1 20 41 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9a323fd69d32872afa2b067cf2207558.mp3 19b6674d8df9f0767530ec9929e0cdce 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:26:32 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 Convocation Address, Fall 2019 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the convocation address given by Pano Kanelos for the Fall 2019 semester in Annapolis, Maryland. Includes students singing Sicut Cervus. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kanelos, Panayiotis 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 2019-08-21 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 Kanelos_Pano_2019-08-21 Convocation Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7e5807d3072efca7e278abcfe9c41a3c.pdf 2034038ab6ad27270a051228d07d7067 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 Word doc Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 7 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 Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Spring 2019 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given by Emily Brooker Langston for the Spring 2019 semester on January 7, 2019 in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "The Joy of Recognition". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Langston, Emily Brooker 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 2019-01-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GI Convocation 2019 Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dff5c37d2c4c457135e36fb85d492f28.mp3 a1ec23d743d446e4273db33d0e3bc16c 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:21:33 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 Convocation Address, Fall 2018 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the convocation address given by Pano Kanelos for the Fall 2018 semester in Annapolis, Maryland. Includes students singing Sicut Cervus. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kanelos, Panayiotis 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 2018-08-22 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 Convocation Kanleos, Pano 8-22-18 Convocation Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8b235e6cee5713a6a46d2fb1ac767a99.pdf 6813f2fd6aea1851bd68f75fc86147d8 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 Microsoft Word document 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 Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2018 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address for the Graduate Institute given by Emily Langston on June 11, 2018 for the Summer 2018 semester in Annapolis, MD. The address is titled "Parts and Wholes." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Langston, Emily Brooker 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 2018-06-11 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 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 Convocation Summer 2018 Parts and Wholes_Emily Langston Relation A related resource <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3926" title="Sound recording">Sound recording</a> Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/aa429ad60fa13b1a86a12140be7a597a.mp3 7826101bd2c906ff9111bb202175ce10 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:19:05 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 Convocation, Graduate Institute, Summer 2018 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the convocation for the Graduate Institute given by Emily Langston for the Summer 2018 semester in Annapolis, MD. Introduction by Panayiotis Kanelos. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Langston, Emily Brooker 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 2018-06-11 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 SummerConvocation2018 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kanelos, Panayiotis Relation A related resource <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3927" title="Typescript">Typescript</a> Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/350132b48541f427adc9feda526aa114.pdf e5856f46705cedf725c5519c1d01d75c PDF Text Text St. John’s College Graduate Institute Convocation Address Summer 2013 On the Philosophy & Theology Segment Welcome, new students, returning students, and tutors, to St. John’s College, and to the Graduate Institute. Today each of you is joining, or returning to, a College that describes itself as a community of learning, and that dedicates itself to inquiry: to asking fundamental questions, and to pursuing answers to these questions. As members of such a community, we must from time to time shine the light of inquiry on ourselves. Today I mean to do so by examining the readings of the Philosophy & Theology segment. The subject of this convocation address – which I mean to be the first of five, each treating one of the segments of the Graduate Institute – follows from a claim that I made in an earlier address, delivered in Spring 2012, titled “What is a Segment?” I said then that the program of the Graduate Institute is a homogeneous whole, and that its segments represent arbitrary divisions of that whole into parts. Accordingly, I claimed that the titles of these segments should be taken as compressed questions in need of answers, and as opportunities for wonder, rather than as names for the distinct subject matter treated by the readings in each. Now I hope to make good on these claims in detail. So what, then, are the wonderful questions raised by the segment title “Philosophy & Theology”? And before I proceed to answer my own question, I should caution that the threads that I mean to follow for the next few minutes – threads that run through the tutorial and seminar readings of the segment, and that are connected to threads that run through other segments – are by no means the only ones worth following. I 1 �only insist that these threads are present in the segment readings, and truly worth following. So again, what are the wonderful questions raised by “Philosophy & Theology”? Let’s begin with the ampersand. It suggests that there is something dual about the segment, and prompts us to wonder what this duality is. The things joined together by the ampersand, of course, are philosophy, which any good dictionary will tell you comes from the Greek for ‘love of wisdom,’ and theology, which comes from the Greek for ‘an account about the god.’ In what way, then, are the ‘love of wisdom’ and ‘an account about the god’ two? It’s tempting to answer this question summarily, by noting that three of our segment titles have ampersands in them, and that each segment has two classes whose readings are required: the seminar and the tutorial. Could it be, then, that the dual segment titles reflect the duality of the seminar and tutorial readings? Not every segment title has an ampersand, admittedly, whereas every segment has a seminar and a tutorial. But we could attribute the exceptions, the one-word segment titles, to exhausted imaginations on the part of the graduate Program’s architects. We could then correct the title of the Literature segment, calling it the Greek & English Literature segment. The History segment would become the Ancient & Modern History segment, and our work would be done. At first glance, there seems to be something to this somewhat tongue-in-cheek ‘division of labor’ theory. For if we survey the readings of the tutorial and the seminar, we see that the former is full of great books ordinarily taken to be works of philosophy – Plato’s Meno, Aristotle’s Physics, Metaphysics, and On the Soul, Descartes’ Meditations, Hume’s Enquiry, Kant’s Prolegomena, and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil – whereas the latter is full of great books ordinarily taken to be works of theology: the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures, and Augustine’s Confessions. The presence of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica on the seminar reading 2 �list could be taken as conclusive evidence in favor of the division of labor between seminar and tutorial, were it not for the disappointing fact that Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments is also among the readings of the so-called ‘theology seminar’ – not to mention that, with the Prolegomena in tutorial and the Groundwork in seminar, Kant seems to be playing for both teams. Indeed, the more one thinks about this division of labor theory, the more problems appear. Take the very first reading from the so-called ‘philosophy tutorial’: Plato’s Meno. It begins, as we all know, with Meno challenging Socrates to say whether virtue comes to be in human beings by teaching, by practice, by learning, by nature, or in some other way [70a]; and it ends, as most of us know, with Socrates claiming that virtue comes to be by “divine allotment” [100b]. In between, we find an account (logos) about divine matters (ta theia), one that claims that “what we call learning is recollection” [81a-81e]. Is the Meno not in some way, then, a theological dialogue? If we are tempted to dismiss this thought, on the ground that Socrates is being playful when he speaks about the gods, what should we say about Aristotle’s account of the unmoved mover, or about Descartes’ proof of the existence of God, or about Hume’s discussion of miracles, or Kant’s theological Idea, or Nietzsche’s reintroduction of Dionysus? Are these really not accounts about the god? What is worse, if we consult Aristotle’s discussion of wisdom (sophia), found in the Nicomachean Ethics – which we read, alarmingly, in the Politics & Society tutorial – we find that it is “the science of the things that are valued most highly” [1141a20-21]. How could the love of such a science not include an account about the god? How could philosophy not include theology? From the perspective of the so-called ‘philosophy tutorial,’ then, it seems that the ampersand in the Philosophy & Theology segment title only marks and apparent duality, a hendiadys, a two that is really one. 3 �Problems arise from the perspective of a so-called ‘theology seminar’ too; but they are more grave, and more interesting. Should we seek a definition of theology, we can find one, but unfortunately, it is also in Aristotle. In two passages in the Metaphysics that we don’t read for tutorial, Aristotle calls theology the kind of contemplative philosophy that concerns things that are eternal, separate, and motionless [1026a10-20; 1064a30-b5] – should such things exist. By contrast, the term is not found in the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. It first appears among the seminar authors in Augustine’s City of God – parts of which we read in the History tutorial – and then among the seminar readings, most obviously in the title of Aquinas’ magnum opus. So the Greek term ‘theology’ seems applicable to at best half of the so-called ‘theology seminar’ readings, in the sense that the authors of roughly half of these readings were aware of, or made use of the term. Since the authors of the other half of these readings had a different name for, or a different understanding of, what they were doing, it seems like the so-called ‘theology seminar’ is in fact composed of theology, understood as a branch of philosophy, and something else. What, then, is this something else? Another look at the first readings for tutorial and seminar will be helpful here. In one of the most memorable passages in the Meno, Socrates says that while he will not insist very much on the other parts of his argument, he would do battle, if he could, for the view that it is better, more courageous, and less lazy to inquire into the things we don’t know, rather than supposing that it is impossible to discover them, or that we ought not to inquire into them [86b-c]. (By the way, I take Socrates’ conditional here not to imply that he can’t battle for this view, but to provide an opening for Meno, who is very interested in what Socrates can and can’t do, to ask him to battle for this view. It’s an opening Meno fails to exploit.) Socrates does not outright say 4 �that we can know all the things we don’t know; but he does imply that he has reason to think that we should try – that the attempt will be neither fruitless nor dangerous. Now contrast this beginning with the beginning in the first Genesis reading from the Philosophy & Theology seminar, where we learn that God created heaven and earth, and what he created was “very good” [1:30]; but Adam and Eve nonetheless ate of the prohibited tree of good and evil knowledge, and were punished for it [3:1-24]. Leaving aside the more sophisticated – we might say, more theological – interpretations of these events, which try to interpret this punishment in accordance with the presumed characteristics of God, the serpent, Eve, and Adam, the naïve message is clear: we ought not to inquire into at least some of the things we don’t know, namely the prohibited things, as the attempt to do so could be both fruitless and dangerous. The first readings of the Philosophy & Theology tutorial and seminar thus make opposite claims. And we should not let our prejudices in favor of one or the other of these claims muddy the wonderful, terrifying question that wants to rise to the surface through this opposition. There are things that we don’t know. It is good to try to know them? Is knowledge possible, and is it good? With these questions we have at last gripped two threads that run, in my view at least, throughout the segment’s tutorial and seminar readings. In the tutorial, the Meno is followed by Aristotle, who in the Metaphysics practices theology as the science of the intrinsically most knowable and best things; by Descartes and Hume, whose reasoning about God is calculated to protect the possibility of knowledge; and by Kant, whose reasoning about knowledge is calculated to protect the possibility of God. This tutorial thread terminates, after its brief Kantian crossing into the seminar, in Beyond Good and Evil, with Nietzsche’s alarming claims that knowledge in the Aristotelian theological sense is neither simply possible, nor simply good. 5 �The seminar thread, by contrast, runs through the Hebrew scriptures, with the examples of Abraham’s exemplary fear [Genesis 22:12], which makes him a worthy father of multitudes and a blessing for nations [22:17-18]; the Israelites’ exemplary law, obedience to which is wisdom and understanding in the eyes of peoples [Deuteronomy 4:6]; and Job’s exemplary ignorance, which in the end confesses that knowledge of God is impossible, and so speaks rightly [Job 42:2-8]. It is found also in the Christian scriptures, for example in Jesus’ claim that the most needful knowledge depends solely on revelation – “no one knows the son except the father,” he says; “and no one knows the father except the son, and anyone to whom the son wishes to reveal it” [Matthew 11:27]. But with the rise of theology, starting with the writings of Paul, this thread becomes tangled. Paul, who confesses himself a debtor just as much to the Greeks as to the barbarians, to the wise as to the unwise [Romans 1:14], is willing to claim that “the invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead” [2:20]. And Augustine and Aquinas both find themselves in the same boat, using the philosophical arguments of theology as paths to belief in the Christian God, all the while denying the sufficiency and even doubting the necessity of these paths. In Book Ten of his Confessions, for example, Augustine laments the soul’s “vain and inquisitive greed” for experience, which “cloaks itself in the name of ‘research’ and ‘knowledge’” [10.35.54]; but soon thereafter he qualifies his lament, saying that he has been able to curb his “curiosity for superfluous knowledge” [10.37.60; emphasis added]. For his part, Aquinas begins the Summa by insisting that sacred doctrine is a science in the Aristotelian sense, even though it is beyond human knowledge and may not be sought by human reason [q.1 a.1]. This seminar thread finally becomes untangled, and then terminates, with Kierkegaard, who asserts in the Philosophical Fragments that thought wants to discover something that thought 6 �cannot think [IV.204]: namely, the, eternal historical moment of god become man [IV.227], the faith that is different in kind from, and infinitely more needful than, any knowledge. Having traced these threads in this way, what can we say about the meaning of the ampersand, and the duality of the Philosophy & Theology readings? The apparent duality of the love of wisdom and an account about the god is only apparent: every lover of wisdom, every lover of the science of the most valuable things, will seek an account about the god. But behind this apparent duality is a real duality, between the love of knowledge – with all the sometimes irrational attachment that the word ‘love’ can connote – and doubt about knowledge. The drama of this duality comes from the encounter between these two views. Since doubt about knowledge nonetheless wants to insist that its doubt is grounded in knowledge, it is easily seduced by the appeal of love of knowledge, tries to incorporate it, and is corrupted by it. Once this corruption is understood, attempts are made to recover the original insight, the original tension between love of knowledge and doubt about knowledge. Beyond Good and Evil, with its consideration of “The Religious Being,” its assertion of the necessity of religion to a flourishing society [61-62], and its Dionysian conclusion, and the Philosophical Fragments, with its radical rethinking of the meaning of Christian faith, are two attempts to restate the original questions – is knowledge possible? Is knowledge good? – in their originally wonderful and terrifying force. I hasten to repeat that the story I have told here about the readings of the Philosophy & Theology tutorial is not a history, and certainly not a Hegelian one. There’s no necessity, to my mind, that Kant follow Hume, nor that Jesus follow Moses; there’s no necessity that the threads I’ve tried to grasp begin and end untangled. (Indeed, they seem quite tangled to me in our contemporary, everyday world.) But there is a necessity that the authors of the great books that we read confront, in more or less clearsighted ways, what it means to be the kinds of beings that 7 �we are: beings that both stretch out, and stretch out toward knowing. It is this durable necessity that ensures the connection of these threads to the threads that run through the readings of the other Graduate Institute segments. The scope and character of political and social life depend, for example, on our answers to the questions of whether knowledge is possible and good, as do the scope and character of mathematics and natural science. And the durable basis of this durable necessity is human nature itself, that homogeneous though multiple subject matter that is the true content and concern of the graduate Program here at St. John’s. Without some account of the whole that lies behind the graduate Program, without some attempt to follow the threads that run through and between its segments, the education we are all pursuing in the Graduate Institute will not acquire its full value. I would like to conclude by announcing that there will be two Graduate Institute-hosted study groups this term. One group will meet on Tuesdays, from 3:00 to 4:30, beginning on June 25, to read Xenophon’s Memorabilia – his recollections of Socrates. The other will hold an organizational meeting in the Hartle Room this Tuesday, June 18, from 2:00 to 3:00. The purpose of the group is to study techniques useful for the math section of the GRE. Schedules for these groups will be circulated by email. Lastly, I would like to invite you all to take part in the refreshments provided at the back of the Great Hall, before going to preceptorial. The summer 2013 term of the Graduate Institute is now in session. Convocatum est. Jeff J.S. Black Annapolis, Maryland 13 June 2013 Delivered 17 June 2013 Note The numbers cited in the text refer in each case to the standard divisions of the work in question, never to page numbers. 8 � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 digital 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 Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2013 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address for the Graduate Institute given by Jeff Black for the Summer 2013 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "On the Philosophy & Theology Segment". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Black, Jeff J. S., 1970- 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 2013-06-17 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 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 Annapolis_GI_Summer_2013_Convocation Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d97a468065b2625d433c3171eed74689.pdf c954cc9654368f04b3ddaa7af7ef54a5 PDF Text Text St. John's College Graduate Institute Convocation Address Spring 2018 Emily Brooker Langston Good Afternoon and Welcome – New and returning students, families, friends, and tutors – to the spring term of the Graduate Institute at St. John's College. In particular, welcome to all of you who are today becoming members of the Graduate Institute. I’ve spoken a couple of times in the past about the seal of the college. Are those of you who are joining us today for the first time familiar with it? You can find it in many places around campus - for instance, it is embedded in the brick section of the quad, before the steps descending toward the playing fields and college creek. The seal is circular and features a picture of a balance-scale, surrounded by seven books representing the seven liberal arts. Inscribed around the edges of the seal is a motto in Latin: “Facio Liberos ex liberis libris libraque.” Or, less alliteravly, in English, “I make free people out of children by means of books and a balance.” In earlier talks I’ve wondered about the applicability of the seal to the Graduate Institute, and what it might mean to assert that students in the GI come to the program as “children.” Today, though, I want to take a different tack and push back a little against the motto on the seal. I want to think about what it means to �learn as an adult. To explore this, I will talk about an adult I spent a lot of time thinking about with my literature seminar this past semester – the “man of many ways,” Odysseus. It is clear from the very beginning of the Odyssey that this will be the tale of a man at or even past the prime of his life, not a character in formation. He comes to us already with a back-story, one we know primarily through the Illiad. Even there we encounter him as one of the older, more experienced warriors. He is not a prodigy like Diomedes or Achilles, but a man whose value to his companions comes even more from his experience with stratagems and his sagacity than it does from his prowess as a warrior. The opening lines of the epic read as follows (all translations are Richard Lattimore’s): “Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was Driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, Many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, Struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.” So right from the start we are told that this is a complex man, a man “of many ways,” who has already lived through great adventures as part of the sack of Troy. And we are told that the story we will hear now is not one of going out, winning a great battle, and gaining glory but a story of returning home. It almost goes without saying that a story of a homecoming of this sort, a homecoming through great trials after long years and a great adventure, is a story �of an adult. The characteristic story of a young person is a story of setting out, launching oneself into the world. We have such a narrative in the Odyssey, in the story of Telemachus’ quest to find his father; it is part of the incomparable beauty of the epic that the story of Telemachus’ setting out and Odysseus’ coming home are intertwined. Classes in the undergraduate program are full of young people launching themselves with greater and lesser degrees of bravado, trepidation, curiosity, and ambition. Like Telemachus in the court of Menelaus, they encounter the adult world with wonder and with a longing to be recognized and welcomed, and it is a delight to converse with them. In the Graduate Institute, though, students bring to their classes a wider range of human experience. Some around the table are still setting out, just out of college, reaching for what they will become. Others however bring to the discussion decades of experience in a wide variety of professions, in families and communities, in peace and in war. These are students who have made an unusual and deliberate choice to seek this education as adults. One of the great joys of classes in the Graduate Institute is experiencing the interaction of the perspectives that students of differing ages and experience bring to our discussions. So, to continue my inquiry, Odysseus returns home not to find out who he is, but to re - establish himself as husband, son, father, and king. There is, as my �colleague Margaret Kirby noted in her fine lecture on the Odyssey earlier this year, a motif of recognition running through the epic. Odysseus must know again his wife, son, father, and faithful retainers, and be known again by them, as well. This recognition is only possible because - although he returns to Ithaca decades older and disguised as a beggar - he remains recognizable. The interplay between the aspects of Odysseus that are complex and fluid and that within him that, through it all, remains recognizably Odysseus is brought to our attention by the epithet that is most frequently applied to him. He is “polutlas”, often translated by Lattimore as “much-enduring.” “Much-enduring Odysseus” The phrase certainly emphasizes the suffering Odysseus has undergone, the adventures he has lived through, and the disguises in which he has appeared, but it is also indicates that there is an enduring center to this man. Let’s look, very quickly, at a couple of instances in which the epithet occurs. When, after leaving Calypso’s island, Odysseus is on a storm-tossed raft and is in sight of shore, the sea nymph Ino appears to him telling him to leave the raft and swim for it. She gives him her veil to tie around himself, saying it is immortal and will not allow him to perish. Instead of immediately taking her advice, however, “much-enduring Odysseus” consults himself and decides to stay on the raft as long as it will carry him, swimming toward shore with the aid of the veil only after the raft has been dashed to bits. In a second example occurring at �the very end of his journey: when he sees his father Laertus, Odysseus desires to reveal himself, weep, and tell his father everything – but surpressing that first impulse “much enduring” Odysseus decides instead to approach his father in disguise and test him. The point I am trying too hastily to make with these examples is that the epithet is often associated with moments when we see the interplay between his self-knowledge and his ability to use his experience to judge and adapt himself to circumstances; between his enduring self and purpose, and the many-ness of his schemes and courses of action. In the two examples I have chosen we see him question the advice of an immortal and gauge his own chances in a battle with the sea; and we see his ability to evaluate and hold in check his own first impulses. In each situation he endures not by being unyieldingly inert but through a prudent adaptability that demands both knowledge of the world in evaluating the situation and settled self-knowledge in determining his way forward. This sort of knowledge, I submit, is characteristic not of children but of (at least some but not all!) adults. Returning now to the subject of education, I will ask - what does any of this imply about the ability to learn? Doesn’t learning imply a self that is not settled but that is formed by the learning process? There surely there is a sort of learning that is mostly formative. Returning to the example of Telemachus, we can see that he is engaged in this sort of learning – gaining skill in speaking in public assemblies, �and in planning and fighting, as he grows to become a leader and man like his father. Odysseus learns too, however. We actually hear it in the first lines of the epic, that I quoted at the beginning of this talk. Lattimore’s translation of line three reads: “Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of.” [The Greek word is a form of “gignosko”, to learn or recognize, and in past tenses to “know”] His skills as an orator and warrior are unquestioned, his experience of the world is vast, but about the deepest questions, including about the minds of men, Odysseus learns. And some of that learning may be most effectively undertaken by one who questions, judges, and evaluates knowing something both of the world and of the self she or he brings to inquiry. Thinking about these different types of learning may give us insight into the difference in curriculum between the undergraduate program at St. John’s and the program of the Graduate Institute. Note the distinction between liberal education (an education that is freeing) and the liberal arts (the seven subject areas of the trivium and quadrivium represented by the books on the seal… grammar logic rhetoric arithmetic geometry, astronomy, music) which are the tools of that education. As the seal puts it, we are educated into freedom “by means of” books and a balance. In the undergraduate program fully half the classes are devoted to learning skills associated with these seven liberal arts. Students have tutorials in language, mathematics, and music. In the Graduate Institute, on the other hand, we �assume a student comes to the program having some level of competence in these arts. And so in our tutorials we spend almost all our time not learning techniques associated with one or another of the liberal arts but reading more slowly and discussing with one another some of the books that, in our judgment, contain some of the greatest thoughts that have been conceived by human beings – or, echoing the opening lines of the epic - by the minds of men. This is an education that, although it may help form children into adults, is also completely fitting FOR adults – for anyone, in fact, who desires wisdom and greater freedom. I want to conclude by noting that an indication of the wide-ranging backgrounds, skills, interests of the students in the Graduate Institute may be seen in the huge variety of student-led study-groups that spring up every semester. I usually list those I know of at the end of this talk, but I won’t even attempt it today since as far as I know there are currently TEN in formation. I will simply tell you that information about these groups is posted on the bulletin board downstairs in this building and will be circulated in an email, and that the groups are open not only to GIs but to all members of the college community. The spring 2018 semester of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis is now in session. CONVOCATUM EST � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 Word doc Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 7 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 Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Spring 2018 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given by Emily Brooker Langston in January 2018 in Annapolis, MD. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Langston, Emily Brooker 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 2018-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Spring 2018 Langston, Emily Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/edf9e1a14b22fcdc7db36edbc4f253a3.pdf a4f1775be350508f1bc1f14afe6df144 PDF Text Text St. John’s College Convocation August 23, 2017 Pano Kanelos It is with great pleasure that I would like to welcome the Class of 2021 and our entering Graduate Institute students into our St. John’s community. We are honored to have you here. I would like to welcome as well all family and friends who are joining us today – thank you for all the support you give these wonderful young people. And to the returning students, faculty and staff – I would like to thank you personally for allowing me to join this community. Just like our first-year students, I feel like I’ve entered a place of a garden of delight and wonder. It was customary in the nineteenth century, at American colleges such as St. John’s, for the college president to offer a capstone course to graduating seniors. This class, generally titled “Moral Philosophy”, was meant to be the culmination of one’s college experience. “Moral philosophy” was the end towards which all the separate courses of study pointed. It represented the telos of one’s education. Those nineteenth-century presidents must have been made of sterner stuff than this twentyfirst century president. I am certain, were I to presume to offer instruction in moral philosophy at the end of your St. John’s experience, I would could only do more harm than good. Let us leave the end of your studies in more qualified hands, those of your tutors, those of the texts you encounter, and most critically, your very own. Yet here we are at a beginning, called together in assembly, which is the meaning of convocation, a radical beginning for those of you who are joining us in your first year, and an only slight less profound beginning for those of us who have already been resident in this community. And at this beginning, I would like to draw inspiration from those past presidents and have us take a look at our end. In fact, what I would like to do this afternoon is provide a framework for you to think about the arc of your education at St. John’s College. To this end, I would like to fix in your mind a tableau, an evocative image provided by one of your teachers, the great lover of wisdom, Plato. My hope is that this image will remain with you during your time here in the college, and that it will be one that you will return to again and again in the years that follow. �The endpoint of the experience of the Program of Instruction is a text, Plato’s Phaedrus. This is the final work on our four-year long seminar reading list in Annapolis. This may seem anomalous to some, given that all the other readings in seminar are roughly chronological in sequence. Why, at the end of the arc, after having marched resolutely from the classical world to Wittgenstein and Heidegger, are we circling back around to this ancient work? And to strike yet another seemingly discordant note, those of you who study the seminar reading list with any attention, will mark another peculiarity – there is only one text over our four-year course of study, that we read not once, but twice – Plato’s Phaedrus. The Phaedrus marks the end point of our first undergraduate year of study; it also marks the endpoint of the Program of Instruction. Thus when we reach the end of the Program we are both at an end, yet also circling back around to an earlier point. We complete a circuit, a coming again, a revolution. The end is, and is not, the end. Which brings us to the image that I would like to fix in your mind as you charge forth into this year and those to come. Picture a chariot. This chariot, pulled by two winged steeds, is traversing the sky. The driver, sweating, straining, struggles to maintain control. One of the horses, white, noble in bearing, heaves upward, wrenching the chariot towards the heavens. The other horse, black, disfigured, drags the craft perilously towards the earth. Their journey is an erratic one, a dangerous one. This dynamic image is taken from the Phaedrus. It is an image of the human soul. In the Phaedrus, Plato describes the chariots of the gods, each harnessed to two white, noble horses, parading one after the other into the heavens. Led by Zeus, the gods ascend effortlessly into the ether, where they contemplate the Forms: " What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a reality that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul's steersman. Now a god's mind is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge, as is the mind of any soul that is concerned to take in what is appropriate to it, and so it is delighted at last to be seeing what is real and watching what is true, feeding on all this and feeling wonderful, until the circular motion brings it around to where it started. On the way around it has a view of Justice as it is; it has a view of Self-control; it has a view of Truth. And when the soul has seen all the things that are as they are and feasted on them, it sinks back inside heaven and goes home. On its arrival, the charioteer stables the horses by the manger, throws in ambrosia, and gives them nectar to drink besides. Now that is the life of the gods.” �The life of mortals, however, is not quite so serene. The chariot represents for Plato the tripartite human soul. The driver of the chariot signifies the intellect, our ratiocinative powers. The white horse represents what the Greeks termed our “thumos” or spiritedness. Our thumos seeks glory, honor, and recognition. It goads us towards excellence and pricks us when we act shamefully. The black horse embodies our appetites, which are drawn towards earthly pleasures, material gain and comfort. Human reason, in the figure of the charioteer, aims for enlightenment. But it is yoked to these other human drives. Thus, trailing the gods, desperately following in their wake, the human soul invariably falters. Again, from the Phaedrus: "As for the other souls, one that follows a god most closely, making itself most like that god, raises the head of its charioteer up to the place outside and is carried around in the circular motion with the others. Although distracted by the horses, this soul does have a view of Reality, just barely. Another soul rises at one time and falls at another, and because its horses pull it violently in different directions, it sees some real things and misses others. The remaining souls are all eagerly straining to keep up, but are unable to rise; they are carried around below the surface, trampling and striking one another as each tries to get ahead of the others...” Such is the fate of human souls. What comes without effort to the gods, possessed of pure intellect, is attained only fleetingly by mortals, and even then, only by a select few. Depending upon on how extensive a glimpse of the Forms they achieve, determines their human identity. Those who have steered their chariots above the rim of the sky and who have glimpsed Reality in its authentic form are compelled by an overwhelming desire to return that exalted station. The longer the soul has spent among the universals, the stronger the memory of what it has witnessed. Souls whose experience of the heavens was most sustained, return to earth as philosophers. Their compulsion to return to an unalloyed Reality manifests itself in desire, in a passion for truth – hence they are denominated lovers of wisdom. Other souls return to earth in descending order, each having seen and understood less and less of Reality, from law-abiding kings, to merchants, physicians, prophets, poets, craftsmen or farmers, sophists, and finally, the least enlightened, tyrants. You may read that final category as you will… This is neither the time nor place to offer an extended exegesis on Plato’s Allegory of the Chariot. Instead, I would like to offer a set of six brief observations. Then I would like to address how this allegory may be applied to your education. 1. The soul described by Plato is dynamic. It is in motion. Its path is not predetermined, but is rather the result of effort. We are creatures that change and develop. �2. The soul is multifaceted, composite. We are not simply rational creatures, but creatures of passion. We are driven by desires, both edifying and destructive. The intellect may try to steer these desires, yet it is also dependent upon them for forward motion. 3. We cannot simply cut the black horse loose – without its strength, we cannot ascend into the heavens. Yet our earthly desires must be informed by our reason and aligned with our spiritedness to propel us in the right direction. 4. The white horse may also present dangers. Thumos properly directed can lead to noble action. But thumos unbridled, like the anger of Achilles, can lead to rage and the loss of control. 5. As mortals, even our greatest efforts to seek Truth ultimately falter. Yet what marks us most is the desire for Truth, rather than its attainment. In this we are more glorious than even the gods. 6. It is the memory of what they have seen that draws souls back into the heavens. To know something is to return to it. To love something is to desire to return to it. So what do these unruly steeds and frantic charioteer have to do with your experience at St. John’s? To answer this question, we must first ask ourselves others: Is this thing we call education the formation of the intellect or the formation of the soul? Is knowledge dependent upon powers of the mind, or habits of character? Are these things separable? For Plato, they clearly are not. To seek truth, one must cultivate one’s character, one must allow the passion for what is honorable to rein in and lead the passion for baser things. In fact, one must train the passions to act in accord with the Good. As Aristotle says, “To be always seeking after the useful, does not become free and exalted souls.” Liberal education is an education that liberates – this is the root implication of liberal. Plato’s chariot is an image of free and exalted souls, those souls that soar as best they can towards the heavens. The course of that flight for those of you joining St. John’s, as well as for those of you currently mid-air, is the course of your experience in the Program. Yours are minds traversing a set of texts, a constellation of intensified human experience. Yet the Program is not the end itself. It is an opportunity for you to strive for higher things. And your striving will be animated by your thumos. Let me provide an example. Recently, I ran into a couple of Johnnies at a restaurant on Main Street in Annapolis. Our conversation turned towards the coming semester. I mentioned that I would be leading a preceptorial, but was still mulling over the topic. I asked them what they would be interested in taking. One of the young women immediately responded, “Anything! �As long as it’s really difficult.” That right there, that impulse that rose in this young woman to seek the challenging path, was an expression of her thumos. You could practically feel the white horse lifting her upwards. As you make your way through St. John’s, the black horse will be at work as well, tugging you in the other direction. It will be most obviously evident in simple, base distractions: when Netflix calls more loudly than Plato. When your confidence is shaken and you question the utility of your education. Most perniciously, you may also find yourself subject to the cynicism that seems to pervade the general culture about the pursuit of truth itself. To resist these impulses, you must have courage. This is not to say that you should only read books. Dancing, sports, conversation, and courtship are all arenas for thumos, where the passions quicken and where one may strive for excellence. We are composite beings, not disembodied minds. Live your life robustly while you are here. Be engaged. Be active. Be open to other remarkable souls that share this journey with you. Like the arc of Plato’s chariot, your pathway through St. John’s will come to its end. This may feel to you like a falling from the heavens to the earth. Yet as Plato instructs us, the end is not the end. Your future will be nourished by the memory of what you encounter here. The higher you soar, the longer you sustain your flight, the more potent your memory will be of the finer things. We are not gods – what we apprehend we apprehend only fleetingly. Yet you will continue to be free and exalted souls as you continue to be propelled by what is honorable, what is excellent and what is good. This will be fed by your love for wisdom. Remember, to know something is to return to it. To love something is to desire to return to it. The end is not the end. In Plato’s account, the wings of the both horses are nourished by beauty, enabling us to soar. At this moment, at the beginning of this journey, I would like to invite Mr. Stoltzfus to lead our students in a particular offering of beauty to sustain us as we move forward into this academic year. Mr. Stoltzfus! Thank you all for that truly inspiring rendition of Sicut Cervus. Immediately following the ceremony today, please join us for a reception in the FSK lobby. I will ask all guest to remain in your places until the platform party freshmen, new GI students and faculty have processed out. With great pleasure, “I officially declare the College in session. CONVOCATUM EST.” � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 Word doc 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 Convocation Address, Fall 2017 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Pano Kanelos for the Fall 2017 semester in Annapolis, MD. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kanelos, Panayiotis 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 2017-08-23 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 Convocation Kanelos, Pano 8-23-17 Relation A related resource <a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3107">Sound recording</a> Convocation Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/92d31ffa84b0722fdb4c1f53ec357402.mp3 81e30dbfd4b24d4cd0d39642b10cf693 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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.) 00:25:30 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 Convocation Address, Fall 2017 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the convocation address given by Pano Kanelos for the Fall 2017 semester in Annapolis, MD. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kanelos, Panayiotis 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 2017-08-23 Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3108">Typsecript</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation Kanelos, Pano 8-28-17 Convocation Presidents https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6122927ba94b348bfccd28c0f74f2b56.pdf 551cc67843e49f56d45ea561f59f0a77 PDF Text Text 1 St. John's College Graduate Institute Convocation Address Spring 2017 Emily Brooker Langston Living in the In-Between Good Afternoon and Welcome – New and returning students, families, friends, and tutors – to the spring term of the Graduate Institute at St. John's College. In particular, I’d like to welcome you who are today becoming students in the Graduate Institute. The year 2017 marks the 50th year of the GI. We’ll be celebrating this anniversary at events through the year, so it seems appropriate to say something today, at the beginning of this year of celebration, about the beginnings of the institute, especially as its beginnings reveal something of the community you are about to join. As those of you doing the mental math will have figured out by now, the first GI classes were held in 1967. To be precise, The Institute came into being in the summer of 1967, on St. John’s brand new campus in Santa Fe New Mexico. Then-president Richard Weigle obtained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation offering support for five summers to found a summer graduate program in the liberal arts. The initial sketch of the curriculum was drawn up by Lawrence Berns, in consultation with many of the members of the Santa Fe faculty at the time, for a �2 program originally called the “Teachers Institute in Liberal Education.” That initial summer saw an enrollment of 33 students. It wasn’t as many as the founders had hoped to attract (though it seems to me like an impressive accomplishment!)but aside from that the program was regarded by all as a great success; every student who enrolled for that first summer elected to return in subsequent summers; there was NO attrition. . To quote a report by Robert Goldwin, the institute’s first director, students were “Like (people) too long in the desert suddenly transported to an oasis. This was just what they had always hoped for but had never really seen.” I won’t move forward now with a year-by-year account of the emergence of the program, though I would like to mention Elliott Zuckerman, who took over the leadership of the Institute from Robert Goldwin after that first summer, and Geoff Comber whose persistence is largely responsible for bringing the GI to the Annapolis Campus. A lively account of the history of the GI has been written by Larry Burns and is available online in the college digital archives. Instead, I’d like to return to talking about the students. Even in that first year, there was some surprise at the variety of students to whom the program appealed. At the end of that first summer, Goldwin suggested changing the name from the Teachers’ Institute to the Graduate Institute, to make it clear that this education was for anyone who desired to undertake it. That first diverse group of �3 33 did include a number of teachers - nine from inner-city schools in Baltimore as well as various residents of Santa Fe, Los Alamos and a places further afield. Some came straight from college, but most already had some graduate work in their backgrounds; many even had advanced degrees. Which is to say, that the first GI student body looked in many ways like the student body we have today - a substantial number of teachers, but also retirees, recent college graduates, people working in other professions, in the military, government agencies, and NGOs. They were also like current GI students in another, more significant, way; they, like you here today, were willing to make a deliberate and unusual educational choice at a time of life when it is neither expected nor convenient. Such a choice must arise from a real and serious desire for the activity we engage in together at the college. At its core, this activity is the same in the Graduate Institute as in the Undergraduate Program. We are all engaged in liberal education, in an education that we believe will render us more free. But making the choice to undertake this education- in medias res as it were- necessitates a different relationship with or stance toward your studies than that of the typical St. John’s undergraduate. Very few undergraduates here attend part time, and most of them live on or very close to campus. They are able to separate themselves, not entirely but somewhat, from the world – forming a tight-knit community in what you will sometimes hear called the “Johnnie Bubble.” But members of the �4 Graduate Institute can’t live in a bubble (no matter how much some of us might wish to from time to time!) Whether you come in the summer or during the academic year, you have commitments – careers, families, the multitudes of obligations of adulthood- that can’t and shouldn’t simply be put aside. Of necessity you find yourself living in the in-between, engaging with these texts and this community as you remain engaged also with what is called, with greater or lesser degrees of irony, the “Real World.” This in-between-ness puts demands on you, and in turn on the educational Program. Some of the differences between the forms the Program takes at the undergraduate and graduate levels – such as the ability of GI students to take a preceptorial, which is to say an “elective,” every semester – I think can be simply put down to a sense that students who are older and more experienced may be offered a modicum more choice. Other differences, though, were originally the result of rethinking the Program in light of what it meant to offer a program of liberal education, that would be rigorous and true to the mission of the college, to students with unavoidable ongoing commitments. A couple of these differences have become defining features of the Graduate Institute program today. The most significant is certainly the division of the program into segments. The founders of the GI considered this a concession – not so much to an academic culture obsessed with marking out territories of expertise, �5 as to the fact that they needed to divide the program into coherent chunks that could be offered in eight weeks of intensive summer study to students who would have a substantial break between terms. Evidence that it is a concession is found in the very term we use for each of these chunks; we call them “segments.” The word segment comes from the Latin, secare, to cut; a segment is something cut off. So “Politics and Society” for example, the segment that some of you will be taking this semester and that was offered during the first GI summer, is not considered to be a subject-area unto itself but instead something cut off from a larger, integrated whole. The fact, again, that although we adhere to a strict order within the segments, the segments themselves may be taken in almost any order was also a concession – this time to the fact that we can’t offer every segment every term, but we need to bring in new students every term, and so students need to be able to start with whatever segments are being offered. And this again has necessitated that we focus less on technical subjects such as mathematics and foreign language study where a certain amount of expertise must be developed cumulatively and in order. The majority of our students earn the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degree without engaging in any foreign language study – and it is possible to do so without without taking any mathematics (Although I urge you not to! Many GI students, and especially those who were most hesitant to take it, find the Math and Natural �6 Sciences segment find it the most freeing of all.) What emerged from all this necessary adjustment, however, was not simply a cut-up, truncated version of the undergraduate program; rather, as my predecessor in this role Jeff Black made clear in an address entitled “Liberal Education for Adults,” it is a version of the St. John’s program with its own integrity and distinctive features. For instance, reading the books organized into segments means that certain questions arise more persistently over the course of a semester, and it is easier to trace a strand of thought or a question from an ancient to a modern thinker. The fact that both new and returning students are likely to be present in any class means that the discussion of the class remains more focused on the books in that particular segment, rather than ranging widely over a long list of books that everyone can be presumed to have read. The fact that we do less math, science, and foreign language study means that we have more time in tutorial to devote to a close reading of key texts within a segment. These differences help make a program in the liberal arts that is particularly appropriate for older students living between worlds. Finally, though, no educational program, however well-conceived, could ensure the success of this endeavor. What sustains the community of learning in the Graduate Institute year after year, as students and faculty alike negotiate the tension between engagement in liberal education and engagement with the world? �7 It’s a pressing question not only for students of the Graduate Institute, but for all of us. For (assuming that we remain engaged in learning at all after leaving school) the space within this tension is where most of us spend our lives. I won’t attempt to answer this question fully in my remaining few minutes, but I think even to begin to answer I must return to what I was saying about you, the students of the GI, and the unusual choice that brought you here. As I said earlier, it is a choice that evidences a strong desire to undertake the project of liberal education. What can we say about such a desire? The desire to become more free through learning, already requires both the self-knowledge to admit that we are less than fully free and at least the hope that we might become more free by pursuing knowledge about essential things. We admit that there is something about this undertaking of being human in the world that we don’t fully grasp. But of course, realizing that there is something we don’t grasp is only the first step. To know that we only have to look at Meno- rich, good-looking and well-connected, certainly engaged with his contemporary world - who, when his ignorance about virtue is exposed, responds with bluster and threats – then throws up his hands as he makes the debater’s argument that it is not even worth trying to know such things. I think I can safely say that most of you, unlike Meno, at some level already believe that it IS worthwhile to seek what we do not know. But the task is not easy. It requires that we be, in the words of Socrates to Meno, “energetic and keen on the search.” �8 Without a continual recommitment to the search this life in-between would be impossible. We rely on this quality in you, this resolve to resist the claims of the immediate and return again and again to search with us for what we do not know; we rely on it, and I think as a community we can encourage it in one another – but as the example of Meno again makes clear we can’t simply instill it where it isn’t present. Socrates tells us that this belief and this search will make us “better, braver and less idle.” It is something very close to virtue; and as with virtue, it is hard to say where it comes from. - Maybe, as is suggested regarding virtue in the second half of the dialogue, it is a gift from the gods. - May we for the next 50 years continue to be blessed with students so gifted. �9 I would like to conclude by mentioning four study-groups that will be taking place this spring in the Graduate Institute, open to all members of the college community. There will be one on Don Quixote; the quantum physics group will be reading Gamow’s Thirty Years that Shook Physics and Bohr’s Discussions with Einstien on the Epistomilogical Problems in Atomic Physics; one on Krishnamurti’s The Awakening of Intelligence, ; and one on several of the works of Hannah Arendt. Information about all the study groups is available in the GI office and will be circulated in an email. I invite you now to enjoy the refreshments at the back of the Great Hall before going to your tutorials, which will begin at 5:15. The spring 2017 session of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis is now in session. CONVOCATUM EST. �10 � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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. 10 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 Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Spring 2017 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given by Emily Brooker Langston in January 2017 in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Living in the in-between". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Langston, Emily Brooker 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 2017-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation Address Spring 2017 Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6618f9a57427de4770324cdee521ef72.pdf 993c456273f6f04eb51e13a356a867c4 PDF Text Text Of Bees, Fish and Cannibals Convocation Address Annapolis, Maryland January 14, 2004 Christopher B. Nelson President Welcome to the newest members of the class of 2007, to the new members of the Graduate Institute, and to their families and friends. And welcome back to the rest of the college community. By way of introducing you to St. John's, I want to say a few words about cannibals and cannibalism. I spent some time over the holidays with one of my favorite essays of Montaigne, On the Education of Children. Montaigne is, incidentally, one of the authors you will be reading in your sophomore year. It happens that he also wrote a little essay on cannibalism, but that has little to do with my object today. In his Education of Children, Montaigne offers loads of good advice. To parent he suggests that they send their children away from home to be tutored. To students, he counsels that they should be silent and modest for social intercourse, but fastidious in choosing and sorting their arguments, and fond of pertinence, and consequently of brevity --above all to surrender and throw their arms before the truth, wherever they encounter it. Montaigne also has a wonderful understanding of what learning is all about, and it has to do with grasping something the student may call his own her own. Let me quote from two of his passages: Let [the student] be asked for an account not merely of the words of his lesson, but of its sense and substance, and let him judge the profit he has made by the testimony not of his memory, but of his life, let him be made to show what he has learned in a hundred aspects, and apply it to as many different subjects, to see if he has yet properly grasped it and made it his own . . . It is a sign of rawness and indigestion to disgorge food just as we swallowed it. The stomach has not done its work if he has not changed the condition and form of what has been given it to cook. And later: Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later . . . The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work that is all his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this. As I was chewing on this essay, I recalled how I was used to receiving copies of speeches written �by your Marshall here, Miss Brann, with a little note saying that they were “for cannibalistic use.” Now, those who know Miss Brann will readily recognize that such talks would be veritable gold mines, filled with things a college president might want to use in talking about liberal education. Let us call these things a “banquet” so as not to mix metaphors. I had been invited to remove parts of what was contained in a paper that I might use them in my own talks from time to time — parts of a talk that was not of my own making. Often, we quote from others to add ornament to our own words. But cannibalistic use is not ornamental use. Somehow, I was meant to consume the talk before making use of it. Just as the stomach must change the condition and form of the meal it has just eaten in order that the body may receive nutrition, so must the mind transform the written matter it has taken in, in order that it may be nourished and its judgment improved. I figured I was being invited to plunder in order to make a work of my own, after I'd sifted through the material, considered it carefully, judged for myself what was worthy and for what purpose, and transformed it somehow to fit me. In this reflection, I was beginning to understand Montaigne, I think. But I was also getting an insight into the heart of liberal education — that the students themselves must learn to become their own guardians, that in the end they must use their own reason to find their way. So, I asked myself whether it mattered what food was served up and how it was served to our students. Well, I know I am preaching to the choir here. You would not have come to St. John's College in the first place — if you had not had at least an intuitive grasp that it matters deeply that the food we serve up for thought is the best we know for the nourishment of the mind and soul, for the development of their faculties. And you know just as well that it matters deeply how it is served. You want a banquet set before you and you need the time to taste everything served, to test it and question it before forming a judgment and rejecting it, doubting it, or making it your own. You understand that the authority of teachers can become an obstacle to learning precisely because their authority belongs to them and is not your own. So you want the teacher to listen to you before responding in turn. You want the liberty to chew on your own questions, not just take in someone else's gospel. You want to be the arbiter of your own opinions, but you need the tools to judge your own questions fairly, with your eye on the truth. I think that is why you are here at St. John's. We offer you tools for working with questions. We offer you opportunities for extended conversation and leisure for reflection about the questions that will help you shape the person you will become. We offer you rich reading material as food for thought, and a faculty modest enough to know that the books themselves make better teachers than the more ordinary mortals sitting on the other side of the aisle. We want you to plunder the ideas these many books have to offer, but afterward make of them honey which is all yours. We want you to digest what you read and hear, and change what you take in to make it a work you can call your own. This means that purely bookish competence is not what we seek (even though competence in all the books in this program would take many lifetimes to achieve). Instead, we hope to help you build a kind of “honest curiosity to inquire into all things,” to help you exercise the habit of shared inquiry, where you will learn to listen well to others, speak when you have something pertinent to say, and build a kind of confidence in yourselves that comes from exercising your reason freely for your own purposes. We want �you to learn the freedom that is required to make wise choices for yourselves so that you may live better lives. There is a rather wonderful image for all this in another book you will be reading before long — an image I was reminded of another generously spirited tutor. I am referring to Dante's Divine Comedy, a poem written in three parts, where our hero Dante is guided on a journey through the Inferno, the place of despair, Purgatorio, the place of hope, and Paradiso, the heavenly place of fulfillment. As Dante, a mortal man and visitor, is led into the second realm of Paradiso, which is inhabited by shades in a blessed spirit world, he is swarmed upon as if by fish to their food. Dante puts it this way: As in a fish-pool that is calm and clear the fish draw to that which comes from the outside, taking it to be their food, so I saw plainly more than a thousand splendors draw towards us, and in each I heard: “Lo, one who will increase our loves!” And as each shade came near it appeared to be full of happiness, by the bright effulgence that came forth from it. The simile suggests that even in the heavenly sphere the human spirit is fed by fellowship. The eagerness for human company and the conversation (which follows) is seen as food for the spirit, and is made apparent by an increase in the heavenly light permeating them. These spirits rush to their new visitor for the increase of their love, which for Dante seems to follow from a knowledge and understanding of the way the world works and the heavens move. I close with this image to remind you that you are not only here to feed. You are food for the rest of your classmates and friends. Fellowship and friendship come from learning like this in a community where each of its members flocks eagerly to the newest arrivals, its freshmen, to share and to learn for the sake of learning itself — and for the happiness that follows from the activity of learning together. We bid you to come to the table. The banquet set before you has more variety and depth than the imagination can capture. Eat generously. Chew it all carefully and thoughtfully, taking in what you come to know is right, placing in doubt what seems uncertain, and rejecting what you know to be wrong, what you know can never be used cannibalistically, because it simply is not something you can call your own. I welcome the cannibal in each of you, and encourage you to make cannibalistic use of the fouryear program of instruction we will be setting before you. And in that spirit, may you learn to love the project you are embarked upon and the fellowship of your classmates. May you succeed in taking in our program, and making of it something beautiful which is also something you may call your own. Thank you. * * * * * I declare the college in session this 14rd day of January 2004. �Convocatum Est! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 4 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Spring 2004 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004-01-14 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given by Chris Nelson on January 14, 2004 in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Of Bees, Fish and Cannibals." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Spring 2004 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Graduate Institute Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/930532df7f3591474f66d9518cf60635.pdf d03de6306eb33510d37274d40db5c776 PDF Text Text Convocation 2015: Mathematics, a Gateway to Philosophy and the Search for Truth St. John’s College in Annapolis opened the 2015-16 academic year on August 26 with Convocation, the annual ceremony rich with traditions. Nearly 120 freshmen participated in a procession from McDowell Hall to Francis Scott Key auditorium, where each student is called on the stage to meet President Christopher B. Nelson. Students sign the college’s register and receive an Ancient Greek lexicon as a gift from the college. Here is the 2015 Convocation address: Welcome to St. John’s College. To our returning students, faculty and staff, welcome back. To our freshmen and their families, we are very happy to have you joining us. In the next few days, you freshmen will begin working your way through a book that I think, more than any other, serves as an exemplar of guidance in an activity we try to undertake in all of our classes, especially our tutorials. I speak of Euclid’sElements. I imagine that there may be one or two among you who do not now love mathematics and may even be a little intimidated by it. Let me put it another way: there may be among you a few who have no idea how much you will come to love the study of mathematics and more particularly this first and most beautiful book of geometry and proportions. If so, you would not be the first. As we sit in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium of Mellon Hall, I am reminded of the difficulty Paul Mellon had with his Mathematics Tutorial in the autumn of his freshman year, 1940. Paul Mellon, philanthropist and heir to the Mellon Bank Fortune, was the single most important financial supporter of the College from the early years of the New Program until 1964 and later through his estate. Mellon had started as a mature student, having degrees from both Yale and Cambridge. He had �done well in plane geometry, memorizing theorems at Choate and receiving a perfect score on his College Boards. But he was flabbergasted and embarrassed that he could not do his demonstrations of Euclid’s propositions at the blackboard at St. John’s. As things progressed from bad to worse, Mellon wrote to his psychiatrist, explaining the problem. He received a letter in reply, part of which says this: “It is an asinine prejudice that mathematics has anything to do with the training of the mind. It has as little to do with the mind as music, which also doesn’t train the mind in the case of one who isn’t musical. . . . So, I think you waste your time absolutely when you try to study mathematics. Mathematics is a hellish and perfectly useless torture for somebody who hasn’t the gift in that way, as it is the most boring nonsense to be forced to learn to play an instrument when one isn’t musical. Tell your professors that their psychological knowledge is a bit weak.” The letter was signed: “I remain yours cordially, Carl Jung.” And you wonder why no book by Carl Jung is on our Program in Annapolis! I may have taken a risk in telling you this story, lest you mistakenly believe that Jung provides a legitimate excuse to treat one of the most beautiful books ever written as useless torture. I got lucky some 55 years ago to have discovered Euclid. I was in the seventh grade, in an age when all girls took Home Economics (a semester each of Cooking and Sewing) and all boys took a semester of Shop followed by one in Mechanical Drawing. For Christmas, between semesters, my parents gave me a drawing board, ruler, compass, T-Square, various plastic triangles, proper pencils, and a pad of drawing paper. I went straight to work, doing all the exercises that awaited me in the coming semester, finishing them before the class had barely started, so completely had I fallen for the beauty of precise draftsmanship. When I had finished the textbook exercises, I went to my father to see if he could find something more for me to draw. He understood my need and, like any good alumnus of St. John’s College, pulled down from his bookshelf a 1941 edition of Book I of Euclid’s Elements. I am pretty certain that I skipped the definitions, postulates and common notions, something I do NOT recommend to our freshmen. �So, starting with Proposition 1: “On a finite straight line to construct an equilateral triangle,” I drew a line and two circles whose centers were the end points of the straight line and whose distance to the circles’ circumference was that very same straight line. “Oh, good,” I thought, as I took out my ruler and compass, drew the figures shown in the proof, and constructed the equilateral triangle, labeling everything according to the drawing in the Euclid text. I then proceeded to do the same for all 48 propositions of Book I. Back to Dad: “Now what?” I asked. “Book II?” Instead, he asked me to set aside my ruler, compass, and other tools, and try Proposition 1 again without them, freehand. Well, I went about it as carefully as I could, drawing the line and circles, labeling the points and intersections. But what I drew frankly did not look like an equilateral triangle. Mine was a pretty lopsided figure. I said I just couldn’t do it freehand, as I was no good at drawing perfect circles. My father then asked me to go through the proof out loud and show him where I had gone wrong. And so I did, and I proved that my triangle was indeed an equilateral triangle, notwithstanding how lopsided it looked. This was my first “Eureka!” moment in mathematics, when I came to realize that the drawings were merely imperfect images of the perfect figures Euclid was constructing in his geometry, using definitions, postulates, and common notions as his tools instead of my draftsman’s mechanical tools, which had their own imperfections too. Euclid’s proof was true and would hold up, however poorly I had drawn my figures. Now I went more slowly through Book I a second time, figuring out how those elementary building blocks so simply laid out in the first three pages could prove all of the propositions in the book. I was now freed of my mechanical tools and able to work in a new world made real by the application of a handful of definitions, a few rules of construction or postulates of the imagination, and a few axioms of logic. I was getting behind the appearances of the geometrical drawings to understand better the reality of the objects of geometry: a point that has no part, a line without breadth, neither of which could be seen with the eye or drawn with the pencil; circles and triangles that could only be imperfectly represented in my drawings, even those made with the finest of mechanical tools. I could dwell in a world lodged firmly in the imagination, somehow more perfect, more “real,” than the one I usually inhabited with my family and friends, a �world filled with objects that have color, dimension and shape, a world we experience in time and space. I soon began to wonder what it might mean to have discovered an imaginary world that could explain the number, size, shape, and movement of bodies in our earthly world and in the heavens above. Sometime later I would ask the question a little differently: What would it mean to understand that all of mathematics is a metaphorical language used to describe the relationships among things in the physical world that I inhabited during most of my waking hours? How were we to judge how far we could draw out that metaphor? And I came back to the question as to which world was the more real and what was the proper relationship between the two. From these questions sprang my love of mathematics and mathematical physics. Another thing in the Elements caught my imagination some years later. It was contained in Euclid’s five postulates. I asked how it was that I could draw the line on which I would construct the equilateral triangle of Proposition 1. It was not by virtue of having the definition of a line as “breadthless length”. That definition did not seem to bring the line into being or to tell me that I had the power to make it so. How was I to take the very first step in the very first proof? Well, there it was: “Let it be postulated: (1) To draw a straight line from any point to any point,” Euclid seemed to describe an activity and give the reader the power to engage in that activity. We know that we cannot really draw a line with breadthless length, but Euclid was giving us both permission and power to do so. Euclid was a teacher of geometry, helping us see in time and space how to go about understanding these geometrical objects of imagination in relation to one another. The construction could be understood best by the unfolding, or revealing, of its nature in a series of steps taken in succession over time. And then years later, a senior colleague of mine helped me understand the complex grammatical construction of the postulates in the original Greek, that they did not direct an activity so much as reveal what these timeless figures were as though they were coming into being in time. To give you an idea of what I mean, let me compare two different translations of another famous text. The sophomores are reading Genesis just now. Consider the differences in these two translations of the opening of that book: �The King James version reads: “In the Beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.” Another version from the Tanakh, translated by the Jewish Publication Society, reads: “When God began to create the heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said. ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.’” In the first translation, it is as though God created the heavens and earth out of nothing. So, the imperative “Let there be light!” seems to suggest a kind of supernatural calling into being. In the second, it is as though God was bringing order to chaos over time. It allows us better to imagine “Let there be light!” as a revealing of what that order might be, a revealing of what had been dark. The second translation contains an ambiguity between the revelation of what is and the activity of calling it into being. I think Euclid is doing something like this in his postulates, revealing what these timeless objects of the imagination are even as we observe them coming into being. We students of Euclid are thus engaged in an activity that appears to be bringing geometrical objects into being even as we are recognizing them for what they already are, timeless and permanent, already possessing all the properties that will be revealed over the course of the remainder of the book. When we go to the board in our mathematics tutorial and repeat the steps in Euclid’s propositions, we are engaged in a journey of the imagination to reflect on the origin, nature, and elements of a line, a circle, a construction, a proof. The truth of the proposition is revealed to us through the application of reason to our imagination. This activity, trying to understand origins and elements, lies at the heart of much of what we do in our study together at St. John’s. But we cannot always start at the beginning as Euclid did, with first principles and elements, building up our understanding from there. Nonetheless, because we have had this experience with Euclid, we imagine that we can work our way back from the appearances, from the phenomena, from the opinions of mankind, to the origins, principles, and elements that underlie what we are hearing, reading, and seeing with our senses, to uncover their origins, foundations, and �elements. If we cannot start at the beginning, we must instead work to recover that beginning and uncover the elements of the object of our study. This is why we sometimes call a St. John’s education “elemental” or “elementary,” not because what we seek to learn is simple or easy to grasp, but because we are always looking to uncover what lies beneath or behind what we think we are seeing. We are seeking to find a truth about the object of our study, just as we have come to see the truth of a Euclidian proposition through the application of both the intellect and the imagination to the original, elementary building blocks. Achilles rages. Why is he angry? What lies behind his rage? Is it natural or not? Good or bad? Is it justified? Can it be controlled or not? If in the end his anger is resolved and some sense of humanity restored, how did this happen and why? “The will of Zeus was moving toward its end.” What has Zeus’s will got to do with Achilles’s wrath? Does that will control the fate of the warriors? Who are these gods and do they determine the outcomes of battle or do they serve as poetic metaphors for deathless forces we cannot control or comprehend? We wish to understand what it means to be human and we want to know about the world we inhabit. What are our origins? What was in the beginning? How do we live and grow? How do we satisfy our needs? How ought we to express our love and sympathy? How become better and wiser? How use our talents to make this a better world? How ought we to treat our planet and use the resources nature has provided? We need to know something about ourselves and our world to answer these questions. We need to uncover a truth we can recognize for what it is—a helpful way-station and landing place on our way to a deeper search for an answer to a question newly raised by the answer we have just uncovered. And on it goes, delving deeper into foundations, looking for the elements of the construction we call our world. At other colleges and universities these elements are rooted in isolated disciplines: chemistry, biology, psychology, or political science; earth science, astronomy, geology, or physics; perhaps history, theology, poetry, or music. We appreciate the need to specialize in order to get a refined understanding of any one thing. But how can you ever come to uncover the truth of a mere part of something without having some understanding of its relationship to other parts or to the whole of which it is a part? �You already have some experience of an integrated whole; for the most part, you have lived a life that has not been lived in an isolated discipline. And yet you have likely been unconscious of most of the elements and foundations of your world. We take seriously your need to be conscious in your search for an understanding of yourselves and your world, the interconnectedness between the two, their origins and elements. And we have constructed a curriculum and a way of helping you bring it to life within yourselves. So, what has Euclid got to do with all of this? First of all, Euclid permanently refutes Carl Jung. The study of his Elementshas everything to do with the training of the mind, exercising the imagination, using your reason, and applying it to the world you live in. His book is an exemplar of the study of elements and origins that you will be looking for in all of your study here. And lucky for you, it is only one of some 130 original works of imagination, each of which has been chosen for its capacity to help you uncover something you may recognize as a truth about yourself or your world, each of which will help you find the next question you need to ask to understand something still more fundamental in your search for answers to the many questions you have—the questions that have undoubtedly brought you to this College. But I am not finished with Dr. Jung! Not only has mathematics got everything to do with the training of the mind, but it has everything to do with the elements of music, which is not the boring nonsense Dr. Jung claims it to be. And to prove the point, I invite all of our upper-classmen to rise and use their one common musical instrument—their voices—to welcome our freshmen to our community. [All Rise to Sing Sicut Cervus] Thank you. After the recessional, I invite everyone to join us for refreshments and conversation outside the Mitchell Gallery through the doors of Mellon Hall. I declare the College in session this 26th day of August, 2015. CONVOCATUM EST! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 7 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-08-26 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2015 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Mathematics, a Gateway to Philosophy and the Search for Truth." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2015 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/278b4b9fd7c65b43036d3b7e8042441b.pdf 1390224b7f74cd49749ca43ddf0ec274 PDF Text Text Convocation 2014: Everything Important in Life Is Unknown St. John’s College opened the 2014-15 academic year on August 20 with Convocation, the annual ceremony rich with traditions. Nearly 140 freshmen in Annapolis participated in a procession from McDowell Hall to Francis Scott Key auditorium, where each student is called on the stage to meet President Christopher B. Nelson. Students sign the college’s register and receive an Ancient Greek lexicon as a gift from the college. Here is the Convocation address: Welcome to the Class of 2018. Welcome to their families and friends. Welcome Back to the rest of the College community! There is nothing in the world like the energy in this room as we open our doors to another year of learning together. Like everyone else here, I prepared for this fresh beginning by reading a few new books over the summer. Among them was an elegant little volume written by Roger Rosenblatt: Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing. It is a partliteral, part-fictional account of what was studied, written and said in one of Rosenblatt’s graduate classes in writing at Stony Brook University. Some months after the class was over,Rosenblatt and his students enjoyed a reunion dinner at a local restaurant, which like most reunions had a pleasant diversionary quality filled with the conversation and good humor that characterizes friendship at its best— friendship born of the shared study of things that are of great importance to those who have opened themselves fully to one another in the interest of their learning together. At the end of the evening,Rosenblatt was asked: “Is there anything you haven’t told us?” He acknowledged that there was something he might have mentioned but it was difficult and the hour was late, so he parted from his students to a good-hearted chorus of boos, and decided to toss in his parting shot at a distance, in a letter at the close of the book he was writing about his class. �The letter was addressed “To My Ungrateful Students:” What he had to say went far beyond the advice of an instructor concerned with technique in good writing: the need for precision and restraint, the use of anticipation over surprise and imagination over invention, the preference for the noun over the adjective and the verb over the adverb. Instead, he told a story of a conversation he’d had with Lewis Thomas toward the end of Thomas’s life, in which Thomas said that he would rather talk about life than death. “There’s an art to living,” he said. “And it has to do with usefulness. I would die content if I knew that I had led a useful life.” Rosenblatt then advised his students: “For your writing to be great ... it must be useful to the world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world. And for that to happen, you need to observe the world, closely and steadily, with a mind open to change. And for that to happen you have to live in the world... . You must love the world as it is, because the world, for all its murder and madness, is worth loving. Nothing you write will matter unless it moves the human heart.” But what is useful to the world? The world will only tell you “what it wants, which changes from moment to moment, and is nearly always cockeyed… The world is an appetite waiting to be defined. The greatest love you can show it is to create what it needs, which means you must know that yourself.” The great writers are great, Rosenblatt says, “because their subjects and themes are great, and thus their usefulness is great as well. Their souls are great, and they have had the good sense and courage to consult their souls before their pens touched paper.” “When Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, George Eliot, or Chekhov are recalled,” Rosenblatt writes, “it is as if tidal waves are washing over us. We cannot catch our breath.” And what do the great writers have in common? “All have … a certain innocence of mind that allows them to observe life openly and with a sense of fair play, though not without judgment.” They also have an appreciation of uncertainty, which is necessary if one is concerned with coming to know the truth, a never-ending journey. Poets grapple with the difficulties of knowing the truth, but so do scientists. For both, ignorance is crucial. Why? Because, Rosenblatt says, “everything important in life is unknown.” �What Rosenblatt wants for his future writers is the same as what all good teachers want for their students: the ability to recognize the source of greatness within themselves; the desire to improve on that soul, making it capacious, kind, and rational; and the continual effort to cultivate the innocence of mind that lets us live freely and openly in the world. His brief description can be applied to education generally. We call it liberal education— education in the art of living well, free from the constraints enclosing us, free from the boundaries of our educational disciplines and specialties, free from the prejudices of our upbringing and popular opinion, free from the many caves that confine us all too comfortably. At St. John’s College, we offer such a liberal education—one that helps us understand ourselves and the world around us; one that helps us develop an adaptable mind, equally open to tradition and to progress; one that gives us practice in the art of inquiry, in asking the questions humans have been asking since we first began to speak. They are questions arising from the depths of wonder; questions revealing the depths of our ignorance about the world and about ourselves; questions demonstrating a startling truth: that our ignorance is the source of our greatest strength. For it is ignorance, not knowledge, that propels us forward. It generates the desire to know, which draws us expectantly into the unknown. This is what the world needs: a good understanding of how to develop and where to direct our desire to know. If this assessment is true—and I believe it is—then the best conceivable education, the education at which college-bound students should aim and the one that is most useful to the world, comes from studying the greatest literary, scientific, philosophical, political, artistic, and musical works known to mankind, because their authors have the most to teach. Of all who have left records behind, they have understood most profoundly that we have much to learn, that the wonders of learning are exhilarating though its challenges are humbling. Take Galileo, an author read in your junior year. He is supposed to have said, “Doubt is the father of invention.” Why did he think that doubt is generative while others consider it paralyzing or destructive? Because doubt is the source of understanding and innovation. It is what causes us to ask the next question, which in turn leads us to a new possibility. It threatens the comfortable sense of security that would keep us tied to what �we thought we knew instead of asking: what does this new understanding cause us to ask that will allow us to reach beyond it? Michael Faraday, another author from the junior year, argued that to acquire the habits to form good judgment, an individual must engage in a program of self-education that rejects the blind dependency on the dogma of others; he must examine himself and become his own sharpest critic. “This education has for its first and last step humility. It can commence only because of a conviction of deficiency.” (Observations on Mental Education) Faraday’s is yet another call to “know thyself” better before advancing a judgment on anything else, a lesson all freshmen learn in their encounter with Socrates, the greatest skeptic of them all. Only when we understand that depth of our own ignorance, when we understand how little we know, are we ready to develop the lifelong habits that will best support learning. Only when we are free from conventional thinking, free to doubt what we have been taught about the world, can we imagine a whole new way to see the world and our place in it. This need to imagine a better world than the one we know is another reason why everything important in life is unknown. You lucky freshmen are reading Homer, the poet who may best demonstrate this power of the imagination, the journey-making faculty and the source of human creative power. The imagination is the beginning and end of any search for meaning, the connection between the world we live in and the one we would shape for ourselves. I can think of no finer example of the exercise of imagination than in Homer’s Odyssey. Constantine Cavafy captured the spirit of the Odyssey in his 1911 poem “Ithaka” “Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if lasts for years, So you are old by the time you reach the island, Wealthy with all you have gained on the way, Not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.” “Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out.” �We at the College imagine that your four-year journey through the Program will help you find your own Ithaca, the beginning and end of your search for meaning. There is a reason we at St. John’s College are proud to say: “The Following Teachers Will Return to St. John’s Next Year”: Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles; Euclid, Apollonius, and Lobachevski; Newton, Einstein, and Heisenberg; Shakespeare, Milton, and Cervantes; Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Plato and Aristotle; Dostoevsky and Tolstoy; Austen and Woolf; Kant, and Hegel; the Bible and the founding documents of our nation. What incomparable teachers they are, capable of helping you find your way to the answers you seek to the big questions you have: How should I live my life? How can I be useful to the world? With teachers like these, what do we expect of you, our students? We ask you to engage with each of these authors whose works span the ages. We ask you to be of every age just as they were, displaced from the world they were born into, wondering at it, learning from it, loving it, recognizing its ugliness and its beauty, and making it a better world for their contributions to it. Along the way we imagine that your discourse with the books and authors will cause you to look deeply into the greatest mystery of all, your very souls. You will not be alone in this four-year journey through the Program. You will have a faculty of tutors who will share this journey with you. Their principle responsibilities are two-fold: to serve as models of inquiry and independence; and to engage with your questions as they arise, to join with you in yoursearch for answers, as you learn how to interrogate yourselves and one another in the endless search for meaning. You will also have with you your fellow students, including those gathered here today to welcome you into our community with all the enthusiasm worthy of fellow learners. I will leave you with a poetic image from a book you will be reading in your sophomore year: Dante’s Divine Comedy, a poem written in three parts. Our hero Dante is guided on a journey through the Inferno, the place of despair, Purgatorio, the place of hope, and Paradiso, the place of fulfillment. As Dante, a mortal visitor, is led into the second realm of Paradiso, inhabited by shades in a blessed spirit world, he is swarmed upon as if by fish to their food. �“As in a fish-pool that is calm and clear the fish draw to that which comes from the outside, taking it to be their food, so I saw plainly more than a thousand splendors draw towards us, and in each I heard: ‘Lo, one who will increase our loves!’ And as each shade came near, it appeared to be full of happiness, by the bright effulgence that came forth from it.” The simile suggests that even in the heavenly sphere the human spirit is fed by fellowship and the desire to know. Human companionship and the conversation which follows are seen as food for the spirit. I close with this image to say to our freshmen that you are not only here to feed on the conversation that is the highest activity of this College. You are also food for the rest of our College community that has been drawn here today to greet you, recognizing that your arrival will increase the love of learning shared by our students, faculty, and staff. May you find here at St. John’s College a curriculum that awakens in you the desire to know! May you keep that desire ever-fresh! May you find fellow companions that will help you uncover your ignorance of the world so that you may be free to explore the unknown—because everything important in life is unknown. Thank you! I declare the College in session this 20th day of August, 2014 Convocatum Est! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 6 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-08-20 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2013 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Everything Important in Life Is Unknown." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2014 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f8b7eb9057ea802627e547b72c817b4d.pdf c206e3fe2cf05952eff82d4562bc1f89 PDF Text Text Welcome to Wonderland St. John's College, Annapolis Convocation Address 8/21/13 Christopher B. Nelson, President Welcome to St. John's College! Welcome to our freshman class, their families and friends! Welcome back to the rest of the College community! Most of you know something of the springtime lawn sport at which this College is said to excel. And many of you have attended more than a few of our annual contests with the US Naval Academy. Honor and Glory are at stake in the match of wits that characterizes croquet in Annapolis. But costume and dance are every bit as much a part of the day as is watching the grass grow. This last year, our Student Committee on Instruction added a Saturday morning seminar to precede the big match. The reading was from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the timeless classic about a little girl drifting off to sleep on a river bank when a White Rabbit ran by, saying to itself in remarkably good English “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” But when Alice saw the Rabbit pull a watch from its waistcoat pocket, she leapt to her feet “burning with curiosity” and followed the Rabbit down the rabbit hole, tumbling into Wonderland, a strange new world filled with yet more strange little worlds. (Alice at 3-6) The Croquet seminar selections were, appropriately, the chapters on the Mad Tea-Partyand the Queen’s Croquet Ground. You may remember that the croquet court was all ridges and furrows, the balls live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the wickets were playing-card soldiers doubled up over themselves to make arches. The only rule to the game was that the Queen of Hearts must win; the price of failure and the Queen’s displeasure: “Off with their heads!” The game came to a halt when the Queen ordered the executioner to cut off the head of the Cheshire Cat. But as the Cat was all head, face, and smile, detached from a body, the players took to arguing whether the head could be cut off from a body that wasn’t. It’s a question we might leave to our own Imperial Wicket, as our croquet team captain is called. The seminar got me to wondering about Wonderland and all the things that could be learned from wandering through it, and so I reread Alice in Wonderland over the summer. From beginning to end, Alice was moved by curiosity to open each closed door to explore a new room, a new garden, new occupants, new societies, new manners and mores, new grammars, new arguments, new logical—or not so logical—constructs. After each exploration, she would discover a bottle that read "DRINK ME!" or a morsel that read "EAT ME!" to which she would respond: "I know something interesting is sure to happen whenever I eat or drink anything." And so she would drink or eat, finding herself growing or shrinking to meet the terrors or confusions of whatever she would encounter on the other side of the next door. (Alice at 29) With each new encounter, she experienced something both familiar and unfamiliar: rabbits were familiar, but talking rabbits were not; a deck of playing cards was familiar but having each card play out a role in the Queen's Courtyard was new; a cat was familiar but a smiling cat without a body was unfamiliar. When asked by a talking caterpillar "Who are you?" Alice responded that she hardly knew: "At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." "What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain yourself!" "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir" said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see." (Alice at 37) Alice had become detached from herself and was looking back at herself in wonderment. When the caterpillar didn't understand what she meant, Alice replied: "[W]hen you have to turn into a chrysalis—you know some �day, you will—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel a little queer, won't you?" (Alice at 38) Now this exchange is quite remarkable. Alice has turned from wondering about the world outside her, with all of its familiar and unfamiliar elements, to wondering about herself and who she is, and then to trying to help another creature become detached enough to wonder at its own evolution and state of being. This is exactly the process, and these exactly the sort of questions, that can liberate us and others from the limitations of what we think we know, from our everyday unexamined assumptions about our everyday lives. This activity lies at the heart of liberal education. It involves the exercise of imagination. We must imagine that we can step outside ourselves and outside our habitual assumptions in order to ask the truly fundamental questions that undergird all other questions, whether those questions lead to the discovery of something new and unknown before (like the discovery of a new planet, a previously unknown subatomic particle, or the cure for polio), or the recovery of something once known and now forgotten (like the recurrent need to rediscover an understanding of the American Civil War), or the reexamination of something not sufficiently understood (like the need to better understand the meaning of justice or of right and wrong—concepts we use daily but understand imperfectly). Some of you may be wondering why I am bothering with the dreams of a fictional little girl when there are so many more important things, so many new things to discover, so much new knowledge to acquire. So let us consider another example, this time a physicist. As it happens, this summer I was also reading a couple of books by Richard Feynman, the Nobelprize-winning theoretical physicist known for his work on the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium. He may be best remembered for his testimony in a televised Congressional hearing explaining the failure of the O-rings of the space shuttle Challenger. It was Feynman’s curiosity, his incessant need to know, his puzzlement and wonder at the world around him, his joy in the study of physics, that led him to become one of the world's great physicists. Once, when Feynman was a student at MIT, he was expected to write a paper for a philosophy class in which he had paid no attention. So he decided to tackle a problem his father had given him as a child: Suppose some Martians were to come to Earth, and Martians never slept. They didn't have any idea of this thing we call sleep. So, they ask you: “How does it feel to go to sleep? Do your thoughts suddenly stop? How does the mind actually turn off?” Being the careful observer that he was, Feynman went about studying himself. He proceeded to watch himself very carefully each day and each night for four weeks to see what happened. He noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas in your head continue but they become less and less logically connected. But you don't notice that they are less well connected until you ask yourself "What made me think of that?" and you try to work your way back, often unsuccessfully. In the end, he wrote up his observations, noting that he didn't really know what it's like to fall asleep, only what it's like while watching himself enter the state. He concluded his paper with a little poem that pointed out the problem with introspection: I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder! (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! at 46-48) �Once again, we find our subject, this time Mr. Feynman, stepping outside of himself to try to understand something within. This escape from the self is an act of liberation, freeing the mind to look inward and study itself as if it were unfamiliar. This act of imagination is necessary for the most fruitful kind of learning. In Alice and in Feynman we see wonder first operating as a kind of curiosity: "I wonder what is on the other side of that door? Let me open it and see." Or "I wonder how the mind shuts down when it is going to sleep. Let me study it and see." In each case, the wonder turns to something like awe when the question turns back on itself: "I cannot tell you who I am because I am not myself. Then who am I?" Or "I cannot explain what it’s like to fall asleep because I am no longer conscious to study it. I wonder why I still wonder." These latter expressions require that we take the self that we think we know and call it into question: "Of course I knew who I was, but now I wonder who I really am." "Of course I am a curious person, but now I wonder why." The ability to wonder at yourself requires suspension of disbelief: you must be able to withstand the pressure to return to your default setting of thinking that you know who you are. This same ability to suspend disbelief is critical in creating both art and knowledge. In last month's New Republic magazine, Judith Shulevitz argues that there is no science without fancy, wonder and the exercise of the imagination. Suspension of disbelief, she says, is required for the "world building" behind all good science fiction. And what is suspension of disbelief but the freedom to imagine something out of the ordinary, the possibility of a future that you may lay claim to one day. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea made the possibility of the submarine seem a little more accessible to a later generation. His Clipper of the Clouds prefigured the helicopter. AndStar Trek’s hand-held communication device directly influenced the invention of the flip-flop cell phone. (The New Republic, July9, 2013.) I hasten to add that suspension of disbelief is necessary for the "world building" you are undertaking as you build a life for yourselves, a life worthy of your hopes and dreams. Now what do you imagine you need to learn to free yourself to ask the questions and shape the life that would belong to you? I imagine that it is the encouragement to wonder about the world around you and the world within you. How will you free your imagination to do that? This will probably require a lot of practice, something we encourage you to do at this College. Preparing for your seminar on the Iliad, you freshmen may wonder what these men are fighting about. What makes a man a hero? What is the role of the gods, and what is the will of Zeus? Why should we imagine that the will of Zeus is being accomplished in this book? Who is the Muse who is speaking through Homer? Why do we care more about the risks taken by our heroic humans than the accomplishments of the Olympian gods? In reading Euclid’s Elements, you will surely wonder how anything may be something that has no part, or what breadthless length can be? In what sense can we say that mathematical objects exist, that they have both meaning and being? Why do we imagine that mathematics may be the language of nature? Or that when we describe something mathematically it has a correlation with things we can see and touch? Why do we trust mathematical truths at all? In your language tutorial, you may wonder why you are reading a dead language with an unfamiliar alphabet. How can this help you understand the English language better? You may wonder, after several efforts, whether any sentence written in another language can be properly translated at all. What does this say about language and our ability to communicate with one another? How do we make the best of such a precarious exercise? And will you wonder, as I once did, about the ability to write intelligible sentences in Greek without the use of a verb? Ah, the substantive-making power of the article τά in the predicate position! In your laboratory, you will be observing plants and animals. You may wonder why you can prune a plant to make it healthier but should not prune an animal and expect the same. How does it happen �that a whole carrot can grow from a small scratch of tissue from another carrot’s tap root? What are the principles of the plant’s organization contained in that tap root? What can you learn about the Magnolia tree from studying one of its leaves? But when you wonder what the meaning of life is, you will find that the laboratory will only help you find a part of the answer. Sophomores are reading Genesis, wondering what it might mean that light and day were created before the sun was formed. Why are there two different stories explaining the creation of man and woman? Why did God forbid Adam and Eve to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden? Why is it right that we are made in the image of God but not right that we might want to be like God or to reach God, as we learn from the story of the Tower of Babel? Why does God destroy most of life on Earth in the great flood and then repent? And who are we to question the Almighty? Juniors are reading Don Quixote, wondering what kind of madness can move us to love. What is the connection between the love of a Knight for his Lady, the Knight’s desire for glory, and his love of the Divine? What does Quixote see in Dulcinea that moves him to take on a whole world? Is this knight like me, fighting seemingly hopeless battles for causes we simply must believe in? How is it that some of us see a hum-drum world with hum-drum eyes while others possess enough imagination to see the possibility of a world worthy of the striving that belongs to a knight-errant? Seniors are reading Tolstoy's magnificent War and Peace, wondering how Napoleon ever imagined he could conquer the Russian spirit. What is the spirit tapped by General Kutuzov that makes Russian victory inevitable? How does Napoleon inspire his troops? Why is it that war can be described as fearful and merry? What is Pierre searching for that will bring peace to his soul? What does it mean that the love of death is a virtue? Why do we fall in love with the lively Natasha? What is the happiness of self-sacrifice that characterizes Princess Marya? Are there laws of history that govern the movement of peoples, as we say there are laws of physics governing the movement of bodies? St. John's College exists to help you develop the capacity for wonder at ever-deepening levels. At first, you will wonder why something strange and new to you is what it is or doeswhat it does. Soon you will be confronted with the things you thought you understood perfectly well and find that you did not know them as well as you thought you did. The familiar will become unfamiliar. That is when you will become free of the preconceived and unexamined opinions you have carried with you for years. You will then have the opportunity to examine those opinions anew and either own them for yourself or discard them as false because you will have acquired a knowledge of what you know and why you know, and hopefully also of the limits and provisional nature of the knowledge you possess and of the need to examine such things over and over as you recover and rediscover the truths about the world about you and the world within you. Along the way, you will likely find yourself in some rabbit hole and may discover a whole new world beneath you that you will have never imagined before. It is this exercise of the imagination and this recovery of the power of wonder that will set you free. I am reminded of this daily from personal experience. Joyce and I have sixteen grandchildren, all of whom are themselves reminders of the richness of imagination in the young. Nathaniel, a six-year old grandson sought out his Grandmother: “Nana, Do you ever wonder about Nurse Sharks?” he asked. She replied, without having ever heard of nurse sharks: “Oh, I do wonder about Nurse Sharks and would love to learn more about them!” Last weekend, eight-year-old Masayda discovered an old brass key to an antique desk and wondered whether, if she used it, the desk would open into a Secret Garden as she had seen in the movie of that name! She and her Nana went on that adventure together and their story remains a secret today. Joyce and I have been made younger by our grandchildren, not because they are young in age, loud, raucous and hard to keep up with—as of course they are!—but because they have the lively imaginations necessary for exploration, discovery, and recovery of the world that is there to be �known! They include us enthusiastically in their explorations, and this requires suspension of disbelief on our part, and courage on their part, to open the next door to—who-knows-where? I parked my car in one of those big plain BWI asphalt parking lots the other day, only to hear a little boy say to his mother, just getting out of a car nearby: “Mommy, did we park next to a volcano?” To her negative response, he said “Oh good! Because volcanoes can be pretty bad for us!” Every venture into the imagination has its risks and can be perilous, as Alice discovered. But consider the rewards! St. John's has a Latin pun for its motto: Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque.“ I make free adults from children by means of books and a balance.” I often think this means that an education in freedom is not possible without the would-be adult first becoming like a child, capable of the kind of wonder experienced by our Alice. Oh Dear! Oh Dear! I worry I have kept you too late! Off with you to the Wonderland that is St. John's College! May you discover and never cease to wonder at the beauty of the world around you, at the richness and depth of the books before you, and at the devotion of this community to the learning of each and every one of you! Thank you. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I declare the College in session this 21st day of August, 2013. Convocatum Est! * Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, The Folio Society, St. Edmundsbury Press, 1998 * Richard P. Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character, W.W. Norton, 1985 � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 5 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2013 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-08-21 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2013 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Welcome to Wonderland." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2013 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0137e6eff052aca69b1086ad92139697.pdf 82431f85e9ff2a12202ef3e2fabd0c4e PDF Text Text “The Things of Friends Are Common” Convocation Address, August 26, 2009 Christopher B. Nelson, President St. John’s College, Annapolis MD Welcome to the Class of 2013 and to your families. To the rest of our college community, welcome back. Welcome, friends all! I came to a rather startling realization over the summer as I was preparing to greet our newcomers: that I had returned to this college to take the position I now hold in the year in which most of our incoming freshmen were born. The years have passed quickly, it seems to me now, and my appreciation for the community of learning I joined back then has grown, as my friendships within the community have deepened. I think I became a wee bit sentimental as I ruminated upon my first year as a student at St. John’s more than 40 years ago. My Greek has gone rusty, but as with most all of memory, the things learned first are remembered best, and I have kept with me over the years two Greek sentences I recall reading in my first days at the college. and . The first can be roughly translated as “Beautiful things are difficult” or “Noble things are difficult.” The second can be translated as “The things of friends are common” or “What friends have, they have in common.” Back in the days of my youth we used a different Greek grammar book, so this last week I took a peek at the Mollin and Williamson Introduction to Ancient Greek that you will be working with in your first semester of the Greek Tutorial. And there they were, the same two sentences, buried in an early lesson on the attributive and predicate position of the definite article, and I rediscovered something I once must have known about the two sentences I had carried with me all these years: that they are both nominal sentences with the article in the predicate position, making it possible to write intelligible, whole sentences without the use of a verb. (Grammar is a handy tool, don’t you think?) Well, I was pretty sure that I had not committed these sentences to memory for the substantive-making power of the article . It’s more likely that I remembered them because they were both quite short, and perhaps because they appeared to carry a mystery and a whiff of truth in them that I might untangle for myself if only I worked on them long enough. I felt justified in this interpretation when I read in this new text that “nominal sentences are best suited to the impersonal and timeless character of maxims or folk-sayings.” (Mollin and Williamson at 31) I wanted to understand better the little maxim “The things of friends are common.” The sentence seemed to capture a beautiful thought, and I had the efficient notion that if I made the effort to understand this maxim better, I also might come to see why “beautiful things are difficult.” Two birds, one arrow --- so to speak! So, I begin my reflection by asking whether this little maxim means that friends share what they have, or that they ought to share what they have. Today, I give you half of the lunch I packed for us both, and tomorrow you will share yours with me. But the sandwiches we eat are hardly common to us both; quite the opposite, they are rationed out separately to each of us, albeit �equally. We may each have an equal share in a good thing, but not a common good. We each consume what the other does not and cannot consume. So it is with all sorts of goods, earthly goods, goods that are external to us; what I give to you in the spirit of sharing with a friend is something I will no longer have after giving it. I will have less of it after sharing it than I did before I shared it, however good and generous my act of friendship has been, and however much I imagine I may have gained in the improvement of my character by sharing it. But what then are the things that could be common to friends? What kinds of things can truly be held in common without having to be shared or meted out among friends? I suppose things of the soul are of this nature, things that belong to the heart, the spirit, or the mind, things that belong to our inner lives. We both may love a single object or a person without our having to share that love as we might share the expense of a gift to the beloved one. My love doesn’t grow less because you love too. And of course, if we should actually love one another, that love is surely greater and stronger for it being reciprocated and reinforced over and over. So it is with the intellect. When I learn something you have shared with me, it does not pass from you to me like milk from a pitcher; you have lost nothing, and yet I have gained something that is now common to us both. The sum of what is common to us has just grown; it has not been redistributed. And should we together go about learning something new, we will each be richer for what we come to have in common. Why, though, do we say that these ‘things in common’ belong to ‘friends’? I think it must have something to do with the reason we seek these common things. We are moved to love something because it is beautiful, or to love some person because he or she is beautiful to us. We seek to know something because we believe that knowing is better than not knowing, that this knowledge will be good for us, perhaps even that it can be turned to good in the world about us. These things we have in common are beautiful and good things, and we wish beautiful and good things for our friends. If the common goods are those that increase by pursuing them together, then the greatest acts of friendship must be the searching together for such a common good. St. John’s College exists for this purpose: to provide a place and countless opportunities for our students to pursue together the common goods of the intellect. We call ourselves a community of learning, aware that the word ‘community’ in English, as in Greek, has the same root as the word ‘common’. We make many an effort to put into practice the conviction that we learn best when we learn with others, who like us, wish to increase the common good. Such a community offers some pretty fine opportunities for friendship. We also have a common curriculum that has us all reading books that are worthy of our attention, even of our love --- books written by men and women who were themselves model fellow learners. The books and the authors may even become our friends, as can the characters in some of those books. If you have not already met the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues, you soon will, and you will be spending a lot of time with him in your freshman year. For some of you, this may be the beginning of a lifelong friendship with a character who would converse with you over and over if you open yourselves to the possibility. The words on the page may remain the same, but the reader brings a new conversationalist to the text every time he or she returns to the dialogue. At least, so it is with me. I call Socrates a friend of mine because I know that he seeks only my own good. He has taught me humility, at least such as I possess it at all. �I have many such friends in the Program. Some of them are books: Homer’s Iliad has been my companion since the seventh grade, and I never tire of returning to it. The Aeneid has become a more recent friend who has helped me understand and better bear the responsibilities of fatherhood and the trials of leadership. The Books of Genesis and Job have helped me understand what it means to be human and how great is the distance between the human and the divine; I read them to remind me of how little I really understand about the relation between the two, which in turn serves as a spur to seeking to understand better. Euclid’s Elements may be the finest example on the St. John’s Program of the practice of the liberal arts, and it is beautiful for its logical, progressive movement from the elemental to the truly grand. Plato’s Republic is the finest book about education ever written; it inspires much of what I do as I practice my vocation at the College, reminding me that a community of learning is reshaping and refounding itself any time a few of its members come together to engage in learning for its own sake --- and that this is what we ought always to be encouraging at this college, even by device when necessary. Other friends of mine are authors: Sophocles, who can evoke a human sympathy to inspire pity in each of his dramas; George Washington, whose restraint in the use of power is evident in his finest writings and in the mark he left on the founding of this country; Abraham Lincoln, whom I consider this country’s finest poet, whose very words reshaped what it meant to be an American; Jane Austen, whose every sentence can be called perfect (and so she is a beautiful author to me); and Martin Luther King, who taught me that non-violent protest is more than a successful tactical measure to achieve a political end, but a proper and loving response to the hateful misconduct of fellow human souls. Then there remain the characters whom I embrace as friends: besides Socrates, there is Hector, Breaker of Horses, ‘Oh my Warrior’; and Penelope, who weaves the path that allows Odysseus to return home and is far worthier of his love than he is of hers. There is Don Quixote, the indomitable spirit, and Middlemarch’s Dorothea Brooks, whose simple acts of goodness change the whole world about her. I rather like Milton’s Eve, mother of us all, who still shines pretty brightly in the face of his spectacular Satan. I was a teenager when I met Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, and I grew to adulthood with him, probably following a little too closely his path to responsibility. There’s the innocent Billy Budd, unprepared to face the force of evil in man, and his Captain Vere, the good man who suffers to do his duty. You will also read some reflections on friendship: this winter, Aristotle will provide freshmen with a framework for considering different kinds of friendships and the goods they afford. You should ask whether you think his list is complete, and whether your own experiences of friendship are embraced by his explication. And then there are examples of friendships, pairs of friends, in many of the books, who will also provide lessons in friendship, for better or worse: Patroclus and Achilles, David and Jonathan, Hal and Falstaff, Huck and Jim, Emma and Knightly, to name a few. As you work your way through the Program, you will have the assistance of many friends, some of whom will still be breathing while others will be living on in the pages you’ll be reading during your years with us. They will help you as you struggle with the big questions that in turn will help to free you to live a life that truly belongs to you. It will be these friends, who are �outside of you but standing close by, who will help you find your own answers to the questions: Who am I? What is my place in the world? And how ought I to live my life? One of my more beautiful living friends, a colleague here at the college, has put it this way: “Our friends are doubly our benefactors: They take us out of ourselves and they help us to return, to face together with them our common human condition.” (Eva Brann, Open Secrets/Inward Prospects, at 55.) Another of my friends, a St. John’s classmate and medical doctor, gave last year’s graduating class in Santa Fe this reminder, that we can learn from our friendships with the books how we might be better friends to one another. “It is the great book that is the life of every person, regardless of station in life,” he said. “So often we make shallow and inaccurate presumptions about people, like the cliché of telling a book by its cover, which robs you of the deeper experience that defines us as humans in our relationship to each other. For me every patient is a great book with a story to tell and much to teach me, and I am sometimes ashamed when my presumptions are exposed and I then see the remarkable person within, between the covers of the book of the story of their own lives.” This doctor has devoted himself to saving the lives of patients suffering from cancer, and he has this to say about how he is guided by the spirit of community and friendship within the soul of every human being: “In my own work, it is sometimes said, we are guided … by the idea that to save a person’s life, it is considered as if one has saved the world. To me that has always meant the life saved is much more than a single life restored, as that person is someone’s spouse, someone’s brother or sister, someone’s parent, or child, a member of a community, of a church, synagogue or mosque, or a friend, and as all are affected by loss, all are restored by their return.” (Stephen J. Forman, 2009 Commencement Address, Santa Fe) This statement is a powerful testament to the wonder of friendship at work in the world. In this last story, I have moved us away from the inner world of reflection and learning to the outer world of putting what one has learned to work in a life devoted to helping others. The second must always follow the first. By this, I mean that you owe it to yourselves and others to take advantage of the opportunities this community offers you to learn with your classmates and tutors what it takes to acquire a little self-understanding before you go out and put it to work in the world. And in the process, we hope that you will make a few friends who will stay with you for the rest of your lives, enriching your lives because ‘what friends have, they have in common.’ I wish to close with a kind of benediction. This little nominal sentence happens to be the penultimate sentence in one of Plato’s dialogues, The Phaedrus, the only book you will read twice for seminar, at the end of both your freshman and senior years. Phaedrus and Socrates have engaged in the highest form of friendship as they have conversed together to try to understand how a man or woman might achieve harmony and balance in the soul by directing that soul to a love for the beautiful. Socrates concludes with this prayer to the gods: Friend Pan and however many other gods are here, grant me to become beautiful in respect to the things within. And as to whatever things I have outside, grant that they be friendly to the things inside me. May I believe the wise man to be rich. May I have as big a mass of gold as no one �other than the moderate man of sound mind could bear or bring along. Do we still need something else, Phaedrus? For I think I’ve prayed in a measured fashion. To which Phaedrus responds: And pray also for these things for me. For friends’ things are in common. (Plato, Phaedrus, Nichols translation, lines 279b-279c) May each of you, as well, learn to enjoy the benefits of such friendships in your time at this College! (And now, in the concluding words of Socrates, “Let’s go” and get started.) Thank you! XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I declare the College in session this 26th day of August, 2009. CONVOCATUM EST! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 5 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2009 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-08-26 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2009 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "The Things of Friends Are Common." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2009 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/24f1e182da66bfc18903ee749a235fdc.pdf 9d43a2ecc4abf5407cc30feeb348ce04 PDF Text Text "The Republic of St. John's College" Convocation Remarks of Christopher B. Nelson President of St. John's College, Annapolis August 27, 2008 Welcome to St. John's College. A warm welcome to our entering freshmen and their families and friends! Welcome back to our returning students, faculty and staff! I want to tell you a story which opened up a question for me that I simply could not resist exploring in preparing these remarks. In the spring of 2004, a friend of mine, the president of another liberal arts college, called to ask for a favor. He was being given a six month sabbatical and wondered whether he might enroll at St. John's College or take some classes with us over the fall term. We talked some about the importance of beginning at the beginning, and he got excited about reading Homer, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus and Sophocles with our freshmen. He ended up auditing the fall freshman seminar, reading everything expected of him, and remaining a silent participant in the conversation. You can read all about his sabbatical experience in a newly published book entitled Racing Odysseus, chronicling his experience in the classroom, on the quad, in the coffee shop, and especially at the boathouse, where he resolved to join the novice crew and take up rowing on the Severn River in the wee hours of each morning with a good sized group of eager, if sleepy, students. It turns out that the star of the story is our very own Mr. Pickens, Director of Athletics at the College, but several students and tutors play lead support roles in the education of my friend, "Rusty" Martin. After he'd been at the college a while, and become acquainted with many of our students, mostly freshman, he found himself observing out loud to one of his crew mates as follows: "Like you, Tom, so many of the freshmen I have met applied only to St. John's. They seem to have a real sense of what it means to be a Johnnie even before they get here." (Does this sound familiar to any of you?) "Maybe so," Tom responds ... "But they aren't Johnnies when they arrive." "So when does that happen?" I ask, surprised by his response. �"When they have completed Plato's Republic! Then they become Johnnies." End of story. But I was now hooked on thinking through what I'd just read. What would it mean to say that one becomes a member of this college community upon completing the six seminars we devote to Plato's Republic in the middle of the freshman fall term? (In fact, freshmen will be halfway through it at Parents' weekend, and you parents can return to campus to test the theory and ask your students this question.) I have no idea whether this view of Mr. Tom's is widely shared at the college, but I thought it was worth taking seriously. So, I'd like to play with the idea for just a bit. I recognize that I can only begin to tease out a few possible answers with a book as inexhaustible as the Republic. But here's a start. If there is a principal question at the root of the many that are explored in the Republic, it may be "What good is justice? Should we choose to live the just life or the unjust, and why?" Indeed, the dialogue opens with a spirited argument for the good of injustice but closes with a myth that reminds the readers of the thousand years of punishment that awaits the man who chooses a life of injustice over one devoted to justice. The dialogue is Plato's longest, and engages more participants than is usual. The two principal interlocutors, however, are the young Glaucon and Adeimantus, brothers to Plato himself, who does not appear as a character in the drama. These two young people, particularly Glaucon, behave a lot like St. Johnnies. They pursue Socrates; they pursue conversation to get to the bottom of things they can hardly fathom; Glaucon at least just won't let up; he questions everything at each turn. Socrates quickly sees that he must take Glaucon seriously because Glaucon has both passion and ambition. He can see the good in Glaucon's soul, in his desire for understanding, but he can also see the dangers to both Glaucon and the state if a mind as fertile as Glaucon's is not turned to the good and is instead allowed to play with false icons. Glaucon needs to be persuaded that it is better to do right than wrong, and he needs to own the argument himself; it must be a case that he will not forget, filled with images, arguments and stories that will not fail to keep him straight. Socrates has his work cut out for him, and he puts together as beautiful a set of images and arguments as we can find in all literature. �Of course, to ask the question "What good is justice?" provokes the next: "What then is justice?" To help answer the question, Socrates and his two young helpers set about to found a city in speech which is designed to help us see what justice might look like on a large scale, in order that we might better understand what justice would look like in the human soul. It turns out that this city is not populated by people that Glaucon can either recognize or respect. He calls it a city of pigs, one that satisfies the appetite of the stomach, but not of the chest or the head. There is no place in this city to practice leisure, enjoy the finer arts, or move beyond a life of consumption to a life more noble. They reorganize the city at least twice more, but each of these cities seems to fail another of Glaucon's tests that they be realizable in our political world. So, Socrates seeks to answer this demand with one of his more memorable statements, in the dead center of the book: "Unless the philosophers rule as kings, (he says) ... there will be no rest from ills for the cities, ... nor I think for human kind, nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible, and see the light of the sun." We can only suppose that if the earlier versions of the city were unrealistic, this latter suggestion — that the best king must also be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom — would be still further beyond the bounds of imagination for Socrates' interlocutors. To their credit, Glaucon and Adeimantus push him on to justify his claim. Socrates agrees, and goes on to give an account of the life of the philosopher and the education appropriate to him. In the middle of this explanation, Socrates gives us three of the most memorable images our students will encounter in their four years at the college. First, he compares the Good, which is the object of the philosopher's search, to the Sun which is the source of life, of all that is, but also the illuminator of all the appearances in the world. Socrates cannot seem to say what the Good is, but he can give us a sense of what it is like. Second, he proposes a geometric model, a "divided line" to give us a picture of what the ascent to the Good might require of us mortals still in this world below, a sense of the kind of intellectual activity we must engage in, the kind of journey we must take to get closer to that object beyond us. In the study of mathematics, we quickly come to understand that the pictures we draw of squares and triangles, lines and proportions, are just images or representations of the true objects of geometry, which are only accessible by thought. Through the image of the divided line, we come to appreciate the �need to access a world of intelligible objects in order to better understand what lies behind, and gives order to, their appearances in the visible world. Third, in the cave analogy, Socrates gives us a drama to describe the great difficulty and pain we can expect in making the ascent from the world of images to the one source of all we can see and know. He asks us to imagine that we are all prisoners in a cave, chained so that all we can see are the shadows cast upon a wall in front of us. We cannot, on our own, turn around and see that these shadows are not real at all, but mere reflections of objects carried by people behind us who are passing in front of a fire which is the source of the light that casts the shadows. He describes first the pain, then the disbelief, and finally the wonder experienced by a prisoner who is released from his bonds and forced to turn around and look into the light of the fire and see what the image makers have known all along. But that is not all. This cave has an entrance open to the light of the sun across the whole width of the cave. Socrates now asks us to imagine that the newly released prisoner is dragged up the steep, rocky, upward way out into the light of the sun. At first, he'd be blinded and see less well than before, but then he would get accustomed to the light and see all the other things the world has to show him — the waters and the land and the starry heavens above, until he could make out the sun itself and see what it is like. That man would be happy at his freedom from the shadows below, and would pity those still in the cave. His education would have literally been an education in the art of turning around, the art of seeing better, in a truer light, what is already really there, of seeing what ought to be seen. Around here, we sometimes call this an education in the arts of freedom, or the liberal arts — the arts that liberate us to flee the bonds of prejudice, the false opinions, and the shadows about us, and see things as they truly are. Every image, every opinion expressed by the image makers and spin doctors around us, should be an occasion for us to pull ourselves, and others with us, out of our caves and into the light of the sun. We recognize that this sun is there for everyone in the cave to access. The entrance to the cave is open to all who are below. After exploring these images, Socrates then constructs the education of the philosopher, and explores the kinds of governments that arise when the rulers are no longer philosophers. He closes with a grand overarching myth that attempts to �incorporate the whole, reminding us that we have a lot at stake in the choices we make in living our lives. Just as we are meant to see the city-building exercise that occurs in the first nine books of the Republic as an image of the education of the individual soul, so we see the closing myth as an image of the choices available to that soul. We see that it is literally a matter of life or death (or at least a matter of great reward or unimaginable punishment) how we choose to live our lives, and how wise we would be to turn ourselves now to the question of justice so that we might learn to live a life that practices it. The well regulated soul, one that is turned to the Good, that is whole, well integrated and balanced, is also, we imagine, the soul best fit to rule our city. I think it is time for me now to try to give my answer to the question I opened with: What would it mean to say that our students don't become Johnnies until they've finished the Republic? The dialogue probably gives us the best account we have of what learning ought to be. It belongs to us at the college, and serves as a kind of model for our program of instruction. The book thus gives our students an opportunity to examine the education they are then engaged in, allows them to ask what it would be like to construct a curriculum fit for a philosopher king, and invites them to compare it to the one they are undertaking at St. John's. The Republic is a beautiful book, filled with the richest of images that help us remember that the difficult search for truth is worth all the effort. It gives us poetic, musical and mathematical images, myths and analogies, to aid us in our search for an understanding of our world and our place in it, images we cannot possibly forget, images that will be available to us forever. Like all of Plato's dialogues, the Republic engages the readers and asks them to become participants in the dialogue that Socrates is having with his friends. It asks us to question the answers given by Glaucon and others, to try them out and formulate better ones. It also helps to lead us up out of our own personal caves, encouraging us, and showing us how to find our way to a life that is better than we have experienced heretofore. The Republic allows our freshmen to see how integrated the whole of learning is in relation to the singular soul. It helps explain the importance of mathematics in our �curriculum, that it is not just a tool required for the specialist in the sciences, engineering, or the trades, but is an indispensable aid to philosophy itself, an aid to self understanding. More than anything, however, I think it must be in our several seminars on the Republic that we become aware of the republic that is shaping itself around us, the republic of friends around the table who are searching together for answers to the deepest of questions: how we ought to be living our lives. We, like Glaucon and Adeimantus, find ourselves being initiated into the one republic that Socrates and his friends have succeeded in realizing. At St. John's, we call this republic our community of learning. In the world, we often speak of the ties that "bind" us to a human community as healthy things, often beautiful and reaffirming ties. It is easy to forget the dark side of this image which is that we can be "tied" and "bound" to a community as to a cave that we fear to escape. We can become yoked to a larger political body by a common interest, a piece of territory, a tribal custom, a shared enemy, or a popular idea — foundations that we may cease to question. And questioning these foundations of community can become taboo, as the chains tighten about us. We are fortunate, then, that the larger community most of us belong to, the United States of America, is founded on a paradox: the ties that bind us as Americans are rooted in human freedom, and the more we exercise the freedom to question our institutions the stronger are our ties to the founding principal. That freedom, protected by our laws, provides us with a very comfortable and open cave in which to live our lives and shape our institutions. We at St John's have taken advantage of that freedom and that cave to found a college grounded in a very similar paradox: we find our truest sense of community in an image of human freedom that finds us somehow "together" seeking to escape the confines of the individual caves that imprison each of us. For lovers of wisdom, the young Glaucons among us, the desire to see things as they are, to strive toward the source of our being and come in to the light of the sun, is too beautiful an activity to resist — and too wonderful not to share with others. We make this search for truth, this struggle to climb out of our caves, our chief community endeavor. �Perhaps, in our search for such a liberating community, and in our occasionally achieving it, "then, we become Johnnies". Nonetheless, I will today welcome you to the Republic of St. John's College. I'm done trying to justify why you must wait 10 weeks to become one of us. We are happy to call you ours today, and to welcome you to our community of learning. Thank You. I declare the College in session this 27th day of August, 2008. CONVOCATUM EST! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 7 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2008 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-08-27 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2008 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "The Republic of St. John's College." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2008 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dbfa132df1f280f5c7236df5b9aab1ee.pdf 60f67bba718fcd7fad8e9ed417956930 PDF Text Text August 22, 2007 The Gift of the Gadfly Convocation 2007 Christopher B. Nelson President, St. John’s College, Annapolis, Md. h “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 makes this claim in his own defense against charges of impiety and corruption of the youth of Athens. It is typical of Socrates that he makes it hard for us to determine just when he intends to deny the charges brought against him and when he would positively embrace them. Socrates is a defense attorney’s worst nightmare and a grave digger’s delight; when in a hole, he will take up the shovel and dig himself deeper. Presented with one bill of particulars, Socrates adds new charges to the list against him. Prosecuted for threatening the city’s good order, for challenging its authority figures and questioning their wisdom, he claims to be a gift to the city. Threatened with death for his behavior, he gives no thought to himself, but instead begs to argue the case for the city. He asks the jury, for its own sake, and the sake of the city, to avoid mistreating god’s gift to them by condemning Socrates, the city’s greatest blessing—a blessing in the form of a gadfly, attached to the city, to stir it and rouse each of its citizens, to persuade and reproach them, all day long and everywhere. On trial at age 70, Socrates will not go quietly into retirement. His jury was sufficiently impressed with his defense that it sentenced him to death. It does not take much imagination to picture what a pain in that noble horse’s rear this gadfly, Socrates, must have been. I apologize to our freshmen for giving away the outcome of the trial, for each of you will soon read the account of it in Plato’s Apology. But I wanted to open my remarks with reference to it because I think that each of us here at the college has something at stake in this trial, at least something at stake in Socrates’ defense. Socrates certainly thinks so, and he will fight for it with all he has, comparing himself, ironically but rightly, I think, to Achilles, another hero our freshmen are encountering this week: the man of action, praised for his courage, his warrior’s excellence, and his fighting spirit. (More about this later.) Perhaps, I am also drawn to the dialogue as a former trial lawyer. While I cringe when Socrates mocks both his accusers and his citizen jury, I find myself �cheering his courage and willingness to embrace the claim that he may be both a threat to the established power structure and a gift to the city. Armed only with questions and the will to question relentlessly, he threatens the status quo and the peace of mind of the city’s public opinion shapers, and challenges the citizens’ thoughtless acceptance of whatever they are told. Socrates is a destabilizing influence. Is he really the blessing to the city that he claims to be? Let us first look at our city. Socrates claims that Athens is great and noble, made sluggish by its size. What can he have meant by this? Not every city is great and noble. Indeed, we learn in a later dialogue that Socrates would rather be put to death in Athens than be released to live anywhere else. I can imagine a number of ways to think about the problem of this great city, but I’d like to offer one for now. Athens is a democracy, or a kind of democracy of free male citizens; it is built upon a respect for the individual and a trust that its citizens are capable of self-governance. Surely, the protection of a democracy and the freedom of its citizens require that those citizens have an education both in the traditions of the city and in the arts of freedom. The traditions of a city, its customs, its idols, and even its laws, will frequently be at odds with the very things that encourage the autonomy of the individual citizen---those arts that allow us to think for ourselves and to question the city fathers, popular opinion, and social custom. One might say that a democracy of any size can only work well if its citizens agree on the need to hold on to this tension between the needs of an ordered society and the needs of a free people. I imagine that only in such societies can a Socrates have a home. Athens may be the best hope for home for the free individual. But it may also be that in any well-ordered and relatively happy society there will always be a tendency for the people to fall asleep, to become comfortable in their prosperity, to follow without much reflection the will of the many, and to ignore, resent or repress the individual voice that would challenge custom and the comfort of its citizens. Let me call this tendency to sleep a form of decay or corruption of a democratic society, which can only be countered by the wakeful vigilance of its citizens and the persistent effort to find ways of renewing the city’s spirit, recalling it to its purposes. If the city’s business is justice, the citizen leadership must always be alert to signs of corruption and open to correction; it must encourage in its citizens a respect for justice which will require the people to think about what is right and wrong, not just what is comfortable or expedient---to think about building a better tomorrow, not just protecting their inheritance. It is probably the case that even the good city is more likely to tolerate its gladflies than to learn from them. Socrates seems to understand this; he argues and reproaches, to be sure. But it is never clear that he has a particular lesson to teach. He would convince us of our ignorance, without finding for us an answer. His chief work would seem to consist in prodding us to wakefulness, to keep us from the smug self-satisfaction that comes from sleeping through life without examining who we are and what we ought to become. He seems to take it as an unqualified good that we should be kept awake to this examination even if we can’t resolve the questions that such examination requires us to ask. How does Socrates prod us to wakefulness? Certainly not by giving us life’s answers. We’ve all slept through those lectures. He does it by asking questions which open us up to the world. These are not the questions you need to know to pass your multiple-choice or true-false exams; they are not the questions designed to test your knowledge. Instead, they are questions that should help you understand how much you still need to learn, and how little you really understand what you thought you knew or were told by others. They are questions that will reduce you to a state of perplexity so that you may wonder at your ignorance and search hard for a better understanding. �For Socrates, it is human to want to know, and the prod to encourage the human desire to know something is the prod to be human. We all recognize that the desire to know something is grounded in what we don’t know. Therefore, the best preparation for life, for becoming more fully human, is less the acquisition of knowledge than the understanding of our ignorance. This in turn will help us find the questions we need to ask to bring us to a better understanding. For a question to help us, something must be at stake for us; it must make a real difference to us how we answer the question. When Socrates tells the reader toward the end of the Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living, he is telling us that we might as well be dead (or never born) as live a life that is unexamined—a life without questions, the answers to which really matter to us. For Socrates, what is at stake is literally greater than life or death. Here is where he compares himself to Achilles who, knowing he will soon be killed after he slays the royal Hector, nonetheless despises death: “ ‘Let me die at once,’ he said, ‘when once I have given the wrongdoer his desserts, rather than remain here, a laughing-stock by the curved ships, a burden upon the earth.’ ” Like Achilles, Socrates is not just willing to risk death for something he believes in; he is without thought of death, as he faces danger rather than the disgrace of withdrawing from the search for self-knowledge, the pursuit of which is Socrates’ only reason for living. The disgrace for Socrates would be all the greater for backing away out of fear of the unknown. “To fear death, gentlemen,” he says “is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man…” True to his search for self knowledge, mere death is no barrier. Socrates and Achilles live the lives that belong to them, fully and completely, because they have some understanding of who they are and what they are meant to do. You will discover that Socrates is a local hero to many at this college. I know there are other such heroes here; some are unyielding, bulwarks, upright (take Ajax or Antigone), while others are survivors, with a kind of practical wisdom that will see them through a changing world (Odysseus and Penelope). In the literature throughout the Program, you will find examples of men and women who will invite imitation. The question we must ask of each such character is this: who is this man or woman, and what is at stake for me that I need to understand what moves them to do what they do? The question that underlies Plato’s Apology is not the guilt or innocence of Socrates. It is something closer to this: “Who is this man, Socrates? Is he living a life worth living---the life that truly belongs to him? Does it matter to me and to the City that this man’s life should continue or come to an end? Is it perhaps, even, a life worth imitating or undertaking as my own?” We cannot judge Socrates until we know him better. And in judging him, we reveal ourselves. We had better understand what is at stake for us before we decide the fate of Socrates and either keep him with us or consign him to Hades and take up another. This is the prod to wakefulness that Socrates represents. And these persistent questions can be as annoying or inspiriting to the sleeping soul within each of us as the gadfly is to the noble horse. This whole program of instruction is designed to give you the tools to ask the question “Who are you?” The invocation here is the same as the words at the entrance to the temple of Delphi, consulted by Socrates in his youth: “Know Thyself.” It presumes that the question “Who are you?” is a real one, and that you yourselves have not answered it. It presumes that the stakes are high, that your happiness depends upon your investigation into this question. It suggests that coming to know yourself is a high and sacred duty, a task of monumental difficulty, requiring courage, and worthy of being called “heroic.” And it suggests that the way each of you will choose to live your life after St. John’s may depend on how you go about exploring the answer to the question: “Who are you?” �Nearly every book we read together will help you consider who you are and what your place is in the world. What makes you a featherless biped, a rational being, a lover of wisdom, a son of Adam, a child of God, a collection of molecules and a product of genes, an evolved kind of ape, an acquisitive animal, a noble savage with a life that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, but created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights? Those are just a few of the possible answers you will consider in your four years with us. In reading these books and asking of them whether they speak any truths to you, you will be participating in an education appropriate to a great and noble democracy—an education in the traditions of society, the arts of freedom, and the tension between the two. You will come to ask yourself whether answering these questions will help you shape your character. I cannot begin to imagine how each of you will find your own answer to that question. But I think I can say with some confidence that your pursuit of these answers, and your wakefulness to the things that matter, will be worthy of the humanity that lies within each of you. We will ask each of you to remember the gift of the gadfly, prompting you to remain wakeful---and ask each of you to serve as a prompt to the rest of the college community whenever we appear to be sleeping. (Now, I ask you not to take this last injunction too literally but to allow yourselves, your classmates and your tutors those hours of repose required for us all to remain alert and fit for daylight classes.) On behalf of the entire college community, I welcome our newcomers to St. John’s College, welcome back the returning members of our community, and invite one and all to participate together in this search for our humanity. Thank you. Following the recessional, I invite everyone to a reception behind the Mitchell Art Gallery. I declare the College in session this 22nd day of August, 2007. CONVOCATUM EST! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 4 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2007 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-08-22 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2007 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "The Gift of the Gadfly." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2007 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/74e87058a4d45e2af27295065f734dd3.pdf cc5e8735ac5e13ef23ef3d1d085ad952 PDF Text Text August 23, 2006 (edited October 2, 2006) The Sting of the Torpedo Fish Convocation Address to the Class of 2010 Christopher B. Nelson President  Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue can be taught? [to continue] Or if not teachable, is it acquired by practice, or if neither, whether men possess it by nature or in some other way?” So begins Plato’s dialogue, Meno, opening as abruptly upon the reader as my remarks have upon you this afternoon. You freshmen will spend a good part of this year with Plato, his frustrating protagonist, Socrates, and this very dialogue, Meno, in both English translation and the original Greek. I think I am on relatively safe ground in saying that the reason we spend so much time on the Meno is that this dialogue belongs peculiarly to this college; it is deeply rooted here. I hope to expose a few of those roots this afternoon --but let me first return to the beginning. “Tell me, Socrates, if you can, whether human excellence can be taught? If not, whether we can acquire it by practice? Or if neither of these, whether we are born with it or it comes to us in some other way?” Meno’s question is interesting, for it appears to go to the heart of some very big questions all of us share: what does it mean to be human, and how can we be better human beings? Parents would love to know how to raise children who are improvements on themselves; all parents want what is best for their children. Teachers would be happy and honored above all others if they could teach their students human virtue. As for students --- why else are you here but that you believe that some answer might be given to Meno’s question: What is the right path to virtue? How might I acquire human excellence? But Meno’s question has its flaws. For one, it comes out of the blue and without context. We are supposed to know, somehow, what Meno is talking about. We’re assumed to have a common vocabulary and even a common understanding of basic concepts. Speaking of vocabulary, some of you will have noted that I translated the Greek in two different ways when I repeated Meno’s question in English --- an exercise you freshmen will undertake as you try first to discover what is being said and what it means, before asking whether it is true. Such attempts at translation will be first steps to get at the root of Meno’s question.   �Socrates appreciates what is at stake in Meno’s question. He thus goes straight to the heart of it with a response that would confound any student hoping to receive the almighty truth from a teacher. Socrates in effect says: how can I say how virtue is acquired when I don’t even know what it is? And worse, Socrates then says that he’s never met any other person who knows what virtue is. He entreats Meno to help him understand what Meno thinks it to be. Meno makes the attempt, responding confidently with what he has heard from other teachers, repeating their opinions as his own. Yet, under Socrates’ questioning, Meno finds himself disowning the opinion he began with. After two false starts, Meno begins to get uncomfortable with Socrates’ examination. When Socrates begs him to start over yet a third time, Meno tries to divert the conversation from the question of virtue to the problem with Socrates: Socrates, I certainly used to hear, even before meeting you, that you never do anything else than exist in a state of perplexity yourself and put others in a state of perplexity. And now you seem to me to be bewitching me and drugging me and simply subduing me with incantations, so that I come to be full of perplexity. And you seem to me, if it is even appropriate to make something of a joke, to be altogether, both in looks and in other respects, like the flat torpedofish of the sea. For, indeed, it always makes anyone who approaches and touches it grow numb, and you seem to me now to have done that very sort of thing to me, making me numb. For truly, both in soul and in mouth, I am numb and have nothing with which I can answer you. And yet thousands of times I have made a great many speeches about virtue, and before many people, and done very well, in my own opinion anyway; yet now I’m altogether unable to say what it is. It is beginning to look as if Meno has no interest in the answer to the question and is more concerned with his image or reputation than with the truth. On the other hand, Socrates is not satisfied; he still wants to proceed with the search for an answer. He is also willing to conduct the search with Meno, a man who seems to have no thoughts of his own. Socrates, in wishing to proceed, has done two things; he’s told Meno that he’ll serve as Meno’s teacher if Meno will let him --- that is, that he will join Meno in the search; and he’s told the reader that he is willing to do so because he might actually learn something from Meno. He is truly open to the possibility that the teacher may learn from the student – any student, even Meno. So, Meno, what is virtue? Meno now tries a sting of his own, challenging Socrates with a classic learner’s paradox: either we know something or we don’t. If we know it, we don’t need to search for it. But if we don’t already know what we’re looking for, how will we ever recognize it when we see it? Socrates will not be deterred by Meno’s attempt to bring the conversation to an abrupt halt. Instead, he takes Meno’s problem seriously and answers in two ways. First, he repeats a myth he has heard which suggests that learning is a kind of recollection, which requires an exercise of responsibility for learning by the one doing the learning; learning does not occur when someone else, a teacher for example, tries to put knowledge into a student. Instead, it is an act of recovery, in some way, of something already known to us. When Meno demonstrates that he doesn’t get it, Socrates resolves upon a way to show Meno what he means, asking Meno to observe carefully as he examines one of Meno’s slave boys about a problem in geometry which is new to him --- a problem which can be demonstrated by a drawing in the earth -- a problem, not incidentally, that you will be working on in your mathematics tutorial with Euclid. The slave boy reaches a point where he expresses with confidence an answer which is false --- an answer which he, himself, a few moments later comes to understand is wrong under Socrates’ questioning. The slave boy tries again with the same result. Socrates asks him to start over, just as he   �did with Meno a little earlier. He asks the boy to produce another answer, and the slave boy says: “Indeed, Socrates, I do not know”. Socrates turns to Meno, and by extension to us, and says: Do you see, Meno, what advances he has made in his power of recollection? He did not know at first, and he does not know now, what is the [answer]: but then he thought that he knew, and answered confidently as if he knew, and had no difficulty; now he has difficulty, and neither knows nor fancies that he knows. Meno: True Socrates: Is he not better off knowing his ignorance? Meno: I think that he is. Socrates: If we have made him doubt, and given him the “torpedo’s shock,” have we done him any harm? Meno: I think not. Socrates: We have certainly, it would seem, assisted him in some degree to the discovery of the truth; and now he will wish to remedy his ignorance, but then he would have been ready to tell all the world again and again [the answer he gave at first?]. Meno: True. Socrates persuades Meno that the slave boy simply would not have been ready to inquire and learn the truth without first being reduced to perplexity. The torpedo’s shock not only didn’t hurt, it positively helped; it was the condition for the learning that did occur (and the slave boy did go on, with Socrates’ help, to find the solution to the geometry problem). Socrates has shown us, the readers (and Meno, if he were listening), that understanding our own ignorance is necessary for learning to take place – especially understanding our ignorance of the everyday common things we thought we knew well. When we can look at the familiar and suddenly realize that we really don’t understand it, when we can look at what we always thought we knew, and ask “what is this thing?” then we are ready to learn and well along the path to better understanding. In that state we are truly torpid, just as the slave boy was, and we bring a sense of “wonder” to our search. This wonder comes not from something we understand, but rather from our desire to understand --- what we sometimes call a love of learning, born not in understanding but in ignorance. Socrates has done something else in his demonstration. He has also shown us the power of discovering what something is NOT, and helped us see that knowing what something is not is much more than knowing nothing; it is a kind of “knowing ignorance,” an “intelligent perplexity” that comes from trying out and discarding false notions. He has also helped us see that we not only don’t know what virtue is, we don’t even know what learning is.   �We now look at Meno and see that he is a slave … a slave to his pride, a slave to the opinions of others, unwilling to examine what he clearly doesn’t understand. Meno’s problem is not that he’s ignorant, but that he has no desire to be free from the shackles of that ignorance. We look at the slave boy and see that he is free --- free from the false notions he’s been carrying around with him, free from barriers to learning. This freedom, strangely, comes not from the certainty of knowledge but from the recognition of his ignorance. Let me return to the place where I began, when I said that this dialogue of Plato’s is deeply rooted at the college. We want you to acquire the freedom of Meno’s slave boy, the freedom that allows you to acknowledge the one certainty in life: “Indeed, Socrates, I do not know.” Recognition of that certainty is the pathway to learning --- learning things that will belong to you, not just repeating things that belong to others. We also want you to have practice with the tools you will need to acquire this freedom --- tools that will help you to listen and to read attentively and deeply, to express yourselves intelligibly and precisely, and to measure and reckon the world in which you live accurately and comprehensively --- tools that will help give shape to your understanding who you are and where you live, and what your responsibility is toward others and the world you together inhabit, the world of the body and the world of the spirit. We live with a deep paradox at the college --- one that you will confront right at the outset. We have made very deliberate choices about what should and should not be included in this all required curriculum (and there are many, many excellent works that are not on the program list simply because there’s no room for them in just four years). Yet we tell you that, for all the conviction we might have that these choices constitute the best undergraduate curriculum we can devise, this conviction is not grounded in the answers these books purport to give but in the questions they raise. When we say that this college is committed to radical inquiry, we mean inquiry into the very traditions and books that have shaped the world we’re born into. This is why we are not ashamed to admit that though we are called an institution of higher learning, we really do not know what learning is. We share the conviction, nonetheless, that it is worth the search to find out. When we welcome you to St. John’s College, we are welcoming you to join us in a search that we imagine will sustain all of us for all of our lives --- a search for origins and foundations that will be firm enough to support the good life we each wish to live. We call on you to join us as fellow lovers of learning, not as a would-be scholars. One of the things you will discover as you read the several platonic dialogues on the program is that they demand your engagement. They ask for you to reflect on how you might respond to Socrates. So, let me venture into the conversation of the Meno with a small, tentative reflection on the question Socrates puts to Meno: “what is virtue?” My thoughts, at least for now, are these: the way to virtue may require that we come to know our great weakness, our own ignorance. This ignorance is common to all who are less than divine; it is something we share with one another in our humanity. If there is a connection between knowledge and right conduct, it is likely to be found in our ignorance and in the humility it inspires, in seeing that every single one of us has a long, long way to go toward understanding, in the endless search for truth. I suspect that human virtue lies somehow coterminous with this strange path toward knowledge, a path through ignorance and therefore available to us all. As we are not likely to attain great heights of knowledge, it is more likely that we can share with each other the great peaks of desire. It may be that the love of learning, more than the attainment of understanding, is what binds us together most tightly. It may also be this love of learning which impels us to great acts of virtue, like the virtue we will be asking you to exhibit every day in class: helping your classmates to experience the loving sting of the torpedo fish, helping them see that you   �too have a lot of baggage to unload, and coming to see that learning is best pursued in a community of lovers of learning, each seeking what is best for the others. And now I see that I’ve found my way to a typical difficulty experienced by all Socratic interlocutors. I’ve tried to say something about the nature of virtue, in terms of loving and learning, when I’m not sure I know what these are. So, let me leave you with this question: Tell me, freshmen, what is this love of learning that has brought you to our door, and where does it come from? --- for I do not know, though I am happy in the thought that we have this much to share with each other for four full glorious years. Welcome to St. John’s College! May you experience the sting of the torpedo fish early and often. May the sting never hurt, but help you along the path toward understanding and freedom. Thank you. ***** I declare the college in session this 23rd day of August, 2006. Convocatum Est!   � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 5 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2006 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-08-23 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2006 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "The Sting of the Torpedo Fish." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2006 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ee81d6f16398ad2f4fa092945f866699.pdf fea21ca4a91585a6317c493d39fdf59a PDF Text Text Homer and the Power of Men That Have Chests Convocation Address August 27, 2003 Christopher B. Nelson President, St. John’s College in Annapolis Welcome to the class of 2007, to those beginning their studies in the Graduate Institute, to parents and friends, and all members of the college community. One of the many things I love about this college is that everyone must begin with Homer — and not only Homer, but the Iliad. It’s not just that this happens to have been my favorite book for most of my life. It is a collection of things, all of which have something to do with your initiation into this community of learning, something to do with the liberal education you are about to begin here. Homer is arguably both the first and the best of poets and we want you to read the best and most original of books at this college. Montaigne, another author you will meet here in your sophomore year, wrote this about Homer: “It was against the order of nature that he created the most excellent production that can be. For things at birth are ordinarily imperfect; they gain size and strength as they grow. He made the infancy of poetry and of several sciences mature, perfect and accomplished. For this reason he may be called the first and last of poets . . .” (Of the Most Outstanding Men) There is also something glorious about undertaking your studies at this particular beginning, because the Iliad takes hold of the imagination from its first line, when it sweeps the reader into the Achaean camps, to face the towering figure of Achilles: “Rage --- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses…” The images and the pace of the poetry appear to be artless, yet commanding. The Iliad has a kind of immediacy you will find nowhere else. It has irresistible momentum. It grabs you in the middle, somewhere in the vicinity of the chest or the heart, and it demands the attention of your sensibility. Consider the size of the heroes and the size of the themes. Who is this godlike Achilles and what is his glory? What is the rage that has power over him? Where does it come from? What are the consequences of unleashing it upon others? Is it purely a destructive force? Can it be directed or controlled? What does it take to dissolve this rage? Why are these men fighting? Who or what drove them to it? What is the price of defending illicit love? Can one ever exercise control over the forces of nature, change fate, or fight the gods? Look at the great battle-armies. What propels these heroes to action, especially when they have knowledge of the risks, dangers and dreadful consequences of battle? What is courage? What good is honor, and what does it mean to die honorably? What is virtue and excellence of character, and can you find these in the poem? �Well, here is your chance to read about the bold and to talk about the question of character. C. S. Lewis wrote a little book that perhaps you have read, The Abolition of Man, in which he argued that modern education (he was writing in 1955) was failing to help the young develop a sense of morality. In man, Lewis said, “[the head rules the belly through the chest – the seat ... of magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The chest – magnanimity – sentiment – these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” What Lewis feared from modern education was that it would stamp out the spirited element in the young, causing the atrophy of magnanimity and sentiment. And all the while, we clamor for more drive, or more self-sacrifice: “... {We} remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” C. S. Lewis may have had cause to complain, but you do not — not now. Surely there is not a more powerful book anywhere than the Iliad with which to examine the virtues and vices, the beauty and terrible power for good or ill, of men with chests. So the Iliad, and later, the Odyssey form a good beginning to philosophy; they ask you to confront powerful aspects of your nature on your first day at the college — aspects that often function independently of your rational capacity. You are asked to face the spirited element within you and to wonder whether it can or should be shaped and tempered by your reason. I’ve been referring to a “spirited” element within man. You’ll be reading a lot about this in your freshman year, first in Homer, then in Herodotus and Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle. The Greek word is 2b:`l. It is variously used to mean the breath of life, the principle that animates life, the soul, the heart, the spirit, an attitude that inspires action, a capacity for vigor, courage, mettle, liveliness, indignation, anger, righteousness or pride. It is a word used of men and women both; it is what moves individual men and women from thought to action. So, while the Iliad is a stage for the display and destruction of 2b:`l among warrior men, you will have ample opportunity during the years for recognizing its place in the breasts of women too. If you look hard, you may even find it used to describe Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey. Now back to the Iliad, where you are also asked to consider the power of community, the bonds of friendship, the call of duty toward one’s own people, all abandoned by Achilles very early in the poem. Achilles becomes both a lesser, meaner man and a distant, godlike emblem because of this. He must learn to take responsibility for the awful consequences of his withdrawal from battle; he must suffer a terrible personal loss and rise up above himself before he can again stand beside his fellow Achaeans. He must also learn compassion before reentering the community of men. �Why is community important? What is friendship, and what does it require? Where does the sense of self belong in a community? These are the same questions you must ask when trying to learn the best way to live with others. You will read about the power of civil discourse as battle plans are shaped and reshaped, about the path to wisdom through suffering and re-commitment, the power of human empathy, and the need for magnanimity and generosity in dealing with others. And always in the shadows are the fates, spinning and inevitably shortening the thread of life. We are, in the end, mortals and we must come to accept this fact. How do we do this? We all want to know. How does one come to terms with death when everything in our being screams with life and the will to live? Who are the gods and what is our relation to them? What of honor, glory, mercy, forgiveness, and the possibility for heroism? What is the authority of law and custom, and how should we behave when this authority threatens the bonds of family? What do we make of Helen who strangely serves as a kind of prime mover in the whole drama, but also as an object of spoil. Name a theme in the realm of human activity that is not dealt with in the Iliad and you are likely to find it in the Odyssey. There, our hero learns what it means to trade the offer of immortality for the possibility of returning home, the need to face one’s demons and overcome one’s weaknesses before deserving the right to return, the importance of taking life’s journey and facing its dangers and temptations in order to grow, the necessity for leaving home in order to discover the bedrock that was there all along. There, we find wisdom in survival, truth in lies, and strength in weakness. And always is our hero’s happiness bound up with the need to search — to search at any price. This too sounds a lot like the kind of question that you might need to examine to understand why you even decided to come to St. John’s. We meet the glorious Penelope, Odysseus’ match in every sense. How well has she raised their son to manhood in his father’s 20-year absence? How has she maintained home, family and kingdom all on her own? How should she treat her returning husband and gain mastery over this wayward stranger of a man, to test his love and confirm that he is fit to return to his place beside her and his seat of power in Ithaca? It is in the Odyssey that we see the strength of Homer’s women and goddesses who serve as Odysseus’ protectors and saviors as well as his reason for returning — they become both the means and the end of his journey from the world of Troy to home in Ithaca. Last, you get the experience of beauty in Homer’s unforgettable images. I still wake up to dawn’s rosy fingers stretching across the waters of the Chesapeake. I see the father’s unbound joy as he tosses his young boy about in his arms, kissing him lovingly, before heading back out to the field of honor for his final battle. I watch the wise and lovely Penelope at her spinning wheel, weaving the web that makes Odysseus’s homecoming possible. Consider now this new beginning to your education: you get the beautiful, the great, the first and the last; you get to start with the issues of the heart and the spirit, those things that move you to action. You will talk about honor and courage, beauty and glory, gods’ laws and man’s, mortality and death, community and friendship, family and love, and the inevitable longing for the next challenge, the search for an answer, the way to human happiness. �With these first two books, you are diving into the greatest project of your education, which is to consider how to compose your character, to figure out what is necessary to live life well — your life — the one you are building for yourselves. In other words, you are not being told to love or admire Achilles or Odysseus or Helen or Penelope — only to let them into your lives so that you may engage with them. Incidentally, it is another fine quality of these poems that Homer doesn’t try to tell you what to think; he lets the story act upon you without intervention. You get to think for yourselves about what is fitting and what is not. But please listen to your classmates too; you might actually learn something from them. Our job, your tutors’ job, is to listen and to ask; yours is to read the books and wrestle with the questions. You will experience no more liberating an activity than this, for a question is a door opening wide, inviting you to explore and discover what’s inside. Trust yourselves to take advantage of this invitation; we do. We believe in the power of your rational capacity. We believe in your power to become your own teachers. Walk through this door, and you will soon find yourselves exercising those intellectual muscles that will allow you to transform a little of what you read here and something of what you hear there into a work that is all your own. We call this work “your judgment.” And we suspect strongly that you’ll find that a little injection of the spirited element right at the beginning will be just what you need to get your project going. If you are now worried, however, that the classroom is the only place you may exercise the spirited element within you, have no fear. There are many other opportunities around this campus, among your friends or on your own, on the playing fields or upon the stage, in community activities or choral groups, in competing for glory or singing to the gods: “Sing, Goddess, the wrath of Achilles . . .” May the poet inspire each and every one of you to love your learning with us and move you to shape a life that is worthy of living. Thank you. And enjoy! ggghggg I declare the college in session for the entering class. Convocatum Est (Revised version of a talk given in January 2000, and again in June 2002.) �� 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 5 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Fall 2003 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-08-27 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2003 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Homer and the Power of Men That Have Chests." Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Convocation, Fall 2003 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cbd160876c982b9651fff1d679f48622.pdf cb057fb4fb7000c2575f9d688f328cce PDF Text Text Music of the Republic Convocation, August, 2011 Christopher B. Nelson, President St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Welcome to the Class of 2015 and their families. To the rest of the College community, welcome back. There comes a time in every year when I find myself saying to a friend or a prospective student that this is a very musical College. After 20 years of speaking this way, I thought I should ask myself just what I mean by this statement, and so I will try to unpack that little observation and say a few words about the music we make at St. John’s College. Each of you has experience with music; it has lifted you up or soothed you; it has angered or frightened you; it has lightened or burdened the spirit, distracted your attention, moved your feet and your arms, inspired an act, or aroused a love; it has transported you to another time or place, or moved you in some way without your quite being aware of it. Music pervades our lives and always has. It has power. It has sometimes taken you outside of yourselves and at other times taken you deep within. For these reasons, it has often been associated with things divine. Not only have you had experience of the effects of music, many of you have brought music with you to the College because it plays an important part in your daily lives. You carry your i-pods, MP3 players, and smart phones, playing classical music and opera, popular tunes and rock, jazz and blues, country and western, hip hop and rap. You hum, sing or play your favorites to yourselves or with others. Music has its place when you are alone and in fellowship. It serves as friend and refuge. Why is this? How can we come to understand the power that music has in our lives? What does it mean that we are somehow all musical beings? That to be human is somehow to be musical? That without music we would be less than human? These are questions I suggest you will be asking yourselves in your four years at St. John’s. �You will also be making music while you are with us. To get at the question “what is this music that we make?” I thought it would be fruitful to explore briefly the place of music in four republics to which we belong and by which we live: the Republic of the United States of America, the Republic of Letters, the Republic of Plato, and the Republic of St. John’s College. What is the place of music in these four republics of ours? The Republic of the United States of America I have mentioned the music that you brought with you when you arrived on campus, much of it performed by, written by, or listened to by Americans. But there is another kind of music that might be said to capture the spirit of the land, something I would call more elemental, seeking to get at the heart of our nation, to comprehend the constitution of its people, to describe what it means, or ought to mean, to be an American. And here I will suggest two, perhaps three, examples of this music. The first is from Walt Whitman, a quintessential American poet: I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off for work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutters song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to no one else, The day what belongs to the day—at night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. (“I Hear America Singing”)One can feel the heartbeat of a new nation, of a people building a country from the sweat of the brow. These Americans are making their own music in the work they do, and they are celebrating that work as something that belongs especially to them as free individuals, free to choose their work and free to enjoy their play. �My second example allows us to recall that music can be an aid in helping us to see and to seek the beautiful and the good. You all know the melody for “America the Beautiful”, so I will not ruin it for you by trying to sing it solo. While the tune is pleasing, the lyrics of Katherine Lee Bates help it to soar. The first stanza appeals to the gifts of the natural world: Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! But it is the second stanza that captures my heart, speaking to the people that made this nation possible, and finally to the rule of law that sustains it: Oh beautiful for pilgrim feet whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law. Here is a hymn to those who brought the spirit of freedom to a new land, and a prayer that we Americans dedicate ourselves to self-control and the rule of law to protect the freedom we have won. This is a noble anthem that we would do well to call up from time to time – a song worth making our own, as members of a community bound together by the will to protect an idea of freedom in the pursuit of happiness. This is, after all, the republic that has made it possible for this College, dedicated to cultivating the arts of freedom, the liberal arts, to thrive since before the formal founding of this nation. We in turn, as well educated and independent thinking citizens, will prove to be the necessary guardians of this republic. A third example, if only our voices could scale a couple of registers, might be a song written by one of our alumni, a graduate of the class of 1796, composer of the most sung song in this country even today, written during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. I refer of course to our National Anthem, penned by Francis Scott Key: “Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?” he said when he composed it. Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. What does it mean for a country to “deserve” a song? And why should a song be the �measure of worth? I will leave these questions hanging as I move to a second republic to which we belong. The Republic of Letters These are the works of literary and musical imagination that constitute the heritage of mankind. They have sprung from many civilizations and have spanned the centuries. We study these works because they are fundamental to understanding our humanity; they are the building blocks and cornerstones of our edifices in the humanities, arts and sciences. When I speak of works of musical imagination, I mean any work that might be said to belong to the ancient Muses, works of poetry or of musical or artistic composition, where the chief work of the author, composer, artist, or performer is the making of powerful images or likenesses of things. Consider, for example, the moving lines that open the Iliad, which freshmen are reading for their first seminar tomorrow evening: Rage --- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, Murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, Hurling down to the House of the Dead so many sturdy souls, Great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, Feasts for the dogs and birds, And the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the first two broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. The images are vivid, the action compelling. I want to take up my spear and shield and go to battle where heroes are made and lost. The song has irresistible momentum that takes hold of the listener (or reader) from its first line. It grabs us in the chest, the seat of sentiment and magnanimity, the locus of the spirit displayed by our heroes. Such is the power of music. Even Homer is caught up by it, as he calls upon an Olympian Muse to tell this story, to sing the song of Achilles’ rage long before it was put to the page. Why does Homer need a Muse to tell this story? Why sing a song about rage, about a �consuming aspect of a man? What is this will of Zeus that is moving inexorably toward its end? What power does this god or any other god have over the affairs of mankind? Homer has concentrated images that beg us to ask a host of questions in these opening lines. That is another power that music has in common with poetry: the capacity for concentration of energy and passion! (And by the way, is my reaction to this poem a healthy one – that I want pick up and head off to battle? What exactly has gotten hold of me? Have I been made captive to a powerful image rather than given freedom to explore a question and seek a truth?) In your sophomore year, you will read of David, another warrior, another musician, but also an instrument of God. You will read the Psalms and sing their songs. God the Muse, man the instrument! How frustrating and depressing this must be for the wholly self-sufficient spirit that would have mankind be the creator and ruler of our world - that would have us become like gods? What kind of freedom comes from obedience to God, from becoming God’s instrument? Or do men and women gain their freedom only from disobedience – something for our juniors to consider when reading Milton’s Paradise Lost? But musical compositions have always had a special place in the literary tradition. Music was among the seven liberal arts as they were studied in the Middle Ages. As you will recall, those seven liberal arts were divided into the trivium, the arts of communication and language: grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, the arts of counting and measuring: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. It turns out that music has mathematical elements that appear to be at its root, that is, that there is a correlation between the musical intervals in our everyday songs and the length of a string that can be plucked to play those sounds. You will learn from your own construction of a monochord, a one-stringed instrument, that the correlation between those very musical intervals and the divisions of the string that makes the sounds is described by a set of ratios consisting of small whole numbers. Lo and behold, we have physical phenomena, musical sounds, that have a mathematical form. Thus, there may something in music that is grounded in nature, not just in our sensibility, suggesting a model of the very mathematical physics you will be studying in your junior and senior laboratory. Music makes the claim that it can be studied objectively. And this causes us again to ask in �what way nature might be as musical as we human beings are. Consider some of the great masterpieces of musical imagination. Sophomores spend several weeks with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Measure by measure, the mathematical elements are analyzed, the melodies and harmonics studied, the rhythm and meter explored, and the lyrics and gospel text applied. If we are ever going to get a sense of the possibility of mathematical physics to explain an emotional or spiritual response, it will be in our study of this masterpiece. It is indeed a passionate work of art, and it begs the question what Bach’s music has to do with the Gospel of Matthew? Does the music have a power over the listener that the Bible does not have over the reader? And is this good or is it downright heresy? We spend time with Mozart and study closely one of his operas, usually Don Giovanni. Who are these human souls that step out onto the stage and sing the music that belongs only to each of them, songs that reveal their character - or shape it - in time, over the course of the opera? What is the relationship between the music and the words? Consider the words alone and they are pretty poor examples of literature. But set them to this music and they soar! They are playful or tragic; they tug at our heartstrings; in Mozart’s hands, they are invariably beautiful. Whatever makes them beautiful? Are there elements of beauty as there appear to be elements of music? Are the two related? And what about the “ugly”? Are things ugly because they do not have the same concord with nature that beautiful things do, that they are in discord with nature? Is the beauty of a musical composition to be found in the mathematical order of the piece, or is it more complicated than that? I move on to our third republic. The Republic of Plato This is a dialogue that freshmen will be reading in the middle of their first semester. It has been described by some as the indispensable text that sets forth the plan of study for what we call the "Program" at St. John's College. It provides the model of a liberal �education at work, where music has its place in the education of the young, as an aid in the formation of character, an habituation that is useful in the training of the soul but not in its education. This education of the soul is better served by philosophy, a love of and pursuit of wisdom, which Socrates in this dialogue calls the greatest music of all. Such is the power of music to grab hold of the soul that Socrates warns us of its dangers. “So then,” Socrates says to his young interlocutor, Glaucon, “isn’t this why upbringing in music is most sovereign? It’s because rhythm and concord most of all sink down to the inmost soul and cling to her most vigorously as they bring gracefulness with them; and they make a man graceful if he’s brought up correctly, but if not, then the opposite.” Socrates points to ‘rhythm and concord’ for the source of music’s power, not its tones, intervals, melodies, and harmonies.Is he right in that? Do we think he is right about the power of music for good and for ill? If this dialogue is meant to be a kind of model for how we go about things at this College, how should we study music at St. John’s to avoid the bad and pursue the good? Should music rather be banned from the College as Socrates insists it ought to be in the formal program of study for the guardians of his Republic? What is the difference between the image-making of the poets, artists and musicians on the one hand and the image-making of the philosopher on the other --- whose image of the Sun serves as a metaphor for the Good, of the Cave for our everyday dwelling places, and of the Divided Line for our path to Wisdom? It is time to move on to our next republic, but I cannot help but pause to observe that we are not without a sense of humor about the seriousness of this or any of these other Republics. We even have a Battle Hymn to the Republic of Letters, written by one of our tutors, Mr. Higuera, and performed by a group of tutors on one of those long, cold winter days in a rite of distraction and fun that we call “Be Gone Dull Care”: Let me share the first of several clever stanzas: My mind has seen the glory of th' Idea of the Good, That it's not the same as pleasure I have firmly understood, And I wouldn't take a tyrant's power even if I could, I'm marching from The Cave! Marching, marching towards the sunlight, �Marching, marching towards the sunlight, Marching, marching towards the sunlight, I'm marching from The Cave! It is now quite clearly time to move to our fourth and last republic. The Republic of St. John’s College By now, you already have a feel for some of the kinds of music you will be singing, hearing, and reflecting upon. We have taken seriously the effort to restore music as a liberal art to the curriculum. As a close study of musical elements and musical literature can best be undertaken by learning to make music, we ask all of our students to use the one musical instrument they have in common --- their voices. Freshmen will sing together throughout the year, learning the fundamentals of melody and basic notation, before turning to sing some of the great choral works. Sophomores investigate rhythm in words and in notes. They study the ratios of musical intervals and consider melody, harmony and counterpoint, all in the context of some of the finest music ever composed by Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and others. And then throughout the College community, there seem to be countless occasions for playing music and singing, and for listening to the fine musical performances of your fellow citizens of this Republic. Join the St. John’s Chorus, the Madrigal Choir, Primum Mobile, or the College Orchestra; come and perform at our Collegiums, or just come to hear your classmates. I don’t think there is anything quite like experiencing the Muse at play in this community. Our purpose both in and out of the classroom, in the words of another of our tutors, Mr. Kalkavage, “is to improve … [our] students’ aesthetic taste: to introduce them to truly great music in an effort to beget a love for all things graceful and well formed. [We] hope that the study of music begets … a habit of searching for causes and details of beautiful things, and that the love of beauty will nourish the love of knowledge and truth. [And we] hope they will strive to imitate in their day-to-day lives the virtues of harmoniousness, proportion, good timing, … grace, and ‘striking the right note’ in thought, speech, feeling, and action.” (Peter Kalkavage, “The Neglected Muse”, The American Educator �Fall 2006) In short, we want these four years to be intensely musical years so that you may experience the liberation of mind and the harmony of soul that is achieved when both mind and soul are directed toward the beautiful. Go forth and sing the songs that stir you to engage in this search for beauty and truth! Make philosophy your Muse. You’ll find that this is a pretty friendly Republic for that kind of activity. Let me close by inviting you to listen to one of the simplest and, to my ear, one of the most beautiful pieces of music we make: Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus, a song familiar to all the residents of this Republic of St. John’s College. I invite all who cannot help themselves to join in and sing with a few of our students and faculty who agreed earlier today to lead us in song. SING! Thank you one and all. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Please join us for refreshments and conversation outside the lobby immediately following the recession. I declare the College in session this 24th day of August, 2011. CONVOCATUM EST!! � 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 Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation 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 9 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 Convocation Address, Fall 2011 Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address given by Chris Nelson for the Fall 2011 semester in Annapolis, MD. Entitled "Music and the Republic." 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 2011-08-24 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 text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nelson, Christopher B. Convocation Presidents Tutors