get at what I mean by
change of aspect and what I mean by seeing aspects. Neither
a physiological account of aspect-seeing, if one could be
provided, nor any other causal account can satisfy us any
more that Socrates was satisfied by the causal accounts of
Anaxagoras. In the Phaedo, Socrates tells his friends that
Anaxagoras at first seemed to say that “Mind puts the world
in order and is responsible for all this” (97c), but in the end
he assigns only physical causality to things. Socrates says
�52
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
that Anaxagoras was like someone who gives an account
based on the relationship of bones and sinews to explain
why Socrates is sitting in prison awaiting death, rather than
providing the account that Socrates himself finds most
convincing: “Since the Athenians judged it better to condemn me, so I for my part have judged it better to sit here
and stay put and endure whatever penalty they order” (98de). The physical account fails to answer the question of what
Socrates’ time in jail means, just as a physiological account
would fail to tell us what our seeing of aspects might mean.
Consider now what happens when I contemplate a face,
and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that
the face has not changed, and yet I see it differently. I have
noticed an aspect of the face (PI, 193). The aspect is not a
part of the face as is the nose, nor a part as is its color or
shape. And yet I see the resemblance of this face to another;
I do not infer it or reason it through. I am struck by a similarity I had not before noticed, as if the being of the resemblance asserts itself, and I cannot help but see it. What is it
suddenly to notice what has been there all the time? Or has
it really been there all along? Perhaps it has come into being,
or perhaps I have been thrust into its presence. Or consider
the case of meeting someone I have not seen for years; I see
him clearly but fail to recognize him. Suddenly I know him,
and I see the old face in the altered one. I believe I would
paint a different portrait of him, if I could paint, now that I
have seen the old in the new. Is this a special sort of seeing?
Is it a case of both seeing and thinking, or an amalgam of the
two? (PI, 197.)
Seeing an aspect or change of aspect is not like seeing an
optical illusion. Optical illusions, such as those shown in
Figure 8 through Figure 10 appear to be what they are not.
In the case of the two diagonal lines of Figure 8, ab and bc,
it appears that ab is greater than bc, but in fact they are of
equal length, as a measurement would show us. In the illu-
53
ESSAYS | VERDI
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
sion of Figure 9, all the vertical lines are parallel to one
another, as are all the horizontal lines, which we could determine by placing a straightedge against them, or looking at
them close up. And in the illusion of Figure 10, the squares
labeled A and B are actually the same shade of gray. Some
kind of light meter might help to show this, even though we
cannot see it. Many optical illusions are understood when
we learn something about how the eyes and brain work. An
optical illusion is a kind of trick that can be of value in understanding how we see, in the causal, physiological sense.
The questions raised by illusions are limited, and their answers tend to bring an end to wonder. Aspect-seeing is of
interest precisely because it is a kind of seeing whose concept is not explicated through physiology, not because we
don’t yet know enough about the eyes and brain, but because it is not a concept whose place in our thinking can be
made any clearer through such an approach.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
54
ESSAYS | VERDI
55
Figure 11
In the image of Figure 11, those who do not see a
change in aspect will be helped by something I am about to
say. This picture is of interest because it demonstrates that
speech can encourage a shift in aspect that might not otherwise occur. If speech can play a role in aspect-seeing, and if
what someone says can affect what we see, then there might
be some connection between speaking and seeing. Figure
11 represents the letter E.
Now here is a more complex image. To most people, the
image in Figure 12 seems to lack any unity. That may be
because it is upside down. If we turn it right side up as in
Figure 13, some people will see something they did not see
before. Most of the rest will be helped by a verbal description to see something like a late medieval representation of
Jesus.
Figure 12
Figure 13
The upper margin of the picture cuts the brow, so the top of
the head is not shown. The point of the jaw, clean-shaven
and brightly illuminated, is just above the geometric center
of the picture. A white mantel covers the right shoulder. The
upper sleeve is exposed as the rather black area at the lower
left. Do you see it now? Some people never see it, but for
those who do, dark marks have become human eyes, and
blobs of black and white have become an expressive human
face. How did that happen and why might it be important?
Part Two: The Being of Aspects
The distinctive mode of being characteristic of aspects is in
question here, and in particular we are now asking the question, What is there? The pictures we have examined so far
have engaged us in a form of dialectic and have brought us
to some kind of impasse. It is the peculiar characteristic of
our relationship to pictures that we see into them the very
objects they depict. We regard the picture, the drawing, or
the photograph as we regard the object itself, and so in a
sense we see what is there and what is not there simultaneously, in much the same way as, in Aristotle’s account of
memory, we recall things by considering a present image as
�56
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
pointing to the past. In a picture we see lines, shapes, paints,
colors; but we also see ducks and rabbits.
If we had in front of us the
original of this portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals, we would
be able to see brush strokes and
paint thicknesses. But our description of this canvas as a
portrait of Descartes will include
elements that do not belong to a
description of the picture as a
purely physical object. Descartes’s eyes look out at us; we can
study the expression on his face
and wonder what it reveals about Figure 14
him. In this paint-covered canvas we see a human being. (It
is perhaps not surprising to learn, then, that in Greek, the
same word, z%on, does double duty for both “living thing”
and “picture.”)
The reason that we hang pictures on our walls at all, I
think, is because we can see into a picture the very thing of
which it is a picture. We also hang snippets of text (PI, 205).
There is, of course, also a sense in which Descartes is not
really there in the picture. The dual nature of aspects—that
what we see both is and is not there—allows the picture to
make a demand on us and to ask us the question, What is
there? Our seeing itself is made questionable. By raising the
question of being, the aspects of the picture also raise the
question of truth. What is true about a picture?
The kinship between pictures and aspects may be put
this way: An aspect of something—that is, what I can see it
as—is what it can be a picture of, or more generally, what it
can stand for or represent: the image I now see can represent, or be seen as, an image of the past; the triangle I draw
on the chalkboard can represent the triangle of the proposition I am demonstrating. I see the duck-rabbit as a duck
57
ESSAYS | VERDI
when it is placed in a field of pictures of ducks. It can be a
picture of a duck. In a field of pictures of rabbits, I see it as
a rabbit. It can be a picture of a rabbit. You could imagine
the image in Figure 15 appearing in several places in a
book.
Figure 15
In the text surrounding the different appearances of the
figure, a different object could be under discussion in each
case: here a glass solid, there an inverted open box, there a
wire frame, there three boards forming a solid angle. We see
the illustration now as one object, now as another (PI, 193).
What we seem to be doing in these various cases is both
seeing and thinking—seeing because I have an illustration
in front of me, thinking because I am guided by the description to see it as one thing or another. It may take something
like imagination or a conscious act of interpretation to see
the drawing as now this, now that. When, by contrast, I view
the portrait of Descartes or see the duck-rabbit in a field of
duck pictures, I needn’t consciously engage the imagination.
And yet I am still inclined to say that imagination—or is it
thought?—suffuses itself throughout my seeing in all these
instances.
When aspect-seeing does not involve the sort of interpretation necessary to see the schematic solid as many different objects, it is more like ordinary seeing in this way:
when I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, my seeing is immediate and non-inferential—though it is still full of mind in
some way. In seeing the duck, I do not draw a conclusion
from a line of reasoning, such as “This must be a duck because all the others are ducks.” It could be said that mind
�58
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
reaches through the world of my knowledge and experience
to give shape to my sight. This is not to say that aspectseeing is two things, thinking and seeing, any more than
playing a piece of music with expression involves both the
playing and the expression. Rather, our seeing is one form
that thought takes in our lives, and it is only in a world of
thought that there can be aspects (RPP I, 1029). We have
thinking eyes and we see thinkingly. In De Anima, Aristotle
shows that all aesthesis, all perception, tends towards a universal, even if every sense has its own specific field, so that
what is immediately given is not universal. The fact is that
we see particulars in relation to something universal. We see
not merely a white patch, but a man. Merleau-Ponty, in his
book The Phenomenology of Perception, restates Aristotle’s
position, giving it a linguistic turn. He says that “language
intervenes at every stage of recognition by providing possible meanings for what is in fact seen, and recognition
advances along with linguistic connections” (131). In this
sense, seeing can be a direct and immediate grasp of the
meanings of things.
Can there then be a connection between a pathology of
mind and a pathology of seeing? What would it be like to be
aspect-blind? What would the world of the aspect-blind person be like? The eyesight of such a person would not be defective in any ordinary sense, but he would be unable to see
a picture jump from one aspect to another. He would not, for
example, see the Necker cube switch from first pointing
down to then pointing up, though he might be able to reason
that the existence of two aspects is a possibility. Furthermore, he might be blind to the expression on a face. He
might not see the picture face of Descartes as proud or pious
or cheerful, though he might be able to learn to deduce from
its features that it expressed these characteristics. In general,
his attitude toward pictures would be quite different from
that of a person who is able to see aspects (RPP II, 49). It
might be like the attitude most of us have toward a blue-
ESSAYS | VERDI
59
print: it needs to be figured out. He would not see motion in
the picture of a runner, though he would know that the picture was meant to represent motion. Aspect-blindness would
be akin to lacking a musical ear.
Oliver Sacks, in the title case study of his book The Man
Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, describes a distinguished
professor of music, Dr. P., who gradually loses the ability to
recognize faces and even quite ordinary objects. On first
meeting him, Sacks doesn’t understand why he has been referred for treatment, because he seems normal. Sacks then
opens for him a copy of National Geographic and asks him
to describe some of the pictures in it. Sacks writes:
His responses here were very curious. His eyes would
dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny features,
individual features. . . . A striking brightness, a color, a
shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment—
but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole. . . . He
never entered into relation with the picture as a
whole—never faced, so to speak, its physiognomy. He
had no sense whatever of a landscape or scene (10-11).
While he could recognize abstract shapes, such as the five
regular solids, he could identify a face only if he could find
in it some distinctive feature, from which he could draw the
conclusion that this must be so-and-so’s face. Nor could he
any longer identify the expressions on faces. He could see
the features, but could not see the face. As Sacks writes:
It wasn’t merely that he displayed the same indifference to the visual world as a computer but . . . he construed the world as a computer construes it, by means
of key features and schematic relationships. The
scheme might be identified . . . without the reality being
grasped at all (15).
There is also the case of young man named Schneider,
who suffered a brain injury during World War I. He was
studied by the psychologists Kurt Goldstein and Adhemar
�60
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Gelb. In most respects Schneider appeared to be quite
normal, with undiminished language ability, intact intelligence, and adequate visual acuity. But Goldstein and Gelb
discovered that Schneider was unable to identify certain
words and objects when they were exposed briefly on a
special viewing apparatus called a tachistoscope, a device
that displays images for a specified length of time. If letters
or pictures were shown him with their contours obscured or
their interiors marked by cross-hatching, he was unable to
recognize them. Even the difference between straightness
and curvature escaped him. The doctors eventually learned
that he could read words and recognize objects and pictures
only through a series of slight head and hand movements,
which could be frustrated if several lines led away from a
single point.
Away from the laboratory and out in the real world,
Schneider managed to find his way around only by using
cues to deduce what things were. He was able to distinguish
a tree from its shadow because the shadow was darker. He
could distinguish men from vehicles because men were
narrow and tall, whereas vehicles were long and wide.
Merleau-Ponty says that he had lost “the symbolic function”
(123). For him the world no longer had any physiognomy,
no characteristic look or feel. Schneider had also lost the
ability to see things as representations, and consequently
could no longer wonder, for wonder is possible only when
we can see in something both that it is and that it is not. He
could himself no longer recognize the power of images to
express meaning and to point beyond themselves. MerleauPonty remarks that “it was through his sight that mind in
him was impaired” (126). It seemed that mind no longer
informed his eyes. The best his eyes could do was to send
information about what was in front of him to his mind,
which would then reason about what there was. In a sense,
his eyes could no longer see.
ESSAYS | VERDI
61
These pathological cases suggest that there exists a deep
connection between aspect-seeing and meaning. The human
world—our world—is full of meanings. Pictures, words,
objects point away from themselves and towards other
things through an endless web of connections. Meaning
arises and spreads out through our recognition of the fundamental interconnectedness of things, the unity of being. In
this regard, aspects are themselves meanings, and as such
they belong, I would suggest, to human experience. Neither
beasts nor gods see aspects, at least not as fully as we do.
Animals for the most part appear to be unable to see something as something else. A dog might mistake a stick for a
bone, but it cannot see the stick as a bone. The Homeric
gods seem to live in a world almost devoid of representations except for language. They do not create representative
works of art for themselves, though Hephaistos does make a
shield for Achilles (Homer, Iliad, 18: 478-608). Do they
delight in poetry or music? Do they find meanings in the
objects of the world? Perhaps they simply see what truly is
and stand in no need of the suggestiveness of art. All this is
merely to say, in slightly different words, what Diotima says
in the Symposium: The gods do not philosophize (204a1).
The condition of aspect-blindness also suggests a
connection between aspects in general and what we might
call “experiencing the meaning of a word” (PI, 214). What
would you be missing if you never could experience the
meaning of a word—if, for instance, you could not feel that
a word loses its meaning and becomes mere sound when it
is repeated ten times over? A word has a familiar physiognomy; it arouses a feeling that it is an actual likeness of
its meaning. We manifest these feelings by the way we
choose and value words and by the care we take to find the
“right” word. The meanings of words are like the aspects of
visual representations: a sentence can resemble a painting in
words; an individual word in a sentence can resemble a picture (PI, 215).
�62
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
As an example, consider the two ideas “fat” and “thin.”
Would you be inclined to say that Friday was thin and
Thursday fat, or the reverse? Which one feels right to you?
Here “fat” and “thin” are not metaphors. Someone who does
not understand what is being asked here would be at a loss—
but not because he did not understand the primary meanings
of the four words. In fact, it is just because he does understand these meanings that the question might seem like
nonsense to him. These people exhibit a kind of meaningblindness, or perhaps meaning-myopia, as most of us do to
some degree. For these people, “finding the right word”
often involves thinking things through, figuring them out,
rather than listening for the right fit. They might have a hard
time appreciating poetry and certain kinds of humor, especially puns. This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw, showing a man in a business suit with a briefcase, standing in his
kitchen presumably after a long day at the office (or in the
classroom), with something like a scowl on his face. His
wife cheerfully asks: “Did you have a nice day, dear?” To
this he responds: “Of course I did. You told me to, didn’t
you?” The humor turns in part on our grasping at once the
dual aspects of the expression “Have a nice day,” usually
meant as a hortatory subjunctive, but grammatically equivalent to an imperative. (But I know it’s impolite to explain
jokes.)
Part Three: The Calling of St. Matthew
Seeing different aspects and experiencing multiple
meanings play important roles in our understanding and
appreciation of visual art, music, and literature, especially
poetry. Consider the representation of King William in
Figure 16 and imagine that we have the actual painting in
front of us.
We can see this image in at least three ways. That is, we
can see at least three of its aspects. First, we can see it as a
63
ESSAYS | VERDI
Figure 16
physical object. It is a canvas nearly eight feet high and five
feet long, surrounded by a frame of wood, rather heavy,
covered with paint of different colors and thicknesses,
applied probably by different brushes with different strokes
by Sir Godfrey Kneller sometime in the late seventeenth
century.
Second, we can see it as what we might call a geometrical object. We can focus on its composition, on how the
shapes and colors blend or contrast, on which lines point in
which directions, and on how our eyes are guided through
the picture by its geometrical and optical qualities. Finally,
we can view it as a portrait of King William III. We can
study his facial expression and his posture. We can notice
his eyes looking down at us, and his left hand encircling the
handle of his sword while it gently holds his cloak. We see
his power; perhaps we can see his justice. Our seeing of the
painting as King William is continuous. We don’t see it now
as King William, now as paint on canvas, though one might
make an effort to do so. But no effort is needed to see it as
a representation of a living human being.
�64
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Figure 17 shows another painting, The Calling of St.
Matthew by Caravaggio. It was painted around 1600 and hangs
in a small corner chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi
in Rome.
Figure 17
It is about eleven feet on each side. On the other two walls
of the sanctuary hang two other depictions by Caravaggio
from the life of St. Matthew. It is impossible to view this
painting head-on without entering the sanctuary, so most
people see it at an angle from the left, as shown in Figure
18.
As we know from Scripture, the painting is a representation of a conversion, that is, a turning. Levi (the pre-conversion name of Matthew) becomes Matthew—and the world
ESSAYS | VERDI
65
changes for him. He sees what he had not seen before.
Caravaggio’s painting attempts to reveal this moment of
conversion, or what we might call a sudden change in
aspect. We can examine the painting under three or four
aspects.
In its aspect as a physical
object, the painting is a large
square. Caravaggio has applied the
paint thinly to the canvas, using
only a small number of colors. A
very close inspection would reveal
brush strokes that to the trained eye
could indicate the size of the
brushes Caravaggio used, and perhaps even the haste or care with
which the paints were applied.
When we consider the geometrical aspect of the painting, we see
Figure 18
that it is divided into two parts. The
standing figures on the right form a vertical rectangle; those
gathered around the table on the left, a horizontal block or
triangle. The two groups are separated by a void that is
bridged by a pointing hand. There is a grid pattern of verticals and horizontals that serve to knit the picture together:
the window, the table, the finger of the bearded man sitting
at the table, a stool, a line running up the wall in the upper
left. The contrast of light and shadow serves to guide our
eye across the painting from right to left.
When we turn out attention to the content aspect of the
painting, we notice that the setting seems ordinary, unremarkable. Perhaps it is a room in a tavern or, if the scene is
outdoors, a courtyard. And yet, even if we did not see it
hanging in the chapel, we might see at once that it is a religious painting. The languid, pointing hand of Jesus commands assent in a way that might exceed mere human
authority. The light streaming in from the right over the head
�66
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
of Jesus draws our attention to his face and hand. There is
also an urgency and a dignity about the painting that suggests there is other work to be done than counting money.
Some people might come to see this as a religious painting
only with help from cues—for example, the halo over the
head of Jesus. Others will recognize this aspect right away.
It is perhaps only or largely through created images and
words that the divine becomes picturable, and so enters the
world. Religious paintings, therefore, play a special role in
revealing the power of pictures in general to disclose what
there is.
The bearded tax-gatherer, Levi, is seated at a table in the
center of a corolla consisting of himself and four others,
perhaps his assistants. Coins litter the table, and the
hunched-over figure on the left appears to be counting some
of them. The group is lighted by a source at the upper right.
Jesus, his eyes veiled in shadow, with a halo hinting at his
divinity, enters alongside Peter. A gesture of his right hand
summons Levi, who is surprised by the intrusion of these
bare-footed men, and perhaps dazzled by the sudden light
from a just-opened door. Levi draws back and gestures
toward himself, as if to ask, “Who, me?” while his right
hand remains pressed onto some coins. The two figures to
the left are so concerned with counting money that they are
oblivious to the arrival of Christ, and so symbolically deprive themselves of the opportunity he offers for salvation.
The two boys in the center do respond, the younger one
drawing back as if to seek Levi’s protection, the older, with
his sword hung conspicuously, leaning forward somewhat
menacingly towards Peter, who seems to freeze him in place
with a finger. For the moment captured in the picture, no one
does anything. In another second, Matthew will rise up and
follow Jesus and his world will be forever different. The
painting captures the very moment of Matthew’s turning.
This brief account of the painting is much like what you
would find in many art books, and has been an accepted
version for many years. It is both revealing and compelling.
ESSAYS | VERDI
67
But we know that there a fourth aspect to this painting,
along with its being a physical object, a geometrical object,
and a representational object. The painting is itself derived
from a representation in words, a Gospel story. Here are the
accounts of Matthew’s calling from his Gospel, and also
from the Gospels of Mark and Luke. First Matthew:
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called
Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him
“Follow me.” And he rose and followed him (Matt.
9:9).
Mark writes:
And as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus
sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow
me.” And he rose and followed him (Mark 2:14).
And Luke:
After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named
Levi, sitting at the tax office; and he said to him,
“Follow me.” And he left everything, and rose and
followed him (Luke 5:27-28).
The accounts are bare and simple, merely hints of what
might have taken place. What strikes us, however, is what
the stories do not say. No account suggests that Matthew
hesitated or questioned before leaving his collection table
when summoned by Jesus. Of course, Caravaggio’s understanding of the story may be that it is fully human to doubt
and question and ask, so that, despite the Gospel narrative,
the bearded man sitting at the table, whose finger points
questioningly, almost unbelievingly, is very likely Matthew.
But if this is not the case, if his own finger is not pointing at
himself, who is Matthew? Jesus does not seem to think that
he’ll need to stay long to answer questions, because his foot,
seen in the lower right, is already turned to leave. Is it clear
at whom Jesus is looking and pointing? If we follow the arc
of his finger, is it not met by the body of the hunched-over
�68
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
young man, whose back curves up and whose head leans
towards Jesus? His eyes are the only ones of the five at the
table that are not illuminated by the bright light from the
right. We are drawn toward both pairs of shadowed eyes—
the young man’s and those of Jesus—not because they are
focal points of lines of light, or because they are centrally
placed. They are human eyes in shadow and they beckon us
because we want to know who they belong to and what they
imply. If the young man is Matthew—and I offer this with
many reservations—then the painting depicts a turning or
conversion without hesitation, without questioning, without
delaying at Kierkegaard’s stage of infinite resignation before
arriving at faith (Fear and Trembling, 46)—an unexpected
and undeserved grace. It is a conversion that Matthew experiences as a sudden change of aspect, for which no preparation was required, or even possible.
We take interest in works of art such as Caravaggio’s
Calling of St. Matthew in part because they seem to affirm
their own being, even while they exist as representations.
They compel us to wonder about how true they might be.
But because the unity of a work of art is never completely
and simply given, that is, because it requires our seeing and
talking to bring it continuously into being, it questions us
and engages us in dialectic, much as great books can do. As
we talk about—and with—a work of art, it may reveal to us
its aspects, which can be thought of as its possible unities,
and therefore its possible modes of being as an object and as
a representation.
In music we also recognize the importance of aspecthearing in the instructions given on how to listen or how to
play. Not merely “louder,” “softer,” “faster,” “slower,” but,
as Wagner does in Tristan und Isolde, “ever more animated,” or “with elevation,” or “with enthusiasm.” Tchaikovsky asks the pianist to play the opening theme of his first
piano concerto with “much majesty.” Instructions like these
must make sense; they must click in some way. When I am
ESSAYS | VERDI
69
told to hear these measures as an opening theme, how am I
to obey this order? I might be able to be taught exactly why
this other theme is a variation on the opening, but unless I
hear it as one, I will remain deaf to some aspect of the
music. Instructions like: “Think of it as a march, then you
will play it right,” or “You must hear this section as a
response to that one,” or “Hear this as in the Phrygian mode,
then you will get the ending”—these ways of guiding are
common and useful and not metaphorical. They can bring us
to hear aspects and not merely to reason our way to them.
As for poetry, I feel I have little insight. We might perhaps improve our reading of poetry by paying more attention to the experience of a word’s meaning. The tempo, too,
at which one reads a poem seems to be as important as it is
in music, and may be analogous to the distance at which one
views a painting. There may be a reading speed at which a
poem is most at home, most itself. I don’t know how one
comes to hear what this tempo would be, or how exactly the
tempo affects the life of the poem, but I am pretty sure that
some people possess this sense as much as others possess a
sense for the right tempo of a piece of music. Perhaps studying music helps one’s reading of poetry. I think also that
someone who knows the meter of a poem hears it differently, and would read it differently, from someone who does
not know the meter. If we think of the poem as a living
thing, we’ll understand that hearing its integrity requires that
we attend to the aspects of both meter and tempo.
The ability to experience the meanings of words plays a
critical role in appreciating metaphors and similes. There are
what may be called “secondary” senses of words, which can
be used and understood only if the primary meaning of a
word is already understood. If I say, “For me the vowel ‘a’
is red,” I do not mean “red” in a metaphorical sense, because
I could not express what I want to say in any other way than
by means of the idea “red” (PI, 216). A secondary sense is
something like an aspect, and those who are deaf or insen-
�70
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
sitive to secondary meanings will be less able to get into a
poem and feel their way around in it. They might of course
still learn to analyze, how to recognize to some degree what
the poem is saying and how, but they won’t be able to hear
the poem in the same way as those to whom secondary
meanings are alive. “Sorrow is like a leaden gray sky” is
either heard and acknowledged or else analyzed into submission. A poem can awaken a secret life in ordinary words
that seem used up, exhausted of meaning. Since we find
much of our experience to be equally ordinary and unremarkable, a poem can help us see new aspects of our experiences, by calling into question our usual ways of describing
them.
Let me close with the suggestion that coming to see new
aspects—and thus perhaps to answer the question What is
there? differently—is a central part of one’s experience
while a student at St. John’s, and can remain so throughout
life. Conversations can provide occasions for changes of
aspect in both our seeing and our thinking, as long as we
keep in mind that not every question requires an answer. In
seminar we all make the effort to understand why others say
what they say. We also ought to try our best to see what they
see. Questions are often requests that we look at things
differently, and that we try to find the maximum amount of
common ground with others.
And finally, I must return again to that writer I cannot
escape. When St. Augustine, in tears and almost in despair,
hears the voice of a child while he sits in the garden, he
takes the voice as a command from God to open the first
book he comes across and to begin reading. He hears the
voice as a command and he obeys it. When he later leaves
the garden, the world he enters is completely different for
him, and yet nothing in it has changed. We can imagine that
he hears the voice the way he does because he has received
grace. Perhaps such graces grace our own lives too, and—
who knows?—perhaps we can come to see the duck-rabbit
as a paradigm for the miracle.
ESSAYS | VERDI
71
REFERENCES
PI
PP
RPPI
RPPII
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
(London: Routledge, 2002).
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology, Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology, Volume II (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
Howard Gardner, The Shattered Mind (New York: Vintage, 1976).
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Edna H. Hong and
Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1962).
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York:
Harper and Row, 1970).
�72
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
REFLECTIONS
73
FULL FATHOM FIVE:
A TUTOR’S SEA CHANGE
Louis Petrich
I send my hearty greetings to the community of St. John’s College
from the Caribbean island of Bonaire (part of the Netherlands
Antilles, 50 miles north of Venezuela), where, after seven years as
a tutor, I am privileged to be spending my first sabbatical. There
is no place I prefer to St. John’s for finding my satisfaction in this
life. I don’t need to specify its forms—you know them. But you
must also know what one American writer said after he found his
calling and happiness at a pond outside Concord, Massachusetts:
“Thank Heaven, here is not all the world.”
I am exploring and learning the ways of another world—the
underwater world. I wish I could show this world to you. Maybe
then it would not seem puzzling that I would choose to dive these
warm coral reefs for a whole year rather than immerse myself in
all those good, non-Program books I have collected over the
years, but never have time to read at the College. I could show
you some photos that I have taken of the marine life in the
southern Caribbean, including one of a unicorn filefish (Aluterus
monoceros), which is almost as rare here as a unicorn. But I don’t
think you would be that impressed. Rareness by itself does not
signify beauty, or even inspire wonder. So let me instead try to put
into words an impression of what my island life is like.
It is strange for me to make this effort, since one of the
pleasures I take in diving everyday—often twice, and usually
with my wife or eleven-year old son as a partner—is not having
to talk much about it. We have gained that pleasure with
experience. During the dive, we may point at special things or
exchange a few hand signals, and in an emergency we can bang
on our tank and hope for immediate attention. But otherwise,
Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. He sent this open letter
to the college community from his sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year.
�74
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
diving delights me as a speechless activity of beholding the
myriad forms of life and their busy behaviors. To call them
“fantastical” is no exaggeration. Were it not for the limited supply
of air and the loss of body heat over time, I am not sure that my
activity of beholding would come to an end. The bulk of these
lines were written during an extended interval on the surface,
which is necessary to allow the nitrogen absorbed under pressure
to escape from my blood and tissues before I can safely return to
the deep, where I would otherwise linger and marvel as if present
at the fifth day of Creation—and that day were enough.
On the surface, Bonaire is not sublime. It is a small and
simple island, about five miles wide and twenty-four miles long,
shaped like a crescent, and home to about fifteen thousand
people—Antilleans, Dutch, and foreign residents like me. There
are no traffic lights on the island, no stop signs, no buses, no horns
blowing except to say “hello,” no theaters or cinemas, no long
stretches of white sandy beaches packed with oily sunbathers (the
beaches are rocky), no hotel or restaurant chains, no malls—
nothing, really, worth shopping for (the island produces only
salt)—and no fall, winter, or spring. There is always a breeze to
satisfy the windsurfers and kitesurfers and to make the hot sun
feel dry and light. Parrots squawk and some fifty other species of
birds sing at dawn to wake us up. Iguanas warm themselves on
the rocks, while wild donkeys and goats go marauding through
the dusty yards and fields, where our bare feet have acquired
calluses. Our hair has grown longer and lighter-colored,
toughened by the salt of the turquoise sea, which is never far from
view. Pink flamingos by the hundreds paint themselves on inner
landscapes, wherever the water pools. The capital of the island,
Kralendijk, can be traversed in about five minutes—a fact that has
led many a cruise ship passenger to wander off in conspicuous
confusion, looking for things that Bonaire simply does not have.
We point them back toward their ships and their buffets. What
Bonaire does have, most emphatically, is the freest and easiest
diving in the entire world, on healthy coral reefs that can be
reached from shore after a five- to ten-minute snorkel from almost
any point on the island. The surrounding sea, down to 250 feet, is
REFLECTIONS | PETRICH
75
a protected national park. Fishing is forbidden. Divers must pay a
park entrance fee and pass a buoyancy control test before being
permitted to dive. No gloves allowed. The reefs and animals may
not be handled, but they may be watched very closely, at any hour
of the day or night, according to one’s interest and pleasure.
The biologists I have met all testify that there is no place on
earth where a person can have such unmediated access to abundant animal life as one finds on Bonaire. Perhaps, they tell me, the
species count in tropical jungles is similar, but the jungles do not
offer free and easy access. In just the first minute of a descent to
forty feet, I have learned to identify thirty species on average (and
that’s just the fish)—one species every two seconds. My son
Louie can do better, since his vision is still acute at all distances.
If we were to include the coral and the other invertebrates and the
aquatic plants, the species count would double. This abundance of
life satisfies a passion that is not only taxonomical. O Lord, how
manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the
earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein
are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts
(Psalm 104: 24-25).
Bonaire’s “things creeping innumerable” are mostly small
(under a foot in length) or medium-sized (up to three or four feet).
Yes, there are leviathans out there: the whale shark (up to fiftyfive feet), the great hammerhead shark (twenty feet), and the
goliath grouper (eight feet), but these creatures are very rarely
sighted on Bonaire’s reefs. (Once I did encounter a goliath
grouper, also known as a “jewfish.” At first I thought he was a big
boulder. He was sleeping on the bottom at 106 feet and barely
budged when I poked him in the side. If he had felt that his meal
were being threatened, he might have charged me like a bull.
Some scripture commentators say it was a goliath grouper that
swallowed Jonah. I cannot dismiss the claim.) So I dive with a
magnifying glass in hand, very slowly, becoming one with the
seeing of my eyes. Ideally, a gentle current carries me, and my
muscles do no work except to turn my head, point my glass, and
breathe. I feel no gravity so long as I remain neutrally buoyant, a
state I maintain by proper breathing, as fish do by adjusting the
�76
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
volume of their air bladders.
To be free of gravity several hours a day, every day, has
become for me almost a need. I think this is one reason I see quite
a few obese scuba divers. They have discovered the only earthly
dispensation from having to carry their bodily burden. I wonder,
when I observe my large fellow humans, why the first forms of
life to emerge from the sea would have given up their freedom to
be oppressed by weight. When my air is running low and I make
my exit to shore, the first several steps on the sloping rocky coast
under the renewed pull of gravity are very difficult to take. I have
to concentrate on how to walk; otherwise, I would tumble, and the
surf would dash me on the rocks. This has happened more than
once. This forgetting how to walk, especially with all that extra
scuba gear to carry on my back, poses the most likely peril of
daily multi-diving.
Yet the physical pleasure of freedom in diving is only secondary. The primary pleasure lies in learning to recognize all those
“somethings” in the water as the very things that are imitated and
described in my field books. The impression of random motion by
innumerable, nameless forms of life begins to make sense as I
learn to see the fish “perform their parts” time and again. My
eyes, instead of darting around to be entertained by colorful
shapes in motion, come to rest on the actions of one fish, or on the
distinct parts of a fish, until the essential aspects, which are often
inconspicuous, acquire meaning. A tiny line under the gills, a pinhead spot next to the eye, the height of the dorsal fin, or some
other precise marking, contour, or motion—which the fish somehow read reliably—can mark the difference between two species.
As I become more acclimated to their element, as my body’s
vibrations become unobtrusive to their senses, the fish let me get
closer. Slowly they reveal more of their forms and purposes, and
if they could talk, I almost believe they would tell me their names.
Then, perhaps, I could do without the imitations.
Until then, let us imagine a six-foot long, green moray eel,
thick as a young pine tree. Its jaws, lined with razor-sharp teeth,
keep opening and closing—an ominous sight even to those who
know that by this action the moray moves water through its gills
REFLECTIONS | PETRICH
77
to breathe. This is not a threatening gesture, the books say. (Why
can’t it be both threatening and respiratory?) I approach very
slowly, head-on, to stare into its face. If you touch its tail, the
moray, feeling “mugged,” may turn round, bite, and not let go
until its teeth have ripped off whatever they have seized.
Approached from the front, however, they hold steady and
breathe ominously, not recognizing me as either prey or predator.
But if the moray sees his green reflection in my camera apparatus,
he may poke his snout into the housing. In this way, while he gets
acquainted with a puzzling stranger, I get an extraordinary photo.
I have also seen one divemaster scratch a green moray under the
gills; the moray appeared to enjoy this, as if he were being
cleaned by a little sharknose goby.
I save my scratching for creatures who breathe with their
mouths shut. Who would have thought that if you scratch a
hawksbill turtle vigorously on its shell—especially on the underside—he will spin round and round, driven wild with the pleasure
of it? I have done this only a few times. The turtle conservationists of the island (who tag, track, and protect the endangered sea
turtles) patrol assiduously for trespassers on the turtle breeding
grounds, for turtle chasers, and for turtle ticklers. Not all turtles
are brave enough to defy this mafia and submit to the tickling, and
only a few divers even know about this secret pleasure.
The Caribbean reef octopus is said to be a “curious” animal;
some even pronounce him “intelligent.” Not because he changes
his colors, instantly and dramatically, to camouflage himself
against any background or to intimidate his opponents. Many reef
fish and creatures change their colors as admirably as he does.
(How do they change so expertly, I wonder? And do any of them
have a “true” color?) The reef octopus appears curious and keen
because you can see him take various objects with one or more of
his eight arms, bring them under his head, and, after a period of
scrutiny, either discard them or carry them back to his den, where
he breaks mollusks open to eat. Reaching out to take various
things in hand (or in arm) for further investigation and possible
eating looks a lot like what the more intelligent animals do.
I put my metal tank banger within reach of the octopus, to see
�78
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
if he will take it under his head to test its nature. He grabs it with
three arms and starts to glide off toward the protection of a
crevice. I want that tank banger back. It’s mine. I kick hard to
chase the octopus, while reaching out with one arm, hoping he’ll
drop the banger. He turns entirely white, blows himself up to
twice his former size, and extends his eight arms in a circle
around his body, hovering above the banger. I keep at a respectful
distance and estimate my chance of winning a tug of war with this
inky octopus over a fourteen dollar tank banger. That is what
intelligent animals do. I decide to let him keep it.
I said earlier that diving is primarily a visual, not a tactile
experience. But now I find it necessary to say this differently.
When I take my four-year old daughter, Abigail, down to fifteen
feet on my spare regulator hose, and we swim around the bottom
together for forty-five minutes, she wants to touch everything she
sees. I have to teach her what to avoid by holding her back with
my hands. She learns the hard way, too. Once, having picked up
a pink, fuzzy, caterpillar-like thing, she signaled me urgently to
surface. “My fingers are burning, daddy,” she cried. “When will
they stop?” “In a short while,” I replied. “You picked up a fireworm.” She sometimes surprises the flounders—overconfident in
their camouflage—with a poke from her finger: “They’re slimy,
daddy, and their eyes are funny.” (She likes to talk about all her
doings.) She tirelessly turns over rocks to uncover urchins and sea
stars; and she enjoys picking up sand to drop on the heads of
parrotfish as they busily scrape up algae. “They drop sand on us
when they poop, so it’s only fair,” she says. All her instinctive
touching of things is how we get to know those things better: we
have learned by the reactions of sea creatures to our touch how
stunningly changeable they are, and how thoroughly they associate being touched—being known—with being eaten.
Most predators on the reef swallow their prey whole (sharks
and barracudas being two notable exceptions). But if a piscivore
happens to take a fish in the wrong position for swift swallowing,
it will pitilessly bash on the rocks whatever protrudes from its
mouth, until it can safely let go to swallow its prey again—whole.
It has to perform the bashing very quickly, because the other
REFLECTIONS | PETRICH
79
predators will notice the commotion and try to seize the halfswallowed prey from its mouth, devouring whatever pieces they
can. Feeding happens so quickly that one seldom sees it performed at all. The reef may thus give an impression of a peaceful
commingling of hundreds of species, who are content, for the
most part, to observe one another. But the reason that the little fish
live among the corals is to hide, and the reason that the bigger fish
cruise the corals is to hunt the littler ones—and hide from even
bigger ones. If the corals do not tell the whole story, they tell at
least the deadly part of it that Darwin says is difficult but necessary for us to bear in mind constantly if we are to understand “the
face of nature.”
I like the reefs no less for their quiet pitilessness, and in fact
I like them all the more for bringing into focus the ultimate
concerns of the poetry that I could have been studying on this
sabbatical:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
—W.B. Yeats
Yet it is not always easy to pass by these scenes coldly while
riding the warm currents of the Caribbean. On moonless nighttime dives, it is pitch black in all directions, save where my divelight is pointed—at the red squirrel fish and cardinal fish, the most
common night-hunters. I love their vibrant red colors and black
eyes—overly large in order to admit the scant rays of stars that
barely penetrate the deep. Suddenly, a six-foot-long silvery tarpon
swoops across my right shoulder, brushing his caudal fin against
me. Then there is another one, shooting forward from directly
below my chest, with a sharksucker attached to his side. They are
using my light to hunt.
They have used me thus hundreds of times, but my heart still
quickens when hungry creatures as big as I swim past me, abruptly and intimately, from out of the darkness. I join the party of the
hunter, coldly shining my light on the sleepy ocean surgeonfish
�80
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
(whom I don’t much care for), and I watch the tarpons try to
swallow them up before they slip away into the recesses of the
coral. The tarpons’ mouths open widely, creating an audible
suction that draws their prey from a foot away into their maws,
quicker than I can see. A jolt of satisfaction passes when they
catch their prey—or rather, when we catch our prey. Questions
arising from my partisan participation in this sea hunt intrude on
my breathing and my buoyancy. When the jaws of death open
wide for me, will I slip away into a dark, secret place for all time?
Or will a light be held to mark my drawing into that sudden,
irresistible openness?
The night-prowling tarpons always make a big impression on
divers, but they are nothing compared to the little longfin damselfish, three inches in length, that spend their lives (up to ten years)
aggressively guarding a patch of algae the size of a doormat. If I
get within a few feet, they’ll charge directly into my mask or nip
at my hands. It feels like a little pinch. You can see them routinely
drive away fish ten times their size, because no one likes being
nipped at incessantly; and besides, there is always some place else
to go on the reefs for food or shelter. If the damselfish were as
large as the fish they attack, the reefs would not be swimmable. I
thank the Creator for making the most aggressive animal in the
Caribbean so small.
One of the highlights of my diving sabbatical occurred during
the two coral spawning periods, a week after the full moons of
September and October. The reefs became cloudy with gametes,
released in unison at night by hosts of invertebrates. The touchme-not sponges emitted their seed like smoke from chimneys.
The always-recumbent tiger tail sea cucumbers stood up vertically and spewed forth stuff that looked like breath in cold air.
The star corals released their little balls of DNA nonstop, like
bubbles from a carbonated beverage. This sea of fecundity staggered the senses. It went on for three successive nights, while
most of the fish that would have eaten the gametes slept. I felt awe
to see how these creatures beat the bad odds of the ocean by
means of a coordinated, all-out emptying of themselves, twice a
year.
REFLECTIONS | PETRICH
81
Fish are spawning all the time, though it takes patient observation to notice it. In the late afternoons, you may spy peacock
flounders gliding three feet off the bottom like Frisbees, risking
their lives to signal a readiness to mate. When the male and
female Frisbee-flounders come together like two hands in prayer,
they shoot up toward the surface and release their gametes near
the top of the water column, where the gametes’ predators are
least abundant. Then they separate and return at once to the
bottom, making themselves indistinguishable from the sand or
rocks. Those four seconds of jetting upward look so unlike the
behavior of flounders that I wonder if this joint activity is when
they are most at-work-being-themselves, or most possessed by
something outside themselves. As my daughter, innocent of philosophy, would say, “It’s freaky, either way.”
Each evening at dinner we watch the sun set over the Caribbean from our seaside patio dining room. We look for the proverbial “green flash” at the very instant of the sun’s disappearance
below the horizon. We have yet to see it. To be honest, more often
than not these passing days, we forget to look. Some of the old
and experienced divers I have met have grown tired of looking for
new things on the reefs, and don’t seem to think it is worth the
effort anymore to go deep. Of our “brave new world, that has such
creatures in it,” they would say (if they knew their Shakespeare),
“’Tis new to thee.” Can we not find ways to keep this world new?
When we have our diving friends to dinner, we sometimes
find it pleasant to play a game of “sea charades.” The children
start it off by acting like their favorite fish. Even the tired, old
divers enjoy the renewed experience of not quite knowing what in
the world they’re looking at: Abigail wiggling around on her back
is . . . a fairy basslet, which can swim belly up; Louie sticking out
his stomach and pulling at his nose in the corner is . . . a sharpnose
puffer that inflates itself when there is no escape. When it’s my
turn, I go to the refrigerator and take out the most unappetizing
leftover I can find and eat it. I am . . . an angelfish, which has
evolved to eat certain things that no other fish will eat (sponges)
because they taste bad. In fact, I have adapted myself to occupy
this niche in our family, as a matter of economy. But to see the
�82
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
familiar things in life as tasteless leftovers is not a fine, or even
fitting, use of either our senses or their things. Let it always be
worth the effort, I pray, to go down deep, again and again, into
this world of sensuous things. That is the simple meaning of this
sabbatical, put into words.
I was afraid at one time that by revealing my free and easy
occupations in this “Divers Paradise” (the official motto of the
island), I would cause there to be sent a “messenger of Satan” to
molest my breathing and my buoyancy. That messenger has long
since come to the occupants of the air-breathing world, even here
on Bonaire; but not even the omnipresent internet together with
all its beeping, vibrating, pocket-sized accomplices can reach me
underwater—yet. So then, as my surface interval comes to a
close, I end these impressions of my island life without fear of the
new or the old, but with gratitude for the existence and easy availability of this underwater world that is not all the world, and with
praise to the College for granting its tutors this time of rejuvenation to keep us up with youth and its joys—and in touch with
things of beauty and wonder. Fare you well, as to the elements of
the isle I go free, unwearied, changed, to see things rich and
strange.
REVIEWS
83
FAT WEDNESDAY
John Verdi, Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on
Aspects.
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010, xii + 296
pages.
Book Review by Eva Brann
I’ll reveal my own predilections and aversions up front: I trust
Socrates—without completely believing him—and I distrust
Wittgenstein, without thinking him completely wrong. In fact,
I’m in some respects terminally puzzled by both, but more so by
Wittgenstein, whose main book, as John Verdi tells us on the first
page of Fat Wednesday (the title will be explained below and has
a purely coincidental relation to “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras),
contains 784 questions of which only 110 are answered, and 70 of
those wrongly—on purpose. Now 744 unanswered questions
seems to me an overplus of perplexity; I am especially sensitive
to such erotetic overload (from erotesis, “question”), since I have
heard it said of our college that we accept students who know
nothing and graduate them now knowing that they know nothing.
So I was a grateful member of a faculty study group on this
question-laden work, the Philosophical Investigations, which
John Verdi led in the spring of 2009, as he was writing his own
book, with the resigned calm of a man who does believe in this
author and is, for that very reason, unwilling to proselytize. Under
his guidance and in conversation with my colleagues I learned a
lot, enough to formulate two judgments. One concerned the
reason for my near-constitutional incomprehension of Wittgenstein’s project: he is the only non-fiction writer I know whose
outlook on life is systematically—and rousingly—askew of mine.
The other judgment was that Verdi’s book would likely be a most
trustworthy introduction to this strange thinker’s upending of all
that seems humanly sensible. And so it proved.
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
�84
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In Fat Wednesday, Verdi approaches Wittgenstein through
two notions central to his later thinking: aspect-seeing and experiencing the meaning of words. The first three chapters explicate
these, while the last two introduce Verdi’s own development and
applications of these two topics. So his book introduces us both to
Wittgenstein and to the world his work implies. It seems to me
that, considering Wittgenstein’s relentless the-proof-is-in-thepudding attitude toward human mentation, this organization is
faithful to Wittgenstein’s intention, since it shows what one can
do with his way of seeing and speaking.
What then is aspect-seeing and why is it crucial to Wittgenstein? Such “seeing” is based on an ineradicable ambiguity: one
shape, objectively self-same, is seen alternately in one way and in
another. Since such ambiguity arises primarily in the absence of
context, deliberately devised drawings instigate it best. The most
famous of them (Verdi illustrates several) is the “duck-rabbit,” a
figure showing two forked protrusions, devised to look now like
a duck’s open bill, and then again like a rabbit’s laid-back ears.
The picture is one, but the aspect “goes about hither and thither”
(Verdi points out that this is the etymology of the word ambiguity), so that we cannot help “seeing” the picture flip between
resembling a duck and resembling a rabbit. This raises the question, What is resemblance?
Here I confess that I have two misgivings of my own about
Wittgenstein’s project. One is that aspect-seeing is not a novel notion, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, but is related, rather, to an
old, old question—the one-over-many problem in metaphysics,
where it is precisely the aspect (a fair translation of eidos, that is,
looks or form) that is one, and the appearances, the phenomena,
that are many. (So why, incidentally, does Wittgenstein write as if
philosophical investigation began with him?) The other misgiving, less born of irritation, is that I have little faith in basing inquiry on special and devised cases, which are essentially distinct
from the ideal cases that I would rather look to. These ideal cases
may go fuzzy at the edges, but are probably substantial at the
center. But then, it is just this center that, as Verdi confirms, Wittgenstein wishes to attenuate.
REVIEWS | BRANN
85
Wittgenstein’s aim is to establish the centrality of resemblance: family resemblance is to replace essence. Verdi [12]*
quotes Wittgenstein’s account of this point:
[F]or the various resemblances between members of a
family . . . overlap and criss-cross in the same way.
[W]e extend our concept . . . as in spinning we twist
fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not
reside in the fact that some fibre runs through the
whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres
(Philosophical Investigations, §67).
So we are not to ask, What do the phenomena to which we
naturally give one name have in common? Instead, we are to look
for a sequence of resemblances; the first and last of these must
perforce be quite unlike each other or there will be, after all, a
thread of sameness. In the old ontology (set out in Plato’s Sophist)
resemblance or likeness is sameness conjoined with otherness.
But, true to his program, Wittgenstein does not engage in nailing
down centralities but in clarifying concepts: “Conceptual (linguistic) questions ground casual questions, not the other way
around” [5].
(This is the late Wittgenstein. I want to take the opportunity
here to express a personal fascination. Wittgenstein recanted—
how deeply is a matter of debate—his early Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, a hard-edged view of a world consisting of logically connected facts exactly pictured by our language, which is
similarly structured, so that reality is explicable by a logical
analysis of language. To me it is an absorbing question whether
there are systematic differences between thinkers who develop by
absorptive tweaking and those whose maturity comes through
degrees of self-refutation. Is the latter a mark of unflagging vigor
or of suspect instability?)
The crucial word of Verdi’s sentence is in parentheses: Wittgenstein seems to equate the terms conceptual and linguistic. A
concept is not, as we were brought up to think, a cognitive entity.
*
Page numbers in brackets refer to Fat Wednesday.
�86
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
As resemblance was construed anti-essentially, so concept is
understood anti-cognitively—if cognition is thought of as an
internal eventuation: Conceptual questions do not ask for interior
states discerned by introspection, but demand observation of the
external phenomena of linguistic usage—just enough such observation to discern how people actually use words. This notion
establishes the transition from Verdi’s first chapter, “The Aspects
Family,” to the second one, “Aspects and Words.”
“Seeing,” for example, has two uses [25]. One use can be
accompanied by pointing to the picture of the ambiguous duckrabbit. But pointing is not possible for the second use, for a duckrabbit is not a this, but rather it flips from a this to a that. Something similar holds for any seeing of resemblance. You can’t point
to a resemblance, though you can point it out, that is, make useful
observations in words.
Wittgenstein means something much more radical than to say
that words can be useful. He invites us to “think of words as
instruments characterized by their use” [44]. In fact, the analogy
is to a toolbox; the “functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects” (Philosophical Investigations, §11).
Here are my misgivings on this point. This way of analyzing
language should depend not only on a receptive ear for the phenomena of speech, but on conceding our fellow human beings’
primary competence to know what they mean. I have long had my
doubts about Wittgenstein and his language-analytical progeny in
regard to the first point. As for the second, there is little doubt that
Wittgenstein means to correct my sense of which meanings are
acceptable and to control my claim that overt words express
interior events, that I often have a thought or feeling for which I
subsequently labor to find the word, and moreover, that this
language is really only residually private, because I cherish a faith
(and, finally, what else is there?) that human souls, with all the
particularity that embellishes their being, are ultimately alike—
even when they willfully plead ultimate diversity. Or to express it
in the relaxed logical mode of real thinking: we have our privacies
in common. These opinions of mine are questioned in form, but
proscribed in effect, by Wittgenstein.
REVIEWS | BRANN
87
Privacy and sociality are central issues for Wittgenstein, since
we operate, he thinks, with words as if we were playing languagegames. These games are governed by socially established rules
that we must learn; the rules tell me what the words, the gamepieces of language, do and what moves are permitted, just as the
rules of chess govern that game. “One would not say,” as Verdi
neatly puts it, “‘I know what a bishop does. Now tell me what it
really is’” [45]. It is a neat formulation because it raises the
question-hackles. Does it mean “would not” or “should not”? I for
one would ask, meaning I might like to think about, “What, really,
is a lusory bishop, a piece of ecclesiastic anthropomorphism (like
a nautical nun-buoy)? What causes its possibility, beyond its
being enmeshed in a game?” Can I be talked out of that predilection?
The rest of Verdi’s second chapter fleshes out, in lucid detail,
Wittgenstein’s disabling of the “what is it?” question—not in
terms of an argument against it, for that would be an admission of
its admissibility, but by the circumscription of an alternative way
of being in and with our world. It is a way that consigns the inner
human being to terminal opaqueness, for which it then compensates by undertaking a persistent and critical analysis of behavior,
both gestural and linguistic. This way of abstemious philosophizing has at least one tremendous virtue: it raises our sensitivity to
how we learn and what we say [106]. In particular, it attunes our
ears to distinguishing how people speak before misguided ratiocination has tempted language into useless utterance.
Here Verdi stops to consider the very condition I touched on
before, that there might be a real division among people’s experiences, and that some people might be “aspect-blind.” In the third
chapter, he considers a group of true pathologies that afflict
patients with the inability to see ambiguities. They are literalists
of vision and language, and so miss crucial aspects of the world.
They lack experiences of meaning.
“Fat Wednesday” itself is an example of such an experience
[150]. “Fat” here is not a metaphor, since there is no sensible relation of obesity to Wotan’s Day. Unless it seems perfectly nonsensical to you, it will evoke a meaning, an “emergent” meaning. I
�88
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
think of it as a meaning-aura, a strong one for me. For in the Nazi
Germany of my childhood, Wednesday was the day of mandated
one-pot suppers (the resultant savings to be dropped into the collection can of a visiting storm-trooper)—and one-pot meals tend
to be greasy. This “secondary meaning,” this emergence, is a
startling development since it seems to be an overt intimation of
interiority. As words have emergent meanings, so aspects can
emerge; the inside will be outed.
Emergent meaning governs the fourth chapter, “Aspects and
Art.” It begins with a reflection on a portrait of Descartes by Franz
Hals, a reflection addressed to the basic ambiguity of all pictureviewing: that there is, in one aspect, a piece of canvas with
splotches of paint that we can point to, and in another, a likeness
of something, here the man, that we can’t reach by following the
laser line from our index finger. (I might point out here that this
analysis of physical images was an abiding preoccupation of
Husserl, his student Fink, and Sartre, but I also want to retract my
complaint about Wittgenstein’s willful aboriginality. Much better
not to be too entangled in conceptual indebtedness!)
Here Verdi puts his Wittgensteinian sensibility to work on objects ranging from paintings (Verdi “sees” some arresting alternative aspects in well-known works) to music, to—and here it becomes wonderful—wine tasting, in the section entitled “Emergent
Meaning and Wine.” Verdi plucks out, from notes on wine tasting
in Wine Spectator Magazine, a group of enologically descriptive
words that are candidates for emergence, including “velvety,
chewy, taut” [201]. He observes that these terms of praise can’t be
metaphorical. Who wants to run his tongue over something
velvet-like? Instead the words carry emergent meanings, which
are shared by other people and, he implies, widen our sensibility.
If I don’t get it, I am (non-pathologically) aspect-blind. If I do, “I
can better make my way in the world of wine-tasting and describing” [203].
The last chapter, provocatively entitled “Ethics and Aesthetics are One,” is a real culmination. It considers the discovery of
new science as a form of aspect-shift, and the letting-be of others’
religion as a form of aspect-seeing. The latter case exemplifies the
REVIEWS | BRANN
89
chapter title. Verdi is as far as possible from the despicable central
European aestheticism that once permitted murder by day if only
the nights were spent listening to Schubert Lieder. Doing right
and seeing multivalently are one, to be sure, insofar as we must
be aesthetically (that is, sensorily) adroit in order to be ethically
(that is, morally) good. The former is not, however, so much a
condition for the latter as it is the same with it—an attitude
realized in a skill. Both are our very own; both are acquired by
attentive learning. Verdi calls this disposition “active tolerance”
[259]. Just as he is far removed from mere aestheticism, so too is
he worlds apart from the essentially disrespectful, because inattentive, tolerance of “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Active tolerance is a
subtle, sophisticated version of the ability to see both—or even
many—sides of an issue. Where Socrates says, “Virtue is knowledge,” Verdi’s Wittgenstein says, “Ethics is aspect-seeing,” an
ingrained appreciation of alternate possibilities and the respect
that goes with it.
Let me indulge in a final cavil, then, one which I’ve already
intimated. Wittgenstein’s probing, pushing, and pulling feel to me
like a clearly offered and cagily retracted condemnation: statements of absolute value are respectfully denominated nonsense
by him [242]. So is Verdi’s deeply liberal conclusion still Wittgenstein, or has it become more Verdi? If the latter, I would, at
risk of paining him, take Verdi over Wittgenstein anytime.
If Wittgenstein has got under your skin, or if you want him to,
read this book.
�90
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
REVIEWS
91
MONSTER AM I
Paolo Palmieri, A History of Galileo’s
Inclined Plane Experiment and its
Philosophical Implications
Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press,
Forthcoming, 2011, 220 pages.
Book Review by Curtis Wilson
The project of this book, Palmieri tells us, emerged slowly, in
close relation with the attempt to reenact certain of Galileo’s experiments, in particular the inclined plane experiment. Galileo’s
adventure with balls rolling down inclined wooden beams was
not a single event to which a date can be assigned, nor yet a set of
operations described in sufficient detail to admit of mere copying.
It was a sequence of explorations lasting nearly a lifetime, involving difficulties and puzzles that Galileo struggled to resolve, with
less than uniform success. A love affair, Palmieri calls it.
Our author seeks to touch the very nerve of Galileo’s endeavor. He challenges the assumption—beguiling to some Galileo
scholars—that armchair philosophy can plumb the complexities
that Galileo met with in the inclined plane experiment. He seeks
to put himself in Galileo’s actual problem-situation, with its puzzles on both the experimental and the theoretical side. Experimental work and theoretical explanation, carried on in tandem,
pose questions of each other. The result, Palmieri reports, is liberating: the experimenter-theoretician-scholar probes more feelingly, with a new intensity. He becomes a participant in a revolutionary endeavor.
The earliest writings we have in Galileo’s hand appear in
Volume I of the Edizione Nazionale under the title Juvenilia,
which was assigned by the editor, Antonio Favaro. He took them
to be a compilation from unidentified sources (they remain unidentified today). Their late-medieval character is striking. Paragraphs frequently begin with Advertendum quod. . . (“It is to be
Curtis Wilson is Tutor Emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
�92
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
noted that. . .”), a scholastic verbal tic implying that the following
sentence is accepted on authority. Is our scribe a mere copyist?
Palmieri detects indications to the contrary. In places Galileo
appears to be paraphrasing or summarizing; here and there he
leaves blank spaces as though for later comment or elucidation.
Included in the Juvenilia is a discussion of “the intension and
remission of forms,” a much-treated topic in scholastic discussions from the fourteenth century to at least the early sixteenth
century. It concerns increase or decrease in the intensity of a
quality. The hotness or hardness of a body may vary from point to
point or from instant to instant at a point. There is no evidence that
the fourteenth-century schoolmen attempted actually to measure
such variations, but they introduced language for describing them
as measurable secundum imaginationem. One of the qualities thus
dealt with was the speed of a moving body.
To the uniform variation of the intensity of a quality, the
schoolmen applied a special rule, now dubbed “the Merton rule”
after the Oxford college where it seems to have originated. It
states that a quality varying uniformly in intensity over a spatial
distance or interval of time is equivalent to the unvarying or
uniform quality of the mean degree stretching over the same
extension, spatial or temporal. Suppose, for instance, that the
hotness of a body varies uniformly from two degrees at one end
of the body to eight degrees at the other, the degree being an
imagined unit of intensity. This “latitude of form” was said to be
equivalent to a uniform hotness of five degrees from one end of
the body to the other.
Applied to the intensity of motion or speed, the Merton Rule
was interpreted as saying that the distance traversed in a motion
uniformly accelerated from an initial to a final speed was equal to
the distance traversed in a uniform motion having the same
duration and the mean speed of the accelerated motion. Compare
this with the crucial first proposition of Galileo’s treatise “On
Naturally Accelerated Motion” in the Third Day of his Two New
Sciences (1638)—do not both come to the same result? The
Merton Rule is not mentioned in the Juvenilia or in any of Gali-
REVIEWS | WILSON
93
leo’s writings. Nevertheless, a number of historians of science,
Pierre Duhem and Marshall Clagett prominently among them,
have concluded that Galileo’s theorem was a redaction of the
Merton Rule.
The jury, Palmieri objects, is still out: no evidence has yet
turned up to show that Galileo actually encountered the medieval
enunciation of the Merton Rule. Palmieri suggests that such influence as the medieval discussion may have had on Galileo was
likely indirect, through the Geometry of Indivisibles (1635) of his
friend Bonaventura Cavalieri. The trajectory of Galileo’s thinking, Palmieri urges (following Favaro), is best determined from
his writings and the experiments he sought to carry out.
At the very time Galileo was writing the Juvenilia, and thus
becoming acquainted with the scholastic conception of the natural
world, he was also annotating Archimedes’ On Sphere and Cylinder, a strict deduction of mathematical consequences from premises. The analytical thrust of Archimedean thinking, Palmieri
believes, peeps through the text of the Juvenilia. Galileo sweats to
understand the medieval four-element physics of the sublunary
realm, and how all qualities are to be derived from the four “prime
qualities” or “alterative qualities,” hot, cold, dry, and wet. Are
motive qualities and speeds grounded in this fundamental Aristotelian ontology? The question is not explicitly addressed in the
Juvenilia, but shows itself in Galileo’s De motu, dating from ca.
1590.
The De motu, Palmieri observes, is polemical. Galileo denounces his teachers for the way they teach. When introducing the
elements of physics, they bring in Aristotle’s other works, quoting
from De anima, De caelo, or Metaphysics, as though their pupils
already knew everything or else will accept all on faith. Galileo
pledges to proceed differently, following the mathematicians in
advancing solely by deductive steps derived from explicit premises.
A central question posed in the De motu is: How do the
weights and speeds of the same body, descending along planes
differently inclined but of equal elevation, differ? By considering
�94
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
the forces needed to equilibrate the weight on the different planes
as weights applied to a lever, Galileo shows that the forces are inversely as the lengths of the planes. (Unbeknownst to Galileo at
the time of the De motu, this same result had been given in the
thirteenth-century Scientia de ponderibus attributed to Jordanus
de Nemore.)
Galileo in the De motu also attempts to deal with the question
of why a falling body accelerates. The body’s heaviness is a virtus
impressa (impressed force) that acts downward. Were it acting
alone, Galileo assumes that it would produce a constant speed of
fall. But to this impressed force downward, Galileo adds an
accidental lightness or levity, imparted to the body when we raise
it from the earth. When we release it, its motion downward accelerates because the impressed lightness exhausts itself over time.
The downward acceleration is thus explained in terms of the Aristotelian qualities of heaviness and lightness, with the important
additional assumption that the accidental lightness decays with
time. Galileo is here entangled in the fundamental ontology and
categories of the Juvenilia, along with a misconception, widely
accepted up to the time of the publication of Descartes’s safari,
Principles of Philosophy, that every velocity has to be maintained
by an impressed force. How did he free himself—as he unquestionably did—from the medieval mindset and its stultifying questions?
Palmieri proposes that certain life-worldly learning experiences—among them, finding how to make glass goblets sing and
brass plates howl—taught Galileo a lesson about the fine structure of nature. By patiently repeated experimentation, the young
Galileo learned how to attend to and control the fine detail of
what happens in the production of these effects. The beginnings
were in the workshop of his father, Vincenzo Galilei. During the
1580s, Vincenzo, a professional lutist, engaged in musicological
controversy. Opposing the Pythagorean claim that numerical
ratios are the cause of musical intervals—that the ratio 2:1 is the
cause of the octave, the ratio 3:2 the cause of the fifth, and so
on—he claimed that these intervals are to be determined by the
ear alone. One of his prime exhibits was the singing glass, a
REVIEWS | WILSON
95
goblet containing water which, on being struck, gave forth a
musical tone. The pitch depended on the amount of water. Years
later Galileo Galilei in his Two New Sciences told of a further
result, not previously reported: the goblet could be set singing if
its rim were stroked with a wet finger-tip. Concomitantly, a standing wave was produced on the surface of the water. Sometimes
the tone shifted up an octave, at which moment the number of
waves per unit length in the standing wave doubled.
Palmieri—apparently the first among Galileo commentators
to do so—has replicated this experiment. Success requires practice, and it is best to begin with a large goblet (Palmieri used a
brandy snifter). One must rub the rim rhythmically, while repeatedly wetting the finger and watching for the evanescent wave
pattern. The wave pattern is more readily produced in the brandy
snifter than in a smaller goblet, but Palmieri found it possible to
obtain Galileo’s result also with the latter.
The howling brass plate is another of Galileo’s experiments
that Palmieri has replicated. As Galileo reports in the Two New
Sciences, while scraping a brass plate with a chisel to remove
stains, he found himself producing sounds. Sometimes they were
musical tones, and in such cases the chisel left evenly spaced
marks on the plate. On one occasion two tones sounded in succession, forming the interval of a fifth. In the two sets of marks
formed on the plate, the numbers of marks per unit length were as
3 to 2. Getting these results was helped by a bit of practice, but
was easier than obtaining the standing wave in the glass goblet.
A correct interpretation of these experiments presupposes the
physics of sounding bodies, which Galileo himself lacked as have
some of his recent commentators. A sounding body vibrates predominantly with certain frequencies that depend on the shape and
mechanical properties of the material. These frequencies are the
body’s “natural modes” of vibration. For a body of regular and
relatively simple shape, the predominant frequency modes are
harmonically related, e.g. as octave or fifth, etc. The vibrations
are reflected from the boundaries of the body, and the reflected
waves, combining with the original train of waves, form a standing wave pattern. For a given speed of propagation (which is de-
�96
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
termined by the medium), the wavelength is inversely as the frequency, and thus the wavelengths of two standing waves have ratios inverse to the integral numerical ratios of the corresponding
natural modes. The natural modes therefore account for the emergence of the Pythagorean ratios in these two experiments. By
confirming Galileo’s experimental results, Palmieri has put them
beyond doubt. They form a beautiful early confirmation of the
theory of natural modes.
Important as this conclusion is, it is a different point that
Palmieri aims primarily to make. Galileo’s experimental results
are obtained only with patient attentiveness to the fine structure of
experience. They yield an experience in which hearing, touching,
and seeing are integrated—a holistic experience. Such experience
can direct consciousness away from false expectations and
toward new facts. This kind of learning, Palmieri proposes, assisted Galileo in liberating himself from the medieval mindset with
its pre-established categories.
What about the inclined plane experiment? Here also, besides
the visual sight of a ball rolling down the plane, a complex of
other sensory data is offered—sounds, vibrations that can be
sensed through skin and bone as well as the ear, changes in sound
as a bronze or wooden ball descends along the wooden track. Did
Galileo attend in a focused way to these effects? We know only of
the cases already cited, in which he focused on the details of
experimental happenings with attentiveness and care. In the Third
Day of the Two New Sciences, in the section On Naturally
Accelerated Motion, he focuses on the kind of acceleration that
nature employs for descending bodies—on this, its consequences,
and not on causes. The latter question as posed by the schoolmen
has been set aside:
[W]e decided to look into [the properties of this kind
of motion] so that we might be sure that the definition
of accelerated motion which we are about to adduce
agrees with the essence of naturally accelerated motion.
REVIEWS | WILSON
97
It is this that he is now seeking the essence of—naturally accelerated motion itself.
Galileo’s adoption of this new focus, Palmieri believes, could
have been triggered by the very intensity of the auditory and
vibratory experience of the ball rolling down its inclined track. To
receive this nonvisual experience as fully as possible, Palmieri
placed his forehead in contact with the underside of the beam
serving as inclined plane, and grasped the beam with his hands
around its sides so that his fingertips could sense the upper side of
the beam. An assistant then released a ball to roll down the
inclined plane. As it rolled, Palmieri’s fingertips picked up the
vibrations induced in the beam, which were also transmitted
through his cranial bone, and he heard the sound through his ears
as well.
The resulting experience Palmieri calls holistic auscultation.
It is no mere juxtaposition of different effects, but an integrated
effect. It powerfully suggests that through our senses we can
delve deep into the fine structure of physical reality. The experience is markedly stereoscopic. The experimenter, hugging the
plane at a particular location, is first aware of the ball’s starting to
move far up behind his head, then hurtling close by, and finally
fading away in the distance. The descending ball produces a
sound that varies as the ball speeds up. Sound and speed grow
uniformly together, and this togetherness takes center stage. The
arresting character of this experience, Palmieri proposes, could
have derailed the young Galileo’s ambition to reduce changing
speed and sound to effects of the qualities dubbed primary by
Aristotle and the schoolmen.
In the scriptorium [where the Juvenilia were produced], the hot-cold-dry-wet chemistry of pitch and
speed can only be thought-through. But it is possible
to leave the scriptorium, visit workshops, and turn life
into a tastier affair. . . . We reach a new balance between knowledge and values when we learn how to
reconfigure life-worldly objects while letting our
senses be affected by them.
�98
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In The Two New Sciences Galileo stresses the simplicity of the
means nature adopts—in the case of descending bodies, the increase of speed in proportion simply to time elapsed. Reenactments of Galileo’s inclined plane experiment, however, yield at
best rough confirmations of this relation. In multiple repetitions
of the experiment, Palmieri and his students used a water clock of
the type Galileo describes, weighing the water released during the
duration of the descent to obtain a measure of elapsed time. In a
descent of the whole plane, compared with a descent of one
quarter of it, the expected ratio of the times is 2:1. In five trials of
a bronze ball one inch in diameter, running on the groove cut by
a router into the beam (so that the ball was running as though on
rails), the numbers obtained were 2.18, 2.19, 2.15, 2.09, 1.97,
averaging to 2.12, hence with 6 percent error and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.08. In five trials of a bronze
ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, running in the
groove, the numbers obtained were 2.04, 1.90, 1.95, 1.90, 1.84,
averaging to 1.93, hence with 3.5 percent error, and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.067.
Palmieri records twelve more sets of five trials each. The
errors are dramatically larger for decreased inclinations of the
plane, especially in the case of smaller and thus lighter bronze
balls. Five trials with a bronze ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in
diameter and an inclination of 1.36 degrees gave an average of
2.74, hence with 37 percent error; but five trials with a bronze ball
one inch in diameter and the same inclination yielded an average
of 2.17, hence with 8.5 percent error. An increase of the inclination to 3.8 degrees for these two balls reduced the errors to 18
percent and 6 percent respectively.
The deviations from expected theoretical ratios do not easily
admit of a detailed explanation, nor does Palmieri attempt one. Of
the factors likely to be operative we mention two. Human reflexes
cannot be relied upon to open the water-clock precisely when the
ball is released to start rolling, or to close it precisely when the
ball hits the stopping block. And, throughout the run, friction is no
doubt operative. Friction is an action at or between surfaces.
Seeking to find what schoolmen were saying in Galileo’s day
REVIEWS | WILSON
99
concerning friction, Palmieri examined the Juvenilia and a book
on natural philosophy by Galileo’s contemporary, the Paduan
professor Giacomo Zabarella (d.1589). He found discussions of
“reaction” and “resistance,” but not of friction. The presumptive
role of friction in the inclined plane experiment, Palmieri believes, was a potent riddle leading Galileo to abandon scholastic
explanations in favor of an atomistic ontology. Galileo knew and
undoubtedly consulted Lucretius’s De rerum natura. It gives a
psychophysical explanation of pleasant and unpleasant tastes in
terms of smooth and rough or hooked atoms. The shapes of atoms
could similarly account for friction in the sliding or rolling of one
surface over another. Friction would thus be a “fight” between
particles of different shapes. The amounts of friction would no
doubt differ with the extent of contact between ball and trough,
with the shapes of atoms, and with the speed of the ball. Such
factors may be the causes of the deviations between observed and
expected time ratios above reported. But it is hard to imagine how
this hypothesis could be tested quantitatively. Besides, Galileo
may have shied away from openly entertaining a hypothesis
deriving from Lucretius’s philosophy—such a move on his part
could have led to a new charge of heresy.
One of Lucretius’s doctrines appears to have played a seminal
role in Galileo’s thinking about falling bodies. Lucretius states
that, since bodies falling in the void meet with no resistance, all
fall with the same speed. He attributes the observed differences
in the rates of fall to the checking action of the medium, which
hinders the motion of lighter bodies more than that of heavier
bodies. Galileo in the Two New Sciences will reach an analogous
conclusion, but with a crucial difference: all bodies falling in the
void fall, not with the same speed, but with the same acceleration.
We recall that earlier, at the time of the De motu, Galileo had
thought that the rates of fall would be as the specific gravities
(weights per unit volume) of the bodies. That assertion differed
from the Aristotelian position, which made the speed of descent
proportional to the body’s weight. Galileo rejected the latter
position on the basis of the following argument. He hypothesized
that any heavy body that falls has its speed, or (if accelerated) its
�100
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
degrees of speed, fixed by nature, so that the speed or the acceleration cannot be increased or decreased without violence. (Thus
the argument applies whether the body falls with a constant or an
accelerated speed.) He then imagined two bodies equal in volume
and weight, e.g., two bricks. If let fall together, their speeds or
accelerations are equal, and they remain side by side. If tied
together so as to form the double weight, the result does not
change: they still fall with the same speed or acceleration, neither
“burdening” the other. Hence speed of fall cannot be proportional
to weight.
By the time he wrote the First Day of The Two New Sciences
(probably in 1634), Galileo had concluded that all bodies that fall
begin by accelerating, and he was hypothesizing that all bodies in
the void, independent of their specific gravities, accelerate with
the same acceleration. The reasoning leading to this conclusion,
as given in the Postils to Rocco (marginal notes on a work in
which Antonio Rocco attacked Galileo’s arguments in Two New
Sciences) proceeds as follows. He imagines two equal spheres,
one of gold and the other of cork, that are let fall from the same
height. Since both are surrounded by air, both are buoyed up by
the same force, equal to the weight of the volume of air they
displace (the buoyancy effect identified by Archimedes). Each
body in its motion will also be slowed by the viscosity of the air,
and this effect, since it derives solely from a property of the air,
would likewise be the same for both. Friction, which Galileo
explains as due to the sticking of particles of the medium to the
asperities of the body’s surface, can also be imagined to differ
negligibly in the two bodies (both could be covered by the same
surface material).
Finally, there is the resistance to the speed of each body,
which is greater for greater speeds. Galileo does not imagine that
this resistance can be eliminated practically (as it was a few years
later, after Galileo’s death, in experimentation with Torricelli’s
mercury barometer and with von Guericke’s air pump). But experience, Galileo tells us, suggests that this resistance is entirely
an effect of the medium. In a fall of the gold and cork spheres
through 100 braccia (150 feet?) in air, the gold, he asserts, will
REVIEWS | WILSON
101
precede the cork by two or three braccia. In a fall of 1 or 2 braccia
the difference all but disappears. If in a thin medium like air, differences of speeds all but disappear, then, Galileo claims, we are
entitled to hypothesize that in a vacuum the speeds would be
identical. For this conclusion, we note, Galileo can claim only a
hypothetical status.
Galileo’s Third Day of his Two New Sciences is in one respect
strange—even peculiar! The First and Second Days, dealing with
the strength of materials, are clearly about real material bodies.
The Fourth Day, likewise, deals with real projectiles, actual
bodies moving through the air and resisted by it in their motion.
The mathematical part of the Third Day, by contrast, is presented
as about points descending along inclined lines. Real bodies are
absent, as are real planes along which they could descend. Friction is nowhere mentioned. The idealization of bodies is at least
as drastic as that in Euclid’s Elements. Galileo’s adoption of this
extreme idealization may owe something to the seeming impossibility of eliminating the effect of the medium, and the difficulty
of quantifying the effects of friction.
Among the numerous theorems proved in the Third Day is
the “expansion theorem”: points falling simultaneously along
variously inclined lines starting from a single point as origin are
all at each instant on the surface of an expanding sphere. Galileo
has the interlocutors of his dialogue engage in a considerable
discussion of this theorem. It may be, Palmieri suggests, a relic of
an earlier project to elaborate a Lucretian cosmogony starting
with point-atoms—another dangerous project which Galileo may
have relinquished to avoid further conflict with the papacy.
Early in his book Palmieri cites John Dewey’s Experience
and Nature for its “take” on Galileo’s quest for a science of
nature. To Dewey, Galileo’s turn to active, controlled experimentation represented a radical challenge to the Graeco-Christian
spectator-theory of knowledge. In Aristotle’s philosophy, as coopted by Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, high value
was placed on detached contemplation of the world. The human
being was seen as situated at the center of the cosmos, empowered to survey and understand its parts. But in Dewey’s pragma-
�102
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tist perspective, true knowledge can be gained only by intervening in the world and attempting to bring disturbing or confusing situations under control. Detached contemplation is “out of
touch,” powerless to penetrate the intricate mysteries of the
world. Only by intervening, risking mistakes and failure, can we
begin to learn the world’s ways.
Was Galileo self-conscious about the revolutionary break he
was making with the methodology of earlier natural philosophy?
Palmieri in his Chapter 7 adduces three pieces of evidence
suggesting that he was.
During his three-year professorship at the University of Pisa
(1589-1592), Galileo had as friend, tutor, and colleague the
professor of Platonic philosophy, Jacopo Mazzoni. Mazzoni was
a syncretist, seeking to show the compatibility of Plato and
Aristotle with each other and with Christianity. He was, indeed,
the very model of a late sixteenth-century Graeco-Christian philosopher. Yet there was one opinion, apparently shared by Plato
and Aristotle, that Mazzoni took issue with, the opinion that
theoretical mind was categorically distinguishable in kind from
practical mind. Every branch of philosophy, Mazzoni insisted, has
both a theoria and a praxis. Each of these incorporates operations
directed toward particulars. In theoria such operations are for the
sake of propping up the truth; in praxis they are for the sake of
attaining the truth, and of finding the essence of things in the
order of existence. Such praxis Mazzoni saw as dangerously rushing toward particulars, plunging the seeker after truth into the
perilous world of the unstable, of the disturbed situation where
action can make the difference between failure and success. In
this characterization Galileo, struggling to make sense of his
results in the inclined plane experiment, might have recognized
himself.
Another glimpse into Galileo’s discomfort with the suffering
of experiential learning may be gathered from his Considerazioni
al Tasso. This consists of notes criticizing Tasso’s epic poem,
Gerusalemme liberata. The publication of the poem in 1581 had
sparked a lively debate among Italians as to its merit relative to
REVIEWS | WILSON
103
Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516). Pro-Ariosto by taste, Galileo
was vehemently anti-Tasso. He rejected Tasso’s treatment of the
human passions. Whereas in Ariosto’s poem there was a metamorphosis of res into verba, leading to a satisfying outcome,
Galileo judged Tasso’s poetry to lack poetic inspiration, and to
end up cobbling together fragmented concetti (imaginations)
lacking continuity and reciprocal dependence. The result was thus
like marquetry, in which colored pieces of wood are fitted together, and the border lines between pieces always remain sharp
and crudely distinguishable. Tasso had failed to realize that the
passage from res to verba must be dynamic, transformative.
Aficionados of Tasso found in his poetry a new conception of
human feeling: feeling as a force originating from deep sources in
the senses and the body, so strong at times as to overwhelm the
mind. Imitating the pathos in Tasso’s poetry became a project for
composers of madrigals like Monteverdi. The resulting works
were among those sharply criticized by Galileo’s father Vincenzo.
Vincenzo saw “modern music” as mixing together voices and
modes, diverse words (in polyphony), different rhythms and
tempos, and thus giving rise to disparate and confusing emotional
reactions in the intellect of the listener. The future of music,
Vincenzo urged, lay in resolving the polyphonic “confusion” of
voices of the madrigal into a monodic style of singing.
Vincenzo’s criticism of polyphonic music as fragmented and
unintelligible is closely parallel to the younger Galileo’s criticism
of Tasso’s poetry as marquetry. Palmieri sees Galileo’s disdain for
Tasso as a disdain for “the real, oblique, polyphonic nature of
experiential learning.” Galileo’s preference for Ariosto is “a preference for an ideal of experience in natural philosophy in which
he had been inducted by Mazzoni’s teachings.” But “Galileo’s
radically new practice of philosophy . . . had brought him face to
face with the reality of experiential learning.” A deep rift runs
through Galileo’s mind, as Palmieri reads him: on the one hand,
Galileo ardently strives after a science of nature—which requires
dealing with the reality of experiential learning; on the other
hand, he would like that science to conform to the ideal sketched
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
104
by Mazzoni. Perhaps, Palmieri suggests, Galileo was salvaging
something of Mazzoni’s ideal in his sanitized accounts of his
experiments.
Finally, Palmieri adduces a sonnet written by the dying
Galileo, giving it both in the original Italian and in a translation
by Dennis Looney. The latter runs as follows:
Enigma
Monster am I, stranger and more misshapen
than the harpy, the siren, or the chimera.
There is not a beast on land, in air or water
whose limbs are of such varied forms.
No part of me is the same size as any other part;
What’s more: if one part is white, the other is black.
I often have a band of hunters behind me
who map out the traces of my tracks.
In the darkest gloom I take my rest,
For if I pass from the shadows to bright light,
Quickly the soul flees from me, just as
The dream flees at the break of day.
And I exhaust my discombobulated limbs
And lose my essence, along with life and name.
Palmieri interprets the sonnet as a meditation on experiential
learning, caught between the polarities of individuality and universality. The metaphor of the monster captures the jagged contour of experience. The darkness is Galileo’s blindness, physical
as well as metaphorical. The hunters are his persecutors, real and
imagined. Only after death, with the loss of individuality, will the
light of truth shine forth. Thus Galileo recognizes that knowledge
is not coextensive with human experience. His sonnet refracts as
through a prism his lifelong pursuit of truth; an active engagement with the life-world, turning up more difficulty and more
unsolved conundrums than he has been able to cope with. The
strife, the tension, as he still relives it toward the end, is tragic in
its intensity. The only resolution is limitless relinquishment.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
104 pages
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
The St. John's Review, Spring 2011
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T. H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
McClay, Barbara
Sachs, Joe
David, Anne
McClay, Wilfred M.
Verdi, John
Petrich, Louis
Wilson, Curtis
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 52, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2011.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ISSN 0277-4720
St_Johns_Review_Vol_52_No_2_Spring_2011
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
St. John's Review
Deprecated: Directive 'allow_url_include' is deprecated in Unknown on line 0