15 20 453 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6ba0cacc01f9af061480eb2a85b8e3d9.pdf 8c9a6b56f1ca7d050e7340a731d2e9f5 PDF Text Text Recognizing Odysseus Lecture delivered at St. John’s College Annapolis, September 22, 2017 1. Opening Lines ἄνδρα µοι ἔννεπε, µοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς µάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν: πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυµόν, ἀρνύµενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων. (Odyssey, 1.1-5) i. “ἄνδρα” The Odyssey opens simply—or perhaps not so simply—with the word “ἄνδρα,” the accusative singular of the noun ἀνήρ, “man”: ἄνδρα µοι ἔννεπε, µοῦσα,… (1.1)—“Of the man, goddess, sing…” The ‘man,’ however, is not identified by name for another twenty lines. In the Iliad, by contrast, more than half the first line is taken up by the hero's name and patronymic— µῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus (Iliad, 1.1) When we English speakers try to translate this initial ἄνδρα, we find it cloaked in a grammatical ambiguity. Because Homer’s Greek generally doesn’t use a definite or indefinite article,1 it is not immediately clear whether ἄνδρα refers to a specific man—“the man”;2 to any man—“a man”; or simply to “man” in general.3 And although the noun ἀνήρ, as the freshmen will have just 1 See Smythe, §1104: “Ordinarily Homer does not use the article where it is required in Attic prose.” See also §1099-1100: “The article ὁ , ἡ , τό was originally a demonstrative pronoun, and as such supplied the place of the personal pronoun of the third person. By gradual weakening it became the definite article… In Homer ὁ , ἡ , τό is usually a demonstrative pronoun and is used substantively or adjectively; it also serves as the personal pronoun of the third person… 2 It has, on the contrary, also been suggested that the very withholding of Odysseus’ name indicates that it's patently clear who this particular man is, that “the postponement [is] a form of amplificatio used for dramatic emphasis.” Norman Austin, “Name Magic in the Odyssey,” Homer’s Odyssey, ed. Lillian E. Doherty (OUP, 2009), 100. 3 The first two lines have been variously translated: 1 �learned, usually refers to “man” as distinct from “woman,” while the noun ἄνθρωπος refers generically to the human, Homer sometimes uses ἀνήρ in the sense of ἄνθρωπος, especially when distinguishing mortals and immortals. Just a little further on in book 1, for example, Zeus is introduced as “father of both men and gods”—πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε (1.28).4 The anonymity of the poem’s opening word, then, and its ability to embrace both generic and specific meanings, seem to obscure the very subject that word so prominently pronounces.5 About whom or about what precisely is the Muse being asked to tell the poet? 6 ii. “πολύ-, πολλά” Of course, the rest of the opening line and opening sentences proceed to qualify the noun ἄνδρα and thus—apparently—to dispel these various uncertainties. Line 1 continues, πολύτροπον, ὃς µάλα πολλὰ—“of many turns, who very many”—there, on the word πολλὰ or Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. (Fagles) Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel. (Lattimore) A man, resourceful but forced into so many wanderings from the time he sacked the sacred stronghold of Troy—sing me his story, Muse. (Sachs) Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy. (Fitzgerald) 4 To give another example: in book 5, the food of “mortal men” (βροτοὶ ἄνδρες) is contrasted with the nectar and ambrosia on which divinities dine (5.197). 5 Goldhill, 1991, 1-2: “the uneasy tension between paradigmatic model and unique individual typical of the representation of heroes is especially marked in the case of Odysseus.” 6 Goldhill, 1991, p.4: “This nameless opening expression, however, does not merely set up the mapping of andra (as man, adult, male, husband…) but also poses the question of what is at stake in a (proper) man, of what is the difference between saying andra and saying ‘Odysseus’.” 2 �“many,” the first line ends. We have to wait until the beginning of line 2 to learn what µάλα πολλὰ—“very many”—qualifies:7 ὃς µάλα πολλὰ/ πλάγχθη—“who was driven a great many ways” or perhaps “who was beaten back so many times.” Some kind of multiplicity almost immediately attaches itself to the being who lies concealed in the indeterminacies of that initial “ἄνδρα”. Such multiplicity, however, tends to obscure the very specificity we expect modifiers to establish. Identifying or recognizing our “man” thus proves somewhat problematic. The adjectives and adverbs used to determine what man, or what sort of man, the poet has in mind, are words that not only undermine specificity, but even point actively to non-specificity: “many-wayed” or “of many turns,” or even “much-turned.”8 Although the qualifiers πολύ- and πολλὰ don’t explicitly appear in line 2, that line is full of plangent “p” and “l” notes, which keep that sound of plurality echoing in our ear— πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν—until the theme is openly and emphatically resumed at the beginning of the 3rd and 4th lines: Many the men whose cities he saw and mind he recognized, Many the pains he suffered on the sea, in his spirit… Throughout the Odyssey, in fact, the epithets that cling most tenaciously to Odysseus are epithets of multiplicity and manifoldness: in addition to being πολύτροπος, he is πολύµητις (“of many counsels,” e.g., 2.173), πολυµήχανος (“of many devices,” e.g., 1.205), πολύφρων (“of much ingenuity,” e.g., 1.83).9 He tells Penelope he is µάλα πολύστονος (“of very many sorrows,” 9.118) Nestor and Athena call him ποικιλοµήτης (“of varied [or intricate] counsels,” 3.163; 13.293). From his old nurse Eurykleia we learn that manyness shadowed his very conception: an 7 We also don’t immediately know that the neuter plural adjective πολλὰ is used adverbially here. Brann, 2002, 52, offers “much-turned.” Cunliffe suggests “of many devices.” LSJ offers both the passive “muchturned” and the active “turning many ways.” Again our “man” proves difficult to pin down! 9 Brann, 2002, 52: “Poly and polla, the Greek words for ‘much, multi-, many’ are clustered about him.” 8 3 �only child, Odysseus was “oft prayed for”—πολυάρητος (19.404). Odysseus’ most frequent epithet, however, is πολύτλας—“daring many things” or “enduring many things” (e.g., 5.171; 6.1; 7.1) Paradoxically, then, manyness attaches even to the attribute that characterizes his ability to resist disintegration—his endurance. Among the diverse things to which the poem’s many similes liken Odysseus, one perhaps particularly epitomizes his manyness: as he tries desperately to find some foothold on the rocky shore of Phaiakia, he’s likened to an octopus, or, to call it by its Greek name, πουλύπους, literally a “many-foot.”10 Indeed the many—and extraordinarily diverse—similes that cluster around Odysseus suggest he might be “polytropic” in a further sense: not only is he compared to an octopus, but he’s likened to such disparate things as a bat, a weeping widow, a mother dog defending her puppies, a sausage sizzling over a fire—to list just a few.11 Even Odysseus’ own story, which so enthralls his Phaiakian audience, is presented more as a collection of disparate adventures than as a single, coherent narrative: he begins by wondering where to begin, since he has so many “sorrows” or “cares”: “the cares the heavenly gods have given me are many” (9.15).12 He characterizes his own tale of homecoming as one “of many 10 The short simile is intriguing and itself somewhat polymorphic: initially Odysseus seems to resemble the octopus who clings so tenaciously to his rocky lair that clusters of pebbles cling to his suckers as he’s pulled away; but then, as Odysseus’s hands are skinned by the rocks, it seems that the rocks resemble the octopus and Odysseus or his hands the creature’s pebbled lair. The motif of trying to get a foothold recurs in the Charybdis section at the end of book 12: there Odysseus is likened to a bat as he resorts to using hands in place of feet. The motif of trying to cling to a rock is also echoed elsewhere—for example, in the image of the souls of the dead suitors “gibbering” (τρίζουσαι) the way bats “gibber” when they fall off the rock wall of a cave (24.5,7, and 9). That simile also functions as a metaphor of death: the bat falling “out of his place in the chain, off of the rock, on which they hold to each other” (24.7-8). In retrospect the image of Odysseus trying to stay alive by clinging to a rock at end of book 5 becomes more powerful—in book 24 we see what it is to lose all hold on the rock’s fixity. 11 Pucci, 1987, 16: “‘polytropy’ has the felicitous advantage of describing not only his character but the thematic and rhetorical qualities of his text, for the turns and re-turn of his wanderings, the turns and ruses of his mind, are mirrored in the turns (tropoi, rhetoric and rhetorical figures) of the Odyssey itself.” (Goldhill, 1992, 3, points out that the earliest evidence of tropos in the sense ‘figure of speech’ is fifth century.) 12 κήδε᾽ ἐπεί µοι πολλὰ δόσαν θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες 4 �cares: “Let me tell you about my homecoming of many cares”— τοι καὶ νόστον ἐµὸν πολυκηδέ᾽ ἐνίσπω (9.37). iii. ἐν πόντῳ: Poseidon, the waves Multiplicity itself, then, takes all manner of shapes and appears in all manner of guises. Our “man” emerges as plural, variegated, turning, shifting—and as doing so in all manner of ways: he is indeed µάλα πολλὰ— “exceedingly many,” “truly many.” Recognition, however, surely demands something recognizable, and depends on some sort of self-sameness in the object recognized. If the sheer fluidity of things means self-sameness is ultimately illusory—a figment perhaps of the mind's own longing for stability—then recognition isn't really possible. Perhaps the greatest threat to Odysseus' return is thus presented as that very fluidity—we might think of it as manyness in a temporal guise. This fluidity is embodied now as Poseidon (1.20), now as "the sea and the fighting" (1.12), now as the “sea-washed isle” of Kalypso (1.50), now as Polyphemos, Poseidon's child by the sea-nymph Thoösa,13 and repeatedly simply as a “great wave” that engulfs Odysseus. Homecoming, return, will involve coming to terms with this fluidity: a critical encounter with shape-shifting Proteus, “the old man of the sea,” features prominently also in Menelaos’ story of homecoming. Almost from the outset of the poem, Poseidon’s animosity is presented as the fundamental obstacle to Odysseus’ homecoming: “all the gods pitied him/ except Poseidon” (1.19-20). Homer's muse appropriately chooses to begin the tale of Odysseus' homecoming at a moment when Poseidon is “far away” visiting the “most remote” people (1.22-23)—as if only the temporary absence of Poseidon can open a window in which Zeus, albeit even then only after some prompting from Athena, can exhort “the other” 13 Thoösa is herself “daughter of Phorkys, lord of the barren salt water” (1.72). 5 �gods (1.26) to “work out [Odysseus'] homecoming and see to it that he returns” (1.75-76).14 Athena herself announces her plan to rouse Telemachos. Telemachos, preoccupied though he is with the disorder in the household, is nevertheless quick to perceive the new visitor in the doorway. At this moment we perhaps catch a faint hint of the opening line, as the poet claims, “Far the first to see her was godlike Telemachos”— τὴν δὲ πολὺ πρῶτος ἴδε Τηλέµαχος θεοειδής (1.113). πολὺ πρῶτος—is this a very distant echo of πολύτροπος, as if the ear might catch, in Telemachos’ response to the stranger at the threshold, just an undercurrent of our variously concealed “man”? Telemachos, however, seems initially unable even to name his absent father, and either refers to him simply as ἀνήρ or points toward him by way of a third person pronoun.15 Moreover, the Odysseus who initially inhabits Telemachos’ thoughts seems fluid to the point of evanescence: at one moment he imagines his father as a mythic hero whose mere appearance will put the unruly suitors to flight (1.115-117)— the epic stuff, perhaps, of a boy’s dreams—at another moment, as nothing but a pile of “white bones” at the mercy of the elements (1.161-2). He wishes his father had died honorably at Troy, having “won great fame for himself and his son hereafter” (1.240), but he concludes that his father has distinguished himself only by vanishing, “in a way no other/ man has done,” “out of sight, out of knowledge” (1.235 and 242).16 It seems to require external agency—Athena in the 14 Zeus’s mind is not initially on Odysseus, but on Aigisthos “whom Orestes, Agamemnon's far-famed son, had murdered” (1.30-31) and on the tendency of mortals generally to ascribe to the gods evils that really result from human recklessness (1.32-35). Odysseus thus appears initially to have slipped even the mind of “the father of men and gods.” Only after Athena rebukes Zeus for having failed to “give heed” to Odysseus, does Zeus claim—by way of an evasive rhetorical question—that Odysseus is indeed on his mind: “How could I forget Odysseus the godlike?” (1.65) Even then, it looks as if Zeus's motive in remembering Odysseus may have as much—perhaps more—to do with polytheistic politics as with Odysseus' desserts: “Poseidon shall put away/ his anger; for all alone and against the will of the other/ immortal gods united he can accomplish nothing” (1.277-278). Multiplicity characterizes also the divine sphere; the tensions between Zeus and Hera in the Iliad, those between Zeus and Poseidon, but especially Athena and Poseidon, in the Odyssey reflect and expose underlying questions about the hegemony of Zeus. 15 Telemachos refers to his father as ἀνήρ at 1.161 and as κεῖνος ἀνήρ (“that man”) at 1.233. 16 It should be noted, however, that these last two descriptions are what he tells 'Mentes,' and it is of course quite possible that Telemachos is being disingenuous. 6 �guise of Mentes—to begin to transform Telemachos' vague imaginings into active inquiry: “go out,” she tells him, “to ask about your father who is so long absent” (1.281).17 2. Kalypso—the womb of being That one alone, longing for his homecoming and his wife, the queenly nymph Kalypso, bright among goddesses, detained in her hollowed caverns, desiring that he should be her husband. (1.13-15)18 By line 13 the subject of the poet’s song seems to lose even his identity as ἀνήρ and to be reduced to the peculiar specificity of the pronoun “that one”: “τόν”—the accusative form of what is in Homer still a demonstrative pronoun.19 He is, so to speak, singled out only as singular: τὸν δ᾽ οἶον—“that one alone,” the poet says. The pronoun has no antecedent: we have not yet heard the name of “that one,” nor do we hear the names of the particular place and wife he is “longing” to see. But what do I mean by “singled out as singular”? From Kalypso’s vantage, I suspect, the main attraction may simply be that this man is a particular other: such an other is a rare phenomenon on Ogygia, “an island washed all around, that is the navel of the sea”, as Athena describes it (1.50).20 There seem simply to be no others on Ogygia—Odysseus tells the Phaiakians that Kalypso is “a dreadful god: there is no one,/ neither of gods nor of mortal people, 17 Athena/Mentes adds shape and color to Telemachos' nebulous images of his father. She claims that Telemachos bears a remarkable physical resemblance to the father he's never known: “you are terribly like about the head, the beautiful eyes...” (1.208). She also plays directly to his imaginary image of his father and brings the absent Odysseus more vividly into view: “he'd stand in the outer doorway/ of his house, wearing a helmet and carrying shield and two spears,/ the way he was the first time that ever I saw him/ in our own house, drinking his wine and taking his pleasure,...” (1.256-258). Athena's visit has the desired effect: “she left in his spirit/ determination and courage, and she put him in mind of his father/ even more than before” (1.321-322). Bidding his guest goodbye, Telemachos says Mentor has spoken to him “what any father would say to his son” (1.308). 18 τὸν δ᾽ οἶον νόστου κεχρηµένον ἠδὲ γυναικὸς νύµφη πότνι᾽ ἔρυκε Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων ἐν σπέσσι γλαφυροῖσι, λιλαιοµένη πόσιν εἶναι. 19 See note 1. 20 νήσῳ ἐν ἀµφιρύτῃ, ὅθι τ᾽ ὀµφαλός ἐστι θαλάσσης 7 �who keeps her company” (7.245-247).21 “There is no one,” οὐδέ τις, says Odysseus. To be with Kalypso, whose very name means “I will cover, conceal, hide” is, I think, to be “no one.”22 But Kalypso offers a particular form of non-being—if non-being can be said to have forms. Kalypso, after all, offers to make Odysseus “immortal and ageless” (5.136; 5.209; 7.256-7), which surely sounds like a very full form of being.23 Her island is not a barren emptiness, but a lush garden, harboring abundant birdlife, flourishing vegetation, flowing fountains. She herself is beautiful, seductive. “Even an immortal,” the poet claims, “who came upon that place/ would have admired what he saw, and rejoiced in his heart” (5.73-74).24 Odysseus seems to be held on Ogygia unwillingly—Kalypso “detains him by constraint,” Athena tells the other Olympians (5.14-15).25 Nevertheless, the sheer length of his sojourn on Kalypso’s island makes one wonder whether he was once more susceptible to the attractive offer she holds out to him. There may really be—or have been—something terribly appealing to Odysseus about Kalypso and that “navel of the sea” where, he will later claim, he “remained fixed for seven years” (7.259).26 The ageless immortality27 Kalypso offers is, I think, utterly unlike the immortal name—the fame or kleos—a hero such as Hector strives for.28 To live concealed in a cave at the “navel of the sea,” in what might anachronistically be called a 21 …δεινὴ θεός: οὐδέ τις αὐτῇ µίσγεται οὔτε θεῶν οὔτε θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων. 22 καλύψω is the first person singular future of the verb καλύπτω. Throughout book 5—the book describing his departure from Ogygia—the poem plays with the etymology of Kalypso’s name: for example, τὸν δὲ µέγα κῦµα κάλυψεν—“a great wave covered him” (5.435). See also note 33 below. 23 ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήραον ἤµατα πάντα. 24 ἔνθα κ᾽ ἔπειτα καὶ ἀθάνατός περ ἐπελθὼν θηήσαιτο ἰδὼν καὶ τερφθείη φρεσὶν ᾗσιν. 25 ἥ µιν ἀνάγκῃ ἴσχει: The same words were used by Menelaos to relate what Proteus told him about Odysseus (4.557-8). 26 “remained fixed”— ἔνθα µὲν ἑπτάετες µένον ἔµπεδον. Kalypso also puts the proposition in terms of “remaining” with her—µένων σὺν ἐµοὶ (5.208). But what sort of “remaining” and what sort of “fixedness” can or does she offer? 27 Reading “immortal and ageless” (ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήραον) as hendiadys. 28 For example, at Iliad 5.91, Hector imagines what future generations will say about him and concludes: “my fame shall never vanish” ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει: τὸ δ᾽ ἐµὸν κλέος οὔ ποτ᾽ ὀλεῖται. 8 �paradisaic—albeit lonely—setting, suggests a loss of the very individuality heroic kleos strives to preserve—to preserve even at the cost of life itself.29 Kalypso’s island and the timeless immortality she offers—in words, Athena notes, that are “ever soft and flattering”—suggest a tempting alternative to that kleos. In place of heroic renown and making a name for oneself, Kalypso seems to offer a kind of reabsorption into the womb of all things, an agelessness that is akin to the agelessness of the cosmos itself. From such a vantage, individuality looks like little more than a “poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage”—to borrow from another poet.30 In this Ogygian perspective, the truth of things lies not in individuation, but rather in unindividuated submersion in the life of all-embracing, all-enveloping being. This, I think, is suggested by the simultaneously sensuous and maternal imagery that surrounds Kalypso: the “dread breasts” of the deep (5.52) and the “navel” (1.50) of the sea, the great “hollow cavern” (5.68) in which Kalypso is said to weave and sing (5.61-2). This sort of return to the origin— surely a homecoming of sorts—underlies, I think, the very real temptation Kalypso holds out—a temptation especially to the man who has, after ten years of fighting, perhaps grown rather weary of “the bubble reputation.”31 29 So, spectacularly, at the outset of Iliad 22, Hektor, ever attuned to what others will say of him, cannot give in to his parents’ pleas that he fight from inside the wall: “as for me, it would be much better/ to face Achilles and come back having slain him,/ or else myself to perish gloriously in front of the city.” ἐµοὶ δὲ τότ᾽ ἂν πολὺ κέρδιον εἴη ἄντην ἢ Ἀχιλῆα κατακτείναντα νέεσθαι, ἠέ κεν αὐτῷ ὀλέσθαι ἐϋκλειῶς πρὸ πόληος. (Iliad 22.108-110) See also Sarpedon’s famous exhortation to Glaukos at Iliad 12.322-328. (The word Sarpedon uses here is not kleos but εὖχος.) 30 Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.24-28) 31 Jaques describes the soldier as Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. (Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.7.151-153) 9 �Kalypso’s longing simply for “that one”— “τόν”— suggests a longing on her part to submerge any individual and all individuality in the ageless womb of all being. We should not simply dismiss the attractions—dangerous and seductive as Athena claims they are—of such dissolution in a kind of universal womb. What is to be recognized in this instance is really precisely the insubstantiality of the finite, particular, and individuated. Kalypso aspires to swallow Odysseus up, but this sort of swallowing up is rich and attractive— “Nothing of him that doth fade,/ But doth suffer a sea-change/ Into something rich and strange.”32 It takes all of book 5 to get Odysseus clear of Ogygia and of the “great wave” that repeatedly engulfs him and threatens to swallow him completely. Kalypso’s continuing hold on him is reflected in the repeated use of the verb καλύπτω, even after he finally crawls ashore on the island of Scheria.33 3. The Phaiakians: “convoy to all” The Phaiakians seem a people of picnics and ballgames, of laundry and laughter. Theirs appears to be an ideal community, far from troublesome neighbors, civilized, and generally what people might nowadays term ‘non-adversarial’—Nausikaa reports that “the Phaiakians have no concern with the bow or the quiver” (6.270); Alkinoos tells Odysseus that Phaiakian men don’t much go in for contact sports like boxing and wrestling (8.246).34 Theirs is a city in which the laws of hospitality are inviolable, but also, oddly, a city that holds itself apart and is apparently suspicious of strangers.35 Phaiakian ships are magically self-steering vessels that “know the cities of all men and their fertile fields.”36 Such universal knowledge—“of all men” (πάντων 32 Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1.2.400-402 At the end of book 5, just as he seems to have landed safely in Phaiakia, we hear that the naked Odysseus covered himself (καλύψατο) with leaves before covering over (ἀµφικαλύψας) his eyes in sleep—book 5 in fact concludes with this participle ἀµφικαλύψας. 34 In the funeral games of Iliad 23 Odysseus proves to be a terrific wrestler! (Iliad, 23.707-738) 35 At least so the disguised Athena tells Odysseus at 7.32-33. 36 καὶ πάντων ἴσασι πόλιας καὶ πίονας ἀγροὺς/ ἀνθρώπων, (8.560-1) 33 10 �ἀνθρώπων)—is reflected in the Phaiakians’ undiscriminating observation of the laws of hospitality— “we are convoy without hurt to absolutely all (ἁπάντων.)”37 Admirable as this universal recognition seems to be, the indiscriminate generosity of the Phaiakians is not unproblematic: their history is overshadowed by a prophecy that this very failure to differentiate will one day prove their undoing: … my father, Nausithoös, […] told me how Poseidon would yet be angry with us because we give harmless convoy to absolutely all (ἁπάντων). He said that one day, as a well-made ship of Phaiakian men came back from a convoy on the misty face of the water, he would stun it, and pile a great mountain over our city, to hide it (ἀµφικαλύψειν). (8. 564-569) It is a bit hard to know what is true of such a storied place—it will in part depend on whether we take Nausikaa’s words to the stranger at face value. It is described as a place at once natural and unnatural: its vegetation oddly immune to the seasons, bearing flowers and fruit yearround; its watchdogs creatures of gold and silver that remain “immortal and unaging all their days”—almost exactly the phrase, incidentally, in which Kalypso’s offer to Odysseus is framed (8.94). The people of Phaiakia are mortal, but they are also ἀγχίθεοι, “close to the gods”38: not only are both King Alkinoos and Queen Arete direct descendants of Poseidon, but according to Alkinoos, his is a people to whom the gods show themselves “clearly,” without “concealment” (7.201-205).39 37 Both Autenrieth and LSJ point out that ἅπας is “stronger than πᾶς.” The word πᾶς (“all”) is repeated as Alkinoos—in accordance with conventional laws of hospitality—asks his guest to identify himself by name and country: “for no one of men is altogether nameless” (οὐ µὲν γάρ τις πάµπαν ἀνώνυµός ἐστ᾽ ἀνθρώπων; 8.552-3); “to all (πᾶσι), when they bring them forth, their parents give a name”) (8.554). (My emphasis.) 38 At 5.35 Zeus describes them as ἀγχίθεοι; at 7.205 Alkinoos says “we are near them[the gods]”— σφισιν ἐγγύθεν εἰµέν. 39 “clearly”— ἐναργεῖς; “they make no concealment”— οὔ τι κατακρύπτουσιν. 11 �However directly they interact with the gods, the Phaiakians nevertheless seem to experience the fullness of human life at a remove. Delighting as they do in song and story— “and changes of clothing and hot baths and beds,” as Alkinoos puts it—they seem a people who might be said to give preference to ‘virtual realities’ (8.249). Human suffering is, for the Phaiakians, really never more than a fiction—Alkinoos notices Odysseus dissolving in tears as Demodokos sings of the Trojan horse, but Alkinoos cannot really fathom those tears:40 Tell me why you lament and weep in your spirit, when you hear of the fate of the Argives and Danaans, and of Ilion. The gods did this, and spun destruction for people, that there might be song for men hereafter. (8.577-580; my emphasis) Odysseus responds by enthralling the Phaiakians with a very different kind of tale. 4. Inhuman encounters? Odysseus’ tale (Books 9-12) i. The Cyclops and the Laistrygonians The literal swallowing up of men Odysseus attributes to the Cyclops seems a far cry from the metaphorical swallowing up of the individual suggested by the various accounts of Ogygia. Whereas Kalypso offers to lull—and annul—in the ageless womb of all things, Polyphemos simply devours and annihilates. The only guest-gift he offers—the only distinction he is able or willing to make—is to save “Outis” for dessert, as it were (9.369). The deliberate and active obliteration of others in which Polyphemos engages seems the most extreme form of nonrecognition. Odysseus’ short description of the Cyclops slapping men against the floor, “like killing puppies,” suggests Polyphemos doesn’t regard the men he devours as beings of the same 40 Lattimore translates 8.533 as “Alkinoos alone understood what he did and noticed,” but Ἀλκίνοος δέ µιν οἶος ἐπεφράσατ᾽ ἠδ᾽ ἐνόησεν can mean simply “Alkinoos alone observed him and took notice.” 12 �kind as himself—that is, here even generic recognition seems to fail (9.287-290).41 The Polyphemos episode occurs early in Odysseus’ tale of his voyage from Troy. His account unobtrusively links this episode to the very first incident he tells the Phaiakians of. That initial incident is one that reveals much about a captain and a crew who’ve just left Troy, after ten years of fighting. Odysseus relates that after sailing from Troy his ships were driven aground at the city of Ismaros, a Kikonian city on the coast of Thrace. Ismaros lies not far from Troy; in the Iliad the Kikonians in fact appear as Trojan allies.42 Odysseus tells the Phaiakians that he and his men raided the city of Ismaros—although we’re aware of such raids in the Iliad, the attack Odysseus describes seems brutally succinct: “I sacked the city and killed them,/ and out of their city taking their wives and many possessions/ we shared them out, so none might go cheated of his fair/ share” (9.40-43). Although Odysseus presents himself as savvy enough, and restrained enough, to know when to leave, his men, he says, knew no restraint—“they were greatly foolish and would not listen” (9.44). Now, in the middle of his tale of the Cyclops, he reminds his audience of that raid, describing it as the source of the extremely potent wine that enabled him to save himself and most of his men from becoming Polyphemos’ supper. He says this remarkable wine was given him as a gift by a Kikonian priest whose wife and child Odysseus had spared from the general slaughter. Whatever Odysseus himself may intend by telling the story of his singular act of clemency in the midst of a mass killing, the reminder, precisely here at the beginning of the Cyclops episode, of that brutal attack may hint that the sort of annihilation Polyphemos is engaged in is not altogether unlike the sort of mass exterminations the Achaian 41 “he in pitiless spirit answered/ nothing, but sprang up and reached for my companions,/ caught up two together and slapped them, like killing puppies, against the floor…” In describing the grotesque scene of dismemberment that ensued Odysseus likens Polyphemos to a lion: “hewing them limb from limb he prepared his supper/ and ate, like a lion reared in the hills, without leaving anything,/ entrails, flesh, and marrowy bones alike” (9.291-293). 42 Iliad 2.846 13 �forces have themselves become accustomed to after ten years in Troy. Ten years of warfare appear to have produced a mentality that obscures what it is to be human, ἀνήρ. Odysseus for his part also seems uncertain whether Polyphemos is a being of the same kind as himself; after initially identifying Polyphemos as a human of monstrous (mountainous) dimensions: “an enormous man,” he revises that description, identifying Polyphemos instead as “an enormous wonder” (9.190)43 and then deciding that this “wonder” is in fact “not like a man (οὐδὲ ἐῴκει ἀνδρί), an eater of bread, but more like a wooded peak of the high mountains seen standing away from the others” (9.190-192).44 While it might have seemed that the generic human would be easier to recognize than the individual, it now seems that this basic distinction of kind threatens to dissolve. Is Polyphemos human—an ἀνήρ? Does his anthropophagy amount to cannibalism? Such dissolution of generic boundaries becomes all the more acute in Odysseus’ brief tale of the Laistrygonians. While the Cyclops have neither laws nor political institutions and so perhaps more readily slip into nonhuman categories,45 the Laistrygonians live in cities and have both family and political life. Here too, Odysseus relates, he “sent companions ahead, telling them to find out/ what men, eaters of bread, might live here in this country” (10.100-101)—this is exactly the same darkly ironic sentence he used in recounting his visit to the land of the Cyclops.46 Odysseus expects to discover a particular kind of people (οἵ τινες ἀνέρες) in each place—such differences are presumably the very ground for his curiosity in finding out, what type of people inhabit each locality. 43 καὶ γὰρ θαῦµ᾽ ἐτέτυκτο πελώριον ….οὐδὲ ἐῴκει ἀνδρί γε σιτοφάγῳ, ἀλλὰ ῥίῳ ὑλήεντι ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων, ὅ τε φαίνεται οἶον ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων. 45 9.112: “they have neither sessions for counsel nor customs”—τοῖσιν δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀγοραὶ βουληφόροι οὔτε θέµιστες 46 δὴ τοτ᾽ ἐγὼν ἑτάρους προΐειν πεύθεσθαι ἰόντας, οἵ τινες ἀνέρες εἶεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ σῖτον ἔδοντες (9.88-89 and 10.100-101) 44 14 �Odysseus of course discovers that, like Polyphemos, the Laistrygonians have a taste for human flesh; they are not so much “eaters of bread” as “eaters of men.” Again, Odysseus tells his tale and then unwinds a thread. The king’s wife is initially described as “a woman as big as a mountain peak.” But after relating that the king “snatched up one of my companions, and prepared him for dinner” (10.116), Odysseus comments that the Laistrygonians who subsequently came “swarming up from every direction” were in fact “not like men (οὐκ ἄνδρεσσιν), but like Giants” (10.120).47 It’s not merely their size, presumably, that makes Odysseus substitute γίγαντες for ἄνδρες—“Giants” for “men”—before describing how the Laistrygonians proceeded to hurl “man-sized boulders” at the Achaians—killing men and smashing ships—and “speared them/ like fish, and carried them away for their joyless feasting” (10.123-124).48 The insubstantiality to which the human—ἀνήρ—is here reduced is reflected in the adjective ἀνδραχθής, literally something like “man-burdening” or perhaps “as big as a man can carry” (10.121). The adjective ἀνδραχθής not only reduces ἀνήρ from substance to accident (noun to adjective), but makes of ἀνήρ a mere qualifier of a qualifier—a mere piece of an adjective describing the size of a rock.49 Odysseus himself, then, is at best ambivalent about whether man-eating Cyclops and man-spearing Laistrygonians can rightly be called human—in both cases that initial classification is then rejected— “not like a man, but a wooded peak of the mountains”; “not like 47 µυρίοι, οὐκ ἄνδρεσσιν ἐοικότες, ἀλλὰ Γίγασιν. As Odysseus’ men seem mere fish to the hungry Laistrygonians, so, at the end of the poem, the dead suitors will lie heaped up, in the poet’s simile, like so many fish (22.384-389)—albeit caught in nets rather than speared. Does the simile echo—however faintly—the earlier account of the Laistrygonians’ inhumanity? 49 A comparable effect is achieved by the phrase ἀνδρόµεα κρέα in book 9 (9.297 and 347) and particularly by the grotesque expression ψωµοί τ᾽ ἀνδρόµεοι (“human morsels”), which describes the Cyclops’ drunken vomiting (9.374). At 10.200, Odysseus’ men become mutinous at the thought of exploring Circe’s island because they “remember” “man-eating Cyclops”: µνησαµένοις ἔργων Λαιστρυγόνος Ἀντιφάταο/ Κύκλωπός τε βίης µεγαλήτορος, ἀνδροφάγοιο (10.199-200). In general, Homeric adjectives that reduce ἀνήρ to prefix have negative connotations: for example, ἀνδροκτασία, ἀνδροφόνος, ἀνδράγρια. ἀνδρόκµητος “man-made” or “made by human toil” alone seems neutral—but the only time it is used (Iliad 1.371) it modifies τύµβος (tomb or grave). 48 15 �men, but giants.” The poem itself, however, hints—albeit quietly—at a link between the Cyclops’ puppy-slapping and Odysseus’ city-sacking, man-slaughtering approach to the Kikonians. Are we to recognize that the attack on Ismaros may bear some likeness to Polyphemos’ man-eating ways? I don’t want to overemphasize the link, but only to suggest it invites us to ask whether we are simply to reject the inhumane as non-human—“not like a man”—or whether it too belongs to “many-wayed” man?50 ii. Circe Circe’s distinctive dissolution of kinds— “they took on the look of pigs…but the minds within them stayed as they had been before”—seems to reduce the individual to material for endless remakings (10.239-241).51 I’d like to venture that Odysseus finds such a view of ἀνήρ not simply unattractive. While the year spent on Circe’s island pales in comparison with the seven spent on Kalypso’s, it does take the exhortations of his men to persuade Odysseus to leave Aiaia (10.467-474).52 Moreover, Odysseus seems curiously unable to tell this part of his story without figuratively presenting himself and his men as animals. As if even the moly couldn’t 50 The heroes of the Iliad do not literally engage in acts of cannibalism, but they are willing to taunt a dying man by suggesting his body will provide plentiful feasting for the dogs and birds of Troy (e.g., Hektor the dying Patroklos at 16.836)—or even, as Achilles so graphically tells one young Trojan, rich food for fish: “And a fish will break a ripple shuddering dark on the water/ as he rises to feed upon the shining fat of Lykaon” (Iliad, 21.126-7). Achilles comes closer to cannibalism: he tells the dying Hektor: “I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me/ to hack your meat away and eat it raw…” (Iliad, 22.346-347). Hecuba’s desire to eat Achilles’ liver in reprisal for Hektor’s death also deserves mention here (24.212-214). 51 Although the men-pigs are said to have retained the minds they had before, they do not, apparently, recognize Odysseus until they’ve been “turned back once more into men”: “they recognized me, and each of them clung to my hand” (10.395-7). 52 Note the arguments Circe is said to have used to persuade Odysseus and his company to stay with her: “I too/ know all the pains you have suffered on the sea where the fish swarm…But come now, eat your food and drink your wine, until/ you gather back into your chests that kind of spirit (θυµόν)/ you had when first you left the land of your fathers/ on rugged Ithaka. Now you are withered, dispirited (ἄθυµοι)/ by the memories (µεµνηµένοι) of your hard wandering, nor is there any/ spirit (θυµός) in your festivity, because of so much suffering.” (10.457-465) Odysseus comments, “So she spoke, and the proud spirit (θυµὸς ἀγήνωρ) in us was persuaded” (10.466). 16 �entirely block the magic of Circe’s potions and wand, Odysseus’ account of Aiaia concludes by figuratively transforming men into cows: And as, in the country, the calves, around the cows returning from pasture back to the dung of the farmyard, well filled with grazing, come gamboling together to meet them, and the pens no longer can hold them in, but lowing incessantly they come running around their mothers, so these [men], once their eyes saw me, came streaming around me, … (10.410-415; trans. Lattimore) The metamorphoses Circe is reported to effect are echoed by the figurative transformations enacted by the poem’s similes, which, however briefly, invite us to see one thing in another: to view ἀνήρ as bovine, leonine, canine by turns—and perhaps to consider even the octopus as a reflection of “man of many turns.” iii. Hades: the insubstantiality of heroic κλέος It may strike us as surprising that it is in Hades that recognizing Odysseus seems least problematic—at least once the shades have been allowed to drink animal blood. Teiresias, Odysseus says, “recognized me”— ἐµὲ δ᾽ ἔγνω (11.91). The verb ἔγνω, the aorist of γιγνώσκω, “recognize” or “know” is repeated as first his mother Antikleia (αὐτίκα δ᾽ ἔγνω, 11.153), then Agamemnon (ἔγνω δ᾽ αἶψ᾽ ἔµ᾽ ἐκεῖνος, 11.390), Achilles (ἔγνω δὲ ψυχή µε ποδώκεος Αἰακίδαο, 11.471), and finally Herakles (ἔγνω δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἔµ᾽ ἐκεῖνος, 11.615) in turn engage with Odysseus. In Hades Odysseus encounters the shades of heroes and mothers of heroes, and learns bitterly, as he tries to embrace his mother’s soul, that from the vantage of Hades, an individual life appears completely insubstantial: Three times I rushed towards her, and my spirit told me to hold her; three times from my hands like a shadow or a dream she fluttered out… (11.206-208) 17 �Antikleia tells him that this “is the appointed way (δίκη), when they die, for all mortals” (11.218). From Achilles Odysseus hears how empty a famous name can be: better to be the nameless serf of an unpropertied man than “king over all the perished dead” (11.491). In the darkness of Hades, divorced from time and place, the individual is little more than an illusion, “a walking shadow”: …how could you endure to come down to the house of Hades, where the dead dwell insensate, mere images of mortals worn out by toil? (11.475-6) Is there any way back up out of this underworldly vision of the individual? 5. Ithaka: signs of recognition i. Arrival in Ithaka The poet’s account of the voyage from Phaiakia to Ithaka recalls the Odyssey’s opening verses and takes us back to the very beginning of the poem: ἄνδρα φέρουσα θεοῖς ἐναλίγκια µήδε᾽ ἔχοντα: ὃς πρὶν µὲν µάλα πολλὰ πάθ᾽ ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυµὸν ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέµους ἀλεγεινά τε κύµατα πείρων (13.89-92) ferrying a man with purposes like those of the gods who before then suffered so many pains in his spirit going through wars of men and painful waves Lines 89 and 91 both begin with the noun ἀνήρ (and line 89 again with the accusative ἄνδρα); the language describing this man’s prior ordeals on land and sea, “µάλα πολλὰ πάθ᾽ ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυµὸν,” strongly echoes the poem’s opening lines. The initial πολύτροπον, ὃς µάλα πολλὰ, however, is now expanded to θεοῖς ἐναλίγκια µήδε᾽ ἔχοντα: “having purposes like those of the gods.”53 There now seems little confusion about the character of the man the Phaiakian oarsmen are ferrying: if this individual is hard to classify, it is only 53 Line 91 is reminiscent of 1.12: “having escaped both the war and the sea.” 18 �because he has a purposiveness that appears to transcend ordinary human boundaries. Nonetheless, he seems not yet fully to have come into his name. As Odysseus wakens from his death-like sleep (13.80) to this new beginning, he is inwardly and outwardly steeped in a haze of non-recognition: Godlike [dios] Odysseus woke up from sleeping in his fatherland, but he did not recognize it, having been away a long time: for the goddess, Pallas Athena, daughter of Zeus [Dios], poured a mist all about, so that she could make him unrecognizable and plot each detail, that his wife might not recognize him before that, and the citizens and his friends, before he punished the suitors for all their transgression. (13.187-193) Shining and godlike as Odysseus now appears, he is nevertheless unable to detect the basic geographic features that would identify this particular place as Ithaka, “having now been absent for a long time,” the poet suggests. Odysseus quickly concludes that this is just one more place like others, inhabited by “mortals” who will prove either “savage and not just” or “hospitable to strangers (φιλόξεινοι)” (13.200-202). Nor does he recognize that the young shepherd who addresses him is in fact Athena, so he tells a story to conceal his name. Despite his recent sojourn in a land where the gods appear openly to mortals, Odysseus does not recognize Athena until she drops her disguise and asserts she has in fact been “always standing beside and protecting” him (13.299-301). ii. Eumaios Athena tells Odysseus he must first go to the steading of Eumaios. Book 14 opens in inarticulate sounds of non-recognition, as Eumaios’ “wild-baying dogs” run “with a great outcry” at a man they quite clearly identify as someone unknown to them. Eumaios hurries to the rescue of one he addresses simply as “old man” (14.47). Eumaios’s ability to acknowledge and 19 �welcome a person he does not know is set against the animals’ dogged rejection of the unknown man. Eumaios not only performs the customary rites of guest-friendship (14.45-47), but perhaps also feels particular sympathy for a stranger who looks like “an ancient old man” (13.432-433) and is dressed in “tattered, squalid, smoke-blackened” clothes (13.435). Speaking of the shame he’d have suffered if his dogs had mauled the newcomer, Eumaios mentions the “pains and sorrows” (ἄλγεά τε στοναχάς τε, 14.39) he himself suffers in the absence of a master he calls “godlike” (14.40-41). Even more significantly, the swineherd imagines his absent master in conditions rather like the stranger’s: “that one, needing sustenance,/ wanders somewhere in a land and city of people who speak a different language (ἀλλοθρόων ἀνδρῶν)” (14.42-43).54 While Eumaios welcomes—we might say recognizes—the unknown wanderer as simply a man in need of sustenance and shelter, he also unwittingly assures Odysseus that he is recalled as a “godlike master” (ἀντιθέου γὰρ ἄνακτος ὀδυρόµενος, 14.40). Although Eumaios does not name his absent master, Odysseus is, nonetheless, almost named: as Eumaios describes his grief for his godlike master, the initial syllables of the participle ὀδυρόµενος—“grieving”—offer just a hint of Odysseus’ name. The syllables “ὀ-δυ” hint softly at the way Ὀδυσσεύς is indirectly on Eumaios’ mind. A gentle assonance evokes the mournful sound of Odysseus’s name,55 but the swineherd seems unable to summon that sound, that name, to full presence. Eumaios’ deep reverence for the laws and ways of guest-friendship is emphasized. When Odysseus thanks the swineherd for his “gracious” (πρόφρων, 14.54) reception of the stranger, 54 αὐτὰρ κεῖνος ἐελδόµενός που ἐδωδῆς πλάζετ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοθρόων ἀνδρῶν δῆµόν τε πόλιν τε 55 It is, however, not the individuality of Odysseus that is in the foreground here, and it is appropriate that the vague hint at his name occurs solely at the level of assonance, rather than as a word cognate with the alleged meaning of the name. Later, as the narrator interrupts Eurykleia’s recognition of the scar with a lengthy discursus on the naming of Odysseus, the poem itself openly pauses to reflect on the sound and etymology of the name ‘Odysseus’ and its echoes of the verb ὀδύσσοµαι— ‘hate.’ See Goldhill, 26: “at four points in the Odyssey the narrative is expressed precisely in terms of Odysseus’ relation of [odussesthai], ‘hate’ with the gods. First (1.62) Athene, when she begs Zeus to free Odysseus, asks why the king of the gods so hates […] the hero. Second (5.339-40), Ino, […]” 20 �Eumaios again points to the demands of guest-friendship—three lines in a row begin with the word ξεῖνος: Stranger, it is not right, not even if one worse off than you should come, that the stranger be dishonored: for under the protection of Zeus are all strangers and vagabonds …” (14.56-58)56 This insistent “all”— ἅπαντες—seems distinct from the equally insistent, but I think more abstract, “all” that marks Alkinoos’ speech:57 Eumaios’ claim is immediately followed by further recollections of his master: …The gods have stopped the homeward voyage of that one who cared kindly for me, and granted me such possessions as a good-natured lord grants to the thrall of his house… (14.61-63) As Eumaios explains his reception of an unknown and indigent man, the interplay between generic recognition—“all strangers (ἅπαντες ξεῖνοί) and vagabonds are under the protection of Zeus”—and the memories of a particular person suggests that such recognition or acknowledgment binds the generic to the specific: as Eumaios’ welcomes the ξένος he thinks of another man who may be in like circumstances. Yet his ability to picture his master among foreigners is surely also deeply connected with his own early experience of such displacement: later Eumaios will relate that he is himself a king’s son who has been reduced—not quite to beggary, but to keeping pigs—in a foreign land. Eumaios is one of the most attractive figures in the Odyssey—it’s no coincidence that the poet himself repeatedly addresses Eumaios in the second person. It is really the swineherd, I think, who finally undoes Circe’s spell. While Circe turns men into pigs, Eumaios is able— without any magical moly—to live and even sleep beside his pigs while retaining the fullest 56 ‘ξεῖν᾽, οὔ µοι θέµις ἔστ᾽, οὐδ᾽ εἰ κακίων σέθεν ἔλθοι, ξεῖνον ἀτιµῆσαι: πρὸς γὰρ Διός εἰσιν ἅπαντες ξεῖνοί τε πτωχοί τε: 57 See p.11 and note 37. 21 �humanity. That humanity becomes most apparent—paradoxically—as he leaves the comforts of his warm hut to spend the night sleeping outside, with his pigs, in the hollow of a rock (14.528533).58 Though he dwells with pigs, there is not the least confusion of kinds in Eumaios.59 iii. Penelope: memory and recognition It is Penelope’s persistent inability—or insistent refusal—to recognize Odysseus that presents, even after the destruction of the suitors, the final and apparently insuperable obstacle to his homecoming. Penelope readily welcomes the stranger and observes likenesses between this vagabond and the absent Odysseus, noting that the stranger is “the same age as” Odysseus and speculating that Odysseus “must by this time have just such hands and feet” as the stranger, “for in misfortune mortals quickly grow bent with age” (19.357-360). The stranger’s presence also puts the old nurse Eurykleia in mind of Odysseus: she envisions servants in “the houses of far-off strangers” teasing her absent master (19.370-372). A little later, the loyal cowherd Philoitios looks at the stranger and recalls Odysseus, “since,” Philoitios remarks, “I think he too is wearing such rags as this” (20.205-206). For both Eurykleia and Philoitios such recognition of likenesses is prelude to specific recognition by way of Odysseus’ scar—an external, physical sign that marks this man and lets him stand out as Odysseus. Twice, however, Eurykleia attempts to identify Odysseus to her mistress by means of the scar, and fails dramatically. What then, will move Penelope from observing general likenesses between Odysseus and the stranger to recognizing that this is indeed Odysseus? The last books of the Odyssey explore this very 58 Although the connection with and undoing of Circe’s magic seems the more obvious feature of book 14, its final line—“he slept under a hollow rock” (πέτρῃ ὕπο γλαφυρῇ εὗδον) is also vaguely reminiscent of Kalypso’s “hollow cavern” (σπεῖος γλαφυρός, 5.68; also 1.15, 9.30). 59 Book 15 ends on a similar note: “[Telemachos] came to/ the yard, where there were countless pigs, and near them always/ slept the noble swineherd, with kind thoughts for his masters” (15.555-557). 22 �question, as they present Penelope with a string of opportunities for recognition: the stranger’s story of a finely wrought brooch, Penelope’s dream of the geese, Odysseus’ stringing of the bow and destruction of the suitors. At the heart of their initial interview is Odysseus’ story, in which he responds to Penelope’s insistent questions about his identity by claiming to be a man from Crete who entertained Odysseus on his way to Troy. The stranger’s tale, and particularly his detailed description of the intricate brooch he says Odysseus was wearing, takes Penelope back, vividly and concretely, to the day, some twenty years earlier, when she saw Odysseus off and “attached the shining pin, to be his adornment” (19.256-257). Although the shared memory of that remarkable brooch, and his marvelous description of it, must in some way bind her to the man who stands before her, it also sharpens Penelope’s already vivid memories of her husband. Thus the luminous memory that the story awakens also obstructs recognition. Penelope’s acute recollection of that long-ago day and fond mental image of her departing husband can bear little relation to the aged man who now stands before her, much as she is clearly at some level well aware that “Odysseus must by this time have just such hands and feet” as the stranger. The stranger’s presence and his detailed description of the clothing and the ornament worn by the departing Odysseus arouse distinct images of Odysseus, but the ragged stranger now before her bears little resemblance to those bright memories to which she so strongly clings: in book 20 she dreams of Odysseus “as he was when he went with the army” (20.89), while in book 23 she tells him directly, “I know very well what you were like/ when you went in the ship with the sweeping oars” (23.175-176). No matter how altered Odysseus’ visible aspect may be, Eurykleia immediately noted a further resemblance between the stranger and her lord: his voice (19.381). This voice comes to 23 �play a central role in a strange dream Penelope tells Odysseus about. Penelope asks the stranger to interpret a dream she had, in which her twenty pet geese were destroyed by a marauding eagle. One peculiar feature of the dream is that, in the dream itself, the eagle returns and, assuming a human voice, interprets the dream for Penelope. This voice begins by telling her that the dream is not a dream, but a waking vision, which will come to fulfillment. According to the voice, the twenty geese feeding at the trough are the greedy suitors, while the eagle is none other than Odysseus himself. When Penelope awoke to find her geese still alive, the vision was of course, on a literal level, proved false. Thus, in a playful pun, Penelope suggests that the dream is in fact one of those dreams that deceive (ἐλεφαίρονται, 19.565) and issue through the carved gate of ivory (ἐλέφαντος, 564) Only figuratively and by means of interpretation can the dream prove true. Like Penelope, we are confused by the dream. Aside from the simple numerical discrepancy between dream and reality—the suitors are after all far more than twenty—if the geese represent the suitors, Penelope’s professed delight in watching them and her sorrow at their death are surely puzzling. Although Penelope hasn’t heard him, we have just heard Odysseus tell Eurykleia that he has “come, in the twentieth year, back to my own country” (19. 484). It is possible, then, that the geese remind us of the twenty years that stand between the Odysseus Penelope remembers and clings to, and the worn stranger who now faces her. What will it mean to set aside those two decades and the vivid memories on which she fixed as she navigated the hard course of those years? As if in direct response to the insufficiency of dreams as a means of bringing Odysseus home, Penelope responds to the stranger’s assurances that her dream is true not only by proclaiming it false, but by announcing her intent to set up the contest of the bow and the axes. It 24 �is as if Penelope reacts to the hazy unreality of the dream by now insisting on an active and external test that will determine whether the stranger is a physical match for the former Odysseus. The test of the bow will actively pit the present claimant to the name of Odysseus against the former owner of that name, who, she remembers, used to set up the axes “like timbers to hold a ship” and “stand far off and send a shaft through them” (19.574-575). Even as Penelope is claiming she will go away with “that one” who most readily strings the bow and sends an arrow “through” the axes, she recalls entering “this house as a bride—a lovely place, full of life” and speaks of remembering it “someday even in dreams”—again memory is prominent (19.579581). Commentators have puzzled at Penelope’s apparently abrupt decision to set up the contest at a moment when she has just received assurance of Odysseus’ imminent return, and some have taken it as evidence that she has already unmistakably identified Odysseus, but both views seem to overlook all that might be entailed in aligning her carefully nurtured memories of the absent Odysseus with the physical reality of the man before her. Nowhere perhaps is her situation more acutely presented than in the poet’s careful description, at the beginning of book 21, of Penelope’s entry into the chamber where the bow is stored: the recollection—as she climbs the stairs, key in hand—of the bow’s provenance; the bellowing noise of the opening door; Penelope’s reaching to lift the bow from its peg; and finally her tears throughout, but especially as she removes the bow from its case and lays it gently on her knees.60 For Odysseus himself, we learn, this bow was a memorial of a friend who died: “always it was stored away in his halls, a memory/ of a beloved guest-friend.” Now, for Penelope, the bow functions as a strong physical reminder—and even as a sort of presence—of the Odysseus of long ago, who “went in the ship with the sweeping oars, from Ithaka” (23.176). It is therefore not altogether astonishing that 60 “putting it on her dear knees” (21.55) 25 �despite the stranger’s tremendous success in stringing the bow and in demonstrating that, as he himself puts it, “the strength is still firm (ἔµπεδόν) in me” (21.426), Penelope’s test in some sense fails her. She is, perhaps appropriately, not present to witness the event. Even the news that the suitors have been slain fails to bring about the desired recognition for Penelope. As her memories of Odysseus become ever more vivid, the tension between the remembered Odysseus and the stranger seems only to become increasingly acute. At the beginning of book 23, having dismissed Eurykleia’s second attempt to identify Odysseus to her by means of the scar, Penelope is described as pulled in two directions: One moment she’d see him as she looked in his face, The next she would not recognize him in his rags. (23. 94-95) Telemachos cannot comprehend his mother’s obduracy and refusal to face what now seems so obvious: My mother, harsh mother, with the hard61 heart inside you, why do you turn away from my father like this, and do not sit beside him and ask him questions and find out about him? (23. 97-99) Penelope, however, insists that such direct questioning cannot be her way: My child, the spirit that is in me is full of wonderment, and I cannot find anything to say to him, nor question him, nor look him straight in the face. But if he is truly Odysseus, and he has come home, then we shall find other ways, and better, to recognize each other, for we have signs (σήµατα) that we know of between the two of us only, but they are secret from others. (23.105-110) 61 The adjective apēnēs, which Telemachos uses here, is the very word Penelope uses in book 19 to describe people (such as the suitors) who are unable to recognize others: “human beings live for only a short time,/ and when a man is harsh himself and his mind knows harsh thoughts,/ all mortals pray that sufferings will befall him…” Although there’s some question about its etymology, it’s certainly very inviting to link it, as Cunliffe does, with words like prēnēs and hypēnētēs, to derive the sense of “with averted face.” To be harsh, or untoward, is a kind of refusal to turn one’s face toward the other. 26 �What is the difference between recognition through questioning, a mode that was, after all, recommended to Telemachos by Athena in book 1,62 and the way of signs? Consider the particular sign that seems finally to enable Penelope “to look [Odysseus] straight in the face” (εἰς ὦπα ἰδέσθαι ἐναντίον) and to embrace him as her husband. This sign is the marital bed, or, more strictly speaking, a sign skillfully embedded in its structure. Odysseus claims “a great sign (µέγα σῆµα) was worked into the artfully made bed” and emphatically announces himself as maker of the bed: “I myself built it, and no one else” (τὸ δ᾽ ἐγὼ κάµον οὐδέ τις ἄλλος, 23.188189). He describes how he constructed both bed and bedroom around an olive tree, whose stout trunk he fashioned into a bed-post. Throughout his detailed account of the bed’s construction, Odysseus stresses the care and skill with which the “long-leaved olive bush” that “grew in the courtyard” was stripped of foliage and transformed into a “great sign” of Odysseus himself and of his marriage to Penelope—a sign known only to himself and Penelope, and to one maid. While once more stressing the bed’s significance: “And so, to you, I make this sign manifest,” he acknowledges he does not know whether the bed is still “in place” (ἔµπεδον) or has somehow been moved (23.202-3).63 And it is this language that the poet echoes as he describes Penelope’s recognition of—not Odysseus—but the sure signs he has given: “she recognized the firm signs (σήµατ᾽ ἔµπεδα) that Odysseus had given” (23.206).64 It is tempting to look away from the object that is so prominent a feature of this scene and concentrate on the participle that introduces Odysseus’s disclosure: “growing angry” (ὀχθήσας, 62 1.281: “go out to ask about your father who is so long absent.” Alfred Heubeck claims that σῆµα in line 202 “refers back to 188 [mega sēma], except that here [Odysseus] obviously means the whole bed” rather than the distinguishing mark concealed in its construction. (A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. 3: books XVII-XXIV, p. 335, note on lines 202-204). 64 σήµατ᾽ἀναγνούσῃ τά οἱ ἔµπεδα πέφραδ᾽ Ὀδυσσεύς. LSJ traces the key word empedos to “ground” (pedon) rather than to “foot” (pous) as Cunliffe does. (These words themselves of course have a common origin.) In a note to 23.204 the Oxford commentary glosses empedon as “firmly planted in the ground,” suggesting that there at least Odysseus is using the word in its most literal sense. 63 27 �23.182).65 To focus exclusively on this anger is, however, to assume that the various objects to which the poem itself gives such prominence are largely divorced from the mental and emotional experiences they appear to interrupt or divert our attention from. Such a focus assumes that the real action occurs internally while our eyes are distracted by an unnecessary excess of external particulars. On such a reading the fine tunic and brooch, the still prominent scar, the elaborately fashioned key that admits Penelope to the long-sealed storage-room, and the strangely rooted bed all seem detached from mental events, rather than objects actively involved in those events. It is, however, worth taking seriously the possibility that the physical marks and objects so carefully detailed in the poem have real significance. This not to suggest that Odysseus’ anger is of no significance. Odysseus may indeed have to be shocked out of his assumption that Penelope has simply remained unaltered in and by his absence. His disturbance at hearing that the bed seems to have lost its distinctive immobility is not insignificant. The bed is both a testing by Odysseus of Penelope’s fidelity and a testing by Penelope of Odysseus’ devotion and memory. Just as Penelope doesn’t quite know who Odysseus is, he doesn’t quite know who Penelope is. The recognition of Penelope and Odysseus is not simply a one-sided affair. Yet we might prefer to think that mutual recognition can dispense with the artifice of signs, and indeed that an indifference to externals is the very hallmark of the marital like-mindedness (ὁµοφροσύνη, 6.181) Odysseus described while still with the Phaiakians: …for nothing is better than this, more steadfast than when two of one mind in their thoughts share the house as husband and wife… (6.182-183) 65 For example, Heubeck insists that Odysseus’ passionate response to Penelope’s orders to make up the bed outside the bed-room (177-80) has in fact already supplied “the very sēma which Penelope presumably had in mind” in her response to Telemachos. (A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey p. 334, note on lines 187-189). 28 �The poem, however, seems to insist that the deepest forms of recognition may depend on our ability to look not simply at each other, but at an external object, which, in such looking, functions not simply as an external material object, but as a sign of something beyond itself. The best signs, moreover, may be those in which the thing signified is an open secret—apparent to many, but perhaps legible only to those who attend to its intimate structure. To an unversed observer the bed looks like any other. The secret of its construction is not outwardly visible, but depends on knowing how it was made. It doesn’t itself disclose its emblematic embeddedness. But to those who know it, it is a sign of immobility and—as literally ἔµπεδον or “planted in the ground”—it is also an immobile sign. Why does Odysseus, the man of many turnings, construct such a symbol? The immobility he posits against the flux of time and change is not an emblem that is his alone, but belongs equally to, and depends equally on, Penelope, or more accurately, on neither alone, but on their relation to each other. It is in fact Penelope who, as we saw, uses the verb γιγνώσκω in the first person plural and in the middle voice: “We shall recognize each other…” (γνωσόµεθ’ ἀλλήλων, 23.109). iv. Laertes One final scene of recognition deserves attention. In book 24 Odysseus goes out from the city to see his father (24.205). His decision to put even Laertes to the test seems needlessly harsh. But perhaps it helps to listen carefully to what Odysseus tells Telemachos—in the words of Lattimore’s lovely translation— …I will make trial of my father whether he will know me and his eyes recognize me, or fail to know me, with all this time that has grown upon me. (24.216-218) 29 �“With all this time that has grown upon me”—πολὺν χρόνον ἀµφὶς ἐόντα—“much time being around me”66—is Odysseus a recognizable individual, or does that name simply conceal distension and multiplicity? Finally, as his grieving father shrouds himself in black dust, Odysseus, unable to bear his father’s sorrow, reveals himself. Laertes, however, asks for a σῆµά ἀριφραδές, or “manifest sign” that will enable him to believe that this man is indeed Odysseus. Odysseus once again offers the scar, as a visible mark of his identity: “look with your eyes upon this scar and know (φράσαι) it.” (24.331) Odysseus, however, immediately substitutes an alternative and less immediately physical sign that he is indeed the son of Laertes: a sign that unmistakably establishes their relation: But come, of the trees in the well-worked orchard let me tell you, the ones you gave me once, and I asked you about each of them —I was still a child—as I followed you through the garden: we made our way among them, and you named and told of each of them. Thirteen pear trees you gave me and ten apple, forty fig; the vines too you named fifty that you would give me, each bearing in succession: there were grape-clusters of every variety— whenever the seasons of Zeus came down and made them heavy. (24.336-344) Only after Odysseus has offered this second sign, a sign that manages so beautifully to capture at once time’s cyclical, seasonal pattern and the linear structure of a human lifetime (“once,” “a child”), does the poem describe Laertes’ response, virtually repeating the language that described Penelope’s recognition. Laertes too does not simply cognize (γιγνώσκω), but truly re-cognizes (ἀναγιγνώσκω); Laertes too is given “firm signs” (σήµατ᾽ ἔµπεδα, 24.346) Whatever the textual debates about the repetition of these lines, it seems utterly appropriate that the sign offered Laertes take the form not of an external physical mark on his son’s body, but of objects that, 66 Rutherford, 1992, note on line 19.221, suggests that in this context ἀµφὶς means “apart” and translates, “with my being apart [away] for a long time. 30 �while literally grounded or rooted (ἔµπεδα), point, like the bedpost, beyond themselves. How fitting that Odysseus recalls, here, near the end of the poem, his earliest questions about cognition—questions both specific and generic. As a child he asked his father the names of the trees, and in response his father named them one by one, allowing his son first to identify each one and then to count them and gather them into their kinds. By pointing beyond their immediate physical nature to a rootedness and stability that lies at the very heart of things, both bed and trees become signs that do more than mark things as bodies of one sort or another. They signify not simply by pointing beyond themselves, but by pointing to a groundedness inherent to them. In order to come home, Odysseus must not simply be recognized, but himself discover a world that is recognizable. He has, throughout his travels, identified himself as one who persists or endures in the face of a world that seems largely unstable and hostile: “Endure my heart; you have endured more bestial things.” (20.18) It is hardly accidental that Poseidon is, throughout, the god with whom Odysseus feels the need to battle for survival. The language of signs suggests that to make some sort of peace with Poseidon, and to be at home in a world in which Poseidon holds sway, involves not so much pitting oneself against that fluidity, as discovering that meaning can be embedded in things, and indeed, that many things speak to us. —Margaret Kirby 31 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 31 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 Recognizing Odysseus Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 22, 2017 by Margaret Kirby as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kirby, Margaret Anne, 1956- 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 2017-09-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript 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 Ancient Greek Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kirby_Margaret_2017-09-22_Typescript Relation A related resource <a title="Sound recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3187">Sound recording</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d8b4145f3cf828d3aaa22abb79e3b6a0.mp3 1f2c4143d62aa9e9ce0a14b21642ddb4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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 mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:32 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 Plutarch’s Swarm Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 25, 2017, by Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series. First formal lecture of the academic year, previously referred to as the "Dean's Lecture", but now called the "Christopher B. Nelson Lecture". Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. 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 2017-08-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Macfarland_Joseph_2017-08-25 Christopher B. Nelson Lecture Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2cae7a3b0a498dec8f748f28b5e0c575.mp3 acc9c50eff25c21372270f26f2ffc8e4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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 mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:10:17 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 <div style="text-align:left;">Johann Sebastian Bach and <em>The Six Suites for Cello Solo - A Fanciful and Extravagant Allegory</em></div> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 21, 2017 by Steven Hancoff as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hancoff, Steven 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 2017-04-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." 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 Hancoff_Steven_2017-04-21 Alumni Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bc73ffc1c8bebe8d1d6448862ed9cefd.pdf 8bc50cf209f5bdbca685c086f1217608 PDF Text Text Two Good Men in Aristotle’s Ethics, or Does a Liberal Education Improve One’s Character? Joseph C. Macfarland A lecture given at St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD, August 26, 2016, and at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM, September 9, 20161 Introduction Does a St. John’s education lead one to become a more virtuous human being? Does it improve one’s character? Early in my tenure as a tutor I recall this being discussed by the faculty. I don’t recall what prompted the discussion or the details, but I vividly recall two things. First, one tutor drew our attention to the “Statement of the Program”—at the time, the principal document used to inform prospective students about the College—this tutor drew attention to the statement as evidence that we, as a community, professed that a liberal education has moral consequences, that it prepares students to be good citizens. The statement begins: St. John’s College is a community dedicated to liberal education. Liberally educated human beings, the college believes, acquire a lifelong commitment to the pursuit of fundamental knowledge and to the search for unifying ideas. They are intelligently and critically appreciative of their common heritage and conscious of their social and moral obligations. They are well equipped to master the specific skills of any calling, and they possess the means and the will to become free and responsible citizens.2 If our liberal education supplies both “the means and the will” to free and responsible citizenship, wouldn’t this mean that liberal education renders free and responsible citizenship inevitable? Would not the attainment of this free and responsible citizenship tacitly presuppose not merely an awareness of social and moral obligations, but a conduct of life based on that awareness? The second thing I recall is that, when this came up in the faculty meeting, several tutors responded with pronounced skepticism: they were reluctant to assent to the claim that a liberal 1 This version is the one given in Santa Fe; it briefly expands and clarifies a few arguments from the version given in Annapolis. The need for these clarifications became apparent in the course of the Annapolis question period. 2 From the 2009-10 statement. The 1993-94 Catalog puts it somewhat differently: “Liberal education should seek to develop free and rational men and women committed to the pursuit of knowledge in its fundamental unity, intelligently appreciative of their common cultural heritage, and conscious of their social and moral obligations. Such men and women are best equipped to master the specific skills of any calling and to become mature, competent and responsible citizens of a free society.” The 2009-10 statement appears to make the “pursuit of fundamental ideas” primary, and consciousness of “social and moral obligations” secondary, whereas the 1993 statement appears to put them on the same level, or, at the very least, it introduces them simultaneously. I suspect that our claims to the practical benefits of a liberal education have become slightly weaker over time, but to be sure one would have to undertake a wider study of how the college describes itself. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 1 �education prepares one to be a good citizen or a moral human being. This skepticism was not surprising: one can see that the Statement of the Program itself hedges on its claim. The Statement stops short of claiming that the attainment of free and responsible citizenship comes as a consequence of this awareness of moral obligations. And to say that liberally educated persons are “conscious of their… moral obligations” is not the same as saying that they will act on them. This reluctance to claim a moral outcome for liberal education arises partly from an uncertainty about the connection between our primary activity, the intellectual activity of reading and asking questions about what we read, and the practical conduct of our lives. Our founding document, the Meno, begins—of course—with Socrates asserting that he does not know how virtue is acquired, whether by teaching or learning, by practice or by nature… because he does not know what virtue is. If, contrary to this, we were to give the Statement of the St. John’s Program an unguarded, robust interpretation, as a tutor I would appear to be in the position of saying: unlike Socrates, I know what virtue is, I know how it is acquired, and the “means and the will” to practice virtue and good citizenship are acquired through liberal education as I practice it. I would be laying claim to an expertise that Socrates claimed to lack; I would be implying that Socrates was either naïve or ironically deceitful. And if in seminar I were to ask, “what is virtue?” I would be asking questions only for the sake of drawing out answers, and not because I had a real question that I was puzzling over. More troubling still, if we tutors knew what virtue was, and how it is acquired, we might be expected to possess virtue, and to exhibit it in our lives, both professional and private. Or, at the very least, we might be expected to have an argument ready at hand for why—when knowing what virtue is—we preferred the alternative. Faced with this difficulty, one option would be to disavow any practical consequences for liberal education, and put the emphasis on liberal education as an intellectual pursuit. We could ask, “what is virtue?” and “how is it acquired?” we could formulate plausible answers and test them in the crucible of our conversations, with no expectation that anyone should become more virtuous on account of this activity. The questions could have no more import for how we live than answering the question of whether light is a wave or a particle.3 We could imitate Socrates from the Apology, who denies that he has the “art” of making those around him better human 3 Alternatively, if a liberal education does improve one’s character, and if asking whether light is a wave or a particle is an integral part of a liberal education, it might be incumbent upon us to say why it is that asking whether light is a wave or a particle ultimately contributes to improving one’s character (regardless of how one answers the question). Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 2 �beings and better citizens; who calls anyone who has this art, “blessed” (20c). But this would be a little disingenuous, insofar as Socrates denies he provides a service to the youths who follow him, whereas tutors do, I believe, think of themselves as providing a service. So we navigate awkwardly—although in good faith—between the extremes of making too bold a claim for the practical import of a liberal education, and making none at all. We are wary of professing a fullness of knowledge that would recommend one specific way of life, but neither do we want to confess an ignorance that is utterly impotent. I have framed this problem in terms of where it puts the tutors, as those who offer or who serve a liberal education, but the question stands for all members of our community, students and staff, who devote themselves to this education: what, if any, are the practical and especially the moral consequences of this activity? To address this question, I would like to turn to Aristotle’s Ethics. Aristotle, unlike Socrates, says what virtue is, and says how it is acquired. The Ethics looks like it may be an easier place to get one’s footing. The Ethics seemed promising for a second reason as well: a long time ago it was brought to my attention that, if you were to consider what a “good man” is, the English word “good” might translate at least three words in Greek: agathos, spoudaios, and epieikês. A fine translation may distinguish these three words, but the words do sometimes seem synonymous. Agathos is the word most frequently and naturally translated as “good.” I will not dwell on it because it poses no difficulties on the surface, and if I tried to penetrate that surface in order to give a precise account of the “good,” I would never get around to the other two. Spoudaios and epieikês are more foreign to us and harder to render well. It is possible that spoudaios and epieikês are two ways of talking about the same human type; the two words often share the same opposite, phaulos, meaning “petty” or “base.”4 But I think they point to different ways of being “good,” different forms of human goodness. For reasons I will get into soon, spoudaios could be translated as “virtuous,” whereas epieikês might be translated as “decent.” My enterprise will be to travel about the Ethics probing passages where the “virtuous” and the “decent” appear, with a view to teasing them apart. To put it bluntly, the hunch that I want to explore is: is it possible that a liberal education could never be expected to render you spoudaios, or virtuous, but it might be expected to render you epieikês, or decent? So I will draw portraits of 4 Passages where spoudaios and epieikês seem to be used synonymously include 1.13.1102b7 and 9.2.12165a7, 9.8.1169a16. For passages in which spoudaios and epieikês have the same opposite, phaulos: compare 3.4.1113a25 with 3.5.1113b14. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 3 �these two human types, and then say something about how one becomes either kind, and whether what we do here is conducive to that end. To be honest, I admit now that this will mean committing the sin of evading, or at least skirting, the central question about the relation of knowledge, ignorance, and virtue, but perhaps this diversion will position us to better address that question another time.5 The virtuous (spoudaios) The Ethics begins by asking what is the good for man (agathos); the answer—easily said, but not well understood—is that the good for man is “happiness.” In the effort to understand what happiness is, Aristotle’s starting point is to assume that we know the difference between someone who does something passably well, and someone who does it very well: we recognize the difference between a guitarist and a “good” guitarist. The good guitarist is distinguished by his virtue as a guitarist. The word “good” in this passage here translates spoudaios: what sets apart the good guitarist, one serious about his activity, is his virtue. When this connection between virtue and spoudaios is first introduced, neither appears to have a moral connotation. The initially amoral character of the inference is apparent when Aristotle says that it is the virtue of the eye that makes the eye function well and be a good eye, that is, a spoudaios eye (2.6 1106a18).6 If the spoudaios guitarist is one who plays the guitar well, then the good man, one who is simply spoudaios, does well whatever it is humans beings characteristically do. This connection between being spoudaios and having virtue is sufficiently strong that one might simply translate spoudaios as “virtuous.” In English, the noun “virtue” has an adjective derived from it, that is, “virtuous”: if a man has “virtue,” then you would say, he is virtuous. In Greek, surprisingly, there is no corresponding adjective derived from the word for virtue, arête: if a man has arête, then you would say, he is spoudaios.7 5 I recognize that in many respects my reading of the Nicomachean Ethics is not original. I have been much influenced and educated by colleagues and friends over the years, especially in a graduate course taught by Leon Kass, and as a teaching assistant to Amy Kass, both at the University of Chicago between 1989 and 1993. More recently my reading of the Ethics was much informed by Eric Salem’s In Pursuit of the Good: Intellect and Action in Aristotle’s Ethics (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010) and Ronna Burger’s Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Joe Sachs’s translation (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002) has proven useful to me, as my notes show. 6 Interestingly, in this passage as Aristotle switches his object from the eye, to a horse, and then to a human being, he changes from spoudaios to agathos: a spoudaios eye, a spoudaios horse, and an agathos human (2.6.1106a23). 7 In Aristotle’s Categories: “Sometimes, moreover, the quality possesses a well-defined name, but the thing that partakes of its nature does not also take its name from it. For instance, a good man [ho spoudaios] is good from Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 4 �Yet spoudaios indicates not only the acquisition of the virtue belonging to a given activity, it also highlights the attitude and the effort that is the precondition for acquiring that virtue. The most immediate translation of spoudaios may be “earnest” or “serious”; it is an adjective derived from a noun, spoudê, which means “haste, zeal, or effort.” Spoudaia things are “weighty” and “worth serious attention.” How does one become a good guitarist? Virtue or skill does not belong to us by nature; practice and application, effort and zeal are the conditions for obtaining it. One becomes a spoudaios guitarist by taking the guitar seriously and playing it often. Taking something seriously is itself an action, expressed by the verb spoudazô. One can take any number of things seriously; examples mentioned by Aristotle include honor, wealth, and offspring (7.4 1143a30). What you are serious about shapes not only what you do, but insensibly, over time, it shapes who you are: if you take wealth very seriously, too seriously, then you will become ungenerous, illiberal, or unfree (4.1 1119b30). The man having all the ethical virtues, the great-souled man, is serious about only few things: he does not take minor setbacks seriously, and he does not “take to heart” things that cannot be avoided (4.3 1125a10-15 ff., Loeb trans.); but his gait and voice show that concerning a few things, he is the most serious of all.8 The man having all ethical virtues is ho spoudaios, the serious one. Sachs translates this as “the man of serious stature” or “serious worth.”9 I will prefer the simple English word “virtuous”: so that whenever this lecture refers to the “virtuous” man, I mean very precisely the one Aristotle calls spoudaios. How does one become virtuous? Ethical virtues, like skills, are acquired by practice, you have to work at them.10 You become just by performing just actions in transactions with others; you acquire courage by acting as a courageous man would in dangerous situations. To a young adult, the vicious action may be pleasurable and the virtuous action may be painful; punishment is generally required to deter us from one and steer us towards the other. How you are raised and habituated from childhood makes all the difference (2.1 1103b25). Correct penalties and rewards possessing the quality, virtue [arête]. We do not, however, derive the term, ‘good’ from the other term, ‘virtue.’ Yet this is seldom the case” (10b6-10, Loeb translation). Passages in the Ethics in which to have the virtues is to be spoudaios: 6.12 1143b22-30; 6.12 1144a11-18. 8 From the statement that he takes only a few things seriously, one might have inferred that he is a buffoon, but the statements about his slow gait and low voice suggest that he is uncommonly serious about those few things. Later, Aristotle speaks of the one who strives (spoudazô) to acquire the noble for himself (9.8 1168b25): this seems to be the spoudaios man in the full sense. 9 In his translation of the Poetics, Benardete and Davis similarly translate spoudaios the “man of stature” (Aristotle: On Poetics, trans. Seth Benardete and Michael Davis [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2002]). 10 Ethics 2.1 1103a32. Sachs’s translation points to the root referring to work (energesantes). Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 5 �are meted out first by the parents and later by the laws. It is not enough to be well-cared for and guided in your youth, you have to pursue correct actions in adulthood in order to establish this disposition as part of your character. All of this you already know. The upshot for the present is that the work of the classroom seems to contribute little to becoming virtuous. Aristotle points this out periodically through the Ethics. He says that knowing what the virtues are does not help the virtuous man to act virtuously, since virtuous action arises not from what he knows, but from his character.11 And Aristotle derides people who, thinking that they are philosophizing, expect to become virtuous (spoudaioi) merely by making speeches rather than by doing what is right.12 Yet Aristotle also says that his inquiry is not merely for the sake of knowing what virtue is and thinking about it, but for the sake of becoming good (agathos), for the sake of acquiring virtue and exercising it.13 We seem to be left with a paradox: the inquiry into happiness and virtue aims at making one good, but the completion of this inquiry, knowing what happiness is, and what virtue is, seems insufficient to make one good. To think about this disjunction between knowing the good and becoming good, we have to go back almost to the beginning of the book. In the early chapters Aristotle considers the opinion, expressed in the Republic, that if one knew the good in itself, on the basis of knowing the “universal good,” one would also know the particular goods, the things that are good for man, and knowing them, one would also choose them. Against this Aristotle argues that “good” (agathos) is meant in several ways, so there is no “common good that is one and universal” (Sachs trans., 1.6 1196a28). Even if there were some one thing good-in-itself, it would not be something that could be possessed and enacted by a human (1.6 1096b30). Aristotle relents somewhat in this critique and admits that there may well be an underlying reason we use the 11 6.12 1143b23-25. “We are not rendered any more capable of healthy and vigorous action by knowing the science of medicine or of physical training.” This is said to bring into question whether prudence is necessary to be virtuous; it is possible that the statement is retracted or qualified in the subsequent course of the argument. As it turns out, prudence is necessary to being virtuous in the complete sense, but this intellectual virtue still may not require a theoretical understanding of what virtue is. 12 Ethics 2.4.1105b13. Burger, p. 55. Compare 10.9 1179a5, where it is said that speeches are not sufficient to make men decent (epieikês), discussed briefly below. 13 2.2 1103b26; 10.9 1172b1. The context in 10.9 implies that it is not sufficient to know what virtue is, one must bring it into being, and because this requires a good upbringing and practice into adulthood, bringing virtue into being requires a political science that can prescribe good laws. But this would imply that the one who inquires into and learns what happiness is is himself not made virtuous by it, but only learns how to frame laws that might lead to the happiness of others. The passage in 2.2 seems to indicate that coming to know what virtue is should be good not only for others, but also good for oneself. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 6 �word “good” in the related ways that we do, but he still denies that this underlying connection between the different ways of saying “good” could form the basis of how knowledgeable men seek the good in their lives (1.6 1196b26). In this way Aristotle descends quickly from the good-in-itself to the good-for-man or to happiness. But even asserting that the good is “happiness” does not advance his inquiry very far, because, as we noted, the word “happiness” requires explication. This brings us to where we began: Aristotle explicates happiness by ascertaining the work characteristic of a human being, and in this context he observes that the difference between the guitarist simply and the good guitarist, or the spoudaios guitarist, is that the good guitarist has the virtue of playing guitar. The movement of the argument is from the good-in-itself, which either does not exist or cannot be known, to the good-for-man, which is our end but whose form is often debated, to the good human being, the spoudaios human being, whose goodness is recognizable. The good-in-itself is hidden or obscure, whereas the virtuous man is a form of goodness recognizable to us. Thus, the virtuous man takes the place of the good-in-itself as a paradigm for recognizing and attaining the human good.14 Whereas we mostly find virtuous actions painful, the virtuous (spoudaios) man finds them pleasurable. What the virtuous man finds pleasant is pleasant by nature (1.8.1099a7-24). Whatever seems good to the virtuous man is good in fact.15 There is no science of the good-in-itself to distinguish the true good from the merely apparent good, but there exists a human being for whom what appears and what is are the same. When judging what is pleasurable and what is noble, the virtuous man serves as our measure (metron). Aristotle defines virtue, but you cannot become virtuous simply by acting from your comprehension of the definition; you must look toward a virtuous human being and act the way he acts. The fact that the spoudaios man is the measure for us is therefore a sign of the limit to which knowing whatvirtue-is can be the means for becoming virtuous.16 14 In the chapter on the good as such (1.6), Aristotle entertains the view that one might have the good simply as a pattern, paradeigma, by which one might know the various goods that can be possessed or carried out, but he then observes that those skilled in the arts or sciences (epistêmai) do not in fact look to the good in itself in order to produce a good product (1.6 21097a1-13). The spoudaios man seems to take the place of the good in itself as the pattern or model by which we know good particulars. To be clear, Aristotle does not say he is a paradigm; that is the inference I have made in connecting 1.6.21097a1-13 with 3.4.1113a25 (below). 15 3.4.1113a25; cf. 10.5.1176a17. In the first passage Aristotle uses spoudaios three times in short succession, suggesting that this more than anything else characterizes him. Later, Aristotle says, “as has been said, virtue and the virtuous [spoudaios] man seem to be the standard in everything” (9.4.1166a13, Loeb trans.). 16 Perhaps I am simply saying that, according to Aristotle, it is not sufficient to say, “virtue is knowledge,” as Socrates often implies in Plato’s dialogues. See Ronna Burger on this question. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 7 �Given this disjunction between knowledge and practice, if the primary aim of a liberal education is “fundamental knowledge” and “unifying ideas,” there seems to be little prospect that it will lead to us to acquire a virtuous character. To acquire virtue requires serious application and repeated practice of noble actions. It is true, to flourish in a liberal education requires an analogous discipline and zeal. Not accidentally, the English word “student” is derived from a Latin word, studeo, which means, “to be zealous and diligent,” and “to apply oneself” to something; it is a fine translation of spoudazô. In fact, in at least one medieval Latin translation of Aristotle’s Politics, spoudaios is translated as studiosus: in its origin, a “student” is someone zealous and serious about learning, someone who exemplifies the seriousness of the good man. And perhaps this is fitting: as a necessary condition of our liberal education, we have to get serious about it and subject ourselves to the rigors of Greek paradigms and Newtonian theorems. We have strange conventions by which we impose an unusual discipline on ourselves: we attend seminars on weekday evenings and lectures on Friday evenings, times usually reserved for recreation. We thereby draw no strict divide between recreation and the serious, if leisured pursuit of knowledge. Because we impose these rigors upon ourselves jointly, they become a kind of law for us: we disapprove in varying degrees of anyone who shirks these responsibilities. This unusual discipline may aid students and tutors in becoming spoudaios readers of Greek and spoudaios geometricians, and the discipline itself may distract us from a variety of temptations, but the discipline alone does not make us spoudaios simply. Subjecting oneself to discipline in these matters does not necessarily lead to virtue as such: the disciplined musician or athlete may become a first-rate guitarist or swimmer and still have a dubious character, and same seems true of the studious. The decent (epieikês) Let us turn from the virtuous man to the decent one. The broadest translation of epieikês might be “fitting” or “suitable,” although “reasonable” and “fair” are common. Epieikês is derived from a verb, eioka; “to seem likely” or “to befit.” Epieikês thus refers to what is fitting or fair, perhaps especially insofar as what is fitting or fair is apparent.17 Within the context of the Ethics, epieikês is most frequently translated “equitable,” a translation justified by the discussion of the quality in Book 5. There Aristotle describes the “equitable” man as one who may appear 17 The related word eikôn means “image” or “semblance.” Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 8 �unjust when he chooses something contrary to the law, but who is nevertheless just because he chooses as the lawgiver would have chosen. I will say more about this in a moment. “Equitable” is no doubt the appropriate English word to describe this quality in its legal context; this adjective comes from the noun, “equity,” a term in jurisprudence that refers to the practice of considering the “reason and the spirit” of a statute under unusual circumstances.18 The word epieikês, however, appears intermittently and often throughout the Ethics with no allusion to its jurisprudential sense. Sachs translates epieikês as “decent,” on the grounds that it is not primarily a legal term, but a common way to name human goodness.19 In fact, Aristotle himself points out that the epieikês are praised so highly, that the word is sometimes used synonymously with agathos, or good.20 As a translation for epieikês, “decent” also has the advantage of being derived from the Latin, decere, a word that also means “to be fitting” or “becoming”: consider the word “decorous,” which comes from the same root. In other words, as a translation of epieikês, “decent” has the advantage of being a word whose Latin origin is very similar to the root of the Greek word it is translating.21 The obvious disadvantage of “decent” is that the word is rather faint praise in English: the epieikês man is genuinely good, not merely satisfactory. Why should we turn from the virtuous man to the decent one? Why should we pry them apart in the first place? One of the sources of this for me was Aristotle’s Poetics, which I will touch on in passing. Epic and tragedy can have as their subject virtuous (spoudaios) men and “things of stature”; Homer is the poet par excellence of the virtuous man.22 In tragedy one sees the protagonist, a man of serious stature, make an error of some kind and pass from good fortune 18 OED online, “equity, n.,” II.3. Sachs also points out that “equitable” is a poor translation for epieikês because “equitable” has as its root, the “equal,” whereas Aristotle points out that the epieikês man, in making a proper judgment not in accord with the law, goes beyond what is equal ([to ison] Sachs translation, p. 203; cf. 1130b13, where the “just” is associated with the ison, the “fair” or the “equal”). Bartlett and Collins also choose “decent” and “decency,” but they employ “equitable” and “equity” in the chapter that deals with the jurisprudential context (Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert Bartlett and Susan Collins [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011]). It is useful to note that the English adjective “equitable” is derived from the noun, “equity,” whereas, conversely, the Greek noun epieikeia is derived from the adjective, epieikês. In Greek, the jurisprudential term is derived from the primary phenomenon, the decent man; in English, the reverse seems to be the case. 20 Ethics 5.10 1137b1. More precisely, the comparative of epieikês is used in place of the beltion, “better.” To my knowledge, Aristotle does not say anything analogous about the relation of spoudaios to agathos: is epieikês closer than spoudaios to agathos? 21 The kinship between “decent” and “seemly” is more apparent in their negations: “indecent” is clearly “unseemly” or unbefitting. 22 Ch. 2 1448a1; ch. 3 1448a26; ch. 4 1448b35; ch 5 1449b10. Tragedy is distinguished from comedy by treating what is spoudaios rather than phaulos. Interestingly enough, Aristotle says that poetry is “more philosophic and more spoudaios” than history. 19 Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 9 �to bad; in viewing this turn of events we experience pity and fear.23 In contrast with this, Aristotle somewhat surprisingly says, to show the decent man changing from good fortune to bad would be “loathsome.”24 If is appropriate for the decent man to appear in tragedy, he must not be the central figure. This distinction in the Poetics provoked me to wonder, what is the difference between being virtuous and being decent? Why is the fall into misfortune loathsome for the decent man, but pitiable for the virtuous one? Is the virtuous man susceptible to error in a way that the decent is not? Given this distinction between the virtuous man and the decent with respect to tragedy, and returning to the Ethics, perhaps it is not a coincidence that the decent man makes two brief appearances in the chapters treating virtues in conversation: truthfulness, wit, and tact.25 According to Aristotle, whoever is truthful when nothing is at stake seems to be decent, since he seems to be a “lover of truth” (philalêthês; 4.7 1127b2). Habitually truthful speech is no guarantee of decency, but it appears to be an important sign of it. The subject comes up again in the immediately following discussion of wit and tact: wit is distinguished from the vices of buffoonery and boorishness, going to excess in trying to make people laugh, and never saying anything funny (4.8 1128a5-17). Superadded to the virtue of wit is tact: the tactful person will say to others, and he will allow others to say to him, only things that are fitting for a “decent and liberal” person (1128a19).26 If we are infer that the decent man is witty no less than tactful, and if wit is understood as somehow opposed to seriousness, then the decent man emerges as somewhat distinct from the virtuous man: escaping the boundaries of the serious, he indulges in playful speech, nevertheless without saying what should not be said. The decent, witty, tactful man is 23 Ch. 13 1453a7. Benardette trans., ch. 13 1452b31. It is “loathsome” (miaros), that is, repugnant, foul, or unclean. I take loathsome to be opposed more to pitiable than to fearful: an outcome being pitiable is connected with its being undeserved (ch. 13 1453a5); to be loathsome seems similar in this respect. Aristotle says that the subject of the tragedy is neither epieikês nor wicked (poneros), but “in between”; he is not distinguished in virtue or justice, although he enjoys fame and good fortune (1453a7). In the Poetics the epieikês appears to be the higher type than the subject of tragedy, the man of serious statue, whereas in the Ethics the spoudaios man often appears to be the higher type. See Burger 9091. 25 On the association of these three virtues as conversational, 4.8 1128b5. So far as I know, these are the first appearances of epieikes in the Ethics, although I suspect that this only means I have inadvertently passed over earlier instances. 26 “Wit” translates eutrapelos, or “easily turning” (Bartlett/Collins, note, p. 87), and “tact” translates epidexiotes, also meaning clever or handy (the word literally means “on the right side,” like the English word “dexterous”). Both qualities point to agility of thought. 24 Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 10 �liberal as well; he has the virtue characteristic of a free man.27 He is free, if not great; he avoids ironic condescension as well as boasting. It is in the following book, on justice, in which decency (epieikeia) first takes center stage; to understand its appearance, it necessary to remind ourselves of a few things about Aristotle’s treatment of justice. He observes that we typically use the word “unjust” ambiguously: we say it, first, about someone who breaks the law and, second, about someone who is unfair (anisos) and takes more than his share (5.1 1129a33). “Just,” like unjust, has two senses: in the first sense, “to be just” is to be lawful. This is justice inasmuch as it comprehends the ethical virtues, and so stakes a claim to being the comprehensive virtue: when the law is well framed, it prescribes a variety of actions, all in accord with the several virtues (1129b29). To be just in this sense means to practice all the virtues. Now “justice” in its second sense means to be “fair” and not to take more than one’s due; even though this second sense is the principal subject of book 5, it is justice in the comprehensive sense that concerns us here. Since the lawfully just is virtue as a whole, and since the virtuous (spoudaios) man is the one who has all the virtues, it is fitting that the lawfully just extends over whatever the virtuous man cares about (5.2 1130b5). This is not to say that the virtuous man is merely lawful; he chooses lawful actions not because the law commands them, but because they are noble (6.12 1144a15-18). But the life of the virtuous man, seeking the noble and its concomitant honors, moves within the ambit of the law. This connection between the virtuous man and the law is echoed in the Politics: here Aristotle asks whether the virtue of a “good man” is the same as the virtue of the “good citizen”; more precisely, he asks whether the virtue of an agathos man (anêr) is the same as the virtue of a spoudaios citizen.28 Goodness simply is associated with being a man simply; what is suitable for a citizen depends on the regime, so that the goodness pertaining to a citizen depends in large measure on the law.29 27 Liberality more properly corresponds to magnificence, but I have contrasted it with greatness of soul because I have not had the occasion to mention magnificence. The chapter plays on the etymological connections between childish pastimes, jesting, and being educated (all involving the paid- root). Although I suppose the truly spoudaios man must have all the virtues, it is difficult to imagine the “man of serious worth” as witty. Late in Ethics Aristotle points the absurdity of laboring and striving (spoudazein) for the sake of amusement (paidia; 10.6 1176b27). 28 Ethics 3.1.1276b22, 3.2.1277b32, 1278b1. 29 What it means to be a virtuous citizen depends on who is a citizen; who is a citizen depends on the type of regime: men who would be citizens in a democracy might be excluded from citizenship in an oligarchy or polity (3.2 1276b32). In these passages Aristotle at least once replaces agathos with spoudaios, thus comparing the spoudaios man with the spoudaios citizen (3.2 1276b33): what is a spoudaios citizen is regime dependent; spoudaios taken Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 11 �This equation between the just and the lawful supposes that the laws are well framed. Later Aristotle draws a distinction between what is [politically] just according to law and what is [politically] just according to nature (5.7 1134b18). He thereby pries open a space between the lawful and the just; this opening between justice and the law prepares us for the introduction of decency (epieikeia). The thematic discussion of decency begins with a problem: it sometimes happens that a good or decent man, whom we are inclined to say is “just,” does what is not lawful. This problem turns out to be not especially vexing: Aristotle explains that the law is always a general statement, but in particular circumstances application of the general statement is not just. The decent man does what is outside the law as a correction to the law; he remains congruent with the judgment of the lawgiver. The decent man is therefore more just than he would have been had he simply followed the law. The solution of the problem leads to paradox: the lawfully just concerns whatever the virtuous man cares about; decency sometimes contradicts what is lawfully just; nevertheless, the lawfully just and decency are both “virtuous,” they are both spoudaios according to Aristotle, and yet decency is better.30 Decency is virtuous, but it is something more than that as well. This treatment of decency coming at the end of the discussion of the moral virtues prepares us for the intellectual virtues (dianoetika), and especially for the intellectual virtue of prudence. This seems fitting, since we first noted it as associated with the virtues of conversation: truthfulness, wit, and tact. Decency is that by which one chooses not to follow the general or categorical statement of the law, but to make an exception; prudence is that by which one selects the particular action that leads to the correctly desired end. Both qualities involve the correct apprehension of particulars, as distinguished from obedience to general statements. In Book 6 Aristotle says that one judges what is decent by the faculty of “consideration” (gnome); by having consideration for others (suggnome), the decent man is forgiving.31 Consideration, this simply may not be. Only a few men can be entirely virtuous, but the lawgiver would strive for all citizens to be spoudaios as citizens: to be a spoudaios citizen is something lower or less accomplished than to be spoudaios simply. Still in these chapters of the Politics, as in the opening chapters of Ethics 5, spoudaios seems to be understood as lawful. Another interesting passage on this question appears in book 10: the care that citizens have for one another in common is epieikês whenever the underlying laws happen to be spoudaioi (1180a35). 30 Ethics 5.10 1137b10. There appears to be a paradox here: if the lawfully just is concerned with spoudaios things, and decency, in contradicting the lawfully just, is also spoudaios, then it is clear that spoudaios takes on different valences. 31 Ethics 6.11.1143a19-24. Sachs points out the etymological connection between what I am calling “consideration” as a faculty (gnome) and being considerate or forgiving towards others ([sun-gnome], Sachs’ note, p. 113). Sachs, Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 12 �faculty by which we are decent, is closely allied with intellect and astuteness (sunesis); all three capacities appear to be natural (1143b8). All three capacities converge with prudence as a perception of a particular choice-worthy action. Still consideration, this natural faculty that lies at the basis of decency, is not equivalent to prudence. The prudent man is one who deliberates well about what is advantageous for him and about living well as a whole (6.5 1140a24). Knowing how to live well in this way is not separable from knowing the good for one’s city and how to attain it (6.8 1142a7-10). From this it is clear that prudent deliberation requires very extensive experience. Prudence must be acquired; consideration appears to be natural. So decency, grounded in consideration, helps us trace the transition from the ethical virtues to the intellectual virtues.32 Decency, as a correction to what is lawfully just, is the first suggestion that the moral virtues are incomplete. It thereby points to the perfection of the moral virtues by the intellectual virtue of prudence without presuming for itself possession of prudence. Decency permits one to judge against the law but in agreement with the lawgiver; prudence in the full sense is the wisdom necessary to be a lawgiver. From what I have said, it would appear that the decent man is a higher type than the virtuous man, but other passages bring this into doubt.33 First, although we have said that decency points towards the intellectual virtue of prudence, Aristotle later says that having virtue is a condition for being prudent, since it is having virtue that leads one to aim at the right end; without virtue, one is not prudent, but merely clever.34 Perhaps not all spoudaioi men are prudent, but every prudent man is spoudaios. A second reason for doubting the superiority of decency is found in the Politics: when discussing aristocratic regimes, Aristotle speaks as if decent men incidentally, prefers the words “thoughtfulness” and “compassion,” respectively. This passage suggests that the exceptions to the law discussed in the chapters on equity were intended to refer above all to cases where punishment under the law is reduced or waived. Having forgiveness or consideration is the most common sense intended by epieikês in Plutarch’s Lives. 32 The idea that the chapter on wit and tact in book 4 initiates or anticipates the turn toward the intellectual virtues of book 6 was first brought to my attention by Leon Kass. 33 The passages from the Poetics also admit of diverse interpretations on this point: is it loathsome for the decent man to suffer a reversal of fortune because he is somehow a higher type than the virtuous man? Or might it be inappropriate because he is more common, less high? 34 6.12.1144a13-23. The word “clever” here is not that same as “astute” above. In the Politics, when Aristotle asks whether the virtues of the agathos anêr and the spoudaios citizen are same, he says they are the same only in the person of one who has prudence and who rules (3.3.1278b1-5; the connection to prudence appears at 3.2.1277b26). At Ethics 7.10 1152a8, Aristotle says that whoever has prudence is virtuous, i.e., spoudaios. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 13 �were more common than wholly virtuous ones.35 Finally, as I mentioned before, whenever Aristotle notes that the good man is the measure of our desires, our pleasures, and our actions, he refers explicitly to the spoudaios man, and never to the decent. If both types of men are good in some sense, the spoudaios is the unique measure of the class, while decency admits of degrees.36 Rather than contriving a relative ranking for the two, I would say that calling someone “decent” points to something different than calling him “virtuous.” To call a man “virtuous” points to his character, to his desires and pleasures, to his heart and his gut, to what he takes most seriously. To call him “decent” points to his habits of mind, to his work and leisure activities, and to what he thinks and says in the company of others.37 It is in the books on friendship where the decent man stands most often in the foreground, even if the virtuous man is much in evidence here as well. Since the word epieikês is sometimes used synonymously with agathos, as we noted, it should not be surprising that the good friendship is sometimes referred to as a decent friendship. Men and women who enjoy good friendships are said to be decent.38 We might expect decency to emerge more fully in the discussion of friendship once we realize that friendship, like decency, is similar to justice but superior to it. Justice demands precision; it demands equality; if equality is not appropriate, it demands proportional compensation. In seeking justice, you ensure that you do not get less than you deserve, and your counterpart does the same. Decency loosens this precision: the decent man waives the strict calculation of the penalty in order to attain the end intended by the lawgiver. 35 If the decent men rule the city, many inhabitants will be excluded from having a share in rule, but if the most virtuous man (spoudaiotatos) rules, still more inhabitants will be excluded (3.6.1281a29). The use of the superlative in the second case allows for a reading in which “decent” and “virtuous” are synonyms, and Aristotle is distinguishing the rule of many decent-virtuous men from the rule of the single most decent-virtuous man. But the use of spoudaios with the superlative may also suggest that being “virtuous” is an extreme in a way that being “decent” is not. 36 Ethics 9.8.1167a33; cf. 9.12.1172a11, discussed below. 37 Aristotle says that, although the unrestrained man does not do what he ought to and his character is bad, his choice (prohairesis) is “decent” (7.10.1152a18). Earlier he says of the restrained man, although he is not good or virtuous, his self-restraint itself is a good disposition (spoudaia hexis; 7.8.1151a28, cf. 7.1.1145b9, 7.9.1151b28). Your thoughts and activities may be epieikês; the disposition of your character may be spoudaios. In the same context, Aristotle speaks of pleasures as being spoudaios: these are the pleasures rightly preferred by the spoudaios person (7.14.1154b2, cf. 7.4.1143a23). 38 Aristotle calls the durable friendship of parents and children, under auspicious circumstances, epieikês (8.6 1158b23). He also says that the friendship of husband and wife will be not merely one of pleasure or utility, but based on virtue, if they are decent (8.12 1162a26). The equivalence of epieikês and agathos, at least in reference to friendship, is implied at 8.4 1157a17. “The friendship of decent people is decent” (9.12 1172a10, Sachs trans.). On decent men and women, see the afterword. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 14 �Similarly, in a good friendship each wishes for the good of his friend more than for the good for himself. Friendship is a more generous, more liberal arrangement than justice.39 Not only does decency share a kinship with friendship, towards the end of the discussion of friendship, decency looks like the ground for the possibility of friendship at all. Aristotle observes that the things we attribute to friendship are also things we observe in the way the decent man behaves towards himself. Aristotle makes four arguments on this point; I will mention only two. First, a friend wishes for and seeks to bring about the good of his friend for the sake of that friend, but the decent man does this same thing for himself, and he does it especially for the part of himself that is most for the sake of itself; this is the thinking part (dianoetikos, 9.4 1166a3; 1166a15). The thinking part has this status because no one would wish for all the goods in the world on the condition that he become someone entirely different, so that the thinking part seems to be most of all what each person is. Now for the second argument: friends wish to spend time together, but the decent man wishes to spend time with himself, for his mind is well furnished with things to contemplate, such as memories and hopes.40 This analogy between being a friend to another and being a friend to oneself underwrites the inference that the capacity of a decent man to be friends with another rests on his capacity to be a friend to himself. It is because he is a friend to himself, and stable in this friendship with himself, that he also serves well as a friend to another. In explaining how decency is the ground of friendship, Aristotle permits us to peer into the soul of the decent man: the good friendship of two persons turns out to be the soul of the decent man writ large. To be a friend to oneself means to be a friend to the thinking part of oneself, since this is authoritative part, the part that seems to be the 39 A friendship based merely on utility may exhibit the exact calculation appropriate to justice. Aristotle says that the friendship of pleasure is closer to the good friendship than is the friendship of utility, for there is more “liberality” in it (8.6 1158a22). He notes the view, as well, that when men are friends, there is no need of justice (8.1 1155a27; Burger, however, raises important questions about this statement). 40 (9.4 1166a8, 1166a23. In paraphrasing the arguments, I have exaggerated how often Aristotle specifically names the decent man: he mentions decency at the opening and the closing of this four-part argument, but not in between (9.4 1166a11, 1166a31). In between he does mention the virtuous man once in typical fashion, noting that virtue and the virtuous man is the standard of each (1166a13). Aristotle raises a question about whether one can be a friend to oneself; it may be possible insofar as he is dual or composite (1166a35). Aristotle has said that human nature is not simple (7.14 1154b22). Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 15 �whole.41 In viewing friendship as the soul writ large, we find a soul that obeys the intellect, but not in the way that the subjects of a city obey a despot or even a monarch.42 By way of contrast, a base man, one lacking decency and subject to strong passions, is at variance with himself. At odds with himself, it is difficult for him to be a reliable friend to others. What passes for friendship depends on the circumstances; when circumstances change, friendship vanishes. Aristotle even goes to far as to say that base men have friendly feelings toward themselves insofar as they presume themselves to be decent and are thus satisfied with themselves (9.4.1166b5). The false presumption of decency looks like the condition for sustaining friendship in those who are not decent at all. Let me take a step back here for a moment to say something too cursory about the decent man and virtuous man in these chapters: I have emphasized the appearance of the decent man in the chapters on friendship, while the virtuous man also appears woven through the same passages. But in these chapters decent men come in degrees, some are more decent, some less; the virtuous man, by contrast, is an extreme, he is the standard and measure. Epieikês is a comparative, spoudaios a superlative.43 As a result Aristotle brings up the virtuous man in limit cases: to take one example, he asks: if the virtuous man is self-sufficient and leads a blessed life, does he need friends at all?44 Can one be so virtuous that one has no need of other human beings? To take a second example: we find generally that the virtuous and the decent both seek what is noble, but of the decent, Aristotle says that he does what is best and obeys the intellect; of the virtuous, he says, he will give up wealth, offices, and all the goods that men strive for, 41 9.8 1168b32-1169a4. Above my phrase “thinking part” translates dianoetikos; here, it translates nous. I have preferred “thinking part” to “intellect” to preserve the etymological connection between the two Greek words, at the price of not distinguishing them in this lecture. 42 Ethics 9.8 1169a16: “for intelligence always chooses for itself what is best, and the good man (epieikês) always obeys his intelligence.” Cf. 10.9 1180a5-19. I say that this soul is not a monarchy or tyranny because it seems important that the soul is “writ large” in a friendship of two rather than in a city of many (as in the Republic): there cannot be friendship where inequality is very great, whereas cities, of course, permit very great inequality. Compare Politics 1.2 1254b6: the rule of intellect over the desires is not despotic but “kingly or political”. I take the “kingly” rule of the intellect over the desires to refer to the soul of the contemplative; in the soul of the decent I take the rule of the intellect over the desires to be only “political.” 43 Epieikês is literally a comparative at 9.3 1165b23. Also consider 10.5 1175b25, although the subject here is activities, not persons. Burger makes an analogous observation about the difference between the decent and the virtuous (“serious”) in the context of discussing friendship (p. 172). 44 9.9 1169b2ff, see especially 1169b14, 1170a8, 1170a14, 1170b19. This chapter focuses on the spoudaios; epieikeis is used once to refer to his practices (1170a3), as often happens. Aristotle does seem to use epieikês synonymously with spoudaios at 1170a28 (both are said to be “blessed” in this chapter). Aristotle’s conclusion is that even the spoudaios man will have friends, for he will attain his end more readily with them than without them. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 16 �even his life, for the sake of what is noble.45 Recall that the virtuous man, unlike the decent, is a fitting subject for tragedy. How does one become decent? And what, if anything, would this have to do with a liberal education? At the close of the Ethics Aristotle points out a difference between the decent man and most men: the decent may be persuaded by speeches to do what is noble; most men are not susceptible to persuasive speech, but must be threatened with punishments (10.9 1180a8). As Aristotle jokes, if speeches were sufficient for making men decent, “then justly ‘would [these speakers] take many large fees.’”46 From this passage, it would seem that a liberal education could hardly make one decent. Within this context it seems one is made decent the same way one is made virtuous: by the law, that is, by thoughtful speech armed with penalties and rewards. Rather than draw this conclusion, I would like to try out an alterative: that friendship is another, in fact, superior means to becoming decent. I want to propose briefly the possibility that the connection between decency and friendship that I touched on before operates in both directions: if the decency of an individual is the ground of his being friends with others, conversely friendship with others may be a means of his becoming decent. The upshot of this would be that it is easier to be a friend to another—and to find another to be a friend to you— than for you to be a friend to yourself. As Aristotle says, the company of good men (agathoi) may be a kind of training in virtue.47 Let’s frame the question a little differently: in the multiplicity within oneself, how do the parts come to be in harmony with, and harken to, the thinking part? There does not appear to be any knowledge of the good-in-itself, or even any knowledge of the human-good, that invests the thinking part with sufficient authority over the rest of the self. There does not appear to be any 45 9.8 1169a15-25. Aristotle’s comment in this passage that the spoudaios would give up many years of life to live nobly for one year reminds one of Achilles, which may be appropriate, if Homer, according to the Poetics, is the poet of the spoudaios. 46 Sachs trans. Aristotle moves from saying that the “decent” may be persuaded by speeches, to saying that the “free” or “liberal youths” and “the well-born” may be persuaded as well. Does he widen the category? Are there “free youths” who are not yet decent, but nevertheless can be persuaded to pursue the noble? 47 9.9 1170a12. Note, however, that this passage does not mention decency, and the context is the spoudaios and whether he needs friends. The application of this passage to decency is perhaps legitimated by the conclusion of the books on friendship, where it is said that the friendship of decent men is itself decent, and the decency of this friendship is augmented by the friends being together (9.12 1172a11). Also note that the passage about the company of good men is attributed to Theogonis; also attributed to Theogonis is the observation about the high fees that one could claim if one could make men good by speeches alone (10.9 1179b7). The coincidence connecting these two passages suggests that Aristotle, too, may think of friendship as a means to make men decent, in lieu of speeches simply. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 17 �direct way to give the thinking part the “strength” to overcome desires and passions.48 We noted before that those who think they philosophize and talk about virtue do not become virtuous by doing so. What if the so-called “strength” or “weakness” of the thinking part lies not in the thinking part at all, but in the rest of the soul, in whether and how the other parts harken to the thinking part? On this supposition, the so-called strength of the thinking part would be a function of the soul as a whole. On this supposition, friendship may be a way to prepare desires and passions to harken to the thinking part. I will say a few words on behalf of this conjecture. The first condition for friendship is thinking-well (eunoia) of someone else, thinking him to be decent.49 Friendship begins with how one frames another human being within one’s mind. But simply thinking well of someone else is not friendship: to this goodwill there has to be added affection (philesis) and reciprocity (8.2 1156a2). The person you think well of must know you think well of him, and he must think well of you. We seek this respect from others because we seek confirmation from others about what to think about ourselves (8.8 1159a22). It is harder to recognize decency in oneself than to see it in another.50 Recognizing it in another, and acknowledging that another has seen it in us, seems to be a training for recognizing it in oneself, by oneself. This mutual recognition must include affection as well: because of the connection between internal friendships and external friendships, when you love what you think well of in another, the passionate part of your soul becomes a little more obedient to its own thinking part. If this conjecture is correct, if friendship is a means to becoming decent, the question remains, what does this have to do with liberal education? On this point, beginning from the Ethics, I can say only a little. You might think well of a virtuous stranger by observing his deeds from a distance; you may take him to be the measure of your own actions and emulate him, but this is not friendship. The first stages of friendship, a pleasurable friendship, begin with the 48 Aristotle implies that spiritedness (thumos) does hear reason more than desire does, but that it mishears it (7.6 1149a25). It does not seem sufficient simply to ally spiritedness to reason. Michael Grenke, however, pointed out that in Politics 7 Aristotle says friendship has its origin in thumos. 49 Ethics 9.5 1166b30, 9.5 1167a19, 9.11 1171b2. Aristotle says goodwill is prompted by “virtue and some kind of decency” (epieikeia tina; 9.5 1167a19). 50 9.9 1169b34. This would be an appropriate moment to reflect on the etymology of epieikês, and its connection with seeming and befitting. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 18 �conversational virtues of wit and tact; they presume familiarity.51 The core of friendship lies in sharing with a friend the awareness of one’s existence; this shared awareness is attained most of all by sharing speeches and thoughts.52 As a friendship becomes closer, as each knows the other as a second self; more and more the characteristic activity of this friendship becomes conversation. I would venture that these friendships are “liberal,” and that they make you more liberal—at least in Aristotle’s sense of the word. We have already seen that friendship, in contradistinction with justice, is concerned with giving freely rather than receiving what is due (cf. 8.13 1162b26). You no longer act under the compulsion of the law; you act for the sake of what is noble as it is made manifest for you in the figure of your friend. Decency, understood as doing what the lawgiver intended, rather than what the law prescribes, likewise points to this freedom. It may be telling that it is precisely in the chapter on the seemingly trivial conversational virtues of wit and tact that Aristotle says the tactful, liberal man is a “law unto himself” (4.8 1128a33). At the close of the chapters on friendship, Aristotle emphasizes that friends should live together in order to share whatever activities they take pleasure in, whether it is partying, playing games, athletics, or philosophizing (9.12 1172a3). It is a little disappointing that Aristotle does not distinguish these activities in terms of their worth, although it becomes clear in the end that the last activity is more “serious” than the others (10.6 1176b32). If my starting point is Aristotle’s Ethics and the differences between spoudaios and epieikês, this is as far as I can go in arguing that friendship, especially a friendship grounded in truthful, witty, and philosophical conversation, can make one a decent human being. As a postscript, let me say that, even if the conversation of decent friends touches on philosophy, I do not mean to draw the conclusion that the path to decency requires passing through the contemplative life as Aristotle describes it. The contemplative life is solitary and divine, suitable for a simple being, while we are composite (7.14 1154b21). I admit that, if being friends with another is the finest way to learn to see oneself more clearly, then the self-reflective friendship of the decent does appear to anticipate the continuous activity of the divine intellect, thought thinking itself. Towards the end of the Ethics, one suspects that the reflective activity of 51 8.4 1157a6, 8.6 1158a30, By “first stages of friendship,” I mean the friendship of pleasure, which might become a good friendship with time. If I understand these passages, wit would come into play before tact does. 52 9.9 1170b11. Here I only assume what is the conclusion of an elaborate, lengthy argument, analyzed in some detail by Burger (p. 181). Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 19 �the simple intellect somehow provides the underlying potential for the decent man to be friends with himself and with others. Yet even if the activity of the intellect somehow underwrites the friendship of the decent, it need not follow that one must first achieve and then sustain the contemplative life in order to attain the goodness belonging to the decent. I suggest rather that a friendship anchored in conversation, even if not always occupied with conversation, may be the surest means for us to attain at least one form of the human good. If our liberal education improves our characters at all, I maintain it is not by enacting the intellect’s solitary activity of contemplation, but by means of the friendly conversations with one another that imperceptibly strengthen our friend, the intellect, within us. An afterword on the gender of spoudaios and epieikês.53 Both words are adjectives; in Greek, adjectives are turned into nouns by adding a definite article; the definite article shows the gender; so far as I can recall in the Ethics, the gender is always masculine. So I generally refer to ho spoudaios as “the virtuous man” and epieikês as the “decent man.” Since no noun is present, one might infer that the implied noun is anêr (a real man) or anthropos (a human being). In the Politics Aristotle asks whether the virtue of a good man, agathos anêr, is the same as the virtue of the good citizen, spoudaios politês (cited above). Using the word anêr, Aristotle clearly understands the spoudaios citizen to be male; citizens of Greek cities were, of course, uniformly male. Since in some cases spoudaios and epieikês are used in a manner that suggests they are synonymous and refer to the same person, one might be tempted to think of the epieikês as equally masculine. In a few cases, however, epieikês is used in contexts that refer to women as well as men. In the discussion of marriage, Aristotle says that the friendship of husband and wife is generally based on pleasure and utility, but the friendship may be one of virtue if they are epieikês (8.12.1162a24-26). In a similar passage, Aristotle says that the friendship between children and parents, if conducted well, will be enduring and epieikês ([8.6.1158b23] the consequence seems to be that the children and parents in these friendships, male or female, will also be epieikês). Based on these considerations, I am inclined to hold that spoudaios is implicitly, exclusively predicated of men, while epieikês is applied to men and women. 53 This paragraph was not read in the two lectures, but prepared in anticipation of the subsequent question periods. Two good men: the virtuous and the decent, page 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 20 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 Two Good Men in Aristotle's <em>Ethics</em>, or Does a Liberal Education Improve One's Character? Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture given on August 26, 2016 by Joseph Macfarland as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-08-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text 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 Macfarland_Joseph_2016-08-26_Typescript Subject The topic of the resource Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/462abf139c93f47845e0667932745c84.mp3 84d40560ff98e2b8eb87cec3dc4d2644 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 00:39:40 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 American Identity in the Age of Trump (Steiner Lecture) Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 31, 2017, by Lydia Polgreen as part of the Formal Lecture Series. This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series, which is made possible by a gift from the Steiner family in memory of Andrew Steiner, an alumnus of the college from 1963. The lecture series was established to bring notable speakers to campus from a variety of disciplines and endeavors, in recognition of Steiner’s intellectual versatility, and for the sake of continued learning. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Polgreen, Lydia 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 2017-03-31 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource National characteristics, American Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Polgreen_Lydia_2017-03-31 Alumni Friday night lecture Steiner lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cc818b4a4f4a51072a513bb85b95412f.mp3 c74d3d9ac94e29d052c1b33c52372357 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. 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 Does a Single Photon Exist? Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 24, 2017 by Chester Burke as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Burke, Chester 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 2017-03-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission: To make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library." 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 Burke_Chester_2017-03-24 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1ca61bf0d30206d2e44a76a3270b1927.mp3 33cc38b90b37072b88496888fbfa4dcc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 55:38 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Books of Nature Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 24, 2017, by Elizabeth Yale as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yale, Elizabeth 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 2017-02-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission: To make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Yale_Elizabeth_2017-02-24_ac Subject The topic of the resource Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. Saggiatore. Natural history Books--History--1450-1600 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6238210cf32cde7989b9e5688670f42e.mp3 556795032142193da83784a30ef80b55 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 01:06:53 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 A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales from Unlikely Allies Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 17, 2017, by Richard DeMillo as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource DeMillo, Richard 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 2017-02-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online." 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 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f3615db65809d72a212da54b5efe58eb.mp3 952fb51c8b4e8d250f5f7a6cfb4de909 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 01:06:08 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 Entropy, the New Caloric Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 12, 2017, by Howard Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is part two of a two-part series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard 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 2017-02-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library." 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="Part one" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1799">Part one</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fisher_Howard_2017-02-12 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d31b0fe69eeddced64a18dc6b5836468.mp3 060bc4b1bb743fc9aa500b8c511e9d84 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 01:08:36 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 In Praise of Caloric Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 10, 2017, by Howard Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is part one of a two-part series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard 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 2017-02-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library." 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="Part two" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1800">Part two</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Fisher_Howard_2017-02-10 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d9e228e9ce9b7c0c95599b1fbb39c2ce.mp3 3e84a4747c09560a145ea035a9de896f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 00:42:49 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 Thinking about Nature Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on January 20, 2017 by Matthew Linck as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Linck, Matthew 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 2017-01-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1784">Typescript</a> Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Linck_Matt_2017-01-20 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c5ce720b507e8fd357d417455d4b6e28.pdf f9025078c540b9b74cf2bda4108a45b3 PDF Text Text Thinking about Nature Matthew Linck I. What is meant by ‘real’ can only be experienced. Nature is a problem for thinking. In one sense it is a problem because it seems nearly impossible to think about it at all. This can be seen in a few lines from Moritz Schlick and Hans Reichenbach, both sophisticated interpreters of Einstein’s relativity theories. In a series of lectures published under the title Philosophy of Nature, Schlick defines nature as “all that is real in so far as it is determined in space and time” (Schlick, 3). For Schlick nothing more can be said about nature without establishing those determinations through empirical study. The philosopher has no role to play in inquiring about nature, since only natural science can get at nature’s determinations. Reichenbach clarifies the basis for the impossibility of thinking about nature. He writes, “The physical object cannot be determined by axioms and definitions. It is a thing of the real world, not an object of the logical world of mathematics” (Reichenbach, The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge, 36). The work of the physicist, according to Reichenbach— and perhaps in contrast to a commonly held view—is not to go beneath sensible appearances and find what is really true of the physical world. Rather, the work of the physicist is only a lining up of mathematical formulations with empirical observations. There is, however, a role for thinking in this work. At its deepest level, the work of physics must ask the question, “By means of which principles will a coordination of equations to physical reality become unique” (Reichenbach, 47). The discovery of such principles cannot be the work of empirical observation, nor have such principles ever been arrived at by means of induction. But, according to Reichenbach, arriving at such principles provides no insight into what nature really is. He writes, “there is no point in trying to define [the physical object’s] existence more closely, because what is meant by ‘real’ can only be experienced” (Reichenbach, 50). In its concrete reality, nature is forever cut off from thought. Nature is a problem for thinking because it unthinkable. ——— �II. Nature confronts us as a riddle and a problem, whose solution both attracts and repels us: attracts us, because Spirit is presaged in nature; repels us, because nature seems an alien existence. Nature remains a problem even for those thinkers who do attempt to grapple with the question of what nature is and what is thinkable in nature. Thinkable should be heard here in contrast to knowable. Nature as a problem for thinking is not at odds with the work of natural science—thinking has a different goal. Natural science seeks knowledge of what is encountered in experience. Thinking about nature is an attempt to comprehend what it is that the scientist studies. Such thinking is not content with the claim that nature is something determinately real but otherwise unthinkable. Instead, such thinking will risk asking about the kinds of determinations that nature must have and about the basis for those determinations. Nevertheless, the philosophers that wish to think nature in this way seem to share a basic point of orientation with philosophers like Schlick and Reichenbach, namely, that nature faces us as a kind of brute fact. It is there before us, but mute, provoking us to reckon with what it is. ——— III. That nature is, it would be ridiculous to try to show, for it is clear that among the things that are, such things are many. It is not self-evident that nature has to be a problem in this way, either as the real that is beyond thought, or as the real as a problem posed for thinking. It is not a problem of this sort, for instance, for Aristotle. That nature is, Aristotle says, is evident. It would be ridiculous to attempt a demonstration that nature is since this would be “to show things that are clear by means of things that are unclear” (193a5). Put this way, Aristotle’s view seems to be in line with the perspectives we have already considered: nature as a problem for thinking also does not demand proof of the existence of nature—its existence is manifest. What nature is and whether it is thinkable are the questions. But here we have to recognize a profound difference in Aristotle’s understanding of nature. When viewed as a problem for 2 �thinking, nature is understood as the whole extended, sensible world. Schlick’s “all that is real insofar as it is determined in space and time” captures this well. For Aristotle, however, nature is a principle that accounts for motions that are intrinsic to a thing. A sensible world of ponderable entities is assumed in Aristotle’s sense of the word, but that sensible world and the things that populate it are not nature. So when Aristotle says that it is evident that nature is, he means it is evident that there are things that possess intrinsic principles of motion. The inquiry carried out in the Physics is not an inquiry about what nature is. Rather it is an attempt to think through what motion is in a way that is consistent with nature understood as a principle of motion. The inquiry into what nature is is carried out in the Metaphysics, for only an inquiry about principles can, in Aristotle’s sense, be an inquiry about nature. The crucial point is this: at no point does Aristotle treat nature as a brute fact, as simply what is real in space and time. There is a sensible, extended world, but it shows itself as animated by indwelling principles. And as such it shows itself as amenable to thought. The effort required to think nature along with Aristotle is tremendous, but at no point is nature a problem for thinking. ——— IV. The separation of subject and object is both real and illusory. It seems, perhaps, that when nature shows up as a problem it does so because of our inclination to see the world in terms of subjects and objects. The subject/object distinction conforms to something we all seem to take for granted as a basic truth, that there are subjects—thinking beings—confronted with objects. This deeply rooted attitude finds expression in our readiness to regard matters of the mind as being “in our heads” and matters of reality as being “out there,” different in kind from what is in the mind. In this regard, the distinction between subjects and objects might just be called good, common sense. But we need only turn again to Aristotle to see that what seems like common sense might be an unrecognized prejudice. Aristotle certainly recognizes that there are thinking 3 �beings. But the principles of thought—even, perhaps, the activity of thinking altogether— are not to be found “in our heads.” It is not that we think and therefore there is thinking. No, there is thinking and we participate in it. And of course Aristotle recognizes that there are discrete items in the world, those things we call objects. But it is not as objects in our sense—objects that stand opposite a subject—that such items figure in Aristotle’s thinking, for the being of things is not grounded in their brute existence. The being of things demands that they be regarded in terms of form, and so thought and being never stand opposed as subject and object. Nature for Schlick and Reichenbach looks as if it could be construed as the subject/object distinction taken to its limit: nature as the totality of what stands opposite the thinking subject. I cannot straightaway recommend a return to Aristotle as a way to dissolve the problem of nature, for I am not sure such a return is possible or desirable. I also will not attempt to explain how or why the subject/object distinction gained purchase in us. It may well be that there is something right about the distinction, provided we can think it through properly. In light of these considerations, our question becomes: Is nature thinkable within the frame of subject and object? ——— V. Since the moderns—rejecting substantial forms and occult qualities—have undertaken to reduce the phenomena of nature to mathematical laws, it has seemed best in this treatise to concentrate on mathematics as it relates to natural philosophy. The mechanical view of nature adopted by Newton in his Principia, shared by many of his greatest contemporaries, and adhered to by subsequent generations of natural scientists, necessitates the subject/object distinction. We see this necessity forcefully presented in Descartes’ writings, where mind and matter are held to be separate substances. The principle of subjectivity—the principle grounding my existence as a thinking thing—is thought itself as a created substance. The truth of the world as encountered in sense perception is that it is a separate and distinct substance from me as thinking thing. And while mind is infused with the natural light of reason, the sensible world must be conceived as nothing but extension. Behind the play of so-called secondary qualities—color, taste, smell, pitch, texture—all those things that give 4 �the world its allure and vibrancy—behind this play is a gray world of shape, position, direction and speed. The living spark in thought is confronted with the dead world of extension. Descartes’ bold metaphysics yields a striking conception of our condition as thinking beings inhabiting a sensible world. But we end up in largely the same place by eschewing metaphysics and pursuing Newtonian science as our sole mode of thinking about nature. We end up there because even if the conception of bodies in motion provided by Newton’s definitions and laws is only meant to provide a platform for studying natural phenomena and not to establish what nature is in itself, we cannot help but conceive of nature as mechanical while pursuing that study on Newton’s terms. And despite its inclusion of inherent and impressed forces, Newton’s external world is as devoid of mind as that of Descartes’. Yet when we read Newton’s book or directly study the world in light of its principles, we are thinking, and we think away the vibrant show of secondary qualities to get at the underlying machine. We may regard ourselves as prudent and sensible in setting aside substantial forms and occult qualities, but we delight in the satisfaction of mathematical proof and the sense that we have gained insight into the laws governing natural phenomena. The sober Newtonian is a secret Cartesian. ——— VI. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. Empiricism is inconsistent with Newtonian science. Newton tells us in the preface to the Principia that he is undertaking a “rational mechanics,” that is, “the science … of the motions that result from any forces whatever and of the forces that are required for any motions whatever” (Newton, 382). Rational mechanics is not an observational science. It is a science of principles and of reasoning from those principles. Empiricism is incapable of explaining how such a science is possible. But the work of the Principia is not limited to rational mechanics. Indeed, it cannot be. The great accomplishment of the opening propositions of Book I of the Principia is the establishment of how certain motions—bodies tracing a variety of shapes—can be linked to laws governing the variation of a centripetal force. Showing these correspondences, 5 �however, tell us nothing immediately about the world around us. The propositions only tell us that if a body is moving in a certain way, the forces acting on it must be varying according to a certain law. Rational mechanics cannot tell us how bodies are actually moving in the world. Pure reason cannot deduce the laws that are at work in the world. To find nature’s laws we must find out how it is in fact moving. And so the Cartesian dream of a science of nature without an empirical part runs aground here. What is needed is a way of thinking that can account for the possibility and necessity of both the pure and empirical parts of Newtonian science. We find such a way in Kant’s transcendental idealism. ——— VII. Thus we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity in them that we call nature. The proofs of rational mechanics are not empty thoughts. Their content is provided by the mind’s own capacities for receiving what is given in experience. This is true for mathematics generally. But without concepts, what is received in experience cannot be known by us. Cognition, and hence human consciousness altogether, must be conceptual all the way down. So goes Kant’s thinking, and establishing these claims is the burden of the opening sections of the Critique of Pure Reason. The possibility of pure mathematics and rational mechanics turns out to be something of a sideshow in Kant’s account, for the real problem for Kant is ordinary experience itself, of which Newtonian science is just a refined form. Consider these features of ordinary experience: the extended character of material objects; the varying intensities of sensible qualities; the apparent persistence of objects through time; and the coordination of the order of time with the relations of cause and effect. Kant’s bold contention is that these features are not learned through experience but are the very conditions for any experience. It is in this way that Kant’s transcendental idealism becomes a philosophy of nature. How so? Kant regards nature as lawful and orderly, and not because we find it to be so, but because it must be so. It must be so because, as Kant writes, “The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time conditions of the possibility of 6 �the objects of experience” (A158/B197). Another way of putting this is to say that the relation of subject and object is not immediate but always mediated by our forms of intuition, pure concepts and imagination. The sentence just quoted comes from the “System of All Principles of the Pure Understanding,” in which Kant shows how intuition, understanding and imagination work together to provide the quantitative, qualitative, substantial and causal backbone of all experience of objects. One crucial aspect of Kant’s argument is that only the full slate of principles working together can provide the basis for experience of any object. (This means, for instance, that even the simple apprehension of an object requires the concept of a cause since only causality can secure an objective order to time. That is, if the apprehension of an object is considered as happening at a determinate time, causality underpins that experience.) This makes the System of Principles the true heart of the Transcendental Analytic. And while the order of presentation requires Kant to consider the various mental faculties separately before elucidating their real use in concert, it would be a mistake to think that the System of Principles can be generated deductively from first principles. The insight provided by the System of Principles depends upon reflection about real experience, and so the Transcendental Analytic must be read backward as well as forward. Why is this seemingly arcane assertion important? It is important because it shows us that there is, on the one hand, no method of empirical observation by which to verify the truth of Kant’s account of cognition, objectivity and experience; on the other hand, it emphasizes that transcendental philosophy is not an apodictic science. Hence Kant’s endeavor is an effort of thought that is different both from Newtonian science, which culminates in empirical observation, and from the efforts of Cartensianism to set philosophical thinking on indubitable grounds. Kant’s thinking is not an attempt to build up knowledge on the basis of secure first principles; it is the work of drilling down into ordinary experience to comprehend its conditions. And in this way Kant’s undertaking is a thinking about nature, since in illuminating the transcendental conditions of experience he shows that they are nature’s conditions as well. ——— 7 �VIII. It seems, therefore, that only a lawfulness without a law, and a subjective harmony of the imagination with the understanding … is compatible with the free lawfulness of the understanding … and with the peculiarity of a judgment of taste. It might seem that Kant has pulled off a philosophical sleight of hand. While we were looking elsewhere, he transformed nature from something alien into something familiar. Put another way, it seems that Kant has moved the conditions for objectivity away from objects and into the subject. Kant won’t deny this. But it might also seem—as it has to many—that Kant undermines his own aims and slides unwittingly from transcendental to subjective idealism. Whether this is the case, we would have to recognize that Kant is insistent that real experience is only possible if there is something—something not located in the subject—that affects us. The goal of the Transcendental Analytic is to establish that the grounds of what is objective in experience reside in the subject, not that experience is a spontaneous creation of the subject. Kant’s account may, in the end, be one-sided. But this shouldn’t blind us to whatever insight might be contained in that one side. And we would be too quick in our judgment of Kant’s thinking if we made it based on the Transcendental Analytic alone. At the very least, we would have to consider the place of nature in Kant’s account of judgments of taste, that is, in our experience of the beautiful. Such experiences are peculiar, in at least two ways. Unlike most judgments, judgments of beauty do not seem to predicate a determinate concept of an object. “That thing is beautiful” is closer to “I like the way this tastes” than it is to “That thing is red.” One might be persuaded about this if one agrees that there are no objective criteria by which to establish that something is beautiful. But unlike with subjective judgments of preference, we expect that others will find things beautiful that we do. We know that we cannot compel someone to see something as beautiful, but we would find it strange to assert that the sentence “That thing is beautiful” is simply equivalent to “That thing is beautiful to me.” In Kant’s vocabulary, the peculiarity can be expressed this way: A judgment of beauty is both subjective and universal. Kant contends that the only way to explain this peculiarity is to locate the experience of beauty in a free play of our mental powers, powers that are a common possession among us. The experience is properly called a judgment because it is grounded in our faculties for judging: intuition, imagination and understanding. But it must be regarded as a free play 8 �since while the understanding is engaged, it is engaged without the employment of any particular concept. The feeling of the beautiful is the feeling of our powers of cognition set into harmonious play—the harmony assumed in any determinate cognition—without settling on any particular thought. What does this have to do with nature? Kant thinks that only products of nature— for instance, a flower—can be the occasion for a pure judgment of taste. All man-made products carry with them an overt or implicit element of conceptual determination, since all artifacts—at the very least—can be attributed to some purpose. Products of nature can also be objects of knowledge and hence conceptually determined. The flower can be studied and known in a variety of ways. But in its bare presentation to us, the product of nature is as something alien—alien because whatever it is, it appears before us of its own accord. In this way, nature has shifted again back away from the determining capacities of the subject. As an element of objective experience, the flower is swamped by subjective determination: its shape, color, persistence, and location in time all remain based in the subject. But—or so Kant claims—something about the flower—something in its form— something not determined by us—sets our mental powers into free play. Here then is the remarkable thought about nature contained in Kant’s account of beauty: Nature as a thing in itself—not as the realm of lawful appearances—is nevertheless in some way fitted to our mental powers. The alien and the familiar meet in concordance in this encounter, even though no knowledge can be yielded from it. ——— IX. This content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind. Despite the emphasis placed on the subject in Kant’s thinking—and the exiling of things in themselves from knowledge and experience—Hegel contends that Kant’s transcendental idealism remains “overawed by the object.” Both the byways and overall thrust of Kant’s three Critiques systematically deny our access to things in themselves, while nevertheless making experience, morality and beauty depend on this unknowable beyond. Untethered from things in themselves, human thought spins in an empty void. 9 �For all of his sympathy toward and admiration for Kant’s transcendental turn, Hegel will criticize Kant’s thinking from end to end as one-sided. This accusation cuts deeply. Take the opposition of subject and object. Hegel is prepared to praise Kant for establishing that the opposition of subject and object is illusory, that subject and object are only two necessary facets of experience. Hegel will agree as well that experience must be regarded as a realm of appearances. There is no harsher critic of dogmatic metaphysics than Hegel. But Hegel thinks Kant has not gone far enough. To place the grounds of objectivity in the subject alone, and to leave, as it were, an undigested thing in itself in a remote beyond is to flirt again with metaphysics of the worst sort. In order to overcome the one-sidedness that engenders this threat one must also overcome the opposition of subject and object from the side of the thing in itself. Or, as one commentator has put it, “The truly Hegelian problem is not to penetrate from the phenomenal surface into Things-in-themselves, but to explain how, within Things, something akin to phenomena could have emerged” (Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, 241). The first step in this undertaking is nothing less than the entire road of despair trodden in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This journey culminates in the knowledge that there is no opposition between consciousness and its object. In this way, the Phenomenology is in accord with Kant’s thinking. But unlike Kant, Hegel arrives at this conclusion without ever positing a role for things in themselves. Indeed, differently than in Kant’s thinking, the concord between subject and object is accomplished only after all versions of a thing in itself are shown to contain contradictions. Achieving the insight that subject and object are not opposed is just the overcoming of all versions of that opposition. What then is left to do? Why does Hegel write a Science of Logic after the Phenomenology? To use Hegel’s own vocabulary, there is work left to do because the Phenomenology itself is one-sided. It is one-sided because it overcomes the opposition of subject and object from the side of the subject. What is yet needed is the same overcoming from the side of the object. But what can this mean? Won’t such an attempt dive headlong once again into bad metaphysics? ——— 10 �X. The Idea freely releases itself. . . . By reason of this freedom, the form of its determinateness is also utterly free—the externality of space and time existing absolutely on its own account without the moment of subjectivity. Hegel is willing to regard the content of the Logic as “the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence” because he is comfortable being a heretic. His assertion is heretical not only because Hegel presumes to have written down God’s thoughts, but also because those thoughts cannot be construed as inhering in a transcendent being. While the movement of thought contained in the Logic is something actual—call it thought thinking itself, or being fully-comprehended—it stands to nature and human consciousness not as willful creator, but as transcendental ground. If metaphysics becomes dogmatic when it presumes to have direct insight into the truth of being, then Hegel steers clear of this charge. The work of the Phenomenology remains within the bounds of what appears to consciousness and the claims that consciousness makes about those appearances. Consciousness as such is marked by its own distinguishing of subject and object. So when the opposition of subject and object is overcome at the end of the Phenomenology, this is, as it were, only a formal achievement. Absolute knowing has a history at this point, but no content. The content is explicated in the Logic. But if we are tempted to see dogmatism creep in here, we have to recognize that Hegel insists that when thought begins to think itself, it still has no content. To think being simply is to think nothing. And while the Phenomenology has given us permission to begin thinking about being without apology, the content of that thinking must accrue through a movement of thought. There is no immediate insight into being whatsoever. Ordinary consciousness will still balk at such statements, since any talk of thinking about being will sound like metaphysical fancy. There is no easy way to dispel this suspicion. But what if one said that for Hegel the concrete world in space and time of our sense experience is not included in the content of the Logic, the discourse that claims to comprehend being altogether? This might at least obtain for us a brief reprieve from scorn, for if the concrete world around us is not being, then what is it? Hegel claims that the full sweep of thought contained in the Logic exhausts what is thinkable about being, including the conditions of its intelligibility. The recognition of this 11 �completeness, together with the retention of everything encountered in the movement of thought, makes a complete whole. And yet, while this completeness is genuine, its form remains one-sided. The inwardness of thought thinking itself, while cut through with maximal difference, has no outward expression. Here we reach one of Hegel’s strangest thoughts, but the one that makes his thinking about nature worth our time. The existence of external reality cannot be construed as something needed by being, since being is inwardly complete. Nevertheless, the inwardness of thought thinking itself frees externality to be itself. We might say that thought allows for there to be something other than thought. This other is nature. Hegel writes, “externality constitutes the specific character in which nature, as nature, exists” (Hegel, §247). Externality is the key to understanding what nature is. ——— XI. Nature exhibits no freedom in its existence, but only necessity and contingency. As fundamentally external, nature is not only alien to us, it is alien to itself. All that is truly intelligible in nature springs from the inherent intelligibility of being. But as the external other of being, nature is not inherently intelligible. And yet it is thinkable. A contrast will help us see our way through. We are familiar with thinking about concrete beings in terms of essence and appearance, where the external show of things is constituted by inward, intelligible forms. But if we try to think of the content of the Logic as the inward essence of nature we will get it all wrong. Recall on the one hand that the inwardness of thought thinking itself—that is, being in its full determination—is not the inwardness of some other thing. It is complete in itself. Likewise, nature is not the external aspect of something inward. Nature is externality through and through. And so the forms of things that we encounter in nature must be regarded in three different ways. As comprehended philosophically, nature shows itself according to certain general forms: as matter in motion; as physically determinate and dynamic materials; as plant and animal life. These general forms and the specific forms that fall beneath them, however, are not sufficient to understand nature as thinkable, on the one hand, and nature as concretely existing on the other. As thinkable, nature’s general forms borrow their intelligibility from 12 �the content of thought thinking itself. The concept of life, for instance, is a moment within the development of the thinking of being. The plant and animal organism are life manifested in the form of externality. In this way, thinking about nature requires a kind of double vision. Nature’s general forms are thinkable if while keeping one eye on them we also keep another eye on the structure of intelligibility as such. Rather than thinking of nature’s forms as the appearance of an intelligible essence, we can perhaps think of these forms as images of the intelligible, reflecting but not embodying the intelligible. But there is a third way in which we must grasp nature’s forms, and here, I think, Hegel’s conception of nature comes to fruition, for as a matter of concrete, sensual reality, even nature’s general forms cannot be found in existence. There is no concrete example of the plant or animal as such. There are only specific plants and animals. And while a diversity of kinds might be necessitated in principle by the concept of nature, the actually existing kinds have no ground either in being as intelligible, or in nature’s general forms. Nature as actually manifest to our senses is irreducibly contingent. This point deserves special emphasis, for it means that nature’s diversity and sensuous specificity is not capable of being comprehended by philosophical thought. Our comprehension of what nature is includes the insight that nature is not graspable in thought at this level because this is the level where nature manifests its inherent contingency. Hence Hegel gives us a way to think what seemed unthinkable: nature in its bare and stubborn presence as object to our subjectivity. ——— XII. Difference is what constitutes being. The world of the scientist is a world of facts, and the world itself is treated as a fact. Treating the world this way entails a theory of being. The theory goes like this: There are things, and they are what they are, and that has nothing to do with us. This sense of being animates G. E. Moore’s 1903 essay, “The Refutation of Idealism,” a forceful attack on what had been the prevailing trend in British philosophy and one of the inaugural moments of what has come to be called analytic philosophy. I mention Moore’s essay because his allegiance to a world-as-fact ontology seems to make it impossible 13 �for him to be able to grasp idealist thought. Moore’s essay begins, “Modern idealism, if it asserts any general conclusion about the universe at all, asserts that it is spiritual” (Moore, 28). Moore’s misunderstanding of idealism can be unfolded from this first sentence alone, since from the outset Moore seems to treat the universe as a simple fact, something present that just is whatever it is. And I think it would be fair to say of Moore’s mindset that the universe as he conceives it is equivalent to being: the universe is and it is all that there is. For Kant and Hegel there is a difference between the universe—the totality of the manifest natural world—and being. This should not be understood as asserting that nature is part of being. This would not entail difference. Rather, nature must be thought, in some way, as different from being. This manifests itself in Hegel’s thought in a particularly strong fashion. For not only is being itself unthinkable without difference—since being fully comprehended is equivalent to the comprehensive self-differentiation of being—but nature, as the domain of exteriority and contingency, is only thinkable in its difference from being. But it is just in this difference that Hegel is able to account for what Moore seems to take at face value, that nature is the realm of the factual. Nature differs from being as fact differs from principle. Hegel thus comes to agree in a way with Reichenbach that the real can only be experienced, if we construe the “real” of Reichenbach’s claim with Hegel’s exteriority. Yet unlike Reichenbach’s real, Hegel’s nature, in its difference from being, nevertheless reflects what is inherently intelligible in being. Nature must be known through experience, but is thinkable in principle. ——— One final thought, for the assurance of this final statement should not go unqualified. The quote from Deleuze that was included in the description for this lecture speaks of a difference between empirical and absolute knowledge. The phrase “absolute knowledge” is not typical of Deleuze’s way of speaking, but we can make sense of the Hegelian language by noting that the quotation comes from a review of a book about Hegel by Jean Hyppolite. Deleuze seems to think that Hyppolite gets Hegel right in ways that others have not. And part of that getting-right bears on the questions I have taken up tonight. Nevertheless, at the end of the review, Deleuze asks whether Hegel himself has 14 �gotten things right, whether Hegel can be followed in principle, whether contradiction can bear the work Hegel has asked of it. This can serve as a reminder for us that searching for principles and searching for facts are not the same, and that thinking cannot be reduced to knowing. 15 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 15 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 Thinking about nature Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 20, 2017 by Matthew Linck as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Linck, Matthew 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 2017-01-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript 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 Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1798">Audio recording</a> Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e88d11c2ee07dc869c150fa1db20114c.mp3 8216508947db0171949b4c789a34d9f0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 01:13;29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Meaning of Rome Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on December 2, 2016 by Michael Grenke as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grenke, Michael Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-12-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission: To make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site." 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 Grenke_Michael_2016-12-02 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b576a36b4101ff45b2414fd52b8c3db7.mp3 be85bd1190b26181699e8e0d91a70f50 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis 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.) 01:03:52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Ten Commandments Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 30, 2016, by Leon Kass as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Kass describes his lecture as, "a close examination and fresh interpretation of the Biblical text (Exodus 20)." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kass, Leon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-09-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission: To make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. To make an audio recording of my lecture available on the St. John's College web site." 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 Kass_Leon_2016-09-30 Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="https://stjcollege.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/default/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ILS$002f0$002fSD_ILS:84552/one?qu=84552&amp;te=ILS" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Typescript (available to check out from the Greenfield Library)</a> Subject The topic of the resource Ten commandments Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c1abd1a23a771c5f35bc772bfc3c64f2.pdf 67babadb41116f14bec9dd3e5b9d3f31 PDF Text Text 1 Talking, Reacting, Writing, Listening Eva Brann I imagine that on Parents' Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read-but read out loud, delivered in the writer's voice. Thus, the sequence goes: I thought, I wrote, I read, I speak. Although this is the principal way of teaching at institutions of higher education, it is a curious one. Here at St. John's, we show our respect for the possible profit we might derive from it by requiring our students to come to a lecture every Friday night-just when, elsewhere, it is prelude-time to party night. And we express our suspicion of lecture-hearing by asking students to listen to a lecture-but only once a week. So this one weekly hour of just sitting and listening is mandatory, and about as enforceable as a mandatory evacuation before a storm. (This simile appears here because this lecture was ·written in the dark during Hurricane Irene.) The attendance that we do take utterly seriously is presence in class-seminar above all. In seminar, no speeches are delivered. Instead we talk, in turn, to one another. So rather .than call my lecture "Speaking, Writing, Reading, Listening," I have substituted "Talking" for "Speaking." Talk seems to denote a more conversational, almost social mode of speech, less formal, more spontaneous, more participatory. And yet our seminar is a mandatory, scheduled class, with prescribed texts. Is that a setting for talk? So I would like to think in public about our modes of being together, about the how and what of this college as a community of learning. Since we, the tutors, collude This lecture was delivered at St. John's College in Annapolis on the Friday of Parents' Weekend, November 4, 2011. Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean of the College. �2 with our students in making them a little impatient with being talked at, I'll sneak around that resistance, which I share. I'll snaffle their good will (old books on rhetoric called this formal beginning of a speech the captatio benevolentiae, "the capture of benevolence") by speaking about talking itself and what it entails. _ Your children, our students, will probably have told you now and then that parents don't know anything. Freshmen, on the other hand, know everything. They are fresh, unimpaired in spirit-and also, perhaps, somewhat fresh in a now obsolete meaning of the term: cheeky. Sophomores know a little less; their class name means "wise fools," as their knowledge of Greek will tell them; it is a combination of Greek sophon, "wise" and moron, "foolish." Juniors and the college elders, the seniors, have reapproached their parents and become almost perfect in ignorance. I am, in fact, being serious. The members of this community of learning are not ashamed to own up to their own ignorance; indeed we think better of this thoughtful confession than of a profession of expertise. It's why the teachers here call themselves "tutors," guardians of learning, rather than "professors," authorities of knowledge, and it is why our students are to some degree our fellow-learners. Thus we are apt to think of even the most positive, content-replete learning as a specification of our ignorance. It's a fancy way of saying that all our learning starts and ends in questions- a point to which I will return as we go along. So this acknowledged ignorance is not false humility, but a confident, even competent, way to conduct a college. Yet, of course, sub aeternitatis, "under the aspect of eternity," specie as the philosophers say, we are, as limited beings, all equal--equally diminutive before the infinitely distant ultimacies we long for. This is cause enough for some personal modesty and even occasional dejection. �3 I've been saying "we," meaning the college of students and tutors. Now I'll mean mainly the tutors when I say that, although there's probably nothing we all agree must be true, there is something we �1 agree must be done. Some of us, perhaps even most, think that the Appearances before our senses bespeak a Being behind them; some of us suppose there is a Ground in which all nature is rooted; and some of us believe there is a realm of Divinity above us. Others see no reason to agree to any of these. But we all agree that, in regard to our ignorance about matters of most persistent importance to human beings, we are close to our students, and that we are therefore guardians of learning rather than transmitters of doctrine. We have a model for this unteacherly mode of teaching, presented to us in the writings of Plato: Socrates. Not all of us, particularly freshmen, take to him. He describes himself now as a gadfly, stinging a sluggish horse into wakefulness, now mediating between earth and heaven (Apology 30e, Symposium 202d, as a demon ff.). So he is both irritating and elusive. One moment he argues like a sophist, that is to say, a trickster of the intellect; another moment he intimates his most genuine relation to truth. He is both bully and benefactor. So when he declares, often and insistently, that he is ignorant, we must suspect irony. "Irony," eironeia, is the Greek word for dissembling, pretending to be what one is not. What then is this Socratic ignorance, which in some of us engenders trust precisely by causing dis-ease? We' ve all come across genuine inarticulate cluelessness, truly dumb ignorance­ though I think it is fairly rare in human beings. Socratic ignorance, on the other hand, is anything but dumb; it talks, and that makes all the difference. For example, in the first philosophical work our students read together, Plato's dialogueMeno, Socrates blames �4 himself for knowing "nothing at all" about human excellence (71b) That is why he can . genuinely ask: What is it? But look what this question involves. First of all it is an admission, actually an assertion, of self-knowledge. People who ask, know what they lack. They know what they don't know. Acknowledged ignorance is important . knowledge about ourselves. And second, it is a very precise negative knowledge of what we are asking after. The word "comprehend" comes to mind; it means "to get, to enclose, in one's grasp '' Human thinking is wonderfully prehensile. It can get at, wrap itself around, something it does not yet really "get' ' in the sense of "understand." In this dialogue, Meno is Socrates' "interlocutor," which is learned Latin for "conversational partner." I use the term here because Meno--who, as we know from other sources, was as bad a man as you'll never want to meet-can't really be a partner, and certainly not a participant, in the sort of searching conversation Socrates cares about. In fact he tries to forestall such talk by producing a clever argument. He has the clever ignorance that defines human badness for Socrates. This obstructionist argument turns that very wonder of question-asking, which I' ve described as our ability to wrap our thought around what we haven' t yet got, into an obstacle: If you know something why would you ask about it? If you're ignorant of it, how would you recognize it if you did get it? Socrates has a reply that has resonated down through the ages; it bears on the essential character of talking, and I'll come to it soon. Meanwhile, there's a third aspect to questions, shown in their very asking. We ask ourselves in inner speech, but in the world, and in that little world, the seminar, we ask each other. This asking presupposes a sort of trust: the trust that we will be �5 comprehended and met halfway by our fellow learners. For a question is a sort of appeal: " Share my perplexity; help me." A fourth trait of asking is one that Socrates, who claims to know so little, claims to know for sure: To inquire, to seek by questions, to search for what one does not know-that makes us better, braver, less lazy than giving in to Meno's clever sophism (86b-c). And finally a fifth feature, which sounds odd but is central. I know of only one subject in which Socrates claims outright to be an expert: He says of himself that he "knows nothing else than matters of love" (Symposium 177d). There are in the dialogues several examples of a wonderfully illuminating word-play: love, eros, and questioning, erotesis, sound very much alike (Symposium 199d, Phaedrus 234c); they are almost homonyms. The love in which Socrates is an expert is the longing for knowledge, the "love of wisdom" which is the English translation of the Greek wordphilosophia. But this longing, this pressure of desire is exactly what you might call the question-feeling. It transfigures apparently insoluble problems into beckoning mysteries, where by a mystery I mean an ultimate problem that attracts energizing reverence rather than dispirited resignation. Our students' much misused word "awesome" applies here, for once. Thus genuine asking is the expression of a desire. For Socrates-and for all of us-such question-desire is always close to real human love. In fact Socratic love has a great penumbra of intermingling loves, among them the affectionate delight that elders feel for the young, the fond respect that colleagues-at their best-feel for one another, and, best of all, that lifelong care which develops between students who have spent many a night talking together. It's a tutor's delight to hear the selfless admiration in the voice of �6 a student who tells of having found such a partner-admiration together with a very proper and surely life-long pride in having accomplished such a friendship. Here is half a line from Schiller's "Ode to Joy," which, in Beethoven's setting, our Freshman Chorus often sings: Wem der grosse Wuifgelungen Eines Freundes Freund zu sein... One who's managed the great fortune To become a true friend's friend. .. such a one is entitled to join in this ode to joy. Schiller has it just right: Friendship is an effortful accomplishment resting on great good luck. This school is its propitious setting: In the talk that is a questioning, friends are found. Aristotle, Plato's true-that is to say resistant-pupil says brusquely: "[Socrates] asked, but didn't answer, for he claimed not to know'' (On Sophistic Refutations, 183b7). Now ironic Socrates is surely unsettling, but no-nonsense Aristotle is often more so. Does he mean it? If I take him at face value, then he is certainly wrong. Socrates does answer, probably always, though often not in explicit words. His questioning doesn't lead to the levity of easy skepticism. He does often begin by "questioning." Light-minded talk about higher education tends to fall into two camps. One camp thinks that this education happens when authorities pour expertise into mostly recalcitrant pupils. The other camp thinks this �7 education occurs when academics incite all too willing students to "question," that is to test, with the implicit intention of refuting, received wisdoms. Socrates often does begin by showing that people's opinions are wrong-headed or incoherent, and, above all, not their own thought but some received doctrine confidently proclaimed to the world but negligently adopted within the soul. That is questioning in the somewhat hostile sense; it is "interrogation." But it is only done in order to clear the decks for a second, more gracious question-asking, by which what ordinary people are really after is confirmed. Socrates is a horsefly to the lazy, to wake them up, but a winged love-god to those ready to be impassioned. I said Socrates gives answers. About present human life he proposes himself as a model that says to us, "Live to learn, and learn to leave life, to be dead" (Phaedo 61 c ff. ). What he means, I think, is this: Devote some of your time every day to reaching for what is behind, beneath, above the world we live in. Here many thoughtful people part company with him-and our students often do, understandably. About ultimate things he offers only working conjectures and hypotheses, which he leaves to his companions to take up. And indeed that is what happened; the thinking generations took him up. Alfred North Whitehead-it figures here that an emigrant to America is speaking to you-says that "the European philosophical tradition ... consists of a series of footnotes to Plato" �d . (Process and Reality, Ch.l, Sec.l }-and that means largely Socrates as Plato pic him speaking. I am about to leap into that two and a half millennia-long footnote for help in thinking more precisely about our ki.nd of talking. Each seminar starts with a question, asked by a tutor. Framing seminar questions is the one ��pertise a tutor might be said to develop. Such a question might well have �8 much thought behind it, but it shouldn't be an invitation to guess the tutor's pet theory. It could be a wide-open admission of puzzlement, but it shouldn't be mushily vague. It might take off from an inconspicuous but significant detail of the text but it shouldn't run the conversation up the creek of a side issue. Why start with a question rather than, say, a tutorial interpretation? A question is,· of course, the very embodiment of a teaching mode devoted to eliciting thought rather than delivering thought-products. The reason lies in the five features of question asking I've mentioned, the most pertinent of these being that questions solicit responses by evincing trust in the willingness and ability to respond in those addressed in the question mode. What then is responsive talk? Here I'll go into the footnote mode. In the Middle Ages, certain thinkers developed the notion of"intentionality." In fact it had come to Europe through the Arabic philosopher Avicenna (c. 1000 C.E.). Most good ideas have their comeback time, and intentionality has been brought back in modem times. It's probably not wrong to say that its beginning is in Socrates' passion for this question: What is it that is knowable in our ever-changing, illusion-rife world, and how is it that words can convey what things are? Intention is both a characteristic of thinking and a capability of speaking (where it is called"imposition'')-one that we can ascribe to nothing else in the world or out of it. ' Its meaning is the action of"stretching towards," of reaching for something. Its descriptive name is "aboutness," the action and the result.of something laying itself ?-bout, of"comprehending" something. Perhaps words show more of the stretching, reaching-toward motion, while thoughts are more like embracing, enclosing structures. �9 Take an example of what intentional aboutness isn 't: a wrapped gift. The gift paper is distinguishable from the box of nougats-and so.you can unwrap the candy-but it's also of the same kind, material stuff. What you can't do is put the gift-wrap about your affectionate wishes, as you can't wrap your sentiments around the nougat-except poetically. Now think a thought. Let's not be particular about its exact nature-whatever we mean when we say that we have something in mind-an object, a relation, an idea, an Th(i..Y\ interpretation-any thought-thing. NGW ask yourself, Can I unwrap my thinking from the thought? When I say that I am thinking a thought, is my thinking separable from the thought? Or it is rather that thinking (that is, a form of the verb for which thought is the noun), is the same as the thought, so that when I think of something, intend it, attend to it, my mind becomes that thing? Do thinking and thought become one? If that's what happens, then which element wins out-the mine-ness of my thinking or the object-ness of the content? Do I taint it with my prejudices, do I rectify it to my standards, or do I let it be what it is? When I think, it is often about a material object in a worldly environment. What aspect of things comes to or into my mind-a mental, quasi-visual image, some ideal essence, or just their use? In what way, as I attend to the world of objects, do they tend toward me? When my talk is for real-that is, when it is about something-how do I begin? How do I get my thoughts to collect themselves in words? Or does my acquired language in fact produce the mental state that feels like thinking, and by its very grammar give me the sense that there are mental objects? How are my words about objects? Do these offer labels that present themselves for me to read off insofar as I know the vocabulary of the world, or do my words tend out from me to the objects, throwing from �10 my mind an ideal sort of lasso, a thinking-noose, that will cast itself about them and snaffle them in a mental shape suitable for my mind? This long litany touches the Socratic mysteries, which, I have said, he started on their way along with some conjectured elucidations. Not that, after all, it matters much who began. These questions, at least, are now ours. Questions about thinking and speaking must surely be central to the education of human beings, who, as even animal ethnologists are willing to admit, are the only animal that can ask questions rather than solicit reactions. But my main point here was to establish one sure thing about talking-that it has the capacity of aboutness, which turns out to make a piece of life like the seminar possible to begin with. Now in the world at large there is much talk that has the aspect of serious, even sophisticated, meaning but that, like many a hard-to-crack nut, has no kernel. So too, in the seminar, there is twaddle-quite a lot of it. Twaddle has in fact a sort of squatter's right in the seminar. Concern for spontaneity and respect for potential make us leery of suppressing it too soon. I can think of three kinds of seminar twaddle. Some among us are so eager to capture attention that they utter words before they have collected a thought. Others are so abashed by the insufficiency of their speaking that they go on for quite a while after they have finished; in the hope of amending their fault they make it worse. This happens to us all and is easily fixed. We just have to become aware of it, as we do of any minor habit. The third kind of twaddle goes much deeper. All worthwhile activities have their specific nullifications, and twaddle is the negation of intentional talk. It is the consequence of a curious negative ability that human beings have: the ability to fashion �11 well-formed sentences that express none of their own thinking, but that sound comfortably explanatory. Here is an inevitable example from the first freshman seminar: Why is Achilles so unassuagably angry when Agamemnon takes his woman away? Student answer: Because he feels dishonored, and"iri the culture of that time honor was important." Tutor's overt follow-up question: What do you know more about, the culture of the time ofHomer's epics (this time happen to be a fictional composite of times) or about Achilles? Tutor's suppressed internal question: How did this most murky of notions-culture-come to seem like a handy explanatory principle to generations of students? Equally silent answer: Because Socrates' notion of opinion is so right. We all share in the remarkable inclination to find satisfaction in surrendering our minds to enticing terms of thought without reaching for the intended thought itself. "Culture" is the most perfect cover-all, the universal wet-blanket for glimmers of penetrating thought. A somewhat impatient tutorial response to twaddle is thus, What are you talking about? And generally, what are we talking about in seminar? Books. We prepare for seminar by reading assignments, and then we bring our readings to class. For my part, I don't care how the readings are delivered. If students find graven stone tablets their medium of choice, let them bring those, or if e-books, let them bring those, provided they don't get diverted and distracted by appended applications, and provided they can find their place. After all, one reason we center seminar on books is so that we may all be on the same page. Let me interrupt myself here for an observation. Our faculty recently had a long discussion about the question: Should e-books be permitted in seminar? We sensibly decided to leave it up to the tutors. In last year's freshman seminar I was expecting an �12 invasion of electronic tablets. Not a one of them appeared. Word was that upperclass members were discouraging them as not in our spirit. The world's opinion is that the young thrive on novelty; the truth as I've experienced it is that; having found a place to cherish, they become its radical conservatives. I have much sympathy. The material book-be it of papyrus, parchment, paper-has, besides its sensory pleasures, one great advantage: it's all there at once in real space. This is a handy representation of one important characteristic of a text: it's an all-present whole; it exists simultaneously with itself. And now that I've used the word "text" let me explain this slightly pretentious term. I use it, first, because it is broader than "book," which is usually composed of words. But we read, in a broad sense, also compositions of notes (musical scores) and books containing more diagrams and symbols than words (mathematical texts). Moreover, "text" reminds us of two etymologically related words: "textile," a woven fabric, and Greek techne, "skill, craft." Books are artfully crafted, carefully coherent artifacts. Well, not all books. The tutors of this college are pretty much at one in thinking themselves not so much entitled as obligated to discriminate between great books and lesser books. St. John's College is, unpopular though that term may be with terminally egalitarian souls, a great books school. Let me say right away that the not-so-great but good books, as well as the mediocre ones, and even the outright shoddy stuff-all these have their saving graces. The'best policy is to read some of everything. (When I was a little girl I developed for a while a passion for reading product labels, especially the fractured instructions written by people for whom English was a second language.) �13 But together we read great books, because, to use a gross metaphor, these are the ones you can sink your teeth into, the ones that stick to your ribs. There are statable criteria for them, of which I'll mention the ones most pertinent to the life of the seminar: Great books are usually self-sufficient, so that no background information or annotation is absolutely necessary to getting absorbed in the text; the best context for them is another great book-perhaps, but not necessarily, its chronological predecessor. Second, a great book, approachable as it is on one level the first time around, is inexhaustibly new, so that on opening it a fifth time you ask yourself, "Could I have read this before? Where was I, to miss so much?" Third, such books are endlessly artful-sometimes beautiful from shapely depth and something ugly with significant contrivance. And fourth, great truth-seeking texts of reflection are full of imagination and great imaginative works of fiction are full of reflection. The former present universals corroborated by particular instances, the latter represent particulars coruscating with liniversal application. Thus philosophy and fiction go hand in hand. Take, for example that famous first sentence of Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." What is it but an applied version of Aristotle's dictum in the Nicomacheari Ethics: "There are many ways of going wrong but only one way which is right" (1106b28)? So such texts are what seminar talk appears to be about. To prepare for seminar we all read the same book-students for the first, tutors for the umptieth time. Reading is, for us, a silent, solitary activity. I say "for us"; Augustine in his Confessions (c.400 C.E.) tells with amazement how his beloved bishop, Ambrose, read. As his eyes moved down �14 the page, "his heart sought out the meaning but his tongue remained silent" (VI, 3). It was an inestimably great revolution, this inward relocation of the written word, which, among other things, made possible summary reading both divorced from and unconcerned about precise wording. We are the heirs of this revolution. This preparatory reading we do is a curious business, then. New readers actually mouth the words; more mature ones read silently but subvocalize the text laryngeally; others let the writing glide directly into the mind. They get the thought, but see rather than hear the words. They register whole sentences through the eyes and tum language, the business of the tongue, into sight-seeing, the work of the eyes. However they do it, they now have in their minds and hearts the words and thoughts of someone else. Our texts, then, are writings, for the most part. And surprise, surprise! Books are written before they are read. How does writing come about? Here is how I do it myself and imagine it for others: Writing comes after talking, in two ways. First, in my own personal history I learned to speak way back, effortlessly, but to write later, with difficulty. I also know that in the larger history of human beings, writing, especially the kind that records the sound of speech, alphabetical writing, did not, in fact, come to Greece until the late eighth century B.C.E. (where in my early years as an archaeologist I had a chance to publish some of the earliest graffiti-that is, scratched letter-words). Second, before and as I write, I talk to myself, because speech is the concretion of thought; it collects its misty pressure into concise sentences and utters them in sensory shape. It's often said that the primary purpose of speech is "communication." The evidence seems to me otherwise. I imagine that most of us say to ourselves in the course of our day hundreds of words for every word we say to others. Speech certainly begins �15 that way. Listen to what students of child development call "jargoning," that sweetest, most melodious gibberish of late infancy, which issues from a lonely crib. Whether it is the antecedent of adult twaddle or carries mental meaning no one knows. This internal speech is what we write down. In "paper conferences" with students tutors can't do better than to persuade them that it is this talk with themselves that they ought to record, without dulling rectification in the interest of a risklessly pompous formality. An author-the word means an originating "augmentor"-is a recorder of an inner speech that improves upon the banal ordinariness of a relaxed inner life by saying something original, either in the sense of "never-said-before" or in the sense of going to the origin of things-or both. This is practically a definition of what the authors of our great books accomplish. They are the masters of pouring thought into the mold of inner speech and of turning that mold out onto the expectant paper. . I must add here that, although you'd scarcely believe it, both claims-that books have authors and that speaking comes before writing-have been disputed in the later part of the last century. The former claim, that there is no originating authorship, is disputed because whatever is said has been pre-shaped by predecessors and will be reshaped by readers. The latter claim, that writing precedes speaking, is disputed on the ground (too sophisticated for presentation here) that writing has a character more original than speech and in fact subsumes it. 1 Reading presupposes writing, and writing poses at least two dangers. The one I've just touched on is that in the interest of liberating our students from being possessed by the opinion of others we in fact subject them to four years of others' very powerful Jacques Derrida, OfGrammatology (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967), Chapter 2. Derrida, the author of both claims, at one point instituted a suit for plagiarism. Imagine!) 1 �16 opinions. Another way to put this is that even--or especially-the devoted study of books is not direct thinking, immediate aboutness. It runs the danger of producing a commentator's soul. I mean that to study books is not quite the same as to think about things; it is to be attending to a secondary sort of aboutness. By thinking in a primary way I mean appropriating the cry of early modem scientists: "To the things themselves!"-· without mediating texts. The other danger, really the complement of the first, is set down in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus. Socrates tells approvingly of an Egyptian king who refused the gift of writing because, he said, those who put trust in writing will learn to forget how to go into themselves to recollect the truths within. Writing will then tum out to be no medicine for memory, but merely a reminder (272c ff.). Writing is external memory; we call on it to remind us now and then of baggage we do not care to keep always with us. Whatever is readily accessible as a filed record becomes storable stuff, a bit of fractured fact, related to living thought as a cellophane-wrapped fish filet is to a frisky live fish. It becomes information, which is as apt to wreck as to rectify judgment. I think this is an up-to-date version of Socrates' misgivings about writing. However-you might call this Platonic irony-this condemnation of writing is delivered to us in the most ravishing piece of philosophical writing I know of, the work that drew me into philosophy as a graduate student. Evidently Plato thought of a way to overcome the rigidification of writing-by incorporating conversation into the text. We extend this trick by incorporating books into a living dialogue, the seminar. How do we then mitigate these drawbacks? Well, we get together, come out of studious privacy, to talk with each other. In universities, "seminar" means an advanced �17 study group under the leadership of a professor. Papers are written, read, and discussed. It is a place of earnest, highly disciplined speech. Our seminars are serious, but perhaps not earnest, or at least not dead earnest, but live earnest-lively. Walk through our corridors on seminar nights, and if you don't hear hilarity issuing from behind this or that door, you may conclude that we've turned into the sitting dead, like the ancestral mummies the Incas brought out to sit at their feasts. For laughter is the explosive expulsion of breath that follows from having one's equanimity pleasantly pinpricked by an acute incongruity-the result, in other words, of a startling insight. Laughter is the grace note of our seriousness. To be sure, the books lie before us, well used, even marked up (which is why we should buy, not borrow, seminar books), and they are the first focus of our attention. But that is also a misapprehension. Books, texts, are occasions, not ends. We don't live in but through books. That formulation would be mere verbiage, were there not a way of study that stays strictly with the text and in it. For instance, in graduate study, say, in English or philosophy, all the student's effort is really invested in the text. The goal is to know the text accurately, to be acquainted with scholarly opinions about it, to work out its arguments in detail, all the while setting aside questions of truth-telling and personal illumination. We encourage a different kind of reading-more direct, and if you like, somewhat naive. Because the author wrote about or expressed something, we feel entitled to pass through the text to that something. We find it plausible sometimes to ask "What did the author have in mind?" and sometimes "Does this representation agree with our experience of life?" and sometimes "Can I corroborate this claim in my own thinking?" �18 Not that we ignore the literal words in their artfulness-not at all-but we regard them as a sort of come-on to catch and hold us to the text until it gives up its meaning. Let me give an example from the freshman seminar that was going on while I was writing this lecture -a wonderfully lively seminar. We asked: "Do the Homeric gods, in all their irresponsible levity, look the same to Homer as to his heroes, does he have access to a view of Olympus, transmitted to him by the Muses, that none of his humans have?" We asked: "Is it in accord with our experience that gentle, thoughtful Patroclus is transformed into a wildly impetuous warrior just by wearing Achilles' armor?" We asked: "Can we follow Socrates in his claim that truth already lies in us and can be retrieved, 'recollected,' as he says, by the right questions?" So to sum up our sort of reading: We pay careful attention to details for the sake of the text's-the author's-intentions, and we pay attention to these for the sake of world and life. That effort requires skills, namely, the arts of reading in the broad sense, the liberal arts. We have the corresponding tutorials, where we practice dealing with thought-laden words in the language class and with thought-structured symbols in the mathematics class. We add to these the latest of the liberal arts to appear on the scene, the art of making nature speak in numbers; for that we have the laboratory class. I've now talked in tum about talking, reading, writing. Now comes the high point: listening. Among the boons of living within a study program like ours-one that is stable and changes, though steadily, yet slowly-is that truly new experiences can come to us tutors. For our students, it's all new anyhow. By contrast, when so-called innovation, that is, deliberate variation, is the universal background, we may indeed be stimulated by novelty-the ever-diminishing frisson accompanying continual variety-but we can �19 scarcely experience newness, which is the poignant sensation of a substantial accession­ a real expansion of our psychic holdings. Under the influence of continua! novelty our mind, as Shakespeare so tellingly puts it, "Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, I Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide, I To rot itself with motion" (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.4.45-47). Thus it was that through our way of acquiring truly new insights, I belatedly discovered a philosopher-as it happens the very first one whose writings we have. He was born around 540 B.C.E. I had often glanced over, but had never made my way into, his sayings. He thinks in aphorisms, that is, terse revelations. The most enticing one of these begins in this way: Listen not to me but to the logos . . . (Heraclitus, D50). Logos is one Greek work all our students are apt to have something to say about. It had dozens of uses and more than one central meaning: word, speech, saying, thinking, reason, ratio. Heraclitus's saying goes on to tell us what we must, in tum, say when we listen to the Logos, the Logos with a capital L. This Logos is the principle that governs everything, and it has something to say to us. I won't go into the entirety of the world­ informing thought that the Logos utters to Heraclitus, but I'll attend� to the first part of it. I think it has, and is meant to have, several meanings-a fact that governs many of Heraclitus's sayings and makes reading him so pleasurably difficult. One of these sayings, the one just quoted, is, as it were, made to be the principle of our seminar. I'll retranslate it: Listen not to me but to my intention. �20 The civility of the seminar, expressed in our addressing one another by last names together with the honorific Ms. or Mr., goes much deeper than a mere form of address. It makes for respectful distance. It means listening past personalities to the thought-gist of our speaking. It enjoins us to try to hear what our fellow speakers intend us to hear, even if we have to hear past the words they are actually, and perhaps ineptly, saying. Of course, we take in each other's looks, mannerisms, gestures. It is, after all, through these that the human being to whose intention we are to listen appears to us. Of course, the "me" Heraclitus wants us to listen past is unavoidably up front. We all, particularly tutors, whose business it is to form impressions of the candor, seriousness, and preparation of speakers, observe the physical fayade. Any student who imagines that tutors don't know, by such observations, whether they've done their seminar reading or are improvising-be it brilliantly, be it twaddingly-is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. The tutors' version of Heraclitus's injunction is the prospective principle of hopeful pretense: Listen for the intention, for what the speech is about, listen to all the speeches extendedly and intently, until they are about something; help students frame what they mean or find out what they intended to say by evincing a staunch faith (even against all evidence) that they did mean or intend something. What is for Heraclitus a call to hear the speech of Thought-capital T-itself, is for us a pedagogic principle: Give respect even before it is due, so that it may become due. Advise students with tacit benevolence as Hamlet does his mother with demonstrative bitterness: "Assume a virtue if you have it not'' (Hamlet, 2.4.I62). For Aristotle teaches that virtues are acquired by being practiced before they are truly possessed (Nicomachean Ethics II03 a-b). �21 So also should students listen to each other in the Heraclitean mode: Suppress animosities and aversions, go for the significant gist in one another's talk. The question "Did you mean . . . ?" is helpful respect made audible. After all, the seminar was intended to bring us out of the isolation of studious reading and the rigidity of recorded, written speech, and to introduce responsiveness into the life oftearning. The underlying hypothesis here, which we hold to through thick imd thin, is that to be human i )� given a chance, intelligent. Now intelligence has this feature, one that has been the millennial preoccupation of thoughtful people: �\Jhat we each think with is our very own intelligence-which makes us interesting to one another-and that what the intellect is about is common to us all-which makes it possible for us to hear one another to begin with. In my hurried summary of the liberal arts and the tutorials devoted to them I left out the music tutorial and the chorus. Among the Greeks, music stands near the apex of the liberal arts; it is the prime mode of praising God for the Hebrews; and it stands close to theology for certain Christians. (See, e.g. , Plato, VB"IJJ� Republic 530d ff.; i'Aiste6:e-Rsaiics Psalm 33:3; Luther, "On Noble Music"). Our president recently put music at the center of his convocation address, and then, to confirm his words, the college sang. ' For as we are rightly called a talking college so we are surely a music-making community. As words are to our thoughts, so is music to our feelings. Without music our program would be radically incomplete; we would be neglecting the affective root of our nature, our sensibility, and our passions. We have been called a severely intellectual college, and this could be an accusation rather than a compliment, if we did not also have a place in the program for cultivating the very sense, hearing, that both takes in linguistic �22 utterances addressed to the intellect and also hears tonal structures calling to our passions. In the music tutorial we learn how passions are informed by number, not by the merely quantitative but by the wonderfully qualitative mathematics of tones in a scale. Moreover, we consider how sounds and words respond to each other, and we attend to a relation of sensation and thinking which we expect to carry over into all our learning­ that tenacious thinking is replete with feeling, that steady passion is contoured by thought, and that the sensory surface itself, be it conduit or last stop, is deeply questionable. And finally, in Chorus, we are the singing college. In talking we face toward each other and speak to each other, turn and turnabout, vice versa-that is the very meaning of con-versa-tion. But we sing with rather than to each other, and we do it mostly not in tum but simultaneously. We are together in the presence of something we are at once hearing and doing, receiving and producing; we are absorptive and responsive, listening to ourselves and to our fellow choristers. It's like hearing a heavenly lecture, for that's how I imagine the angels listen. And that is the end of this merely earthly lecture, addressed to the parents over our student's heads, so to speak, but really meant for them. So thank you all for listening. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 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 Talking, reading, writing, listening: a lecture for parents and students Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-11-04 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 04, 2011 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series (during Parents Weekend). Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 2011-11-04 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 has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/12">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1d3f88b4251f118f815e78f707981e97.pdf 04ccd899a25071e8771e3a15c3549cfd PDF Text Text Friday Night Lecture Homecoming, October 4, 2002 Annapolis, MD THE ElvfPIRES OF THE SUN AND THE WEST Eva Brann, Tutor This lecture is dedicated to my friend and fellow tutor William Darkey, who first introduced me to the book behind this.lecture, William Prescott's History of the Conquest ofMexico. I shall begin with two sets of facts and dates. On or about August 8of1519 Heman Cortes, a hidalgo, a knight, from Medellin in the Estremadura region of Spain, having sailed his expeditionary fleet from Cuba to win "vast and wealthy lands," set out from a city he called Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico to march inland, west toward the capital of Anahuac, the empire of the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs. The city was called Tenochtitlan and its lord, the emperor, was Montezuma II. Cortes knew of the place from the emperor's coastal vassals and from delegations Montezuma had sent loaded with presents to welcome-and to forestall-the invaders. The presents included many works of well-crafted gold. Cortes had with him about 300 Spaniards, including about forty crossbowmen and twenty arquebusiers, that is, men carrying heavy matchlock rifles. He probably had three front-loading cannons. His officers wore metal armor. There were fifteen horses for the captains and a pack of hunting dogs. (I might mention here that the Aztec dogs were a hairless type bred for food.) The band was accompanied by Indian porters and allies, a group that grew to about I 000 as they marched inland. Early in November they passed at 13000 feet between the two volcanoes that guard the high Valley of Mexico. Some Spanish captains astounded the Indians by venturing to climb to the crater rim of the ominously smoking Popocatepetl. On November 8, Cortes was on �the causeway to Tenochtitlan. On November 14, Montezuma, the ruler of a realm of 125,000 square miles, capable of putting in the field an army of200,000 men with a highly trained officer corps, quietly surrendered his person to the custody of Cortes, declared himself a vassal of Emperor Charles V, and transferred his administration to the palace assigned to the Spaniards. He soon made them a present of the state treasure which they had discovered behind a plasteredover door in the_ palace aviary. Cortes's suimise that just to enter Tenoc.htitlan was to take Anahuac captive seemed to be justified. On June 30, 1520, Cortes being absent, Montezuma was either murdered by the Spaniards or stoned to death by his own people as he appeared on the palace wall attempting to contain a rebellion. The latter account seems more plausible, since he appears to have been shielded by Spaniards to whom he was a valuable pawn and since some of his nobles were growing disgusted with his submissiveness. The uprising had been induced by the young captain whom Cortes had left in charge, who had massacred unarmed celebrants of the feast of Huitzilop6chtli, the city's chief god; this god both was and stood for the Sun. The Mexican uprising culminated in the noche triste, the Sad Night, when the Spaniards were driven from the city with enormous loss of life. In June 1521 the Spanish situation looked desperate to them, as a vigorous, indomitable, eighteen-year-old emperor, Cuauhtemoc, Montezuma' s second successor (the first having died of smallpox), assumed the leadership of an Aztec army now better acquainted with these once apparently invincible invaders. On August 15, 1521, just two years after his landing, Cortes's band, augmented by some new arrivals and an allied Indian army from Tenochtitlan's old enemy, Tlaxca.Ia, fought its way, foot by foot, back into the city, with frightful losses on both sides. The Spaniards were supported by a flotilla of forty brigantines, light square-rigged sailing vessels that Cortes had ordered built 2 �and dragged overland to Lake Texcoco, the complex shallow water on which Tenochtitlan stood.-It was the first fleet of sailing ships to float on the lake. I am still in the realm of fact when I say that within a few days this city, surpassing all cities then on earth in the beauty of its situation and the magic of its aspect, was completely razed . Within four years it was overlaid, under Cortes's supervision, by a complete Spanish city, whose cathedral, the Cathedral of Mexico City, was eventually built h4[d by the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. In this total catastrophe the Spaniards had lost fewer than 100 men, the Aztecs or Mexica about 100,000. I have, of course, omitted myriads of gripping details, such as a novelist might hesitate to invent. But I shall now abbreviate an abbreviation: In August 1519 there was a large, powerful, highly civilized empire called Anahuac. By August 1521 it was gone; instead there was a new realm, a colony called New Spain; Spanish was replacing the native Nahuatl. Now the second set of facts, even more curtailed. On May 13, 1532, Francisco Pizarro (like Cortes from the Estremadura and his distant relation) arrived at Tumbez, a port at the northern end of the Inca empire and of modern Peru. This empire was called by its people Tahuantinsuyu, meaning the Realm of the Four Quarters. Pizarro had 130 troopers, 40 cavalry and one small cannon. The Inca Atahualpa-Inca means Lord-had an anny of 50,000 men. On November 16, 1533, the Inca came, at Pizarro's invitation, to meet him in the town plaza of Cajamara. There he was unintelligibly harangued by the chaplain of the expedition and given a breviary: the Inca scornfully threw the scribbles to the ground. Within 33 minutes, he having been seized, 4000 of his men had been massacred. Resistance and the empire itself fell apart with his capture. Atahualpa offered to fill his prison, a cell 22 x 10 feet, with gold to the height of his reach in exchange for his freedom. While the temples which were encrusted with gold were 3 �being denuded and the condition was being fulfilled, the Inca was condemned to death by burning. This sentence was commuted to strangulation when he agreed to be baptized. Pizarro soon took Cuzco, the capital, and installed a puppet Inca, Manco Capac, who mounted a rebellion; it was put down with great loss of life on the Inca's side in 1534. There followed a period of civil war among the conquerors. Again to summarize the summary: A tiny band of Spanish ruffians brought down, within two· years, the most efficiently aqministered polity of its time. Quechua, the native language, was replaced by Spanish as the chief language. It is thought that this second scenario was, on Pizarro's part, a reprise of Cortes's conquest. If so, it is a demonstration of the inferiority of imitations. The kind of facts I have listed here are spectacular yet uncontested discontinuities in the stream of life. The dates, which tell us both the temporal order of these facts and their distance from us, serve to dramatize the discontinuity: About half a millennium ago there occurred, not very far south of us and close to each other in space and time, two mind-boggling events-the destruction by a very few Spaniards of two great civilizations. We at this college have read or will read in Herodotus's Persian Wars how in July of 480 B.C. a band of 299 Spartans, the same in number as Cortes's original companions, died in holding the pass of Thermopylae against an Asian anny of who knows how many hundreds of thousands, led by Xerxes, king of Persia. Their object was to give the Greeks time and courage to repel the invader. But the Spartans were defending their own land from a self-debilitating behemoth. The Spaniards' situation in Mesoamerica is just the inverse, except that in each case the few were the free . What, we may wonder, would our world be like if the Asians had prevailed in 480 B.C. or the Nahua in 1519 AD.? 4 �How could it happen? How did these American empires fall? Just as Herodotus drew conclusions about the nature of the Greeks from the Persian defeat, so one might wonder if illumination about the nature of our West might not be found in these catastrophes that mark the beginning of modem life. To put it straightforwardly: In reading about Mexico and Peru I began to wonder if there might be a clue in these events to the apparently irresistible potency of the West when it touches, be it insidiously or catastrophically, other worlds, be they receptive or resistant. Let me explain the not altogether appropriate use of the term "the West" in my title, "The Empires of the Sun and the West." Our tradition-I mean the one whose works we study at this college-is usually called the Western tradition. It is thereby revealed as defining itself against the East, Near and Far, the Orient, the place where the sun rises. Our North American republic is in this sense the West's very West and its currently culminating expression. But, of course, the Aztecs-let me interrupt myself to say that the people of the imperial city ofMexicoTenochtitlan did not call themselves Aztecs but Mexica and that they called those who spoke their language the Nahua and that the term Aztec was introduced to the English-speaking world by the aforementioned Prescott-these Mexica, then, of course thought of the invaders as being from the quarter of the rising sun, from the east. This turns out to be a significant fact. Columbus thought that he was "sailing not the usual way" but west-sailing west to reach the East, Japan, China, India. It was for quite a while a very unwelcome discovery that the people whom the adventurers so hopefully called Indians (as I will continue to do here) inhabited a long continent which, although it contracted into a narrow isthmus in the middle, blocked the ocean route to the fabulous Orient. Thus Prescott calls Tenochtitlan "the great capital of the western world." So "West" is, strictly speaking, nonsense as used in this context, but I cling to it because it is the 5 �available shorthand for ourselves, for those living in the tradition that has its roots in Jerusalem and Athens, achieves its modernity in Europe, has come to its current culmination on this continent, and is spreading its effects all over the globe. What can be more necessary at this moment than to grapple with the being of this West? As I read on it seemed to me often that the reasons given by historians for Anahuac' s sudden collapse before the Spaniards might well be cumulatively necess¥J' but could not be sufficient conditions. I mean that without their operation the Empires could not have fallen so quickly, but that altogether they did not so completely account for the fall as to make it seem unavoidable. It is true that the Spaniards brought horses into a land without draft animals, and so the cavaliers could run down the pedestrian Aztec warriors and frighten the Indians into seeing the Europeans as centaurs, four-footed monstrous men-horses. But these Indians soon learned that man and horse were separable and mortal; during their desperate and bloody defense of Tenochtitlan there appeared on the skull rack of a local temple, beneath 53 heads of Spaniards, the heads of a number of horses, of "Spanish deer," as they were now called. The crossbows and cannons may have delivered more swift and terrifying destruction than the Aztec javelinthrowers, the metal armor deflected the cuts of obsidian-studded wooden swords; the driving greed for gold, which, as Cortes ironically represented to an Indian official, was the specific remedy for a disease that troubled the Spaniards, may have disoriented the people; the 'physical disease brought by the Spaniards, the smallpox, did more than decimate the uninoculated natives; Spanish luck at crucial junctures may have demoralized the caciques, the Indian chieftains; the harsh exactions and suppression ofMontezuma's empire did indeed provide Cortes with Indian allies (though the 150,000 Indians that came with the now 900 Spaniards to retake Tenochtitlan were by their very numbers an encumbrance on the heavily defended causeways into the island 6 �city and by their excited hatred for their Mexica oppressors a danger to Cortes's prudent intentions}; the crucifix may well, in Carlos Fuentes's words, "have made their minds collapse," as they saw how their own numerous gods demanded numerous sacrifices of them, while this one Christian god sacrificed one man, himself. Such factors or forces are called, in the categories in which history is conceptualized, technological, demographic, epidemiological, political, psychological, or what have you. Perhaps they were necessary to Spani?h success. But a number of contemporaries thought that at various junctures it might well have gone otherwise. For example, the strong-minded king ofTexcoco, Cacima, said that all the Spaniards within Tenochtitlan could be killed in an hour; Cortes himself thought so. To me historical inevitability seems an ex post facto cause. It is the way afait accompli presents itself, when passage has turned into past. I cannot quite tell whether my rejection of historical determinism should be reinforced or thrown into doubt by the fact that the Mexica themselves had given themselves over to fate, as I will tell. Perhaps that very self-surrender was a sufficient condition, the factor that makes the outcome practically certain. But that would only be half the explanation; for the other half one would have to look in the nature of the Europeans as well. Before doing that, let me complete the apology for my title. In it I mention the two empires, though I will speak of one only, Anahuac. I mean no reflection on the Inca realm, that marvel of social administration and public works built with the most astounding masonry I've ever seen. But both of the Peruvian protagonists were like deteriorated copies of their Aztec templates. Pizarro was an intrepid thug, by all accounts, and Atahualpa a culpably and carelessly arrogant man with a violent history. Since it seemed to me that the pairs of chief actors in this drama not only were the main factors because both empires were autocracies, but were also in 7 �their very distinctive ways personally emblematic of their worlds, I chose the more humanly accessible, the more expressive duo. Finally, I refer to the Sun because the solar domination under which both these Precolumbian empires labored seemed to me more and more significant. The Incas called themselves the Children of the Sun; their great Sun Temple at Cuzco, the Coricancha, was studded with gold, "the tears wept by the sun." So too the Mexicans, who called their generals "the Lords of the Sun," had come into the marshes of Lake Texcoco, their place of destiny, led by priests who bore on their backs a twittering medicine bundle. It was Huitzilopochtli, who was reborn on the way at Teotihuac<in, the birthplace of the gods, and later installed in Tenochtitlan in the Great Temple. There he was incessantly nourished with human blood. Of course, when I use the indicative mood in speaking of the Aztec gods, I am not reporting fact-I am telling what the Aztecs said and are thought to have believed. The most difficult thing, I have discovered, is for historians to find the right voice in speaking of alien gods, especially when they are many in number, fluid in function, and visible in many forms. The Indians' relation to the sun I have come to think of as symbolic of the whole debacle and even its proximate cause. To anticipate my version of a common idea: The daily, annual and epochal returns of the heavenly body were to the Aztecs so fearsomely antic, so uncertain, that they burdened themselves, as their traditions taught them, with rituals and sacrifices. These were so demanding that they enfeebled both the Nahua empire and the Nahua's souls. The West's relation to the Sun was just the opposite. In 1506, just about the time young Cortes came to the Indies, Copernicus was beginning to write On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. It is one of Western modernity's seminal works, which our sophomores study. In it he shows that the mathematical rationalization of the 8 �heavens is more economically accomplished and the celestial phenomena are better "saved" if the sun stands stably at the center of the world. But his motive is not only mathematical economy. "For who," he says, "would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another place than this, wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time?" Cortes was surely not a premature Copernican, but he acted out of a tradition in which one God controls the cosmos through the laws of nature. Since the deity' is not capricious, celestial n1j.ture is ever-reliable, well-illuminated and confidence-inspiring. Nature's sun does not, in any case, respond to human · propitiation and Nature's god prefers prayers to ritual sacrifices. Let me append here a poignant incident told by Cortes. In the final days of the investment of Tenochtitlan, a delegation of parched and starvmg Mexica came to the banicades. They said that they held Cortes to be a child of the Sun, who could perform a circuit of the earth in a day and a night. Why would he not slay them in that time to end their suffering? Let me hold off yet one more minute from my main task to tell you what motives drew me into a study so far from our Program. To begin with, there was the sheer enchantment of what proved to be a fragile civilization and the unburdened romance of comfortably un-current drama. All that romance I got from reading William Hickling Prescott's Conquest ofMexico of 1843, and his Conquest of Peru of 1847. Of the first book he himself wrote that it was conceived "not as a philosophical theme but as an epic in prose, a romance of chivalry." For this approach later historians, for whom demythification, deromanticization, and the dispersal of human deeds into forces and patterns is a professional requirement, despise him somewhat, and it took me a while to see what valuable lesson could be drawn from his telling. Prescott has it right; first the great tale, then the critical theory. 9 �From the first I knew I was reading the American Gibbon. We at St. John' s used to read parts, particularly notorious :fifteenth chapter, of that English historian's monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, completed in 1788. To my taste the American is the finer of the two. Gibbon conceals in the magnificantly Latinate periods of his style the universal irony of the ultimately enlightened man. I do not fault him for sitting in judgment, for a non-judgmental historian is an incarnate contradiction and produces only an armature o( facts without the musculature that gives it human shape. But I am put off by his judging as an Olympian enthroned on Olympus. In that fifteenth chapter, which treats the question "by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of this earth?" (a question of the kind I am asking) he reflects with raised eyebrows in tum on the mortification of the flesh, pious chastity and divine providence, so as to come to a pretty secular answer, just as if Christianity were not first and last a faith. Surely when a faith conquers, its substance must be given some credit. Prescott, on the other hand, who had in his youth privately critiqued Gibbon's style for its "tumid grandeur," writes with deliberate American plainness,though to this twenty-first-century ear, with a dignified elegance. What matters more to me is that he does his level best to enter into the feelings and thoughts of his alien world, finding much to admire in the Aztecs and much to blame in the Spaniards; for example he calls the massacre of the Indians in fateful Cholula a "dark stain" on Cortes' s record . But for all his romantic pleasure in new marvels he never condescends to accept the horrifying elements of Aztec civilization. He recognizes that these are not individual crimes but systemic evils that his Western liberal conscience cannot condone. One might say that he dignifies his subjects with his condemnation. For this candor he is, as you can 10 �imagine, belittled these days as naive, culture-bound, and ethnocentric. I shall have a word to say on the sophisticated reverse bigotry of his belittlers. His style, to add one more feature, is extraordinarily vivid; it compares to Gibbon's as a classical statue in all its original bright encaustic colors to one that has been dug up, now only bare white marble. This visual aliveness may be a "blind Homer" effect. When Prescott was a young student dining at the Harvard Commons, he was hit in the eye by a hard piece of bread during a food fight and was half-blind for the rest of his life. It is characteristic of this man that, although he knew whose missile had hit him, he never told the name. His enormous collection of sources was read to him and evidently richly illustrated in his imagination. I might mention the other chief sources I read. (A longer bibliography, merging books read and those merely consulted, is attached.) First for anyone interested in the actual course of the Conquest is Bernal Diaz del Castillo's True History of New Spain of 1555 . This simply told, incident-rich account of the march on Tenochtitlan and what happened afterwards gains credence from the fact that the old trooper was disgruntled with his captain's assignment of rewards-the common condition of the Conquistador ranks; the poor devils got little for their endless exertions and wounds. In spite of his grievances, Diaz's love and admiration for Cortes unsuppressably dominates his story. The Conquistadores are sometimes represented as having had eyes for nothing not made of gold. Here is the old soldier's recall of Tenochtitlan as he first glimpsed it, thirty-six years before, on a causeway leading toward the island city: We were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments they tell of Amadis, on account of the great towers and cues (temples) rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things we saw were not a dream. It is not to be wondered that I here write it down in this manner, for there is so much to think over that I do not know how to describe 11 �it, seeing things, as we did, that have never been heard of or seen or even dreamed. These men; some of them ruffians, but with medieval romances behind their eyes to help them see alien beauty, were evidently not altogether sick with gold greed. But those later writers who don't blame them for the one, accuse them of the other: they're either merely medieval knighterrants or merely mercantile expeditionaries. In fact, they seem to have been poignantly aware that they were seeing sights no European had ever seen before or could ever see after. Here is what they saw: A city edged by flowering "floating gardens," the mud-anchored chinampas, lying on the shining flat waters of a shallow, irregular lake collected in a high valley guarded by the snowy peaks-even in August---ofthe two volcanoes; straight broad causeways connecting the city to the shore giving into straight broad avenues leading from the four directions of the winds to its sacred center, the center of the world, with its great, gleaming, colorfully decorated temple pyramid; a grid of smaller streets edged with bridged canals; a myriad of lesser temple pyramids, some smoking with sacrifices; palaces with stuccoed walls and patios polished to gleam like silver; sparkling pools; crowds of clean, orderly people going about their business, especially in the great market of Tlatelolco; gardens everywhere; and the white houses of the city's quarter million inhabitants with their flat roofs, the azoteas from which two years hence such a deadly shower of missiles would rain down on the returning Spaniards that the dwellings were demolished one by one.-All these features of the vision have been, incidentally, described with a poet's relish by William Carlos Williams: [T]he city spread its dark life upon the earth of a new world, sensitive to its richest beauty, but so completely removed from those foreign contacts that harden and protect, that at the very breath of conquest it vanished. 12 �The mutual admiration of Indians and Spaniards was great-in the beginning. True, the Spaniards, whom Cortes's vigilance kept sleeping in their armor, stank in the nostrils of the much-bathing Indians, and the priests with their long, blood-matted hair in their gore-bespattered sanctuaries nauseated the Spaniards. (I omit here, for the moment, the Spaniards' response to the sacrifices themselves, which marked, on the Christians' side, the beginning of the end of amity.) The Spaniards were astonished by Indian craftsmanship. Diaz describes.after decades a necklace made of golden crabs (others say crayfish) that Montezuma placed around Cortes's neck. Of course, Diaz described the golden gifts more often in terms of the pesos they weighed when melted down into bullion. I note here that the Aztecs did not, evidently, have scales and did not reduce objects to their universal stuff, ponderable mass (thus the Mexicans used natural items, quils of gold dust and cocoa beans, for currency, while the Spanish had the peso d' oro, the "gold weight," calibrated in fact to silver, to 42.29 grams of the pure substance)~ this intellectual device of universal quantification even those critics of the West who deplore it can hardly forego in the business oflife. The Spaniards were astounded by, and perhaps a little envious of, the stately splendor of the cacique' s accoutrements. The Indians, on their part, were amazed by the invaders' daring, tenaicty, and endurance. They called them, as the Spanish heard it, teules, teat/ being the Nahuatl word for god. The term seems to have been used somewhat as Homer uses dios, indicating sometimes just excellence and sometimes divinity. As we shall see, the Aztecs had a serious reason to call Cortes and his people gods. The Spanish, on their side, in their very horror of the frightful-looking Aztec god-images, paid them a certain respect in regarding them not as mere idols, deaf and dumb objects of stupid worship, but much as the Mexica themselves did: Sahaglin, of whom I will shortly tell, records an Aztec ruler's admonitory speech in which he says: "For our lord seeth, heareth within wood, within stone." The god-representations were 13 �not of masks of nothing to the Christians, but they were images of demons, of the Devil in various shapes. Thus in looking at the Nahuatl side in Sahagun's dual language text, I noticed that diablo, Devil, had become a Spanish loan word in Nahuatl--one new name for all the old divinities, to be abominated but also acknowledged. The second eyewitness source is Cortes himself, who wrote to his sovereign, Charles V, five letters reporting on his activities. Of these cartas de relacion, lettex:s ofreport, all but one are extant in copies. They are not notes but voluminous, detailed accounts beginning with the first, pre-Cortes exploration of the Gulf Coast and ending with Cortes's own post-Conquest explorations; the second and third letter contain the material for this lecture. The English version conveys a flavor of studiedly plain elegance. These clearly literary works are charged by historians with being both subtly self-aggrandizing and consciously myth-making. To me it would seem strange if Cortes, in writing to his sovereign, on whom depended acknowledgements and rewards, did not portray his exertions most favorably. It might be said-I don't know whether in mitigation or exacerbation-that he was also willing to suppress a brave but irrepressible compaiiero's guilt : Nowhere have I found even a mention of Alvarado's culpability in the events leading to the noche triste. It is also said that Cortes invented the myth of an Aztec empire which rivaled Charles's own, to whet the Spanish emperor's interest in his new dominion. To me, the account itself, telling of tributes owed by the subject cities and of their chiefs obliged to be in attendance in Tenochtitlan, sounds more like information he was in fact given by proud Mexica officials or disaffected dependents. Above all, Cortes fills his letters with myriads of meticulously noted detail-too thick and too vivid to be attributed to mere mendacious fantasizing . He would have had to have been a veritable Gabriel Garcia Marquez to invent so magical a reality. For, he says, "we saw things so 14 �remarkable as not to be believed. We who saw them with our own eyes could not grasp them with our understanding." Cortes himself will appear in a moment. The third source, the most exhaustive in scope and remarkable in method, is The History of the Things of New Spain by the before-mentioned Friar Bernadine de Sahagun. He had arrived as the forty-third of the religious that Cortes had requested in one of his letters to the emperor. The Conquistador needed them to cany on the task of conversion, bec~use, as he said, the ·,_,. . . Indians had a great natural attraction to Christianity; indeed in the early post-Conquest years, Indians were baptized by the thousands a day. (The reasons that Cortes's observation is not implausible will be mentioned below.) The name New Spain in Sahagun's title is, incidentally, Cortes's own for conquered Anahuac: ''New Spain of the Ocean Sea." For the Conquistador it betokens a great colonial accession to old peninsular Spain and the emphasis is on "Spain." But later the accent shifts to "New," as the criollos, the Mexican-born Spaniards, rebel against the old country's domination. Eventually a nativist revival and a growing sense of nationhood leads to a rejection by the nativeborn Spaniards themselves of their Conquistador heritage, and when in 1821 the country achieves independence, it will be called by the old Nahua name for Tenochtitlan, Mtxico (now pronounced in the Spanish way, Mehico) . Nativist Mexico's tutelary deity will be Quetzalc6atl, the dominating god of this lecture, of whom more in a moment. Back to Sahagun. He learned Nahuatl himself and spent the rest of his life, with much untoward clerical interference, compiling the world's first inside ethnographic account. In his college he trained his own informants, Indian boys, often of noble descent, who could interview their living elders and obtain the information that Sahagun compiled in parallel columns, Spanish and Nahuatl. The work, in twelve volumes, is known as the Florentine Corpus. Lisa Richmond, 15 �our librarian, fulfilled my·unexpectant hopes by buying the very expensive English edition for our library, and if one reader a decade finds the delight and illumination in it that I did, the investment will be well justified. Sahagun begins with the gods and their births-for like Greek gods, these gods were born, at Teotihuacan, 33 miles northeast of Tenochtitlan. This sacred city was well over a millennium old when Anahuac was established, and in ruins. But there the Mexica came to worship, particularly at the great temple pyramid dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. What bound new Anahuac to old Teotihuacan-the name means City of the Gods-was their common era, that of the Fifth Sun, upon whose destruction the world would end. Sahagun then records everything from the sacred rituals and binding omens to the set . . moral speeches (much more charming without failing to be scary than similar speeches made by our elders) down to the riddles people asked, such as "What drags its entrails through a gorge?" Answer: "A needle." The next to last book is an inventory of the "Earthly Things" of New Spain, its flora, fauna and minerals; the chapter on herbs begins with the plants "that perturb one, madden one," the hallucinogens. The twelfth book is Sahagun's own history of the Conquest. Some say that the first bishop of New Spain, Zumarraga, conducted a huge auto-da-je, a book burning of Aztec codices, those screenfold books composed in glyphs (stylized figures with fixed meanings) combined with lively pictures. Others say that those codices that weren't destroyed by the hostile Tlaxcalans or in the great conflagration of Tenochtitlan were spirited away by Indians. In any case, the art of illustration was still alive, and Sahagun used the talents of Indian painters to supplement his records in this visually delightful pre-alphabetic way. Finally I want to mention the History of the Indians of New Spain by another Franciscan, affectionately named by his Indian parishioners Motolinia, Nahuatl for "Little Poor One," since 16 �he took his vow of poverty seriously. He reports the terrible post-Conquest sufferings undergone by the Indian population; worse than their cruel exploitation by the disappointed Conquistadores and colonists was the succession of European plagues (smallpox, bubonic plague, measles, for which the Indians reciprocated only with syphilis). I am impressed, over and over, with this pattern: that the inoculated West does most of its harm to other civilizations unintentionally, and I mean not only through their physical susceptibility but even more, through their spiritual and intellectual vulnerability. The reason we can cope with our dangerously developed, potent tradition is that we know how to fight back, how to subject our powers to constraining criticism and how to correct our aberrations by returns to sounder beginnings. Critique and Renaissance are the continual evidence of our self-inoculation, and we see right now the dangerous consequences of the Western invasion of souls not so protected. But Motolinia also reports successes, not only in conversions, which were too stupendous in number and abrupt in spiritual terms to be always quite real. What is lovely to read about is not only his affection for the gentleness and dignified reticence of his boys but their quick intelligence and general talentedness; some learned enough Latin in a few years to correct the grammar-a tense but triumphant moment for their teacher--of a visiting dignitary. They sang liturgies like angels and easily learned to play European instruments. No wonder Mexico City was to become, in the eighteenth century, this hemisphere's greatest center of baroque music; its chief composer, Manuel de Zumaya, Chapel Master at the very Cathedral of Mexico City which replaced Huitzilopochtli's temple, was part-Indian. I should also mention two more works written with great sympathy for the Indians: Bishop las Casas's Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies of 1542, a book of passionate accusation against the Spanish conquerors and colonists, and Cabesa de Vaca's Relacion, the 17 �story of the tribulations of a discoverer of Florida, who was himself for a while enslaved by Indians. By contemporary historians the Aztecs are treated in almost comically opposite ways. Jacques Soustelle paints their daily life as an idyll of gentle, flower-loving, orderly culture, made poignant on occasion by the necessities of the ritual care and feeding of the gods. It is the myth of harmony and happiness the Mexica themselves encouraged in the revisionist accounts that succeeded the "book burning" by Itzc6atl, their first emperor. Inga Clendinnen, on the other hand, depicts a somberly severe, fear-ridden, God-encumbered society, whose sacrificial rituals, coruscating with whirling sights and penetrating musical noise, were, she says, "infused with the transcendent reality of the aesthetic." Hugh Thomas, the moSt recent historian of the Conquest, a sensible and thorough marshaller of thousands of facts, speaks similarly ofuthe astounding, often splendid, and sometimes beautiful barbarities" of Aztec ritual practice. What astounds me is not the antithetical views of Aztec life, for these polarities seem to have been of the Aztec essence. What takes me aback is that my contemporaries seem to wish to appear as knowing what is beautiful but not what is wrong. There are of course exceptions, writers who feel insuperable moral unease over these alien customs they are by their professional bias bound to honor. The imaginary experiment that I, as an outsider and amateur, have devised for myself to put the profession in general to the test is this: When the Spaniards first came on the remains of ritual killings-later they saw the rituals themselves and eventually found the body parts of their own comrades---they broke into the holding pens where prisoners were being fattened and stormed the temples. Would the professors have done the same or would they have regarded the practice as protected by the mantra of "otherness"? I am assuming here that they do disapprove of human sacrifice in their own culture. For my part, I cannot tell what I would have �had the courage to do, but I would have been forever ashamed if I had not shared in the revulsion, the reversal of an original appreciation that, for all their rapaciousness, the Christians had for the Indians-and I might add, for certain remarkable Indian women. I have thus evolved for myself two categories of historians: non-condoners and condoners. The older writers tend to be non-condoners; they are not careful to cloak themselves in moral opacity; what they abhor at borne they will not condone abroad, be it ever so indigenous and ever so splendid. One remarkable exception is the before-mentioned Bartolome de Las Casas, who lays out the case for human sacrifice as being both natural-since men offer their god what they hold most excellent, their own kind-and also as being within our traditionsince Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's bidding, and God himself sacrificed his son. The difficulty with this latter argument would seem to be that Abraham's sacrifice was called off, and God's sacri£ce was unique, while Indian sacrifices were multitudinous. Las Casas is the preceptor ofTzetan Todorov, a European intellectual who, in his book Conquest, tries hard to come to grips with "the Other," with the Aztec non-West. He finally elevates the Other over his own: The Aztecs made sacrifices, the Spaniards committed massacres. And here the rational difficulty is that Aztec religion commanded these deaths and Christian religion forbade them, so that Todorov is comparing customs with crimes. This enterprise of restricting universal morality in the interests of empathy with otherness puzzles me a lot. For if we are really and radically each other's Other, then those who leave their own side to enter into the Other will thereby also lose their footing as open-eyed contemplators. In any case, it seems to me that the non-condoning Prescott's grand narrative has done more for the memory of this bygone civilization than have the condoning contemporaries. For he induces 19 �what Virgil calls lacrimae rerum, tears for lost things-while they invite, in me at least, contrariness, resistance to their sanctimonious self-denial. You can see that as I read on I developed an interest in historiography, the reflective study of historical accounting itself For it seems to me of great current importance to consider a propensity of Western intellectuals, particularly pronounced in the social studies and expressive of a strength and its complementary weaknesses native to this tradition: knowledgeable selfcriticism flipping into unthinking self-abasement before the non-West. I say this mindful of the moral quandary of pitting the humanly unacceptable, but, so to speak, innocent evils, the traditional practices of a whole civilization, against the crimes of individuals transgressing the laws of their own, crimes magnified by its superior power. And now a final motive for this, my aberrant interest: We here on the Annapolis campus are only 200 miles further from Mexico City than from our other halfin New Mexico; Incan Cuzco is nearly on our longitude of76° W. Yet these pre-Columbian empires are hardly ever in our common consciousness, even less now than in the decades after Prescott's very popular book appeared. True, some of the skyscrapers of the twenties and thirties intentionally recalled Mesoamerican pyramids. True, the Nahuatl words chocoldtl and tamal!i are in our daily vocabulary, as is Nahua cooking, that is, Mexican food, in our diets. The Aztecs had in fact a high cuisine; the description of the emperor's daily service with its hundreds of dishes--among which (lest we be tempted too much) there may have been, as Diaz reports, the meat of little children-is staggering in its variety; indeed there cannot ever have been a potentate more luxuriously or elaborately served. Of all this we've adopted, through modern Mexico, the low end, but where else do the Empires of the Sun figure in our lives? This surprised sense of their missing influence made me engage in another one of those imagination-experiments by which 20 �we see the world anew: \Vhat if, as King Cacama ofTexcoco and some later historians thought possible, the Mex.ica had just killed Cortes and his band, so that the Westernization of Anahuac had been held off for some centuries?-for it is not within my imagination that the West was forever to be resisted . Suppose the unwitting extermination of the Indians by disease had thus been prevented. (I might say here that this huge demographic disaster, possibly among the worst in history, is numerically unfixed . Some say Anahuac had thirty million, some say it had four before Cortes. Some say by the mid-fifteenth century this population had been reduced to 2.6 or 1.2 million, to be fully restored only much later.) Suppose, then, that the ravaged generation of the Conquest and post-Conquest era had instead been preserved, and Nahua civilization with it. Suppose eventually North American jeans and technology had drifted down and Aztec gorgeousness and craftsmanship up the latitudes.- ! might inject here that the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who has grappled seriously with such dreams, comes to the sad but realistic conclusion that the loss of native culture is worth the benefit to ordinary people that these imports bring.-Suppose moreover that our American English had absorbed some of the suavely dignified classical Nahuatl, its urbane address, its poetic rephrasings, its expressive wordagglutinations; suppose as well that the speech of the N ahua had accepted some of our flamboyant informality. Suppose our clothing had been restyled by Aztec orchidaciousness and our manners had been a little improved by Aztec ceremoniousness. Suppose our political discourse had been informed by a neighboring monarchy against which we had never had to rebel. We can learn in our imagination whether such fine acquisitions could have come into our way of life without losing their hieratic heart. Would not one of the parties in this cultural exchange eventually tum out to contribute the core and the other the decoration? My provisional 21 �answer is that the West would assert itself as the substructure and the Empire of the Sun would become part of its recreation--they would be the pilgrims and we the tourists. The Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes tells of a similar imagined reversal of history in the semi-historical story "The Two Shores." Here Aguilar, Cortes' s first interpreter who had long lived with the Maya, speaks from the grave. He tells how even while in Cortes's employ he held with the Indians and, by always translating.not what Cortes said but what he thought, caused trouble. He confesses that he was jealous of Malinche, the Nahuatl- and Mayan-speaking woman, whose Mayan Aguilar translated into Spanish. She soon became Cortes's mistress and learned Spanish; she was one of the central figures of the conquest, present and mediating on every great occasion; Aguilar was made redundant But revenge is not his final passion. It is rather a plan to mount with his Mayans a reverse conquest, a successful invasion of Spain, and there to recall the defeated Moors and the expelled Jews, to inaugurate a darker-skinned, better melded Europe, "a universe simultaneously new and recovered, permeable, complex, fertile,,., where "Sweet Mayan songs joined those of the Provencal troubadours . .. ."But Aguilar, as he dreams his impossible dream, is dead of the bubonic plague that did not attack only Indians. So these imagination-experiments endorse the question raised by the facts with which I began: How can we understand what happened here, on this American continent, between 1519 and 1534? Can we compel the fortunes of war and the forces of history to show their human motive power? To get at some sort of answer, I shall take up the four factors in the conquest of Mexico that seem to me most revealing: One is a god, Quetzalcoatl; one is a practice, human sacrifice; two are men, Montezuma and Cortes. 22 �Quetzalcoatl, the most appealing of the Mesoamerican gods, is also most deeply implicated in the Mexican debacle. This is a complex figure, a god of human interiority and of the works of civilization, a searcher into the depth of hell and the guardian of terrestrial idylls, a priest king of Tula and the deus absconditus of Anahuac, an Indian Prometheus. He was not the tribal god of the Mexica, having been in the country long before they arrived. Their god was Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and of the sun, or rather the Sun itself, who shared the great temple pyramid of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the scene of so much of the drama in this tale, with Tlaloc, the god of rain-the god who floods the heavens with the god who drenches the earth. When the Mexica were still Chichimeca (as the Nahua called the wandering semi-savages of the north), coming down from their mythical city of origin Aztlan (whence the name Aztec) in search of their appointed home, their priests carried on their backs, as I mentioned before, a twittering medicine bundle. This was Huitzilopochtli, reborn at Teotihuacan, the birthplace of the gods, as the Fifth Sun. His name means "Hummingbird On the Left" or "On the South," perhaps because he and his people went southwest to find their marshland home on Lake Texcoco, perhaps because the god-figure was half-bird, having a thin, feathered left leg. In effect their god was crippled. Cripples, dwarves, hunchbacks, albinos play a great role in Nahua history, partly because the valley people had an inexhaustible interest in the sports and varieties of nature: Montezuma's palace complex included besides an aviary, a zoo, an arboretum, a gallery of anomalous humans; but there may be something deeper to it, some sense of awe before the exceptional-I don't know. The war god was a hummingbird because Aztec warriors who died in battle went not to the murky Hades of Mictlan but to a sunny Elysium where they flitted about feeding on flowery 23 �nectar-perfect examples of a dominant Aztec characteristic, the abrupt juxtaposing of or transiting from the brutal to the delicate. Most of the Aztec gods seem to have had frightful aspects. There is a statue of Huitzilopochtli' s mother Coatlicue, a chunky monster with a necklace of human parts and a head like an oblong package made up from two compressed snakes springing from her neck. The tribal god himself must have looked inhumanly terrifying. Not so Quetzalcoatl. The Aztecs were very sensitive to human beauty-the ugliness of the gods is clearly deliberate-and this god was represented as beautiful, though in a way which, although not unique to him, is yet most remarkable. Quetzalcoatl's name combines the word quetzal, a Mesoamerican bird that has precious green tailfeathers (the green of quetzal feathers and of jade was the color of the Mexica nobility), with coat!, meaning snake. So he is the bird-snake, or the Plumed Serpent, belonging both to the sky and the earth. And thus he is shown in some sculptures, with coils whose scales are lengthened into feathers neatly piled into a spiral. The fanged jaws are wide open and frame a handsome, spare young male face, with high-bridged nose, well-shaped eyes, thin-lipped mouth-the face, I imagine, of a young Aztec noble. Is this face that of the god within a serpentine integument, or is the creature as a whole the god, or is it the god's priest in his ritual costume? It is not clear that it is even a permissible question. The Aztecs appear to have had the most flexible notions of their divinities. The gods amalgamate competences, share names, identify with their victims, and merge with their priests. As far as I can tell, this mode is neither confusion nor indeterminacy. It is rather a kind of conceptual fluidity which does become fixed in the very precisely promulgated rituals. The graphic art of the Aztecs expresses this multifarious melding by its complexly intertwined 24 �figures with their attributes all drawn indistinguishably on one plane and discriminable only to an expert in Aztec divinity. But of Quetzalcoatl we know that he was indeed both god and man. As man he was then lord of Tula, and as the Toltec lord he became fateful to the Mexica. To me the most appealing characteristic of these newcomers, these recent Chichimeca, was their longing deference to a city of the. past, Tula, a city forty miles.north of their lake and overthrown more than 300 years before Montezuma' s day. Tula was to Tenochtitlan what Athens has been to Europe and still is to us in Maryland and New Mexico: the source of wisdom, art, and ideals oflife. The Toltecs were to the Mexica like gods, walking swiftly everywhere on blue sandals, wrapped in flowery fragrance. For them corn sprouted in enormous ears, precious cocoa beans--one of the Mexican currencies-were found in plenty, and cotton grew already dyed in rich colors. They made works of art so exemplary that the Aztecs gave their own craftsmen the generic name of tolteca, Tulans. Over this earthly idyll Quetzalcoatl Topiltzin, Our Dear Lord Quetzalcoatl, ruled as priest and king, godlike but also all too human. I cannot tell you what then happened in all its tragicomic detail. But in brief, Huitzilopochtli and other gods arrived in the guise of mischiefmaking wizards. Never mind the disparity in dates. This is the story of a newer god of war undoing an older god of civilization, and, I suspect, the story of how Huitzilopochtli' s people betrayed their assumed Toltec heritage. These wizards assaulted the Toltec lord, who had grown in some way neglectful, with portents and temptations. They tempted him with pulque, the wine made from the maguey cactus, the American aloe, whose consumption was fiercely regulated in Tenochtitlan. They raised indecent passions in princesses and induced civil wars that Quetzalcoatl had to win with his army of dwarves and cripples. They caused the T olteca to sing 25 �and dance themselves to death. To these temptations the lord of Tula succumbed as a participant. Finally, however, they tried to force him to make human sacrifices. Here he balked and refused and was for that steadfastness driven from Tula. All this is told by Sahagun and other Indian sources. This is the moment to say once more what needs saying just because it seems too naive for words: To report that Huitzilopochtli did this and Quetzalcoatl that is not to confer the status of existence on these divine figures . Indeed they became fateful to thei~ people precisely because they were so vulnerable to non-existence proofs. There is a stone head that shows the Dear Lord weeping, long clublike tears issuing straight from the god's eyes, probably those he wept as he went into exile. The same head shows him heavily bearded, an unusual feature in a young god, and among the Indians in general . He is also supposed to have been light-skinned. Quetzalcoatl flees toward the east. He crosses, in space not time, the path of the Mexica' s god going southwest, and he makes his way toward the east coast, there to embark with his loyal band on a raft of serpents and to drift into the rising sun-the very way Cortes, a white bearded man, took in reverse going west and inland. Cortes comes this way in 1519, just as the year that in the Aztec calendrical cycle is Quetzalcoatl's birth and death year, ce acatl, One Reed, had come round again. In this year the Dear Lord was destined to return by boat from his transoceanic exile. You can see the tragedy taking shape. The biggest pyramid in America rose at Cholula to mark one of the god-man's stations of flight. There the old god failed his people when, on his way to Tenochtitlan, Cortes massacred more than a hundred unarmed Cholulan nobles in his temple precinct. Cortes thought he had uncovered a plot to betray his band to the Mexica. Perhaps he had, and perhaps the planned ambush would have been the end for him if he had not prevented it with his characteristic 26 �merciless decisiveness. That we shall never know, but we do know this: The Cholulans remembered an old prophecy that the god who had rested from his flight in their city would protect them, and that if they pulled a stone out of his pyramid, a flood of water would sweep the enemy away. With panicky energy they succeeded in wrenching out a stone-and got a cloud of dust. The Plumed Serpent, briefly to finish his tale, was not permanently discredited, nor did he cease to occupy imaginations. He became the savior god of a resurrected Mexico. The friars who came at Cortes's request wanted a warrant for treating the Indians as aboriginal Christians; they saw in the wandering god St. Thomas, one of Jesus's twelve disciples who was his missionary to India. Quetzalcoatl was also the guardian god of the nativist movement in New Spain and Mexico, celebrated in murals and hymns by Mexican painters and intellectuals and even by that wandering Englishman D. H. Lawrence. His novel of 1926, The Plumed Serpent, is a repulsively fascinating, garishly proto-Nazi fantasy of the god's return in provincial Mexico, complete with the paraphernalia of Nuremberg: a charismatic god-representing leader, choreographed soldiery, Nazi-like salutes, and finally human sacrifice-all this so that the heroine, a manless ageing Irishwoman, might find a man who is a man, that is, who hardly ever talks. It is a travesty of the sorrowful Toltec divinity of civilization. Human sacrifice was, I have learned to think, not really just a Mexican custom ascribable to "otherness." The Mexica knew the story just told of Quetzalcoatl. I cannot believe that some of them, especially their last emperor, did not reflect that they were co-opting the god into a practice he abhorred and over which he went into exile. Perhaps those priests ofHuitzilopochtli, with their skull-decorated black gowns and blood-matted hair, were fanatics totally absorbed in their cultic task, but the educated nobles, admirers of Tula, so refined in their intimate habits and 27 �their social life, must have had qualms and doubts--unless there is no way to infer from ourselves to others. The numbers are staggering. It is reported that at the inauguration of Huitzilopochtli' s Great Temple in 1487, 20,000-by some readings 80,000--victims were lined up four abreast in queues stretching from the temple onto the city's causeways. (Is it altogether an ironical coincidence that these were about the numbers of Indians said to have px:esented themselves for conversion on certain days after the conquest?) And this killing went on, in smaller numbers, in the numerous minor temples of the city. Every twenty days, by the ritual calendar, there was a god's feast, requiring sometimes quite a few children, sometimes a woman, sometimes a specially prepared youth. The operation itself is often shown in the codices. The victims march, mostly unassisted, to the top of the pyramid; there they are laid on a convex sacrificial stone, their limbs are held by four priests while a fifth chokes off his screams with a wooden yoke, the obsidian knife rips into the chest, the heart, still beating, is held up to the Sun and put in a wooden bowl, the "eagle dish." The victim is rolled down the steps to be dismembered and distributed for feasting according to a strict protocol. The victims are children bought from the poor, the pick of slaves for sale in the market (who are ritually bathed), beautiful young nobles prepared in a year of splendid living for their role as ixiptlas, god-impersonators. Evidently certain divinities, like the ever-present Tezcatlip6ca, Lord of the Near and Nigh, who shared functions with the city god, were not only recipients of victims but were themselves sacrificed, albeit through their human incarnations-Dne noteworthy parallel to Christianity. It seems to be true that these ritual killings were not sadistic in intention or demeaning to the victims. While there are reports of weeping family and frightened victims, the sacrificial 28 �human was evidently well co-opted into the performance. Moreover, the cactus button peyotl and the mushroom teonanacatl, "Flesh of the Gods," both hallucinogens, and the alcoholic pulque seem to have been administered to the sacrifices, who were, in any case, intoxicated with the ritual swirl and the musical strider around them. For the prepared chosen at least this passage into a flowery next world was perhaps a high point of this life-though who knows how many victims, particularly the children, died experiencing extreme fear. These frightful, somber, and splendid festivals were evidently thought to be truly necessary to the survival of the city and the continuing existence of its world. Yet, as I said, the Aztec nobility, who were so finely attuned to right and wrong conduct (as their stock homilies, preserved by Sahagun, show), must have felt themselves to be living over a moral abyss, doing a balancing act in a threatening and fragile sacred world, which doomed them in their hearts for what they did and through their sacred duties for what they might omit to do. I have neglected to mention the largest and most steady supply of victims, the prisoners. The highest calling ofHuitzilopochtli's people, the soldiers of the Sun, was war, and the object of war was to take captives, an even higher object than the subjugation of Anahuac's cities. Promotion in the army was strictly according to the number of prisoners taken. The warriors needed to take prisoners to rise in rank; the city needed prisoners for their flesh and blood, the sacrifices that would feed and maintain the good will of the gods. It was a tight circle of necessities. This religious trap-I will call it that-had three devastating secular consequences. First, the Mexican army never learned, until it was too late, to fight to kill, to fight a war for survival in realest earnest. Second, Tenochtitlan trained up a deadly enemy for itself, the city ofTlaxcala, seated between itself and the eastern coast. There was a bizarre but logical institution in 29 �Anahuac, the so-called "flowery war," xochiya6yotl. The Triple Alliance of Anahuac, eventually dominated by Tenochtitlan and including Texcoco, had a mutual arrangement with three cities across the mountains, of which the aristocratic republic of Tlaxcala was the most independent. The agreement was to stage battles regularly for the sole purpose of obtaining from each other prisoners for sacrifice. This was a strange kind of ceremonious warfare, which required the highborn warriors skillfully to take their enemies alive, only to bring them back home to their delayed warriors' death. Meanwhile the Tlaxcalans remained free, in training, and full of hatred, and they became Cortes's most effective allies. And third, the evidence and actual sight of human sacrifice turned the Spaniards' stomachs-as powerful a revulsion as the moral one, I imagine. So when, as I said, they saw the remains of their own people, an ineradicable repugnance seems to have turned their hearts, a disgust which became the pretext for much savagery of their own. Montezuma was installed as tlatoani of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1502. 17atoani means "He Who Speaks," who has authority. Since Tenochtitlan was the secular and sacred center of the Aztec world, he was the speaker over the universe, the uei-tlatoani-usually rendered as "emperor." When he was killed in 1520 he was 52. His lineage was even shorter than the city's existence, whose founding date is 1345. The Anahuac empire was put together during the next century; Axayacatl, Montezuma's father, who died in 1481, was only the third emperor. As was the custom, the council that chose the new lord did not go to the son but first to Axayacatl's two brothers. When Montezuma became the sixth emperor, Anahuac was less than seventy years old. Historians disagree whether objectively the empire was in a state of youthful vigor or in the course of rigidified decline when Cortes came. But there can be no doubt that Montezuma was a monarch who personally felt doom corning. Motolinia says (probably incorrectly) that his very 30 �name--nomen omen--meant one who is sad and serious, as well as one who inspires fear and respect . As was necessary for the tlatoani, he had proved himself as warrior and officer, but he was also a highly educated man . The Mexica, like most high civilizations, were committed to a well-defined and diversified plan of education for their young. The set speeches, the traditional admonitions, that the ruling nobles made to their boys and girls upon thyir having reached the age of discretion are loving, somber, straitlaced, meticulous-and full of Nahua charm. The one from which I will read a sampling goes on for six of Sahagun's columns. It begins thus: Here art thou, thou who art my child, thou who art my precious necklace, thou who art my precious feather, thou who art my creation, my offspring, my blood, my image. And then the child is inducted into Aztec pessimism: Hear well, 0 my daughter, 0 my child. The earth is not a good place. It is not a place of joy; it is not a place of contentment. Then the little girl is given rules of conduct, for example: At night hold vigil, arise promptly. Extend thy arms promptly, quickly leave thy soft bed, wash thy face, wash thy hands, wash thy mouth, seize the broom; be diligent with the sweeping; be not tepid, be not lukewarm. What wilt thou seize upon as thy womanly labors? ... Look well to the drink, the food; how it is prepared, how it is made Then the speech touches deep moral matters: May thou not covet carnal things. May t}1ou not wish for experience, as is said, in the excrement, in the refuse. And if thou truly art to change thyself, would thou become a goddess? But there was also public education, a dual system. The Young Men's (and Women's) House, the telpochcalli, was open to the lower nobility and even to commoners. The boys' house had features of our prep school. The emphasis was on physical hardening and the performance of 31 �rough public service. A lot of rowdy fun was overlooked; some of the older boys even took mistresses, and, Sahagun reports, "they presumed to utter light and ironic words and spoke with pride and temerity." The second institution, the famous calmecac, was part seminary, part cadet corps. Here went the high nobility and commoners destined by talent to be priests. The daily routine was punishing; for example, sleep was often interrupted when the boys wen: called to draw blood from their earlobes and ankles with maguey spines. This self-sacrifice was said to have been instituted by Quetzalcoatl, who was in fact the tutelary divinity, the super-tutor, of the calmecac. Discipline was fierce. There were constant humiliations, and if a noble' s son was found even a little drunk on pulque he was secretly strangled; a commoner was beaten to death. The curriculum was rigid and rigorous. The boys learned the revisionist Mexica version of Nahua history from painted books that were expounded to them. They learned to speak ceremoniously and to perform ritual songs and dances accurately. They learned, besides the sign and number count of the 360-day solar calendar with its five unfortunate "hollow" intercalary days, the divinatory calendar. This was the "Sacred Book of Days" by which the priest told the feast days of the gods, the personal destiny of a baby and the epochs of the world. This study was evidently the most effective initiation into the Aztec way of seeing the world . That is the reason why the friars, trying to extirpate Aztec worship, denounced this sacred calendar with particular vehemence as having cast loose from the natural heavenly revol_utions and being an evil convention-as they said: "the fruit of a compact with the Devil." The two calendars came together every 52 years, an era called the Bundling of the Years. Ominously, such an epoch evidently occurred in 1506, "One Rabbit," when just as many yearbundles had gone by as would make the setting of the fifth Sun imminent, and with it the final 32 �destruction by earthquakes of Huitzilopochtli, his city, and the world whose center was Tenochtitlan. The year of 1519, moreover, was, as I said, ce acat!, "One Reed," the name of the year of Quetzalcoatl's birth, exile and prophesied return. A student of the calendar presumably knew himself to be living at once near doomsday and near delivery. From this schooling and his experience in the field, Montezuma emerged as high priest, warrior and tlatoani: spiritually austere for all his palatial luxury, a severe father to his Mexica, rigidly religious, ·and, for all the self-abasement his set accession speech required, an autocratic and aristocratic ruler, the first to restrict high office to the nobility. He was inaccessible to the populace, stately and ceremonious with his nobles, reserved as to his person: When Cortes, as he himself tells, tried to hug him "in Spanish fashion," Montezuma's attendants stopped him; this was court etiquette but presumably also personal preference. But above all he was a burdened man, doom-ridden, half hopeful, self-doubtful. "What shall I do, where shall I hide? If only I could tum into stone, wood or some other earthly matter rather than suffer that which I dread!" he cried out, this victor of nine pitched battles, to his magicians who could not turn to good the omens of evil to come (and got severely punished for it). This was no coward's funk but a pious man's terror of a probably inevitable future. There was a city across the lake, Texcoco, a member of Tenochtitlan's Triple Alliance. It paralleled the Italian cities of the Renaissance in high culture; it was a Tula revived. In the fifteenth century it had a poet-king, Nezahualc6yotl, whose poetry has the fragrance that arises when the melancholy of existence melds with soundness of heart. Like a Nahua Lucretius he offers his bitter cup with the rim sweetened by honey. He speaks: . I, Nezahualcoyotl, ask this : Is it true one really lives on the earth? Not forever on earth, only a little while here. 33 �Though it be jade it falls apart, though it be gold it wears away, though it be quetzal plumage it is tom asunder. Not forever on earth, only a little while here. This is beauty to console for the brevity of being, but in the Texcocan Renaissance prince it is without the panicky gloom of the Mexican Emperor of the late Fifth Sun. Nezahualcoyotl's underlying sense of life's inconstancy is the same, but Montezuma's w~ infected by the consciousness of a more starkly immediate doom. I think that Montezuma was probably an overwrought exemplar of a Mexica noble: devout witness of constant bloody brutality; refined connoisseur of jade and feather work; watcher for imminent death and destruction; avid collector of fleeting things like birds and flowers; cruel lord and ever-courteous prince; liar of great ability and treacherous too, as the Tlaxcalans believed; high noble of candid and simple bearing: witness the poignant speech of submission he appears to have made to Cortes when he was still in his own palace, when he still believed in the Spanish savior. He said with a smile: You too have been told perhaps that I am a god, and dwell in palaces of gold and silver. But you see it is false. My houses, though large, are of stone and wood like those of others. And as to my body [here he threw open his cloak]-you see it is flesh and blood like yours. Some see delicate irony in his words, particularly in the reference to the absence of gold. But to me his speech sounds heartfelt, and he was in fact submitting to men he thought might be teules, gods; Cortes's band, the santa compafzia, the Holy Company, might indeed be bringing back Quetzalcoatl-Cortes, "the white hero of the break of day." He had had some cause to be thus receptive, for in the decade before Cortes's arrival the omens had multiplied: the spontaneous combustion of Huitzilopochtli's temple, tongues of 34 �celestial fire, finally a bird found in Lake Texcoco bearing a black mirror in its head in which the emperor briefly glimpsed the strangers landing-Sahagun catalogues eight serious omens. I think Montezuma became heartsick and started vacillating, now welcoming the Spaniard from afar with golden gifts, now holding him off or even arranging his ambush. In the end he was transfixed like a rabbit by a snake, truly a snake since Cortes played the role of the Plumed Serpent. So he sent the Spaniard Quetzalcoatl's regalia, since it was the year ce acatl, One Reed . Not all his nobles were pleased at the emperor's submissiveness; they wept when not much later they attended his litter to his place of custody, his father's palace. Some historians think the omens were an ex post facto invention to make the catastrophe more palatable to simple people. But they sound very plausible; ominous events do occur in clusters before disasters (as Machiavelli observes in his Discourses), at least for those who have prophetic souls. The omens help explain Montezuma's fragility before the crisis. It was, I want to say, a type of fragility almost designed to highlight Cortes's robustness, as if Montezuma had found his fated match, the better to reveal the West to itself Once he had made his submission to the Spanish emperor and been taken into Spanish custody, another side of his character came out : He became receptive to new experiences, learned to shoot the crossbow, sailed Lake Texcoco on a brigantine, the first wind-driven vessel on those waters.-It is always the West's inventions, especially those that shoot far and go fast, that first beguile the non-West. He retained his exquisite courtesy and generosity; he became sociable and even affectionate with the Spaniards. It has been suggested that he was displaying the pathological bonding of a victim to his kidnappers. But by a concord with Cortes Montezuma was running his empire from Axayacatl's palace where he and the Spaniards were quartered, and 35 �he was free to indulge in his old pleasures like hunting. It is reported that if there was fun afoot he could dissolve in giggles. But this priest-emperor never converted or gave up human sacrifice, although frequently subjected to Cortes's passionate theological harangues against the ritual on the grounds of human brotherhood. As Fuentes says, it was simply a more urgent question to him whether the sun would rise and the world go on than what the Spaniards did to him or his empire. Nevertheless, I wonder if it ever came to him that his religious practices were, in the nature of things, futile, that the Christians had a sun that moved reliably and stably (and would soon even stand still) precisely because it was not a god and therefore not amenable to human exertion and sacrifice. Octavio Paz says in his Labyrinth of Solitude that the Aztecs committed suicide because they were betrayed by their gods. I th.ink they were, speaking more precisely, betrayed by their trust in their visible and palpable gods, who (as I th.ink in contrast to the early invaders, who acknowledged them as devils) did nothing and were nothing and absconded more crassly than could an invisible deity or one less abjectly served-a truth I have, strangely enough, never found enunciated by the historians I have read. Cortes, finally, the Conquistador, seems to me a man as emblematic of the conquering West as Montezuma was of the empire of the doomed Sun. Cortes was a hidalgo from an old, turbulent, moderately situated family. Having gotten into various scrapes he chose to come to the Indies in 1504 when he was nineteen-an age more often given over to wanderlust than to acquisitiveness. In 1519 he began to subdue Anahuac, whose chiefs became, as he put it to his sovereign, "Your Majesty's vassals, and obey my commands." No sooner had he conquered Mexico for Spain than he was beset by endless audiencias and residencias, tribunals and inquiries, conducted by officials whose rectitude was apparently not much greater than his own 36 �and whose daring was considerably less. Nevertheless, by 1529 he was Marquess of the Oaxaca Valley and Captain-General of New Spain, empowered to discover further lands and to colonize them. (In fact following Mexico he discovered and named California after a queen in one of those medieval romances.) He died in 1547, and his bones have undergone grotesque removals paralleling his downward course in Mexican history, during which Quetzalcoatl was raised to a national hero while his unwitting impersonator was suppressed by the descendants of the Conquest. The story of his and his Holy Company's march toward Tenochtitlan in 1519, his first peaceful entrance into the sacred and magical city, his expulsion, near-annihilation and devastating re-entry have lately been retold in all its fiction-defying detail by Hugh Thomas in Conquest. He lands on Anahuac's eastern shore with his little fleet of "water houses," as the natives described his three-masted square-riggers, of the type called naos. When they first saw them, they reported on them as "mountain ranges floating on water." His boldest first stroke is to dismantle his ships before he marches inland. Now the thirty-four-year-old sailor emerges as a man of many devices and deceits, a bold man of faith-and greed-inspired audacity-albeit somewhat more devoted to the salvation of his soul than to the amassing of gold; a resilient man well acquainted with suffering and depression; a man of self- and other-punishing endurance and scary tenacity, who seems to live on little sleep; cruel and charming, careful of his companions and demanding their utmost; prudent and daring; circumspect and lightning-quick; generous and grasping; kind and manipulative; and always an adventurer and a wanderer-as complex a man in his way as Montezuma. Prescott says in his personal memoranda, in which he details for himself the oppositions of Cortes' s character: The great feature of his character was constancy of purpose ... . He was inexhaustible in resources, and when all outward means 37 �were withdrawn, seemed to find sufficient to sustain him, in his own bosom. Now listen to the beginning of Homer's Odyssey: Tell me, 0 Muse, of the many of many twists who wandered so much when he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. He saw the towns of many men and knew their mind, and suffered much on the sea, seeking to save his soul and the return of his companions. No two men could be more alike; if I were to inventory the characters of the two adventurers nearly every feature in one list would tum up quite recognizably in the other, including the bouts of depression. And this happy circumstance tells me that Cortes was not primarily a man of his time: not just a medieval knight-errant or a mercantile-minded gold prospector, or a hard-tocontrol vassal of the Spanish crown, or a fierce competitor for the rights of first conquest-He was certainly all these, and it was because he returned to the Gulf Coast to intercept his Spanish pursuers that he first lost Tenochtitlan. But before these and more fundamentally he was a man who in his intense individuality expressed an ancient type of the West, Odysseus the selfsufficient, who talks to his own heart, who has many twists and devices, who is blunt and tactful, who can be driven to extreme cruelty and engage in gratuitous acts of kindness, who lies but not ignobly, and above all, who can, in a pinch, rely on his virgin goddess, Athena, because he relies on himself. In Cortes that ancient pagan character type seems to have comfortably accommodated, or better, absorbed the God from the other root of the Western tradition, though Cortes was particularly devoted to the Virgin. Hugh Thomas says that he became more God-fearing as the expedition went on-who wouldn't? His flagship sailed under a banner he had inscribed with the saying: "Friends, let us follow the Cross and if we only have faith in this sign we shall conquer." He was citing the legend under which the Emperor Constantine fought the battle that in 3 12 38 �turned the Roman Empire Christian. Cortes's Christianity is a debated subject, but to me it seems unquestionable. One kind of evidence is that this prudent commander several times put his expedition at risk because of his religious impetuousness and had to be restrained by Bartolome de Olmeda, the wise and patient friar with the expedition, a man who while practicing prudence also thought of the Indians' feelings-so .unlike Pizarro's fatal chaplain. On one memorable occasion, the emperor, at Cortes's request, invited him with some of his ·captains to come up the Great Pyramid ofHuitzilopochtli. Montezuma himself was, as usual, carried to the top, but Cortes insisted on marching up all 113 steep narrow steps and declared to the solicitous emperor waiting for him that "Spaniards are never weary;" indeed, as I mentioned, Cortes slept little when on campaign. Montezuma then obtained pemiission from the priests for Cortes, who was clearly already in the Christian conqueror mode, to enter the sanctuary. This reeking place so disgusted him that he asked Montezuma with a smile---not a charming one, I imagine---how so wise a prince could put his faith in a representation of the Devil. He offered to install in this temple, as he had on other pyramids, a cross and an image of the Virgin, before which the false gods would shrink into oblivion. Montezuma was deeply shocked and said-here is irony-that these were the gods that had ever led the Mexica to victory. Cortes, perhaps nudged by Friar Olmeda, apologized. But it was a dangerous moment. Montezuma stayed behind to expiate the sacrilege. This action, which could have meant the ·early end of Montezuma's policy of submission, was certainly impolitic and clearly inspired by pure if untimely Christian fervor. In his own account Cortes naturally suppresses this incident in favor of what must have been a later occasion, when he did actually topple the idol down the pyramid steps, and, as he claims, stop the sacrifices. 39 �Cortes became de facto emperor of Anahuac close to the time, namely 1513, that Machiavelli's Prince appeared. So I looked Cortes up, as it were. I have often wondered for whom this manual on rulership is meant, since natural princes already know it all and untalented rulers will simply use it as permission for misconduct. Cortes, it turns out, knows most of Machiavelli' s lessons: how to fight both like a fox and a lion, for he was proud of his "cunning stratagems" and fierce even when wounded and unarmed; how not to b'e good on occasion, for he could be brutal; how to get credit for every exploit, for his letters take care that he should; how to rule more by love than fear, as his trooper Diaz attests; how, finally, to be lucky, and-a Machiavellian or Odyssean trait of his own-how to lie royally without being commonly dishonest. But there were many more things that he did not do by this book but did rather against its explicit advice: he relied heavily on auxiliaries, fought with an amateur's improvisation, and did not study eminent predecessors-for there were none. But above all, Machiavelli doesn't seem to know, or at least to enunciate, the one thing most needful to an imperial conquistador: faith-in Cortes's case, Christian faith, but faith also in a more expansive sense, as I will try to show. Both rulers made mistakes. Montezuma should not have sent gold to greet the ''Holy Company," though how was he to know? He should not have quartered the Spaniards in Axayacatl's palace where the state treasure was hidden-and so on. But the chief mistake was to believe the prophecies and to submit to the omens, and so to the bearded white men coming over the water. Some of his nobles seem to have realized this, but they were themselves used to submitting to their lord, and so they wept silently. Cortes' s errors were those of a nervous yet decisive aggressor. At Cholula he stained his name with a possibly preventable massacre. At Tenochtitlan, when he hastened to the coast to 40 �repel his pursuers, he left in charge a valorous young brute, Pedro d' Alvarado, whom the Indians called Tonatiuh, the Sun, because he was blond and beautiful. He proved worse to them than their own doomed Fifth Sun, for as he was edgy, eager and without judgment, he unleashed a massacre on the unarmed celebrants ofHuitzilopochtli's festival which ended every chance of peaceful dominion and brought on that Sad Night. This was the night when the Spaniards, their Indian allies, and the Spanish women fighting desperately alongside their men, were driven from the city and nearly exterminated. Above all, he razed Tenochtitlan, the finest city in the world. Was it a mistake, a crime? Here is what he himself says in his account of the recapture of the city from the Mexica, who under the young Emperor Cuauhtemoc, Montezuma's nephew, had learned the Spanish skills: to fight to kill, to fight at night, to fight from the water. The passage is from the third letter to Emperor Charles V: All I had seen forced me to two conclusions, the one that we should regain little of the treasure the Mexicans had taken from us; the other that they would force us to destroy and kill them all and this last weighed on my soul. I began to wonder how I. could terrify them and bring them to a sense of their error. It could only be done by burning and destroying their houses and towers of the idols . . . . Of course, the letter explains first things first : why the Emperor isn't getting his customary fifth of treasure. Of course, it assumes that the Mexica are legally in rebellion. But it also reveals a certain travail of spirit, a conscience, a care for a people whose intelligence Cortes admired and whose fate he pitied, albeit he was its cause. On Cortes's premise the destruction was a necessity, but was the premise itself necessary? For my part, I simply cannot judge. It is true, however, that once he was master of Anahuac he looked carefully after his realm and probably did it more good in the long run than it ever was in Montezuma's power to do : He spent his own resources in rebuilding the country, introduced new plants and draught animals, condemned the enslavement 41 �of the Indians and recorded in his will his deep misgivings of conscience about the institution itself, and tried to mitigate the treatment of the natives by the colonists. And, of course, he abolished human sacrifice. All in all, his dubious deeds had the effect of relegating Anahuac to the past; his good deeds gave Mexico a future. And, pressed to think in these terms about the Conquest itself, I suppose with the Peruvian writer Mario Llosa that it belongs in the long run to the credit side of something, call it human welfare. But the question I proposed was how and why it could happen. So let me try to come to some sort of conclusion. Two worlds clashed (here the cliche tells the simple truth), and the leaders happened to be emblematic of their worlds. Let me first compare the divinities that led the leaders. We have an alumnus, Peter Nabokov, the stepson of the man to whom this lecture is dedicated, William Darkey. He is an expert on Indian sacred life and its sacred space. When he heard that I was reading on this subject he sent me a large box of books from his private library. In one of these books I found an article containing an antithetical listing of Aztec and Christian religiosity. On the left, the Nahua side, is listed (I select for brevity's sake) Symmetry, Autonomy, Interchangeability, and Cyclicality. On the right, the Spanish side, is listed Hierarchy, Centralization, Fixity, and Linearity. This right side is in fact recognizable as a checklist of features condemned in the West as evils of the West, a compendium of the self-critique of the West such as was current in the later part of the last century. I also recognize the left side of the list, and it does appear to me to be descriptive of Aztec religion. But notice this strange effect : how each characteristic of that religion induced an opposite effect on the Aztec polity. The complexly related Symmetries of divine functions make 42 �for a draining tangle of rituals; the Autonomy of the deities-as many as 1600-leads to a burdensome multiplicity of services; the Interchangeability of identities leads to dependence on priestly interpreters; and the Cyclicality leads to a sense of inescapable doom. In fact it was Anahuac that most tended toward social Hierarchy, administrative Centralization and rigid Fixity of protocol. The Spanish side, on the other hand, gave its real-life practitioners one supreme god, reliable in his operations, author of a stable creation, progressing hopefully into a new day. And so it was the Spaniards who could afford to be free, flexible, energetic, and self-reliant: When God permits them to be defeated it is, Cortes says, on account of their own sins, a deserved punishment, not a divine antic. But, a student of Aztec religion might argue, the similarities to Christianity are remarkably exact and numerous, so why would religion make the difference? To give a sampling of the parallelisms: The Indians had the symbol of the cross, a Maltese type, that turns up frequently in their visual art. They had absolution by confession, though it could be undergone only once in a lifetime. They had a form of baptism, ritual fasting, even an invisible god. Above all, they had the ritual ingestion of their god's blood: the victim's or their own blood was kneaded into loaves of amaranth seeds that were god-images and were then eaten. This last practice, the analogue of Christian communion, is most interesting to me, because some scholars represent this Christian sacrament as a form of cannibalism that brings Christianity closer to the Aztec feasting on flesh . But, of course, the blood partaken of during the Christian Eucharist is precisely not the blood of a living human being. Even a very untheoretical Christian knows that it is a mystery which is accompanied by a complex rational theology. Communicants know, if vaguely, that the wafer and wine are neither merely symbolic nor brutely real-the nature of their transformation is open to rational questioning: For example, have they undergone 43 �transubstantiation, so that the substance itself, the bread and the wine, are to be regarded as now the body and blood of Christ, or have they achieved consubstantiation, such that they present a duality of visible properties and invisible essence? I may be allowed to dismiss the beguiling but bizarre notion of the friars that the Indians were lapsed Christians, baptized a millennium and a half ago by Quetzalcoatl-St. Thomas; at any rate, they themselves were always afraid that the willing conversions of the Indians were perhaps rather shallow and masked the survival of the old similar-seeming worship. It remains a problem, requiring really deep investigation by people who know not only the methods of comparative ethnography but the ways of faith, whether such similarities betoken pure coincidence, or are features belonging to some general human religiosity, and whether such all-human phenomena have a deep or shallow common root. To me it seems, judging only at first glance, that a religion supported by many disparate narratives, whose meaning, being a matter of memory, is uncircumventably in the hands of trained priests, is simply incommensurable with a religion that has one master story whose ever new interpretations, carried on by priests, theologians, and laymen alike, strive for coherence. Let me make my point brusquely and minimally: Such a religion, Christianity in the present case, seems to me simply more energizing. To wit : Cortes liked to read, as he said, when he had time, and he knew some theology which, in turn, gave him the self-confidence to harangue an emperor. He went to mass in the morning without fail and was ready for the day. In defense, Montezuma could only tell divine stories-myths to us-and insist on his gods' past services, which he had to keep securing by spending every day much time and many resources on arduous cultic performances. Moreover, Cortes's Holy Company could rely on their God who, being invisible-though having one and only one human incarnation-was therefore impervious to sudden toppling. This 44 �God, a god mysterious but not capricious, made nature according to laws and left it largely alone. Thus God's created nature was open to the self-reliant inventiveness of human beings. This natural realm, being amenable to human rationality, invited initiative, for its God had himself engaged in radical innovation when he created the world and when he irrupted into history in human form . I have been engaged by this puzzle: We know that the Indians had wheeled toys; why did Anahuac wait for Cortes to introduce wagons? It seems to me that it is not generally true that necessity is the mother of invention, but rather than inventions develop necessities: We see a convenience and we need it. Anahuac, to be sure, had enough slaves and commoners with tumplines to drag its building stones anywhere. But why didn't someone think of the splendor of rolling in stately carriages over the waiting causeways of Tenochtitlan? By my premise it was not lack of need but something else, at which I am guessing: the Aztecs were close and loving onlookers and clever users of nature, but they were not on the lookout to go her one better, to whirl rather than to walk over her terrain. Perhaps the wheel isn' t the most convincing general example, since it seems to have come to the Western world not as an original invention but by diffusion, probably from Mesopotamia, but to me its absence in Anahuac does seem telling for Aztec invention-inertia. Theology, the laws of nature, interpretative accessibility, and inventiveness-these are great but they are not the only advantages that these Westerners who came out of the East carried with them. Others have been intimated : the fraternal equality of human beings insofar as they are ensouled creatures that Cortes preached to the Aztec nobles, whereas Anahuac was caste-ridden; the ensuing closeness of the leader to his men that made Cortes listen to the complaints and sometimes-never at crucial moments-heed the advice of his companions, whereas Montezuma 45 �was deliberately remote-his subjects had to avert their eyes when he passed-and autocratic; the project of propagating to all the world a truth felt to be universal that unquestionably drove Cortes if not the "Holy Company"-the name was first given ironically-whereas the Mexica rather collected the gods of other cities, ever more of them, for whom Montezuma even established a sort of all-Anahuac pantheon; and, for our times, above all, the tenacity of the Christians in holding on to life, whereas the Aztecs seemed somehow-Tm far from understanding it-to surrender themselves more readily to the thought of death and to death itself. Of course, the Conquistadores' Christianity was intertwined with that other root of our West, pagan Greco-Roman antiquity, of which I mention now only the intellectual taproot, the Greek one. From this dual root stems, it seems to me, that faith in a more comprehensive sense I mentioned before, the faith that underlies a daily life free for confident projects: the trust in the stable motions of nature combined with a contemplative care for transcendence, the faith in "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," to cite our founding charter AH of us here know--or will learn in the next four years-how much the Christian and post-Christian West owes to the Greek science of celestial nature and the rational account of divinity. But I want to recur to the human model that is exemplified with such spectacular accuracy by Cortes, the Homeric Odysseus, the first mature Western man (for Achilles, though in years the same age in the Iliad as was Cortes in 1519, is constitutionally a youth) . This man, a soldier and sailor too, is free, self-reliant, inventive, a discoverer of new lands, be it of the world or the soul, and, I nearly omitted to say, the lover of women of stature: Like Odysseus, who had his semi-goddesses abroad and his Penelope at home, Cortes had in his life two royal daughters of Montezuma and two Spanish wives, but above all his comrade, his advisor and interpreter, 46 �Malinali or Malinche, the Mexican princess christened Dona Marina. It was his partnership with her that gave him his Nahua nickname-the Indians addressed him as "Malinche;" if it was meant in derision, it was a misplaced scorn. She and Cortes were, like Odysseus and Penelope, one in their wily works, and they had a son, the Conquistador's heir Don Martin Cortes (named after the Conquistador's father), a son to whom he was as attached as Odysseus was to his Telemachus. I cannot pretend to understand how this distinctive species of Odyssean individualists is propagated down the ages, nor can I quite figure out whether the type produces the tradition or the tradition generates the type. In other words, to me this question seems askable and therefore pursuable: Whatever may be the case for the rest of the human world, is our West ultimately more a civilization or a kind of human being? I tend toward the latter, but for the moment I will take the safe though weasly way and say that together, type and tradition in tangled reciprocity, they are responsible for the West's apparently irresistible expansiveness. The Empires of the Sun, on the other hand, fell so fast into ruin because they and their leaders displayed characteristics that were, so to speak, the fateful complement, the matched antithesis, of the men and machines of the West. The lessons learned in thinking about a problem amount more often to collateral insights than direct solutions. So I want to end with two such lessons I believe I learned: First, that we really must come to grips with this expansiveness of the West and if, on thoughtful consideration, it proves necessary, acknowledge candidly its superiority-superiority, that is, in the scope it gives to individual human nature by the universality of its conceptions. And two, that we, as conscious representatives of that tradition, owe those overrun and extinguished 47 �civilizations, with alLtheir irreplaceable strange beauty, a remembrance-not merely as projects for research but as objects of human regard. 48 �Books Read and Books Consulted Baldwin, Neil. 1998. Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God. New York: PublicAffairs. Boone, Elizabeth Hill. 1994. The Aztec World. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books. Broda, Johanna, David Carrasco, and Eduardo Moctezuma. 1987. The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery of the Aztec World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nunez. 1542. The Account: A/var Ni111ez Cabeza de Vaca 's Relacion. Translated by Martin A Favata and Jose B. Fernandez. Houston: Arte PUblico Press (1993). Carmack, Robert M ., Janine Gasco, and Gary H. Gossen. 1996. The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of Native American Civilization. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall. Carrasco, David. 1982. Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press. Clendinnen, Inga. 1991. Aztecs: An Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Columbus, Christopher. 1492-1504. The Four Voyages of Christopher Colwnbus. Edited and translated by J.M. Cohen. Baltimore: Penguin Books (1969). Conrad, Geoffrey, and Arthur A Demarest. 1988. Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism . Cambridge: Cambridge University. Copernicus, Nicolaus. 1543 . On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Translated by Charles Glenn-Wallace. Great Books of the Western World, no. 16: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler. Chicago : Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. (1952). Cortes, Heman. 1520's. Heman Cortes, LettersjromMexico. Translated by Anthony Pagden. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1986). Diamond, Jared . 1999. Guns, Genns, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton. Diaz del Castillo, Bernal. 1555. The Discovery and Conquest ofMexico. Translated by A P. Maudslay. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1956) . Diaz, Gisele and Alan Rodgers . c. 1500. The Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restauration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript. New York: Dover Publications (1993) . 49 �Florescano, Enrique. 1999. The Myth of Quetzalcoatl. Translated by Lysa Hochroth. Baltimore: The Johns Hoplcins University Press. Fuentes, Carlos. 1998. "The Two Shores." In Clashes of Culture. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation. Galeano, Eduardo. 1985. Memory of Fire: 1. Genesis: Part One of a Trilogy. Translated by Cedric Belfrage. New York: Pantheon Books. Gibbon, Edward. 1788. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I. New York: The Modem Library. Jennings, Gary. 1980. Aztec. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book (1997). Kadir, Djelal. 1992. Columbus and the Ends of the Earth: Europe's Prophetic Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Klor de Alva, J. Jorge. 1999. "Religious Rationalization and the Conversion of the Nahuas: Social Organization and Colonial Epistemology." In Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes. Edited by David Carrasco. Niwot, CO : University Press of Colorado. Lafaye, Jacques. 1976. Quetzalc6atl and Guadalupe: the Formation ofMexican National Consciousness, 1531-1813. Translated by Benjamin Keen. Foreword by Octavio Paz. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press. Las Casas, Bartolome de. 1542. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Translated by Nigel Griffin. London: Penguin Books (1992). Lawrence, D. H. 1926. The Plumed Serpent [Quetzalcoatl}. New York: Vintage Books (1992). Le Clezio, J.M. G. 1993 . The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press. Leon-Portilla, Miguel, editor. 1969. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press. - - - , editor. 1980. Native Mesoamerican Spirituality: Ancient Myths, Discourses, Stories, Doctrines, Hymns, Poems from the Aztec, Yucatec, Quiche-Maya and Other Sacred Traditions. Mahwah, N .J.: Paulist Press. Llosa, Mario Vargas. 1990. "Questions of Conquest," Harper'sMagazine (December):45-53 . 50 �- - - . 1989. The Storyteller. Translated by Helen Lane. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1513. The Prince and The Discourses. Translated by Luigi Ricci. New York: Modem Library (1950). "Motolinia" (Fray Toribio de Benavente). c. 1541. History of the Indians of New Spain. Translated by Francis Borgia Steck, O.F.M. Richmond, VA: William Byrd Press (1951). Naipaul, V. S. 1969. The Loss of El Dorado: A History. New York: Penguin Books (1981). Paz, Octavio. 1985. The Labyrinth of Solitude and The Other Mexico; Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude; Mexico and the United States; The Philanthropic Ogre. Translated by Lysander Kemp, Yara Milos, and Rachel Phillips Belash. New York: Grove Press. Pearce, Colin D. 1997. "Prescott's Conquests: Anthropophagy, Auto-da-Fe and Eternal Return." Interpretation, Vol. 24, 3 (Spring):339-361. Peck, Harry Thurston. 1905. William Hickling Prescott. Port Washington, N .Y.: Kennikat Press (1968). Prescott, William Hickling. 1843, 1847. History of the Conquest ofMexico and History of the Conquest of Peru . New York: The Modem Library. - - -. History of the Conquest ofMexico. Introduction by James Lockhart. New York: Modem Library (2001). - - - . 1823-1858. The Literary Memoranda of William Hickling Prescott, Vols. I, II. Edited by C. Harvey Gardiner. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press (1961). Ricard, Robert. 1933. The Spiritual Conquest ofMexico: An Essay on the Apostolate and Evangelizing Methods of the Mendicant Orders in New Spain: 1523-1572. Berkeley: University of California Press (1982). Sahaglin, Fray Bernadine de. 1547-1579. General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex, 12 Books). Translated by Arthur J. 0 . Anderson and Charles Dibble. Published in thirteen parts: Santa Fe, N.M.: The School of American Research and The University of Utah (1953-82). - - -. 1585. Conquest of New Spain: 1585 Revision. Translated by Howard F. Cline. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press (1989). 51 �Sejourne, Laurette. 1976. Burning Water: Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico . Berkeley: Shambala. Soustelle, Jacques. 1955. The Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest. Translated by Patrick O'Brian. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1970). Thomas, Hugh. 1993 . Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico. New York: Simon and Schuster. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1984. The Conquest ofAmerica: The Question of the Other. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: HarperPerennial (1992). Townsend, Richard F., editor. 1992. The Ancient Americas: Art.from Sacred Landscapes. Chicago : The Art Institute of Chicago. Von Hagen, Victor W. 1957. Realm of the Incas. New York: Mentor Books. Walker, Ronald G. 1978. Infernal Paradise: Mexico and the Modem English Novel. Berkeley: The University of California Press. Williams, William Carlos. 1925 . "The Destruction of Tenochtitlan: Cortez and Montezuma." In In the American Grain: Essays by William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions Books (1956). Wolf, Eric. 1959. Sons of the Shaking Earth. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. 52 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. 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Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/270">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Homecoming Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d074ca2720d678c69ea6edcfb9b1027e.pdf fae7eb4ec5c8d2f182676ad1d12c01d6 PDF Text Text Friday Night lecture Parents' Weekend November 2, 2001 Eva Brann WAYS OF NA YSA YING No, Not, Nonexistence, Nonbeing, Negativity, Nothing-these \vords, the guideposts of my lecture, may seem like a dismal parade for Parents' Weekend. There's an old post-World War II song that goes: "You gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative," and accordingly the more pessimistic particles, adjectives, nouns, have a bad name in our assertively optimistic country. But that aversion is a misapprehension. Almost nothing in our mental capacity is more life-affirming than our power of naysaying, and you might almost say that where there's No there's Hope. So when our dean, Mr. Flaumenhaft, asked me to give a sort of higher book report on a 'fht. volume I've completed fairly recently, called/Vays of Naysaying: I c.heerfully assented, thinking that it needn't spoil your evening. For the human capacity for negation does turn out to be a large territory-full of fascinatingly knotty intellectual problems but also of plain familiar human charm. Now the book contains about sixty thousand words, while I won't keep you here even sixty minutes, so I'll have to pick and choose my negations. It will be hard, because all of naysaying has come to seem to me close to \vhat I think of as the human center. • Rowman and Littlefield, 2001 . �To explain what I mean by the human center I have to use a very unfashionable word, unfashionable at least among those who now write academic books about human beings. The word is "soul." Oddly enough the word is more acceptable in its Greek version "psyche." With the word "soul" comes, very naturally, the notion of a lay-out, a spatial topography. We speak of surface emotions and deep feelings, for example. A number of the authors we read at this college-Plato, Augustine, Freud-speak of the soul as a sort of territory with its O\Vn geography. And so I will feel entitled to use a similar figure and give our inner being a spatial expression. In my image, the soul has an outer margin, a front, where it is open to the outside world and its facts of sense, be they human or natural. And it has a background, deep behind, whence arise truths of thought. As we must not only deliberately keep our eyes open to see (though it is not the eyes that see but we ourselves) so we must go deep into these inner places to learn things the outside can't teach us. On reason why the Platonic dialogue Meno is so central to our program is that it tells a story and gives a demonstration about the way to that deep inner region where live not only mathematical but also moral truths. Now I sketch for myself a middle territory where whatever comes through the senses up front and whatever thought we can dredge up from the depths behind meet, and where, incidentally, our feelings live most familiarly; it is where we come in those "sessions of sweet silent thought" Shakespeare sings of. This middle territory is a strange non-spatial space, a quasispace. You .c an't measure its extent, but you can pace or fly through it. You won't find solid weighty objects there, but nothing is more lasting than its contents. In it is whatever you've seen or heard, except that it is not really there; and it contains besides much that you've never seen or heard, except that it is as if you had; and it contains above all the many scenes and people that are now far a\vay or gone altogether, except that they are present in there. I've never read a more 2 �accurate description of this middle-soul than Augustine gives in his Confessions. He tells how he "comes into the fields and spacious palaces of memory" where he finds everything he's ever sensed and much more. "There," he says, "I have in readiness the heaven, the earth, the sea," though "not the things themselves but their images." We are speaking of course of the imagination and that part of it which is time-affected, memory. In fact I thought I could show that the memory is the origin of our sense of time (and incidentally that there is no objective natural time beyond that inner time). It is when we flip through the files of our memory, so to speak, that time arises-the thicker the file, the longer the time. Now in_ meditating on the nature of the imagination and time, those inhabitants of our soul's center, I kept coming on "not" and "non-," on negative particles and prefLxes. The imagination is full of presences of absent things; things that are there but not there themselves. These images are beings and also non beings, because when we say of a picture, "Tpat's him all right," we also know that it really isn't. Images and imagining have their satisfactions, but who doesn't fly to embrace the friend in the flesh? So too with time. What is a memory a memory of but what was once but is not no\v or not here? What is that forward-directed memory called expectation but dreams and fears of the "not yet"? Time consists altogether of what is no longer and is not yet, and these surround a vanishing now, the elusive present. Nothing in thinking about time hit me with a greater shock than the realization that time, which consisted of what was no more and is not yet, really didn't leave much time for anything to be present, to stand out of that stream of no longer and not yet. For this "standing-out," translated into Latin, is "existence," and so we seemed to exist on the cusp of tv,:o converging negations. 3 �So having done a lot of scribbling first about imagination and then time, I seemed to be driven into tonight's subject. Imagination and time began and ended as enigmas and mysteries and here appeared a third, which seemed to emerge in thinking about both. Let me take a little detour here to talk about enigmas and emergences, something particularly relevant to an audience ofstudents and teachers devoted to tackling mysteries and making questions emerge, and to the parents who underwrite this strange enterprise. \\'hat is an inquiry of the sort we are most committed to? Does it begin with a problem, which is a brisk formulation of a topic to be attacked, and end in a resolution so that the problem goes away and the topic becomes untopical, no longer interesting? No such thing. It begins with some muddled thoughts and some talk that leads to an increasing unease, a sense of being at once stuck and at loose ends. Students quite often ask to have a conversation about something, but when we sit down together the topic isn't quite clear to them, neither the place they're at nor where we're intended to go. So first we figure out what we want to be talking about. Then people who are serious read up on the subject, and in this study they find different approaches and a whole slew of prepared problems and solutions. And then comes the real thinking, the kind that makes the question emerge, and new topics, new places to be. Now mere problems tum into true emergences and mysteries-I ' ll have something more to say about these at the end. One question that can really only be answered late in the inquiry arose pretty soon: Is there something negation everywhere and always, and so to speak, essentially, is? Is there fundamental naysaying? It is a question to be answered, if at all, only through collecting the kinds, the ways of naysaying, though there is one linguistic fact that did encourage the expectation that all naysaying is at bottom one. This is the fact that no, not, non, nothing, negation, denial, denigration, and dozens of other refusing words all have the same root, ne. :t\c 4 �one knows what that root signifies, but there is a plausible if unprovable conjecture that goes back to Darwin, who was much interested in the signifying origins of human gesture. He thought that negation was expressed by putting up or wrinkling your nose at something in refusal or disgust, as infants do when they don't \Vant their bottle, saying "nenenenenene" through . clenched gums-and also as modern Greeks do when they want to express "no." To the confusion of the tourist they give a slight upward jerk of the head, as if raising their nose at the idea. A related question was whether negation was essentially linguistic: Was language the locus of naysaying, as it seemed on the face of it? Could there be negation only for thinking and speaking beings?-for I accepted it as given that speech expresses thought. To be sure, there is mindless jabber and rote opinion, and conversely there is thought yet seeking expression. But when things are working right, we have a sense of the word neatly clicking L·nto the thought. So if naysaying is primarily a verbal phenomenon, perhaps everything in the natural \vorld is positive-as some people have certainly thought-and we humans (plus whatever spirits have speech besides us) alone say "no." And of course, I asked myself how negation got into our inner life, our imagining and our remembering, and our living through time by means of memory. Did it come from the nether parts of our soul's topography as an expression of our capacity to think negatingly, or was that middle part itself somehow receptive to nonexistent objects? And there was the same question only asked from within about the world without: Are there ghost presences, like our Liberty Tree, that half-millennium-old tulip poplar on our front campus, which fell victim to a hurricane in 1999 and which is still somehow visible in its absence, like Robert Frost's memory house ... that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm 5 �And in a to\\'n that is no more a town. Are there nonexistences that walk the earth alongside or even in the same place as all the assertively solid, weightily positive beings that inhabit nature? Physicists talk a lot about negative forces and particles. It is said that when in 1747 Benjamin Franklin assigned the adjective "negative" to electricity gotten by rubbing a rubber rod with fur, while when a glass rod was rubbed with silk the electricity was called positive, he was being arbitrary. But is that true of all the oppositions of physics? Are they all arbitrarily positive and negative? Are there, furthermore, in that vivid, feeling-filled field of the imagination half-beings without physical weight but with all the gravity that belongs to human matters? And finally, does the region of thought contain non beings, objects of thought whose nature it is not to be? These may seem to you weird-if perhaps wonderful--questions to ask. I have a certain justification for asking them in the fact that they are frequently answered without even being asked. For example, the tribe of logicians is frequently positive-minded; it comes to them naturally to think that the world is full of positive facts and objects, and that negation is a formal operation, which flips a positive proposition into its opposite. Then there are philosophers who define negation as opposition, a word that pits position against counter-position, this posited thing against that. The notion of opposition too is a kind of positivism. In fact, about five years ago my friends and fellow tutors, Eric Salem and Peter Kalkavage and I studied and translated the Platonic dialogue that deals with these matters more deeply than any work I.know (except for the Hegelian Logic, some of which our seniors used to read-and should again). It is the Sophist. A sophist then and now is a professor, someone who professes to have teachable, usually trendy, wisdom but who has never gone deeply into 6 �anything. In Plato's dialogue, it is a f}pe whose nature the participants pursue, not a particular person. The chief speaker is a stranger from the town where Parmenides taught. Parmenides was the first of those who wanted to think about Being, about that one nature displayed by everything whatsoever that comes to our attention. For whatever else it might be, everything is, when it might so easily (we sometimes think) be otherwise, when it might not be. Or if it seems · unthinkable that certain beings could not be, these people who attended to Being wanted know why not. This inquiry, which Parmenides initiated, is called ontology, Greek for "the story of Being," and I will now boldly claim that there can't be many human beings who haven't come up against the question of Being in some way. They might just soberly have noticed that almost every sentence either has "is" or "are" or "am" in it or can be made to have it: "What is she talking about?", "Why are we sitting here?", "I am feeling sleepy." Or they might have felt that the things of this world are fleeting and deceptive and wondered what, if anything, is behind them. Now this Parmenides, when he was the age of a college freshman, took a number of blazingly wild rides right into the heart of truth where a goddess spoke to him. She told him that there are two ways to thin\<. And she said One way says: "Is" and that "Is not" is impossible. This is the road of conviction, for it follows truth. The other says: "Is not" and that it is fated that "Is" not be. · This path I show you as altogether unlearnable. For neither could you knov,: Nonbeing, since it is unattainable, Nor could you show it to anyone 7 �For Is-not cannot possibly be said or thought. So this is the message the youth was to bring to all human beings: Speak only Being, and, moreover, know that Being has no divisions, no limits, no time, no discernible distinctions at all . But you can hear and discern right away that the goddess is asking the impossible: to speak without making attributions and distinctions, and above all without saying "not" or "non-." For thinking and speaking is altogether articulating and bringing together differences. In every sentence this is said to be that or not that. If I say, as I must, that "Being is a mystery," you can and should puzzle from now till doomsday whether I am separating the mysteriousness out from Being or putting it together with Being. In fact the goddess herself uses these particles and prefixes all the time. She does worse: She puts into the human vocabulary a brand-new word, "Nonbeing." So she manages to accomplish what earnest prohibitions so often do, to name a proscribed thing and so to make it infinitely fascinating. This effect falls in the class of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences are best known in the realms of economic and social policy. They occur when you intend a very good thing and get a very sorry side-effect, such as trying to prevent inflation by hiking interest rates and causing a slow-down, or closing a number of all-black schools in the interests of integration and losing a large percentage of black principals. So here we have it in the realm of thought: This goddess wants to drive out all negation from thought and speech but incidentally lets -loose among us the thought called Nonbeing. So Parmenides and his pupils spend the rest of his life puzzling out what one could say without disobeying the goddess. At the time the dialogue takes place Parrrienides is dead and one of these pupils, a stranger, arrives in Athens, and Socrates draws him into a conversation about 8 �sophists as a type, and then he says no more. I think he knows perfectly well what mischief he is stirring up. The Sophist, a false or pretended or negatively wise man, who is himself a mere image of wisdom and a maker of mere images, can't be caught in speech without reference to Nonbeing. Nonbeing is, one might say, the ideal cause in thought of an incarnate negation like the Sophist; it is, taken in itself, the very thought of Non and Not, the thought we get hold of as an object to wrap our mind around when we think of the opposite of Being. Now this stranger rises to the occasion by doing something wonderful and terrible that he himself gives a name to. He commits parricide; he kills Father Parmenides in spirit by sho\l,.ing that his goddess was wrong: Nonbeing is after all. He does this deed by thinking the thought I've already mentioned: The opposite of Being is indeed Nonbeing, but that Nonbeing is not an unthinkable and unspeakable nullity but just other being. ¥/hen I say the real Sophist is not a genuine lover of wisdom, or to put it into Greek, is not a philosopher, I am not saying he is n·owhere to be found and a nothing, not to be grasped.-That is exactly what the clever Sophist would like me to think, because then I can't catch him in my understanding. I am saying he is other than, diverse from}he philosopher. (In fact, he's in some ways pretty close.) This is the stranger's tremendous thought: Nonbeing is Otherness, and coversely, Otherness is Nonbeing. If ,,.... . you 're tempted to think that this is mere wordage, ask yourself what is the most potent political sentiment in our country at this moment. I say it is what we all call "diversity," the idea that who and what we are not has as much proper Being as we do; what is other is only other, not less. And this powerful thought is first articulated in Plato's Sophist. But here's the rub. This parricidal Stranger doesn't quite succeed with his reinterpretation of Nonbeing. For though the Sophist is now unable to escape capture by going to ground in utter nothingness, he's still not the genuine article, still a faker, still the mere image of the honest 9 �thinker. So ifNonbeing is just Otherbeing, how will we account for true inferiority, truly mere images, a true decline and fall from what we usually call reality? For an image isn't just other than its original-it really is not quite up to that particular original, though in a way it is, namely insofar as it has its looks. An image is usually hopelessly less than its original; few people prefer a photograph to its sitter or a fake to the genuine article. Do notice that all I've just reported is really a very deep treatment of the question I posed before, asking whether negation is just something we think and say or whether there is real, genuine, true negation in things themselves, be they thinkable or visible. Thus for me Parmenides' goddess with her rejected Nonbeing was at the center of the \i,·hole inquiry, and that is where she appears in the book I'm telling you about. Notice too how important the practical consequences of the answer are. Those theologians who make most sense to me all think that evil, in the world and in the soul, is the effect of an infirmity of Being, of an inferior or lesser existence. When we meet badness incarnate, face to face, it may appear as positive, even vital evil, but when we try to think our way as best we can into the badness of a soul we ahvays find something missing, a lack, a poverty, a kind ofNonbeing. But if we deny this analysis then evil is either perspectival or positive.-It is either the effect of our subjective v.:ays of naysaying rejection or a powerful and therefore possibly respectable and often fascinating way of positive being. You can see that to me it is important that the external and internal world should not just be a tissue of positive facts-as the school called positivism in fact claims. But I'm not one hundred percent convinced I can have it my way, though as I will shortly show, I've got another good reason, even closer to my heart, for wishing to acknowledge non-existent objects. Let me now return to one of my many questions, the first one, which was to be answered only toward the end, after having gone some way into the inquiry. The question was: Is all 10 �negation fundamentally one? The mere etymology of all the no and neg- words in terms of turned-up noses doesn't get us very far, so the next thing is to try to discern the kinds of naysaying and nayspeaking there are, and then to see what they might have in common. I'll hurtle through them, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the question period you will add some I left out. I began where our life as persons begins, with toddlers, those two-year-old terrors of negativity. This propensity of the terrible twos for naysaying will ring a bell with parents. It's No! to everything, often for the sheer compulsion to negate. I once minded (in both senses of the . word) a little fellow who actually said to me: "I want not to want .... "Or ask a kid in the throes of negativity: "Do you want some of my baloney sandwich?" ''No!" he says, and he gets on your lap and takes it away from you. Now at least in our Western world there are three great crises of individual development: One is the mid-life crisis, which ought to seem very remote to students; the second is adolescence, of which they come as accredited experts; and the earliset is the "terrible twos," which they have probably totally blanked out. But this was when they first grew from lovable animals into respect-demanding persons. In its rebellious assertiveness it is very similar to the second transition into independent humanity, the one that occurs in adolescence . The momentous happening for babies is the discovery of their will, the negative will that repels the outside and defines the child as a separate human being. The briefest, most independent kind of naysaying, just ''No!'', is here willful, and it is an open question for me whether human negativity doesn't always preserve a trace of self-assertion. I might add that from naysaying babies I go in the first chapter by a natural and easy transition to negating devils and demons \Vho are in permanent rebellion against their divinity. 11 �Whatever the case of personal naysaying may be, there is an opposite kind of denial, expressed by the particle "not," which can be as impersonal and objective as human rationality is capable of being. This is the negation of the logicians, the negation that is tied to sentences, statements, and propositions. There are many deeply interesting questions to be asked oflogical negation, for example, how what is known as the Law of Excluded Middle got built into the · fundamental standard logic-the law that says that there is no third possibility between affirmation and denial. Or whether positive and negative are logically coequal, or the positive is always the original position. But let me propose to you a preliminary question not quite so deep but just as interesting: Where in a sentence does the "not" properly come? Let me give you the possibilities. You might say (I hope): 1. "This lecture is-not boring." Here the not is attached to the copula "is." The thoughtcoupling or connection between my lecture and boredom is broken by the operation of negation. Or 2. "This lecture is not-boring." Here the "not" goes with the boredom, and puts the lecture into the infinitely large class of non-boring speeches. This is not so much a negative operation as a positive classification into a negative class, a class that is itself a negative object. Or 3. "It is not the case that this lecture kboring." Here the negation is to the who le proposition. The curious possibility of denying a proposition lock, stock, and barrel led to a new logic early in the last century. This is symbolic logic, for which the sentence itself shrinks into the symbol p or q, one whose relations of implication can be studied quite apart from any sentential meaning. Here negation is nothing more than a flipping function. If p is true, then notp is false and the reverse, if p is false then not-p is true. It is the most colorless negation there is. Its definition is nothing more than the rule just stated; no one really \Vants to say what true and 12 �false, T and F, means in this formal context, though in ordinary speech negation and falsity seem to be closer than negation and truth. Thus those Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels, which the Juniors read about, call "saying the thing which is not" a lie, though it might \.vell be the trutlr--if the thing really is not. There is a fourth possibility: 4. "This non-lecture is boring." This sentence suddenly has an altogether different quality. ("Quality" is the term used of the positivity or negativity of a proposition). It is not a negation at all, but the affirmation that a predicate belongs positively to a subject, though the subject is itself negative. So here we are back to the question raised before. Are there non-subjects, non-beings that can be subjects of assertions, at least in thought? Here is a way to think ofthis puzzle. Almost everyone agrees that when you think you are thinking about something. I say "almost everyone" because there are alternatives: There might not be separable objects for thought and speech to be about, but thinking and speaking might just be about themselves. But let that be, and let me here suppose that the question "\\'hat are you thinking about?" makes sense. Then one might argue that the sentence "This non-lecture is boring" is nonsense, but it isn't straightforward nonsense. Or one might e;ven argue that it is straightforwardly false. There are, that argument would go, all sorts of non-existent objects that make a sentence false when you try to make them the subject, since you can't talk of non-beings and shouldn't try. There are golden mountains that happen not to exist, though they might; there are round squares that can't exist because they are selfcontradictory in concept; there are unicorns that are imaginable but not as an existing part of nature. All these are nonexistent objects; add-to them the legion of human beings who live in epics and novels, for example, Odysseus who lives in Homer's Odyssey. 13 �Now, however, let me introduce to you Mrs. Pringle, an acquaintance of one philosophically inclined logician. Mrs. Pringle teaches high school; it is a good school because they read the Odyssey. She wants to test if you've read carefully, so she asks: "What is the color of Odysseus' hair?" If you have in fact read carefully you know Odysseus has auburn, reddishgold hair, and that when he comes home to Ithaca it's a little silvery and a little thin. That's all in the poem. So ifyou say "auburn" on the test she marks it T and if"brov.11" it's F for falssand your grade is Fas well. So it's clearly not the case that all sentences about the fictional, imagined, nonexistent Odysseus are false-not to Mrs. Pringle, who's not to be fooled. The Englishman Bertrand Russell, one of those who think that the world is composed of positive particulars and also the man who was the co-discoverer of symbolic logic, made the claim, clearly connected to these opinions and discoveries, that propositions about nonbeings are just false. He had an opponent, whom he respected highly and who wrote at about the same time, the beginning of the last century, the Austrian Alexius Meinong. He squarely faced the fact so clear to Mrs. Pringle, that sentences about nonexistences and nonbeings can be both true and false, and moreover he took it as a basic feature of thought that it always is about something, that without fail we intend something when we think. So he made the follov.:ing paradoxical but unavoidable claim. He said: "There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects." It was a way of saying that there must be objects, objects that we think of or imagine, that are indifferent to existence, that are outside of existence. Meinong says that such objects have "Beyond-being." Among them are the mathematical objects, the theories \Ve have in mind, and also beings like Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and even unicorns. So the standing of the creatures of the imagination seems to be saved and we can talk 14 �about them. They can be subjects of sentences. They don't exist but they have a kind of Being, Beyond-being. But here's the trouble: Recent logicians have blamed Meinong for making a "slum" of nonexistents, a ''breeding ground of disorderly elements"-though that's their problem, not mine. My trouble is that Meinong's Beyond-being is more the acknowledgement of a need than the solution of a problem. Beyond-being is a courtesy title for objects that it is very easy and natural to be acquainted with and very mystifying to get to the bottom of The beings that arise in our imagination, or that transmigrate from someone else's imagination into ours by way of a work of fiction, don't exist, to be sure, at least not in their full specificity. They are not flesh and blood and yet they are more vital and more vivid than much that has respectable existence in the ) real world. Fictions coinhabit our lives as models and companions and they have more staying · power than human beings-Odysseus is, after all, well over three thousand years old. Their power seems to derive from the mysterious way in which an airy nothing has assumed a . habitation and a name. The term Being both does and doesn't apply to them, and Meinong's Beyond-being is a brave acknowledgement of that fact, but no more. Now I have given examples of willful No, logical Not, the Nonbeing that arises unwittingly with the inquiry into Being, and the Nonexistence that concerns philosophically inclined logicians. There are two more ways of naysaying that I'll dispose of quickly. One is Negativity itself, considered not, as is negation, in terms of a fixed positive judgment pitted against a negative judgment \.vhere one says: "I say this lecture is not boring;'' and the other, whose understanding is the opposite, says: "Yes, it is." This more fluid negativity was discovered by Hegel; it is known to the seniors as it appears at work in the Phenomenology of the Spirit. This late in the lecture is no time to talk seriously about that kind of negativity, but let me 15 �describe it briefly and give an example-perhaps it would be better to say, let me try to induce a taste of it. Summarizing once-more, I've spoken of the negation that is the expression of an act of repelling will, and the negation that is an operation of logical thought and the negative object that thought is about. Hegelian negativity is neither an operation of the mind nor a mental object that holds still for thought. It is instead the life of thought in which the activity of thinking and the stable object that thinking is about meld and fuse together. Thus the object is, as it were, animated, while the thinking is not yours or mine but emanates from the thing itself. Assuming that the word Being has some meaning for you, hold it in your mind and receptively watch it; immerse yourself in it. Being will reveal itself, just as Parmenides's goddess says it must. But what it will reveal about itself is that it has no shape, no weight, no limit. It has no features, and the thought of Being is altogether negative, a tissue of no's and not's. So in being thought and in animating ·· thought, Being turns out to be Nothing or Naught. The story of Hegelian negativity begins here, for Nothing under this scrutiny of thought, or thought under the influence of Nothing, turns into yet another, a third thought-object, namely Becoming. Hegel calls these animate thoughts "concepts" and the whole universe of subjectively active thought and stable thought-substance develops as an organic whole. Hegel's name for this development is dialectic. It became more and more a problem to me why it begins with Being rather than Nothing, for Nothing seems even more rudimentary than Being, and, when watched thoughtfully, it too turns into its opposite, namely Being. But leaving that problem aside, I was next confronted with what seemed to me the most final and absolute kind of negation, the thought of Nothing. Nonbeing was always relative to Being, the negation of and alternative to Being. But Nothing is independent and absolute. Indeed 16 �the Nihilists, the "nothingists," as they call themselves, do deny reality and being, do seem to negate all that is and say that everything is nothing, comes to nothing, is worth nothing. But that is only because they find themselves in an illusory world, and so they begin by opposing the naive and deluded believers in this world. Thus it turns out that they do acknowledge something, even if it is something illusory. What they really maintain is the absolute primacy of Nothing. So the great question becomes why there is anything at all and not only nothing, ~w that small stain of illusion appears upon the vast pure plain of Nothingness. Nihilist passion can be powerfully political and nihilist metaphysics deeply subtle, but, to tell the truth, I don't know what to make of it: The fly in the nihilist ointment seems to be the nihilist himself thrashing about in a very positive way. The object of this hurtling race through the various negations that I discerned was to ask what they might have in common. What, if anything, do willful No, logical Not, fictional Nonexistence, ontological Nonbeing, dialectical Negativity, and absolute Nothing have in common? Well, the first thing that came to mind is also the last. What they all have in common is that they start from a position, a place maintained, and develop from that an op-position, a denial of that place. Willful No opposes what I want to what I repel, sometimes just because it's not my idea. Logical Not rises above my subjective position to see a field of propositions that are affirmed and couples itself with these as their denial, their negation. Nonexistence is a ghostly doppelganger that opposes its own related Existence, where that term is used of what is posited as here in place and now in time. Nonbeing is what opposes Being, where Being means all that is, in or even out of place, in and even out of time. Negativity is the movement of thought as it 'Natches its object develop into its opposite. And finally, Nihilism is the claim that the natural human position, which is in the positive, in Reality, Existence, Being, and in Yeasaying, must be · 17 �reversed and that Nothing is the original affirmative position to which Something is negatively opposed. That negation is fundamentally opposition is not news: many books on the subject say so quite incidentally and smoothly. But when this understanding arises not as an obvious and easy assumption but as a haltingly thought-out conclusion it comes as a revelation. Mine and thine, this and that, here and there, now and then are discernible, discriminable, distinguishable not as mere diversities and differences but as related position and counterposition, as bonded opposites. Each kind of naysaying is a specific response to what first comes to sight or to mind; all naysaying is parasitic on and shows up the configuration of a positive object, the sense of an affirmative thought which it cancels and yet somehow keeps. It is slightly less obvious that there might be things that are in themselves negative which are inferior by reason of their nonexistence or nonbeing. And it is a very unobv_ous reflection that some nonexistences and nonbeings are i more potent and more important to us than the most positive reality. It's, as I say, no great news, and yet it is a revealing insight with which to live, this ability of ours to keep and cherish what absence, passage oftime, inherent nature, circumstantial impossibility or opposing thought has canceled. And so I want to end with a little disquisition on the results and uses of inquiries ofthis sort, the kind we encourage at this college. The chief question, the one that drove me into the investigation, led me only to mystery upon mystery, as I will show in a minute. By hard-nosed standards I got no results to which a well-informed reader of philosophical and logical books couldn't say either: "Well, we knew that to begin with" or "That's against common sense ." And the only use these results seem to have is to make everyday occurrences strange and confusing. 18 �But you might as truthfully say that they make dully ordinary mundane things remarkable and wonderful. Indeed, the discovery of a mystery is least of anything the sowing of confusion. A mystery is not an unsolved problem awaiting expert resolution in the course of progress. But neither is it a swampy indeterminacy that sucks in all attempts at clarification. Nor is it one of those notorious unanswerable questions from that deep pit about which we think we know, by some magical insight, that it has no bottom. A mystery in my meaning is a beckoning question to which one can discover very precise approaches and very definite answers, only to find that there are ever new routes of inquiry and that each solution contains new questions. In the course of this enterprise the mystery develops specificity, and we develop the conviction that there is really something stupendously wonderful there for .us to pursue-something to which all serious attempts at inquiry do bring us closer, but that we can never simply undo and discard as a question in the way we resolve and leave behind a problem. Moreover, we acquire the faith that our inability to finish the question off for good does not lie in the murky bottomlessness of the mystery but in the insuperable finitude of our thinking. In sum, here is what I think: The pursuit of a mystery is the prescription for a pretty interesting life. And now to the real end of this lecture. My main question was: How do we account for our strange and wonderful ability to live by and with things that are no longer and things that never were, these being the formulas for our temporal and imaginative life? Well, the truth is that I've come on a number of ways to ask the question, and a number of ways to ans\.ver it, but no one way or one answer. Instead I have developed a powerful conviction that there is an articulabl~ mystery at our human center. Out of the background of our soul come discerning thought and its distinction-making language, which is always explicitly or implicitly a kind of naysaying; they inject themselves into the broad fields and beautiful palaces of our strangely 19 �spatial middle soul. There thought and speech meet the deliverances of our physical fa9ade which come by way of our frontal senses, especially sight and hearing, by which we face and confront the external world. And between these two, sense and thought, on the field of our imagination, there arise presences that are also absences: existences that are nonexistences too, beings that are nonbeings as well. Among these are the memories of what once was in time but no longer is, the remembrances from which our past, our histories are made. Among these are as well the present images of what is absent in space, the imagined completion of our sensually limited world. And among them are, finally, the enchanting visions of what never yet was but might yet be in the real world, the hopeful images that spur and guide our actions. I commend this middle mystery to you as a good companion for life, both to cultivate as an experience and to pursue as an inquiry. 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 20 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 Ways of Naysaying Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-02 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on November 02, 2001 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series (during Parents Weekend). Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 2001-11-02 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 has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/269">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ea14c33aa80252ba796f917c643bce96.pdf a7defdefa7114cd33acc482cfc216759 PDF Text Text Friday Night Lecture St. John's College, Annapolis September4, 1998 What, then, is Time? Eva Brann When our dean asked me to lecture this September it was because he had heard that I'd just completed a book on time, and he thought I might like to talk about it. He was right, and here are three possible kinds of profit that, on thinking it over, I figured might come to you and to me if I gave what I guess one might call a book report. First, even if the writing of books is a few decades off for most of you here tonight, it turns out that writing papers and annual essays is not so different from writing books, and I thought I might be able to tell you something useful. In fact I'll do it right now. \Vhen the time comes to write, whether it's a small paper or a long annual essay, never think: "I've got to write this thing! Help! I need a paper!" Instead search your soul for a question you have nursed for quite a while, whether articulately or inarticulately, somethingj:hat bothered and puzzled you, something that might be very intimate but is capable of public expression. Then flip mentally through the books you've studied, or the music you've sung, or the theorems you've proved, or the experiments you've re-enacted, and ask yourself which have a bearing, taken in the largest sense, on your issue. What will happen next is the result of a mixture of concentration and luck: some paradox or analogy or some other significant array will jump out at you. Seize that and slowly pummel, stroke, and shape it into an articulate order. Of course, none of that can happen at 1 �the last minute. For looking into yourself, for calling on your studies, for finding a crystallizing moment, for working all of it into a well-shaped' whole, time is of the essence. My second thought was that time is one subject concerning which it does not matter whether one is a freshman finishing the second week at the college or a senior beginning the fourth year, or even a tutor who has taught most of the program. Stormy love is not a pressing issue to all ages, nor is looming death, but there is, I think, no one, at any time of life, for whom time does not become a problem in some way or other. I know this from experience. Of the things that have urgently interested me from time to time, the mention of Being and Non-being, for example, provokes mostly stupefied non-interest, the mention of the Imagination elicits an account of people's favorite fantasy series, but the mention of Time gives rise to intelligently companionable puzzlement. People have a different relation to the question concerning time than to other deep matters, which they are either willing to bypass as too obscure for their taste or to treat with the most unreflective but familiar particularity. The title of this lecture -- and of my book -- is "What, then, is Time?" It is a quotation from the most famous sentence ever written on time by the man who was most deeply immersed in its elusive familiarity, Augustine. It comes from the eleventh book of his Confessions, which we read in the sophomore year. Here is the \vhole sentence: What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to the questioner, I do not know. My own concern with time started from two ends at once, intellectual puzzlement and deepfelt irritation, and it developed, as really good questions do, from annoyed fascination to serious interest. The intellectual puzzlement was just that expressed by Augustine: What sort of a being, if it was a being, could be so handily familiar in daily usage and so fugitive to the grasp of thought? Here I did as all my fellow humans do: I make time, kill time, manage my time, waste time. To be sure, I've never "done" time, though but for the grace of God I might have. I know that time heals all wounds and ravages all the beauties of the world. 2 But if I ask myself what it is that does this, I �see and touch nothing and think of less. That is at first just a puzzling and then an engaging state of affairs. The irritation I experienced had a superficially different source. In all the departments of life people talk of time as a force or a power, not just in the sort of dead metaphor that makes up the unconscious poetry of popular usage, as in all the phrases cited above. No, they mean it literally, especially when they are talking of the so-called "phases" of time. "Phase" will be the most important word in this lecture. It is my word -- different authors use different words -- for the three parts of time, past, present, future. Perhaps I should have said the three parts of human time, for I will argue that only human, or human-like, beings have pasts and presents and futures. It is the future with which these people mostly play infuriating havoc. They say and they inean that there is a future coming and our business is to form a reception committee for it. Some see this Future with a capital Fas a doom, as in Yeats's great poem, "The Second Coming": And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Far more of our contemporaries see it cheerfully as a benefactor, though a totally manipulative one: It is the Information Age or the Global Age or the Age of Megacorporations, you name it, and our duty is to be ready or to be run over by time. They engage in what I call to myself proactive passivity. This time-mode -- the adjective, incidentally, is "temporal," so I will say, this temporal mode -- strikes me as paralyzing the human will, and that is one form of immorality. So besides the intellectual desire to understand the nature of time and whether it is a being or a nothing, I also began to think about time in its human effects. Almost everyone who has lived for some time has neat observations about these effects. For example, I have been at this college forty-one years or almost fifteen thousand days. Sometimes it seems like forever and sometimes it seems like a day. What accounts for this mad elasticity of time? But besides these timernminations there is also that sense I have of the important moral consequences of not thinking about the nature of time, about accepting what seem to be abuses of our phase-nature. In fact, a new hero of mine, Octavio Paz (whom I did not in fact discover for myself but through one of our 3 �Mexican alumni, Juan Villasenor) put my thought much more expansively than I would have had the courage to do. He says in his book on India: I believe that the reformation of our civilization must begin with a reflection on time. Recall that I am still laying out the possible profit of telling you about my book, and here is the last one, chiefly to myself. Imagine what a pleasure it will be to come on campus and to be able to fall easily into a conversation about this magical subject with some proportion of the people that live and learn here -- with the more virtuous part, I might add, those who come to Friday night lectures. Now let me tell you of two discoveries or devices -- it's always hard to tell whether it's one or the other -- about which the book crystallized. One was the discovery -- and I became persuaded that it was a discovery, was really there to be found-- that writers on time who lived millennia apart in time and who were worlds apart in thought were at crucial moments driven into the same understanding, or at least the same problem. Once I had discovered one such pair of time-twins I came on three others. And finally I came to believe that amongst them they pretty well established the perennial possibilities and the pertinent problems concerning time. In a moment I will tell who these writers are and what deep notion each pair shares. But let me say here that it ' was a blessing to find such a principle of selection. For it is hard for most of us to think about these enigmas without help. The trouble is, there is too much help on offer. I own a bibliography of time which tells of nearly two hundred thousand books and articles written between 1900 and now. Of course, much of it is piffling, but much of it is, I am sure, though!1'ul. I chose four great writers, and they paired quite naturally with four more, and by good luck these are the eight among the ancient and modern writers generally agreed to have the deepest theories. The pairs, then, are Plato and Einstein, Aristotle and Kant, Plotinus and Heidegger, Augustine and Husserl. Since many of you will not have read them, though all but Husserl are on the Program (and he ought to be), I'll present their time-theories as simply and as unencumbered by terminology as possible. But I'll omit completely telling you about one pair, Plotinus and Heidegger, because it is too tricky 4 �to do, although their similarity on the point of time is most spectacular in view of their diametric opposition on everything else that matters. The other discovery was that a human effect which never ceases to enchant me, namely the images that arise before the mind's eye in our imagination, had a certain remarkable similarity with our sense of time, a formal sort of similarity. Images are absent presences or present absences; they are not what they are, they are made of Being and Non-being. What I mean is that any image, but particularly a mental image, presents someone or something not actually present. To imagine an absent friend is to have him there, but not really. Time as well, it turns out, has this curious character of being and not-being, of being there but not really, of being present only in its absence. My all-time favorite time-saying is by the priceless Yogi Berra. When someone asked him: "What time is it?" he replied: "You mean now?" It is the wisest of answers, because you can't tell time, and yet we do. It is always and never Now. So the book began to have two parts. One part was a study of these eight philosophers for the purpose of seeing what kinds of answers could be given to the question "What is time?" and what problems were inherent in the answers. But studying, while a help to thinking, and for most of us an indispensable help, is not thinking, since to understand what others think is simply a different activity from the thinking that goes directly, without intermediary, to the question. So in a second part I tried to go directly to the question, having absorbed all the help I could. Therefore in this lecture, too, after telling what some of the best writers I could find have thought about time, I will try to tell what I think. I should say right now, lest you be disappointed, that what I conclude first and last is that it is a true mystery. I mean a potent effect whose characteristics are poignantly clear but whose nature is finally unfathomable. You can specify a mystery but you can't resolve it. If you have a huge field of apparently possible answers to a question, it clears the decks somewhat to begin by removing the answers that are simply unacceptable. In thinking about the ways time is spoken of, it seemed to me that whatever else is said, time is spoken of either as 5 �occurring in nature or as being within the human being. Time is either external or internal, or perhaps both. External time has attracted by far the greater interest. Time is written of in religion, where it is a great question how an eternal God acts in created time. Time is treated in history, where it is a great question whether the times make history or people do. But above all time is a great subject in physics, where the best-grounded and most remarkable theories of time are developed. Without question, the physicist who has done most to make other physicists and people in general think about time is Einstein. The work I chose to examine is his 1905 paper on what came to be known as the Special Theory of Relativity. \Vhat struck me first was that every mention of time was in quotation marks. This habit conveyed to me that I was dealing with the most careful and thoughtful of writers, one who knew that time in physics is a most problematic notion. Einstein says right away: It might appear possible to overcome all the difficulties attending the definition of "time" by substituting "the position of the small hand of my watch" for "time." And in fact such a definition is satisfactory .... At least it is satisfactory when we are talking only of time here and now. Before Einstein, physicists had believed what everyone believes: that it is the same time throughout the world, that every other Here simply has the same Now as my Here. This situation was called simultaneity and was regarded as a chief feature of external, I mean natural, time. Einstein goes on to show that for any stationary Here far away from my own, it takes some calculating to synchronize our watches. And when we are moving relative to each other one of our most entrenched senses about time is overthrown, namely that what time it is is independent of our state of rest or motion. Einstein's theory turns out to have to do entirely with the measurement of time -- what my local clock and your local clock tell under different physical conditions. That is why Einstein puts "time" in quotations: He is warning us that not the nature of time but its measurement is at issue. Now I'll jump back two and a half millennia and quote to you what is the most famous, . most often cited definition of time. It comes from Plato's dialogue called Timaeus. Timaeus is a 6 �made-up character, a visiting physicist. He and some of Socrates' friends have planned an amusement for him. On the day before Socrates had produced for them a picture in words of the ideal political community -- some people think it is the one set out in the dialogue called The Republic. Now Timaeus will reciprocate by painting for Socrates' entertainment the cosmos, the ordered world within which such an ideal city might fit. In the course of giving a mathematical account of such a cosmos, Timaeus says this about the way the maker of the world introduced time into it: He planned to make a movable image of eternity, and as he ordered heaven into a cosmos, he made an image of that eternity which stays one and the same, an eternal image moving according to number. And that is what we call time. What Timaeus is saying is that the heavens move like a great cosmic dial and that this motion allows us to tell time. So the mythical early physicist and the greatest of modem physicists are saying the same thing: Time is what the clock tells, in one case the cosmic clock, in the other a local watch. And so say all working physicists in between. It is a working, a so-called operational definition of time, and it works just fine -- until you begin to think about it. That time is what the clock tells is what one might call a dispositive definition. It disposes of time as an issue. But if you turn it around and try to say that the clock tells time you're in trouble. Time never appears on the face of a clock. Nor does it appear anywhere else in nature, ever. All other natural phenomena appear somehow to sight or hearing or touch. Of time not a trace. What does appear is motion. An analog clock is a standard cyclical motion. A digital clock " is a standard progressive motion. Clocks are calibrated motions. There is no time actually used in physics and none that actually appears in nature. There is much more to be said about this shocking claim, and I'm sure you'll want to argue it out in the question period. Among other points then to be made, the seniors, who have read Newton, might want to point out that Newton, at least, does stipulate true natural time, an equable flux that comes before motion. And I would answer that it is not only as physicist but also as theologian that Newton 7 �puts time into nature. For this so-called absolute time, which has no <:>bservable features, is probably not so much in nature as in God's mind, in that part of God's mind, called his "sensorium," with which he is receptive to all of nature, its infinite spaces, its primary forces, its ultimate bodies. My point at the moment is, however, only to reinforce a conclusion I came to: Wherever time is seriously considered, mind, soul, consciousness and sensibility come on the scene. Time can only be internal, meaning within a mind, possibly God's mind. So I disposed to my own satisfaction of the vast majority of theories of time. Intricate and interesting as they are, they are really theories of motion, not of time, and they don't tell what time is. But time is the sort of subject for which every settling of the mind in one respect is punished by a complementary problem popping up in another. You can, and I think you have to, take time out of nature, b·ut I am not so perverse as to claim that the outside world isn't full of variations: locomotions, processes, alterations. The mystery that has now popped up is that we have no idea what is really going on in this time-deprived world. Let me show you what I mean. Human time, internal time, will be distinguished by its phases, past, present, future. But nothing in nature, except perhaps the near-human mammals, apes and dolphins, has a past or a present or a future. Edwin Muir says in a poem called "The Animals": But these have never trod Twice the familiar track, Never turned back Into the memoried day. All is new and near In the unchanging Here .... Animals and sticks and stones do not have a past, though they might be scµd to be their past. But I, for one, just cannot imagine what it is like to live in the unchanging Here and not the have memory, how such a being gets itself into and out of existence, in short how anything can change without having phases of time. But then again the effort is love's labor lost: Hmv could I have empathy with, feel my way into, that which has no inside? So the outer world becomes in this 'fespect opaque, and this is the price to be paid for making a philosophical choice. In corning to conclusions in philosophical inquiries, I want to say as an aside, it is always a matter of what we 8 �can best live with for the time being -- which is why all philosophy as carried on by human beings is ultimately moral philosophy. There is perhaps a solution to the timelessness of nature. It is a commonplace for writers o. time that there are two kinds of time. They might be called succession-time and phase-time. n Phase-time is dynamic in the sense that the human present, about which time breaks into past and . future, continually shifts -- as Yogi Berra's counter-question, "You mean now?" makes clear in its unavoidable absurdity. Succession-time, on the other hand, is static. It is merely the endless chain of before-and-after, established once and for all. It' is time all by itself, no one's time, the time of all events taken only with relation to their succession and to nothing and nobody else. Perhaps nature does have its time, succession-time. But even the successions of nature tum out to be more intelligible as causal than as temporal sequences. This is the moment to introduce Aristotle, who produced the first extensive treatment of time ever, in Book Four of his Physics. Here is what he says time is: Time, then, is not motion but that by which motion has number. Aristotle seems to be making spectacularly short shrift of that mysterious power, time. It is nothing but an attribute of motion . Then he says what sort of attribute: Time ... is the number of motion with resnect to before and after. L 'What th~ deep meaning of all this is can't come out unless we follow up what Aristotle means by motion, number, before-and-after. But we might guess at two problematic elements of this understanding of time. . The first, which is by far the less deep of the two but is endlessly dis~ussed, is this. If time is the number of motion as a progression in which the parts come before and after, if it is in fact the succession-time I just introduced, it must somehow share in a chief feature of motion, namely continuity. Physical motion borrows this feature from the fact that it takes place over distance. Distances are representable as mathematical lines, and these lines, as the freshmen have just begun to see, must be continuous -- no elements can be missing. So time, as Aristotle himself 9 �emphasizes, is continuous, like a line. Wherever you cut the line you get a point that belongs to both parts of the cut. This point is the Now. Time is in every way like a line of geometry: It lies upon its points, each of which is a Now. The only difference is that the geometric points are static, whereas the Now moves forward, ever the same in its features, ever different in temporal location. But as you know by now, a point is that which has no parts, so the Now has no parts . .Therefore it has no extent, no bulk, no force, no presence. Therefore the point-Now of the mathematical model of time is as far removed as anything can be from the humanly experienced present, which is vivid, full, and altogether the most impressive phase of time. Insofar as time is continuous it is not very human. But then Aristotle has also said that which will make time totally discontinuous. For time is a number by which motion is counted, and a number is a collection of completely discontinuous units -- there is no way one unit can be tangent to another. Motion, locomotion at least, is bound to distance and borrows from that fact its continuity. But number is bound to something else which reinforces its discontinuity. Many things in the world are collections of items. Aristotle mentions herds of horses and flocks of sheep. Other things, such as distances of all sorts, can be marked off into artificial units. All these things have a number that belongs to them. But nothing in nature gets its number unless someone is counting. Aristotle says that it is the soul that counts. So time, in order to be the number of motion, requires a wide-awake counting soul. Now I shall say a sentence, or rather a question, which is underlined in my typescript: When the soul is countin2. does it take time to do it? Does it get its numbering from some motion? What distance does that psychic motion cover? Aristotle is in big - and I must say unacknowledged - trouble. Time in nature is only the number of motion, but what is the counting that announces that number? I don't think he knew, but perhaps in the question period someone will make his case. Now let me leap two thousand plus years ahead. For Aristotle time originates with the counting soul. To my mind, Aristotle's true modem successor, the one who takes Aristotle's 10 �thought and turns it thoroughly and precisely upside down, is Kant. Here is an aside: This kind of inversion of thought, so that it is the same in name but utterly different in significance, is the chief moving force of the philosophical tradition we study at this college. By "force" I don't mean some magical attribute of the passage of time, but the way of proceeding that is congenial to those immersed in this tradition. At any rate, whatever time is, if it has power it has it only as an aspect of human consciousness. Back to Kant. You will be relieved to hear that I do not plan to tell you what is in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant's founding book, although everything in there. is sooner or later related to time. In any case, the Juniors will be studying it in spring, and it is that which makes February a month of delights. Instead I will focus on a few sentences which show what it is that brings Kant so very close to Aristotle in the letter, though he is worlds apart in meaning. Kant regards time as a constitutional part of our receptive capacity, our ability to take in what is given to us. Such a capacity is called "sensibility," and we are so made that whatever comes to us, the world of nature especially, comes in the form of temporal sensibility. The Critique is a great work of philosophical art, and I omit the many factors that feed beautifully into rounding this notion out, in order to concentrate on just one thing: When we ask what it means that nature comes to us in the form of time, the answer is that whenever we think about nature we begin by noticing quantities, and we do that first of all by numbering-- not top-of-the-head counting, but a deeply interior kind of beating out of units that add up into a number. Here is Kant's word on what is happening in this counting: "I generate time itself .... " So Aristotle and Kant agree that time is a kind of psychic beating or counting. It does not save Kant from the question I asked of Aristotle that he calls time a form of the sensibility. Is this form, I now ask, itself static or is it fluid? If it is static, how does it produce the psychic flow of pulses? If it is fluid, is there yet another time behind Kant's deep constitutional time? Let me say right now that all the authors who put time within the soul run into this trouble. And those who put the origin or ground of time outside of the soul run into other and worse troubles. 11 �Both Aristotle and Kant have been primarily interested in what I have called successiontime, the steady chain of before-and-afters found in nature, though apprehended by our counting. Now is the time to speak of human time, phase-time. To my mind, Augustine is the greatest writer on time -- and the most beautiful one. Here's another aside: Very broadly speaking, philosophers come in two kinds, those who inquire serenely and hopefully into a subject they long to know and believe they can approach and those who question severely and disenchantedly a matter they think is ultimately hopeless. Augustine certainly has travails of the soul, and I would not be unfair to call Husserl, who takes up two millennia later exactly where Augustine had left off, a fusspot. But both are not so much driven as led by faith in their subject, and I want to say that these are the philosophers I trust and prefer to be with. Augustine wants to know what time is because it is the human counterpart of God's eternity, the eternity of the God he has just found and acknowledged. But there is nothing exalted about his questioning -- it is very down-to-earth. He loves to sing hymns, and the question is: How do I measure times, the long and short syllables, the lengths of the stanzas? Distances are easy to measure. They stay put while you lay a measuring stick alongside them. But the moment slips away, the past is no longer, the future not yet, and there is no way to lay a time-stick along an elapsed time. Lengths measure lengths, motions measure motions -- what measures time? Here is his answer, as I said, to my mind the most illuminating thing ever uttered about time, a new discovery, as he himself says: Time is nothing else but a stretching out, though of what I do not know. Yet I marvel if it be not of the mind itself. Our mind or soul is distended and that makes it capable of holding time, so to speak. How distended, how stretched? Here is Augustine again: This then is clear and plain, that neither things to come nor things past are, nor should we properly say: "There are three times, past, present, and future." But probably we should say: "There are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future" .... The present of things past is memory, 12 �the present of things present is sight [or perception], the present of things future is expectation. So we can measure times gone by and times to come because they are now present to us. But the solution of the measuring problem is the least of it. What Augustine has done is to tell what makes a human being temporal, how time is in us. To be human is to be present and to have things present before or within. Yet another aside: Certain so-called postmodern writers, ta19ng their departure from Heidegger, think that this is a very derivative way of approaching human Being and that to think of human beings as containing presences within and confronting things present without demeans the originality of existence. But Augustine does think that to exist is both to be in the present and to be in the presence of things. Augustine's book on time in the Confessions is preceded by a book on memory, and this book is the indispensable preparation for his understanding of time. For there he shows how we can also be in the presence of absent things: We have the whole spacious world, its fields and palaces, within us, not, however, the things themselves but their images. Here you can see how the imagination, as a power for making the absent present, is essential to our inner sense of time. For with it we can have memory of past times and also expectation of future things, since expectation is a forward-directed imagination. And since much of what has happened to us is now present to us or is now recoverable, we can not only measure time somewhat as we do space, which is all there simultaneously. We can also see how our mind is a temporal image of God's mind, who holds all creation toget~er there at once, in the eternal Now. a To be human, then, is to have mind so stretched that it encompasses in its present both memory and foresight. One way to depict that condition is in a diagram like a coordinate system. The horizontal axis is the time of the world, of Creation; it is succession-time. God knows how it works; we don't. Astride of this horizontal coordinate sits a vertical stretch of line, our mind. ·Where the two intersect is the moment of sight, of perception, our point of intake for the world. The segment below 'represents remembered events, dropped out of sight but not out of mind. The 13 �part above represents the dreams and plans we now have for the future -- and that is all the future that actually exists. As the world passes by, our memory line grows longer and our expectation line shortens. Then one day it ends. Husserl, who actually draws diagrams of this sort, in fact marks one of his lines as the "tug towards death." It is not, however, one of the axes he is marking in this way, but one of the oblique lines with which he connects the horizontal axis of succession-time and the vertical axis of phase-time. These oblique lines show how each perception offered by the horizontal successionline sinks away into vertical memory in an orderly and continuous manner, without any scrambling or dislocation. Husserl's time-diagrams are clever and complex, and I had a lot of fun -- fun bordering on agony, that is -- working them out. But I didn't give you any handouts, because then you'd be trying to figure them out now instead of listening; I should know. Many of you will not have heard of Husserl, and I'll say just enough for my purpose. He is the founder of a way of inquiry called Phenomenology. Its chief feature is that is excludes all questions of existence and reality, such as whether time is real. Instead a Phenomenologist pays attention to the appearances within consciousness, articulating and ordering them. Our sense of time is a perfect subject for Phenomenology and Husserl's lecture-series known as The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness is the great first-fruit of his method. Husserl makes hundreds of acute observations, but his main advance on Augustine is to puzzle seriously over the extent of the present. Recall that the point-Now of mathematics is too skimpy to live in, but consider also that an extended present is going to be part past, part future. Husser! finds a way, fairly technical, to show that there is a discernible immediate past and an immediate future that are so bound in with the present as to give room, so to speak, for perception, so that there is time for a time-sequence, say a melody, to be taken in. He shows how the present has time for the world to impress itself on us. One last word about Husserl. The horizontal axis, which represented the world's time for Augustine, represents an internal time-flux, a continuous sort of subjective succession-time, for 14 �Husserl. For he is withholding all claims about the reality of the world and its time, and attending only to our inner experience, to our internal time-consciousness. In trying to understand this internal flow Husserl is drawn into questions beyond Phenomenology. The question that finally preoccupies him is the familiar one: How can this flux, which is one aspect of our sense of time and for him the deepest, be spoken of? Are we fluid through and through, or is this flux grounded in a stable form? But how can a fixed form be the source of a flow? Husserl, a man who is willing to admit ultimate perplexity without losing faith in the worth of his problem, says: For these things we have no names. · Now is the time for me to say what I think time is -- maybe it would be more sensible to say "how time works." I thiiik that phase-time is the fountain and origin of all time. Every phenomenon of time is derivative from the fact that we have past, present and future. To me the most astounding circumstance of our temporal life, surpassingly strange but apparently unavoidable, is the crux and center of the three phases: the present. All that is ever real for us, all that is really there, really present; occurs in these point-by-point moments of presence. This is the instant of perception when we see and hear and touch the world. The rest, the long stretches behind and before, is absence -- what has gone by and what is yet to come. Human life would therefore be very pointillistic and poor if present existence were all we had. Happily there are ways of being that are even more potent than present reality and momentary existence. There is the actuality of imaginative memory and of imaginative expectation. The present of perception is the point of intake for the novelties that the world offers to our senses, but the past and the future are also present to us as images, as memories of things past and plans for things to come. These are the present actualities, the powerfully present absences that give coherence and resonance and significance to the moment They also make it possible for us to measure time directly, not by observing external motions as of the hands of the clock which never displays time at all, but by the thickness of the image-pictures we flip through or leap over to get to 15 �moment from which we want to estimate a stretch of time. Our memory is like a laminate of transparencies or a carousel of slides, and my claim is that this accumulation we call the past and this projection we call the future is what produces our inner sense of time. And this thickening of the present by past and future is what Augustine calls "the stretching of the mind." Now note that I have described the present as punctual, instantaneous, momentary. And this description seems to be supported by the observations of all kinds of people, perhaps poets above all. The Nows that matter are somewhat isolated - instants of recognition, moments of meaning. In his book The Labyrinth of Solitude Octavio Paz calls the Now "explosive and orgiastic" and wonders how it fits into ordinary historical passage. But much of the time of our lives passes in seeming continuity, and this sort of time, the time that seems like a continuous passage, usually called duration, has to be accounted for as well. I think it works as follows. Our present appears punctuated by the ever-varying world and our perception of it. Now . we see our friends, now they've disappeared around the. corner; now we hear one note, now another. But there is another time experience that we become conscious of when we are deprived of most external sensation or when our inner images are pushed out of sight by fear and anxiety. Or we can deliberately close off our senses and empty our minds to concentrate simply on our inner duration. What then comes to the fore is a sort of inner pulsing, the very beat of our mere consciousness, empty life itself. I am trying to describe the soul's aboriginal counting that both Aristotle and Kant discovered. This inner beat then is the origin of that succession-time that is mirrored in the before-and-after of physical motion and that plays so large a role in our practicaL life. Now most of the time we are not taking note of this pulse, or paying much attention to our inner life at all. The beats recede and merge as in a long perspective; time's passage appears continuous and acquires all the characteristics and problems of a line in space. Then, 16 �retrospedively, time is thought of -- not felt -- as a continuum that is continuously cut by a pointlike Now, the kind of Now in which nothing can happen. So my description of time, which leaves time as what I call "a well-specified mystery," ends with the point-Now. And that is where a review of the various pathologies people attach to the phases of time begins. I'll give the sketchiest summary of our time-troubles, partly because time is short, partly because every one of us has a lot of personal experience with this aspect of time, and it will make a good subject for the question period. One way, then, to think of the way people wreak havoc with the perceptual present is that they treat it as a mere, point-like Now, monotonously empty and featureless, while racing unrestrainably forward. To try to live in this Now is to long to fill it with strong stimulation and increasing novelty. Now-life is the pathological counterpart of present-life. Similarly some people deprive themselves of the image-filled memory that gives the present its anchor of significance by rushing to keep up with novelty and trashing not only their own past but that past which their communities have in common, their external memories. And finally, some people are so dominated by a future that is supposedly coming at them that they give up what they really care about to make themselves into ready servants of this oncoming power. But according to my understanding the future is nothing but the dreams and plans we currently have, and as far as the humanly-made world is concerned, nothing is coming but what we actively or passively agree to. It is that passivity which is, to my mind, the greatest time-pathology. Arid now time's up. 17 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 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 What, then, is time? Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-09-14 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 14, 1998 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1998-09-04 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 has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/268">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8ced069597ebbf92956268e3779da410.pdf 9c19c913516fe795adf078aed85368af PDF Text Text WHY READ BOOKS? DEAN'S LECTURE, AUGUST EVA T. 30, 1996 H. BRANN As always, this opening lecture is dedicated to our freshmen. There is a Greek saying: Arche de toi hemisu pant6s: "The beginning is, in truth, half of the whole." I recall the saying because it sat above the first lesson of my Greek book in college, and it meant: You'd better learn these case endings thoroughly or else. But I want to take the saying on a nobler plane - as a reminder that what we, your teachers and fellow students, say to you in this first week is likely to have a special influence and to mark your four years here to some degree. So it seems to me important to alert you right away to one of the ways of your new community: a lecture, a prepared, uninterrupted pronouncement of some length, is in this college mainly the occasion for a conversation, either in the question period immediately afterwards, or later on, when you are very welcome -and this is no merely polite invitation -to visit me to talk more at less distance. The topic, or rather the question of this lecture "Why read books?" fits with this approach. All of you, as I know from reading your applications, do in fact read books, and you came here to read more of them and to do it better. It is the one thing you all have in common, this love of books. But what we do here is to question the facts and attachments of our lives, and that is the world of which you have now become a part. It has always seemed absurd to me, and a sign of how little experience the world in general has in asking real questions, that "questioning" should be felt as something hostile, as an interrogation intended to destroy self-confidence and faith, as if a call to question your own life and its assumptions were an invitation to undermine the ground you stand on. That may happen, to be sure, and cause you some difficult times, but it can never be the first, good-faith intention of question-raising. Questions are raised so that the mental ground you occupy will not be as a hard-trodden asphalt-covered barren parking lot for your thoughts but the tilled and turned-over soil of a growing garden of ideas. When I ask myself and you "Why read books?," I don't mean "What's the point?" but rather "There's more to this than I thought." Before I pursue my question for the evening, I want to add a dedication. This, my seventh and last opening lecture, is dedicated 1 �Brann to the seniors as well. We have something very particular in common, because for all of us, you and me, it will be the last year · of an epoch in our lives. You, however, will turn into alumni and will take ~p a new life, while I will return to my old occupations, reading books and teaching. And this mirror image of our fates makes me want to tell you something I have learned in the dean's office. Some of you will recall how fiercely - and ineffectually - I resisted being called "the administration." Why? Because the deans are in their proper being students and teachers in the program who have taken time out to fulfill a particular duty in this community that needs to be done, and by our polity, must be done by tutors. This constitution of ours embodies a rule that governs this institution oflearning as a whole. This rule is: First think, then act. If this rule is a good one, it justifies the four years you have taken out of your normal life as active participants in the world of action . . First you were given time and occasion to think, and now you are ready to seize the opportunity to do deeds. The strange fact is that few people in institutions of learning believe in this rule anymore. Some think that you learn to live by living and others think that it's enough to learn to make a living. Pragmatism and vocationalism are the short-hand terms for these beliefs. I am here to tell you that these notions have got to be wrong. I cannot tell you why it is so, but we human beings are so constituted that we cannot do these two things at once: think and act. I believe this fact of life has to do with the ever-enigmatic nature of time: the time of receptive contemplation is radically different from the time of decisive action. That is not to say that there is not much thought-like activity in action: prospective . imagining, provident figuring, careful calculating, summary intuiting. But in action all these mental activities are exercised as by a sleepwalker whose safety rests on the habits of another life and who had better not try to wake up. Deans know that; some even like it. Aristotle, it seems to me, has it absolutely right in the third book of the Nicomachean Ethics: the life of deliberation, which is the mental side of the active life, needs a capital of prior truths, theories and, above all, ends, a capital that is accumulated in contemplation. When you go into action you must already know what working hypotheses you will adopt, what you think about human nature in general, and most importantly what you love and want to bring about or save. It was in order to build up this fund of 2 �Why Read Books theories, insights and attachments that you came to this place of leisure - and it is never out of place to remind us all that the word "school" comes from the Greek word for leisure, schole. But something not unexpected will happen. As you draw down even a mental capital, you deplete it, you wear down the detailing that gives particularity to your thought, you compact and pare it into usable phrases; in short it undergoes what thought tolerates even less than fruit: canning. It is to prevent this normal canning of thought in active life that our alumni all over the country regularly hold seminars and read books together. · Have I gotten away from "Why read books?," my opening question? I think not. In this school books are the means of choice · for occasioning thought. There is a lovely archaic usage for a common word. In Psalm 119 (v. 147) of the King James version we read: "I prevented the dawning of the morning," meaning "My rising preceded that of the sun." The reading of books properly prevents the thinking of thoughts, in the sense of preceding it. Might it also sometimes prevent it in the sense of presenting an obstacle to thinking? Are reading and contemplation in league or at odds? That is a qu.e stion that has always puzzled me, but does so especially now that I am not far from returning to study. It may well interest you also, who are about to begin and who are about to conclude your studies, at least at the college. I want to ask the question in parts, first "What is reading?," then "What is a book?," and finally "Why read books'?" I am following here Socrates' teaching, which seems true to me, that to answer a "why'' or "how" question well we must inquire "what" sort of thing the object of our interest is. I. Reading Reading has a wide sense. The word itself is related both to reasoning and to riddling. To read is both to think and to puzzle something out. We are said to read faces and character, the lie of the land and maps, the book of nature and evidence. Here reading means attending carefully both by scanning and fixing in detail on whatever is before the eyes or other senses - and making something of it. In the largest sense reading is interpretation. The primary Latin meaning of "interpreter" is go-between or broker, and that fits the activity of reader in the largest sense very well. This kind of interpreting reader knows how to go from a sign to 3 �Brann what it signifies; a reader knows how to negotiate the way between a sign and meaning. Theories of signification are a huge and deep subject. We do not study them explicitly in this program any more than we pick out other philosophical or linguistic subject matter, but the study you do here should set you up particularly well for more detailed inquiry into signification. For the moment, let me provide a word for the object that reading, broadly understood, deals with: symbols. A symbol, in one frequent and well-warranted use of the word, is a sign that, whether intentionally or naturally, catches the attention on its own and at least in part reveals its significance through inspection. The word is Greek and means something joined or fitted together. When two parties were about to enter into a contract, say that one would act as broker to the other's money, they would take a strip of clay, make ajagged cut through it and bake the halves. When the lender came for his deposit, he had the fitting half as proof of ownership. A symbol is therefore a token meaningful through its sensory attributes. For example, if someone were to receive a bouquet of skunk cabbage from a neighbor as a token of esteem, the recipient would know what to think through exercising the sense of smell. Reading in the.wide sense is therefore the skill of interpreting symbols, which presupposes the ability to discern which among the multitude of objects we perceive are in fact symbolic; this ability is · anticipated by a far more fundamental disposition: the disposition to see everything whatsoever on occasion as pointing beyond itself. This inclination to regard nothing that appears as a dead end seems to me to be as human a characteristic as anything can be. I would go so far as to say that if any creature displays it, it has honorary membership in the human race and is entitled to all the privileges and immunities thereunto appertaining. Dolphins and chimpanzees may well turn out to be candidates. The human being may then be defined as the reading animal. But besides symbols, which are to be looked at, there are also signs, usually, though not always, of a conventional sort, signs that are meant to be looked not at but through. I say "usually" rather than "always" because there may be certain physical signs which are to be observed as, say, symbols of some disease, but are to be seen through and overlooked as signs of human nature, such as a bodily deficiency. But the class I am speaking of is mostly conventional, that is, it functions by a convention, an agreement which is usually published in a dictionary-like list somewhere. The 4 �Why Read Books signs that I am particularly thinking of are letters .. The letters themselves as well as their order are largely conventional, which means they do not signify on their own - else why would one need agreement and dictionary? "Conventional" is often and sensibly opposed to "natural," and in this context the difference is that what is natural reveals itself for what it is or does and what is conventional needs the aid of instruction, as an image of a dolphin reveals what it is an image of by being looked at, while the capital letter Q is not a sperm fertilizing an egg; which is what it looks like, nor could anyone guess that in English words it needs to be followed by a U. To be sure, some of the letters of the Western alphabet started as pictograms, and others were interpreted as pictures. For example the capital letter Delta, shaped like a triangle, gave its name to the spreading alluvial mouth of a river, and the capital letter Lamda, originally an inverted chevron one of whose legs was shorter than the other, gave its name to the mother of the great Corinthian house of the Cypselids, because she had the same characteristic. Herodotus tells her remarkable story in his fifth book (92). So also a meaning was sometimes found in the conventional ordei: of the alphabet or ABC. Some Romans evidently read in the sequence that sits in the middle of the ABC, L-M-N, the word elementum, making an analogy between the order of letters and the elements of nature. Since wherever convention is strongly involved, history becomes the primary source of explanation, knowing the history of our alphabet is the necessary way into the reasons for its present state, and a wonderful story it is. But to my mind, its most wonderful aspect, one with deep causes and great consequences, is how soon and completely the letters become mere signs with none but assigned functions. And that brings me to reading in the narrow sense, the kind of reading peculiarly appropriate to books. Here is what I mean. Recall the painful days - they were for me at six - of learning to read. Recall how your eye stopped at the letter, how you laboriously and haltingly spelled out each word. Letters stood between you and the sounded words, and every desire was to return to the companionable ease of being read to. Then one day, perhaps rather suddenly, everything clicked. The letters disappeared, often even the sound, and you were in the book. I remember my first silently read book with a kind ofreinforced vividness because it was exactly the one title that Rousseau recommends in his Emile, the text on the upbringing of children that obscurely influenced European 5 �Brann parents for generations down to my own. This "marvelous book" was Robinson Crusoe (Book Ill), and reading it by myself had an effect not unlike the one Rousseau imagined: a tremendous sense of withdrawal from the social world, of being on my own, of' imagining myself capable of being self-subsisting. (I should say, parenthetically, that it was a child's version I read, and I discovered only later that this aboriginal self-help book is actually also a chronicle of the blackest depression and god-foresakenness.) The wonder then of reading in the narrowest sense, of alphabetical reading, is that the letters disappear. Or perhaps it is possible to say that they are transparent, as Aristotle understands transparency in On the Soul (II, 7). He says that the transparent is not visible in itself but takes its visibility, its color, from something elSe. So the letters are no longer seen in their own shape, but as they convey the story told. It is a good way of saying that letters are the medium par excellence. You all know that there are quite a few other ways of noting down what is in the mind: particularly pictographs, ideograms, hieroglyphics. What characterizes these notations in their pure form (they are usually mixed with conventional signs) is that the eye notes them and should not immediately read past them. They are not mere media but mean something in themselves. For example, it isinsufficient but possible to decipher a ChiJ).ese poem just by looking at its characters: here is a stylized but recognizable mountain; here is a person, the ideograms looking very much like the lambda above. They occur in the first line of Wang Wei's poem "Dear Park," which is in fact about an empty mountain and unseen people (Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei). In the West too we have partly symbolic scripts, for instance musical notations, in which rising notes climb up the staff. Even mathematical notation is partly symbolic - the equal sign of an equation is as the fulcrum of a balance. So by and large it is alphabetical writing alone that is a pure medium. Most of the so called media- recall that "medium" means a middle-thing, a go-between - are impure as hell. They crop and take an angle and omit, and so convey a cooked version of some far-off original speech or deed. The purity of the letter medium seems to me to be of the very deepest significance. It means that we can be absorbed into a book in a most immediate way, and then again we can, at will, surface and attend to the literal level, the letter of the text. There are, 6 �Why Read Books consequently, different kinds of reading. In classical antiquity scrolls were, it seems, read aloud by servants who did not, perhaps, quite understand what they were reading. Our tutor, Ms. Judy Seeger tells a great story which takes the point to its extreme. When she and her husband Tony, who is an anthropologist, lived with a preliterate tribe of the Amazon called the Suya, it once happened that the men, who were amused by Tony's portable memory, had him transcribe a bunch oflewdjokes that he himself did not understand. The notebook was carried to the women's side of the village and Ms. Seeger, who was equally innocent of the meaning, was made to read the writing aloud to the ladies of the tribe. Pandemonium ensued. Here letters are nothing but sound notations. Of course, reading aloud can also be a very companionable activity, and it,is probably the most important educating that parents can do for little children. The next stage in reading is recounted by Augustine in his Confessions. He tells with wonder of St. Ambrose, his teacher, that "when he was reading he drew his eyes along over the leaves, and his heart searched into the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent" (VI, 3). He did this, Augustine conjectures, because his time for leisure was short and he did not wish to have it intruded upon by the requests for clarifications of those who might be listening. The beginning of our prevalent way of reading is thus the shortness of leisure and withdrawal - time-deprivation and a need for privacy. At a subsequent stage, I have no idea when attained, even the internally sounded letters were bypassed. I think that this is how most of us read; we hardly ever feel impelled even to move our lips. It is the kind of reading that makes correctness of spelling and punctuation so important, because unorthodox forms act as eye-catchers (sometimes, of course, that might be intended) and distract the reader from the matter. We all know how hurt we feel when we submit the thoughts of our mind to a reader who seems to see only the typo on the page. So when your tutor does that sort of subeditorial reading for you, it is to save your work from that distraction in the future. There are, finally, all sorts of readings that new time constraints have made necessary and new techniques possible: skimming, speed-reading, listening to book tapes in the car, and reading off the teleprompter, which is a high-tech crib for public speakers. Let me then suppose that the kind of reading most characteristic of this community is the extended silent reading which is largely, though not altogether, accomplished by the sort of visual scanning 7 �Brann that provides the most recessive sort of stimulation to sensation set moreover in an environment as secluded and, one might say, as homeostatic, as little intrusive, as you can manage. What bodily positions and perceptual backdrop help you concentrate on this essentially non-physical activity is very much a matter of taste and as such probably not worth disputing - there is for instance the matter of background music, of auditory atmospherics. It seems to me that silent reading and the seminar are two activities in search of each other. Casual, informal conversations should be a large part of your life out of class here, but the scheduled conversation that we call the seminar is in need of a guiding text, or, experience shows, it will end up producing the product after which the bull session is so felicitously named. But though it is true that the world round people P1Ogram get-togethers about nothing · f and then wonder why it all seems so unprofitable, the more interesting question for us is why silent reading should require the complement of regular conversation. For in my opinion it is only half the story that you are required to prepare for seminar by doing your reading; the other half is that your reading requires the seminar. The reason is to be found in the way we are made: We have an inside and an outside, a private interior and a public exterior, and our internal activities -feelings and opinions - seek to become external; they long for expression, resonance and refutation. And silent reading, more than any other steady activity I know of, is capable of producing large stores of inner responses that are badly in need of untangling and testing or just of shining in the light of public conversation. I might go so far as to say that to sit apart and read and to come together and talk- that is the natural rhythm of the life oflearning. So much for reading and its return to living speech. II. Books ."To read" is a · transitive verb, which means it normally takes an object. We read something, and there was a time when the most obvious object of reading in the narrow sense was a book. But that is no longer so - many things can now be read besides books. There are, it seems to me, two main sets of alternatives to book-reading. The differences are in what might be called "format" and "delivery." Format distinguishes reading matter such as articles in periodicals or collections, course packs, photocopied lectures and the like, from 8 �Why Read Books bound books by single authors. Delivery refers to the physical substrate, the underlying bearer of the text, particularly the electronic alternative to the printed book. There is no denying that some of the most epoch-making ideas have been announced in so-called "papers," short works published in periodicals. One great example among many is Einstein's 1905 paper on Special Relativity, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," which the seniors will be studying next semester. Now it may seem like a very superficial way oflooking at a text to ask whether it has the format of a flyer, of an article in a periodical (be it printed on mat, glossy, or pulp paper), of an off-print - or of a book. But facts are sometimes significant, and the fact is that the papers we take up are mostly read for the laboratory and are often known by their date, such as Einstein's "nineteen-o-five paper," while in~ the seminar we read almost exclusively wholes or parts of books, and only a few of us pay much attention to their dates of publication. Speaking very roughly, but not without some truth, I can say that differences in the format of writings often betoken deep distinctions in the things written about. It belongs to the character of science that it is carried forward by succinctly presentable discoveries. Both the fact that science is progressive, so that later work is presumed to present an advance, and the fact that each newly uncovered truth is in our tradition credited to its first discoverer, means that quick publication and clear chronology are crucial to the enterprise. Not so with literature and philosophy. In neither is there a reasonable presumption - or so it seems to us at this school -that the latest is the most creditable. Nor is there a premium on elegant succinctness or quick publication. We want books of literature to spread themselves pleasingly over our lives; we want books of philosophy to amplify their theses sufficiently; and we couldn't care less whose system or whose tale got out first - at least most of us here don't. I might say, parenthetically, that the generation of a good deal of non-scientific periodical literature is due to the attempt to bring the format of natural science to other human inquiries. If you are interested in the origin of this format and the philosophy behind it, look at the postscript of Bacon's New Organon, where you will find the aboriginal directions for modern research scholarship, albeit with many cautions that have been blatantly neglected, such as: 9 �Brann Never cite an author except in a matter of doubtful credit; never introduce a controversy except in a matter of great moment. And for all that concerns ornaments of speech, similitudes, treasury of eloquence, and such like emptinesses, let it be utterly dismissed. (Aphorism Ill.) Anyhow, it is books that we read here, writings that are expansive in the physical space they occupy and independent of the time in which they were published - and that have yet one more feature: They have weight, physical gravity. The text is delivered in a material form, the writing has a tangible substrate. Less than a decade ago this feature would not have been worth noting. Almost all texts were written or printed onto an underlying, usually natural, material such as paper, parchment, or wood. The very name of a book and its paper tells as much. "Book" apparently comes from "beech," referring to the source of the wooden tablets on which runes, the ancient Scandinavian letters, were inscribed, and "paper" comes from Rapyrus, the plant from which the ancient Egyptians made their writing material. Now has arisen something truly new in the world - the immaterial electronic book. The electronic tablet itselfis, to be sure, a material object, made of plastic and perhaps glass. But the writing is not on a material medium. And this fact has all sorts of thought-provoking consequences for reading. It is generally agreed that people who value the sight of their eyes and the alignment of their vertebrae would not think of reading a long book off a computer screen. Moreover, readers who like to carry the books they are involved with on their daily rounds will not find a computer monitor sufficiently portable. But comfort and portability will indeed be features of the not-so-far future when electronic tablets of handy size and with eye-saving screens will be readily available. Just think of what is in the offing: one slim tablet on which will appear, on demand, every text on our seminar list and every writing found worth scanning into its memory. The one tablet will be the repository of a large virtual library. ''Virtuality" is a word and a meaning that will, it is my guess, play a huge role in your lives after you leave us. To my mind, virtuality presents the next great human issue that our intellectual tradition has to digest. Virtuality is, I think, quite properly contrasted to reality. The particular meaning of the word "virtue" that "virtuality'' turns into an issue is an old one. Virtue here means 10 �Why Read Books the effect some thing or substance has, as the virtue of a drug. For example, a candidate for doctor of medicine, in Moliere's Malade Jmaginaire or The Hypochondriac, who is being examined upon the cause and reason why opium makes one sleep, answers in hilarious pidgin-Latin thus: Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva, Cujus ef;lt natura Sensus assoupire. (Third Intermezzo.) Because there is in it A sleepy-making virtue, Whose nature it is To lull the senses. The virtus or virtue here is the cause which is identical with the effect. Virtuality then describes the, condition in which virtue, or effect, has cast loose from the substance or thing, that is to say, from the reality, that underlies it. A virtual world is a world of apparitions that is effectively perceived but has no real, weighty, inertial, material world of things behind it. Its space is nowadays said to be cyberspace, which means control-space (from the Greek verb kybernaein to steer, guide or control). To my mind, the fasCinating question of the early next century will concern the relation of virtuality to imagination, of cyberspace to , maginative i space and of the virtual world to the world of the imagination. For it seems to me that they are in some respects happily coincident and in others bitterly at odds. But I've brought this preoccupation of mine in only to talk about libraries of books, virtual and real. For it is the case that we've just built ourselves a beautiful new library, and moved our nearly hundred thousand volumes into it. I wish the freshmen had been here in spring on May 6th to see the whole community turn out for the Great Book Move. All day long lines of book-bag carrying students, tutors, and staff members wended their way across the front campus from the old library, now about to be the Barr-Buchanan Center, to the new Greenfield Library. Connie and Stewart Greenfield themselves worked most of the day carrying and shelving books, and there was a lovely spirit abroad. The word "real" is Latin and means "thing-like." Our new library was designed not only to house the books that we have accumulated since 1697, the date of our earliest acquisitions, but 11 �Brann also to have empty shelves for again as many books to come -real, thing-like books occupying real, thing-accommodating space. Our new library is, among other things, an announcement to the world that we mean to keep acquiring and reading real beech-and-paper books, housed in real cubic space, for quite a while. III. Why Read Real Books? So now the time has come to conclude by attempting an answer to the question of my title "Why read books?," but in a new version: "Why read real books?" In the beginning I insisted on the truly wondrous minimalism of reading in the narrow sense - how unobtrusive this Phoenician-Greco-Roman alphabet of ours is, a true medium, a recessive go-between. But I've noticed, as have all of us who have learned at this school to pay large attention to apparently trivial matters, that the less blatant .i s the appeal to the senses in an activity, the more opportunity there is for the noticing sensibility, for subtlety. And so it is with this activity: Just because there is so little for eye, ear and touch, the subtle circumstances mattera great deal. Let me therefore finish by setting out just a very few of those subtle, almost evanescent marks of reading real books and end by merely intimating how massively important they are to sublimating reading in the narrow technical sense into reading in the widest and grandest sense. As I am composing this lecture, I am sitting within my personal library. The house holds maybe five thousand books, collected over five decades. What is moving, now that I'm paying attention, is how familiar the aspect of almost every book is. These are not mere book-volumes occupying mere space-volumes. Each is a place, a local concentration of eventful memory. I ask myself which volume out of these weighs the most with me and immediately find the Oxford Plato, two maroon-and-gold volumes of onion skin paper, crisp and compact, containing all the dialogues in Greek. And when I open one, a glimpse of Ionic columns carved from ivory-hued marble and an aroma of thyme-scented Aegean island paths emerges, as if from a magic chest. I bought these books probably in 1957, the year I came to this college, and one reason they have such strong sensory associations is that the Greek printed in them is still Greek to me. I bought them with the youthfully megalomaniac intention ofreading, more and more fluently, all thirty-six genuine 12 �Why Read Books dialogues in Greek and then the six spurious ones. That never happened and therefore the Greek text within these volumes retains after all these years the evocatory enchantment of a true spell. Books, then, serve as depositories of memory, but one would have to be a very distractable bibliophile to consider this their essential attribute. So that's not it. Some books are simply beautiful and being elaborately beautiful is their end-all. If any of you have ever seen old books with fore-edge painting you will know that books can be magical while yet half-closed. Fore-edging, now a lost art, makes a hidden picture come to view when the pages, gilded on their outer rims, are fanned. It is indeed pure magic, but it is the point of the book only for a collecting connoisseur. So that's not it either. Anyhow I don't own one of these wonders. Some books in my library are full of strange signs and symbols, like nothing to be found on any keyboard, and intelligible only to me. These book-objects belong to me, and I can annotate them as I please - never, never, let me interject here, write in a library book - and I can make them the repository of my encoded comments . over all the years and all the different readings. But I imagine that the virtual-text-tablets will eventually have a free-hand annotation capability by means of a stylus, so that's not it either. Since it is a well-researched fact that human place memory has a stupendous capacity, it is not surprising that I can find my way to certain passages in many books almost as I find my way to my friends' houses. Well-read books are full of idea-addresses; in them thoughts have definite places in space. And now we're getting close. For what I've been in search of is the subtle influence that the peculiar material character of real books exercises on reading. I can think, as I said, of quite a few, but I will mention only the two that seem crucially important to me. I call them "simultaneity'' and "intractability." By simultaneity I mean that, since books are stacks of leaves, all the text that tells the tale is there simultaneously, at once, in real space. You can stick in up to five fingers or any number of slips and by flipping back and forth read the linearly progressive text as a simultaneous architectural structure. At this finger-reading, usually the second time around, the conventional signs of the text allow a new level to emerge: symbolic reading. The letters are still suppressed, but the structure of the visible writing begins to work symbolically. Recall that a symbol is a sign that speaks by itself, 13 �Brann and the layout of the book, spatially perceived, does tell things on its own. For example, it is a fact that if you open your copy of Plato's Republic at the nearly exact center of its pages -originally you would have unrolled a scroll - you will have before you the claim that Socrates' beautiful city will never come into being "until either philosophers become kings or those now called kings and regents become genuine philosophers" (473 d) - and that is the most startling and most contentious assertion in this radical book. Here "center of the book" symbolizes "central to the book," and you discover this by treating the text symbolically, that is, by letting its signs in their extension speak to you. One reason why great books are so often long books is that the elaboration of a textual architecture cannot help but need room, just as its discovery is meant to take time. I am not saying that this kind of reading can't also be done by scrolling a text on a monitor, but that the suggestive physical substrate," which gives the spatial sense of shape, will be missing. Now to my second mark of a book, an even weightier one. By intractability I mean that a printed book resists revision, emendation, editing and any other sort of ex post facto interference. The text in the book once published is intractably persistent and recalcitrantly non-interactive. By contrast, there is evidently no perfect protection against alterations to an electronic text. In fact, commentators on literature in cyberspace extol the fluidity of electronic texts and the obliteration of a single responsible author. They welcome the disappearance of the definitive text and the advent of the continuously changing joint product. This instability will not only characterize the new texts specifically composed for the electronic medium, but also older ones, for we all know that there is no reasonable precaution or real protection against a determined cyberspace revisionist. No text is safe from a brilliant but conscienceless hacker. And since great works are nearly always finely calibrated, even a little change can have large consequences. That is why, although it is very necessary for the likes of you and me to take advice from those who are kind enough to correct our papers, really accomplished writers cannot condone even a small interference. For example, Lincoln, to my mind the greatest writer of American English, tells an editor about his editing: 14 �Why Read Books So far it is intended merely to improve in grammar, and elegance of composition, I am quite agreed; but I do not wish the sense changed, or modified, to a hair's breadth. And you, not having studied the particular points so closely as I have, can not be quite sure that you do not change the sense when you do not intend it. (To Charles C. Nott, May 31, 1860.) Texts printed in books, then, have stability; they are the unalterable formulation of a definite, responsible author - some one particular person, who has thought it out and put it down. Of course, the author is usually not literally ."responsible," that is, answerable, as someone who can be made to appear, respond, and answer in person. One excuse for authorial unresponsiveness is being dead, as most of our authors are. Another is the one given by Bishop Ambrose, Augustine's teacher, when he said that he read silently so that pupils wouldn't interrupt with questions addressed to him in the author's place. Yet another, the most formidable excuse, is that authors write books just in order to distance themselves from what they have worked out; the book may go abroad and make its rounds in public, but the author stays at home and is entitled to privacy. At the very end of this year the freshmen will read and the seniors will reread the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus. In it Socrates blames written works for just this intractable stability I mean to praise tonight. He says: Writing, you know, Phaedrus, has this strange quality about it, which makes it really like painting: the painter's products stand before us quite as though they were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence. So, too, with written words: you might think they spoke as though they made sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are saying, if you wish an explanation, they go on telling you the same thing, over and over forever. (275d.) It's impossible to forget, though, that this dialogue itself was written by Plato, and that for all its lively conversation, the characters keep saying the same thing to each other up to its enthusiastic end. Here we can hear Socrates and Plato coming apart, and we see a new era of inquiry beginning-inquiry by reading. 15 �Brann For the written word, and above all, the printed book incite thought just because they are unbudgeably and solidly fixed. The printed book says what it says, and it is up to us to read it in the large sense, to puzzle it out and reason about it. It confronts us as a real thing in the world, which happens to contain as if by magic the fully realized thought of another human being. It incites our attention and our opposition by its sturdy and stolid independent existence. It demands our concentrated attention because it allows no clicking onto informational distractions. Its author is entitled to no agreement and no gratitude beyond what the book itself evokes. Thus it symbolizes whatever in life we come up against that will not give, and this reading of books in the widest sense, which is also called interpretation, is a skill eminently transferable to what is often called "the real world." Now is the moment to finish by returning nearly full circle to an early question: Does reading books help or hinder thinking? I think the sober answer is, it does both. It helps thought because it draws us into the fully accomplished product of another's thought, and we in turn begin to think, to reason and puzzle, by sympathetic attraction or repulsion. It hinders thought for the very same reason: because in reading books we are partly outside of ourselves, and thinking goes on within. Then, to close the circle completely, why should we read books - read not this or that particular book but read as a lifelong activity? The answer, or rather my answer for tonight, is now ready to be formulated - and therefore ready as well to be taken apart in the question period. Here it is: Reading in the narrow sense accustoms us to look right past the conventional sign to the intended meaning; reading in the wide sense teaches us to dwell on the words to find the larger meanings; reading good books develops in us the ability to apprehend intricate structures wrought by an intending intellect; and reading printed volumes keeps us mindful of the miraculous hard fact that thought can be an obstinate real presence in the world. In sum, this answer to the question "Why read books?," which is pretty nearly the same as an answer to the question "Why become educated?," is: so that the world outside and your life within may gather well-defined significance. 16 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 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 Why read books? Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-08-30 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on August 30, 1996 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1996-08-30 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 has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/267">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f2db2f6e0cd3bed5846287b6c4d2d820.pdf 6ea7591eada1e7693d8fcac9b305c60b PDF Text Text FOR THE FIRST TIME Eva T. H. Brann Opening Lecture by the Dean August29. 1995 �FOR THE FIRST TIME Dean's Lecture August 29, 1995 Eva T. H. Brann This will be the first time that you, the freshmen among us, you to whom this opening occasion is traditionally dedicated, have attended a Friday night lecture- the first time, the first of many times, we hope. I imagine that there have been many things this past week which you did and experienced for the first time: the first time you have been really and truly gone from under your parents' roof, the first time you cast eyes on people who will be your life long friends or perhaps something even more intimate, the first time you've taken part in seminar (with two hundred fifty-five to come), the first time you've read words in the beautiful new Greek alphabet and the first time you have said the words psyche and pl1ilosophia in Greek (because they are in the first lesson of your Greek manual). All these "firsts" make a discontinuity in your lives, and give a sort of shock to your familiar ways. St. John's does not differ from any other live-in college you might have chosen, in intending to tear you from old contexts and habits. I hasten to say that all of us are at one in ardently hoping that you will hang on to some habits with which you all undoubtedly came imbued, such as keeping your room in impeccable order, or going to bed punctually and alone at 10:30 PM and rising promptly at 6:30 AM to brush your teeth and study your Euclid. But all schools expect you to undergo some culture shock, as the anthropologists say, or defamiliarization, in intellectual lingo. You are ex­ pected to come apart in some benign sense and for a while at least. But now arises a difference. You all know the nursery rhyme: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; All the King's horses and all the King's men Couldn't put Humpty together again. Well, if Humpty stands for a freshman who is suddenly dropped into a new environment, and the royal horses and troops for the school's courses and professors, then most colleges do succeed in putting the egghead some­ how together again. You should come out reshaped as a scientist, or a historian, or a philosopher, with the methods and habits of thought that give you, as they say, an "identity" as a prospective member of a profession. And in all the colleges I know about, the professors are seriously concerned with �the bearing this reintegration in professional terms has on the personal life and the character of their students. As you knew when you chose to come here, we do not promise or wish to put you together again as solidly trained specialists with tried-and-true categories and methods of approach to each subject. We hope -with trepi­ dation - for something far more risky: that you should find a new integrity of person and togetherness of character while becoming permanently uneasy with routines of thinking. To put it another way: We would love it - or perhaps it is safer to say, I would love it - if you eventually appeared, and really did live, in the outer world as solid people of dependable habits, but if you had in your inner being only one habit - that of having no habits, of seeing as many things as often as possible for the first time. For example: The title and theme of this opening lecture is "For the First Time." I came on that theme by two approaches. (By the way, for me, and, it might possibly be, for you, tfrat is the test of a good theme - one that turns up along different routes.) One approach arises from the fact that I am incurably interested in time-language, such as "the first time" or "two times two" or "The New York (or Washington or London) Times." Similarly I am fascinated by all the firsts which I expect to talk about in a minute. So the conjunction of "first" and "time" is irresistible to me. A second approach came from using my imagination about the freshman condition. This is the first week of my thirty-eighth year at this school; what's it feel like for you who are in your first week? Which of us is more acutely and really here? What is the difference between beginning absolutely and beginning once again? Is there such a thing as a truly first time? Such thoughts and musings made suddenly strange to me-strange and wonderful -this matter of "the fi'rst time." That sort of estrangement, in which the familiar turns unfamiliar and thereby becomes acutely noticeable, will be called wonder by several authors you will be reading this year. It differs from doubt, curiosity and round-eyed amazement. I understand round-eyed amazement as the naive surprise at something that appears as marvelous, curiosity as the pursuit of the variety and novelty of the world, and doubt as the uneasy sense that what you are told is not so. Amazement belongs to the perceptive child of any age, curiosity to the insatiable onlooker, and doubt to the wary initiate. It is a pity not to have in one's makeup the propensity for some degree of both of these. But wonder belongs to a kind of lover who wishes to place things at just that distance and in exactly that light in which they will become visible to thought. Now the wish to place things in the right way also has a name. It is called asking questions -of a certain kind. There are many sorts of questions, and most of these are not what I mean, particularly questions that are part of a self-canceling two-step mechanism. Someone asks, someone answers: the end. " Are you crazy?" -"Get lost." "What time is it?"- "8:30 PM." (Though I can't resist interjecting here, quite gratuitously, my favorite counterquestion, which suddenly raises a dead-end answer to a wonderfully loopy significance: That genius of inspired inadvertence, Yogi Berra, was asked "What time is it?" and answered "You mean now?") 2 �The kind of question I am speaking of, the kind that does not lapse with its answer, does not in fact request an answer so much as it initiates a search. This question stays active throughout and guides an inquiry- which means that asking good questions is, or rather requires, art and skill. It is only a beginning to frame the question; then you have to know how to go on; you have to find passages into the thing asked about. Otherwise you remain without passage at an impasse. The Greek word for an impasse, which will become very familiar to you, is a-poria. Poros is a means of passage, and a is called an "alpha privative," a negating prefix. Thus aporia means exactly that: "impasse." Aporia is an important stage in any inquiry, when the ordinary means and the ready answers are exhausted and mere willingness is not enough, so that your own ingenuity or a teacher's know-how have to come into play. It would not be too much to say that what we hope you will become here above all is an inspired framer of questions and an artful discoverer of passages through them. Among the best questions are often those in which we tum back on ourselves. Not for nothing is the thought that stops action for a moment called reflection. We leave off dealing with affairs to bend back on ourselves, -for that is what reflection means literally - to consider our own thinking and speaking and doing. It is said of scorpions that, if caught in a circle of fire, they bend their venom-tipped tail back on themselves and sting themselves to death. The story is false as both fact and as simile. In fact, the scorpions' arch is a mere thermal reflex, not a mortal reflection on their own poisonousness. The simile for a reflective question should be the opposite of fatal self-canceling circular­ ity, perhaps something more like a rising circle, a spiral. To return to the example at hand. You, the freshmen, have uttered the phrase "for the first time," very conservatively speaking, perhaps 360 times in your life, say twice a month since you learned to talk. Now suddenly you are to hear yourself speak, to ask yourselves what you mean, what we mean, what it means, when you say those words. So let's see. First let me frame spontaneously and randomly some ques­ tions of the sort I am talking about. Many of us are doing this week for the first time what others among us are doing for the umptieth time. Is there a special significance in such a first time? Is it begging to be gotten over with quickly or to be recorded in deep memory? What is the significance of the fact that we are beings who begin life in time, to whom things happen for the first - and it seems, by the same token -for the last time? Is the first time the best, or the least, or just like the others? Is the first day of your birth or the second day or the eighteenth year or the eightieth of most significance, or do any anniversaries matter? Does the first day of your life somehow have in it the rest of all your days as its outcome, or can a new, a second birth, occur if you will it? Could it be that some things have to happen twice to happen at all? But then, is there in fact ever a true and discernible first or, for that matter, a second time of anything?- One of the two founding fathers of philosophy, Heracleitus, said that you can't step into the same river twice, but another witty wise man topped him, saying that you can't step into the same river even once. What that one meant, I think, is that there are no first times, nor, in fact, 3 �any discernible events, bunches of time that you can count, at all, but that everything flows continuously and smoothly, continually new and evenly undifferentiated. Think, that wit meant (he was Cratylus and according to Aristotle he was Plato's first teacher), of your life not as a sequence of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, but as an undifferentiated flow which has no countable times at all, first, second or last! I want to supply examples of how books help you to think about questions of this kind. For while asking questions is the beginning and end, the arclre and the telos, of your unsettling life here, in between comes a very solid and settling activity. It is the activity of study and reading -the study and practice of the skills that I mentioned before as useful for approaching problems, as well as the reading and interpretation of the stories and theories, the fictions and truths contained in books of stature. While you are here, you will divide your time between arts and authors, between studying some of the skills necessary for thinking well and reading some of the books that contain examples of such thought. I want to use three such books as examples of help in thinking about first and second and numerically indiscernible times. One of these books, an epic, Homer's Odyssey, is on the program; a second, a novel, Gabriel Garcia Mar­ quez's Love in the Time oftire Clrolera, might well be so some time in the future; and the third, a long short story, Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice," used to be on the seminar list. These are the books, and the area of application is love, where times of inchoateness, of incipience, and of incisive recognition, that is, of vague potentiality, triggered growth, and unmistakable flowering are most poignantly in evidence. Put to these books the question of first times, now in the form of love at first sight, or second sight, or without a clear epoch, that is, without a clearly marked time of beginning. They will answer with a treasury of human possibilities. Let me begin with "Death in Venice." It is the story of an old and famous writer, one who has become a classic author, and of the love he conceives for a beautiful boy in the city of Venice in the dissolute time of the cholera. This love, the voyage that leads to it, and the author 's death from heart disease or cholera which brings the episode to an end, is fraught with all sorts of time-bound significance. The purpose here is to attend to the genesis of this eventually fatal passion. It is not love at first sight. The first time the writer casts eyes on the boy in the elegant lobby of an international luxury hotel, he observes him with the objective, almost cool attention of a man of mature esthetic judgment facing perfect beauty. He is roused to an abstract meditation on that mysterious union of the generic and the individual that produces the humanly beautiful. Soon after, he makes an attempt, under a mundane pretext, to escape from Venice, an attempt which is fated to fail. All is atmosphere, intimation, resonance, while first in restrained steps and then through mountingly catastrophic episodes the lover begins to enter and understand his true state. From the falsely serene beginning to the deadly end, there is no word or touch exchanged between the two, no first word or first closing of physical distance. This is an unpunctuated, unrealized, unbounded affair - no first time, no consummation, no last time. 4 �Let me go next to Love in the Time of Cholera, a book I came to read because our student Nick Colton, whom some of the juniors and seniors will remem­ ber, gave it to me as a parting present, and because whatever a fellow-reader wishes me to read, that I do eventually read. It is one of those responsive courtesies that carries its own manifold reward. Love- the love that arises, once more, in the time of cholera -begins on page 55 of my book, when Florentino Ariza, who is delivering a telegram to the house of Fermina Daza, catches a glimpse of her as she is sitting in the sewing room teaching her old aunt to read. She is thirteen. She raises her eyes to see who is passing. And for Florentino Ariza "that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later." Of course, one must think of that Florentine Dante and his Beatrice. Fermina Daza marries another man and has a not-unsatisfactory marriage. Florentino Ariza spends a life somewhat lovelessly hunting women, mechanically repli­ cating his young years of lying in wait for Fermina Daza. When the book ends some three hundred pages later, Florentino Ariza and the widowed Fermina Daza are sailing up and down the Magdalena River on the boat of the line that Florentino Ariza now owns. He has ordered the captain to hoist the cholera flag - though no one is sick on the boat. In cozy quarantine the two make love, and when the captain asks how long they think they can keep up "this goddam coming and going," Florentino Ariza, "who had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights," says, "Forever." Florentino Ariza's love has a first time- and then no others, except forever. Those two stories are one in the temporal modes of intellectualized roman­ ticism and the other in the magicised realism of novelistic prose. Now comes poetry, straight, plain and in accordance with nature, and with it love at second sight. It is the girl who loves, and it takes a second apparition, a second time in the man's presence, for love to happen. The Odyssey is the second book you will read together here. This episode happens near the end of Odysseus' voyage. He has been shipwrecked on the shore of Phaeacia, having escaped on a raft from seven years of increasingly savorless love-service to a voluptuous goddess. Nausicaa, the young princess of Phaeacia, and her attendants have come to wash clothes (particularly her trousseau, in accordance with a dream she has had), and to picnic and play ball on the sea shore. Odysseus, washed ashore, worn out, briny, and naked, has crawled into a lair of leaves. When he is awakened by the girls' voices he emerges like a lion, covering himself with a branch. The handmaidens run from him, but the young princess stands her ground and plays courteous hostess to the castaway; he responds with gallantry. She calls for oil and clothing, and Odysseus, having washed, shaved and dressed himself, under­ goes one of those transformations from bandy-legged uncouth roughneck to smooth, beautiful lord that characterize him. This look he sometimes has is not so much a matter of grooming, as of being seen in one of the modes proper to him - a sort of splendid lovableness. Here is what Homer says in Fitzgerald's poignant translation (V I, 238-261): 5 �And now Odysseus, dousing in the river, scrubbed the coat of brine from back and shoulders and rinsed the clot of sea-spume from his hair; got himself all rubbed down, from head to foot, then he put on the clothes the princess gave him. Athena lent a hand, making him seem taller, and massive too, with crisping hair in curls like petals of wild hyacinth, but all red-golden. Think of gold infused on silver by a craftsman, whose fine art Hephaistos taught him, or Athena: one whose work moves to delight: just so she lavished beauty over Odysseus' head and shoulders. Then he went down to sit on the sea beach in his new splendor. There the girl regarded him, and after a time she said to the maids beside her: "My gentlewomen, I have a thing to tell you. The Olympian gods cannot be all averse to this man's coming here among our islanders. Uncouth he seemed, I thought so, too, before; but now he looks like one of heaven's people. I wish my husband could be fine as he and glad to stay forever on Skheria! But have you given refreshment to our guest?" Now that is all a way of saying that Nausikaa sees him, at second sight, with love- that she has fallen in love with him. And here Homer plays one of his many lovely tricks. Where Fitzgerald has Nausikaa ask: "But have you given refreshment to our guest?," she actually says: "Do give, my attendants, food and drink to the stranger" (209) In Greek -and now it helps to have the linguistic skill of knowing Greek - she actually says: Alia dot', amp1tipoloi, xeinoi brosin te posin te. Brosis is the same word as our "bread;" and it is contrasted to ambrosia, "un-bread," the ethereal solid food of the immortals. But posis means plain drink and it happens to be a homonym- a word with the same sound but different sense- of posis, the word for husband Nausikaa had just used. To Odysseus, who has for seven years unwillingly drunk heavenly nectar and eaten immortal ambrosia in divine Calypso's cave, posis names the first mortal, real food and drink he has had for seven years. But to Nausikaa it carries the sound and thought of marriage and husband. As it happens, Odysseus is on his way to his wife-not a girl but a woman and a mother -and cannot stay. But we know that the young princess is not to Odysseus simply one more 6 �among the powerful and voluptuous women who gladly become his lovers. We can tell because when he and his wife Penelope finally go to bed together, for the first time in twenty years, he talks to her of all the witches and nymphs who have captivated him, but of the maiden Nausikaa he says not a word. He maintains the respectful discretion due to a virgin, a human being distin­ guished by not yet having had a certain experience for the first time. We may imagine that Nausikaa, in cut-off "Skheria" (the name means the "Split-off Land"), will get a satisfactory husband from the many elegant sailor boys that frequent her parents' court, but we cannot think that she will ever forget this exciting stranger. For her this was real love, arrived in the real way: sudden but not immediate, a proof of the power of the second time. This then is an example of thinking about first -and second -times in human life and of using books, in this case fiction, to guide the inquiry by means of the imagination. But we can go beyond our individual lives to the life of our species, mankind. For example, we might ask, was there a first time a human being stood erect, clothed in dignity, and asked questions like these? Or was the develop­ ment, the evolution as we call it, so smoothly continuous that no first could have been discernible? Is the question of a first-time human a problem for science or a speculation for philosophy? What, if there was a first moment of human consciousness, did it feel like? Was it like breaking through the cracking solid surface of familiar things and falling all alone into a black icy lake, or was it like rising from the dark fog of every preceding day into a new, fiery, illuminating presence? Or was it like floating peacefully to a light surface from a misty sleep? Did this ancestor of ours, this first Johnny, run to find someone to tell about it, inventing the required language on the spot, or did this ancestor devote all the rest of life to remembering and trying to tell how it was? These are dreamily speculative questions, in which any human being with a sense of ancestry will sometimes get lost. Books on human evolution will not help much, because while they have more to say every decade about the times and places where upright posture was achieved and where signs of sapient behavior are first to be found, they can only guess at the inner life that accompanied it - in particular they can only speculate whether there were discernible first times at all, and if there were, whether thought or behavior came first. So let us leave, for the rest of this lecture, first times that have to do with one particular time, with what came first as measured by the revolutions of the earth or the pulsations of the universe. Let me set aside "times " and attend only to "first." In Lesson XV of your Greek manual you will, for the first time, come on a word of great ancient dignity, arche, alpha, rho, chi, eta, a feminine noun of the first declension. You will, perhaps unknowingly, be quite familiar with the word. It occurs in archangel, archetype, architect, archipelago, archfiend. In this school, the tutor in charge of the meeting in which your teachers talk over the week's work in your classes is traditionally called an archon, the person responsible for starting the meeting off and conducting it. Arche, you may be able to guess, is what comes first, at the beginning, though not merely first in time, but first in responsibility. An arche might 7 �indeed be a beginning in time. Thus Herodotus, who as a historian traces each event, in particular the Persian War, to its beginning in time, speaks near the beginning of his work of the arche tes ecllthres, "the beginning of the enmity" of the Persians towards the Greeks, which, at least in the opinion of the Persians, was the seizure of Troy (I 5). Some such beginnings continue to be at work and to have effects when their time is passed. For example, what has happened to you here this first week may well influence you when the week is over. How it does is one of that slew of questions I threw out at the beginning: whether there are ever beginnings that do not rule the rest of days? I happen to think there are such. For example, the first day of any mere routine, of any mindless repetition, has no more force than any other because nothing is coming into being or to fruition; each day is the lifeless replica of any other. Such a first is a beginning as mere lower limit, not as a governing principle. "Principle," in Latin principium, is a good word to introduce here. It is Cicero's translation for arche. It is made up of the two words primus, "first," and capere, "to take." A principle, like a prince - a word that has the same origin -is what (or who) takes first place. The German word for prince is Fuerst, which is the same as our word "first." "Principal" belongs here, too; it has the same origin and meaning as principle and prince, but perhaps a more vivid meaning to you, since your high school probably had one of them, an awesome personage who took the first place and had the last word. (I can't resist interrupting myself with a totally incidental but highly charming reference. My favorite dictionary, the American Heritage, has a lovely little disquisition on the long history of confusion in the spelling of principle as in arche, and of principal as in "go to the principal's office," which ends as follows: A key point to remember ... is that in middle English spelling was not nearly as fixed as it usually is today, a development that was much furthered by the invention of printing. When we interchange spellings for principle and principal we are doing something that would have been less of a fault in the days before the conformity imposed on us by this marvelous invention.) This little collection of '�first" words shows that people appreciate in their speech the fact that to be first does not always mean to come before or earlier in time. An arclte may be first out of time. It may go before in a different sense. It may be the beginning, fountain, origin or rule. About such a first, about a timeless arche, clusters a whole new set of questions. One subset has to do with the beginning of the world, or rather the transition to the beginning. Is such a transition thinkable? Was there a moment- could it be called a moment?-before time or its materialization began? Was there a time before time began, a beginning of beginnings, as is intimated in the most famous of sentences containing the word arche: En archei ein ho logos; in Latin: In principio erat verbum - "In the beginning was the word," the first sentence of the Gospel according to St. John? Is the beginning cf time thinkable? Is the non-beginning of time thinkable? Such questions are , 8 �considered alike by those who think about God, by theologians like Augustine whose book on time, the Confessions, you will read as sophomores, and by those who think about nature, the physicists from Aristotle to Stephen Hawkins - but oh, how differently! The transition from eternity to time is not, however, always to be thought of in the analogy of a sequence: first a "standing" now and then a passage of nows. It can also be thought of as a simultaneity: a double world of timeless and changeless being and of passing and variable becoming. Should we accept such a duality? In what sense is the stable world the beginning, the arche, of changing appearances, as Plato, above all the philosophers you will be reading this year, will claim? And how does such an arche, such a "founding ruler," as Plato calls what always and primarily is (archegos, Sopltist 243 d) -how does this arche govern? Is it an apex, a divinity to which all that lives is drawn, or one from which all increase flows? Or is it a foundation, a fundament, on which all that appears is grounded? Or are the laws and rules that govern the physical world throughout everywhere equally in force, so that no one and nothing has special privileges, and the most beautifully painted porcelain vase falls to earth under exactly the same dispensation as an ugly old clay pot? This is the new claim that the scientific writers of your junior year will make. These questions and others will arise for you as you think your way through the next four years. And they will always arise in two tiers, as it were. For you will always be asking about "firsts" -as about everything else what are the terms, problems and arguments presented by the books, and also whether the authors are right in the formulation of the question and the contriving of the answer. There will continually be this double task for you: first to make out the meaning and then to judge its truth. Let me turn a second and last time from the framing of questions to an example of an attempted development. For this second set of questions, help comes primarily not from those authors who improve on the visible world by increasing its stock of particular characters and events -I mean the poets and novelists- but from those who clarify it by lifting from it universal descrip­ tions- I mean the philosophers. The question whose treatment I want to exemplify belongs to that tricky type which concerns beginnings in time and out time as they come together, not at the origin or in the perpetuation of the external world, but in us human beings. This question arose for me, as -remember -good questions tend to do, coincidentally in several ways. (I have often noticed that there seems to be a sort of benign arsonist of the mind abroad who lights fires in several mental districts at once.) This time the question had one beginning when I had occasion to reread Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a work the freshmen among us will reach in February. I noticed for the first time the full force of a powerfully abrupt phrase. Aristotle speaks of the human being as a beginning. "The human being," he says, "is that kind of beginning" - toiaute arche anthropos (1139 b 7). What kind of beginning? A beginning called choice. Not so long after, a colleague stopped me in the hall to ask what I thought might be the connotations of the word Aristotle uses for human choice, 9 �prohairesis. There is a perfectly good Greek word for choice, hairesis. You actually know it from the English word "heretic," used for people who insist on making choices of their own rather than following the established doctrine, the orthodoxy. Why, my colleague wanted to figure out, does Aristotle insist on pro-hairesis? Pro is a prefix meaning before, as in pro-gnosis, that is, pre-diction. What on earth is fore-choice? Could it mean pre-ference, choos­ ing something over or before something else? That seemed insipid. Could it mean choice before choice? That seemed mysterious. We went off to attend to the lesser matters that take most of our time. Not long after, Mr. John White, another colleague, gave a lecture in which he dwelled on this pro of prohairesis (St. John's Review XLII, 3, 1994). Let me give my interpretation of his interpretation of Aristotle's understanding of the human beginning, not in the sense of how human beings first began to be human but how they are in themselves beginnings. This interpretational episode is intended to be an example of our way. Our way is by listening to each other talk about books to get closer to the things themselves, and by becoming more and more familiar with them to make them stranger and more wonderful to ourselves. Pro-llaeris, then, has to do with human originality, with our ability to be origins or beginnings. Let me read you my version of Aristotle's whole sentence: Therefore fore-choice is either thought reaching out in desire or desire informed by thought, and the human being is that kind of beginning. "Therefore" refers to what Aristotle had just said, that mere thought by itself moves no practical action, but only when it is for the sake of something. Productive work, too, he says, begins like that - with a purpose in mind. Therefore it is choice that makes human beings beginnings or origins. The way it works is that every originating choice implies a "before" which decides an "after," or as Mr. White puts it: a present choice is "the past of a future." Mere desirous preference in the now is mere choice, hairesis simply. Little children and animals live in that now, that present-choice; they do seem to exercise choice but not fore-choice, for example, when they want to be picked up and then they want to get down. Simple hairesis is, Aristotle implies, the word to be used for a choice driven by desire without thought. Prohairesis then is choiee made not on the cusp of desire. In fact Aristotle had already said quite a while earlier (1112 a 17) about fore-choice: Isn't it something pre-planned? For choice involves reason and thinking. It seems that the name signifies something chosen before other things. He appears to be saying that to choose something above other things is to choose it beforehand. To make a proper choice, all the possibilities have to be calculated beforehand, and then you can place one above the others. 10 �Calculation is an aspect of beforehandedness that intelligence and thinking make possible. But there is another aspect that is not, Aristotle holds, to be gotten from the mere intelligence of one's calculations and certainly not from the truth of one's principles. That aspect has to do with being set in the right direction to make good choices, and we call it habit. Mr. W hite points out that the Greek word for habit, l1exis, comes from the future of the verb ecl1ein, to have or hold. So people who have good habits will hold themselves well when the moment comes. They have gotten into the habit from way back, and it is with them, always waiting and about to go to work. They're all set before­ hand, and that condition too goes into the pro of prohairesis. Let me now lay out an understanding of that pertinent but startling claim that a human being is a kind of arcl1e, namely the kind in whom desire and thought have become inextricably entangled, so that it is impossible to say which modifies which. On the one hand, as immature human beings still close to our animal nature, we may exhibit mere choice, hairesis, reaching for the desire of the moment, imprisoned in the present by each passing preference. On the other hand, there is an incomplete mode of thinking, a mere thinking that possesses some of us, a kind of ratiocination running on dry, that gets nowhere and does 'nothing, and is disconnected from any human hunger. This kind of thinking is not, like appetite or desire, in the now, but rather in the never. How does hungry reaching become tamed and mere figuring get aimed? This fusion of thought and passion is attained way back, by having made, or better, by having been made to make many choices. Such choices were first rather thoughtless, perhaps mere thwartings of appetite under the constraints of parental guidance, but then, in time, desire and thought became all but fused, and choice turned into fore-choice. For that is how we acquire a habit. A habit grows by what we now call boot-strapping. It pulls itself up by its own handle, that is, it becomes what it is by just beginning with an instance of itself, but in time it grows deliberate and thoughtful. So that is Aristotle's broadest understanding of what it means to be good, or, in an older language, virtuous: "Virtue," he says, is the "fore-choice habit" (he arete hexis proairetike, 1106 b 36); virtue is the habit of making choices from thought-di­ rected desire. Human beings project themselves into time in a peculiarly human way, by being shaped in the past to be ready for the future. That is what habit helps us do and be. At the present moment we make choices that arise from that past shaping, which amounts to an integration of our hungers and our thoughts. Much past goes into that kind of choice, and so it is called, at least by Aristotle, fore-choice. Mr. White says, finally, that the pro of the prohairesis also looks backward on the deed that will follow the choice, even before it is done. We reflect on the consequences at the moment of narrowing our options and specifying our principles; we leap into the future before us and, while still in the present preceding action, look back on the implications of our principles. Tl1at is what Aristotle means when he says that a human being is an origin called choice: a being who at every present moment uses the past to shape the future. We might say: a being who is a matrix of controlled beginnings and hence a source of intended consequences. 11 �If I stopped here I would have given an exposition but not an interpreta­ tion. Interpretations get personal. We have to figure out what a text means and then what we think. Moreover we have to try not to contradict ourselves in what we say to each other in public. If I were simply to say "yes, indeed," and "surely so," to Aristotle, like some little boy in a Platonicdialogue, it would be because I omitted to ask him if this human arclre who makes a difference in time is itself altogether in time and why, if thought itself moves nothing, it turns out at the climax of his thought in the majestic Book Lambda of his Metaphysics to move everything. And then all my questions about arche as a timeless beginning, and whether it is source or foundation, would be left dangling. And again, if I were simply to say yea and amen to Aristotle, who has such faith in good habits, I would have to rely on your having forgotten how I began tonight. I began by saying that we hope you will acquire here the habit of having no habits. Of course, what I meant was that we hope you will break down quite a few of your own petrified opinions and derail your scheduled trains of thought. But when thinking cuts loose, conduct becomes more original. With thinking people you will never know what· interesting thing they'll say in seminar or what imaginative thing they'll do outside of class. All you can bet on is that it will be worth listening to and that they will be worth being with. So I'll express my personal reservations to Aristotle thus, knowing very well that he has more to say in other places: You seem to me to be very right in your emphasis on the human originating activity as rooted in time, in present choices being conditioned both by past practices and by forethought. What you say is sheer soundmindedness and sanity. Thus students are beings who rejoice in a habitual obedience to seminar lists, class schedules, daily assignments, and paper deadlines. But students, really good students, seem to live double lives. They are also learners. Learn­ ers are beings who are subject to the sudden irruptions of unscheduled insights, to the habit-disrupting exhilaration of glimpsing sources, origins, beginnings out of time and beyond themselves, to those abrupt, kaleidoscopic shifts in which the familiar world rearranges itself to appear again and again for the first time. How, I ask, do such first times come about? I end with a question because at this school a lecture is merely the incite­ ment to a question period. And I will tell you one more thing: If the first question is asked by one of you freshmen attending question period for the first time, I have a neat little present in my office for you, which I will give you on Monday as a token of valor-this one first time. 12 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 13 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 For the first time Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-08-29 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on August 29, 1995 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1995-08-29 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 has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/266">Audio recording</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors