1
20
54
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
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
CD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:33:58
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
Peters, Ralph, 1952-
Title
A name given to the resource
The price of erasing history
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-04-03
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 03, 2013 by Ralph Peters as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the first in a newly established joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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
sound
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 80767
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
-
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:58:38
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib #81628
Title
A name given to the resource
Lessons from a decade of frustrating war
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 09, 2014 by Francis J. West as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the second in a series of joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
West, Francis J.
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
2014-04-09
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
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
United States, Foreign relations, Middle East
United States, Military relations, Middle East
War and society, United States
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
-
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
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
cassette tape
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:34:11
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/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib #65727
Title
A name given to the resource
Newton's double pendulum experiment: talk and demonstration
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 20, 1999 by Curtis Wilson. This lecture was given as part of the Isaac Newton Conference & Exhibition at St. John's College, March 19-21, 1999.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wilson, Curtis
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
1999-03-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College 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
Deans
Tutors
-
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
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
digital
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:17:32
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
Homer on Military Leadership
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 10, 2015, by Jonathan Shay as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the third in a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in the education of naval and military professions.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Shay, Jonathan
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
2015-04-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission received.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Shay_Jonathan_2015-04-10
Subject
The topic of the resource
Command of troops
Homer
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
-
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 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
Santa Fe Baccalaureate Address, Spring 1991
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a the address given on May 19, 1991 by James Carey as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Carey, James
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
1991-05-19
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
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000381
Baccalaureate service
-
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
8 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
Freedom, letters, and leisure : west and east
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute commencement address given on August 15, 2008 by James Carey in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Carey, James
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
2008-08-15
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
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Language
Leisure
Psycholinguistics
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003569
-
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
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
digital
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:58:20
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
Patriotism in the 21st Century
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 13, 2016 by Seth Cropsey as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the first in a newly established joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Cropsey, Seth
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
2016-04-13
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
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Beall, James (Introduction)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cropsey_Seth_2016-04-13
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
-
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PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
6 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
Beginnings of community
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of an address given on May 21, 1999 by Stephen Van Luchene as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Van Luchene, Stephen R.
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
1999-05-21
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
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Communities
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003362
Baccalaureate service
-
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b713522e4b38877caf70fe2a189668ff
PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
32 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The friend
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of an address given on May 16, 1998 by Peter Pesic as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pesic, Peter
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
1998-05-16
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
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible. New Testament
Christianity
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003356
Baccalaureate service
-
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1379b77c8df641a30acff7ebf9dc2504
PDF Text
Text
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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
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 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
"I hate books" or making room for learning
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 15, 1997 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levine, David Lawrence
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
1997-06-15
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
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
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Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Emile.
Education
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English
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24000406
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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6 pages
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You too have read Newton!
Description
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Transcript of the commencement address given on May 20, 2006 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2006-05-20
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text
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pdf
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Education, Higher
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English
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24003171
Commencement
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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paper
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8 pages
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Hand-me-downs : or the traditionalization of thought
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Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 14, 1998 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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1998-06-14
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text
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pdf
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Learning and scholarship
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English
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24003174
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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12 pages
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A world of worldless truths, an invitation to philosophy
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Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 20, 1999 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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1999-06-20
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text
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pdf
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Philosophy
Learning and scholarship
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English
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24003175
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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paper
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10 pages
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From the virtual to the actual : the painful prospect of liberal education
Description
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Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 18, 2000 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM.
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Levine, David Lawrence
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2000-06-18
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text
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pdf
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Education, Humanistic
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English
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24003176
Convocation
Graduate Institute
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Text
Inauguration speech 9.16.16
Thank you to all who have spoken, to my friend Greg Avis, Ms
Morf, Pam Saunders Albin, Matt Davis and Chris Nelson for your
kind words. And also to former presidents Mike Peters, and John
Agresto for being with us tonight. And all those who made this
event happen, led by Sarah Palacios.
And thank you to all those who make this college happen - the
BVG, who hired me, the tutors, who inspire us every day with
their dedication and insight, the staff who provide the scaffolding
which allows the whole show to go on, to the alumni who make
the college a permanent and important part of their lives –
including those here for Homecoming and their leaders, the
Alumni Association board -- and to our amazing students…who
are why we are all here.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------When we were beginning to plan this ceremony last February I
had been at the college for only a month. I had been thinking a
great deal about what makes the college unique. I had been
thinking, too, about how I would fit here and what I could do to
advance the life-changing work that is done at St. John’s.
Those of you who with a longer and deeper association with the
college may not remember as acutely as I do the combination of
excitement and bewilderment a person can feel when
encountering this place for the first time. St. John’s looks and
behaves, on the surface, like any other college: students and
faculty meet in classrooms, there are dormitories, a dining hall, a
bookstore, a gym…and even a bell tower.
1
�But St. John’s is not like other colleges. Faculty aren’t called
“professors,” because it is not their job to “profess.” No, at St.
John’s, faculty are called tutors, and their mission is NOT to help
students come to preordained conclusions but to provoke
learning by asking questions to which, in many cases, they
themselves are still searching for the answers…to actually learn
alongside students. The books and ideas in the academic program
are not means to an end – a good grade, the fulfillment of a
major, a light and shallow dip into one topic or another. They are,
simultaneously, the means and the end.
There is a purity to this, and a radicalism, that I have not seen
before. It can be difficult to take in. And as I began to take it in, I
realized that to succeed for the college in the way I wish, I would
somehow have to move these concepts from my head into my
heart, blood, and bones.
At that same time that I was thinking about these issues and
about how to make this ceremony meaningful, my wife, Dorothy,
and I watched the film Seymour: An Introduction.
The film, along with Seymour himself and his student, American
populist intellectual Michael Kimmelman, says so much about
what we seek to do here and about how we search for meaning in
our lives.
I am so grateful that Michael and Seymour agreed to be with us
this weekend. And I encourage any of you who have not seen the
film to do so and to join them and our own Sarah Davis for a panel
discussion about work and life’s meaning tomorrow, followed by
Seymour’s master class.
It will be worth your while.
2
�Seymour Bernstein is an extraordinarily gifted man who could
have spent his life perfecting his own craft. He certainly did not
have to take the path he chose – to be a teacher and mentor
above all else. But he made his choice knowing not only what he
was gaining, but also what he was giving up. His choice was to
follow his joy and pass that joy along to students like Michael
Kimmelman, with a brand of devotion that you heard earlier,
when they played Schubert.
This evening, and in other inauguration events, we are
highlighting teachers and students. Our processional music was
played by Evan Quarles, a Santa Fe student who is part of a senior
seminar in which I am a participant. Mr. Quarles will also
participate in Seymour’s master class tomorrow afternoon. Hoop
dancer Josiah Enriquez and drummer Duh-love-eye Denipaw
represent the long tradition of cultural mentorship in Native
American communities.
Tomorrow’s panel discussion and the piano master class will
amplify the idea that there is inherent joy in teaching and learning
and that the value of learning in community is irreplaceable –
even if the “community” is as small as just one teacher and one
student or two students together.
We say, correctly, that our academic program sets St. John’s apart
from all other colleges. What we don’t always underscore is how
much the success of the program depends on the way it is
executed – in community. But I would argue that the execution is
as well designed and intentional as the content and that it
deserves an equal share of credit when our students and alumni
reflect on what St. John’s means for their lives.
3
�For Exhibit A - observe that beautiful Steinway. There it sits, the
Schubert score in the rack, and anyone who reads music could
come to the bench and at least understand the sounds the
Steinway should make if played correctly. In the same way – and
many Johnnies will have heard this – anyone can get a list of the
books we study here and go off and sit under a tree and read
them.
But sheet music alone is not Schubert. Schubert “happens” when
Michael Kimmelman and Seymour Bernstein practice and
perform, and when we listen. Books alone are not Plato, Tolstoy,
Woolf or Shakespeare. St. John’s comprehends that, and the
Program we revere works because we understand that we are
enriched not only by the ideas of geniuses but by the
interpretations and insights we achieve together – in our
classrooms, in discussions at the koi pond or at the dorm, when
students and tutors, students and students, tutors and tutors
engage with the material and with each other.
This is the part of St. John’s that I have seen in the classroom and
in the faculty and student discussions and that makes me so
grateful to be standing here, about to be invested as president.
My challenge to all assembled here this evening is that we must
cherish this Program. We must do everything we can to ensure
that this radical form of learning doesn’t simply survive as some
kind of curiosity, but thrives as a viable alternative in the
increasingly homogeneous landscape that is mainstream higher
education.
But it is fair to ask exactly why does it matter that St. John’s
survive and prosper?
4
�This question is especially important right now, for, as many of
you know, St John’s has some significant organizational and
financial challenges that we must address.
And that makes it even more critical that we explore what
difference it would make if this small college disappeared, aside
from the – not insignificant – fact that students, tutors, and staff
who love it here would lose their home and would find no other
place like it.
Organizations come into being, and organizations fade away.
Why does St John’s matter so much?
While I was working on this speech I asked that question in
various forums, of tutors, staff and students, and, this being St.
John’s, answers came in large numbers, and many were very
beautiful.
One tutor views a St. John’s education as a curative for “the echo
chamber that passes as contemporary thinking.” Meaning, he
said, that by reading great books, students can learn to find their
own intellectual path in a society where many institutions that
past generations relied on for moral and intellectual direction
have faltered or lost influence.
Many pointed out that Americans find it difficult to talk
respectfully across difference. They noted that those kinds of
conversations occur at St. John’s every day, in and outside the
classroom.
A staff member and St. John’s graduate told me: “We leave this
place with confidence in our own identity, seeking authenticity in
5
�our interactions with the world we encounter.” She underscored
the view that many tutors shared, that “we are the only college
wholly devoted to the project of studying the great books with a
view to freeing ourselves from mere prejudice so that we can
think for ourselves.”
One tutor reminded me of how often we describe St. John’s by
saying what it is not rather than what it is. Offering what he called
a “positive account,” he said: “We are trying to show by actions,
the actions of thinking, speaking, reading, and writing, and of
living together in this residential college, that it is our deepest
nature to learn; that learning is a shared enterprise; and that it
fulfills us as human beings, makes us happy and assures us that
we belong with one another in the world as doers. The books we
read are like love letters. They invite us to happy marriages.”
I often use the word “radical” to describe the way learning occurs
on our two campuses – I have done so more than once in this
speech. That word may sound discordant if you think of St. John’s
as a place that teaches Great Books by “dead white men.” Isn’t
that kind of curriculum conservative to the core? How can we
reconcile the words “radical” and “conservative?”
We can do so by playing with the idea that in many ways what St.
John’s conserves is that which is radical in Western thought.
Arguably, everything a student encounters in the Program
demonstrates not incremental thought but radical disruption.
Thinkers like Socrates, who students get to know in their first
year, shake up everything in the known world. They express ideas
that can get a person killed. They unmoor us by insisting that all is
open to question, and they jar us from our complacency. A tutor I
spoke with earlier this fall told me that it is a rare student who
6
�reads and discusses Socrates and Plato in the Program and
doesn’t come away changed forever.
That is the “why” and the “so what” of St. John’s. It changes
people who can go on to change the world. Many St. John’s
alumni choose to teach, and many take a version of the Program
into their classrooms, where they give students the daylight in
which to examine ideas. Others take these habits of mind into
every profession you can imagine and into personal lives that are
of enormous consequence in the communities where they live.
We find ourselves on a planet beset by challenges. If we are to be
successful in facing down those challenges, we will need minds
tempered in a forge like St. John’s, at home with intellectual
disruption and subversion and able to embrace the quantum over
the incremental.
My commitment to preserving this education and celebrating its
impact is unwavering. I know that to succeed, we will do the work
before us in community, just the way we learn. We will question
everything. And we will attend to all voices.
And, I hope, when we think back on this weekend we will
remember not just the challenges in front of us but the joy and
beauty of the enterprise in which we are engaged. Schubert
becoming Schubert because we are here together. A hoop that
symbolizes eternity and interdependence and a young dancer
expressing the import. A ceremony as old as academia that
celebrates bold new thought. And above all else, this small,
wonderful, one-of-a-kind college that is unafraid to sail against
prevailing winds and that brings us all together, in community.
Thank you.
7
�
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Title
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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digital
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7 pages
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Presidential Inauguration Speech, 2016
Description
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Typescript of the inauguration speech given by Mark Roosevelt on September 16, 2016 in Santa Fe, NM.
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Roosevelt, Mark
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Santa Fe, NM
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2016-09-16
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English
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Roosevelt Inauguration Speech - 2016-09-16
Inauguration
Presidents
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THE OFFENSE OF SOCRATES
A Re-reading of Plat6's Apoloiy
Eva Brann
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
prepared for delivery at the 1975 Annual Meeting of
the American Political Science Association, San
Francisco Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, California,
September 2--5, 1975
�THE OFFENSE OF SOCRATES
A Re-reading of Plato's Apology
Eva Brann
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
1.
A first reading of Socrates' defense before the court
of the Athenian people as handed down by Plato induces an
exalted feeling in favor of Socrates. 1 That is my experience
and, I think, the experience of most studentsa
we hear a
philosopher nobly coping with a persecuting populace.
It is a perennial perception. To cite only two of the
numerous testimonials; 1 one from the last and the other from
this century1
John Stuart Mill, referring to the Apology
in his essay On Liberty, says that the tribunal "condemned
the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of
mankind to be put to death as a criminal," and Alfred North
Whitehead asserts that Socrates died "for freedom of
contemplation, and for freedom of the communication of
contemplative experiences." By and large the defenders of
Socrate$ are to be fot.md among those who might reasonably
be called liberals, both of the thoughtful and the lightheaded kind.
Now a re-reading of the speech can check this first
feeling and raise suspicions which subsequent readings
confirm.
I am taken aback by the intransigencew1.th which
Socrates is shown to go on the offensive and to convert
his defense before the court of the Heliaea into an accusation against the ''men of Athens." A small formality sets
the tonea
he never once accords the court the customary
�2
address of "Judges;" he reserves it for those who vote
for his acquittal (40 a).
What is more, the speech intensifies in provocation
toward its end.
In that section, delivered after convic-
tion, where Socrates avails himself of the opportunity
granted by Athenian law for proposing a penalty to
counter that demanded by the prosecution, he first suggests
maintenance at the public table for himself, so that he
might have more leisure for exhorting the Athenians, next
a derisory fine about equivalent to a prisoner's ransom,
and only finally, urged by Plato, Crito and other friends,
a reluctantly reasonable sum thirty times as great.
As
a foreseeable consequence eighty juror-judges, evidently
convinced that this Socrates, once convicted, must be
executed, now vote for the death penalty (Diogenes
Laertius II, 42).
And yet later, after judgment, when
Socrates is allowed to speak once more, he issues dark
threats against the city through its children (39 d).
· This perspective on the event, resistant to Socrates
as it is, also has a lineage of testimony.
Its sources
range for the most part from respectably conservative
through illiberal, even to reactionary writers, from Jacob
Burckhardt who calls Socrates "the gravedigger of the Attic
city," through Nietzsche and Sorel to the Nazi writer
Alfred Rosenberg, who regards his defense as
the degeneration of Greece.
an
intimation of
This rough division of views
will have a certain bearing on what I have to say.
But the variety and bulk of
Apology is itself significant.
commen~
concerning the
It shows :'\ow unlikely it is
that I could hope to say anything new or anything binding,
�3
the more so since the one discovery which might really
startle us--what Socrates in fact satd--is totally beyond
our reach, as it already was beyond that of a contemporary like Xenophon.
In his own Apology, which both
counters and complements the Platonic version, he calls all
current accounts of Socrates' speech deficient (paYa..1)
and says that the only aspect on which all agree ts its
"grandeur of utterance."
So we are thrown back on the
consideration and re-consideration of the major version,
Plato's--which is undoubtedly what he intended.
2.
I can see two inferior and one pressing reason for
undertaking this effort.
The first lies in the speciaJ
position which the Apology occupies in Plato's Socratic
works.
It is the only speech among them; the auditors
participate only by shouting, and its single interlocutor,
the reluctant witness M!letos, is impressed into a dialogue.
It is the only work in which the author, who is explicitly
absent even at Socrates' death (PhaedO
59 b), reports
himself present, a fact Xenophon omits. I understand these
circumstances to indicate that what Socrates said and did
here is to be seen as casting its shadow over the other
works, including those preceding the trial in dramatic
date.
I mean not only the dialogues explicitly associated
with the Apology, namely its prologue, Socrates' conversation
u..
about piety with Ethyphro; its complement, about patriotism,
/\
with Crito; and its consummation, on death, with Phaedo
and others.
Nor am I particularly referring to the works
which contain
clea~
allusions to the trial, like Anytos'
threats in the lifillQ (94 e) or the prediction of the
�4
philosopher's death in the Republic (517 a).
But rather,
all Platonic conversations, even those at which Socrates
is absent, are colored by his defense--in just what way
is the question .ta bP
discus~ed.
3.
A second reason for attending to the Apoloey is that
it belongs to a group of works which I would hesitate to
call a literary genre because of the solemnity of their
occasion, but
education.
w1io8~
subject does form a topic in moral
.
They are the accounts of the trials of rni::n
who have offended the authorities by thinking or speaking,
but .!lQ.t J2Y doing anything l~ the.gross sense.
For example, two
days before his conviction for hir:,h tn=!ason and less than
two weeks before his execution Helmut von
Moltke~
wrote
a letter to his wife reporting on his trial before the
National Socialist
P~ople's
Court.
was smuggled out of prison, he saida
In the letter, which
";ve are cleared of
every practical ;i.ction; we are to be hang~d 'because we
thought together." 3 IIe goes on to praise the othen.:ise
despicable judge for his clarity of perception in this
respect.
Anyone who dies for his deeds also finally dies for
his thought.
But what distinguishes these deaths for
thinking and speaking alone,,attended by no provable intention to incite particular action, is the acute form they
give to_
::-the question
co~cerning
the work of thought in the
world.
4.
First among these comparable accounrs stand those of
the trial of Jesus.
There is, in fact, a very long
�5
tradition setting Socrates' and Jesus' ordeals side by sides
it is done, to name a small selection, in the writings of
Origen, Calvin, Rousseau, and G&nctbt\1 4
The apparent similarities begin with the very fact
that there are varying accounts of what was said and done.
As for the defendants
both are the objects of
th~mselves,
popular passion channelled by a Group of implacable
opponents, lA<i respectively by Anytos for the re-established
democracy and Caiaphas for the Sanhedrin.
Both are
attended by a band of adherents, friends or . disciples, to
whom they are suspected of imparting secret teachings, and
both deny the charge.
Both are intransigent in their refusal
to defend themselves effectively.
Both show a shocking
unwillineness to evade death, and for both, their deaths
only confirm their influence.
A most striking parallel,
furthermore, is the chief explicit charge, irreverence in
Socrates' and blasphemy in Jesus.' case.
also, however,
It is at this pointl\that the utter incommensurability
of the two cases begins to appear.
Jesus "holds his peace"
before the Sanhedrin and answers Pilate with "never a word"
(Matthew 26,63; 27,14; a divergent account lets him answer
with counter-questions and evasions).
from his situation.
His silence arises
He is suspected of claiming the power
and being of the Messiah.
That claim is undeniably
blasphemy if it is false.
But the Jewish court has already
prejudged its falsity, and since he has certainly asserted
the claim in secret (16,15-20), his only course is to
obscure its assertion publicly.
Again, when the Jewish
authorities represent him to the Roman goverrtor as
seditious because he has assumed for himself a new ..
�6
sovereignty, Jesus follows a similar coursea
he admits
and at the same time denies this assumption by putting it
in the mouth of the governor--"Thou sayest it" (27,11),
and by denying that his rule is pplitical--"My kingdom is
not of this world" (John 18,36).
So far there might still be a parallel between him
and Socrates, for both withhold themselves from the court;
both present themselves as less than they are.
is this all-important differences
But there
the writers of the
Gospeis believed, after all, that Jesus' claim was true;
that the defendant at this trial was, acknowledged or not,
God.
So while both cases are the consequence of an irruption into the corrununity of powerful claims incompatible
with its authority, they are quite incomparable in a way
very revealing to the Apology.
For Jesus, as the 1.ong-
awaited Christ, is represented as fulfilling in his life
and death a prophecy and a mission, while Socrates, who
specifically denies having even super-human wisdom (20 e),
is a man, and a man unheralded and unordained.
Therefore,
while the Passion is an inevitable consummation, Socrates'
end is no part of a prefigured unique drama but a deliberate,
human deed.
It is consonant with this difference that
Socrates speaks where Jesus is silent, and speaks boldly,
if selectively, to his city, in this world.
The Apology
is part of a thoroughly political event.
s.
There is, however, another trial \.:hich is more
permissibly comparable.
Sir Thomas More. "our noble, new
Christian Socrates," as his biographer Harpsfield calls him,
�7
was brought before the King's Bench, indicted on a statute
which made it treason to deny, or, in the court's
interpretation, to refuse to affirm, the King as Supreme
Head of the Church of England.
Socrates' and More's conduct are similar in these
pointsa
Both have an opportunity for evading their trials as
well as their sentences, Socrates by voluntary silence or
exile, More by offering to "revoke and reform" his "wilful
obstinate opinion." Both defend themselves before the court
and
b~th
speak again, more bluntly and intransigently, after
having been pronounced guilty, both revealing that they
consider the real cause to be other than the stated indictment, but also that they are in spirit, at least, guilty as
charged. Finally, both explain their conduct by reference
to other-wordly considerations, More to "the hazarding of
my soul to perpetual damnation," Socrates to his welcome
among the heroes in Hades.
Buts
More makes a wily, subtle defense, standing on
the letter of the law in claiming his right to silence,
and revealing only after the verdict his implacable
opposition to the king's heterodoxy.
He saysa
••• ye must understand that, in things touching
conscience, every true and good subject is more-bound
to have respect to his said conscience and to his
soul than to any other thing in all the world besides,
namely, when his conscience is in such a so~t as mine
is, that is to say, when the person giveth no occasion of slander, of tumult and sedition against his
prince, as it is with mea for I assure you that I have
not hitherto to this hour disclosed and opened my
conscience and mind to any person living in all
5
the world ....
More, then, as a statesman and a lawyer defends himself
with all legal care, while as a subject and a Christian
he, as did Christ, preserves inviolate his inmost thought••
�8
But Socrates, a private man who has never held office and
has no experience of courts (17 d), handles his defense
very cavalierly, while as a citizen and a philosopher he,
unlike his Christian counterpart, has no notion of .
privacies of conscience,
The comparison therefore throws
into relief his freedom in the Apology,
His resolve
derives from no hidden recesses of conviction, but from a
ground which by its very nature is common and in need of
communication.
6.
The most vivid reason, finally, for re-studying the
Apology is the desire to come to some answer to the
questions
was Socrates rightly convicted and rightly
condemned to death~
It is a question of several aspects.
First, why did the Heliastic court convict Socrates and
accept the prosecutior&view that this had to be a capital
case'?
It is essential here to recall that Socrates himself
not only considers irreverence and corruption of the young
definable offenses and agrees with the authorities that
such charges could lie, but that, as the Crito shows, he is
in deepest accord with the Solonic fundamental law from
which they arise. 6
Now in the absence of the case for the prosecution,
this first questionJcan only be resolved by examining
Socrates' defense, which I want to do later.
That task is,
however, complicated by the fact that Socrates turns his
defense into an offense, into an accusation against his
accusers and his fellow citizens.
For :t would be ludicrous
to attempt to examine the substance of hi: attack, which
would mean trying to determine whether it is more true of
�9
the Athenians that they are sluggish in self-examination
than of, say, Thebans, Spartans, or Americans.
Indeed,
it might be argued that charges which are universally true
of all humankind are, when pointedly levelled at one
particular community, pernicious, so that his very attack
might become evidence to the jury of his bad faith.
A second aspect of the question concerning Socrates'
conviction is this.
Shortly after Socrates' execution a
backlash seems to have occurred.
Meletos may have been
condemned to death and .Anytos to exile. 7 Socrates the
persecuted philosopher was vindicated in the repentant
city.
How then ought a Heliastic juror have voted, had he
been able to foresee subsequent events, particularly the
most immediate result, that a convicted Socrates would cooperate
with hjs accu~P.rs bv
Amov~~to force the court into the death penalty?
But the most important aspect is that framed in
contemporary terms.
How should I be disposed in analogous
present-day situations7
For in spite of the fact that
such cases can no longer arise with the judicial directness
of the ancient city, the Socratic issue is always present
when persons of more mobile intellect, more extensive
education and more leisure than most people come into
collision with the religious beliefs and moral traditions
of those whom they are intent on serving.
7.
To begin with, then, I must examine the sufficiency
of Socrates' defense.
Xenophon takes . Jocrates' "grandness of utterance,"
"
a feature present
a~
his
poi~t
of
~n
all previous accounts of the speech,
d~oarture.
This tone must, he says,
�10
appear as "rather mindless .. unless it can be shown that
Socrates was in fact deliberately inviting death as an
escape from the decay of old age (6).
Here is the classic
statement in. the tradition propounding self-euthanasia
as an explanation of Socrates' strange conduct in court.
For it is evident that Socrates' defense is a deliberate
failure.
Now Plato attempts to forestall Xenophon's explanation
of this striking fact in the dialogue of Socrates' last
day, the Phaedo.
There Socrates himself argues that
suicide is simply impermissible, no matter how desirable
death might seem (62 a).
To regard Socrates as manipu-
lating the Athenians into killing him and to confuse his
welcoming acceptance of death with suicide is to trivialize
the events of that day in court.
Only the fact that
Socyates invited conviction stands.
8.
Let me then present a critical rehearsal of Socrates'
speech, stated in the least well-disposed terms.
Socrates begins by accusing his accusers of lying when
they warn the court that he is a skilled and formidable
speaker.
Unaccustomed as he is to public speaking he is
· not formidable, "unless they call him formidable who speaks
the truth" (17 b).
This truth he will present, and indeed in
the subsequent speech he is, "alien to the diction" of a crowd
though he may be, complete master of the situation.
He
even contrives for a stretch to introduce his own dialectic
mode into the proceeding, as he
interrc~ates
Meletos, a
co-accuser, who is by law obliged to subrrit to examination.
Anytos, his senior opponent, he wisely omits to call.
�11
He attacks this inadequate young man, who, as Socrates
puts it, goes running to accuse him "to the city as to his
mother" (Ey.thyphro 2 c), with an ad hominem arguments
Meletus himself does not care about the substance of the
accusation.
But what weight in law can that have, supposing
it were so7
In any case, Socrates does not allow Meletos
to answer his question--Vho, then, does make the young
better7--in the only way Meletos and those behind him.£.!!!
answer it, namely by asserting that the laws, but most of
all the citizens, improve the young
(24-2~).
For in the
Meno (92 e) he had already disallowed Anytos' answer that
it is the respectable citizens of the city, its gentlemen,
who transmit excellence from generation to generation.
Now
he wants Meletos to tell the court what particular person,
like a horse trainer, exercises the youth of Athens into
excellence,
But, of course, this is precisely what Meletos'
backers resist--the notion that their children's formation
should be in the hands of such experts.
As a part of Socrates' wider attack, on the good faith
of his accusers he substitutes a charge of his own devising
for the true formal indictment.
In bringing his charge, he
claims, Meletos trusted to an "old slander" (19 a, 28 b),
a long-standing hatred in the city aginst him, which Socrates
associates with Aristophanes' comedy, The Clouds,
there are difficulties.
But
Not only does he himself later refer
to the high esteem in which he is held in the city, where
"the opinion prevails that Socrates is somet.hing more than
most men" (35 a), but the relation of Aristophanes to
Socrates in the Svrnposium and Plato's veneration for the
playwright make it hard to believe that Socrates' friends
�12
really saw that old comedy as working over near a quarter
of a century toward his undoing.
9.
Socrates, then, makes up a suppositious new indictment
based on the Clouds (112, 117), which runsa
"Socrates
does wrong and meddles, searching into the things below
the earth and into celestial things and making the worse
reasoning the stronger and teaching others these very things"
(19 b).
By means of this reformulation he pretends that the
real charge of irreverence--which he himself recognizes as
such in the E§lthyphro (S c)--is directed at his supposed
researches into the nature of heavenly bodiPs and similar
matters.
These he had, indeed, given up long aeo when still
in his youth, for reasons set out in the Phaedo (96 b).
Of .;uch matters, he plausibly argues, he no longer knows
anything nor do they any longer concern him.
And yet--in
that very dialogue he gives a vivid _
topoloey of the things
above and below the earth (198 e ff.) , as he does i.n the
Republic and in other conversations.
Can he really in
good faith argue that he has no interest in eschatology,
when he makes up novel stories and private myths about the
upper and lower realms--the very enterprise that disturbs
the Athenians 'l
His chief defense, however, against the "old sl;:i.nder"-which is at bottom nothing but the imputati.on of 5ophistry-rests on a tale he tells (20 e).
Chaerophon, his crony in
the Clouds, had perpetrated a coup in 11elphi.
1-Ie had gotten
Apollo's oracle to declare that no man "·'ls wiser than
Socrates.
Whereupon Socrates modestly undertakes to prove
�13
the god mistaken, but, to his own regret, fails.
He calls
this undertaking "giving the god's business the highest
priority" (21 e), and regards its mention as a sufficient
defense against the old charge (24 b),
10.
The correct indictment, as Socrates cites it, isa
"that Socrates does wrong, corrupting the young and not
respecting the gods whom the city respects, but other, new
half-divinities" (24 b).
Here is how Socrates meets the actual charge of irreverence, when he finally reaches it.
The wording of its
first point, if the meaning of the verb (nomizein) is translated
very carefully, is that Socrates "does not regard the gods
in the customary way." Against this point Socrates has no
defense--he himself admits its truth to Euthyphro, for he tells
him that he, Socrates, cannot accept the traditional stories
of the gods, that is, the common myths of the Greeks; this,
he adds, is the reason for his rrosecution (6 a).
In cross-
examining Meletus, however, he traps him into thoughtlesly
agreeing with an altered formulation, namely that Socrates
"does not regard the gods as existing" (nomizein einai, 26 c, d).
Now he can defend himself, and he produces an argument as
logical as it is ludicrous.
Using the indictment itself, he
argues that he who is accused of introducing new half-divinities
cannot be charged with not believing in the full gods who must
be their parents, any more than someone who acknowledges the
existence of mules can be supposed not to believe in their
parents, namely horses and asses (27 c).
So much for
irreverence.
Ther~
remains the charge concerning the introduction of
�14
new divinities.
Socrates makes it clear in the EMthynhro
(3 b) and again in the Aoology (31 d) that he understands
the accusers to be thinking of his notorious daimonion, the
"half-divine thing" within him, and that they regard him as
a "me.ker of gods" on account of it.
Nonetheless Socrates not
only makes no effort to allay their apprehensions, but he
even dwells more extensively on his "divine sign" here in
court than anywhere else.
11.
How next does Socrats defend himself against the
corruption charge7
His version of it in terms of the "old
slander" is that Socrates is a "clever one," the unique
indigenous sophist, an excogitator who dispenses dangerous
wisdom to a clique from within a cogitatorium.
Of course,
as everyone knows, Socrates actually has no establishment of
his own, so the comic claim needs no refutation.
Its serious
counterpart in the real accusation, on the other hand, is
that he has esoteric teachings.
Socrates calls this charge
a lie and asserts that no one has ever heard anything from him
in private that all were not welcome to hear (33 b).
Ha<l I
been in that court-room I would simply have refused to
believe him.
Bot1'fing ·· is clearer than that Socrates does not
say everything to everybody.
Furthermore, Socrates knows very well that his accusers
are not very precise in their knowledge of this intrusive
travelling tribe of professionals.
In
the~
Anytos wanders
into the conversation expressing a horror of these people,
but readily confesses that he has neve:.· even met one.
Socrates is in no position to ridicule h;m for that lack of
experience.
For in the Republic he himself argues that it
�15
might be useful for a physician to have experienced disease
in his own body, but that it is in no way good for someone
who is to govern the soul by the soul to be experienced in
corruption (409 a).
A magistrate like Anytos might well
claim that it is a staunch caution that keeps him from
seeking acquaintance with those whom his good sense makes
him despise.
Since, therefore, the description of the sophists'
co~petence
is left to Socrates, he chooses to present them as
people wh9 "might be wise with a greater than human wisdom"
(20 e).
That is, they are the ones who are expert in the
things above and below, while Socrates has the reputation
only of "a certain wisdom," which is "perhaps human wisdom."
At this point the Athenians make a disturbance, for they know
that this Socratic wisdom, thisnunwilling wisdom" (Ey:thyphro
11 e), has but one contents
the knowledge of his own ignorance
and the determined exposition of- the ignorance of everyone else
in the city . (21 .d).
Part of the charge of sophistry is the charge of
"teaching."
Teaching is not in the terms of the actual
indictment, but Socrates imports it and tricks Meletos into
amending the wording to include it (26 b).
Why7
Because he
· intends, in making the point that his activity is not teaching,
to bring out these circumstancesa
that he takes no money,
that he conveys no subject-matter and that he accepts no
responsibility . (33 b).
But if he takes no money, that only means that he is
uncontrollable--he cannot be engaged or dismissed, as a
parent might hire or fire a professionalo
And if he takes
no responsibility for the careers of his young associates,
�16
why, that is usually called irresponsibility.
But if he
conveys no positive matter to these young men, that is the
very worst of all, in the light of what he shows them
instead.
For with disingenuous innocence he himself gives
a vivid description of what it is that is conveyed to them
1n his companya
he goes about engaging public men, poets
and craftsmen in conversations which are really examinations and
in the course of which it emerges that they do not, in truth,
know what they are doing, although they think they know it well
enough--while the young men stand by and watch and smile; for,
he says charminglya "it
he
repo~ts,
is~
unpleasant" (33 c).
Afterwards,
they range through the city imitatine him,
presumably like those skeptical puppies who have inopportunely
gotten hold of dialectic, which he himself describes in the
Republic (529 b).
This is what Socrates calls "not being
anyune's teacher," and this is how he makes himself palatable , to
his fellow-citizens.
He . ompletes his defense aeainst the corruption charge
c
by pointing to the fact that no·.one --who either considers himself
to have been corrupted or is a parent of a corrupted child is
then and there coming forward to complain (34 b).
But then,
of course, aside from the unlikelihood that a parent would
proclaim his child's corruption in public, the whOle town knew
that the chief accuser Anytos considered himself to
such a parent.
b~
just
Xenophon records this circumstance (Apoloey 29).
12.
This then is Socrates' defense
a~
Plato permits us to
construe it in the mind of a Heliastic juror.
There is
i.ncr iia.i na t 1 ng
undoubtedly something deliberately self-,..,. -
-_- -
about it.
Socrates does not even scruple to use phrases to the
�17
court which intimate in his own terms the equivocal nature
of his own acti.vity. I am referring to the phrases which ·
in the Republic give the working definition of right or
justice, namely "to do one's own business," and of wrongdoing, namely "to be busy at many things" (433 a), to meddle,
~
to do everything,h the latter being Socrates' favorite
description of the sophists' activity (596 c).
Yet for
Socrates in Athens the two apparently coincide--he claims
that in his private interrogations he is both "doing his
own business" (33 a) which happens to be going about meddling
in theirs (31 c), and that in doing theirs he is also doing
the god's (33 c).
So he intimates something possibly pernicious, while he
never takes cognizance of the real fears of his judges.
Those fears concern the substance of the citY, which is
compounded of traditions, particularly the deep old myths
about its gods and the established respect for the wisdom
of its citizens, of whose collapse Socrates' scrutiny makes
a spectacle for the young.
So also, because he never ac-
knowledges that he in fact teaches, he evades rendering a
candid and comforting account of the essential loyalty of
his
intention~
such as even a very uncomfortAing citizen-
teacher would feel obligated to give to apprehensive parents1
he never says that he and they in the end care for the
~
city.
It is necessary here to recall that Socrates' indictment was judicially correct.
Under these circumstances it
seems to me that even a decent juror, realizing in the course
of the speech that both charges had the same root, which the
defense had in no way reached, might feel compelled to
�18
convict, and, if he was a man of ftir~s; i'gb;t_, he might pray the
while that it would not come to execution.
13.
Indeed there is a case to be made for the convicting
Athenians.
Hegel, for instance, who of course takes a very
comprehensive view of the affair, is their brisk defender,
and some of the points that follow are, in fact, made in
the History£! Philosophy (Vol. II, "The Fate of Socrates").
First, the common view that this was a political trial,
the attack of the rabid returned democracy against a man
with aristocratic views and associates, will not hold up.
Socrates himself recounts at his trial how he had been in
difficulties under various regimes, certainly under the
oligarchical Thirty who included his own interlocutors
Critias and Charmides (32 e).
Furthermore, the chief accuser
Anyt.Js was a moderate democrat, a "seemly and well-conducted
man" of respectable reputation by Socrates' own account in
the Meno (90 b).
In fact the very description of Socrates as an antidemocrat is not very convincing.
Read without prejudice the
vignette of the democratic regime in the Republic, a dialogue
itself set in the democratic stronghold of Athens' harbor,
shows, for all its outrageousness, one vital redeeming
features
this regime is, Socrates says, a perfect supermarket
of constitutions, and anyone who wishes to erect a city,
~~~doing,"
should go there (557 d).
"~
Socrates'
activity is at home in a democracy, not to speak of the fact
that the Athenians regard Socrates as instigating that very
forwardness in the young which he describ0s as endemic to
democracies (563 a).
�19
Now the Athenians have, 1.n fact, as Socrates himself
observes in the Crito (52 e), borne with him for seventy
years, in spite of the supposed "great hatred" against him
(28 a).
Even his two incursions into politics, for which,
as he tells the court, he might "perhaps" have died (32 d),
passed off safely.
So that. the man who tells the Athenians
that they will kill anyone who publicly opposes them (31 e),
has himself been allowed to live a long life of semi-public
resistance.
Even this late conclusion need never have come.
If they
had managed better, Crito sadly observes, the ·case need never
have come to court (45 e).
Nor need Socrates have died, for
voluntary exile was possible, as the Laws remind him when he
makes them speak (52 e).
Even in that court and in spite of
Socrates' intransigence there were 220--nearly half--of the
five hundred (or 501) jurors who either thought the accusation
insufficiently proved, or were moved by a strong sense of
Socrates' excellence, or agreed with him that the city could
profit by his existence, or considered that the city would
be better served by forbearance.
him guilty.
These 220 refused to find
Their number surprises Socrates who has evidently
not done justice to the quality of some Athenians (36 a).
Again, once the verdict is in, Socrates is allowed to
speak freely, as is the civilized Athenian cu$tom, and to
reaffirm his partnership in the city by participating in the
fonnulation of his sentence.
Socrtites abuses this occasion
in order to re-iterate his view of the incompetence of the
Heliastic court.
Yet more, once sentenced and in prison the
Athenians allow him daily conversation with his friends and
Accord him a bloodless death among friends.
�20
Indeed his freedom to speak before the large public
of the court-room or to the intimate circle of friends in
prison ts complete.
The formal issue of a mere right to
free speech is of no concern to Socrates or to the Athenians1
~
care only about the substantial question whether
Socrates' speech does damage.
In this light even Anytos' harsh recommendation that the
case must either not come before the court at all or come
as a capital case (29 c) can at least be taken to evince a
state of mind the opposite of trivial, a state of mind Plato
must respect.
For in the Statesman, the stranger to whom
Socrates has turned over the conversation says that in the
absence of true statesmanship, the laws and the
customs must rule.
anc~stral
Since, then, no one is to be wiser than
they, if anyone is seen to be searching into the crafts which
have been legally established, and waxing wise about them,
he can be indicted on a charge of corrupting the young and
made to suffer "the most extreme penalti?s" (299 b).
In .sum the very seriousness with which they take
Socrates' non-political activity gives the Athenians a claim
.
to our respect, wh ose mo d us viven di t. to regar d p h' 1 osop h ers
i is
i
I\
light-heartedly.
To be sure, it is not good to interrupt a
speaker, but their clamor is brief and controllable--and it
comes correctly, at crucial points.
Here in effect the
attention of a whole city has been gained by one man, a
philosopher.
Of what other people can that be said?
14.
Clearly this Socrates, who
confron~s
and affronts such
a city in this way, is Socrates in a very oblique aspect.
This aspect is just that described by Kierkegaard in a
�21
R
passage from The Concept .Q.f Irony: ··
Thus we see clearly how the position of Socrates with
respect to the state is thoroughly negative, how he
ivholly fails to fit into it, but we see it even more
clearly at the moment when, indicted for his way of
life, he surely must have become conscious of his
disproportion to the state, Yet undismayed he carries
throueh his position, with his sword above his head,
His speech is not the powerful pathos of enthusiasm •••
but instead we have an irony carried through to its
last limit.
By irony Kterkegaard means not what Socrates means when he
uses the tenn
laticrl, his
~ith
respect to himself, namely his dissimu-
preti::>1~ce
of knowing less than he does, but a
kind of self-levitation by which one is raised above all
rositive knowledge.
Such a zestful abstention from content
does, in a way, characterize the Socrates of the Apology.
At any rate, Socrates with his sword above his head is a
man of neeation, and these are his featuresa
15.
First and foremost there is that uncanny nay-sayer
within him which he calls his daimonion, and which plays
-a larger role in this than in any other genuine dialogue.
He
describes it (31 d) as a sort of inner voice which has been
with him from childhood; that is to say, it is innate but
not in need of "recollection," of being .searched out by
thought.
This "half-divine" and even "divine something,"
-·
action.
...
. never aids thought and never urges
. '.'
;.·.
It speaks only to warn him .!!.Q.!; to do a deed.
To what realm of being this notorious daimonion belongs
is unfathomable.
But the role it has in Socrates' life is
not beyond conception.
Enthusiasm means literally the
state of having a d~vinity within (cf. entheos)1
The
daimonion is Socr .... tes' negative enthusiasm., a permanently
~--i~n~oA r~~~r~inin~
oower.
Socrates is no enthusiast,
�22
because the exaltations of thought are not due to a special
agency, but he does need a special negative faculty.
For
it is his chief teaching that excellence is knowledge _
(e.g. Protagoras 360 e ff.), and that deeds of excellence
are the direct consequence of knowledee.
But then, by
the inverse proposition, wrong deeds stem from ignorance anc1
are always in some deep sense inadvertent; no one does bad
things in full consciousness.
Consequently, since they are
by their very nature beyond the context of reason, they require
an uncanny power for their prevention.
The daimonion is
Socrates' ability to avoid wrong, his negative excellence.
In particular the daimapjap makes Socrates refrain from
engaging in politics (31 d) because that would have been tantamount, he says, to a futile sort of self-destruction.
None-
theless he describes himself in the Gorgias (521 d) as being
the only man in Athens who does truly engage in politics.
That ts to say, he has devised for himself a mode of being
privately public (or the reverse); by his description it is
a way of "conferring in private the greatest benefit on each
citizen" (36 c).
This mission he has devised for -himself he
will not give up even if he "is to die many times over"
(33 c).
This is Socrates' neeative politicsa
to deny that
the public realm is the truly political realm and to assert
his inner logos intransigently in the service of the city.
mpqt differs from
Tho~s More.
FoT. Mpre
~ocratesJ\unwillingly
It is 1n this respect that
accepts
: ~::_
but dutifully
. . high public office, and yet asserts to
the right to open his mind to no one.
his'~ death
It is, in capsule,
the distinction in matters political between a Christian and a
philosopher.
�23
16.
Last and most important, when Socrates formulates what
is to be within this speech "the greatest good for man" it
is in altogether negative termss "The unexamined life is
'for mC}n"
not livable/\ l38 a); what people at present care for is
nothing much (30 a);
the truly worthwhile work is that
of examining, testing, refuting, exposing impartially both
hi~self
and others. In this one respect at least he finds
himself wise:
that he knows he knows nothing (21 d); his
fellow citizE?ns, on the other hand, fail totally under
examination--and it is precisely' his offense that he publ ish~s these failures,
He claims, however, without irony,
that to fall silPnt would be disobedience to the god.
To put it another -ways
the first culmination of
Socrates' non-didactic teaching is usually his notorious
anori'1, literally "waylessness," a profitable perplexity or
embarassment, i.nducP<l in the learner for his own sake (e.g.
t-1 Ano 84).
a public
Insofar as
sf'>rvic~,
Socrat~s
rr--prPsents his activity as
however, his interlocutor is embarrassed
not for his own sake but as an.object-lPsson, nor does the
conversation continue to positive learning; in this setting
Socrates is indeed a negative teacher.
Here, then, the philosophic activity is presented as an
entirely negative effort, without an end or a substance-sienificantly the substantive philosophia is never used, but
only the verb philosophein, "to carry on the effort for
wisdom."
But most particularly, at thP. literal center of the
speech (29 b), and again at its end, Socrates asserts his
ultimate negative wisdoms
concerning Hades,
th~
his knowledee of his ignorance
realm of death.
�24
17.
To offset clearly the negative Socrates in the dock,
whose defense he appears to record, Plato writes a second
defense for Socrates in prison.
The conversations of the
Crito and the Phaedo arE' the deliberately posittve cornp1Pments to the oratory of
th~ A~olo~v.
In the l:>eeinning of the Crito
So~r<:1tes
o.wakP.s from a
deep blank sleep, 1 ik!J <:!1:-1 t so lo!1gir.3ly c!escribed at
end of the Apoloey, to a conversation in which hP
condemnation as he never would before th!? court,
duly proceeding from the laws he has
under all his life (53 a).
V!~l.'Y
th~
acc~~t~
I!
l .J
.::.s
r1a:"t~ely
willirie,1y
\.-.
liv~d
In a tone thP very o_;:•I="osite of that
in the Apology he has the laws upbraid him:
the right thing is the same for you
an~
whatever we undertake to do to you, you
"••
for us,
thin~
.r.o
yo•..: •.:hir:k
t!:=t t
:.;0
it is
ri~ht
to do
the same back to us1" (SO e).
This other, positive Socrates is even more stronely
del in ea ted in the Phae<lo, the dial oeue o:i
his second and; he
ho~es,
more successful
dP<t
th
~,,h ich
def~nse
con ta ins
(69 e).
On
this his last day he is not a harsh and offensive rhetorician,
but a charming and attentive listener, as the narrator makes a
point of noting (89 a).
Here he speaks not as a relentless
interrogator but as one who is prepared, if his interlocutor
wishes it, to "talk it through in tales" (diainytb"ologei!!·•! . ,
70 b).
Here he does not present himself as proudly ignorant,
but is presented as the one and only knower (76 b); nor does
he pretend to be without a teaching, but he rather appears
as one who--the recipient of Phaedo's account interrupts to
remark--makes philosophical matters astonishingly clear (102 a).
Here all the great Socratic notions are recapitulateda
his
�25
supposition of the eide, the invisible "looks" or forms1
the myth
of
r~collection;
the true good beyond the merely
human good of refutation in the Apology.
In this conversation
Socrates frequently refers to philosophia, and presents it as
the inquiry into the rec:ilm of death, the "invisible Hades"
(Ai~~s
Aeides) which is also the place of the invisible eide
(80 d), the place of being (76 d).
of death but
~.;1?11-studied
Here he is not ignorant
in it, and the death the city confers
on him is not an ahscon<'ling into sleep-like nothingness but
an "immigration" to the realm of being (40 c, 117 c); a
felicitous alternative to exile.
So, then, there can be no question that before the court
Socrates <:leliberately curtails and withholds himself.
18.
Then the question becomes1
why?
deliberately offend the court, why
~oes
Why does Socrates
he go on the offens-
ive acainst the Athenians, why does he use his defense to
document his offense against the city?
Since Socrates actually lived and actually came before
the Heliaea, there must be some aspects of Plato's Defense
which derive from the actual circumstances.
Once a defendant,
Socrates became a resister, the defender of philosophy from
the city's attack.
He must have thought that this public
occasion was a moment to display spirit, to confirm the lifelong business of words in deed, to be what Achilles, to whom
he compares himself, was in war, 4hero for philosophy - (28 c).
YT1
Again, in part his conduct must have been an accomodation
"
to the conditions of the occasion, ·namely the short time he
has for speaking end the great crowd to whom he must address
himself.
Twice he mentions the lack of time for
quie~
.
�26
persuasion (19 a, 37 b).
This lack of leisure and of
intimacy is not a peripheral
matter--~othing
Socrates thinks
can be expeditiously conveyed by public deliverance; it
always be slowly engendered in
lei.sur~ly
with its accompanying inner dialogue.
n ust
1
direct conversation
Socrates' positive
wisdom stated concisely in public would appear simply bizarre.
The negative and the positive Socrates are obverses of
each other.
Refutation, the breaking up of an accerterl
opinion, goes over into the search for a truth.
But in IJUblic,
whether Socrates has been summoned to court or has accostP.d
a man who is not a friend, the transformation will not take
place--the conversation is curtailed.
The Apolo0v leaves
aside the widest and deepest Qllf':'Stions conr.en1ing the rie,ht
relation between the political community and the care of
souls, but it implies this mucha
when philoso;'hY comes upon
the 8ity it comes as a threat.
19.
Accordingly it is possible to surmise whv Plato
~ut
on
record for times to come so detailed and emphatic a statem0nt
of the resistant Socrates.
A startling moment in the Apology throws light on this
matter.
For the first and last time Plato himself irrupts
into his own work (38 a).
Socrates hears him raisP his voice
to suggest a sober and sensible money penalty, to subvert as
it were, Socrates' own proud and derisory proposals.
The
suggestion is very much like a rebuke, and Socrates accepts
it.
It is as if in this work, in which he does not so much
speak through Socrates but represents himself as spoken to
by him, Plato is recording something he h..\d heard in court
which must cast its shadow over the other dialogues, and so
�27
over the whole philosophical tradition.
He had heard that
Socrates' actiyity .ll publicly indefensibl<-?.
20.
Let me
conjr~cture.
The nialogues proper, the Socratic
conversations, would by and laree p.:iss into oblivion, the
~'ositive
co11tent of Socrates' wisdom, its <leep suppositions
and encompassing myths shrivelled into conformity with his
succ8s~:ors'
ci
p:;'ea r in
rnor~
,~thens
s tr1~!1uoos
sys ter.is.
OnP.
succe1=rn or
such"would soon
•
.
the other hand, Socrates' speech, delivered before
C:-i
the 1ar!3E'St public of his life, would continue to be at
work.
Its heroic intransigence, which had driven the court
to extrem0s c..:,2.inst him, would play a part in a revulsion
endine in his re-est:abl i.shment.
It would be the Socrates
of refutations uho would prevail.
In a softened popular
col0.r_·ine. this . is thc-> Socrates of Cicero's "1-l'el 1-known
1escription1
Socrates was the first who cal lf'?d rhilosophy <1o"m from
the b..eavens, SP.ttle<l her in the citiP-s and even introduced her into private houses and compelled her to ask
questions about life and moral matters and things good
~nd ba~. (T1_1sculan !)isDutations, V, iv, 10)
:2u t the so-cal led "Socr:.:l tic method" •vould also make
1.'3.rsher reappearances, as "rn.rlical doubt," as "enlightenment,"
1
· as "critique," as the'\.e-examination of all values" or as a
~eneral
affirmation of the questioning disposition.
In
each of these modes philosophy would penetrate the preit:ences
to credit of yet another community.
'l 'lithout supposing that
Plato could have foreseen all these developments, it is yet
possible
to imagine that he had intimations, that he was
as apprehensive ahout the facile vindication of Socrates' way
as he was about the learned ossification of his thought.
To
�28
prevent the lattcr--or rather to provide a per.manent possibility of revival--he wrote
nu.~erous
Socratic conversations.
To forestall the former--or rather to put perennial obstacles
in its wa.y--he wrote one Socr.atic speech.
noble oration
~.,roul<l,
This proud and
at least on re-examination, reveal that
Socrates had committed an undeniable offense against thi::city and that Socrates was
it woulrl serve - is a
:
da~eP.rnus;
warning to his future frienr:ls--and as an enticement.
To append a mocern applications
In our polity Socrates'
offense is not a
~apital
crime nor a.re his modern successors
of his stature.
Furthermore in a court of law an American
citizen juror would be guided and restrained by the Constitution and its interpretations and law.s.
The judicial issue is
therefore much less excruciating--what is more urgent is to
form some general opinions about such situations.
And here
the Apology makes a clear comment, which, stated most cautiously, is that the side resisting enlightenment also has something
vital to defend.
There is yet one more thought.
Seer.ates . himself would,
I am persuaded, live out his life among us doing no harm and
receiving none.
isa
The great question then to be thought through
ought such mutual immunity to be a source of high
satisfaction or of deep misgiving 7
�29
Notes
1.
Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates S!!.Q Crito,
edited with notes by John Burnet (Oxford, 1924).
References
to the .d ialogues are by Stephanu1 page.
2.
The Socratic Enigma,
A Collection
QI Testimonies Through
Twentv-Four Centuries, ed. Herbert Spiegelberg (The Library
of Liberal Arts, 1964)1 PP• 99, 112,
3.
Helmut James von Mbltle 1
Verlag, 1971)1
~43,
262, 203, 278.
Briefe (Berlins Henssel
p.63.
4.
Socratic Enigma, .Ql2• .£..!.!;. pp. 43, 66, 187, 228, 285.
5.
William Roper and Nicholas Harpsfield, Lives of Saint
Thomas~
(Everyman Library, 1963)1 p. 157.
6.
Burnet, .Ql2• cit. p. 103.
7.
~Meno
1.961) 1
8.
of Plato, ed. E. Seymer Thompson (Cambridge,
p. xxiv.
St/>rP-n Kierkegaard,
Constant Reference
J;,Q
~
Concept
of Irony, Vi.th
Socrates (London, 1966)1
Socratic Enigma, .Ql2• cit., p. 291.
p. 221.
Cf.
�
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The offense of Socrates: a re-reading of Plato's Apology
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Deans
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Text
ON TRANSLATING PLATO
For "Retracing the Platonic Text":
Conference
held on March 20-22, 1997 at Penn State
Eva T. H. Brann
Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
I imagine that Professor Sallis asked me to speak on
translating in the first instance because of some work I had done
in turning German into English. First was the translation of
Jacob Klein's book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra, which was originally published by the M.I.T. Press in
1968, and, having become a sort of classic not only in the
history of mathematics but also in the study of modernity, was
picked up for republication by the Dover Press in 1991. I had
also done an annotated version of Heidegger's essay ''What is that
-- Philosophy?'' for the use of our seniors at st. John's College.
It remains unpublished because Professor Sallis was unable to
obtain reasonable terms from the Heidegger estate. Furthermore I
did an essay written by Nietzsche when he was twenty "On the
Relation of the Speech of Alcibades to the Other Speeches of the
Platonic Symposium," which our student journal Energeia published
to serve not only a model but also as an encouragement for our
students who choose similar topics for their annual essay.
I
aiso did a short vignette by Hermann Hesse, called "An Evening at
Home with Doctor Faustus" for the same journal; in this story
Mephistopheles invents a future-phonograph and plays for Doctor
Faustus the music of our century -- pretty nearly the same that
sometimes wafts across our campus. The Doctor concludes that the
world has gone to the devil, as he himself soon will.
In 1995 I was asked by the series adviser, Keith Whitaker to
do a first translation for the nascent Focus Philosophical
Library; Plato was suggested as a possibility. The Focus Press
publishes fresh translations, intended to be very reasonably
priced and to be used by American students. The project was
appealing to me both as a teacher in a school dependent on good
and accessible translations and as a dean in need of intellectual
recreation.
I had what turned out to be an inspired idea, that of
seeking collaborators among my colleagues, figuring that the
pleasure of becoming so really intimate with a dialogue as only a
translator is would be enhanced by the close partnership of
common work, and that three heads could better solve the problems
and detect the mistakes that would surely dog a lone translator.
Peter Kalkavage and Eric Salem agreed to becoming a trio. We
chose the Sophist because we had all three begun to recognize the
dialogue as the most ontologically future-fraught of them all,
�2
and we welcomed the challenge of preserving its originary
freshness.
What follows is a report, under various headings, of the
things we think we learned, and the advice we might venture to
give our fellow translators.
Collaboration
One feature of the Sophist is that wherever you are, there
he is not; he is forever trying to escape into trackless
impassible thickets, ("Impasse," incidentally, is one of our
translations, very nearly literal, of aporia -- waylessness.)
But those who deal in knowing also display an opposite fault in
the dialogues. That is the fault of position-taking. They
occupy positions in defense of which they throw up outworks
(problema is the Greek word for such a defensive outwork) and
employ various apotropaic stratagems. Evidently Socrates and
Plato consider that either to have a universal escape route in
all arguments or to occupy entrenched positions is unworthy of
the philosopher's mission.
And so it is of the translator's task. Those who work
together on transferring Greek meanings into English words have
to be focussed on what the Greeks call the praqma and what Hegel
calls die Sache. They have to eschew both escape and
entrenchment, and they must be objective -- intent on the object
at hand.
Yet while ego is out, there is a strong human element in a
collaboration put in the service of a dialogue.
It demands and
develops friendship.
The three of us all bring slightly
different strengths: One is perhaps more alert to Greek grammar,
another to the philosophical resonances of terms. All three of
us, having undergone the most effective part of our education at
St. John's College, are relatively fearless in the face of
ignorance and fresh in our deliberate amateurism.
The way we work is that each of us presents a translation of
one Stephanus page in turn every third week, which all of us
together then rake over as with a fine-tooth comb, the original
translator explaining but not particularly defending a choice.
Often we let somewhat daring or awkwardly accurate readings
stand, waiting for that reading, close to the final one, in which
we attend particularly to idiom and flow while erasing false
inspirations.
I think we have become persuaded that in putting a rich
Greek text into English there are so many facets to be attended
to, that three heads are indeed better than one. We do in fact
�3
have grand predecessors to look to: You will recall the legend
about the seventy-two scribes, six from each of Israel's twelve
tribes, who produced the Septuagint, the earliest extant Greek
version of the Hebrew Bible, in the third century B.C. They
worked in separate cells and came up with identical translations,
presumably inspired by the text itself. We might say that the
Platonic text acted on us in a more modest ex post facto mode in
a similar way -- one version would suddenly, after some trial and
error, click for all three of us.
Our advice to collaborators: Cotranslating is a form of
intimacy, best done by those who have the same object firmly in
their sights while viewing each other with affectionate respect.
Readership
We thought it essential to keep in mind for whom we meant
this translation. We meant it for the people that we imagine
standing around in this as in so many other dialogues as
spectators and auditors. They are presumably tacitly engaged,
like the silently present young Socrates, Theaetetus's friend,
who shares our Socrates' name, as Theaetetus shares his looks.
Another way to put it is that we thought of our students as they
prepare for a seminar by silent reading.
Some are quite innocent
of the issues, some have, or think they have, insider knowledge,
some read casually and disengagedly, and some are intensely
serious.
That brought up the delicate question of colloquialism. One
device that would keep the conversation casually speech-like was
contraction, and we used it a lot, but not in places that we
thought were meant to be stuffy, highflown, or solemn. We looked
for idiomatic equivalents but avoided slang (though we had a
great time devising some raucous interim translations, such as
"wise guy" or "weisenheimer" for the sophist himself) . While we
were well aware that every idiomatic translation will in time
betray its date, nothing dates more quickly than slang, and even
in its day it fails, like all truckling-under to fashion, to have
real appeal for students.
In the course of thinking about drawing readers into the
dialogue we often had occasion to consider what is probably a
real difference between the ear of a young contemporary Greek and
one of our students. The well-brought up Greek (and not only an
Athenian) , being nourished on Homer and the tragedians whose
language was no one's spoken Greek, could savor artificialities
and archaisms that our students would find simply off-putting. A
couple of generations ago some English-speaking students would
have absorbed enough of Shakespeare and Milton to be appreciative
of such echoes, but we couldn't count on that.
So we put
�4
everything into plain current English, sometimes allowing
ourselves the merest whiff of high poetry or archaism.
Above all, we tried, in our students' behalf, to put
ourselves into the interlocutors' sandals: What is being said,
what is being heard, what is being felt, what is being thought?
We called on our experience as teachers to guess at the dialogic
backdrop of anxious agreement, triumphant dissent, and shamed
realization - that young Theaetetus contributes.
But above all we
clung to our main hypothesis as trusting readers of the
dialogues:
that each speech uttered has a discernible meaning
contributing to the drift of the conversation, and that the
translation should preserve that motion.
our advice here is: In translating fill out imaginatively
not only the conversation within the text but draw in the
external participant, the reading student.
Predecessors
Of course, we took all the help we could get from earlier
translations. We used Robin for his intelligently chosen
readings, Campbell for his linguistic annotations, Cornford for
informational help.
The two translations we had always at our side were the Loeb
Fowler and Benardete. Fowler, though old-fashioned in diction
and uninspired in terminology, was almost unfailing in making
sense of puzzling passages and turns of phrase.
We consulted Benardete whenever we ran into trouble, because
of his meticulous attention to every word and because of his
linguistic ingenuity. His version is a crib for the better sort
of folk; it becomes intelligible if you read it as essentially in
Greek and accidentally in English. Since, however, we were
determined to translate not only from Greek but also into
English, we only rarely borrowed phrases from him though we took
many hints as to meaning.
Heidegger translates numerous passages of the Sophist in the
lecture notes published in 1992 under the title Platen:
Sophistes. These versions are a reminder that in certain
respects the translator into German is to be envied. Some of the
forms that have to do with Being go more directly into German
than into English.
For example, to einai becomes "das Sein,"
while in English the infinitive cannot normally be nominalized;
also to on readily goes into "Seiendes," and ta onta is rendered
as "das Seiende," which functions, like the Greek neuter plural,
as a collective noun. Probably most provocative and least
helpful to translators who intend to be as naively true to the
�5
text and as agendaless as possible, are Heidegger's terms for
ousia, which he renders in an uninterpreted and an interpreted
version, as it were.
In the former, ousia is plain "Sein." In
the interpreted version ousia is rendered as if it were parousia:
"das Anwesende" or "das Vorhandene," i.e., "the present" or "the
at-hand," in accord with his idea that Greek thought suffers from
the aboriginal flaw of thinking of Being as if it were a thing.
We puzzled a good deal over the proper translation of ousia,
being loath on principle, namely the principle that translation
should be as far as feasible into an existent language, to invent
non-current abstract substantives. But we finally decided on
"beinghood. 11 We chose it over "beingness" not only because it
sounded better to us but because it had more concreteness, as in
neighborhood or manhood; we were mindful that ousia means
something like ''real estate" in ordinary Greek. And we decided
to make up a word to begin with because we had an unresolved
sense that ousia, which in the Sophist is usually contrasted with
genesis, had a peculiar weight, and we wanted the reader to be in
a position to attend to that interpretational problem.
I was relieved to see that even German could not deal with
the crucial little adverb ontos, which for our private amusement
only we translated as "beingly" but more soberly, for public
consumption, as "in its very being;" thus the phrase that
concludes the ultimate collection of differentiating terms
reveals ton ontos sophisten: "the Sophist in his very being."
To return to the advantages of translating into German with
two examples.
1. We had long discussions about the translation of stasis,
the specific other of motion. We settled on rest, knowing full
well that rest is wrong insofar as it means lack of, or cessation
from, motion.
"Stand-still" or "stationariness," a condition
coequal with motion, seemed too strained, and we consigned them
to the glossary. German is lucky in being able to form
"Standigkeit" quite naturally, as Heidegger does (p. 579).
2.
In 244 c 4, when the stranger begins his critique of
Parmenides' hypothesis of the One, we were pretty much forced to
use the English word "hypothesis" with all it scientific baggage.
Schleiermacher uses the Germanized version of "presupposition,"
that is "Voraussetzung," but Heidegger eschews both and
brilliantly writes "Ansatz," with the observation that
Parmenides's One is not a supposition to be consequently
confirmed but a beginning, an arche, an "onset" -- which is
exactly what "Ansatz" may mean.
Nonetheless, with all the felicities to be gotten especially
from the German propensity for easy prepositional compounding, I
kept being grateful that it was our lot to be putting Plato into
�6
English, particularly American English.
In our idiom we could
achieve a plainness and a playfulness that must be, when all is
said and done, more pleasing to Socrates as he listens in than a
lot of linguistic incense.
I think our general advice to fellow translators would be
unabashedly to cannibalize and unabashedly to set aside previous
translations.
Apparatus
Since we were left very free by our press to decide on
supplementary materials, we thought long and hard about our
obligation to the text and to the reader.
We come from a school
meaning both a way of thinking and
an institution -- that has the greatest misgivings about standing
between a reader and the book. The extra-textual stuff in a
volume is of course meant to facilitate the approach to the
translated text, but really, how can it? Take an introduction.
If it says the same thing as the work, it will, assuming that the
work is of the highest quality, say it worse.
If it says
something else, it will keep the reader from the work by that
much time. We have a strong faith, based on our common teaching
experience, that good books don't need approaching; they need
facing, immediately and directly, at least at the first reading.
We compromised that faith, partly because by the end of our
labor we were simply so full of thoughts that we couldn't contain
ourselves, partly because we know perfectly well that wellinstructed students skip introductions and come back to them
much later, if at all.
So we decided to keep it short, simple, and straightforward.
We avoided historical backgrounding on the principle that Plato
would have felt about our doing it much as a landscape painter
might if we took his painting and provided it with a broad frame
extending the scenery so as to give the viewer an enlarged
setting. We didn't want to deface the dialogue or distract or
prejudice our student readers in this way; I should say that at
st. John's evidence of familiarity with introductions is a
suspect virtue. But we did set the dialogue briefly in its
sequence -- Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman and the mysteriously
missing Philosopher. We gave a succinct plot outline of the hunt
for the sophist, geared to a new and, we think, quite spiffy
diagram of the infamous divisions that play so large a role in
the Sophist. We pointed out some aspects of the dialogue that
had become particularly pregnant for us, such as the generic
nature of the Sophist here pursued (as opposed to the named
individual sophists Socrates politely persecutes in dialogues
�7
like the Gorgias and the Protagoras). We had a little section on
Father Parrnenides and the strange and wonderful fact that he, the
Stranger's own teacher, attracts the main attack of the dialogue.
Then we told briefly what we understood about the such deep
matters as the relation of Image to Non-being and of Non-being to
Otherness. And we left it at that.
Since we made use of the printer's full typographical menu,
we had a little note on that. We were very sparing with
footnotes, using them mostly to supply what we thought an ancient
contemporary reader might have known, or where we thought we
detected a joke or an allusion obscure to a current reader.
Our energy went into the glossary, which we put in back, to
be used or not. We arranged the Greek terms and our reasoned
translations in meaning-clusters.
(You will find something
similar in the Hope translation of Aristotle's Physics and
Metaphysics, except that we transliterated all our Greek in the
hope that students might learn to accent and pronounce words like
phr6nesis and poiesis and mimesis correctly.)
We avoided the
alphabetic order so as to prevent the impression that we -- or
the partners of a dialogue -- are ever looking for dictionarylike definitions. We also hoped to provide students with what we
thought of as the proto-terrninology of a corning ontology -- or
perhaps better a me-ontology, an account of Non-being; the
Sophist is a spawning ground of metaphysical terms-to-be.
Our advice to translators is to go easy on the paraphernalia
of translation.
Editing
The translator's final reading of course tries for absolute
correctness. But we have to warn the trustful that having a
perfect disk is no protection. Something will get screwed up,
there will be unexpected glitches and, as we learned to our
sorrow, it will be in the most carefully construed first
sentence.
No matter how good and accommodating the editor -- and we
have good reason to thank Ron Pullins, the editor-publisher of
Focus Press -- there will be howlers.
Our advice:
final proofs.
Trust no one but yourselves and demand to see
�8
Replies
Theaetetus plays to the Stranger by regularly uttering a
budget of stock replies signifying slight hesitation, passive
assent, positive agreement or requests for clarification.
After a while we began to suspect that the rotating litany
of responses might not be entirely mechanical. This apprehension
made it incumbent upon us to keep a list of our considered
renditions of nai, pos, pos d'ou, pos gar ou, ti de, houtos,
anangke, pan, panu ge, pantapasi men oun and a dozen others, so
that in one of our later readings we could make all the replies
consistent.
In that way we would give readers of the translation
a chance to discover patterns we only suspected.
For example,
pantapasi men oun, for which we borrowed Benardete's "That's
altogether so," occurs in the dialogue as a strong assent to a
summary claim and concludes the dialogue as Theaetetus's last
response to the final collection of divisions that catch the true
and ultimate sophist as the expert of the non-genuine.
Theaetetus is clearly assenting not only to the definitive but
also to the global character of this final determination of a
human type and profession.
Particles
We were similarly anxious to render particles fairly
consistently. The dialogic life is in them -- they indicate
inflections of the voice, gestures of the body, and even motions
of the soul.
The dictionary, or even Denniston's Greek Particles, though
they must be consulted to give the limits of usage, cannot do it
all.
The translators must savor the speech in its context and
judge whether it is marked as an inference or a new departure,
whether eagerness is being displayed, smiles are suppressed,
eyebrows raised or hands thrown up. We were mindful of
typographic and punctuational devices not available to a Greek
composer of living speech and used italics, dashes, colons,
semicolons and exclamation points liberally to render the force
of particles or emphases indicated by sentential order.
I might
mention here that capitalization helped us a great deal in
translating a dialogue full of terms for f orrns and kinds
designated in Greek by the definite article and a verbal or
adjectival substantive such as to on (Being), to me on (Nonbeing), tauton (the Sarne), thateron (the Other).
Our advice to translators is to be -- within the limits of
natural English -- consistent, careful and ingenious in rendering
apparently little and apparently automatic elements of the
�9
dialogues; they may be more revealing than one realizes at the
time.
Techno-humor
At the end of Bacon's New Oraanon there is to be found a
prescient catalogue of one hundred and thirty "histories" of
special investigations that are one day to constitute the sphere
of human expertise.
It is a strange and wonderful fact that the
first such comprehensive ordering of extant technical know-how ·
(that I know of) is found in the Sophist -- and that it is a
send-up.
The stranger, who is not an overtly funny person,
engages in what might be called techno-humor at the expense of
experts.
Of course, as readers of the dialogue, we thought a good
deal about the reason why a comprehensive classification of human
know-how or technique -- we translated techne as "expertise" and
sometimes "art," as in "arts and crafts" -- should be the
approach of choice to the delineation of the Sophist. We were,
of course, alert to the startling conjunction of apparently
disjunct themes that governs a number of the great dialogues, as
the Phaedrus, for instance, seems to yoke the unlikely pair of
love and rhetoric.
Moreover, it does not take much reflection to see that the
Sophist, whose nature is presented here as that of a faker and a
know-it-all, should be tracked into the branches of human
activity, and that in that great decision-tree he should reappear
in seven places, and sometimes among the lowly but genuine crafts
and sometimes among the high-sounding but dubious ones.
It also
made sense that the hunt for this elusive creature should be the
occasion for presenting to the world the new dialectic art of
division and collection and all its problems -- chief among them
what might be called the problem of heuristic direction: at what
moment in this dialectic enterprise, at the beginning, end or inbetween, does new insight arise?
But as translators it was not so much our business to have
theories about the inevitable implication of expertise and
shamming or about the problems of classification as to render the
divisions faithfully into English. And there we were in a pretty
good position. As I have said, all three of us come from a
college that has distanced itself from specialization, and we
were alive to the tragicomedy of defining human beings as the
professors of a profession.
(Our English version of sophistes
was, incidentally, "professor of wisdom.")
Not that all of us
aren't ourselves certified members of the world of expertise.
I
myself, for instance, began my working life in a profession that
the Stranger might have ranged, looking to the three great
�10
branches of human expertise called "getting," "separating," and
"making," under getting, specifying it as a hunt beneath the soil
for fragmented old artifacts carried on by means of pick-axes.
We call it archaeology. Recall that the Sophist is first found
in the right hand branch of animal hunting on land, specified as
the sham-teaching hunt of wealthy youths.
We tried to preserve the neologic high-jinks of some of the
divisions.
Thus the sophist is found a second, third, and fourth
time in the getting part of expertise as a psycho-trading virtueseller, and in the manipulating part both as a seller of selfmade learnables and a peddler of other-made learnables:
"psychotrading" renders pychemporike and "learnable-selling" mathematopolikon.
We had not long worked on our new current project for the
Focus Philosophical Library, a translation of the Phaedo, before
we became aware of the varieties of Platonic humor.
In fact one
of us, Peter Kalkavage, who, as it happens, got his doctorate at
Penn State, began retrospectively to refer to the Sophist as a
one-joke dialogue, dominated by the techno-humor of the otherwise
ponderous Stranger that I've just described. The Phaedo, because
in it Socrates not only speaks but even makes speeches, is, we
discovered, infused with a very different, far more subtle humor,
which we are doing our best to preserve.
It is the sort of
hilarity or jocundity in the original Latin sense, the subdued
joyousness and even merriment of the ultimate moment, that
belongs to a man going blithely to his death without having lost
his firm, even hard grip on the earthly condition. We have come
to think of it as the tone of the . lightness of Being.
It keeps
his companions in an ambivalent state of sorrowful exhilaration,
suspended between tears and laughter.
Of course the secondary partners too, are very different in
the two dialogues. Theaetetus is, at least vis-a-vis the
Stranger, a somewhat stuffy boy, while that comradely pair,
Simmias and Cebes, are each in their way pretty lively.
Does bringing out the humor of the dialogues in translations
need a justification? I should not imagine so, but I might
mention once more that all three of us are receiving our real
education in a place to which a way of reading Plato was
introduced by Jacob Klein, who in his interpretations was
especially alert to the mimetic character of the dialogues. As
imitations of Socrates and the conversations he conducted or
attended, they were bound to be playful, as Socrates was playful,
with a playfulness that is the kindly counterpart of his
notorious dissembling, his irony. But not all humor is comedic
in Aristotle's understanding of comedy as the imitation of what
is laughable, that is, low or ugly but relatively harmless (Else,
Aristotle's Poetics, pp. 39 ff, 183 ff).
The techno-humor of the
Sophist comes far closer to comedy than does that of the other
�11
dialogues, with the proviso that the laughableness of the
sophistic craft is not so harmless.
In any case, our advice to colleagues who plan to translate
Platonic dialogues is to be prepared not only to laugh themselves
but also to be the cause of laughter in others.
Faithfulness
It was clear to us from the beginning that looseness,
paraphrase, and interpretative adumbration were intolerable in
the translation of any Platonic writing, but especially in a
dialogue like the Sophist, which is so close to the brink of
technical metaphysics and yet so carefully refrains from letting
philosophy become a techne, an expertise. It does so by going at
what Aristotle will later codify as "problems" of Being in an
oblique and human way. It is oblique in concentrating, as was
said, less on ontology than on me-ontology, the account of Nonbeing as the ground of imitation or pretense, and it is human in
pursuing the Sophist as a human type as much as it does sophistry
as a profession.
In this morning-twilight of philosophy
meticulous accuracy is especially necessary.
So we spent, as I
have said, much time on words, determining for ourselves whether
they were terms of a trade or not -- yet. Aporia and methodos
are examples. Both come to be fixed as terms of philosophy:
"perplexity" and "method." But we aimed to preserve at least in
some places the unfixed original meaning:
"impasse," i.e. lack
of passage, and "way," both at which preserve the playful spatial
analogy that is so prominent in the Stranger's reflections on the
motion of thought.
We aimed at faithfulness, however, not only in words and
terms but also in sentences. The obvious problem is always subliteralness -- producing a contortedly accurate pony. We thought
that it was a part of faithfulness to render the various levels
of elegance, clarity and emphasis of the speeches -- and the
Stranger surely has his obscure and klunky moments, at least as
we heard them.
The faith of translators who mean to be faithful must be
that, meaning-element for meaning-element, it is possible to turn
Greek into English, and that this must imply that usually -- it
never pays to be too rigid -- one Greek word goes into one
English word or typographical symbol, one phrase into one phrase,
one clause into one clause, and one sentence into one sentence -in other words that it is possible to get equivalence without
sublinearity.
It also implies that one can find an English word
order that renders the emphasis of the Greek sentence, and
English connectives that maintain the Greek flow.
One of our
last readings was addressed, as I have mentioned, to the
attempted eradication of all signs of translaterese. Our trust
�12
was that if we stuck faithfully to the Greek, barring simple
mistakes and omissions, we would get English that said exactly
what the Greek said and with something like the original
naturalness and deviations from naturalness.
In other words, we
had the faith that we might overcome the charge expressed in the
Italian pairing traduttore: traditore; we hoped that a translator
need not be a traitor to the text.
our best advice to others is not to give in to current
hermeneutic theories concerning the essential untranslatability
of one language into another, but to suppose, as a starting
hypothesis, that even if not all human speech can say the same
thing, then at least we can think and say practically the same
thing as our ancient intellectual progenitors -- from which it is
evident that the translator's hypothesis is no negligible
commentary on contemporary philosophy.
Requirements
The last item on my list of observations concerns the
crucial question what translators need to know and be good at.
The three of us did not think that we were required to have
a full-fledged interpretation to have a go at a translation.
What we needed instead was a lively sense of intimations, a sense
born of a belief in the unfailing significance of the text.
In
other words, we came to Plato's philosophic plays with the trust
that every word (or nearly every word) was deliberately placed,
but that some terms and turns were special sign-posts to implied
meanings. We tried to be alert to oddities of language and
emphasis as well as to hapax legomena (linguistic singularities
which we treated as occasions for literalness even if it proved
awkward).
On another level, we listened for high points and
crucial junctures, which Plato's most responsible speakers, and
of course Socrates himself, often signal by a throwaway reference
to that one more "little" addition.
None of us are, this is the moment to say, great believers
in esoteric readings. We are much too possessed by a sense of
the pedagogic generosity of the dialogues, a sense that here a
discreetly fierce energy is devoted to carrying interlocutors,
bystanders, and readers beyond themselves, into realms reachable
only by circuitous and indirect means. To put it another way:
In the dialogues we are told as much, but no more, than we need
to make us want to think onward. That is why the dialogues are
fairly easy to read the first time and get harder to understand
as, with each reading, more signals are picked up.
There certainly exist occasionally esoteric writers like
Newton who, "to avoid being baited by little smatterers in
�13
mathematics ... designedly made his Princioia abstruse"
(Portsmouth Collection), and authors who touch guardedly on
theological or political issues in intolerant times (though they
never do seem to escape persecution).
Socrates' dissembling and
Plato's subtlety, however, are not of this self-protective sort
but are pedagogical devices for drawing the learner in -- at
least that is our experience. The dialogues work on the
principle that "a cat may look at a king," or rather, "a boy may
look at Being." And in any case, they display hardly any attempt
to mask the fact that not everything that goes on in these
conversations will be of comfort to respectable parents.
So the first translator's requirement is a belief in the
many-layered accessibility of the text and an alertness to those
signs and signals which the English version should preserve for
readers to puzzle over.
A second requirement we put on ourselves was to attempt
consistency but to shun method. An intelligent consistency is,
we thought, the guardian spirit of open minds. So as far as
possible we· tried, as I said, to choose the right word and to
stick with it even in fairly routine phrases.
Thus phainetai is
almost always "it appears" and dokei "it seems." At the same
time we tried to remain open to significant nuances and strange
turns within each dialogue, though our avoidance of methodical
translating bound to a particular interpretation of Platonic
philosophy applied mainly across the dialogues:
In taking up the ·
Phaedo we saw once again the truth of the teaching that each
dialogue is a fresh world of discourse and is to be faced without
preconceptions regarding "Platonic thought." That observation is
particularly true as between dialogues in which Socrates guides
the conversation and those in which he only listens in or is,
finally, even absent.
As far as preparation is concerned, since none of us can
really read Greek as a living language, we were glad to see that
we could do pretty well on a lot of Greek reading experience to
give us a feel for the intention and on enough grammatical
expertise to tell us when we needed to do careful parsing. We
found that besides Liddell-Scott we needed to have at hand
Roget's Thesaurus to help us to the word we were looking for.
But we think that all in all, the main requirement for
translators of Plato, and our advice to them, is to believe in
the semantic plenitude of the Platonic texts, and to produce an
English version that, like the Greek, says more than the
translators know.
�
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
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On translating Plato
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1997-03
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Typescript of a lecture delivered in March 1997 by Eva Brann at the "Retracing the Platonic Text" conference held at Penn State.
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Deans
Tutors
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The Natural Law of War and Peace
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 19, 2017 by Dr. Angelo Codevilla as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the part of a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
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On the Natural Law Of War And Peace
By Angelo M. Codevilla
1.We are here to celebrate the memory of Erik S. Kristensen, a
warrior who had graduated from the Naval Academy and who
then came to St. Johns College - the closest thing in today's
world to Plato's Academy. In his memory, someone comes here
each year to explain why the peace on which the practice of
philosophy depends requires successful statecraft, including
success in war. LCDR Kristensen's life testified to the
interdependence of war, peace, and philosophy. 2500 years
earlier, Socrates had testified to the same truth by speaking with
young men about good and evil after having carried his spear in
the Athenian Phalanx. Like Socrates and Erik Kristensen, we are
lovers of our country, and of truth - truth with the capital T what is true by nature, and lovers of what America's Founders
called "the laws of nature and nature's God." What guidance do
these laws give us about war and peace in our time?
That question is urgent because Americans have enjoyed peace
for only about thirty of the past hundred years. America's armed
forces have won essentially all their battles. Winning battles
naturally leads to winning wars, and hence to earning peace and
security. But already by 1950 George Kennan had noted that the
American people's peace and security had diminished. Today,
we look at the peace and security of the 1950s much as Kennan
looked nostalgically back to 1905. How come? Results so
contrary to nature and intentions do not happen because of etTors
�in policy. They happen only from mistakes regarding first
principles. What are these first principles?
There has been no shortage of controversy among American
statesmen through the past hundred years about the principles,
the laws of nature, concerning peace and war: Woodrow Wilson
against Theodore Roosevelt, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman
against Robert A. Taft and Douglas MacArthur, Henry
Kissinger, Robert McNamara, and Lyndon Johnson against
Barry Goldwater, candidate George W. Bush against President
George W. Bush. Though they disagreed fundamentally, all
believed they were advocating the truly the right way for nations
- especially this nation - to behave. In this they have been
consistent with America's founders, who meant to establish a
great nation on the basis of what is right, simply.
2. Our very civilization is based on understanding that man and
nature exist and behave, according to laws that our minds can
grasp by observation and study. Only recently has it become
customary to distinguish between science and philosophy,
between facts and values. Formerly, the study of physics and
chemistry as well as of ethics and politics was known as "natural
philosophy." The fundamental distinction was between truth and
opinion. The people who built America believed that attention to
the laws of nature and nature's God was the key to thriving.
They believed it because they knew that ignoring or flouting
reality does not turn out well, that sanity begins with not
banging one's head against reality.
2
�Let us now consider what this thing called natural law is, and
what it demands of statesmanship and war.
3.Naturallaw is the complex of the laws by which the world
works. Physics and chemistry remind us that natural law is
inflexible and self-enforcing, that what we humans imagine
about ourselves and the world is irrelevant. You may "identify"
as a bird, eat bird food and wear feathers. But if you jump off a
cliff chirping and flopping those feathers, Mother Nature's laws
regarding mass and motion will punish you. If you want to fly,
you had better learn her laws concerning the pressure and speed
of fluids. By the same token, no amount of commitment will
enable you join two sodium atoms into salt.
Plants are just as subject to inflexible laws. Regardless of
anybody's opinion, apples and oranges and avocados require
different conditions to thrive. That is why judgments about
farming have to be right by nature. Not so long ago, following
scientific consensus that acquired characteristics are inherited
the Soviet government wasted millions of tons of seeds trying to
modifying wheat to grow in Siberia. In America today, scientific
consensus has it that the globe is warming. And yet, citrus
growers are moving their operations southward because the trees
happen not to share that consensus. Mother Nature does not care
what anybody thinks.
Wild animals are, as the saying goes, "hard wired" to survive
and thrive. They move and reproduce to take optimal advantage
of weather and food sources. They operate by day or night as
3
�best fits the species. They can't help doing the right things for
themselves.
4. Human beings, unlike animals, are free to do the wrong things
for themselves. But nature is just as clear about what it takes for
human beings to thrive and survive as it is about what it takes
for any other species to do so. Like horses and wolves, we need
food and community to survive. But, to fulfill ourselves, we
humans have to do the things that make for the survival and
happiness of peculiar creatures that are neither mere animals nor
gods. What might these be?
The Ten Commandments are the most common and concise
compendium of natural law regarding man. But isn't that a set of
peculiarly Jewish ideas that draw their authority from the claim
that Moses got them from God? Think again. Try reversing each
of the Commandments, and ask how humans would fare living
by that reversed list: Have many gods and disrespect them all,
never stop to rest or to consider whence you came or whither
you go, dishonor your father and your mother, kill as you please,
take what you can from whomever you can, fornicate with
whomever you can. Lie and betray, enry and scheme against
those around you. Not even criminal gangs can survive on that
basis. Nor could any individual be happy who lived by such
counsels. At best, he might become a tyrant. But, having no
friends, his choice would be whether to die like Stalin - or like
Ceaucescu. Hence we are forced to conclude that the Ten
Commandments just happen to be a pretty good summation of
what nature requires for human beings to live human lives.
4
�That is true regardless of whether they were jotted at random by
a stone-carving monkey, or discerned by Moses, or given by
nature's Creator.
Moses gives a bunch of other precepts applicable to man in
general. They are subject to the same test: how do they relate to
human nature? Here is one: "Thou shalt not suffer a sorcerer to
live." Is that a Jewish prejudice? Consider. Magic claims that
nature is capricious, but that it can be mastered by occult
practices. Mother Nature decrees that people who live by magic
are stuck in misery. In fact, banning magic is right by nature
because all human improvement depends on reading and
heeding nature's open book of rules. How about Moses'
condemnation of anal intercourse? Is it that another Jewish
prejudice? In fact, since whatever else that practice does, it sure
does not propagate the species, we may well consider Genesis'
story ofSodom's fate as another of Mother Nature's warnings.
The point here is not that the Torah is the apex of natural law
about man. Aristotle, Cicero, and many others have delved into
the subject far more deeply and systematically. Rather, the point
is that our civilization is full of pretty accurate descriptions of
what happens when humans disregard Mother Nature.
5. How does natural law apply to actions? In fact, all actions can
only be understood by their natural consequences. Naturally, all
movement aims at some state of rest. We move, walk, speak or
shut up, for certain purposes each of which is for the sake of
ends that we value even more. A concise illustration of the term
"teleology" is the old saying: "not even a dog wags his tail for
5
�nothing." I fix my tractor so I can till the ground, so that I can
grow my grapes, so that I can sell them and maintain my
household, so that I may fulfill my duties.
6. Human trades or professions are naturally about producing
certain things. What is the natural law about them? Yes, all of
them also bring advantages to the tradesman. Yet by nature, each
is about producing a good peculiar to itself- buildings that
stand, ships that float, plumbing that does not leak, shoes that fit
and last, medicine that heals. What does Mother Nature do when
human activities aim at results other than the ones proper to
them? Mother Nature makes humans suffer the violations'
consequences. Buildings built badly fall down on you. Bad ships
leak or capsize. Bad shoes chafe and fall apart.
That is why human activity cannot be understood in terms of
power-seeking or pleasure-seeking as ends in themselves. Along
with Socrates and Thrasymachus, let us consider the successful
tyrant. He can have anything he wants - including all sorts of
things that are bad for him. The same goes for very rich people.
If they do well, it is not be because they have the power to
please themselves, but because they learn what is really good.
Dictators and rock stars routinely make themselves powerfully
miserable. Powerful men differ from powerless ones only in the
number of people they make miserable.
7. Nature obliges soldiers and statesmen to produce certain
goods, just as it obliges shoemakers and shipwrights. What are
the goods, the natural ends, of the activity known as
statesmanship? The Chinese empire's millennia! claim to rule
6
�has been providing tien an men, heavenly peace. Caesar
Augustus' claim to the imperial power that replaced Rome's
raucous Republic was that he was the Princeps Pacis - the
prince of peace. As the Roman Empire was falling, St.
Augustine defmed statesmanship for the next thousand years. Its
product was to be "the tranquility of order." The temporal ruler
was to be the "defensor pacis." Fourteen hundred years later,
Lincoln summarized his objective as "peace among ourselves
and with all nations." Niccolo' Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes
are, if anything, more insistent on judging any exercise of
statesmanship on the degree of peace that it produces especially internal peace. Indeed, the incapacity to rest from war
really does seem to be the punishment that Mother Nature
imposes for incompetent statesmanship.
(A caveat is in order here: The above does not apply to Persian
civilization or Indian civilization, whose manuals of
statesmanship- the Shah Nameh and the Arthrasastra,
respectively - do not look beyond struggles for power. It applies
to Islamic civilization only insofar as it might after all resistance
to Islam had ceased. Nor does it apply to certain primitive
tribes.)
8. If peace is so essential to well being, why, so often does it
take war to establish it? Simply because, by nature, each of us
wants his or her way. We human beings share in Eve's lively
appetites and in Adam's irresponsibility. Individually and
collectively, we want to be a law unto ourselves. Statecraft is the
art of reconciling all sides' claims to their own desires, and
perhaps to their own peace. We fight wars so that we may have
7
�peace - our version of peace. That is why Any peace is what one
side earns for itself by defeating the other side's attempt to get
the peace that it wanted. Still, although war is the most intense
of activities, it aims naturally at a state of rest neither more nor
less than any other activity.
This is why approaching war as anything other than the pursuit
of peace is naturally self defeating. Consider how two of
history's greatest warriors failed. Napoleon never thought of an
end to his string of battlefield victories. Hence, as Charles De
Gaulle wrote, Napoleon "broke France's sword by striking it
unceasingly." His failure to aim at peace more than nullified his
valor as a warrior. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal
subordinated strategic logic to operational logic by staying on
the offensive even after having failed to force Rome to
negotiate.
9. Nature leads the warrior to ask: "When will this end?" The
warrior's contact with the enemy presses him to end the
fighting, and to do it as fast as possible. Thus did Aristotle note
that the warrior's natural objective is victory. By the same token,
Aristotle also noted that peace is the natural end of the
statesman's art: your victory is what makes possible your peace.
Victory, of course, comes in different forms - everything from
the enemy's annihilation or enslavement, as was the rule in
ancient warfare, to sovereignty over border provinces, as was
common in European 18th century warfare. But all forms share
a denominator: the vanquished no longer disturbs the winner's
enjoyment of his peace.
8
�10. Victory, forcing the enemy to acquiesce to one's enjoyment
of one's own peace, naturally presupposes a coherent
understanding of that peace. During the past hundred years
however, American statecraft has not produced peace because,
Progressive statesmen, beginning with such as Woodrow
Wilson, Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin
Roosevelt, have pursued concepts of peace that are literally out
of the realm of possibility. Indeed, the enemies which these
statesmen have designated are purely creatures of the
statesman's own minds, respectively: "autocracy," "war itself,"
"world disorder," "ancient evils, ancient ills." Whom would we
have to kill to defeat these enemies?
To make war is to destroy or bend the persons and causes that
stand in the way of your peace. Victory, comes when none
troubles your enjoyment of your peace any longer. If you have
made war, killed and destroyed, and yet you cannot enjoy peace,
it means that you have killed the wrong people.
11. For century, American blood and treasure has been
committed to kill and destroy certain people as if they embodied
the abstractions in our statesmen' own minds. But who are the
people who whose death would end war itself, bring about world
order, establish liberal democracy, end ancient evils, reconcile
historic enemies? The conjuring of unreal enemies makes it
impossible to ask who might be the persons whose killing or
constraint would deliver peace vis a vis the actual, living ones
who actually shoot at us. This is a principal the reason why
America's military campaigns have been waged without
9
�reasonable plans for achieving a better peace. Moreover, since
Korea 1950, the U.S government has explicitly disavowed
seeking military victories.
Understanding this hundred-year divorce of force from purpose
requires attention to the arguments between Theodore Roosevelt
and Woodrow Wilson.
12. In a nutshell: TR, the apostle of "the big stick," rejoiced in
America's emergence as a great power because he believed that
the U.S government could and should use this power to secure
Americans' enjoyment of domestic peace and tranquility better
than it could in George Washington's time. Like Washington,
whom he called "the best of great men and the greatest of good
men," TR wanted to mind America's business as "our interest
guided by justice shall counsel." TR regarded power as a means
of keeping trouble away from America. The enemy was whoever
troubled America's peace. War was a temporary measure to
secure that peace.
By contrast, Woodrow Wilson had started his career denouncing
the hurdles that America's founders had placed in the way of
forceful human improvement. For him, the enemy at home and
abroad was everything and anything that stood in the way of
human improvement. For him, America itself existed to defeat
such enemies. To improve America, he pushed Prohibition. This
started a war at home. To improve the world, he invented the
league of Nations. For him, Washington's (and the Gospel's)
admonition to mind one's own imperfections looking not for
specks in others' eyes was priggishness. Such was his vision of
10
�the peace that his League of Nations would secure that, when
senators asked him how this commitment to everlasting peace
differed from a commitment to perpetual war, he was unable to
answer. in short, Wilson erased the distinction between war and
peace.
In short, the peace at which TR aimed was America's peace, to
be secured by minding America's business, that is, by speaking
softly to foreigners, and by carrying a big stick to bash
whomever would interfere in America. George Washington,
John Quincy Adams, TR, had taken for granted that America's
business came first always, and that this business requires
jealous attention to squaring ends with means. Words had to be
smaller than the stick. Wilson, however, collapsed the distinction
between America's business and everybody else's business.
Voicing limitless objectives, he gave little if any thought about
how America's armed forces could actually achieve them.
Yet Wilson won the hearts and minds of the subsequent
century's statesmen. Reading Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert
Hoover, FDR, Dean Acheson, John F. Kennedy, Henry
Kissinger, Bush 41 and 43, and Obama we might imagine that,
respectively, the world had united in disarming, in outlawing
war, in eliminating "ancient evils, ancient ills" that it was
policing the world through the U.N.; that nothing could stand in
the way of freedom, that satisfying the USSR had tamed it, that
a New World Order was a-borning, that democracy is
conquering the Middle East, and that Islam is terrorism's
solution. None of this was true. Although most of these
statesmen were not shy about sending Americans to fight
11
�abroad, none explained how doing so could materialize the
marvelous vistas they sketched.
13. From Washington to TR, American statesmen had worked on
the realization that the world is made up of different folks who
want incompatible things. That is why the essence of statecraft's
craft is jealous attention to what our own power can do to secure
our own interests. But because statesmen from Wilson's time to
our own have voiced certainty that all civilized peoples share the
same objectives for peace and progress, they have felt justified
in dispensing with their craft's essence. That is why, far from
producing peace, the past hundred years' statecraft resembles
less the engineering of sound buildings or seaworthy ships than
it does ritual human sacrifices performed to the sound of
assumptions recited as if magical incantations. Each of their
ventures got us fewer victories, less peace, more war.
Each set of statesmen have emphasized one or more aspects of
that departure from statesmanship's nature, and earned the
penalties that Mother Nature imposes on unnatural behavior. Let
us see what truths Mother nature has been trying to teach us.
14. In 1921 Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes brokered
the "Washington Treaties," which scrapped more naval tonnage
than all of history's wars had ever sunk, and fixed the major
powers' ratios of naval power. Japan also agreed to respect
China's integrity and sovereignty in exchange for America's
promise not to fortify our Pacific bases. Hence America
disempowered itself from securing that objective. America's best
12
�and brightest believed that this secured peace because they were
sure that all peoples shared their consensus that armaments
caused war. Hence, their logic said, limit the means of war and
you will limit the will to war. In fact, the natural chain of logic
leads in the opposite direction: from ends to means. That is why
these Treaties secured not peace but Japan's supremacy in the
western Pacific, China's dismemberment, Pearl Harbor,
Corregidor, etc.
.....
15. Herbert Hoover believed that, the world had outlawed war
by the 1929 Kellogg Briand pact. That was not true. Franklin
Roosevelt spent the first seven years of his presidency lecturing
America and the world about the need to act as if it were true.
His lasting legacy was to fight WWII while trying to persuade
the American people that Stalin understood good and evil in the
same way as Americans do. Naturally, because untruths
necessarily cause confusion, they produced divisions among
Americans. They plague us to this day.
16. FDR, and especially Dean Acheson and Harry Truman,
fostered a consensus that, finally, the United Nations had
brought law and order to international affairs. So precious was
that consensus-in-illusion that they sent some fifty-thousand
Americans to die in Korea in what they called a "police action"
to preserve it. Naturally, that sacrifice resulted in preserving an
enemy that now targets nuclear weapons on America. Douglas
MacArthur had protested: "in war, there is no substitute for
victory." Mother Nature nodded yes. The ruling Consensus
thought McArthur was a dinosaur.
13
�17. Under presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and
Richard Nixon the practice of defeating global evils by
committing U.S military forces against foreign enemies without
intending to defeat them became explicit. JFK redeemed his
promise to "bear any burden" in freedom's defense- presumably
against the Soviet Union - by sending Americans to fight in
Vietnam. Johnson explained that military victory was impossible
there, for anybody, because "the enemy is poverty, ignorance
and disease." He and Nixon rotated some twelve million
Americans in and out of there in the service of these illusions.
Ho Chi Minh and the Soviets had other ideas more in tune with
Mother Nature. So did the North Vietnamese soldier who drove
his tank through the US embassy gate.
18.The great Consensus spoke through Harvard's Kissinger and
Richard Nixon to the effect that nuclear weapons had sobered
the Soviet politburo. All America had to do for the Soviets to
join in Wilson's dream of world order was to make U.S nuclear
forces incapable of targeting the Soviet military or of interfering
with Soviet missiles targeted on America. The U.S. government
would not use U.S strategic forces because using them would do
us no good. The government crafted the forces and Kissinger
crafted the treaties that embodied this vision. In 1972 Kissinger,
presenting the treaties to the Senate, spoke of having banished
nuclear war. Eight years later Jimmy Carter's Defense Secretary,
had to tell America that the Soviets were far advanced in
preparations to fight, survive, and win a nuclear war. Those who
pay attention to natural law, you see, build things to do
themselves some good. Not even a dog wags his tail for nothing.
14
�19. As the Soviet monster was croaking of disaffection, Bush 41
tried to save it by massive transfusions of U.S cash in untied
loans (never repaid). He also told a crowd in Ukraine's capital
that they should be good Soviet citizens. This was the voice of
the U.S establishment Consensus, which valued the dream of
U.S. Soviet cooperation over the real prospect of undoing a real
enemy. Ukrainians shook their heads in disbelief.
The same president and Consensus decided that since Saddam
Hussein's Iraq had violated World Order by absorbing Kuwait,
the U.S government would conduct a police action to reestablish
the borders. At the time, Saddam was no enemy of America. A
half millennium earlier, Niccolo' Machiavelli had cautioned:
"people ought to be caressed or extinguished." Bush 41 just
assumed that "a new world order " would follow his bellum
interruptus. Instead, by harming Saddam without eliminating
him, he helped make him the Middle East's paladin of anti
Americanism. The troops which Bush 41 then stationed on
Saudi soil to deal with this newly menacing Middle East ended
up energizing Muslim Jihad against America.
20. Bush 43 and Barack Obama differed only verbally and
quantitatively in their approach to this Jihad. Essentially, both
ordered the U.S armed forces to do the same things they had
done in Vietnam: hunt down hostile groups and individuals
while the rest of the government infuses their societies with
economic aid and social reform. They did so eschewing
explicitly any plans for ending the conflict, never mind winning
it. With various degrees of emphasis, both bent backward to
counter suggestions that the Muslims who attack America do so
15
�for reasons related to Islam. In fact, both refused to identify any
causes of anti American terrorism. Bush 43's proposal for the
Department of homeland Security states that terrorism will be
with us indefinitely because "modernity itself' is the cause.
Obama's use of the term"violent extremism" moved the problem
further into abstraction. But the blood of hundreds of innocents
and the fears of millions are not abstract.
21. OrdinaryAmericans' desire to live peacefully is natural. So is
resentment of a Consensus that shows no sign of plans for
delivering peace. Though the Consensus has become shy of
voicing support for more "nation building" or "engagement with
moderate local allies," it cannot imagine anything other than
what it has been doing. Therefore the question imposes itself:
what has it been missing? What has Mother Nature been trying
to teach us about how to deal with war so as to obtain peace?
22. The lessons are neither new nor complex. They will startle
only those whose intellectual horizon is the Consensus.
First, foreign relations involve dealing with foreigners - that is,
people whose cultures, priorities, and interests are their own, not
ours - above all whose business is their own. The sine qua non
of peace is to recognize different people's natural, ineffable,
focus on themselves, distinguishing what is our business and
what is others' business is. Others may not like what we do in
pursuit of our own business. They are less likely to forgive
intrusions into theirs.
16
�By nature as well, statesmen are their people's fiduciaries.
Minding the business of one's own nation is a task that stretches
the capacity of the very finest of statesmen. Just as it is
impossible to serve two masters, it is impossible to serve more
than one nation at a time. Nor is the attempt to do so legitimate.
John Quincy Adams rightly reproved suggestions that the U.S
help one side or another in conflicts within or among foreign
peoples by asking "who appointed us judges in their causes?"
By nature, "they" alone get to decide what they want for
themselves.
Second, by that very nature, we alone get to decide how
important anything is to us and what to do about it. Because we
alone are responsible for ourselves, decisions about how to mind
such business as we decide is our own come first, while the
needs, desires, views, of foreigners are naturally incidental. Like
everybody else, we are the only ones on whom we can count to
defend "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Hence,
alliances are subject to the same rule of nature as bank loans: the
more you need them the less they avail you. In short, nature
seems to dictate that we must make only such commitments as
we can, and intend, to keep with our own resources no matter
what. Even questioning whether our own interests should come
first is unnatural.
Third, earning the respect necessary for living peacefully as we
please requires fulfilling commitments, and especially dealing
harshly with whomever disrespects us. Respect is the practical
meaning of "honor" in international affairs - Hard-earned and
easily lost. How precious honor is may be seen in a 1791 memo
17
�from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington on how to
respond to Britain's possible movement of troops across U.S
territory to attack Spain in New Orleans. Hamilton outlined the
ways in which Washington could ignore or color Britain's
affront. But he ended by counseling that, were Britain's transit to
have violated America's honor, the disasters of war with Britain
would have to be suffered for the sake of America's honor. In
fact, nations exist only insofar as they are honored.
Fourth, while America's armed forces have earned honor
arguably more than any in history, American statesmen's failure
to draw peace from their victories has drawn down the reservoir
of respect for America among foreigners and, most impot1antly,
among us Americans as well. The Consensus, from such as
Henry Kissinger on down blames the American people for
insufficient support of long range policy and for "isolationism."
But the discrepancy between the declared objectives, the
sacrifices, and the results has been impossible to hide.
Woodrow Wilson's promises could not possibly have been
fulfilled. Nor could those made on behalf of the United Nations.
What is the natural reaction to using forces capable of
overwhelming those facing them and yet forbearing to do so?
Actions such as in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East in our
time make sense only to those thoroughly trained to suppress the
revulsion felt by ordinary human beings.
Fifth and finally, our experiences with Mother Nature tell us that
those old simpletons, George Washington, John Quincy Adams,
Abe Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt were right, along with
18
�Machiavelli and Don Corleone: Don't go looking for trouble and
make nice with everybody. But if you have to fight, then fight
with all you've got to defeat them as quickly as possible. Partial
commitments, "sending signals," shows of force" convey
stupidity and invite contempt. Yes, all wars are foggy and
require adjustments. But Mother Nature supplies a compass by
which to navigate the fog. Its needle keeps pointing straight to
the reason you fought in the first place: your understanding of
the peace you are seeking. The path to that peace is victory.
19
�
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The Natural Law of War and Peace
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Typescript of a lecture delivered on April 19, 2017 by Dr. Angelo Codevilla as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the part of a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in education of naval and military professions.
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Codevilla, Dr. Angelo
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2017-04-19
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Codevilla_Angelo_2017-04-19_Typescript
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
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Text
“Fit for the World”
Commencement Address, May 2017
St. John’s College in Santa Fe
Christopher B. Nelson
My congratulations to all of you seniors and students in the Graduate Institute, and
congratulations to your families and loved ones, who have seen you through these years of joy
and challenge.
Thank you for the honor of the invitation to address you today. Once again a beautiful day in
Santa Fe! I have often spoken to my friends of the wonder of this College, which enjoys 365
days of perfect weather; Santa Fe has 363 of them, and Annapolis has all the rest.
I love returning to my second home here on this campus, where I walked across the platform to
receive my diploma some 47 years ago, back in the days before Weigle Hall was built, when
Camino Cruz Blanca was a dirt road, and when the Graduate Institute was born. But it was in
the year of my graduation when a book was published that ended on a note that has troubled
me for all these years. It is time I came to terms with it.
I am speaking of a comment made by Scott Buchanan in a series of interviews he had with his
old friend Harris Wofford that were collected in a book entitled Embers of the World:
Conversations with Scott Buchanan. Most of you know that Buchanan was the principal
architect of the New Program of study brought to St. John's College in 1937. We are talking prehistory for us on the Western Campus of the College. That New Program, back when Buchanan
was dean, was in large measure much like the program we enjoy today on both of our
campuses.
The book closes with a comment by Buchanan that has bothered me since I first read it some 45
years ago. It was this: "We used to say at St. John's that we were preparing people to be misfits,
and we meant that in a very broad sense. Perhaps misfits in the universe for the time being."
I can imagine that if I were to affirm that statement without explanation and close these
remarks now, some of you would demand a refund of your tuition. So, you can understand why
I have been restless for all these years, wondering at Buchanan’s remark while serving as one of
this College’s presidents. At long last, I thought I ought at least to make an effort to understand
why Buchanan said this, what he meant by it, and whether I thought it was true, for your sake
as well as my own.
The Case for the Misfit
Why might it be a positive good that the College should be preparing you to be “misfits” in the
world?
�Consider, for example, the place of a misfit in a world characterized by conflict, where change is
sought through violence alone, where rhetorical force is laced with fear-mongering or hatred.
Such a misfit might bring reason to bear on the rancor, and imagination to the resolution of
conflict.
Or consider a world that is so conventional that people rarely contribute anything original or
inventive …. where so little of our natural human capacity, and none of our imagination, is
exercised! What kind of world would it be if everyone acted as though they had the answers to
life and no one had any questions of it?
What is the place of a misfit in a world that is out of joint? Or a world that has reduced all value
to an economic metaphor? Where everything has a price and nothing is priceless? Where the
end of life is service to the global economy? And the end of education is simply to fit one for
the marketplace!
What is the place of a misfit in a world governed by one rule only: that it’s what we can get for
ourselves that counts, a world that does not accept that it is in our nature to do good for one
another?
Many of you will recognize those worlds or will imagine that all of these descriptions
characterize aspects of the world we live in. The world is hardly perfect; a misfit may be what it
needs from time to time to get it on a better path. Perhaps when Buchanan spoke of preparing
“misfits in the universe for the time being,” he meant that misfits entering the world today
could help shape the world of tomorrow, one that would be a better fit for the imaginative,
reform-minded individual.
Question: Why is Socrates so beloved of many of us at St. John’s? Is it because he was a misfit in
the world of Athens? Recall his argument for the defense in Plato’s Apology:
“I was attached to this city by the god – though it seems a
ridiculous thing to say – as upon a great and noble horse
which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed
to be stirred by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such
function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I
never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade
and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself
in your company.”
Socrates even likened himself to Achilles, who despised death rather than shirk his
responsibility to avenge his friend and live the life of a coward ever after. If Socrates is a kind of
hero to many of us, dare we ask whether we are prepared to be the gadfly he claimed to be and
run the risks he ran? It is a lot of trouble to speak truth to power, and it takes courage.
�Recall Antigone, a heroine to many! Are we prepared to make the sacrifice she made for her
defense of community mores that were out of favor in a kingdom itself out of joint?
Are these the kinds of misfits Buchanan was talking about? Are these sacrifices to be expected
of you? You want to be a doctor or lawyer, a soldier or farmer, a writer or painter, a scientist or
engineer, a teacher or librarian. You are attracted to politics, or investment banking, or the
revolution in technology. These are all fitting occupations in our world, all useful to it. Was
Buchanan speaking of you when he said what he did? What should distinguish you from others
in the worlds you are entering when you leave here?
When Buchanan made his remark about misfits in the universe, he seemed to have used it as a
punctuation to his reflection on the fate of tragic heroes. He understood that people generally
identify tragedy with calamity or death, but he thought that these were merely accidental to
the real point: that tragedy is about blindness and recognition, what the hero or heroine has
learned from some misfortune, like Oedipus recognizing who he is - his father's killer, his
mother's husband, and his children's brother - and then destroying his offending eyes that were
useless to his recognition of himself as the source of the pollution in Thebes!
This may be why we sometimes call such a protagonist a "tragic hero," someone "willing to pay
the price for a certain kind of integrity and rationality and honesty...," Buchanan would say. He
even went so far as to say that "happiness would be the life of a hero...who's willing to pay the
price" for that integrity for he will have "maintained his soul." Such happiness can extract a high
price, sometimes beyond the breaking point, he acknowledged. (Of course, the tragic hero may
also come to recognize his blindness without enjoying the happiness that might have followed.
Recall Othello, confronting his green-eyed monster; or Lear, his blindness to a daughter’s love.)
Ask yourselves: Is this what you have been up to at St. John’s College: stretching your
imagination, confronting your blindness and ignorance, and coming to some recognition,
however tentative, of who you are in all your imperfection, what propels you to go where you
must, what calls you to do what you will, what gives each of you a singular soul, what makes
you whole?
Do you recognize that you have sometimes been brought to a breaking point, when it hurt you
to accept your blindness of something or someone, or when you heard a voice within you that
you hardly recognized confront you with a truth you wished you could deny but could not? Are
you prepared to keep asking these questions when you leave here, alive to the learning now
begun? Do you have the courage to maintain your integrity in a world that may often seem not
to care for what you think or who you are? Will you continue this search for an understanding
of yourself and your world while engaged in the career you may choose to pursue, even if you
should confront an uncomfortable truth about the work you are doing?
�The Case for the World
I recognize that in trying to make a good home for our misfit, I may have come down pretty
hard on the world, blaming it for our woes, setting up heroes and heroines to confront it. I now
would ask you to look again at that world.
In your four years at the College, you have been asking as many questions of your world as you
have of yourselves. You have studied the heavens above and the earth below, the movement of
planets and the elements of matter, the conception and growth of living things and the relation
of their parts to their wholes, the laws of nature (such as they are) and the forces at work in the
world - even spooky action at a distance.
In the world of human affairs, you have studied political, societal, religious, psychological,
historical, economic, and ethical forces that have more or less shaped the societies we live in …
or vice versa. These forces may seem more capricious than those you have studied in the
laboratory, but they have nonetheless influenced the world you will be living in, the world that
belongs to you as much as you belong to it.
The mysteries of the human heart, and of the soul within you, are every bit as wondrous as the
mysteries of the political and the natural worlds. And so you have asked questions of the world,
in part because it is your nature to wish to know, in part because you wish to know your place
within that world, and in part, I dare say, because it is your world and you are bent on loving it
as you love yourselves. It will be your love of the world that will bridge the divide between you
and it.
Your world needs you; it needs your desire to understand it, your openness to what it has to
teach you, your acceptance of its imperfections, and your sincere wish and best efforts to be
useful to it because you care for it as it has cared for you, however unconscious that care may
have been.
The Case for the Hero in the World
Once again, consider Socrates and how he put the case in his own defense: that he was a gift of
the god, and that he was attached “as upon a great and noble horse” that needed to be stirred.
That great and noble horse was the City of Athens, the world’s first democracy of any sort, the
city that reared and educated the man, the city that Socrates so loved he would not trade a
death sentence in Athens for life in any other city. This was Socrates’s world. He saw his service
as a gadfly to be a divine gift, a gift of love for his world in the hope that he could help Athens
recognize the corruption within it, correct its course and recover its integrity. How different is
Socrates’s world from ours?
In her essay When I was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson located the American
Western hero on the frontier, something she called “neither a place nor a thing.” Such a hero
could perhaps be located someplace in the imagination, on a frontier of society, a frontier of
�science, a frontier of medicine or law or technology or any other discipline you might commit
yourselves to. The frontier might be on the edge of a habitable wilderness, at a town hall
meeting, in the workplace, or even within the warmth of a household. These frontiers will
always remain open.
Robinson described the archetypal hero or heroine as sometimes a visionary, sometimes a
critic, sometimes a rescuer or an avenger, expressing discontent with the status quo and a
willingness, perhaps even a calling, to seek change, always with a positive interest in the good
of society. But she added something more, a reflection on the beauty of human society:
“Rousseau said men are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Since the time of the
Hebrew prophets it has been the role of the outsider to loosen those chains, or lengthen them,
if only by bringing the rumor of a life lived otherwise.”
The Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic reminds us that we need help to break the chains
that have kept us staring comfortably at the mere shadows of things; that we need to be turned
around to face the reality that has been hidden from us; that we need to be dragged up the
rocky slope and out into the light of the sun where we can see the extraordinary beauty of the
world of things as they are; and that the journey up is a painful one. We realize how
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, it must be to make this journey to understanding alone.
We need that “outsider” to shake us up and help us free ourselves to make lives worthy of our
humanity.
The Case for Your Education
This image of the lone individual in society should be a familiar one. Consider the paradox you
face every day in your education at our College: the learning you each come to enjoy is yours
alone, but you pursue it in the company of others. You make from the bits and pieces that you
have read, heard, and thought through, something entirely new that belongs to you alone. And
yet, you have needed others around you, helping you with your discoveries of the world,
helping you uncover unsettling truths about yourselves, and opening fruitful paths to your
learning.
Nonetheless, what you have learned you have freely learned (it is your learning, not a learned
professor’s or someone else’s.) That freedom has helped you develop an adaptable mind,
equally open to tradition and to progress, one that gives you practice in the art of inquiry, in
asking the questions the human race has asked since mankind first began to speak. They are
questions arising from the depths of wonder; questions revealing the vast extent of your
ignorance about the world and about yourselves; questions demonstrating a startling truth:
that your ignorance is the source of your greatest strength. For it is ignorance, not knowledge,
that will propel you forward. It generates the desire to know, which draws you expectantly into
the unknown.
This humility of the intellect is actually a powerful force. We often call it wisdom, and it is one
of the things the world needs: a good understanding of how to develop and where to direct our
�desire to know and our desire to be better women and men. This generative force is also
something your professions will need, something your co-workers and neighbors will need and
hopefully appreciate, and something your children will need to live well in the world they will
one day inherit.
You are fit to enter the world, having had four years of practice in the art of recognition without
having to pay the price of an Oedipus or an Antigone or an Othello or a Lear. You have had this
practice within the confines of a relatively safe classroom and among friends who have helped
you recognize what you don’t know and what you still need to learn to grapple with what the
world will throw at you. These friends - the books and the natural objects of your study, your
tutors, and your classmates – these friends have helped you understand both the limitations of
your reach and the possibilities open to you. They have freed you from conventional thinking,
freed you to doubt what you have been taught about the world, and thus freed you to imagine
a world different from the one you find yourselves in and the possibility of a future that you
may lay claim to one day, a future you may even help to shape.
This mention of the power of the imagination reminds me of a story that may shed some light
on what Buchanan might have had in mind when he said we were making misfits in the
universe. Stringfellow Barr, president of St. John’s when Buchanan was dean, said this of his
friend: “The difference between Scott and me was that when I see a baby, I’m enchanted with
him; and Scott is always feeling, ‘Well, that’s not the baby I had in mind. Babies ought to do
better than that.’ All human enterprises, including birth, seem to him a little disappointing. He’s
a Platonist in the sense he’s got some notion of the baby in the back of his mind that no baby
lives up to, whereas to me it’s such a miracle the little brat is alive – so what, if he has defects.
His ears stick out and he’s cross-eyed, certainly, but he’s alive.” Barr was talking then about the
birth of the St. John’s Program, but his observations about Buchanan – about Buchanan as a
kind of Socrates – these observations may help us understand how Buchanan saw the world in
general, and that only misfits were well fit to recognize the world as it is and the world as it is
meant to be … and then to make the effort to do something to close the gap between the two.
It is now your turn to take the gift of your education out into the world, which needs the open,
thoughtful, loving stewards, critics, and visionaries you are capable of being. May you fare well
and find happiness in this endeavor!
Thank you!
�
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Title
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Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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speechespresentationsotherlectures
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Word doc
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6 pages
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Title
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Fit for the world
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of the commencement address given on May 20, 2017 by Christopher Nelson in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
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Nelson, Christopher B.
Publisher
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2017-05-20
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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text
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pdf
Language
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English
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Nelson, C. Commencement 05-2017
Commencement
Presidents
Santa Fe
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