1
20
4
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/568ad47ae544caa11b62da037a979e81.pdf
cde1daa212da77f14795c8731c3144fe
PDF Text
Text
1
"YOU ARE THAT!"
The Upanishads Read Through Western Eyes1
© Robert Druecker, February, 2008
The original title of this lecture-"'You Are That! "'-was a quotation, from the
Chandogya Upanishad, of an exclamation made several times by a man named "Uddalaka" to
his son Svetaketu. The "That" refers to a realm or state of being, known as "Brahman." One
who experiences it is called a "knower of Brahman" (brahmavid). Uddfilaka was a knower of
Brahman, speaking to his son out of his direct experience.
The classical Upanishads are expressions of and invitations to this direct experiencing.
So, understanding them is a matter of understanding what that experiencing is like, not a matter
of believing or knowing some truths about the world. Thus, the lecture, in elucidating the
meaning of its title, will convey a sense of the experience of Brahman, which is what the
Upanishads as a whole are about.
But, of course, their ultimate aim is not simply to produce understanding in this sense, but
rather to eventuate in the actual experiencing of the Brahman-realm. Even Sankara, the most
highly esteemed expositor of the Upanishads, a man noted for his theoretical acumen, wrote: .
One should consider theoretical reflection as 100 times more efficacious than
oral instruction, and meditation as 100,000 , times more efficacious than
theoretical reflection. As for [the direct experiencing of the Brahman-realm],
it has consequences which defy all comparison. ·
The revised title of the lecture is: '"You Are That!': The Upanishads Read Through
Western Eyes." For I have followed Aristotle's recorrimendation to begin with the things .best
.
.
.
.
known to us; where 'us,' in this case, ~efers to the St John's community. Thus,Part One will
give a sense of what the Brahman-realm is like by elaborating on an analogous experience in
Homer and Aristotle. Part Two, much of which will be delivered on Tuesday afternoon in the
Conversation Room, will elucidate the experiencing of Brahman in a more direct way.
�2
Finally, many of the writings in the Upanishads are dialogues involving a knower of
Brahman. Yajfiavalkya is the central figure in the conversations in the oldest Upanishad. In
working on this lecture, I have asked him, as a knower of Brahman, for some help. So, during
the lecture Yajfiavalkya will be providing us with his sense of what it is in Homer or Aristotle
that is analogous to the Brahman-realm.
�3
Part One: vos1v and Jl.w:iul (Conjunction)
A.Homer
Homer frequently refers to human beings or gods waking up to, or realizing, the full
significance of a situation (voEtv) or to their ability to do so (v6oc; in some uses). 2
Paradigmatically the verb in the aorist expresses an individual's sudden flash of insight.
Resisting his parents' entreaties, Hektor has held his position, as he watches Achilleus coming
toward him. He is pondering what might happen should he retreat or should he offer to return
Helen; but then Achilleus closes upon him: "And trembling took hold of Hektor when the
realization suddenly struck him [what single combat against Achilleus really meant], and he
could no longer stand his ground there, but ... fled, frightened ... " (I, 22.136-37). 3 When the
progressive aspect is used, it conveys the process of pieces gradually fitting together to form a
wholly new picture, as when Theoklymenos tells the suitors that the ·realization is dawning upon
him that there is an evil on the way which they will not be able to avoid (0, 20.367-70).
Because of the intensity of the character's involvement in the situation, the experienced
shift in significance is often accompanied by strong emotion, as seen in the Hektor-example
earlier. When the insight concerns an individual object, instead of a situation, then the
realization is always accompanied by such emotion; it is as if the shift in the meaning of the
situation were compressed into a single thing or person. So, Menelaos, having caught sight of
Paris, leaps down from his chariot. Then "when [Paris] realized the full significance of
· Menelaus standing there among the champions, the heart was shaken within him'~ (I, 3 .29-31~
the full significance being that Menelaus is drawing near, full of an overwhelming desire to kill
Paris.
�4
'Realization of significance' has a variety of meanings that spread over a directional arc. 4
A character begins in a situation in which he has already seemingly recognized (ytyvrocnct::tv) the
surrounding things or people as definite individuals that are familiar. Then their real significance
is awakened to, a corresponding emotional impact is experienced, and a way of dealing with the
newly perceived situation comes to light and the will to do so arises. Thus, the present naturally
extends itself into the future. When the primary meaning is at either end of this arc, the other
parts of the arc are co-present. Thus, when the emphasis is on present clarity of mind, as when
Kirke tells Odysseus that no magic can work on his ability always to realize what is the real
meaning of the situation in which he finds himself, the insightful character of his future aims,
plans, and actions is also on her mind (0, 10.329). Or when the accent is on willing an action in
the future, it iilVolves a clear vision in the present (e.g., I, 144-49).
The realization of significance may or may not be prepared for by a thought process. But
when it is, it itself is distinct from the preceding reasoning, in the same way as 'seeing' one of
Euclid's proofs is different from figuring out how it is justified in terms of previous propositions.
Yajfiavalkya now observed to me that realizing Brahman, too, could be characterized as
including an emotional response, joy (ananda), and a way of acting, calm responsiveness to the
whole situation.
The realization may penetrate to great depth and extend {ar in space and time, like
Theoklymenonos's referred to earlier or like that involving Athena when she speaks to Achilleus
as he is drawing his sword to kill Aga.inemnon-the breadth and depth of which took a whole
Dean's Lecture to elucidate a couple of years ago.
The more intense the situation and the deeper and broader the realization, the more likely
it is that the characters are raised above their ordinary abilities, so that they are able to see almost
�5
all the implications and consequences of the situation with unusual clarity and to act with
extraordinary foresight. This experience of being raised above the ordinary is a divine
manifestation. 5
Homer most often mentions Athena and Apollo in such moments. For instance,
Odysseus's sudden realization of the true meaning of return-its being the right time to reveal
himself to Telemachos-is the presencing of Athena (0, 16.155ff). And Hektor's sudden
waking up to danger when he was about to oppose Achilleus is Apollo's manifesting himself (I,
20.375ff). These two examples point to the difference between the two gods. Athena remains
untroubled and serene in the midst of action while she is discerning at every juncture what the
instant requires, is planning the deed with precision, and is poised and ready to bring it about
energetically. Apollo, on the other hand, is associated with a cognitive attitude of stately
objectivity and a ranging gaze, distance and freedom, clarity and good form. He is the god of the
saving, or preserving, awareness (crcocppocruvri) expressed in the Delphic dictum, "Know
thyself," meaning, 'Realize what human beings really are, that is, how great a distance separates
them from the omnitemporal gods' (HG, 216-17, 215, 52, 57, 59, 78-79, 66). Yajiiavalkya
remarked that such traits as serenity in the midst of action, the freedom of a ranging gaze, and
saving, or preserving, awareness pertain to the Brahman-realm as well.
In a manifestation of Athena or Apollo, the god is revealed as the very essence of the
realization. That is, the realization's ultimate meaning is that it is a ray of the divine illumining
· human life. Homer realizes that the complete lucidity in which we sometimes act Is a connection
. with something superior to us, even though we think of it as a quality of our own minds. In
decisive moments what a warrior realizes is both himself and the deity together (HG, 7, 247, 174,
184-85) . .Yajiiavalkya commented that in the Upanishads, this non-separateness of the human
�6
and 'divine' is known as "non-duality" (advaita; BU, N.3,32): "Whoever meditates on a
divinity that is other (anyiim) [than himself], thinking, 'This [god] is one (anyah), I am another
(anyah),' does not know ['I am Brahman']." (BU, 1.4.10).
Homer's recognition of moments in which the divine and the human are non-dual is
sharply opposed to a view that would see Athena and Apollo as external 'causes' of the events he
is narrating (HG, 213). Yajiiavalkya said that, somewhat similarly, we are invited to awaken to
Brahman not as an external cause but rather as what is most profound in our experience.
When the god is present in moments of non-duality, the warrior's ego and personality
recede into the background (HG, 241f). That sort of impersonality, which also characterizes our
moments of experiencing the truth of a Euclidean proposition, is inherent in the Brahman-realm,
according to Yajiiavalkya.
The divine coming-to-presence has been said to occur at "the critical moment when
human powers suddenly converge, as if charged by electric contact, on some insight, some
resolution, some deed." Lightning comes forth from the clouds to strike buildings or trees which
have risen from the earth; so, too, the divine suddenly emerges from the background to shock an
individual only when the individual has gone forth from himself toward the background (HG, 6,
210, 195). Yajiiavalkya noted that the instant1of recognition of the Brahman realm is _also
compared to "a sudden flash oflightning" (BU, 11.3.6; cp. KeU, IV.4). Moreover, he thought
that the going-forth toward the background might be, in some way, analogous to a 'movingtowards' Brahman, going-forth involved either in practicing meditation or in coming to wonder,
'Who aml?'
While, in the examples given so far, the divine manifestation has come _in an awakening
to significance or in an elaborating of a plan, this should not lead us to think that deity is
�7
encountered in the inward turn. The appearance of the goddess is not, for instance, Achilleus' s
pondering whether to kill Agamemnon or to check his anger (I, 1.193 ), but rather the resolution
of his introspection in a flash of certitude (HG, 174, 48). Yajfiavalkya agreed that introspection
neither characterizes the Brahman-realm nor is a means thereto. However, there is, he said, a
different sort of inward turn which can facilitate its realization.
There are many instances in which a god is there, at a moment when none of the
characters is aware of it. But at times, when awakening to the full significance of his situation, a
warrior may realize that his very awakening is itself the manifestation of a god. An interesting
example occurs when Poseidon appears to the Aiantes in the likeness ofKalkas. At first neither
brother is aware of the presence of a god; but, after Poseidon departs like a hawk, Aias son of
Oi:leus realizes that some god, whom he does not recognize, has addressed them, while
Telemonian Aias notices only his own increased strength and energy (I, 13.43-80). On other
occasions the human being recognizes the god by name--sometimes only after the encounter, but
sometimes already at its inception (HG, 207-08).
A god may be especially 'close' to a particular individual in that the human being
regularly displays the qualities of the particular god, as Athena acknowledges Odysseus does (0,
13.330-32; HG, 192-95). There is even one person who seems to be fully awake to
divin~
presence-Homer himself, who
sees events through and through even when the participants see only the
surface. And often when the participants sense only that a divine hand is
touching them the poet is able to name the god concerned and knows the
·
secret of his purpose. (HG, 195-96)
According to Yajiiavalkya this variation, .among human beings, in the frequency with which, and
degree to which, they notice the divine presence in moments of waking up to meaning matches a
corresponding variation in noticing Brahman.
�8
So far in Homer we have emphasized cognition. This is appropriate in that cognition in a
broad sense is the way in which we come to realize Brahman. However, it gives a distorted
picture of the world as Homer depicts it. For there are many gods-Ares, Aphrodite, Poseidon,
Hera, and others-who manifest themselves in the world in addition to the two who are
especially associated with realizing significance. Moreover, the appearance of a deity often
involves an inner phenomenon other than awakening, as when Hektor's body is "packed full of
force arid fighting strength" (I, 17.211-12) or when Athena puts "courage into the heart" of
Nausikaa (0, 6.140). Yajfiavalkya said that these phenomena of enlivening, energizing, and
strengthening were included, along with realization, in what the Upanishads call the "Inner
Controller" (antaryamin; BU, III.7.1). 6 Also, that Homer realized that they, too, were divine
manifestations shows that he did not think of non-duality as limited to cognition.
Second, a deity often manifests itself by affecting a character from outside. Most
notably, Patroklos's aristeia was put to an end by Apollo, who "stood behind him, and struck his
back and his broad shoulders with a flat
~troke
of the hand so that his eyes spun" (I, 16.791-92).
Yajfiavalkya pointed out that events like this might be echoes of Brahman as "pouring forth," or
"emitting," all things (MuU, I.1. 7). He added that just as Homer recognizes the one Apollo both
in his striking of Patrdclus and in Hektor's realization referred to earlier, so the Upanishads
express the realization that the inner controlling and the outer emitting are one, in stating: "This
Self is ... Brahman" (BU, II.5.19).
�9
B. Aristotle and Averroes
Now for help in thinking through the experiences highlighted by Homer, we turn to
Aristotle. In moments ofrealization, we are in a state of what he called "being-at-work," what
I'll call 'activity.' Activity is "complete over any time whatever"; it is not a temporal
phenomenon. In distinction from it, a motion "is in time and directed at some end ... and is
complete when it brings about that at which it aims" (NE, 1174a15-21). For example, whereas
the activity of dancing is 'all there' at each moment, the motion of learning to dance is complete
only when you've actually become a dancer.
Homer's gods Athena and Apollo are manifested in activities of ours which would be
"choiceworthy in themselves" (NE, 1144al) even if they didn't make anything in addition. The
active state of our ability to awaken to significance is what is best and most powerful in us and is
"either divine itself or the most divine of the things in us." When it is directed toward the most
divine, timeless things, it is a pure beholding (NE, 1177a13-21).
One living in this state of activity would be living a life that "is divine as compared with
a human life." Hence, Aristotle said, "one ought to immortalize" (NE, 1177b25-34). That is,
one ought to be as much as possible in this best state of activity, that of the immortals, like
Athena, in Homer or that of the impersonal divine in Aristotle. Wlien we are in that state, we are
for a period of time in the same state as the divine itself is in, over the whole oftime. 7 Moreover,
"each person would even seem to be_this [best state of activity]" (NE, 1178al). "[A]nd so the
person who loves and gratifies this is most a lover of self' (NE, l 168b33).
Yajfiavalkya commented that the Brahman-realm, too, has the characteristics of not being
a temporal phenomenon, of being a sort of pure beholding, and of being our true self. Moreover,
it, too, is impersonal, not divided up into essentially different Athena-moments and Apollo-
�10
moments. Finally, knowers of Brahman, living the life of their true self, are leading a life that
transcends the human. Thus, most of us live in ignorance of our true self.
But whereas Aristotle agrees formally with the implication of Apollo's "Know thyself,"
that we are ignorant of our true self, yet Aristotle's recognition of the true self as divine seems to
contradict Apollo's insistence on the separation between the human and the divine. Yaj:fiavalkya
said that when a similar contradiction is voiced in his tradition, the response offered is that the
contradiction is only apparent. Someone who took the "You" in "You are That!" to refer to his
ordinary sense of self, would be engaging in self-inflation. Students are encouraged to ponder
'Who am I?' as a practice, in order to shift them from the ordinary to the true sense of self. So,
Yaj:fiavalkya said, he and Aristotle could both take "Know thyself' in a double sense: 'With
respect to your ordinary sense of self, think mortal thoughts, but recognize that the true you is
divine activity.'
In On the Soul Aristotle began to sketch what might be entailed in realizing the
Aristotelian analogue to "You are That!" namely, the immortalizing involvement in the best
activity. One of Aristotle's foremost interpreters, Averroes has worked out a detailed portrait in
color, which fills in Aristotle's black-and-white sketch in a way that has interesting parallels to
'the Upanishadic picture. To that portrait'we now turn.8
We shall now refer to this best state of activity by its customary name in philosophical
texts, "intellection." In Aristotelian fashion Averroes began his account of intellection with what
is clearer to us and ended it with what is clearer by nature. There are three main figures in his
initial portrait-the "material intellect," the "disposed intellect," and the "agent intellect."
Averroes followed Aristotle's comparison of intellection to the action of a craft, in which
some material, like clay, receives a form, say, that of a bowl (OS, 430al0-14). When I acquire a
�11
simple intelligible, such as, 'straight line,' it is received as form by the material intellect-which,
not being corporeal, is material only in the sense that it serves as material-for. My disposed
intellect, 9 now having the acquired intelligible as an active disposition ('€~t~), is in what Aristotle
calls a first state of maintaining itself(' sxciv) in (' f,\I) its completed condition (r€A.o~), with
respect to this intelligible. Henceforth, we shall misleadingly say that it is 'in first actuality.'
The accomplished dancer, when not actually dancing, is a dancer in first actuality. When she is
actually dancing, she said to be a dancer 'in second actuality.' So, too, when I am actively
contemplating the intelligible 'straight line,' perhaps in the course of a demonstration, my
intellect is in second actuality.
According to Aristotle, "the soul never engages in intellection without an appearance"
(43 la24), which Averroes takes to mean imaginative appearance. 10 Thus, when I am led up to
(' cnayroyft) a particularly suggestive instance, say a good image of a straight line, that image is
what specifies that the material intellect will receive the intelligible 'straight line.' Averroes said
that the material intellect, as so determined by my imagination, 11 is "conjoined" with it and that
my disposed intellect is precisely this conjunction of the material intellect with my imagination.
One of the unusual features of Averroes's interpretation is that according to him there is
only one material intellect. My disposed intellect and your disposed intellect are the results of its
conjunctions with the different images in our respective imaginations; we actualize it differently.
In this way the one material intellect is said to be incidentally many. 12 Moreover, since my
imagination is corporeal, therefore, the intelligibles of mundane things in me and, consequently,
my disposed intellect itself are generable and corruptible. 13 Yajiiavalkya observed that one
might also say that the one Brahman is incidentally many individual selves (jfvatman).
�12
Now, before the intelligible 'straight line' can be received by the material intellect, what
is irrelevant in the image in which it is 'embodied' must be taken away ('acpmpsro). This
abstraction brings it into the state of actual intelligibility. To elucidate this act of abstraction,
Averroes referred to another of Aristotle's comparisons: The passage from potential to actual
intelligibility is like a color's transition from potential visibility to actual visibility when the
lights in a room are turned on. The 'light' that illumines the darkness of the image, producing
the abstraction of the latent intelligible, is the agent intellect.
However, this picture of the agent intellect as shining from the outside onto a potential
intelligible embedded in an image is only the way it first appears to us. Averroes said that if we
consider its role in the intellectual insights we have when we draw conclusions from the
intelligibles that we have acquired-perhaps, that one and only one straight line may be drawn
between two points-we come to a deeper view. In reality the agent intellect is related to the
intelligibles of my disposed intellect as form to material. It is somewhat as though the agent
intellect were a light 'full' of Color itself. What really happens when it shines on an image is
that the image's conjunction with Color itself draws out of the latter a particular color, one which
)
had been potentially within Color itself. Then that particular color is received by the material
intellect. Even in my acts of intellecting simple intelligibles in the world, the agent intellect is
incidentally in partial conjunction with my imagination. 14 I am to a degree intellecting it, so that
it, then, is at work as the form of my disposed intellect. 15
For Averroes this understanding of the agent intellect meant that it is itself the source of
the intelligibility of the corporeal world. For since the image arose on the basis of sense
perception of things in the world, the potential intelligibles in my imagination are due to the
potential intelligibles in the things in the world. Consequently, he took the agent intellect to be
�13
Aristotle's unmoved mover from the Metaphysics (1072b18-30; 1075a5-11). Hence, there is
only one agent intellect; and it is its very activity of unchanging, eternal self-intellection.
Correlatively the potential intelligibles of things in the world are their actualities, their being-atwork maintaining themselves in their respective states of completeness. The agent intellect is
responsible for their potential intelligibility in the following sense. For each of them its state of
completeness is the closest state to the agent intellect's self-intellection that its materials are
capable of attaining. 16 Yajiiavalkya noted that the agent intellect as responsible for all
intelligible being is somewhat analogous to the one source of all existence in his tradition.
But how can the self-directed intellection of the agent intellect be responsible for our
intellection of the intelligibles in things outside of itself in the world, when it and the object of its
intellection are absolutely one? As reflexively turned toward itself, it is not aware of the
multiplicity of the potential intelligibles of mundane things as such. Yet it nevertheless does
comprehend them, somewhat in the way that the craft of pottery-making, in a sense,
comprehends the forms of all the bowls for which it could be responsible. But to be actively
responsible for the intellection of this intelligible on this occasion, the agent intellect must also
be 'turned outwards,' as it were, away from itself, in order to shine on the appearances of
mundane things, in hu'man beings' imaginations.
As outward-turned, prior to illuminating the appearance, it seems to be lacking any
intelligible. And yet any one of them can be brought into focus from itself by an image. Thus,
surprisingly, the agent-intellect-as-turned-outward is pure potentiality, pure material-for; it is the
material intellect.
Ill order to appear as such, that is, as empty of intelligibles of mundane things,
it must become "temporarily ignorant of itself." 17
�14
This self-forgetfulness is concretely realized by its conjunction with our imaginations.
By virtue of that conjunction, the agent intellect becomes 'ignorant' of being the self-intellecting
source of all intelligibility; it appears, instead, in each of us in a double form-first, as our
partially actualized receptivities for intelligibles (our disposed intellects) and, second, as light
eliciting those intelligibles by abstraction from our images. At this point Yajfiavalkya interjected
that the agent intellect's ignorance of itself seems to be in amazing agreement with the role of
ignorance in the Upanishads: A knower of Brahman "knows knowledge and ignorance, both of
them, together" (IU, 11). For Brahman, too, turns outward, so that ignorance, that is, awareness
of multiplicity, is one of its aspects. 18 But Brahman is both knowledge and ignorance; the two
are inseparable. 19
From the human point of view, as I learn more, the agent intellect becomes the form of
my disposed intellect to an ever greater degree. In this way my three principal differences from
it will decrease. First, in acquiring more intelligibles, my disposed intellect becomes less and
less a partial view of the agent intellect. Second, in advancing to intelligibles which are less and
less referred to the corporeal world, my disposed intellect becomes more pure.
20
Third, in
coming to ever more encompassing intelligibles, it approaches the agent intellect's unitary
VlSIOn.
Ultimately, while still "in this life,"21 I may arrive at the point where I have acquired all
the intelligibles. 22 Then I will have achieved a state of complete conjunction23 with the agent
intellect. My disposed intellect will have lost all traces of individuality, 24 which are what made
it my disposed intellect; it will have perished as such. All of me that is not intellect is "cut off'
from my intellect, which is identical with the agent intellect. 25 In this sense the state of complete
conjunction has been said to involve an "existential break" from the world.
26
Once again
�15
Yajfiavalk:ya was surprised to recognize in this existential break an analogue in the Aristotelian
tradition, at such a deep experiential level, to a prominent feature of the realization of Brahman.
In complete conjunction I experience myself permanently27 as shining forth intelligibility,
but this 'myself is not the self! used to think I was. For the conjunction removes what had been
preventing my recognition of the ag~nt intellect as being my form. 28 Averroes said that then the
agent intellect, united with us as our form, functions as our sole operative principle. 29
We
might wonder what life in this state of conjunction would be like. One suggestion is that I might
experience it as "a wakeful loss of rationality," a loss of consciousness of my humanity. 30 I
would not be engaged in thinking things out; I would not be conscious of myself as an
individual, as a member of the human species.
Alternatively, guided somewhat by his own experience, Yajfiavalkya proposed that
perhaps I might be aware of myself (what Aristotle in the Ethics poi.rited to as my true self)
engaged in self-intellection, while simultaneously being aware of experiencing my ordinary self
involved in its everyday activities against this backdrop. Yajfiavalkya mentioned two
possibilities, the second of which was not analogous to his own experience. First, in each
instance of intellection, I could perhaps experience the agent intellect as transitioning from
unitary self-intellection to the offering of an aspect of itself to my imagination. Second,
analogous to the end of the path outlined in the Yoga-Sutras (that is, kaivalya), 31 it could be that
engaged in self-intellection I ignore and desist from everyday activities, and so, ultimately,
wither away and die_. 32
�16
1
NEH-supported lectures given at St. John's College, Annopolis, on February 15 and 19, 2008 and
dedicated to the memory of Ralph Swentzell, who did so much to further the study of Eastern Classics at St. John's
College.
2
This and the following few paragraphs are based on K. von Fritz, "NOO:E and NOEIN in the Homeric
Poems," Classical Philology 38. (1943), 79-93.
3
The translations from Homer are based upon those listed in the bibliography.
4
This "directional arc" is analogous, at a higher level, to Merleau-Ponty's arc intentionnel on ~e level of
sensing (Merleau-Ponty, 158).
5
The following few paragraphs are based on W. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek
Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954).
6
The Inner Controller is depicted mythologically as follows:
He entered in here right to the tips of the nails, as a razor slips into a razor-case ....
When he breathes he is called 'breath'; when he speaks, 'speech'; when he sees,
'eye'; when he hears, 'ear'; when he thinks, 'mind.' They are just the names of his
actions. Whoever meditates on any one of these does not know [the Self], for [the
Self] is not completely active in any one of them. One should meditate on them as
[being] simply the Self (BU, 1.4.7)
7
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1075a7-l l: "So, the condition the human intellect .. . is in at some period of time
... is the condition the intellection that intellects itself is iii over the whole of time." Cf.: "For the gods, the
whole of life is blessed, and for human beings it is so to the extent that there is in it some likeness to such a
state of activity" (NE, l l 78b25-26).
8
I am indebted to my colleague, Michael Blaustein, for a: very fruitful recent conversation about Averroes.
This section is based upon the works of Altmann, Black, Blaustein, Hyman, Ivry, Leaman, and Zedler
listed in the bibliography. Leaman and Zedler have been particularly helpful for the early part, but I have
taken most of it from Black. In the later part I have relied heavily on Blaustein's working out of the details
of the relation between agent and material intellects and have made significant use of Altmann and lvry,
especially the latter's thoughts about conjunction while we are still alive. However, responsibility for any
.
errors that there may be in the interpretation of Averroes is mine alone.
9
OSl...11 Y ~('aql bi al-ma/aka), which means intellect in natural disposition, aptitude, faculty; intellectus
in habitu.
10
Also: "the intellective [part of the soul] intellects the [intelligible] looks in appearances" (43 lb2).
I accept Nussbaum's (1978) suggestion about the meaning of <pavwia. It is based on such
passages as the following 428al, 7, 14ff, & 29ff; b30fi), wherein the link between <pav•o"ia and <paivi::cr0at
seems compelling.
11
In fact, for Averroes the imagination or, more properly, the cogitative power-which, together with the
imagination and memory; prepares what is given in sensation, so that, when illumined by the agent
intellect, the intelligible look can appear through and in-form the material intellect-is a fourth intellect, the
passible intellect (LC, 449.174, cp. 409.640).
"The cogitative power has the following functions : it can make an absent object appear as though
present; it can compare and distinguish the re-presented_objects with each other; it can judge whether a
given re-presented object bears a relation to a directly presented sense intention" (Zedler, 1954, 441).
12
Zedler, 1951, 175.
13
Yet because the human species is eternal, the succession of human souls in which intellection ofintelligibles of
mundane things occurs ensures the continuity ofintellection in the material intellect and the omnitemporality of the
intelligible looks of mundane things as such. Through the repeated presentation of potential intelligibles in
imaginative appearances, this succession "provides a replica in time and in matter of the eternal" intellection of the
agent intellect (Zedler, 1951, 173). It is possible that the belief that souls migrate into different bodies in succession
is a reflection in the form of popular myth of the truth of the omnitemporal unity of the material intellect in the
multiplicity of disposed intellects (Altmann, 82).
14
The agentintellect in this incidental connection would be what Aristotle referred to as the intellect that enters
from outside the door": "It remains then that intellect alone enters additionally into [the seed of a human being]
from outside the door (0upa0ev) and that it alone is divine, for corporeal being-at-work has nothing in common with
its being-at-work" (De Gen. 736b27). Cf:
�17
But the intellect seems to come to be in [us] while being an independent thing, and not to be
destroyed... . [I]ntellecting or contemplating wastes away because something else in us is destroyed,
but it is itself unaffected (without attributes). But thinking things through and loving or hating are
affections (attributes) not of the intellect but of that which has intellect, insofar as it has it. For this
reason, when the latter is destroyed, the intellect neither remembers nor loves, for these acts did not
belong to it but to the composite being which has perished; the intellect is perhaps something more
divine and is unaffected (OS, 408bl8ff).
What Averroes actually says is that the incidental connection constitutes a "disposition" [ ..il~I
(Isti'dad), which means readiness, willingness, preparedness, inclination, tendency, disposition, propensity;
dispositio] of the agent intellect, but one located within human souls. It is a disposition to receive the
intelligible looks of mundane things. Thus, the material intellect is in reality the agent-intellect-as-havingsuch-a-disposition-in-human-beings.
15
"[T]he material intellect is perfected by the agent intellect and intellects if' (Blaustein, 285; italics
added).
16
Based on Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072bl2: "[I]t is beautiful and in that way a source."
17
Blaustein, 214-15.
18
Aurobindo, 61-62 and 94.
19
Aurobindo, 58 and 72.
20
When my disposed intellect is actively engaged in intellecting an intylligible look, it is also intellecting
itself, since, as Aristotle points out, the intellect is one with what it intellects, in that the second actuality of
both is identical, as lumber's being built is one with the activity of building. In contemplating itself as
informed by the intelligible look, my intellect is also directed toward the image, which specified which
look was to be received, in the same way in which, when we look at a painting, we are directed toward the
scene which we see in it. However, since the mundane thing toward which the intellect is directed via the
image is not pure intelligibility, therefore, the disposed intellect's self-intellection is not pure selfintellection; its act ofintellection is not absolutely one with its object ofintellection (Blaustein, **). In this
way it differs from the self-intellection of the agent intellect. For the object of the agent intellect's
intellection does not point beyond itself.
21
lvry, 83.
22
What had been my intellect would now be either fully (Blaustein, 272, 283) or partly assimilated to the
agent intellect. That is, either 'I' would be engaged in intellection of everything intelligible or, having
abandoned all the contingent aspects of my intellection, I would be focusing solely on its formal aspects,
which are supplied by the agent intellect, so that I would be participating in an aspect of the formal
governing source of the whole (Leaman, 101-03).
23
Ji......wl (ittisal) = connectedness, unitedness, union; juncture, conjunction, link; connection; contact [from
J.,..._, (wasala) =to connect, join, unite, combine, link, attach]. Continuatio =a following of one thing after
another, an unbroken series, a connection, continuation, succession [from continuare =to join together in
uninterrupted succession, to make continuous]. Wasala may be a reformulation of Aristotle's 0\St~.
Altmann (83) states that the notion reflects Plotinus's cruvfut-rEtV [=(tr.) join together; II (intr.)
border on, lie next to; combine, be connected with]. Consider: "[W]e lift ourselves up by the part [of the
soul] which is not submerged in the body and by this conjoin at our own centres to something like the
Centre ofall things .... [W]e must suppose that [our souls conjoin] by other powers, in the way in which
that which is engaged in intellection naturally conjoins with that which is being thoroughly intellected and
that that which is engaged in intellection ... conjoins with what is akin to it with nothing to keep them
apart" (Plotinus, VI.9.8.19-30).
Altmann (83n) also mentions that Plotinus refers to his experience of union as a contact ('acpi]).
However, in Averroes "conjunction" is to be distinguished from "union": ..ib.wl (ittihad)= oneness,
singleness, unity; concord, unison, unanimity; combination; amalgamation, merger, fusion; union [from ..i:.._,
(wahada) =to be alone, unique; II to make into one, unite, unify; to connect, unite, bring together,
amalgamate, merge]. In Greek the corresponding word is 'tvmcru; = combination into one, union.
24
In its perfected state as engaged in intellection of the agent intellect, the disposed intellect is called the
"intellect that has arrived" (intellectus adeptus).
25
Blaustein, 272.
26
Altmann, 74, characterizing the position of Averroes' teacher.
27
Ivry, 83.
�18
28
Blaustein, 284. Cp. further: "[T]he material intellect's awareness of itself even when it is not thinking of
any intelligible form .... is itself kind of actuality, however empty. Averroes claims that this kind of selfawareness is in fact the obverse of the [agent] intellect's fully conscious awareness of itself; the material
intellect's awareness of its own potentiality is a dim awareness of its actuality as the [agent] intellect."
29
It is interesting to note that with respect to conjunction, the agent intellect exercises all four kinds of
responsibility that Aristotle describes in the Physics. It is responsible for my attainment of conjunction in
functioning as my end (tf:A.oi;). Moreover, it is responsible for the motion oflearning, by which I approach
conjunction; for my learning is really its producing intelligibles in me by revealing itself to me as the form
of my disposed intellect (Blaustein, 276-77). Since the agent intellect is what I am more and more coming
to intellect and, so, to be, it is also responsible for conjunction in the way a form is. Finally, it is also
responsible as material, since the material intellect is ultimately identical with it. The same could be said of
Brahman, with the key difference that its responsibility is not limited to the realm of intelligibility.
30
Blaustein, 272.
31
Patafijali, IV.34; see also Feuerstein's comment (p. 145). Kaivalya is "the aloneness" of seeing.
32
Finally, as far as Averroes' position with respect to individual immortality goes, there are two interesting
possibilities. He may have thought that the only immortality was the impersonal immortality of the state of
conjunction and that philosophers were orienting their lives accordingly. The belief in personal
immortality on the part of ordinary people would then be the closest approximation to the truth of which
they were capable. On the other hand, he may have held that while a few intellects may attain conjunction
of, all souls are immortal (Zedler, 1954, 451-52). There is a somewhat similar divergence in the
Upanishadic tradition between Sankara's position that the individual self is in a sense unreal and
Ramanuja's view that individual selves, while not independent, are real.
a
�19
Part Two: Cit (Pure Awareness)
To begin the final section, we return to Aristotle. In the Nichomachean Ethics, he states:
[O]ne who is seeing is aware ('mcr8cive-rat) that he is seeing, and one who is hearing
[is aware] that he is hearing, ... whenever we are perceiving [we are aware] that we
are perceiving and whenever we are engaged in intellection (vocoµev) [we are aware]
that we are engaged in intellection (l l 70a29-3 l). 1
To what aspect of experience is Aristotle pointing here? The prevalent view has been that he
means that, say, perceptual consciousness is accompanied by a reflection on, or a thought about,
that consciousness:2 'I know that I'm looking at you seated there before me.' However, this
seems to occur only intermittently. Hence, an alternative interpretation has been proposed3 that
perceptual consciousness is always selfaware, aware (of) itself,4 but not conscious of itself,
although, at any given time, we may notice selfawareness to a greater or lesser degree.
Yajfiavalkya emphasized to me that it is only through diligent practice that I could learn to
recognize the difference between reflective consciousness and selfawareness in my own
expenence.
To clarify the difference bet_ween selfawareness and reflective consciousness, we shall
draw upon some descriptions of experience by the philosopher J.-P. Sartre. 5 Consciousness is
necessarily always aware (of) itself, but precisely as being conscious of an object beyond itself.
"[T]his awareness (of) consciousness ... is not positional; that is, consciousness is not for itself
its own object. Its object is outside or'l.t by nature .... We shall call such a consciousness
'consciousness of the first degree' ... " (S, 23-14). In this lecture 'consciousness' will always
-mean positional consciousness, consciousness of ari object.
Let us take as an example of first-degree consciousness my perceptual consciousness-ofthe-microphone-on-the-lectern-say, in the mode of staring-at. 6 That perceptual consciousness
is not an object for itself, whereas the mike-on-the-lectern is an object for it. But in each such
�20
act of consciousness, there lives an attentive presence by virtue of which the consciousness is
aware (of) itself. When, as is usually the case, the attentive presence goes unnoticed, we
experience only a dim awareness (of) consciousness.
Yaj:fiavalkya interjected that in his tradition this awareness is called the "witness" (sakshz;
SU, Vl.12-14) and the selfaware quality of consciousness is called "self-luminousness"
(svajyotir). He added that this is what he was referring to when he said: "'You cannot see the
seer of seeing; you cannot hear the hearer of hearing; you cannot think of the thinker of thinking;
you cannot perceive the perceiver of perceiving'" (BU, IIl.4.2). And: "'It is the unseen seer, the
unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unperceived perceiver. Other than this there is no
seer, ... hearer, .. . perceiver"' (BU, 7.23). I responded that Sartre seemed to agree with him that
this awareness cannot be the object of consciousness: This sphere "is a sphere of absolute
existence, that is, of pure spontaneities, which are never objects ... " (S, 77).
As opposed to this selfaware, first-degree consciousness-of-objects, which makes up
most of our waking lives, there arises from time to time "a consciousness directed onto [the firstdegree] consciousness, [that is,] a consciousness which takes [the first-degree] consciousness as
its object." Sartre calls it a "second-degree" or "reflecting consciousness." Whereas in the
previous case there was no duality at all to synthesize, here "we are in the preserice of a synthesis
of two consciousnesses, of which one is consciousness ofthe other." When I think, 'Staring at
this mike on the lectern is wasting time,' this act of reflective consciousness involves a synthesis
of the thinking consciousness and the reflected-upon consciousness-of-the-microphone.
Moreover, just like a first degree consciousness, second-degree consciousness, here, my
thinking, is selfaware (S, 28-29).
-
When the thinking consciousness posits the previously unreflected-upon staring
consciousness as its object, it is not its own staring that it is positing. What the reflecting
�21
consciousness exclaims about the staring, concerns not itself, but the staring consciousness,
which is reflected upon. Hence, what reflecting consciousness is turns out to be selfaware
consciousness of another, prior, selfaware consciousness, which, in tum, is consciousness of an
object that is not a consciousness. It is truly re-fleeting, that is, bending backwards, to look at an
earlier moment of consciousness.
The fact that it is not its own staring that the thinking consciousness posits in reflecting
on the staring consciousness raises the question whether the I that seems to be thinking "is that of
the consciousness reflected upon" and not, in fact, an I supposed to be "common to the two
superimposed consciousnesses." Indeed, one suspects that the reason why every reflection
possesses a sense of self is that the reflective act itself gives birth to the sense of self in the
consciousness that is reflected upon (S, 28-29). 7 Sartre offers an example in order to test this
hypothesis:
... I was absorbed just now in my reading. I am going to seek to recall the
circumstances of my reading. . . . Thus I am going to revive ... also a certain thickness
. of un-reflected-upon consciousness, since the objects were able to be perceived only
by that consciousness and remain relative to it. That consciousness must not be
posited as the object of my reflection; on the contrary, I must direct my attention onto
the revived objects, but without losing sight of the un-reflected-upon consciousness,
while maintaining a sort of complicity with it and making an inventory of its content
in a non-positional way. The result is,,not in doubt. While I was reading, there was
consciousness of the book, of the heroes of the novel, but the I was not inhabiting that
consdousm;ss ... (S, 30; second set of italics added)
Here Sartre reawakens the original selfaware consciousness and dwells in the awareness.
That awareness is also a precondition for reflection. Should he reflect, 'I was absorbed in
my reading,' then, instead of dwelling in the awareness-component of the original consciousness,
he would, as it were, transform it into an act of consciousness, the object of which is the original
consciousness, (of) which the awareness was aware. An I is present to that second-order
consciousness. 8 So, we m~y call it 'self-consciousness.'
�22
Sartre goes on to propose how, based upon this I
of self as
or reflection, I go on to construct a sense
aunity, first, of states, like, for example, my hatred of Peter, then, of actions, like my
playing a piano sonata or driving to DC, and, finally, of qualities, like my spitefulness. For
instance, let us suppose a first-order consciousness of disgust and anger, together with the
perception of Peter. If the self-consciousness reflected only on what was appearing in the firstorder consciousness, it would be thinking, 'I feel disgusted with Peter.' But instead, the angry
disgust at Peter appears as a profile, or perspectival view, of a disposition, 'hatred of Peter,'
similarly to the way in which a house will show itself to me in different profiles, depending upon
where I am standing. The hatred appears to be showing a 'side' of itself through the momentary
experience of angry disgust. For the self-consciousness the angry disgust appears to be
emanating from the hatred. On a later occasion, perhaps, the hatred will itself appear to
refledion as an actualization of a quality of spitefulness, which is in Me (S, 45-46, 51, 53). But
in neither case does the self-consciousness realize that the hatred or the spitefulness is arising in
the moment of reflection; rather it supposes that the state or the quality was already there in the
first-order consciousness. 9
This process resulting in a sense of self leads me to say things like "my consciousness,"
when in fact "[t]he I is not the owner of consciousness; it is the object of consciousness" (S, 77).
Yajfiavalkya noted that a process of construction of the sense of self (aham-kara) figures
prominently in the Upanishadic tradition, too. It leads to the arising of many fears and desires,
which, in turn, function as barriers to the realization of Brahman by keeping us 'glued' to
objects. I responded that here, too, there is a remarkable agreement with Sartre, who wrote:
"But perhaps the essential role [of the sense of self] is to mask to consciousness its own
spontaneity. . . . Hence, everything happens as if consciousness ... were hypnotizing itself over
that sense of self, which it constituted" (S, 81-82).
�23
Usually we do not notice the awareness-aspect of consciousness because we are so taken
up with what is appearing to consciousness. Yet on occasion awareness may stand out in our
experience. For instance, some people are engaged in a heated discussion at an outdoor cafe. A
nearby car suddenly backfires. Several of the participants may be so caught up in the
conversation that they don't even notice the loud sound. Others may be startled and shift their
attention to the street. But someone who was anchored in awareness would notice, but not be
jarred by, the sound.
Another example: On a good day the football quarterback Joe Montana, at the top of his
game, would experience a pass play as follows. 10 He was conscious of the linemen rushing at
him, of his receivers running downfield, and so on. But instead oflooking with hurried, anxious
glances, he experienced an awareness spread over the whole unfolding scene. All the players
seemed to be moving in slow motion, and everything appeared with great clarity and
distinctness. He was keenly aware of his own body, the motions of his limbs and an overall
sense of relaxation, as his arm drew back and the ball headed toward the receiver. 11 Taken by
itself this example may mislead us into thinking that awareness is dependent on the attainment of
a certain l~vel of skill, in this case, that of an MVP quarterback. But the previous example and
the following one make it clear that this is not the case.
A third illustration: Some automobile drivers-when they are not too distracted by their
thoughts--experience freeway traffic as follows: 'First, one driver cuts me off; then a slowpoke
is holding me up. My consciousness narrows to focus on the offending driver; and, irritated, I
react by honking or suddenly changing lanes.' Another driver may perceive the same cars on the
beltway as if they were moving in a force field. She is aware of that field as calling forth the
alterations in her driving required in order to maintain a smooth flow of traffic.
�24
A fourth instance: "Surgeons say that during a difficult operation they have the sensation
that the entire operating team is a single organism, moved by the same purpose; they describe it
as a "ballet" in which the individual is subordinated to the group performance ... ~· 12
The following story shows a transition out of awareness into consciousness:
Suppose a woman is engaged in sewing something. A friend enters the room and
'begins speaking to her. As long as she listens to her friend and sews in [awareness],
she has no trouble doing both. But if she gives her 'attention to her friend's words and
·a thought arises in her mind as she thinks about what to reply, her hands stop sewing;
if she turns her attention to her sewing and thinks about that, she fails to catch
everything her friend is saying, and the conversation does not proceed smoothly. In
either case . . . . she has transformed [awareness] into thought. As her thoughts fix on
one thing, they're blank to all others, depriving the mind of its freedom. 13
This example enables us to avoid the misconception that awareness is incompatible with words.
For it was a shift in the way in which she attended to speech, or to her sewing, that led to the
woman's loss of the ability to attend to both simultaneously.
A final case, as described by Merleau-Ponty (1945): Being most of the time in the
consciousness-mode, we live in a world that "only stirs up second-hand thoughts in us." Our
mind is taken up with "thoughts, already formulated and already expressed, which we can recall
silently to ourselves and by which we give ourselves the illusion of an interior life. But this
supposed silence is in reality full of words rattling around." However, occasionally we may
"rediscover primordial silence, J.nderneath the words' rattling around." Then we pass from the
mode of consciousness-of-objects to dwell in awareness. We experience "a certain emptiness,"
"a certain lack which seeks to fill itself," to be transformed into speech (213-14). Then there can
emerge "an authentic word, one which formulates something for the first time"-such as "that of
the child who is pronouncing her first word, of the lover who is discovering his feeling" (207..,
08), or of "the writer who is saying and thinking something for the first time" (214). In the mode
of awareness, we can live through a sort of original emergence.
�25
Words usually serve to keep our thoughts moving within already formulated articulations.
They could be said to function like "preciptitates" (Niederschlage) 14 of previous 'chemical
reactions,' whether our own or others'. However, when awareness becomes prominent, it acts as
a catalyst, which facilitates a fresh chemical reaction.
All the examples manifest an awake, keen involvement in experience together with an
absence of the sense of self and of self-focused emotions and motivations from the foreground.
And each of them foregrounds a different property of awareness in turn-'unstuckness' to
objects, 'spaciousness,' not merely in the spatial and the temporal senses, responsiveness to
dynamic qualities of the surrounding field, organic connectedness with who or what 15 is in the
field, moving out of awareness with the arising of a directing I, and a sense of emptiness out of
which newness arises spontaneously.
We might say that a good seminar could give evidence of some of these signs of
increased awareness. If over time the participants have developed seminar skills, as the surgical
team developed surgical skills, it could become experienced as a ballet. Along with the
development of those skills, some of the members may have cultivated their awareness to some
degree, paralleling the range of levels of awareness in the operating team. That cultivation may
e_nable them to experience "a certain emptiness," from which an "authentic word" may emerge
with greater frequency.
Such characteristics of awareness as those listed above have-led people in certain
pursuits, such as martial arts, to seek to cultivate it, so that it will become reliably foregrounded.
In developing a painterly vision, 16 for instance, one must learn to forget what things are, in order
to see how they are actually appearing to the eye, which means, how they are coming into being
before our eyes. As Merleau-Ponty says of Cezanne: "It is the mountain that he interrogates
�26
with his gaze. What exactly does he ask of it? To unveil the means, visible and not otherwise,
by which it is making itself a mountain before our eyes." 17
We might expand on this account in the following way. As a potential painter's
awareness becomes more prominent, she no longer sees things as already 'finished off,'
but~
instead, as having a potential for greater 'aliveness.' It is as if they were calling to her to join in
their emergence. Then she may heed the appeal and begin to paint. Now it is this particular .,
piece of fruit before her that she captures "coming into being before [her] eyes" in such a way
that it can do so later before our eyes. 18
Another example of the cultivation of awareness is found in psychoanalysis. Freud, in
his recommendations on the proper attitude to be adopted by the analyst, counsels a state of mind
characterized by, first, the absence of reasoning or
deliberate attempts to select, concentrate or understand; and [second] even, equal and
impartial attention to all that occurs within the field of awareness. . . . This technique,
says Freud, " .. . consists simply in not directing one's notice to anything in particular
and in maintaining the same 'evenly suspended attention' (as I have called it) in the
face of all that one hears ... " 19
That is, the analyst deliberately withdraws from consciousness-of-objects and dwells in the
awareness component of consciousness. This open attentional attitude is to be distinguished, on
the one 1hand, from a merely passive attention, in which the mind wanders freely from object to
object, and, on the other, from a focal attentional attitude, searching for a particular meaning. 20
Partly because evenly suspended attention was criticized as unattainable,21 Freud's prescriptions
to practice it did not become integrated into psychoanalytic training programs.
However, Wilfred Bion, probably the most thoughtful psychoanalyst of the latter part of
the twentieth century, forcefully advocated this practice in the following terms:
[T]he capacity to forget, the ability to eschew desire and understanding, must be
regarded as essential discipline for the psycho-analyst. Failure to practise this
discipline will lead to a steady deterioration in the powers of observation whose
maintenance is ~ssential. The vigilant submission to such discipline will by degrees
�27
strengthen the analyst's mental powers just in proportion as lapses in this discipline
will debilitate them.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
To attain to the state of mind essential for the practice of psycho-analysis I
avoid any exercise of memory.. . . When I am tempted to remember the events of any
particular session I resist the temptation.... If I find that some half-memory is
beginning to obtrude I resist its recall.. ..
A similar procedure is followed with regard to desires: I avoid entertaining
desires and attempt to dismiss them from my mind. For example, ... it interferes with
analytic work to permit desires for the patient's cure, or well-being or future to enter
the mind. Such desires .. . lead to progressive deterioration of [the analyst's] intuition.
[There is an aspect of ultimate reality] that is _currently presenting the unknown and
unknowable [in the consulting room]. This is the 'dark spot' that must be illuminated
by 'blindness' [that is, ignorance]. Memory and desire are 'illuminations' that destroy
the value of the analyst's capacity for observation as a leakage of light into a camera
might destroy the value of the film being exposed. 22
The effect of not following this discipline is to interpret what the patient says in terms of
what the analyst wishes or already 'knows,' thus closing her off from what may be emerging for
the frrst time in the current hour. Bion's psychoanalytic state of mind is comparable to Socratic
ignorance. Both represent an opening of oneself, in a conversation, to notice possibilities
springing up that would otherwise remain unthought.
Another area in which a practice has been advocated for the enhancement of awareness is
philosophy. In the early twentieth century, Edmund Husserl proposed pursuing wisdom by
following a path that he called "phenomenology." By this he meant an account of the things
I
appearing to you precisely in the way in which they actually appear.
Philosophy students sometimes think that studying phenomenology entails mainly
reading books. However, learning to see the things appearing to you precisely in the way in
which they actually appear takes practice. Martin Heidegger, Husserl's best known student, had
great difficulty at the beginning of his study of phenomenology.
It concerned the simple question how thinking's manner of procedure which called
itself "phenomenology" was to be carried out.~ .. My perplexity decreased slowly ...
only after I met Husserl personally in his workshop .. .. Husserl's teaching took place
in a step-by-step training in phenomenological "seeing" which at the same time
demanded that one relinquish the untested use of philosophical knowledge.... I
�28
myself practiced phenomenological seeing, teaching and learning m Husserl's
proximity after 1919.23
The phenomenological seeing that one would practice is founded on an act called "the
phenomenological reduction." While it was instituted in the service of phenomenological
philosophy, Husserl was aware of the effect it could have by itself upon the person practicing it:
Perhaps it will even turn out that the total phenomenological attitude, and the
[reduction] belonging to it, essentially has, first of all, the vocation of effecting a
complete personal transformation, which would, in the first place, be comparable to a
religious conversion, but which beyond that contains within itself the significance of
being the greatest existential transformation to which humanity as humanity is
called.24
Yajiiavalkya noted that the designation "greatest existential transformation"-like the earlier
"existential break" associated with conjunction in Averroes-fits the experience of "waking up
to" (pratibodham) Brahman as well (KeU, II.4).
In characterizing the phenomenological reduction, I shall borrow the descriptions of the
later Husserl's closest collaborator, Eugen Fink, because they are vivid and strongly suggestive
of awakening to Brahman.
25
The phenomenological reduction is a two-part act (F, 41). Husserl
called the first component of that act a "disconnection" (Ausschaltung), or an "epoche," a
suspension ('s7toxft), of the "natural attitude," the attitude in which we take things for granted, or
as a matter of course (selbstverstdndlich).
Disconnection means that you deliberately abstain from all beliefs; you inhibit your
accepting of all the things you take as what 'counts' (Geltendes) for you (F, 3 9-40). You cease
living in acts of positional consciousness in Sartre's sense. As we observed Sartre doing, while
remaining disconn.ected you turn your attention from the objects of consciousness to the
consciousn~ss-of-objects.
You are not caught up with objects, but are attentively.'spread' over
the whole of consciousness~of-objects, without positing that as
an object. And you alter your
mode of attention from an active searching-for to a receptive letting-things-come. You are
�29
learning to do something involuntary, somewhat like preparing to receive "the visitation of
sleep," which comes in the way as the god Dionysus visits his followers, when they no longer are
distinct from the role they are playing. 26 You are not gradually acquiring things in the way the
disposed intellect acquires intelligibles.
The disconnection includes the "nullification" of the sense of yourself as an empirical
human being-it "un-humanizes" (entmenschlicht) you-in that it "lays bare the ... onlooker"
"already at work" in you, into which you now "fade away" (F, 40). In the terminology of this
lecture, you disidentify with your sense of self; and you pass into awareness rather than in
consciousness. Yajfiavalkya interjected that, involved in the realization of Brahman, there is a
similar correlation of the "de-construction of the sense of self' (nir-aham-kiira) with a fading
away into the onlooker, that is, the "witness," which was already at work.
You are now in a position to notice precisely what appears to you in just the way in
which it appears. As with Freud's evenly suspended attention, all the phenomena are treated
equally; none is assumed in advance to have priority over the others. As in the case of painterly
vision, you are not imposing your knowledge on your experiencing; you are operating 'prior' to
your identification of things or events. Your going backwards involves a sort of reversal of the
outward-turning action ofthe~agent intellect. For, viewed on one level, the agent intellect
elicited intelligibles from their latent state in the appearances, while the disconnection goes back
behind those intelligibles, which, due to language, are already at work in our ordinary experience
of the appearances. In its receptive attentiveness the disconnection has an 'empty' relationship
to experience, perhaps somewhat like the agent intellect in its 'empty' state as material intellect.
The second component of the phenomenological reduction is a leading-back, the reducing proper. 27 In it, "while explicitly inquiring backwards behind the acceptednesses ... with
respect to your belonging to the world," the onlooker blasts open (sprengen) with insights your
�30
"being held captive by your captivation" (Befangenheit) with the world. You experience this as
a "breakthrough" (Durchbruch; FK, 348). As a result you discover for the first time that
underlying all of your experiences has been a primordial conviction (Urdoxa in Husserl), an
unformulated, implicit acceptance of the world and of yourself as belonging to it (F, 40-41 ).
Here "world" refers, not to the collection of all things, but to what is originally given as a
universal background, i:h the way a horizon is given for vision. While particular beliefs of yours
may have occasionally broken down, that did not shake your implicit acceptance of the horizon.
You are now sharing in the onlooker's awareness of the world, which is the "universally
flowing and continuing [world-]apperception," the "underground" (Untergrund) out of which
every act of consciousness springs up.
In this sense phenomenology is said to make the
ultimate ground of the world available to an experience (FK, 349, 352, 340),28 one in which we
experience "how ... the world is coming about for us."29
Yajfiavalkya accepted that painterly vision, evenly suspended attention, and the
phenomenological reduction are at least partial Brahman-experiences, ones that go beyond the
spontaneously arising Brahman-moments on the football field or on the highway. However, he
pointed out two differences. First, they are cultivated in the service of other ends, painting,
healing patients, or pursuing wisdom, whereas realization of Brahman is the supreme end (BU,
IV.3.22), pursued for its own sake. Second, in the other contexts awareness is to be actualized
only on particular occasions, before the canvas, in the consulting room, or in the
phenomenological "workshop," whereas one remains continually in the Braliman-realm.
I responded that, according to Husserl, in going about the course of ordinary life, the
phenomenologist has the epoche as "an active-dispositional30 attitude to which we resolve
ourselves once and for all" and which "can be actualized again and again,"31 like the dancer's
repeated re-actualizing of the dancing that she has as a first actuality. I told him that this raised
�31
the question for me whether the knower of Brahman could be said to be Brahman in this
dispositional sense.
In the Upanishadic tradition you may engage in a meditative practice, in which you could
pass through several stages. At the beginning you deliberately concentrate and turn your
consciousness inward, whil~ endeavoring to dwell more and more in awareness. 32 You need to
keep reminding yourself to notice the awareness, which is always there. Initially you cannot
accomplish this while you are doing something else, because a thing or event always captures
your attention.
After a while you will be able to maintain this centering of yourself in awareness. While
· your mind gradually has become dominated by awareness, you still occasionally experience
moments of conscious reflection on the immediately preceding moment of awareness. 33 You are
now "allowing the mind to fluctuate." 34 The following analogy may convey some sense of what
that is like. "Suppose a neighbor were to ask you to look after her children .... When the
children come you could take one of three different courses of action." You could abandon
responsibility by telling them that they can do whatever they want as long as they don't bother
you. Or you could try to control them by telling them what to do and not to do. Or, finally, you
could~
allow the children to play. This "allowing" is not active, since you do not interfere. It
is not passive, since you are present with the children ... in a total way. It is like a cat
sitting at a mouse hole. It appears to be asleep, but let the mouse show but a whisker
and the cat will pounce. It is only by allowing that one truly understands what
allowing means.
'Allowing' brings awareness to the fore in a way that pushing away and controlling do not. 35
You are aware of movements from focused to unfocused consciousness, of shifts from perceptual
to thinking consciousness, of fluctuations from consciousness-of to empty awareness, and so
�32
forth, as well as of the reversals of all these. "Allowing is ... , so to say, what fluctuating
awareness is 'made of.'"
Eventually no reflection is experienced any more; this total wakefulness, completely
purifies one of the 'sleepiness' which is what the 'habit' of consciousness really is. 36 To be
aware you don't have to be conscious ofsomething; nor do you need to be someone, much less
someone special. 37
Positional consciousness-of-objects, which was first for us, here shows itself to be, in
fact, a derivative of non-positional awareness, which is what is first in itself. Initially
consciousness seemed to have the component of awareness; but now we may say that awareness
sometimes manifests itself partially in the form of consciousness-of-objects, while in itself it is
pure awareness (cit). Again, this is quite analogous to what Averroes said of the agent intellect.
In itself it is pure, having no reference to the world; but, through its outward turn, it conjoins
itself to our imaginations, resulting in the emergence from it of particular intelligibles.
Upon emerging from this absolute silence, you may be so forcefully struck by something
in the world that you consciously recognize that you are just pure awareness.3 8 You
momentarily become conscious of this objectless being "present with the children ... in a total
way" as yourself. You are now conscious of havib.g arrived in the Brahman-realm.39
Yajiiavalkya interjected that this recognition is what is expressed in the words: "I am Brahman!"
(BU, I.4.10). He added that this experiencing of pure awareness is what he was referring to
when he had said:
· "Though then he does not see [any thing], yet he does not see while seeing. There is
no cutting off of the seeing of the seer .... But there is no second (dvitfyam), no other
(anyad), separate from him, that he could see .... When there is some other (anyad),
then one can see ... the other." (BU, IV.3.23 & 31)
�33
I said to Yajfiavalkya that, according to this account, pure awareness seemed to be empty.
He responded that while it is empty of objects, it is full in the sense that it is an experiencing of
the moment-to-moment "going forth of things in different directions" (vyuccaranti), like "sparks
from a fire" (BU, 11.1.20). Alternatively it is an experiencing of the whole's springing forth
(sambhavati), which is like a spider's emitting (srjate) of a thread of its web or like plants'
springing up from the earth (MuU, 1.1.7). It is as if in pure awareness we had 'gone backwards'
to a point just 'before' things, self, and world emerge. I told him that what he'd said reminded
me of a passage in Sartre: "Thus, each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex
nihilo .. .. this inexhaustible creation of existence of which we are not the creators" (S, 79).
Yajfiavalkya continued by pointing out that what he had just said about pure awareness
being full is conveyed by the traditional name for the Brahman-realm, 'saccidananda.' The
three parts of the one word express the oneness of pure existence (sat), pure awareness (cit), and
pure joy (ananda).
Since there is no 'of,' as in 'consciousness-of,' awareness is pure sat rather
than being conscious of it. I said that Fink seemed to be giving voice to the same experience
when he referred to the unique identity of the onlooker and the universally flowing worldapperception (FK, 355). As "there is ... no other (anyad), separate from him, that he could see,"
so there are no objects to separate the onlooker from the flowing world-apperception.
Yajfiavalkya's report about the oneness of existence and awareness brought to my mind
something in the Thomistic branch of the Aristotelian tradition, which could make that oneness
partly understandable to me. I mentioned it to Yajfiavalkya: Thomas understood each of us to
·exist by virtue of a separate act of is-ing (esse), which is other than our essence, our humanity. A
human being is, not by virtue of being human, but by participation in, or reception of, is-ing
from, absolute Is-ing, just as a piece of wood that is afrre is so by participation in Fire (ST, Q.3,
A.4r). Absolute Is-ing is like the Sun, and a human being is like some part of the air. Each
�34
individual instantiation of the intelligible human essence remains illuminated, that is, continues
is-ing, only as long as absolute Is-ing is shining on it (ST, Q.8, A.Ir). That is why Thomas states
that what we ca// 'creation' is, in fact, an ongoing "flowing out, arising, springing out"
(emanatio) (ST, Q.44, A.Ir) from absolute Is-ing. This much ofThomas's view can help us to
understand how the Upanishadic experience of cit is an experience of sat.
Jacques Maritain applied Thomas' s understanding of the distinction between esse and
essence to interpret the experience of the knower of Brahman in the following way. 40 In
reflecting consciousness we experience our soul in its acts. What we experience in reflection is
not our intelligible essence but rather our self "prisoner of the mobility, of the multiplicity, of the
fugitive luxuriance of the phenomena and the operations which emerge in us from the night of
the unconscious-prisoner of the apparent self'(I45-46). But, as we have seen, the cultivation
of awareness, instead of consciousness or reflecting consciousness, enables those on the path to
realizing Brahman to pass from ordinary self-conscious experience "to an exceptional and
privileged experience, emptying into the abyss of subjectivity, ... to escape from the apparent
self, in order to reach the absolute Self'(I46). These practitioners "strip themselves of every
image, of every particular representation, and of every distinct operation to such a degree that ...
they reach not the essence df their soul but its existence, substantial1 esse itself'(I 48), "by an ...
annihilating connaturality"(I46), in the absolute silence of total wakefulness.
[F]rom the fact that existence is ... limited only by the essence that receives it ... one
can understand that this negative experience, in reaching the substantial esse of the
soul, reaches, at once, both this existence proper to the soul and existing in its
metaphysical profusion and the sources of existing, according as the existence of the
soul . . . is something that is emanating and is pervaded by an inflow from which it
holds everything.... It is the sources of being in his soul that the human being reaches
in this way." (153-54)
Thus, through practice, in experiencing pure awareness (cit), the knower of Brahman
has come to experience herself as the inflow of is-ing flowing out from abso.lute Is-ing
�35
(sat). One might say that the transition from experiencing myself as witness to
recognition of pure awareness is like going from having my finger on the pulsing of
the world to recognizing my finger as the pulsing of the world. Yajfiavalkya added
that Maritain's interpretation at least clearly distinguished the Sun of Averroes's
outward-turned self-intellection of intelligible essences from the Sun of outflowing
selfaware existence.
Now we are in a position to say that when Svetaketu realizes "You are That," he is
experiencing himself as the outflow of sat and recognizing as his true self pure awareness (of)
the moment-to-moment flying out of sparks, which are 'on the way' to becoming things-and
that this recognizing is that very going forth. Moreover, in this recognition Svetaketu is what is
recognized: "One who knows the supreme Brahman becomes that very Brahman" (MuU, IIl.2.9;
cp. BU, IV.4.13) and "becomes this All" (BU, I.4.10).
As earlier we wondered what the daily experience of the state of complete conjunction
would be like, so now the analogous question arises with respect to the Brahman-realm. In the
discussion of the phenomenological reduction, I had raised the possibility that we could acquire
pure awareness as a first actuality, in the sense of an active disposition. The knower of Brahman
would then alternate between pure awareness and consciousness-of, in the way that I can 'turn
on' my contemplation of the Pythagorean Theorem as I wish. This suggestion would parallel
Aristotle's experience that we are for intermittent periods of time in the same state as the divine
itself is in over the whole of time. The difference would be that instead of turning from one
mode of consciousness, say, perceiving or thinking, to a different one, intellecting, the knower of
Brahman would alternate at will between two different ways of total experiencing, between
consciousness and pure awareness. It would be somewhat analogous to looking at the.well. known duck-rabbit ambiguous figure and seeing it now as a duck, now as a rabbit.
�36
However, Yajfiavalkya said that living in the Brahman-realm is, instead, like a
hypothetical double seeing of both the duck and the rabbit at once, rather than like a seeing of
them in altemation. 41 The knower of Brahman is engaged with consciousness-of while
simultaneously remaining in the realm of pure awareness. The following analogy conveys
something of this:
The ordinary person only sees the reflection in the mirror but the realized person sees
the reflection as well as the mirror. "For instance you see a reflection in the mirror
and the mirror. You know the mirror to be the reality and the picture in it a mere
reflection. Is it necessary that to see the mirror we should cease to see the reflection
in it?" Similarly, the realized one continues to experience the world in his realized
state. Thus the realized person appreciates ''the distinctions" of sound, taste, form,
smell etc. "But he always perceives and experiences the one reality in all of them."42
Brahman-knowers' experiencing of the everyday world inthe mirror of purified awareness
enables their keen yet calm involvement in that world. In the analogy we could take 'seeing the
reflection' to stand for consciousness of the world, and 'seeing the mirror,' for pure awareness.
When I see the mirror along with the reflections, the latter are not being viewed 'from outside,'
as they are in the mode of consciousness, but rather as emerging out of awareness. One might
also apply the analogy to the self by saying that knowers of Brahman experience their ordinary
selves, too, as being virtual images cast by the mirror.
,
1
The mirror analogy may be applied to the modes of experiencing other than those
encountered specifically in meditative practice. Consciousness-of-objects-whether perceiving,
sensing, emoting, evaluating, thinking, and so on-and self-consciousness, too, are like a vision
of things in the virtual space of the mirror. There are two fundamentally different modes of
consciousness-of-objects, depending upon whether or not the object in question is an object in
the true sense. When it maintains itself throughout a succession of acts of consciousness of it, it
is an object in the etymological sense that it is something set or put (-jectum), before or over
against (ob-) the act of consciousness. This setting-over-against is what is meant by 'subject-
�37
object duality.' Such an object shall be referred to henceforth as an "Object." It has an identity,
to which we may return again and again.
The following example illustrates the different layers that may arise in perceptual
consciousness-of-Objects. It begins with the emergence of an hnplicit Object from the
background, continues with a prepredicative explicating of it, and goes on to various layers of
predicative development in the following way. While I am engaged in seminar, someone's
coffee cup may emerge from the margins of my consciousness and may attract my attention and
become an explicit object of consciousness. My attention may travel from its color to a figure on
the side, and then to its overall shape, and so on. 43 Then my interest may awaken sufficiently, so
that I think, 'The cup has a circular figure on the side.' This shift represents a transition from the
cup's just previously having become implicitly determined as having a circle on its side to its
being grasped in an active identification as determined by the circle on its side. 44 Then I may
think, 'The fact that the cup has that circular figure on its side is puzzling. I wonder what it
stands for.' My thought may subsequently be led to such Objects as 'the circular,' 'shape in
general,' and 'property.' 45
'Prior' to such perceptual consciousness of Objects and its developments, there is a
sensory consciousness of objects, which has beer\. vividly described by Erwin Straus. 46 We sense
objects in the same way in which we respond to the dynamic quality of a tone, which is "a state
of unrest, a tension, an urge, almost a will to move on, as if a force were acting on the tone and
pulling it in a certain direction."47 We are in a symbiotic relation (200) with the 'tones,' to which
we respond with incipient movements as we do to dance music (239). This pre-linguistic,
flowing realm is the ground from which Objects emerge (204). We live simultaneously in the
. Objective and the sensory and may experience the tension between them, as the latter resists
being fit into the former. Some people may be especially attracted to the loss of their stance
�38
over-against Objects, of their self-consciousness, and of the sharp distinctness within the
Objective realm (284, 275). Precisely because of its lack of subject-Object duality and selfconsciousness, sensory consciousness is occasionally mistaken for awareness by beginners.
However, it is just another mode of vision of the reflections in the virtual space produced by the
mrrror.
All of the above are distinctions that can be clearly seen in the vision of that virtual space.
In addition to seeing these, the knower of Brahman sees the virtual space and its reflections as
emanating from the mirror. This second sort of seeing is pure awareness. While awareness is
never totally absent from our experience, we notice it to varying degrees.
Usually the degree to which we notice it is very minimal as when we seem to be, in
Sartre's words, "hypnotized" by what we are conscious of. This is our 'default' mode of
experiencing. When we are reading, thinking, conversing in seminar, dancing, gazing at a
sunset, or "even stretching out a hand to open the door," we are absorbed in that moment's
action.
48
When we are self-conscious, we are also absorbed in the self-consciousness. In
absorption, awareness seems to have gotten lost; but it has only receded into the deep
background.
In some special moments, which have been called moments of "flow," 49 awarenes~
becomes prominent in an incidental way. We have not deliberately pursued it; it just happens.
The flow experience may be spontaneous, as in the earlier examples of the driver and the woman
sewing; or it may be skill-related, as in the examples of Joe Montana and the surgeon. One
might say that, in the case of the skill-related flow experience, through practice the body's usual
resistance to intended action is overcome. As a result consciousness as over against the body
disappears, allowing awareness to become prominent. We move out of flow when the over-
�39
againstness arises as the 'I' becomes active either in reaction-'Wow! This is so exciting!'--or
in action-' If I bear down, I can keep this going.'
As we saw in relation to painting, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology, prominence of
awareness may be deliberately cultivated in order to be able to engage in some pursuit. Here
awareness is practiced, so that the practitioner comes to experience the witness as a disposition.
Having it as a.first actuality, he or she can then activate it when engaging in the activity for the
sake of which it was developed.
Finally, in the double seeing of the knower of Brahman, pure mirror-awareness is
permanently prominent as a second actuality; and there is a 'loose,' 'unstuck,' clear
consciousness-of-objects as well. This is said to be the state of one "freed while alive"
(jfvanmukta; cp. BU, IV.4.7).
In virtue of the oneness of sat and cit, this double seeing is one with the out-flowing of
existence. Thus, the freedom manifests itself in that one's awareness is active, or creative, with
respect to the world, on the one hand, and one's action is responsive, or receptive, with respect to
it, on the other-a reversal of the usual receptivity of consciousness and activity of action. 50 In
the realm of action, this freedom is freedom to respond without a 'hitch' to the vectors in the
field of experience, wliich are analogous to the directional arc involved in realizing the full
significance of a situation mentioned in Part One. These field vectors include what Yajfiavalkya
takes Aristotle to be referring to when he speaks of feeling feelings or performing actions as
required (8c:i), in the required cases, with respect to the required people, in the required way, and
for the required reasons (NE, 1106b 17-2 7).
Another way of putting this is to say that the freedom of the knower of Brahman
manifests itself in the ability to be able to move freely through the world with grace and
effortlessness, which is called 'saving awareness,' crocppocruvri: 51
�40
For crocppocruVT) is precisely the virtue of general and unself-conscious self-possession,
of universal grace and effortless command neither specified by particular action,
which would transform it from crocppOcrUVTJ to some particular virtue, nor checked by
any opacity, which would translate it into a mode of self-control. What could work
better for its model than a pure [awareness ]?52
Knowers of Brahman have no inner barriers, which could get in the way -of their spontaneously
allowing what is called for by the current moment to emerge.
In conclusion, we note certainformal parallels between the role of Brahman in the
Upanishads and that of the agent intellect according to Averroes. First, each is the sourceBrahman, of all existence, and the agent intellect, of all being, that is, of all intelligibility.
Second, both are "self-luminous" and are responsible for 'seeing' in some sense. Third, the nondual relation between the individual self and Brahman is like that between the disposed intellect
and the agent intellect. Fourth, a 'self-forgetting' 'outward turn' 'occurs' in the case of each of
them. Fifth, both the experiencing of Brahman and the experience of intellection could be said to
involve a breaking-free from my ordinary captivation by the images on the walls of a cavelike
dwelling, an engagement in a practice, and, ultimately, an existential breakthrough to
"immortalizing." In that breakthrough, in both cases, I deconstruct my ordinary sense of self and
discover my true self as being both non-private (that is, not mine alone) and non-dual with
respect to the true self of others.
However, there are fundamental differences in other respects. Whereas in the one case
the captivation is by opinions and by the perceptual world and is broken through in becoming
free for intelligibles, involving a gradual movement of theoretical study, in the other case it is
captivation by the mundane way of experiencing objects, whether in sensory, perceptual, or
intellectual consciousness; and it is broken by a sudden shift from involvement in consciousness,
whether first-degree or reflective, to pure awareness, a shift which may be experienced on a path
of cultivation of awareness. Moreover, the nature of the one, impersonal, true self of us all, in
�41
which we share non-dually in our immortalizing, which for Averroes is the self-intellection of
the agent intellect, is pure awareness according to Yajfiavalkya. Finally, on the one hand, the
material intellect may realize conjunction with the agent intellect, which is the source of all
intelligibility in the world. On the other hand, in the Brahman-realm pure selfawareness realizes
that it is non-dual with the continual springing up of all existence, both sensory and intelligible,
of the world as a whole, including but not limited to the intelligible realm.
Yajfiavalkya thought that the following comment on Aristotle by Mr. Klein might
provide a fruitful direction to pursue in the question period: The receptive aspect of "vm:iv ... is
the state of wakefulness, a state of preparedness and alertness .... Nouc; ... when it is ... one with
the v01rr<i .... [o]nly then can be said to be wakefulness 'at work' ... " 53 Looking back to the
beginning, Yajfiavalkya wondered how Homer's realization of the full significance of a
situation, 54 Aristotle's reception of an intelligible, and Averroes's complete conjunction with the
agent intellect's self-intellection would compare, with respect to their degrees of wakefulness,
with dwelling in pure awareness.
I asked him how he would respond. He said: 'Perhaps the major difference between the
Upanishads and our three W estem thinkers might be that for the former the state of empty
"receptivity is supreme, that is, even more wakeful than "wakefulness at work."'
I rejoined: 'I'm not sure that I've really understood Averroes. But it might be that his
account of complete conjunction is a good partial depiction of Brahman. Insofar as Mr. Klein
was directing us to the experiential living-through of the moment in which the empty, receptive
intellect is one with the revelation of what is a profile of the full, unitary agent intellect, we do
seem to be pointed toward a face of Brahman, as it were, namely, the intellectual one.'
Yajfiavalkya had the last word: 'What you may be overlooking is that the empty,
receptive material intellect is an appearance of the outward turning of the full source of
�42
determinacy, the agent intellect, whereas, in the case of Brahman, the full and determinate is an
appearance of the outward turning of the empty.'
1
Compare: "Since [in all cases of seeing and hearing] we are aware ('mcr0av6µE:0a) that we are seeing and hearing,
it must either be by sight that we are aware [for example] that we are seeing or by some other [sense]" (OS, 425bl 112). "To each sense there belongs something special and something common. For example, what is special to sight
is to see, [what is special] to hearing is to hear, and similarly with the rest. But there is also a certain common power
that goes along with all of them, by which one is also aware that one is seeing and hearing (for it is not, after all, by
sight that one is seeing that one is seeing ... )." (On Sleeping and Waking, 455a12-5)
2
We may speak of self-consciousness in the sense of consciousness of myself only 'after' the construction of the
sense of self, which is discussed below.
3
By Kosman, who also made reference to Sartre's La Transcendence de !'Ego. I had been planning to use Sartre to
introduce the notion of selfawareness (seen. 4) as an alternative to anything in Aristotle. However, Kosman's
article, which I came across a couple of months ago, made it possible to cite Aristotle himself in order to introduce
this notion.
4
I write 'selfawareness' and 'awareness (of) itself' to suggest that the relationship between awareness and what it is
aware (of) is not the same as that between consciousness and the object of consciousness. I am following Sartre's
practice in L 'etre et le neant (pp. 18-20), where he writes 'conscience (de) soi' to refer to what I am calling
'selfawareness or 'awareness (of) itself'.
5
In La Transcendance de I 'Ego, from which the quotations are taken, Sartre uses only one word, 'conscience,'
which I have rendered as 'consciousness' when it is positional and as 'awareness' when it is non-positional.
Moreover, he does not here write 'conscience (de),' as he did later (see footnote 4).
Gurwitsch (1941) endorsed most of Sartre's position, to which Schiltz then objected. They debate this
issue further in Schiltz and Gurwitsch.
..
6
What is said will apply as well to consciousness that is imagining, remembering, judging, thinking, intellecting,
feeling, or evaluating.
7
See footnote 9.
8
The last two sentences represent my understanding of Gurwitsch (1985), 5, second paragraph).
9
Gurwitsch (1941) pointed out that this account of the arising of the sense of self is inconsistent with the fact that
reflection can accomplish no more than to render explicit the content of the reflected-upon consciousness (332-33).
He later (1985) offered a corrected account of the construction of the psychical empirical sense of self (15ff). It is
based on the recognition that both states and "qualities designate psychic constants, i.e., regularities of experience ...
rather than mental facts which themselves fall under direct experience" ( 15), as they do in Sartre.
10
I remember many years ago reading an article by him in The Washington Post, in which he described his
experience in somewhat these terms.
11
These characteristics are similar to those in the example of the violinist in Csikszentmihalyi: "A violinist must be
extremely aware of every movement of her fingers, as well as of the sound entering her ears, and of the total form of
the piece she is playing, both analytically, note by note, and holistically, in terms of its overall design" (64).
12
Csikszentmihalyi, 65.
13
Bankei, 58. I have substituted "awareness" first for "the Unborn" and then for "it," referring to her Buddha-mind.
14
This is Husserl's word (1964), passim.
15
It need not be living beings with respect to which we experience the connection: "The [mountain] climber,
focusing all her attention on the small irregularities of the rock wall that will have to support her weight safely,
speaks of the sense of kinship that develops between fingers and rock .. ." "This feeling is not just a fancy of the
imagination, but is based on a concrete experience of close interaction with some Other ... " (Csikszentmihalyi, 64).
16
A popular book on learning to draw, tells us of a subjective state that artists speak of, which is characterized by "a
sense of close 'connection' with the work, a sense of timelessness, difficulty in using words ... a lack of anxiety, a
sense of close attention to shapes and spaces and forms that remain nameless." It is important for the artist to
experience the shift from the ordinary state to this one. The student is encouraged to set up the proper "conditions
for this mental shift" and to become "able to recognize and foster this state in" himself (Edwards, 46). These
characteristics correspond quite well with the qualities of a consciousness in which awareness is in the foreground.
17
Merleau-Ponty (1961), 166, translation modified.
�43
18
The articulation in this paragraph emerged in a conversatibn with Nina Haigney, just a few minutes before I
delivered this lecture. It was an example of the sort of thing it attempts to articulate-a conversation, with
awareness to some degree in the foreground, allowing for the experience of"a certain emptiness," followed by the
·
emergence, in two people, of an, a least relatively, "authentic word."
19
Epstein, 194. The quotation from Freud is from "Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis"
(1912).
20
Epstein, 195.
21
By Theodore Reik in 1948; see Epstein, 199-201.
22
Bion, 51-52, 55-56, 69.
23
M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, quoted in Ihde, 15; italics added and translation corrected at one point.
24
Husserl (1962), 140.27-33; to maintain consistency of terminology, I substituted "[reduction]" for epoche.
25
The same view is conveyed, in different language, by Husserl himself(l962), Sections 37-42.
26
Merleau-Ponty (1945), 191, where, however, the expression is not being used to characterize the
phenomenological reduction.
27
The distinction between disconnection and reducing proper parallels that in the Buddhist tradition between
mindfulness (sati) and seeing distinctly in detail (vi-pa§yana).
28
Cp.: "And so also must the gaze made free by the epoche be .. . an experiencing gaze" (Husserl (1962), 156.1315.
29
Husserl (1962), 147.29-32.
30
I take habituell to correspond to an adjectival form of 't~t<;.
31
Husserl (1962), 153.36-37 and 140.19-20.
32
Sekida, 62 and 93. This stage in the yogic tradition involves eight members, the last three of which are
concentration, meditation, and in-stance (samiidhi), which is opposed both to ex-stasy and to our ordinary counterstance vis-a-vis objects (Patafijali, II.29).
33
Sekida, 93; cp. Patafijali, I.42 and 44: coincidence wit hreflection (saviciirii samiipattih)
34
The quotations in this paragraph are taken from Low, 149-50; italics added.
35
When allowing the children to play, you are not caught up in their playing; so, you have a kind of distance from it.
Yet you are 'with' them, accompanying them. Thus, your distance is of a different kind than the distance that occurs
in Objectivation, where the Ob-ject is over against you (discussed below).
Moreover, while it might seem as though the Objective, perceptual world were free of captivation, when
compared to the dynamic, sensory realm (discussed below), in fact, the former is grounded in the primordial doxa of
the latter.
36
Sekida, 62 and 94. The role that this experience of pure awareness plays in the upanishadic tradition parallels that
of the "aloneness of seeing" (dr§eh kaivalyam; Patafijali, II.25) in the yogic tradition (Patafijali, III.50; IV.26 and
34).
37
Low, 40.
38
Sekida, 95.
39
This account ofrealization of Brahman is based on zen sources. However, as Shear points out, this experience of
awake, pure selfawareness lacks any empirical qualities or content. As a result differing references to it as the ·
Brahman-realm or Buddha-nature are not pointing to qualitative differences in the experience (1983, 57-59; 1990,
392).
40
The page numbers given in this paragraph all refer to Maritain, Quatre essais.
41
Carter, 54. Sekida, 91-97, also depicts the corresponding state in the zen tradition in this way.
Carter proposes the comparison with binocular vision. It is interesting that Bion, too, uses this analogy
(Grinberg, Sor, and Tabak di Bianchedi, 35-36).
42
Sharma, 43; first two sets of italics added. The quotation is from Ramana Maharshi as reported in D. Goodman,
ed., The Teachings ofSri Ramana Maharshi (NY: Arkana, 1985), pp. 42, 41.
43
Cp. the description in Husserl (1964), 124-25
44
Cp. the description in Husserl (1964), 206-08
45
Cp. the descriptions in Husserl (1964), tt#58-61, 80-82, 86-87 and in Husserl (1950), #10.
46
The page references in this paragraph are from Straus, Vom Sinn der Sinne.
47
Zuckerkandl, 19.
48
Sekida, 91. .
49
Csikszentmilalyi.
50
YUASA, 68.
�44
51
I believe that Kleist had the same phenomenon in view when he reported Herr C.'s words after two anecdotes,
one about a graceful dancer who lost his grace when self-consciousness arose and the other about a bear, who
effortlessly parried every thrust of Herr C. 's rapier with a graceful swipe of his paw:
' ... [I]n the same degree as, in the organic world, reflection becomes more obscure and
weaker, giace emerges there ever more radiant and supreme.-Yetjust as. :. the image
in a concave mirror, after withdrawing to infinity, suddenly comes right in front of us
again, so when consciousness has, as it were, passed through an infinite, grace will
again put in an appearance. Hence, it appears most purely in the human bodily
structure that has either no self-consciousness or an infinite self-consciousness ... '
(Kleist, 67)
That is, in our terms, grace emerges in the realm of animal, sensory consciousness, a realm which we can
experience, but not enter completely (Straus, 284). And it emerges again in the realm of pure self-awareness, in
which we are no longer caught up in first- or second-degree consciousness.
52
Kosman, 516; the ending in the original is "a pure, objectless knowledge."
53
Klein, 65.
54
Another question to pursue might be whether Homer's realization of full significance became narrower and more
limited in passing over into intellection.
ABREVIATIONS
BU
Brihadtiranyaka Upanishad
CU
Chtindogya Upanishad
F
Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory ofMethod.
FK
"Die Phanomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der Gegenwartigen Kritik."
HG
Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion.
I
Homer, Iliad
IU
Isa Upanishad
KeU
Kena Upanishad
LC
Averroes, Long Commentary = Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima.
MuU Mundaka Upanishad
NE
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; translation altered in some places.
0
Homer, Odyssey
OS
Aristotle, On the Soul; translation altered in some places.
�45
S
Sartre, J.-P., La Transcendance de /'Ego: Esquisse d'une descriptionphenomenologique.
ST
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Latin text, Volume II, containing Ia, QQ.2-11.
TU
Taittitrfya Upanishad
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altmann, A., "lbn Bajja on Man's Ultimate Felicity," Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, I
(Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965)
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, tr. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002)
_ _,On the Soul, tr. J. Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2001).
_ _,Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study, tr. J. Sachs (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1995).
_ _,Aristotle's Metaphysics, tr. J. Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999).
Arnheim, R., Art and Visual Expression: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, second edition
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
Aurobindo, Sri, The Upanishads: Texts, Translations and Commentaries, Part One (Twin Lakes,
WI: Lotus Press, 1996)
Averroes, Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima, ed. F. Crawford (Cambridge, MA:
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953).
Bankei, The Unborn: The Life and Teachings ofZen Master Bankei, tr. N. Waddell (New York:
South Point Press, 2000).
Bion, W., Attention and Interpretation (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1970/1983).
Black, D., "Conjunction and the Identity of Knower and Known in Averroes," American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1999), 159-84.
Blaustein, M., Averroes on the Imagination and the Intellect (University Microfilms, 1984).
Carter, R., The Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy ofNishida Kitaro,
second edition (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1997).
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, Inc., 1990).
Edwards, B., Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and
Artistic Confidence (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, Inc., 1979)
Epstein, M., "On the Neglect of Evenly Suspended Attention," The Journal ofTranspersonal
Psychology 16 (1904), 193-205.
Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, tr., R.
Bruzina (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
_ _, "Die Phanomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der Gegenwartigen Kritik,"
Kant-Studien 38 (1933), 319-83.
Grinberg, L., Sor D., and Tabak di Bianchedi, E., New Introduction to the Work of Bion, third
editon (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1993).
Gurwitsch, A., Marginal Consciousness (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985).
_ _,The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1964).
_ _,"A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness," Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 1 (1941), 325-38.
Gurwitsch, A. and Schlitz, A., Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence ofAlfred Schutz and
�46
Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed: R. Grathoff and tr. J Evans (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1989).
Homer, The lliad, 2 vols., tr. A. Murray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).
_ _,The lliad ofHomer, tr. R. Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1951).
-~ The Odyssey, tr. A. Cook (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974).
_ _,The Odyssey of Homer, tr. R. Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row Publisher, 1967).
Husserl, E., Die Krisis der Europiiischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale
Phiinomenologie, ed. W. Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962).
_ _, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Claussen Verlag, 1964).
_ _, Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und Phiinomenologischen Philosophie I (Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1950).
Hyman, A., "Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect and Its Interpretation by Averroes" in
Studies in Aristotle, ed. D. O'Meara (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, n.d.), 161-91.
Ihde, D., Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction (NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons,
1977).
.
Ivry, A., "Averroes on Intellection and Conjunction," Journal of the American Oriental Society
86 (1966), 76-85.
Klein, J., "Aristotle, An Introduction," in Ancients and Moderns, ed., J. Cropsey(**, 1964).
Kleist, H. von, "Uber das Marionettentheater," in Prosastiicke (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun.,
1964), 58-67.
Kosman, L., "Perceiving that We Perceive: On the Soul III, 2," The Philosophical Review 84,
No. 4. (Oct., 1975), pp. 499-519.
Leaman, 0., Averroes and His Philosophy (Surrey: Curzon, 1998).
Low, A., The Butterfly's Dream: In Search of the Roots ofZen (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle
Company, Inc., 1993).
Maritain, J., Quatre essais sur !'esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Paris: Alsatia, 1956).
Merleau-Ponty, M., "Eye and Mind" (1961), tr. C. Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. J.
Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
_ _, Phenomenolgie de la perception (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1945).
Moore, G. E., "The Refutation ofldealism," in Philosophical Studies (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield,
Adams & Co., 1965).
Nussbaum, M., "The Role of Phantasia in Aristotle's Explanation of Action" in her Aristotle's
De Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1954).
Pataiijali, The Yoga-Sutra ofPatafijali, tr. G. Feuerstein (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions
International, 1989)
Plotinus; Enneads, Volumes III, V, VI, and VII, tr. A.H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967-88).
Sartre, J.-P., L 'etre et le neant (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1943)
_ _ ,La Transcendance de !'Ego: Esquisse d'une descriptionphenomenologique (Paris:
Vrin, 1966), originally published 1936.
Schutz, A., "Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2 (1942), 323-47 ..
SEKIDA, K., Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy, ed. A. Grimstone (NY: Weatherhill,
�47
1985).
Shanna, A., The Experiential Dimension ofAdvaita Vedanta (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers, (1993).
Shear, J., "Mystical Experience, Hermeneutics, and Rationality," International
Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990), 391-401.
_ _, "The Experience of Pure Consciousness: A New Perspective for Theories of Self,"
Metaphilosophy 14 (1983), 53-62.
Snell, B., "Die Ausdriicke fiir den Begriff des Wissens in der Vorplatonischen Philosophie,"
Philologische Untersuchungen 29 (1924/1976).
Straus, E., Phenomenological Psychology, tr. in part, E. Eng (NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1966.
_ _; Vom Sinn der Sinne (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1956).
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Latin text, Volume II, containing Ia, QQ.2-11, T. McDermott,
O.P., ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964).
The Principal Upanishads, ed. and tr. S. Radhakrishnan (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers
India, 1994).
The Upanishads, tr. V. Roebuck (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
UEDA, S., "Pure Experience, Self-awareness, Basho," Etudes phenomenologiques 18 (1993),
63-86.
Upanishads, tr. P. Olivelle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
von Fritz, K., ''NOOI: and NOEIN in the Homeric Poems," Classical Philology 38 (1943), 7993.
YUASA, Y., The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, tr. N. Shigenori and T. Kasulis
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1987).
Zedler, B., Introduction to Aquinas's On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists
(Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1968).
_ _,"Averroes and Immortality," New Scholasticism 28 (1954), 436-53.
_ _,"Averroes on the Possible Intellect," Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association 25 (1951 ), 164-78.
Zuckerkandl, V., The Sense ofMusic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
�
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.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
pdf
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
47 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
You Are That!: The <em>Upanishads</em> Read Through Western Eyes
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered by Robert Druecker, Annapolis tutor on February 15, 2008, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Druecker, Robert
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-02-15
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library; make typescript copies of my lecture available for archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Upanishads--Criticism and interpretation
Brahman
Yājñavalkya
Homer. Iliad
Homer. Odyssey
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Druecker_Robert_2008-02-15
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bad9abe42857f1e4121517789ff6bb55.mp3
d914b7626f917bc0763ea5e014756e31
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
St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:49:27
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 horses of Achilles
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given on September 7, 2018 by Robert Charles Abbott, Jr. as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Abbott, Robert Charles, Jr.
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
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-09-07
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Homer. Iliad
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Abbott, 2018-09
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/db50401157cf0299c23c7ce8d620768b.pdf
5853abe246489a8673a534d93b39c5dd
PDF Text
Text
The Anger of Achilles, and its Source: A Reading of Book One of the Iliad
Adam Schulman
St. John’s College, Annapolis
September 7, 2012
Anger—sing goddess the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles. Why is it that “anger” is the first
word of the first great book of Western civilization, and of the St. John’s College
curriculum? Why did Homer choose to write an epic poem of some 15,000 lines about
the anger of Achilles? Why should anger be an important theme, if not the central theme,
of all of classical literature? How might reflection on anger form at least the startingpoint, if not also the core, of a liberal education? These are questions I hope to illuminate,
and perhaps to answer, through a reading of the first book of the Iliad, with some
passages from later books.
Let me first summarize the events depicted in Book One of the Iliad. After invoking
the muse and announcing his theme—the anger of Achilles—Homer tells the story of the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, a quarrel he says was set in motion by Apollo.
Chryses, a priest of Apollo, comes to the swift ships of the Achaians bearing an immense
fortune, to ransom back his daughter, evidently captured in a previous raid on a Trojan
town and taken by Agamemnon as his personal prize. Despite the enthusiastic approval of
the army, Agamemnon refuses to give up the girl, and the priest, fleeing, prays to Apollo
for vengeance, which comes in the form of a deadly plague afflicting the entire army. On
the tenth day of the sickness, with no end in sight, Achilles calls an assembly, where
Calchas the seer reveals that the plague is Apollo’s punishment for dishonoring his priest.
Only the return of the girl, now for no ransom, together with a huge sacrifice, will
propitiate the angry god. Agamemnon, infuriated, is willing to free her, but demands that
some other girl be given to him in her place, lest he be the only Achaian left without a
prize. Achilles is outraged by this demand and insists that there are no spare girls around
to hand over to Agamemnon as a prize. After an exchange of bitter insults, Achilles
�threatens to withdraw from the fight and go home, and Agamemnon announces that he
will take Achilles’ own prize, the beautiful Briseis, to compensate him for the loss of
Chryseis, the daughter of the priest. Achilles, in his anger, is tempted to kill Agamemnon
right then and there, but the goddess Athena restrains him. Instead, Achilles returns to his
tent, Agamemnon sends his men there to seize Briseis, and the Achaians bring Chryseis
back to her father and make the required sacrifice. Apollo is appeased, the plague comes
to an end, and the Achaians, now without Achilles, are ready to resume the fight against
Troy. Meanwhile, Achilles prays to his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, to persuade Zeus
to give aid to the Trojans in the fight, so that many Achaians will be killed, and
Agamemnon will rue the day he dishonored Achilles, the best of the Achaians. The rest
of Book One shows how Thetis journeyed to Olympus to supplicate Zeus, how Zeus
considered and granted her son’s request, and how Hera and Zeus quarreled with each
other after the visit by Thetis.
Now perhaps it will seem obvious that the main reason Achilles gets angry is that,
after all, Agamemnon has just threatened to take away his girlfriend, his beloved Briseis,
presumably intending to have his way with her in his tent. It is, in fact, right after
Agamemnon utters this threat that Achilles feels a strong urge to draw his sword and kill
Agamemnon on the spot (188). On the other hand, Achilles himself speaks very
provokingly throughout the exchange and seems intent on escalating the quarrel with
Agamemnon at every turn. That is especially evident when old Nestor intervenes with
soothing words, encouraging Agamemnon not to take away Briseis and Achilles not to
struggle against a sceptered king, to whom Zeus has given glory (274-279). When
Agamemnon appears ready to accept Nestor’s sensible advice and back down, Achilles
interrupts him and insists that Agamemnon can go ahead and take the girl but warns that
he will kill him if he tries to take away anything else. So we are inclined to suspect that
Achilles harbored grievances against Agamemnon well before the quarrel over Briseis.
Reading a little more carefully, we can see other grounds for Achilles’ anger that, it
seems, were already present even before Agamemnon threatened to take away Briseis.
Achilles accuses Agamemnon of being a greedy coward, who during the sacking of cities
hangs back from the dangerous fighting while allowing others to win spoils for him.
According to Achilles, Agamemnon has “never dared in [his] spirit to put on [his] armor
2
�with the troops for war, nor to go on an ambush with the best of the Achaians” (225-227).
And yet, while Achilles considers himself to be the best of the Achaians (244, 412) he
says at the start of the quarrel that Agamemnon now boasts that he himself is “by far the
best of the Achaians” (91).
What is at stake in this dispute about which warrior is “the best of the Achaians”? No
doubt that title would involve a variety of excellences, including strength, and swiftness,
and skill, but it seems clear that the core of Achilles’ claim to excellence lies in his arete,
that is, his manly virtue, manifested above all as courage in the face of violent death. In
Achilles’ view, the Achaians show their virtue—or lack of it—especially in ambushes,
where a handful of troops sit in silence, eyeing each other tensely, and awaiting the
sudden onslaught of ferocious man-to-man combat. Much later, in Book Thirteen of the
Iliad, the Cretan hero Idomeneus gives us a vivid account of how such ambushes show
who is a coward and who is not:
If now beside the ships all the best men were to assemble
for an ambush where most of all the virtue of men is discerned,
there the cowardly man and the courageous are shown forth clearly,
for the skin of the coward changes color one way and another,
and the spirit in his midriff cannot restrain him to sit untrembling,
but he squats shifting from ham to ham, and shifts from one foot to the other,
and the heart inside his chest pounds greatly
as he thinks about Death, and a chattering of the teeth commences.
But the good man’s skin does not change color nor is he overly frightened,
Once he has taken his place in the ambush of men,
But he prays to be mixed as fast as possible in baneful war. (13.276-286)
Among other things, this passage makes clear that, for Idomeneus, the man who displays
courage and steadfastness in the face of death is the good man simply, while the coward,
whose heart pounds, and whose skin changes color, and who squats and shifts nervously
from one foot to the other, is the bad man simply. For Achilles as well, it seems, the
habitual absence of Agamemnon from such ambushes is a sure sign that he is not a man
of virtue in the primary sense of the word. Perhaps, then, the underlying reason for
Achilles’ anger is the thought that he, a man of virtue and the best of the Achaians, is
under the authority of a king who has proved himself to be an inferior man, a greedy,
selfish coward, who does not deserve to have heroes like Achilles risking their lives for
him in battle day after day. On this reading, Achilles’ anger is an expression of righteous
3
�indignation at the manifest injustice of his situation at Troy. It is not surprising, then, that
Achilles is seething with resentment even before Apollo’s plague strikes the army, and
the quarrel over Briseis is merely the occasion for that smoldering indignation to burst
into open flame.
But even this more careful account of the anger of Achilles does not seem to me to go
deep enough. One clue that there is more to be said about the source of the quarrel
between Achilles and Agamemnon can be found in the odd way Homer introduces us to
that subject. He asks, rhetorically, “Which one of the gods set these two together to fight
in strife?” and his answer is Apollo, who, “in his anger at the king, sent an evil sickness
throughout the army, and the troops were dying” (9-10). And, in fact, it is on the tenth
day of that unrelenting and deadly plague that Achilles feels moved to make his first
speech in the Iliad. It seems to me that Homer asks his rhetorical question precisely in
order to indicate to us that the origin of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon is
questionable—not obvious as it might seem—and that, in fact, the plague sent by Apollo
might have a great deal to do with the anger of Achilles. Let me explain. When the priest
Chryses first prayed to Apollo for vengeance, he addressed the god as Smintheus, that is
“mouse god” (39). In the Iliad, Apollo, the far-shooter, seems to be a god responsible for
disease rather than for health, perhaps in this instance for a plague borne by rodents. In
Homer’s description of the start of the plague, Apollo “came like the night” (47); first to
die were the mules and the dogs, and then the men, and the funeral pyres of the dead were
burning continuously (50-52). Achilles, calling the assembly on the tenth day of the
plague, seems particularly horrified by the thought that he and the other Achaians might
die not gloriously in battle but ignominiously from this pestilence, carried into the camp
by mice, that kills anonymously and indiscriminately, striking dogs and mules as well as
men. Achilles even suggests in his first speech that they should all go home, if they can
escape death, since war and plague together are now subduing the Achaians (61).
It is striking that Achilles is the one to raise the possibility of abandoning the war and
returning home, for later in Book One he tells his mother, “you bore me to be short-lived”
(352), implying that he believed he was destined to die young. And Thetis appears to
confirm this, saying, “indeed your allotted span is short, not very long at all, but as it is,
you are quick to die and miserable beyond all men” (416). It is only in Book Nine that we
4
�learn from Achilles himself that his mother had in fact offered him a choice:
My mother the goddess Thetis of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of doom towards the end of death.
If I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is lost, but my fame shall be everlasting;
But if I go home to the dear land of my fathers,
my excellent fame is lost, but there will be a long time for me,
Nor will the end of death reach me quickly. (9.410-416)
In light of this fuller account of Achilles’ dual destinies, I think we have to read the Book
One passages about his fate to mean that, to a man like Achilles, the choice between a
long dull life at home without fame and a brief but glorious life at Troy ending with death
in battle seemed no choice at all, that he felt all but compelled to take the path that will
shortly cost him his life but will win him imperishable glory. And, far from making him
the most miserable of mortals, Achilles might have thought that the choice of fates
offered to him was a supremely noble one. After all, to be truly the best of the Achaians
and worthy of imperishable glory—perhaps the only form of immortality available to a
human being—it would not suffice to be a great and effective fighter; one would also
have to show the supreme virtue of courage, above all by facing death unflinchingly. And
what better way to show such courage than to accept the certainty of death at a young age
as the price one is willing to pay for an imperishable and glorious name?
This is not to suggest that Achilles had a clear-sighted understanding of his own selfinterested motives in choosing to risk his life for the sake of glory. In the quarrel with
Agamemnon he insists (152-162) that he is fighting at Troy not for his own good but only
to please Agamemnon and to win honor for him and his brother. We see in this claim the
essential paradox of manly virtue, that it is pursued for the sake of glory—a selfish
good—and yet it must be pursued unselfishly, for its own sake or for the good of another,
if it is to be deemed worthy of the highest honor. In his confusion, Achilles believes both
that his virtue is selfless and that it is best for him.
Now a warrior of Achilles’ rank might reasonably expect that his manly virtue and
other excellences would, most of the time if not all the time, make him victorious in
battle, regularly defeating and even killing his foes, and not being defeated or killed by
them. That is, he would expect his virtue to offer him considerable protection against
defeat and death rather than lead inevitably, let alone quickly, to his demise. Nonetheless,
5
�there would be something troubling about a kind of virtue so overwhelmingly superior
that it simply guaranteed a warrior’s safety and success in battle, so that the prospect of
an ambush would be no more terrible and frightening to him than, say, the task of ridding
his house of ants or cockroaches. There has to be a genuine risk of death, it seems, if
manly virtue is to be truly deserving of immortal glory. On the other hand, it would be
absurd if this risk of death were so great that Achilles got himself killed, and his life cut
short, in his very first battle at Troy. Perhaps, then, it would be more reasonable to say
that what the best of the Achaians expects of his manly virtue is that it will protect him
from death for a time but that, if he should perish splendidly in battle, his virtue in life
and in death will be remembered and admired forever. But even then, the choice to risk or
sacrifice his life for glory would seem to be the exchange of a lesser good for a greater
good, hence not really a sacrifice at all, but rather a choice that any prudent selfinterested man would make if he could.
In any event, ten days of unrelenting plague sent by the mouse-god Apollo, with men
and animals dying all around him, have perhaps shaken Achilles’ confidence in the
choice he made, reminding him forcefully that nothing in life is certain, that the gods may
have their own plans to which we are not privy, and that it is not at all impossible that
Achilles himself will end up one of the multitude of mules, dogs, and men randomly
brought down by this dreadful and indiscriminate disease. That is, the plague raises for
Achilles the suspicion that he might himself perish at Troy ignominiously and
anonymously, rather than in a noble and distinguished display of manly arete. It might
turn out that the gods in the end are indifferent to our fate, and even to our virtue, that
they hold us in no higher regard than dogs and mules, and that it is of little concern to
them whose body ends up piled on the burning heaps of disease-ravaged corpses. A hero
who died in that way, no more valiantly than a mule or a dog, would be a thing arousing
horror and pity, surely not a fit subject for imperishable glory, even if the gods somehow
contrived for that to be his destiny. It would therefore not be surprising if at this moment
Achilles is beginning to wonder whether the short violent life at Troy was so obviously
superior to a long dull life at home.
Later, in Book Nine, during the embassy of Odysseus, Ajax, and Phoenix, we will see
even more evidence of Achilles’ ambivalence regarding the wisdom of his choice. It is
6
�here that Achilles expresses his most serious doubts as to whether the life of the warrior
is worthwhile. An equal fate, he tells Odysseus, awaits the man who holds back and the
one who fights hard. “The bad man and the good man are both held in the same honor. A
man who has done nothing dies just like one who has done much” (318-320). And he
declares that all the possessions that can be won by fighting are not worth risking one’s
life for. (405-409) Yet he cannot make up his mind whether to stay at Troy and return to
the fighting or to go home to Phthia. He first tells Odysseus that he and all his men will
be sailing away from Troy the next morning, hoping to reach Phthia on the third day
(359-363). He speaks of his plans to take a wife in marriage and enjoy with her the
possessions won by his father (398-400). He then tells Phoenix that he hasn’t made up his
mind but will decide tomorrow whether to go back home or remain at Troy (618-619).
And finally he tells Ajax to inform Agamemnon that he will return to the fighting, but
only when Hector and the Trojans have come all the way to the ships and tents of the
Myrmidons, slaughtering the Argives as they come (648-653).
So suppose that Achilles is having doubts about the wisdom of the choice he made to
stay at Troy and fight, doubts either first raised by the plague sent by Apollo or at any
rate brought vividly to mind on that occasion. What has all this to do with Achilles’ anger
at Agamemnon? Let us look once more at that quarrel, in light of the suggestion that
Achilles is just now calling into question whether the choice he has made, to die young in
battle in return for the promise of immortal fame, is a sound and reasonable one.
When the seer Calchas tells him that he must return Chryses to her father, a bitter
Agamemnon complains that he had wanted to take her home with him, preferring her in
fact to his own wife Clytemnestra, to whom she is not inferior in body and stature and
wits and work (113-115). Agamemnon, it is clear, is not one of those warriors who is
planning to die gloriously in battle; instead, he never loses sight of his eventual goal, to
return to Argos and live out his life as a happy, rich, and celebrated king. Achilles
responds by addressing him as “most famous son of Atreus, most possession-loving of all
men” (122). He goes on to accuse Agamemnon of always taking the biggest prizes for
himself, heaping up abundance and wealth while leaving the most dangerous fighting to
others (165-167; 171). As his anger burns hotly, Achilles even declares, as we noted
above, that Agamemnon has “never dared in [his] spirit to put on [his] armor with the
7
�troops for war or to go on an ambush with the best of the Achaians” (225-227). Perhaps,
in his anger, Achilles exaggerates the charges, as angry people are prone to do. But
suppose it is true that Agamemnon fights as little as possible, prefers the lucrative raiding
of villages to dangerous combat with the Trojans, takes care to avoid endangering his life,
and carefully heaps up piles of treasure and beautiful women to take home with him to
enjoy for the rest of his life. Why should that make Achilles angry? It would seem, after
all, that all the warriors at Troy face a choice something like that which Achilles was
given, even if the two alternative destinies are not laid out for them as starkly as they
were for him. That is, they can either conduct themselves primarily with a view to
displaying utmost valor in combat, at great personal risk to life and limb, or they can
make it their paramount aim to survive the war and flourish afterward, even at the cost of
some diminished reputation; or, more likely, they will pursue some muddled, middling
course in between these extremes. But it ought not to surprise a proud hero like Achilles
that few men would have the courage to make the choice he made, and it should even be
a source of satisfaction to him, and a confirmation that he is truly the best of the Achaians,
that most of his fellow soldiers, and even some of their illustrious leaders, cannot face
their deaths as fearlessly as he does. Why should it trouble Achilles that the short brilliant
life, and the promise of eternal glory, are a blessed destiny reserved for only the best of
the Achaians? One might even say that a man confident in his virtue, and assured of the
power of virtue to win him the only kind of destiny that can truly overcome death, would
feel pity rather than anger at those inferior men who are not able to face their death with
the same courage and steadfastness. When Achilles, who considers himself a man of
virtue, gets angry at those who are not virtuous, his anger reveals the unclarity of his
thinking about virtue itself: if virtue is good for us, then the unvirtuous deserve our pity;
if it is bad for us, why pursue it in the first place? In either case, there would be no basis
for anger.
But Achilles’ anger at the unmanly Agamemnon has now been further inflamed by
the suspicion that he himself may have been wrong all along about the power of virtue to
overcome death, i.e., to grant imperishable glory, a species of immortality, in
compensation for our death. Achilles’ choice would then be a mistake, and men like
Agamemnon might turn out to be right. The coward, the bad man, who conducts himself
8
�in battle so as to maximize his chances of surviving and flourishing afterward, might turn
out to be the good man after all, or at least the man most likely to experience happiness in
the all-too-brief span of a human life. Whereas the courageous man, who risks and even
sacrifices his life with no guarantee of compensation, would turn out to be a deluded fool.
Achilles, in his anger, calls Agamemnon “clothed in shamelessness, thinking only of
gain” (148), a man who has “the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer” (225). The heart of
a deer is the heart of a cowardly man, who would flinch in combat from fear of death, and
whose lack of manly virtue would be manifest to his comrades as soon as he was
compelled to take his place on an ambush with the best of the Achaians. But what are the
eyes of a dog? A dog is a slave to his desires, especially for food, and every dog owner is
familiar with that shameless look in the eyes of a begging dog, a look that says, “I am
mastered by my overpowering desire and I will do anything to satisfy it.” According to
Achilles, Agamemnon is not only a greedy coward who shrinks from death and cares
only about gain, he even does those things publicly without any shame. But if Achilles
is wrong about virtue and its power vis-à-vis death, then it might turn out that human
excellence—or at any rate, the most serviceable way of comporting oneself in this
world—does not require courage but rather something like cowardice in the face of death
and shamelessness in satisfying one’s appetites—in short, the heart of a deer and the eyes
of a dog. It is this half-formed suspicion, I suggest—the vague fear that he might be
utterly wrong about virtue, that those who care about virtue are deluding themselves, and
that the best of the Achaians might not be a man of virtue at all but a shameless, selfish
pursuer of material goods in the mold of Agamemnon—that fills Achilles with rage.
But why should such a fear—the fear that virtue does not truly have the power to
protect us from death—lead to anger? What accounts for the anger in the soul of a man
who is assailed by doubts about the power of his virtue to protect him? Here too Homer
has much to teach us through the example of Achilles. What he shows us is first, that
anger is, or at least can be, a supremely talkative passion. The angry man is full of
arguments, which he is eager to share with others, arguments that serve to justify his
shaken convictions and restore his confidence in his own virtue and in the power of that
virtue. In the case of Achilles, his anger seems to give him the hope, however fleeting,
that by killing the miscreant Agamemnon he can prove that virtue is after all effective,
9
�that shameless cowards get the death they deserve, and that good men are vindicated and
bad men punished, thus restoring the moral order of the world that seemed to be
threatened. Anger, more than any other passion, can at times make us feel godlike,
confident that our will will be accomplished, and even perhaps that we are the
embodiment of a divine nemesis, inexorably insuring that justice will be done. Consider
Achilles’ words to Athena when she comes down to stay his anger and stop him from
stabbing Agamemnon to death:
Why have you come this time, o child of aegis-bearing Zeus?
Or is it to see the hubris of Atreus’ son Agamemnon?
But I will tell you this, and I think it shall be accomplished.
By such acts of insolence he may soon lose his life. (202-205)
These are imperious words that a god might address to a mortal, as Athena gently
suggests when she says, in answer,
But I will tell you thus, and it also will be accomplished. (212)
Achilles gives in to Athena on this occasion, but it must have come as a shock and a
disappointment to him that a god would come down to prevent him from administering to
the vicious Agamemnon the death that he so clearly deserved. It must have been even
more shocking to Achilles when Athena tells him that she was sent down to stay his hand
by the goddess Hera herself, who “in her spirit loves and cares for both of you alike.”
(209). First Apollo, and now Athena and Hera, have given Achilles cause to wonder if the
gods really care whether human beings get what they truly deserve. And that question, if
followed up in a thoughtful and tough-minded way, might have led Achilles to the deeper
and more troubling question of whether human beings really deserve anything.
Anger, Homer shows us, is not so much a rational as a pseudo-rational passion.
Angry words tend to be boastful and exaggerated. Consider, for example, Achilles’
improbable accusation, quoted above, that Agamemnon has never once dared to put on
his armor to fight alongside the troops (225-227). Even more revealing is Achilles’
insistence, noted above, that he is here fighting at Troy only for the sake of Agamemnon
and his brother, with no thought of personal benefit (152-162)—when actually, as we
have seen, he is fighting primarily in order to achieve glory for himself. His anger lets
him hide from himself the realization that in practicing manly virtue, and even in risking
his life, he is not devoting himself selflessly to the good of others but is instead pursuing
10
�what he implicitly believes to be his own highest good.
Judging by Achilles’ example, anger is not per se a dishonest passion; or at least the
angry man thinks he his telling the simple truth. Indeed, anger often feels not so much
like a passion as a perception, that is a perception of one’s own righteousness and of the
injustice of others, and it is not surprising that the angry often feel as though they have
attained, and are expressing in their speech, perfect clarity about their situation. But, as
Homer shows us, anger does allow us, and perhaps even requires us, to lie to ourselves.
In Book Nine, at the start of the embassy, Achilles declares to Odysseus, “Hateful to me
as the gates of Hades is that man who conceals one thing in his heart and says another”
(9.312-313). But at that very moment Achilles is speaking to his old friends with apparent
sympathy while concealing in his heart the fact that he has arranged through his mother
and Zeus for Hector and the Trojans to slaughter the Achaians and set fire to their ships.
Yet, I am convinced, at that moment Achilles does not think of himself as a deceitful
man; his anger protects him from such self-awareness.
Surprisingly, however painful are the experiences that give rise to anger, anger itself
turns out to be a sweet pleasure only masquerading as a pain, as Achilles himself comes
to realize after the death of Patroklos. In Book Eighteen, in a moment of rare clarity and
introspection, Achilles comments,
If only strife might vanish from among gods and human beings,
and anger, which makes even a very thoughtful man harsh
and, much sweeter than honey that drips down,
rises up like smoke in the hearts of men. (18.107-110)
In this powerful image, the honey signifies the sweet pleasure of our experience of anger;
the smoke points up the way anger clouds our rational judgment. Of course, only four
lines after offering this remarkably thoughtful insight about anger, Achilles reverts to his
old passion, vowing to hunt down and kill Hector in revenge for Patroklos. Had he been
able to sustain that insight, and to follow through on its implications, he might have come
to see that his anger, rather than a simple and healthy reaction to the injustice and
wickedness of others, was instead a self-indulgent and self-deceiving pleasure, and that
by wallowing in anger and self-pity, he was preventing himself from facing up to his
fears about manly virtue and death.
Achilles is indeed a paradoxical figure, at once the angriest man in the Iliad—if not in
11
�all of western literature—and at the same time capable on more than one occasion of the
most thoughtful reflections about anger, mortality, and the contradictions of the heroic
life. Somehow, no matter how clearly he sees that his anger is self-serving and
destructive, no matter how penetrating are his insights into the incoherence of the life
pursued by “the best of the Achaians,” Achilles always finds himself seduced once more
by the honey and smoke. As we have seen, Achilles several times raises the possibility of
leaving Troy, abandoning the life of the hero and the quest for immortal glory, and
returning home to Phthia to find a more modest but more attainable felicity in (to quote
Moby Dick) “the wife, and hearth, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.”
And yet, despite all his talk and all his doubts, Achilles never manages to summon the
nerve to get up and leave. When Achilles first raised the possibility of leaving for Phthia,
Agamemnon had answered, with contempt, “Flee, then, if your spirit urges you to” (173),
and perhaps Achilles could not stand the thought of Agamemnon and the others speaking
of him derisively as a coward after he and the Myrmidons had packed up and left. Maybe
what kept him from acting on his convictions and leaving Troy was a lack of true courage,
if there is such a thing. Courage so conceived would be a kind toughness or strength of
soul that would enable the truly courageous man to follow through on his critical insights
and pursue what is genuinely good no matter how painful he finds it to give up what is
spuriously good. In any case, we learn from the story of Achilles that anger is perhaps the
most un-philosophic of the passions and poses the gravest obstacle to genuine selfknowledge. It is in this sense that the Iliad shows us how the question of anger might
form, if not the core, at any rate the starting point, of a liberal education.
*
To advance the discussion, let me remind you of the main points of my interpretation:
First, that the claim to be the best of the Achaians is at its core a claim to possess manly
virtue, arete, that is, courage in the face of death, to the highest degree; second, that the
supremely virtuous man thinks himself worthy of everlasting glory, and believes that his
virtue has the power, if not to protect him fully from death, at least to mitigate the sting of
his mortality by rewarding him with such glory; third, that the anger of Achilles has as its
12
�ultimate source the fear that virtue does not in fact have such a power to overcome death;
that the gods may in fact not care whether people get what they deserve; fourth, that
together with this fear arises the painful thought that virtue itself might be not only
impotent but incoherent, that there is nothing that we “deserve,” that human nobility
might be an illusion, so that the only sensible way to go through life is to shamelessly
pursue what we desire while avoiding death at all cost; it might turn out that the good
man is the one with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer; and finally, that as long as
we are prone to anger we will never be able to think through the problem of virtue, as
anger is the most un-philosophic of passions, a pleasure masquerading as a pain, posing
in itself the most serious impediment to self-knowledge.
13
�
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.
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
Schulman, Adam
Title
A name given to the resource
The anger of Achilles, and its source : a reading of book one of the Iliad
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-09-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 07, 2012 by Adam Schulman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Subject
The topic of the resource
Homer. Iliad
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 80678
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/53">Audio recording</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e553d77c227b743eed847bbe38d4704c.mp3
e1e55650b68017acf147c0834d00b31d
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
St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:44:39
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
"Deeds of balanced vengeance" and the end of The Iliad
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given on October 26, 2018 by Emily Austin as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Austin, Emily
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
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-10-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Homer. Iliad
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Austin, 2018-10
Friday night lecture
Deprecated: Directive 'allow_url_include' is deprecated in Unknown on line 0