15
20
5655
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8328da4088ea650921343f9d358b9b13.pdf
16029ff8fa292404c2559956e1b15f94
PDF Text
Text
Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Dante
and
the
Hero’s
Quest
for
Healing
I
want
to
talk
about
a
very
old
kind
of
story.
Or
rather,
I
should
say,
the
only
kind
of
story
–
the
hero’s
quest.
Tonight
we
will
discuss
the
hero’s
quest
in
ancient
and
modern
literature
using
examples
from
mythology,
Homer’s
Odyssey,
Virgil’s
Aeneid,
Dante’s
Inferno,
and
finally
my
own
novel,
The
End
of
Healing.
My
lecture
will
consider
how
each
of
these
stories—and
for
that
matter
every
good
story—involves
a
process
of
healing,
both
for
the
broken
world
in
which
the
hero
finds
himself
and
for
the
hero
personally.
These
stories
all
resonate
for
us
because
we
all
identify
with
the
hero
and
we
are
all
on
a
quest
for
healing.
By
way
of
apology,
first
let
me
first
make
clear
that
throughout
this
lecture,
despite
my
use
of
mostly
masculine
examples
of
heroes,
I
use
the
word
hero
without
reference
to
gender.
Although
some
hero
archetypes
are
most
commonly
associated
with
male
gender
and
some
with
female
gender—the
Oedipus
complex
has
its
corollary
in
the
Electra
complex—all
of
the
hero
archetypes
we
will
discuss
tonight
can
manifest
in
either
gender.
Second,
let
me
acknowledge
that
my
observations
today
are
derivative.
I
give
thanks
to
my
tutors
of
ancient
and
modern
times
who
have
authored
me
and
my
work.
Among
my
authors
I
particularly
give
thanks
to
the
departed
St.
John’s
College
tutors
Chaninah
Maschler
who
gave
me
her
love
of
biology
and
the
old
testament,
Michael
Littleton
whose
Purgatorio
preceptorial
I
attended
over
30
years
ago,
and
Jacob
Klein;
to
the
very
present
Joe
Sachs,
whose
Don
Quixote
preceptorial
was
one
of
the
best
of
all
time;
to
all
my
great
tutors
at
St.
John’s
College,
especially
Jon
Tuck,
Marilyn
Higuera,
John
White,
Peter
Kalkavage,
Elliott
Zuckerman,
Jon
Lenkowski,
Eva
Brann,
Ed
Sparrow,
and
Winfree
Smith;
and
to
all
the
authors
of
the
great
books
we
will
discuss
tonight
that
still
serve
as
some
of
our
greatest
guides
through
the
world’s
darkness.
Thank
you
for
giving
me
the
opportunity
to
talk
with
you
about
some
of
my
favorite
stories.
This
lecture
will
have
4
main
parts.
First,
I
will
give
an
overview
of
the
framework
for
the
archetypal
hero’s
journey
as
described
by
Joseph
Campbell,
Carl
Jung,
and
others.
Second,
I
will
apply
that
framework
to
Dante’s
Commedia
to
help
us
understand
how
the
hero’s
journey
involves
a
process
of
healing.
Third,
we
will
delve
deeper
into
the
past
to
examine
some
of
the
earlier
hero
myths
that
influenced
Dante’s
work,
focusing
especially
on
the
Odyssey
and
Aeneid,
to
see
what
these
works
tell
us
about
the
hero’s
healing
journey.
Lastly,
we
will
move
to
the
future
to
examine
what
all
this
has
to
do
with
health
care
and
the
quest
for
healing
in
today’s
world.
Part
1:
The
Hero’s
Journey
The
ancient
pattern
of
the
hero’s
quest
was
well
described
by
Joseph
Campbell
in
his
seminal
work
The
Hero
with
a
Thousand
Faces
in
1949.1
He
revealed
that
this
ancient
story
pattern
resonates
because
it
draws
on
ancient
unconscious
archetypes
described
by
Carl
Jung
and
others.
Campbell
and
Jung
described
how
the
outward
journey
of
the
hero
reflects
a
parallel
inner
journey.
In
great
stories,
both
the
outward
and
inward
journeys
occur
simultaneously
and
complement
and
reinforce
one
another.
The
diagram
below
1
Joseph
Campbell,
The
Hero
with
a
Thousand
Faces,
Pantheon
Books,
1949
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
provides
an
overview
of
the
typical
components
and
order
of
a
hero’s
journey
story.
In
a
famous
memo
to
executives
at
Walt
Disney
Pictures
in
1985,
Christopher
Vogler
described
how
this
classical
hero
myth
lies
behind
all
great
stories,
screenplays
and
movies.
Christopher
Vogler,
http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm
By
way
of
example,
let’s
briefly
consider
one
of
my
favorite
woman-‐child
heroes,
Dorothy
in
The
Wizard
of
Oz.
Dorothy
begins
her
story
in
the
ordinary
world.
She
is
called
to
adventure
when
Miss
Gulch
attempts
to
kidnap
her
beloved
Toto.
But
when
she
meets
Professor
Marvel
she
begins
to
realize
that
the
ordinary
world
may
not
be
exactly
as
it
appears.
Even
though
Professor
Marvel
serves
as
a
good
mentor
to
Dorothy,
in
the
beginning
we
are
left
to
wonder
whether
he
is
a
true
healer,
or
is
he,
as
she
later
claims,
just
“…a
very
bad
man!”
She
attempts
to
refuse
the
call
and
run
back
to
her
Auntie
Em’s
house
in
Kansas
but
ends
up
crossing
the
threshold
into
another
world
where
she
encounters
difficult
tests,
discovers
three
wonderful
allies,
and
faces
dangerous
enemies.
Then
Dorothy
faces
the
seemingly
impossible
task
of
killing
the
Wicked
Witch
of
the
West.
She
and
her
friends
approach
the
Witch’s
castle,
the
place
they
most
dread,
and
she
undergoes
an
agonizing
ordeal
in
which
she
is
captured
and
condemned
to
death,
only
to
be
saved
in
the
very
last
instant
before
the
hourglass
runs
out.
She
then
seizes
the
sword,
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
or
in
this
case
a
bucket
of
water,
kills
the
witch
and
then
begins
on
the
road
back
to
Kansas.
When
she
finally
reawakens
there
she
has
a
new
perspective
and
power
that
allows
her
to
truly
see
and
understand
the
ordinary
world
in
a
way
she
never
could
have
imagined
before.
That
in
a
nutshell
is
a
description
of
the
hero’s
journey
and
it
has
been
well
described.
What
has
been
less
well
described
is
how
this
classic
hero’s
myth
always
involves
a
process
of
healing
or
movement
toward
wholeness
for
both
the
hero
and
the
broken
world
he
inhabits.
This
is
what
we
are
going
to
talk
about
today,
and
we
will
use
as
our
primary
guide,
Dante
Alighieri,
and
his
divine
hero
myth,
La
Commedia.
Part
2:
La
Divina
Commedia
If
hero
journey
stories
are
the
stories
that
resonate
most
with
humans,
it
goes
to
follow
that
these
stories
portray
the
most
important
spiritual
steps
for
humans
in
their
path
to
wholeness,
in
their
work
to
grow.
These
stories
teach
us
that
the
greatest
growth
for
humans
comes
from
discovering
a
healing
path
through
agony
and
despair.
So
it
is
fitting
that
Dante’s
comedy
begins
in
a
dark
wood.
Nel
mezzo
del
cammin
di
nostra
vita
Mi
ritrovai
per
una
selva
oscura,
ché
la
diritta
via
era
smarrita.
Inferno,
I,
1-‐3
“In
the
middle
of
the
journey
of
our
life,
I
found
myself
in
a
dark
wood
where
the
straight
way
was
lost.”
In
the
Commedia,
we
are
not
told
how
Dante
became
lost,
yet
every
one
of
his
readers
in
his
time
knew
his
story.
Dante’s
early
dream
was
to
play
a
major
role
in
the
government
of
his
city-‐state
of
Florence,
at
that
time,
perhaps
the
greatest
republic
in
world.
In
fact,
strong
lines
of
evidence
suggest
that
he
became
a
physician
and
member
of
the
“Arte
dei
medici
e
speziali"
(The
Guild
of
Physicians
and
Apothecaries)
in
Florence
in
1296
because
of
Florentine
law
requiring
enrollment
in
one
of
the
guilds
as
a
prerequisite
for
election
to
local
government
office.
From
Dante’s
early
writings
we
know
that
he
dreamed
of
helping
to
create
in
Florence
a
new
Jerusalem.
And
in
1301,
700
years
ago,
his
dream
appeared
to
be
realized.
He
was
elected
as
one
of
the
six
magistrates,
the
highest
office,
of
his
beloved
city
of
Florence.
He
had
already
served
his
fair
city
for
some
five
years
as
a
devoted
statesman,
and
had
finally
reached
what
he
thought
was
the
pinnacle
of
his
career.
As
a
city
magistrate
he
had
the
opportunity
to
make
a
real
difference
for
good,
to
foster
peace
and
justice,
and
support
a
Renaissance
in
Florence
such
as
the
world
had
never
known.
But
he
became
embroiled
in
unforeseen
political
intrigue.
After
only
a
year
as
magistrate,
he
was
exiled
from
his
home,
never
to
return
again.
At
age
37,
he
suddenly
found
himself
despised
and
homeless,
notwithstanding
his
devotion
to
the
city
of
Florence
and
his
non-‐partisan
efforts
on
its
behalf.
And
that
is
where
the
Divine
Comedy
begins–in
his
unfathomable
despair.
His
dark
wood
is
the
ordinary
world
and
the
entire
Commedia
is
devoted
to
his
finding
his
way
out.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
For
that
he
requires
a
mentor
and
guide
and
everyone
knows
that
Dante
is
led
by
Virgil,
just
as
Virgil
was
guided
by
Homer;
as
Aeneas
was
guided
by
Venus
the
goddess
of
love;
as
Homer’s
Odysseus
was
guided
by
Pallas
Athena.
When
Virgil
first
introduces
himself
to
Dante
he
immediately
challenges
him
with
a
call
to
adventure.
Poeta
fui,
e
cantai
di
quell
giusto
figliuol
d’Anchise
che
venne
di
Troia,
poi
che
‘l
superbo
Ilïón
fu
combusto.
Ma
tu
perché
ritorni
a
tanta
noia?
Inferno,
I,
73-‐76
He
says:
“Poet
I
was,
and
I
sang
of
the
just
son
of
Anchises
that
came
from
Troy,
after
proud
Ilium
was
burnt
to
the
ground.
But
why
are
you
turning
back
to
all
that
misery
[or
boredom]?”
Virgil
appears,
as
all
mentors
do,
in
just
the
right
moment
to
guide
Dante
not
back
into
the
misery,
the
“dark
wood,”
of
the
ordinary
world,
but
rather
to
guide
him
into
an
extraordinary
world
of
forms
and
meaning
that
undergird
and
ultimately
can
help
restore
the
ordinary
world.
Dante
is
overwhelmed
by
this
meeting,
and
responds:
O
de
li
altri
poeti
onore
e
lume,
Vagliami
‘l
lungo
studio
e
‘l
grande
amore
Che
m’ha
fatto
cercar
lo
luo
volume.
Tu
se’
lo
mio
maestro
e
‘l
mio
autore,
Inferno,
I,
82-‐85
“O
of
the
other
poets
our
honor
and
light,
value
my
long
study
and
the
great
love
that
has
made
me
search
your
volume.
You
are
my
teacher
and
my
author.”
Regarding
the
meeting
of
Dante
with
the
author
of
The
Aeneid
let
me
state
the
obvious.
The
reason
that
Virgil
is
able
to
serve
as
Dante’s
guide
is
because
he
has
been
there
before.
Virgil
has
seen
and
understands
every
type
of
sin
or
misstep
that
Dante
will
encounter
in
the
Inferno.
For
he
has
taken
his
Aeneas
there
before
and
provides
the
description
of
the
underworld
that
is
the
foundation
of
Dante
the
author’s
description.
Furthermore,
Dante
recognizes
Virgil
as
his
author—that
Virgil
made
him
what
he
is.
Dante
recognizes
that
his
love
of
Virgil’s
work
has
also
made
him
an
author
and
has
prepared
him
to
tell
his
own
story.
And
Dante’s
protagonist
must
be
guided
by
Virgil
because
Virgil’s
Aeneid
was
Dante’s
guide
to
the
underworld.
What
Dante
has
come
to
understand
about
the
underworld,
has
largely
come
through
Virgil’s
instruction.
Still,
Dante
must
screw
up
his
courage
when
it
is
his
turn
to
crossing
the
threshold
into
hell.
This
most
famous
of
all
cantos
begins
with
the
famous
words:
“Per
me
si
va
ne
la
città
dolente,
per
me
si
va
ne
l'etterno
dolore,
per
me
si
va
tra
la
perduta
gente.
Giustizia
mosse
il
mio
alto
fattore;
fecemi
la
divina
podestate,
la
somma
sapïenza
e
'l
primo
amore.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Dinanzi
a
me
non
fuor
cose
create
se
non
etterne,
e
io
etterno
duro.
Lasciate
ogne
speranza,
voi
ch'intrate."
THROUGH
ME
THE
WAY
TO
THE
CITY
OF
WOE,
THROUGH
ME
THE
WAY
TO
EVERLASTING
PAIN,
THROUGH
ME
THE
WAY
AMONG
THE
LOST.
JUSTICE
MOVED
MY
MAKER
ON
HIGH.
DIVINE
POWER
MADE
ME,
WISDOM
SUPREME,
AND
PRIMAL
LOVE.
BEFORE
ME
NOTHING
WAS
BUT
THINGS
ETERNAL,
AND
ETERNAL
I
ENDURE.
ABANDON
ALL
HOPE,
YOU
WHO
ENTER
HERE.
Inferno,
3,
1-‐9
These
are
the
horrifying
words
Dante
sees
inscribed
over
the
entrance
to
hell.
Of
note,
he
is
one
of
the
few,
including
Jesus
of
Nazareth
whose
hero
myth
is
well
known
to
all,
who
is
able
to
pass
through
this
gate
without
abandoning
all
hope.
After
passing
through
the
gates
of
hell,
Dante’s
instruction
begins
in
earnest.
He
explores
every
inch
of
the
nine
levels
of
hell
that
Virgil
describes
only
in
passing
in
his
Aeneid.
In
Dante’s
hell,
just
as
in
Virgil’s
Tartarus,
every
punishment
is
perfectly
suited
to
the
crime.
For
Dante,
exploring
the
levels
of
hell
involves
a
process
of
diagnosis.
He
is
able
to
fully
understand
the
reasons
for
the
brokenness
of
the
world
by
uncovering
the
sources
of
human
suffering
and
understanding
the
nature
and
types
of
human
missteps,
or
sins,
that
have
led
to
this
brokenness.
As
shown
in
the
schematic
of
Dante’s
hell
by
Mandelbaum
below,
he
places
mistakes
of
over-‐indulgence
at
the
highest
levels,
errors
of
violence
in
the
middle,
and
fraud
in
the
bottom.
Dante
saw
the
misuse
of
the
intellect
or
the
mind
to
deceive
others
as
the
very
worst
kind
of
human
error.
At
the
bottom
of
his
hell
he
places
treachery—first
treason
against
family,
then
country,
and
last
of
all
treason
against
our
natural
lord
and
master,
against
God.
In
Dante’s
Inferno
all
the
types
of
human
missteps
are
catalogued—every
single
one.
His
catalogue
of
sin
is
comprehensive.
Every
type
of
mistake
or
temptation
is
considered,
so
at
some
level,
there
is
no
completely
new
story
that
can
be
told
after
the
Commedia.
Every
story
deals
with
one
or
another
of
these
human
mistakes
or
near
mistakes.
For
Dante,
encountering
each
type
of
mistake
and
seeing
its
consequence
is
a
harsh
and
bitter
reminder
of
his
own
missteps
and
the
consequences
of
those
missteps
for
others.
So,
his
descent
is
an
ever
worsening
trial
of
pain
and
suffering
as
Dante
discovers
the
consequences
of
misguided
action
in
the
afterlife.
Like
much
of
the
first
half
of
the
Odyssey
and
of
the
Aeneid,
much
of
the
Inferno
is
filled
with
the
protagonist’s
tears
and
internal
suffering.
For
Dante,
this
process
is
one
of
diagnosis
(understanding
the
condition)
that
is
his
first
step
toward
healing.
Let
me
also
note,
that
after
his
exile
from
his
beloved
homeland,
it
does
his
heart
good
to
see
many
of
his
worst
enemies
in
life,
finally
paying
for
their
crimes.
For
him,
seeing
justice
done
in
the
afterlife
begins
the
process
of
healing.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Mandelbaum
Diagram
of
the
Inferno2
Dante’s
rebirth
occurs
when
he
passes
through
the
very
bottom
of
hell,
the
poles
of
the
world
are
reversed,
and
Dante
thinks
“they
are
heading
back
to
hell”
(Inferno
34,
81).
It
is
only
then
that
he
and
his
beloved
guide
Virgil
are
able
to
“ascend...to
see
again
the
stars”
(Inferno
34,
136-‐139).
2
From
THE
DIVINE
COMEDY
OF
DANTE
ALIGHIERI:
INFERNO
by
Allen
Mandelbaum,
,
Illustration
by
Barry
Moser,
copyright
©
1980
by
Allen
Mandelbaum,
Bantam
Books,
a
division
of
Random
House,
Inc.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
So
you
notice
that
Dante
in
the
Inferno
has
not
yet
“seized
the
sword.”
Indeed,
he
has
only
barely
passed
through
his
own
rebirth
when
the
first
story
ends.
Of
course
the
story
does
not
end
here.
Dante’s
healing
is
just
begun.
When
Purgatorio
begins
diagnosis
is
no
longer
the
focus,
but
rather
purification.
Once
hell
is
abandoned,
the
Purgatorio
lays
out
the
disciplined
path
that
Dante
suggests
that
our
souls
require
for
healing.
As
Dante
and
Virgil
climb
the
mountain
of
purgatory,
Dante
learns
how
practice
of
good
habits
can
lead
to
virtue
and
health.
On
each
level
of
purgatory
the
same
errors
encountered
in
hell
are
met
one
by
one.
The
only
difference
is
that
the
people
in
purgatory
work
to
overcome
them.
In
purgatory,
Dante
is
to
undergo
a
stepwise
process
of
purification
and
rebirth
when
he
arrives
at
the
top
of
mount
purgatory
in
the
earthly
paradise
or
Eden.
Near
the
bottom
of
purgatory,
seven
“P”s
are
traced
on
Dante’s
forehead,
standing
for
the
deadly
peccata
[sins]
that
weigh
him
down
and
keep
him
from
paradise.
As
Dante
struggles
up
the
mountain,
the
marks
are
cleansed
from
his
forehead
one
by
one.
The
following
texts
from
the
Purgatorio
describe
this
cleansing
process
as
a
kind
of
healing.
“Seek
only
that
the
five
wounds
healed
by
being
painful
soon
may
be
closed
up,
as
the
other
two
already
are.”
(XV,
79-‐81)
“But,
to
soothe
you
and
to
grant
your
wish,
here
is
Statius.
I
call
on
him,
I
beg
him,
to
be
the
healer
of
your
wounds.”
(XXV,
28-‐30)
“With
such
treatment
and
with
just
such
diet
must
the
last
of
all
the
wounds
be
healed.”
(XXV,
138-‐139)
“Keep
your
munificence
alive
in
me,
so
that
my
soul,
which
you
have
healed,
may
please
you
when
it
leaves
its
mortal
frame.”
(XXXI,
88-‐90)
As
a
result
of
this
process
of
being
freed
from
the
burden
of
these
wounds,
Dante
“feels
so
light
as
to
be
able
to
soar
into
the
heavens.”
In
his
last
words
of
the
Purgatorio
he
exclaims:
“I
came
forth…renovated,
even
as
new
trees
renewed
with
new
foliage,
pure
and
ready
to
rise
to
the
stars.”
(XXXIII,
143-‐145)
Dante’s
conclusion
to
the
Purgatorio
reminds
us
that
the
ancient
Greek
word
“phusis”,
from
which
the
word
physician
is
derived,
means
growth.
The
true
physician
is
the
one
who
stimulates
growth.
And
in
purgatory
growth
is
stimulated
through
the
practice
of
healthy
habits,
confronting
and
overcoming
the
temptations
and
errors
of
our
lives.
It
seems
natural
to
ask
at
this
point
whether
Dante’s
poetry
doesn’t
stimulate
growth
in
precisely
the
way
of
a
good
physician.
Surely
this
is
Dante’s
aim.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Part
3:
Resonance
of
the
Inferno
with
earlier
hero
stories
Let
me
now
turn
to
the
earlier
hero
myths
that
influenced
Dante’s
work,
focusing
especially
on
the
Odyssey
and
Aeneid,
to
see
what
these
works
tell
us
about
the
hero’s
healing
journey.
These
hero
stories
particularly
resonate
with
Dante
and
show
some
of
the
many
ways
to
tell
the
story
of
the
hero’s
quest.
The
Aeneid
is
an
homage
to
the
Odyssey
as
La
Commedia
is
an
homage
to
The
Aeneid.
Both
stories
feature
a
journey
to
the
underworld
in
their
centers
and
each
hero
has
a
sibyl
guide,
and
in
the
underworld
each
hero
seeks
to
come
to
terms
with
their
past
and
gain
vision
of
their
path
into
the
future.
As
it
is
for
Dante
in
the
Commedia,
rebirth
and
enlightenment
occur
for
both
Odysseus
and
Aeneas
in
the
underworld,
in
the
most
desperate
place
of
all.
Healing
occurs
through
their
contact
with
the
hidden
Cthonic
underworld,
and
both
involve
a
seer,
Sibyl,
oracle
helper,
who
serves
as
a
guide
to
the
navel
of
the
world,
the
place
of
their
rebirth.
For
both
Odysseus
and
Aeneas,
like
Dante,
the
ordinary
world
is
a
broken
world
from
which
they
would
prefer
to
hide
and
escape.
Both
Odysseus
and
Aeneas
seek
to
escape
their
broken
world,
Odysseus
with
the
divine
Kalypso,
and
Aeneas
with
his
beloved
Dido,
but
both
find
themselves
unable
to
forget
their
past
and
fated
future.
Like
the
Athenians
in
the
time
of
Theseus
who
didn’t
want
to
admit
that
it
was
wrong
for
their
children
to
be
sacrificed
to
the
Minotaur,
none
of
our
heroes
want
to
face
the
horror
embedded
in
the
ordinary
world,
but
they
are
compelled
to
do
so.
All
of
three
of
these
hero
myths
involve
reluctant
heroes
who
are
forced
to
confront
the
pain
in
their
ordinary
world.
Dante
is
accused
of
graft
and
exiled
from
his
beloved
world
of
Florence
forever.
Odysseus,
the
wounded
warrior,
must
confront
and
recover
from
the
horrors
of
war
and
his
guilt
over
abandoning
his
family
and
losing
all
of
his
crew
one
by
one.
Aeneas’
ordinary
world
is
burnt
to
the
ground
and
destroyed
forever.
So
we
can
rightly
wonder
on
this
day
of
9–11
as
we
ponder
the
place
where
the
twin
towers
once
stood.
How
can
such
wastelands
provide
grounds
for
healing
and
lead
to
rebirth?
Dante
clearly
has
more
regard
for
pious
Aeneas,
led
by
the
goddess
of
love
Venus
who
serves
as
his
mentor,
than
he
has
for
Odysseus,
whom
he
punishes
as
a
smooth-‐tongued
false
counselor
or
rhetorician
in
the
realm
of
fraud.
Yet
even
though
Virgil’s
Aeneid
is
more
directly
related
to
Dante’s
story,
please
give
me
leave
to
reverse
courses
and
turn
to
the
older
story
of
Odysseus
first,
as
it
will
help
us
better
interpret
The
Aeneid.
Odysseus’
homecoming
story
begins
not
with
Odysseus—we
are
only
are
told
that
he
is
stranded
on
Kalypso’s
isle,
despondent,
unfit,
and
without
hope
of
ever
returning
home
again.
The
Odyssey
begins
with
Athena’s
plan
to
save
him,
and
the
call
to
adventure
of
his
son
Telemachus.
Athena
recognizes
Odysseus’
critical
need
for
his
family
to
help
him
achieve
his
homecoming.
And
it
is
Pallas
Athena,
the
goddess
of
wisdom
who
serves
as
Odysseus’
mentor.
For
the
first
four
books
of
the
Odyssey
Odysseus
himself
is
strangely
absent.
Instead
we
are
occupied
with
Athena
disguising
herself
as
Odysseus’
wise
old
friend
Mentor
and
the
early
books
primarily
deal
with
her
serving
as
a
guide
and
mentor
to
his
son,
not
to
Odysseus
himself.
Meanwhile
Odysseus’
ordinary
world
is
living
with
the
immortal
Kalypso
in
indolence
and
pleasure.
And
yet
we
learn
that
he
spends
most
of
his
days
in
mourning,
homesickness,
and
grief.
His
world
on
a
fantasy
island
with
Kalypso
is
a
perfect
world,
but
it
is
a
world
he
cannot
accept.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Finally
in
Book
V,
Odysseus
leaves
the
island
of
Kalypso
where
he
has
lived
8
years
in
the
company
of
the
immortal
goddess.
After
18
days
at
sea
on
his
raft
he
is
finally
within
sight
of
Phaiákian
land.
But
Poseidon
conjurs
a
storm
that
completely
destroys
his
raft.
The
storm
strips
him
of
his
clothes
and
for
two
days
and
nights
he
is
cast
about
the
sea
holding
on
to
the
single
beam
remaining
from
his
raft.
On
the
dawn
of
the
third
day
the
sea
calms
and
he
swims
for
the
shore.
With
the
help
of
the
gods
avoids
the
crashing
breakers
of
the
rocky
coast
of
the
island
of
Skeria
and
finds
a
river
inlet
where
he
can
make
his
way
ashore.
He
drags
himself
between
twin
bushes
of
olive
from
one
stem—one
wild
and
one
cultivated—where
he
falls
into
an
exhausted
sleep.
As
Kathryn
Davis
notes,3
the
twin
olive
bush
has
two
meanings.
First,
it
serves
as
a
sign
of
Athena,
evoking
the
myth
that
she
brought
the
cultivated
olive
to
Greece
but
that
it
had
to
be
grafted
onto
wild
stock
to
thrive.
Second,
the
olive
prefigures
Odysseus’
homecoming
(for
both
him
and
us)
and
it
allows
him
the
opportunity
to
remake
his
olive
tree
bed
as
part
of
his
work
of
recovery.
The
next
day,
the
naked
Odysseus
is
discovered
by
the
king’s
daughter
Nausikaa
who
has
gone
to
the
river
with
her
handmaids
to
wash
clothes.
There
on
the
shore,
Odysseus
appears
reborn
like
a
naked
babe
and
he
is
clothed
and
fed
and
brought
back
to
the
Phaiákian
king
and
queen.
Thus,
within
the
first
story
of
the
Odyssey,
Odysseus
experiences
his
rebirth
on
the
shores
of
the
land
of
the
Phaiákians.
But
closer
reading
suggests
that
his
death
and
rebirth
begin,
are
centered
on,
and
derive
from
his
experience
in
the
underworld.
Odysseus’
journey
to
the
underworld
is
told
as
a
story
within
a
story,
in
his
Homeric
telling
of
his
own
story
to
the
Phaiákian
people.
He
tells
the
story
of
his
death
soon
after
his
rebirth
on
the
beach,
after
he
has
barely
survived
another
near
death
experience,
his
near
drowning
on
his
desperate
attempt
to
return
home.
With
the
Phaiákian’s
he
becomes
a
storyteller
and
his
healing,
recovery,
growth
(Gr.
Phusis)
rapidly
progresses.
The
middle
half
of
the
Odyssey
consists
not
of
an
impartial
story
of
Odysseus’
return,
but
rather
of
Odysseus’
telling
of
his
own
story.
Odysseus
–must
tell
his
story
to
heal.
This
is
reminiscent
of
the
primary
healing
modality
employed
by
the
wounded
warrior’s
project
for
American
soldiers
with
post-‐traumatic
stress
disorder
(PTSD)
returning
from
the
Middle
East.
For
those
who
can
heal,
sharing
their
story
is
a
key
part
of
healing
for
those
returning
home
from
the
horrors
of
war.
Odysseus
is
able
to
return
to
the
ordinary
world
by
helping
to
change
it,
by
sharing
his
accumulated
wisdom,
by
telling
his
story.
The
reader
has
to
wonder,
along
with
the
king
and
queen,
whether
or
not
he
is
a
reliable
historian,
or
whether
he
is
simply
pitching
the
story
for
his
own
gain.
Regardless,
there
can
be
no
doubt
that
it
is
in
telling
his
story
that
Odysseus
begins
to
regain
his
health.
Within
this
story
within
the
story
of
the
Odyssey,
in
the
very
center
and
crux
of
the
poem,
his
death
and
the
beginning
of
his
rebirth
is
revealed.
His
journey
to
the
underworld
occurs
some
10
years
after
Odysseus
has
left
home,
when
he
is
most
desperate
to
return.
The
witch-‐healer
or
goddess
φαρμακεία
(Gr.)
Kirke
finally
gives
him
leave,
but
informs
him
that
3
Kathryn Davis, The Olive Tree and “the idea of order” in the Odyssey, Accessed July 8, 2015 at
http://www.udallas.edu/documents/pdf/braniff/kathryndavis.pdf.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
he
first
must
perform
one
more
task.
Here
is
their
conversation,
as
related
by
Odysseus,
when
he
begs
to
leave
and
receives
the
darkest
news
imaginable:
“Son
of
Laertes
and
the
gods
of
old,
Odysseus,
master
mariner
and
soldier,
you
shall
not
stay
here
longer
in
my
house
against
your
will;
but
home
you
may
not
go
unless
you
take
a
strange
way
round
and
come
to
the
cold
bones
of
Death
and
pale
Persephone.
You
shall
hear
prophecy
from
the
rapt
shade
of
blind
Teiresias
of
Thebes,
forever
charged
with
reason
even
among
the
dead…”
At
this
I
felt
a
weight
like
a
stone
within
me,
and
moaning,
pressed
my
length
against
the
bed,
with
no
desire
to
see
the
daylight
more.
But
when
I
had
wept
and
tossed
and
had
my
fill
of
despair,
at
last
I
answered
her:
“Kirke,
who
pilots
me
on
this
journey?
No
man
has
ever
sailed
to
the
land
of
Death.”
Odyssey,
Book
X
Her
answer
is
that
the
spirit
of
Teiresias
will
be
his
guide.
And
thus,
following
Kirke’s
instructions
he
is
met
by
Teiresias
in
Hades
who
gives
him
a
dark
prophecy
regarding
his
most
difficult
return.
Odysseus
is
told
that
“anguish
lies
ahead”
and
that
he
can
only
hope
for
a
rapid
return
through
“denial
of
yourself,
restraint
of
shipmates.”
And
of
course
in
this
latter
goal
we
know
that
Odysseus
fails
and
as
prophesied
all
his
shipmates
are
then
lost.
Then
in
the
depths
of
Hades
Odysseus
sees
his
mother
who
has
died
in
his
absence
.
She
asks
him
painful
questions
about
his
absence
and
all
that
he
has
left
behind,
and
then
finally
she
tells
him
the
cause
of
her
own
death
while
he
was
gone:
“So
I
too
pined
away,
so
doom
befell
me,…
not
that
illness
overtook
me–no
true
illness
wasting
the
body
to
undo
the
spirit;
only
my
loneliness
for
you,
Odysseus,
for
your
kind
heart
and
counsel,
gentle
Odysseus,
took
my
life
away.”
This
is
when
he
seeks
to
embrace
her,
three
times,
and
is
unable,
her
shadow
sifting
through
his
hands.
Not
only
is
he
responsible
for
her
death,
she
evokes
a
past
that
he
can
never
recover.
And
at
this
point
he
doubts
that
he
can
ever
recover
his
past
kindness
and
gentleness
that
only
his
mother
seems
to
remember.
This
recognition
of
the
depth
of
his
loss
is
both
his
greatest
point
of
pain
and
the
true
beginning
of
his
rebirth
and
his
process
of
healing.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
Let
me
now
turn
briefly
to
Aeneas.
As
we
discussed,
Aeneas’
mentor
is
Venus,
the
goddess
of
love,
and
he
also
has
a
very
similar
excursion
into
the
underworld
in
the
very
center
of
The
Aeneid.
Similarly,
this
journey
to
the
underworld
serves
as
perhaps
the
most
moving
part
of
his
story.
Like
Odysseus,
he
is
similarly
guided
by
a
seer,
the
Cumaean
Sibyl.
In
Hades
Aeneas
also
seeks
to
embrace
his
ancestor
three
times,
but
in
this
case
it
is
his
father,
Anchises
that
he
seeks
to
embrace.
As
Jacob
Klein
notes,
the
story
runs
both
reverse
and
inverse—father,
not
mother,
guided
by
love,
not
wisdom—yet
still
it
is
at
heart
a
hero’s
quest,
and
follows
the
basic
pattern
we
previously
described.
Here
Virgil
describes
their
emotional
meeting:
“And
have
you
come
at
last,
and
has
the
pious
love
that
your
father
waited
for
defeated
the
difficulty
of
the
journey?
Son,
can
I
look
at
your
face,
hear,
and
return
familiar
accents?...”
Then
he:
“My
father,
it
was
your
sad
image,
so
often
come,
that
urged
me
to
these
thresholds.
My
ships
are
moored
on
the
Tyrrhenian.
O
father,
let
me
hold
your
right
hand
fast,
do
not
withdraw
from
my
embrace.”
His
face
was
wet
with
weeping
as
he
spoke.
Three
times
he
tried
to
throw
his
arms
around
Anchises’
neck;
and
three
times
the
Shade
escaped
from
that
vain
clasp—like
light
winds,
or
most
like
swift
dreams.
The
Aeneid,
Book
VI,
908-‐927
He
similarly
has
to
let
go
of
his
past,
and
toward
that
end,
his
father
shows
him
not
the
heroes
of
the
past
in
Hades,
but
rather
his
hero
warrior
descendants
of
the
future
who
will
found
the
city
of
Rome.
With
this
bright
but
difficult
future
in
mind,
Aeneas
leaves
Hades
with
a
new
hope
for
a
path
to
a
better
future.
And
many
of
you
will
remember,
after
seeing
this
vision
of
the
future,
he
and
the
Sibyl
pass
through
the
polished
ivory
gate
of
Sleep
which
Virgil
calls
the
“way
the
Spirits
send
false
dreams”—the
same
gate
of
“dreams
of
glimmering
illusion,
[and]
fantasies”
(Odyssey,
Book
19,
532-‐533)
from
which
Penelope
suspected
her
dream
of
Odysseus’
return
most
likely
came.
Virgil
leaves
all
to
wonder
whether
Aeneas’
hope
for
a
great
and
just
Rome
is
a
false
hope
that
will
never
come
to
pass.
As
Jacob
Klein
the
late
Annapolis
tutor
and
Dean
so
elegantly
has
shown
in
his
essay
“The
Myth
of
Virgil’s
Aeneid,4
Virgil’s
story
of
Aeneas
is
a
retelling
of
The
Odyssey,
written
as
the
reverse
and
inverse
of
Homer’s
story
of
Odysseus.
The
Aeneid
mirrors
The
Iliad
and
The
Odyssey
together,
told
in
reverse.
Like
The
Odyssey,
The
Aeneid
is
a
homecoming/recovery
story,
but
it
ends
with
the
wrath
of
Aeneas
just
as
The
Iliad
begins
with
the
wrath
of
Achilles.
As
Jacob
Klein
points
out,
The
Aeneid
ends
with
a
Trojan
war
raging
in
reverse
4
Jacob
Klein,
The
Myth
of
Virgil’s
Aeneid,
from
Jacob
Klein:
Lectures
and
Essays,
Ed.
R
Williamson
and
E.
Zuckerman,
St.
John’s
College
Press,
Annapolis,
MD:
1985
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
order
and
“This
time
it
will
end
with
the
victory
of
Aeneas,
the
new
Hector,
over
Turnus,
the
new
Achilles.”
And
after
this
victory
there
will
be
a
final
reconciliation
between
the
Trojans
and
Latins
and
all
the
warring
gods
that
represent
them.
Thus,
The
Aeneid
ends
with
the
dawn
of
a
new
golden
age
in
which
Rome
is
born
and
through
war
brings
the
dream
of
new
golden
age
of
peace.
Aeneas
story
is
a
story
of
the
recovery
of
Aeneas
and
the
restoration
of
his
world,
of
a
better
and
just
world,
of
Troy
reborn
as
Rome.
Part
4:
9–11
and
“The
Waste
Land”
of
modern
healthcare
So
what
does
all
this
have
to
do
with
healthcare
and
our
modern
quest
for
healing?
Through
these
stories
we
have
seen
that
the
hero’s
quest
always
begins
with
the
discovery
by
the
hero
that
the
world
is
upside
down
and
needs
to
be
restored.
So
my
novel,
The
End
of
Healing,
begins
with
its
protagonist,
the
young
Dr.
Don
Newman,
discovering
himself
in
a
very
dark
place.
In
the
first
part
of
our
new
millennium,
precisely
700
years
after
Dante
Alighieri
painful
awakening,
Dr.
Newman
finds
himself
in
a
broken
world.
The
End
of
Healing
begins
when
Dr.
Newman
is
awoken
in
the
middle
of
a
night
on
call
to
put
an
intravenous
line
in
the
neck
of
a
dying
woman
who
can’t
talk
because
a
recent
massive
stroke
from
which
she
will
never
recover.
He
knows
his
patient
doesn’t
want
an
intravenous
line
and
that
it
won’t
really
help
her
get
better.
Here
is
a
bit
of
their
encounter
after
Dr.
Newman
has
prepped
and
draped
Mrs.
Bellamy
before
putting
in
the
unwanted
IV:
For
a
quiet
moment
she
was
just
a
neck.
He
numbed
the
skin
with
a
bee
sting
of
lidocaine,
studied
the
anatomical
landmarks
to
find
the
right
spot,
and
stabbed
her
neck
with
the
three-‐inch
needle.
She
screamed
beneath
the
drape.
Dark
blood
shot
from
the
hub
of
the
hypodermic.
He
passed
a
long
stiff
wire
through
the
needle
into
the
jugular
vein
and
deep
into
her
body.
The
pager
started
screeching
again
but
he
couldn’t
reach
under
his
gown
to
turn
it
off.
A
voice
in
his
head
whispered
the
oath
he
had
taken
at
the
beginning
and
again
at
the
end
of
medical
school:
and
at
least
I
will
do
no
harm.
Bullshit!
Harm
is
my
business.
How
could
any
good
ever
come
out
of
what
I’m
doing
here
to
Sibyl
Bellamy?
His
bloody
gloved
fingers
worked
to
thread
the
Silastic
tubing
over
the
wire,
through
her
soft
skin,
and
down
to
the
first
chamber
of
her
heart.
Sibyl
Bellamy
began
to
whimper.
Out
of
nowhere,
water
filled
his
eyes
and
blurred
his
vision.
What
was
this?
It
wasn’t
like
him
to
become
emotional
while
dealing
with
a
patient,
and
he
bristled
with
irritation
at
the
sudden
unprofessional
display.
He
blinked
hard,
hoping
the
nurse
didn’t
notice
the
single
drop
that
spilled
from
the
corner
of
his
eye
and
trailed
across
his
cheek
and
around
his
mouth
to
balance
on
the
tip
of
his
chin.
Mrs.
Bellamy
had
once
been
a
beautiful
woman.
Something
about
her
reminded
him
of
his
own
mother.
Momma
was
gone
now,
and
he
had
done
nothing
to
help
her,
either.
As
he
struggled
to
suture
the
line
into
place,
the
tear
dropped
off
his
chin.
It
landed
on
the
sterile
blue
drape
and
spread
into
a
dark
circle
over
Sibyl
Bellamy’s
heart.
The
End
of
Healing,
Chapter
1,
The
Dark
Ward
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
A
patient
helps
him
to
see
to
his
horror
that
far
from
following
his
oath
to
“at
least
do
no
harm”
that
“harm
has
become
his
business.”
This
is
a
near
universal
experience
among
young
would-‐be
healers,
that
at
some
point
early
in
their
career
they
realize
that
they
have
entered
a
powerful
industry
that
does
not
always
place
the
interest
of
the
patient
first,
and
that
they
themselves
have
participated
in
the
business
of
harm.
Then
he
meets
his
mentor,
Dr.
Gil
Sampson,
who
encourages
him
to
cross
a
threshold,
to
forsake
plans
for
a
lucrative
career
in
cardiology,
and
instead
embark
on
a
dubious
quest
to
“Follow
the
money”
to
better
understand
the
true
ends
of
the
healthcare
industry
today.
Dr.
Sampson
and
Dr.
Newman’s
fellow
students
in
his
Oxford
style
graduate
program
in
Health
System
change
assist
him
in
this
quest
and
force
him
to
see
things
he
finds
horrifying
and
which
challenge
his
cherished
identity
as
a
healer.
Soon
after
beginning
his
Ivy
League
graduate
program
he
is
sorely
tested.
On
September
11,
2001
Don
and
his
fellow
students
are
sitting
in
their
college’s
coffee
shop,
a
place
that
looks
a
lot
like
the
St.
John’s
College
coffee
shop
beneath
McDowell
Hall,
when
the
planes
hit:
Don
had
been
drinking
coffee
in
The
Down
Under,
one
eye
on
the
morning
news
and
the
other
on
his
seminar
reading,
when
the
television
showed
the
first
plane
slamming
into
the
side
of
the
South
Tower.
He
assumed
the
pilot
had
veered
off
course
or
had
mechanical
problems—a
terrible
freak
accident—and
went
back
to
his
reading.
Just
after
nine
o’clock,
a
student
in
the
coffee
shop
screamed,
“Oh,
my
God!”
The
panic
in
her
voice
caused
Don
to
look
at
the
screen
just
as
a
second
jet
slammed
into
the
North
Tower.
Boiling
orange
flames
exploded
from
all
four
sides
of
several
floors.
Glittering
glass
and
metal
showered
the
streets
below,
and
billowing
black
smoke
poured
out
of
the
jagged,
gaping
holes
in
the
gleaming
towers.
Everything
changed
in
that
moment.
The
concern
in
the
room
turned
to
palpable
fear
and
everyone
was
now
riveted
to
the
news.
Some
were
crying;
others
were
desperately
dialing
their
cell
phones….The
South
Tower
crumbled
first,
just
before
ten
o’clock.
The
giant
building
collapsed
in
slow
motion.
It
started
with
a
barely
noticeable
shudder
and
a
slight
sagging
that
warped
the
skyscraper’s
straight
lines.
The
people
up
on
the
roof
hoping
in
vain
for
a
helicopter
rescue
must
have
felt
the
steel
beams
give
up
beneath
them
as
the
floors
began
to
collapse,
accelerating
to
a
machine
gun
staccato.
Puffs
of
smoke
shot
out
from
between
the
floors
with
each
percussion,
and
gray-‐brown
clouds
of
dust
began
to
rise
and
swell.
The
interminable
fall
ended
with
a
huge
belch
as
the
floors
slammed
to
the
ground.
The
building
exhaled
its
last
breath—a
thick,
rolling
cloud
of
dust
and
debris
that
advanced
from
the
heap
and
engulfed
everything
in
its
path.
The
fall
of
the
North
Tower
thirty
minutes
later
was
predictable
and
right
on
time.
In
spite
of
that,
a
steady
stream
of
fearless
firemen
filed
into
the
building
right
up
to
the
very
end.
The
End
of
Healing,
Chapter
7,
The
Waste
Land
He
quickly
discovers
what
anyone
who
has
eyes
to
see,
can
see—that
as
horrible
as
the
attack
on
the
Twin
Towers
was—the
world
of
modern
healthcare
is
far
worse.
To
his
dismay
he
learns
that
over
100,000
Americans
are
killed
by
medical
mistakes
in
hospitals
every
year—
the
equivalent
of
a
jumbo
jet
crashing
every
day!
That
makes
healthcare
far
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
and
away
the
number
one
cause
of
accidental
death
in
the
U.S.
And
he
discovers
that
healthcare
providers
generally
get
paid
more
when
they
make
mistakes.
That
some
100
million
people
worldwide
are
killed,
maimed,
or
seriously
injured
by
medical
mistakes
every
10
years,
more
than
have
ever
been
killed
in
any
war
in
the
history
of
time
in
a
similar
period.
And
as
he
“follows
the
money”
with
his
professor’s
guidance,
he
realizes
that
the
costs
of
the
American
high-‐tech,
hospital-‐focused
healthcare
approach
are
unsupportable.
He
sees
that
healthcare
is
already
consuming
20%
of
the
American
economy
and
it
is
hungry
for
more.
Even
when
the
novel
is
set,
in
2001,
he
sees
that
the
average
family
of
four
is
spending
(or
is
having
spent
on
their
behalf)
over
$20,000
per
year
and
the
average
Medicare
age
family
of
two
is
spending
over
$40,000
per
year,
amounts
that
most
American
families
can
ill
afford.
As
he
searches
to
understand
how
and
why
this
untenable
situation—this
broken
world—has
developed,
he
discovers,
beneath
the
surface
of
his
ordinary
medical
world,
a
powerful
healthcare
industrial
complex
seemingly
bent
on
trading
people’s
health
for
profit.
Don
and
his
fellow
students
begin
a
comprehensive
investigation
of
each
of
the
major
healthcare
industries
and
the
organizations
and
individuals
that
collude
with
them
in
the
quest
for
profit.
As
young
Dr.
Newman
struggles
to
find
a
framework
to
help
him
understand
the
broken
world
of
modern
healthcare
he
turns
to
Dante.
As
Virgil
look
to
Homer
and
Dante
looked
to
Virgil,
so
Dr.
Newman
looks
to
Dante
for
guidance.
His
Italian
mother
had
introduced
him
to
La
Divina
Commedia
as
a
boy
and
he
inherited
her
treasured
antique
copy.
He
turns
to
that
book
as
a
graduate
student
in
his
search
for
answers.
And
his
inherited
facsimile
edition
of
the
Commedia
contains
the
earliest
known
illustrations
of
the
Comedy
drawn
by
the
famous
Renaissance
artist
Botticelli.
Here
is
Botticelli’s
depiction
of
the
levels
of
Dante’s
Inferno.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
In
The
End
of
Healing,
Dr.
Newman
discovers
that
Dante’s
representation
of
the
moral
organization
of
the
universe
is
a
perfect
ethical
framework
for
understanding
modern
medicine.
In
a
flash
of
inspiration,
Don
realizes
that
the
levels
of
healthcare
hell
he
has
been
exploring
with
Dr.
Sampson
in
their
seminar
correspond
perfectly
with
the
levels
in
Dante’s
Inferno.
He
discovers
that
for
every
ethical
misstep,
mistake,
or
error
that
Dante
catalogued
there
is
a
corresponding
mistake
in
modern
healthcare.
He
discovers
that
the
way
humans
can
go
wrong
really
have
not
changed
that
much
in
the
last
700
years.
So
like
Dante,
he
begins
to
catalog
the
errors
in
modern
healthcare
and
to
use
Botticelli’s
drawing
as
his
guide.
He
realizes
that
these
errors
in
health
system
organization
have
consequences
in
terms
of
money
spent,
lives
saved,
and
lives
lost
and
he
begins
to
record
these
consequences
in
his
own
version
of
Botticelli’s
diagram
in
his
journal.
He
works
night
after
night
reviewing
the
literature,
calculating
and
filling
in
the
money
spent,
lives
saved
and
lives
lost
in
every
sector
of
the
healthcare
industry.
And
here
is
what
he
discovers.
Diagram
of
Healthcare
Hell5
5
From
The
End
of
Healing
by
Jim
Bailey,
Illustration
by
Joel
Hilgenberg,
copyright
©
2014
by
The
Healthy
City.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
In
his
journey
into
the
hell
of
the
ordinary
medical
world
Don
discovers
that
the
priorities
of
our
healthcare
system
are
completely
upside
down–and
that
this
has
horrible
consequences
for
the
people
who
depend
on
and
need
good
health
care
for
themselves
and
their
families.
In
The
End
of
Healing,
Don
and
his
colleagues
see
the
victims
of
disorganized
healthcare
up
close,
they
share
the
stories
of
the
unnecessary
suffering
they
have
witnessed,
and
they
understand
the
reasons
for
the
diseases
and
premature
deaths
of
these
innocent
people.
What
Don
discovers
through
his
journey
is
that
where
Americans
spend
the
most—on
hyped
care,
procedures,
and
hospital
care—they
get
the
least,
the
fewest
lives
are
saved,
and
the
most
lives
are
lost
from
medical
errors,
adverse
events,
and
complications.
And
where
Americans
spend
the
least
is
where
the
true
high-‐value
care
lies,
care
that
has
the
potential
to
not
only
save
far
more
lives
but
also
to
help
bring
abundant
life
to
the
people
of
America.
This
is
the
reality
of
modern
medicine
in
the
United
States,
where
it
is
currently
estimated
that
$800
billion
or
one-‐third
of
the
total
$2.4
trillion
U.S.
healthcare
budget
is
wasted
on
potentially
harmful
activities
activities
that
do
little
or
nothing
to
promote
health.6,7
So
tonight
I
have
shared
the
beginning
of
the
story
of
a
new
hero
who
perhaps
can
help
us
confront
one
of
the
greatest
social
ills
of
our
time,
the
unconscionable
waste
of
lives
and
resources
on
a
broken
healthcare
system.
Perhaps
Dr.
Don
Newman’s
search,
like
Dante’s,
Aeneas’,
and
Odysseus’
before
him
can
guide
us
to
the
nature
of
true
healing
and
help
us
discover
true
healing
for
ourselves
and
our
families.
His
work
and
our
work
is
simple—to
reclaim
and
restore
our
upside-‐down
healthcare
system.
All
we
have
to
do
is
to
turn
the
system
right-‐side
up—right-‐side
health
care
and
reclaim
the
well.
All
that
is
required
is
to
move
the
money
from
wasteful
sectors
and
industries
where
it
does
harm
to
where
it
can
do
good
through
primary
care
and
prevention.
This
task
would
be
easy
if
only
every
bit
of
that
waste
were
not
someone’s
profit.
So
this
process
of
transformation
will
require
heroes.
Through
Dr.
Newman’s
story
we
learn
that
high-‐value
health
care
starts
with
each
of
us
and
our
values.
Before
we
can
hope
to
demand
high-‐value
health
care
we
have
to
know
what
high-‐value
health
care
is
and
how
we
can
find
it.
We
must
ask
ourselves
what
health
care
is
truly
most
valuable
and
discern
the
answer.
Through
The
End
of
Healing
the
reader
can
accompany
Dr.
Don
Newman
and
participate
in
that
process
of
painful
discernment.
That
is
the
healing
journey
that
young
Dr.
Don
Newman
bids
us
to
join
in—a
quest
to
seek
the
path
through
our
broken
healthcare
system
to
reclaim
the
well
and
the
narrow
path
to
true
healing.
6
Orzag
PR,
Statement
to
the
Committee
on
the
Budget,
U.S.
House
of
Representatives,
Increasing
the
Value
of
Federal
Spending
on
Health
Care,
July
16,
2008.
Available
at:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41717;
Accessed
9/10/15.
7
Kelly
R,
Where
can
$700
billion
in
waste
be
cut
annually
from
the
U.S.
healthcare
system?
Thomson
Reuters,
October
2009,
Available
at:
http://www.ncrponline.org/PDFs/2009/Thomson_Reuters_White_Paper_on_Healthcare_
Waste.pdf;
Accessed
9/10/15.
�Jim
Bailey
St.
John’s
College,
Annapolis,
MD
Friday
Night
Lecture,
September
11,
2015
This
call
to
adventure
issued
by
The
End
of
Healing
is
not
unlike
the
call
issued
by
Dante
through
his
Divine
Comedy
to
examine
our
ordinary
world
and
reclaim
it,
or
the
call
of
Virgil
through
his
Aeneid
to
look
for
and
help
build
a
true
and
just
Pax
Romana.
Nor
is
it
far
from
Homer’s
call
to
Odysseus
to
remember
what
is
truly
important
and
to
strive
for
a
new
homecoming
and
restore
his
broken
household.
Let
us
look
for
Odysseus’s
reclaimed
homeland,
Aeneas’
reborn
Trojan
empire,
Dante’s
hoped
for
new
Jerusalem,
and
accept
the
call
to
adventure
to
go
with
young
Dr.
Newman
and
find
the
path
to
the
healthy
city
of
our
dreams.
And
perhaps
in
the
process,
like
Odysseus,
Aeneas,
and
Dante
before
us,
we
can
pass
through
the
darkness
and
be
reborn,
reclaim
the
well,
and
resurrect
our
better
selves.
�
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 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
Dante and the hero's quest for healing
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 11, 2015 by Jim Bailey as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bailey, James E.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-11
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 82891
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bf94435e925d7dfea916df54baf5f55f.pdf
b3bf5b245bf7f902f20d5ed703221a39
PDF Text
Text
Leibniz's Monadology and the Philosophical Foundations of Non-locality in
Quantum Mechanics.
by
J.H. Beall
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Abstract:
One of the most troubling aspects of our understanding of modern physics, generally, and quantum
mechanics, specifically, is the concept of “non-locality.” Non-locality appears in an entire class of
experiments, including the so-called “two-slit” experiment. In these, particles and “quanta” of light can
be emitted and absorbed individually. Yet in the way these particles or quanta traverse the space and
time between emission and absorption, they appear to behave not as point particles, but as though they
were distributed throughout the entire spatial volume and temporal extent of the experiment. That the
phenomenon of non-locality has recently been corroborated over macroscopic distances of the order of
10 kilometers makes these effects all the more remarkable.
In this lecture, I shall review the experiments and arguments that have led to an acceptance of nonlocality in modern physics, and will suggest that the concept of space and time that this understanding
implies is consistent with Leibniz's Monadology, wherein our ideas of space and time are
fundamentally different from those given to us by our intuitions.
�Outline of Lecture:
1. Leibniz's Monadology
Principle of sufficient reason
Leibniz-Clark Correspondence
Leibniz and Newton
2. Quantum Mechanics: An Eternal, Golden Braid
Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect
Rutherford, Bohr, de Broglie, and Heisenberg: an eternal golden braid
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Einstein, Padolski, and Rosen's response to Heisenberg and Bohr
3. Bell's Theorem (or Bell's Inequality)
Bell's work at CERN
a synopsis of Bell's inequality via entangled particles
Bell's untimely death
Henry Pierce Stapp's paper on Bell's Theorem and it's implications
three reasonable demands: locality, causality, and individuality
must abandon one of the three
best option: abandon locality
Experimental foundation:
Stern-Gerlach correlation experiments
and more recent experiments with quanta of light
Professor Carol Alley's indignation
What is the Speed of Quantum Information?” 18 km, 10,000 times speed of light.
“
4. Like shadows on a Cave Wall: Leibniz's ideas of “space” as a kind of answer to the problem of nonlocality
5. Concluding remarks
The coherence of mind—The Emporer's New Mind: Roger Penrose on the unity of cognition
The commonality of experience
The problem and promise of entanglement
�1. Leibniz's Monadology
Principle of sufficient reason
Leibniz-Clark Correspondence
Leibniz and Newton
Leibniz's writings on the philosophical, mathematical, and natural sciences represent a coherent, if
somewhat surprising whole. Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the Monadology, the
Discourse of Metaphysics, and the Leibniz-Clark correspondence.
Leibniz begins with the view of God as a maker, a being who makes the world the best possible.
Part and parcel with this view of the world is Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason. It goes
something like this: one monad can only be different from another because of its different character or
qualities. I'll use a modern idea of a monad to illustrate this: an elementary particle like an electron. I
hope my choice will become plausible a bit later when we start the discussion of quantum mechanics.
Is one electron the same as another? If so, if there is NO difference between “this electron” and “that
electron”, then they would be the same, since by the Principle of Sufficient Reason they cannot be
distinguished. But my simply pointing to them is an indication of the differences. “This electron” IS
different from that one, because it has an explicitly different representation that is indicated by my
pointing at them. If I were to insist on a Cartesian representation of this difference, I can make a threedimensional coordinate system with a particular origin and three orthogonal axes, labeled x, y, and z.
Numbering these axes, I can locate “this” electron and distinguish it from “that” electron by the use of
three numbers, x1, y1, and z1, and x2, y2, and z2. I can then say that I have a representation of each of
these two electrons as different, given these two sets of three numbers. I can even represent their
separation of this electron from that electron by a three-dimensional version of the Pythagorean
theorem.
Leibniz makes this explicit several places in his works. For example, in the essay, “On Nature Itself
(pp 164 – 165), he states in arguing against Descartes' reliance on geometry in physics. Given such an
identity or similarity between objects,
… not even an angel could find any difference between its states at different times, nor have any
evidence for discerning whether the enclosed sphere is at rest or revolves, and what law of
motion it follows....Even if those who have not penetrated these matters deeply enough may not
have noticed this, it ought to be accepted as certain that such consequences are alien to the
nature and order of things, and that nowhere are there things perfectly similar (which is among
my [Leibniz's] new and important axioms). (Leibniz's essay, On Nature Itself, paragraph 13)
Of course, electrons have other properties as well: charge, mass, angular momentum (they seem to
spin like tops), magnetic moment (they act like tiny bar-magnets), velocity, momentum, and kinetic
energy, among other things. Each of these qualities or characteristics can also be represented by a
series of numbers or “coordinate expression.” I've always fancied that in a very formal sense an
electron or any other elementary particle (had Leibniz known about them) could be represented as an
aggregation of numbers (or coordinate expressions) related to another monad. This other monad could
also be represented in a similar way. By the Principle of Sufficient Reason, some of these coordinate
expressions are different from the coordinate expressions of all other monads.
The other thing to mention about monads is their unity. They are “simple.” They do not have parts.
�According to Leibniz, they represent a unity of different properties, much like a geometric point that is
the nexus of many geometric lines. Leibniz states that:
Everything is full in nature... And since everything is connected because of the plenitude of the
world, and since each body acts on every other body, more or less, in proportion to its distance,
and is itself affected by the other through reaction, it follows that each monad is a living mirror
or a mirror endowed with internal action, which represents the universe from its own point of
view and is as ordered as the universe itself. Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace, Based
on Reason, paragraph 3.
Some even have the property of being “be-souled.” So look around you. According to Leibniz, you
are sitting among a reasonably large group of monads, each of which is capable of noticing you and
regarding you as separate, individual “beings.”
There is one final thing about monads (among their many interesting properties) that bears on our
discussion of quantum mechanics. As Leibniz says, tt another point, in the Monadology:
The monads have no windows through which something can enter or leave. (Monadology,
paragraph 7)
Monads have no “windows.” Yet each monad is a representation to a greater or lesser extent of
everything else in the Universe because it is linked to all other monads by means of its relation to God.
That is, each monad is a reflection of the entire Universe precisely because it is in some way a
projection of a part of God. The debt Leibniz owes to Plato's Republic for this concept (note that I did
not say image) is nowhere directly acknowledged by Leibniz, but it is manifest. The one quarrel
Leibniz would have with my associating him with the image of the Cave in the Socratic dialog is
simply that it is an image as opposed to something that dwells in the understanding. For Leibniz's God
is, at least to my thinking, a Mathematician, and He, like Dedekind, holds that mathematics has no need
of geometry.
In this conception, then, there is a profound similarity between all of our connections with one another
and with the physical, social, and moral world.
It seems clear, therefore, that Leibniz does not think that space has an actual existence. As he states
explicitly,
As for my own opinion, I have said more than once that I hold space to be something relative,
as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.
(Letters to Clark, Leibniz's Third Paper, Paragraph 4)
This is radically at odds with Newton's Principia, wherein Newton seems to deduce the existence of
absolute space from the existence of absolute (i.e, accelerated) motion. For Newton, space is the
“sensorium of God.”
Let us ponder this for a moment. For Newton, space has an existence. We can look out into the space
before us and hold it in our minds as something, even though we can (as Kant does) in our imaginations
remove all of its contents from the space that holds it. What is left over is space, be it a cubic
centimeter in front of us or volume 100,000 parsecs on a side.
�When Leibniz sees this emptiness, he views it as an actual metaphysical void, something that not even
God can relate to. As such, it is an abomination. Leibniz cannot accept a thing that God cannot act
upon, and the idea of an actual void is such a thing. Since God must be able to act on all creation, a
genuine metaphysical void cannot exist. This is one of the reasons why the Leibniz-Clark
correspondence (Clark was taking Newton's part) makes little headway to change the authors' minds.
The grounds of the conversation are radically different.
It is a worthy anecdote to relate that Leibniz and Newton never acknowledged the other's invention of
the differential and integral calculus. And it is helpful to note that Newton's development of the
calculus relies on geometrical constructions, while Leibniz's relies on an evolution of Descartes'
algebra. Is it true that Leibniz uses sketches of curves and lines for his derivations, in part because we
are visual creatures, but Leibniz's derivations do seem to be less reliant on images of extension.
Thus, for Leibniz, extension has no actual existence. What we interpret as extension, as space, is a
representation given to us by God. It is very likely that the same is true for time in Leibniz's
metaphysics. This separation is like a three-dimensional Pythagorean theorem whose terms are given to
us. What we interpret as a spatial extension is a coordinate interval that we call space, just as temporal
separation is a coordinate expression that we call time. What separates us, what we interpret as
distance, is just a shadow on a Cave wall caused by our origin within a common light. What separates
us from the amber light of ages past is an equivalent coordinate expression whose regularity is provided
by God.
I cannot resist at this point recalling for you the yarn in the Odyssey when the hero is among the
Phaeacians, and Homer brings us back from the story Odysseus is telling into Alkinoos and Arete's
palace hall with it's feast and polished stone floors and torchlight. The momentum of that telescoping
does not stop there, but places us back firmly into the present where we realize that we are reading
words two thousand years old about a story that is a thousand years distant even from that remote past.
Like Leibniz's God, Homer has linked us to the ages, and three millennia are as nought.
One other element of Leibniz's philosophy will prove useful later: Leibniz directly addresses the
problem of a Deity that weaves out our destiny to construct the best of all possible worlds. This Deity
knows everything we are capable of doing, knows all of our potentialities, and further, knows all of our
past.
And since every present state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding
state, the present is pregnant with the future (Monadology, paragraph 22).
Thus, the “Demon” in Laplace's Essay on a Theory of Probability takes its tack from Leibniz. Laplace
says explicitly:
We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as
the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could
comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings
who compose it -- an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis-it would
embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of
the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be
present to its eyes. (Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, ch II)
Leibniz seems to recognize the determinism of such a God, but sidesteps the troublesome argument of
�the lack of free will by claiming that God knows all possible predicates of our being, and so chooses
the path which we would follow anyway!
I regard the foregoing comments about Leibniz's Monadology as a preamble to our discussion of the
problem of non-locality in quantum mechanics, especially as the concept of non-locality has been
articulated by interpretations of the work of John Bell, an elementary particle theorist who worked at
CERN before his untimely death in the Fall of 1990. But first, I shall try to provide some background
on the landscape in which Bell developed his certifiably famous theorem.
2. An Eternal, Golden Braid: Quantum Mechanics in Rutherford, Bohr, de Broglie, Heisenberg,
and Einstein
Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect
Rutherford, Bohr, de Broglie, and Heisenberg: an eternal golden braid
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Einstein, Padolski, and Rosen's response to Heisenberg and Bohr
It is surprising at first gloss that of the four papers Einstein published in 1905, the one for which he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics was not one of the following:
The one on Special Relativity, entitled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”.
Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 891-921;
nor the one entitled
“Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon its Energy Content?” (the famous E=mc2
paper), in Annalen der Physik 18 (1905);
nor the one on Brownian motion, entitled
“On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the
Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat.” in Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 549-560.
As an aside, it is worthy of note that this is the 100th anniversary of the publication of the 1915 paper on
General Relativity, and the 150th anniversary of Maxwell's publication of his theory of light as
electromagnetic waves.
The actual phrasing from the Nobel Prize Committee was “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and
especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." The so-called “photoelectric effect”
paper has a curious title: “Concerning an Heuristic Point of View Toward the Emission and
Transformation of Light.” It was also published in Annalen der Physik 17 (1905): 132-148. It was one
which marked the beginnings of what is now called Quantum Mechanics.
In the paper, Einstein characterizes the wave theory of light in the following manner:
...the energy of a beam of light from a point source (according to Maxwell's theory of light or,
more generally, according to any wave theory) is continuously spread over an ever increasing
volume.
In the next paragraph, Einstein notes that
The wave theory of light, which operates with continuous spatial functions, has worked well in
the representation of purely optical phenomena and will probably never be replaced by any
other theory.
�But in the next paragraph, he states that
It seems to me that the observations associated with blackbody radiation, fluorescence, the
production of cathode rays by ultraviolet light, and other related phenomena connected with the
emission and transformation of light … are more readily understood if one assumes that the
energy of light is discontinuously distributed in space. In accordance with the assumption to be
considered here, the energy of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continuously
distributed over increasing space but consists of a finite number of energy quanta which are
localized at points in space, which move without dividing, and which can only be produced and
absorbed as complete units.
On the one hand, Einstein allows for a “wave theory” like Maxwell's waves in a luminiferous aether
wherein the light it transmitted, reflected, and refracted. He “heuristically” considers light to be a
particle during light's emission from and absorption into material bodies. It is perhaps ironic that
Einstein was never able to reconcile his conception of the dual nature of light with the equivalent, dual
character of particles as both material bodies and waves, a solution posed by de Broglie to provide an
explanation of Bohr's model for the energy levels of the hydrogen atom.
Of course, this entire “braid” began with efforts to apply models from classical physics that explain
everything from cannonballs to asteroids to planets to the very small structures within matter such as
atoms and elementary particles via Galileo, Thomson, Millikan, and Rutherford.
By way of a truncated outline of the argument, Bohr used the existence of hydrogen spectral lines and
the contemporary work by Planck to explain so-called Blackbody radiation. Planck made the
hypothesis that discrete oscillators in matter had only certain fundamental modes with which they could
vibrate. He asserted that these oscillators were in equilibrium with the thermal radiation from matter
with a particular temperature, and thus explained blackbody radiation. Bohr wondered what the
“Planck oscillators” could be, since the classical picture of an orbiting charge holds that it should
radiate continuously. He hypothesized that his atom settled into quasi-stationary states and emitted and
absorbed radiation during transitions from one energy level to another.
It is likely that everyone in the audience is familiar with Bohr's model from high school science classes
and many popular lectures and books on the subject of science. You Seniors are in the process of
completing this sequence of papers.
In fact, the Bohr model has become a commonplace picture of the atom. But such familiarity hides the
utter strangeness of the concept. The atom is stable for a while, and then is excited or de-excited by the
absorption or emission of light at a specific frequency. These energy levels are Bohr's answer to why
the spectra of light from certain gases contains only certain frequencies. If you sprinkle salt onto the
logs in your fireplace, the resultant light is a brilliant yellow. That yellow light contains only certain
frequencies, frequencies that are as much an indication of the presence of the sodium in salt as your
finger prints are of you as an individual person. We know the constitution of stars precisely because of
this line-spectrum identification of elements, stars that can be hundreds or thousands of light years
distant.
The strangeness of the idea of the Bohr atom bothered de Broglie, who reasoned by a kind of symmetry
derived from Einstein's photoelectric effect paper (wherein light can have a particulate nature, as well
as a wave-like nature) that particles could perhaps have both a discrete nature and also a wave-like
nature. In an immensely clever argument (he won the Nobel Prize for it), de Broglie argued that one
�can calculate the “wavelength” of a particle by assigning it a specific momentum, which implies that it
has an energy. That energy can be used to calculate a characteristic wavelength, E = hν = hc/λ. It is a
stunning triumph for so simple an argument that the wavelengths thus calculated for an electron in the
Bohr orbits for hydrogen is exactly the circumference of the quasi-stationary orbits for electrons in the
hydrogen atom. So the electrons are not exactly particles when they are inside the atom. They also
have wave-like qualities.
Schroedinger was a young assistant professor when de Broglie published his astonishing idea. I have it
on good authority that Schroedinger was assigned the task of giving the journal club lecture at his
university the next week. It's a bit like these Friday night lectures, but less formal and typically they
are on a week-day afternoon. The assignment was something like, “Take a look at de Broglie's paper
and give us a synopsis of it at the journal club next Tuesday.”
Schroedinger had a ski trip planned for that weekend (Friday through Sunday, apparently). Being the
persistent soul that he was, he took a copy of de Broglie's paper and a book on solutions to differential
equations in various coordinate systems (rectilinear, cylindrical, and spherical) with him on the ski trip.
The short version of the story is that he didn't get much skiing done, but he came back well on the way
of inventing wave mechanics, an explanation for the energy levels of atoms as kind of standing waves
in space. His “eureka” moment came when he said to his bewildered ski companions, “I have just fit
the energy levels of the hydrogen atom in a way you would not believe!” The standing waves were
similar to the three-dimensional oscillations of sound waves in a concert hall. But standing waves of
what?
I believe Schroedinger originally thought of the standing waves as waves of charge density. The
electron has wave-like qualities à la de Broglie, and it has charge, so it would make sense as an
extension of de Broglie's hypothesis. But electrons have discrete charges when they are measured by
Millikan in his famous oil-drop experiment. How come we never see fractional charges?
Schroedinger's description of electrons (or any elementary particle, for that matter) was that they are
aggregations of waves that reinforce in a certain region and cancel out everywhere else. This makes
sense in explaining the energy levels of a hydrogen atom, but causes other conceptual problems.
First slide (the Cat – on title page)
Schroedinger's description of a particle as an aggregation of waves of some sort caused Heisenberg to
analyze the behavior of such particles when we try to measure them. If we try to localize the particle as
we do in the act of measurement, we confine it to a narrower region in space. That means we add up
more and more waves. Each wave has a slightly different speed. Schroedinger needed these different
speeds for different wavelengths in order to get the “wave-packet” to behave like a particle. But that
means that the momentum of the particle becomes less certain over time, since, in order to localize the
particle, we need to add more wavelengths, and adding more wavelengths means the velocity (and
therefore the momentum) become more uncertain.
�Slide 2: Slide of wave addition to produce wave-packet goes here
There is actually a calculable limit to the uncertainty in the momentum times the uncertainty in the
position of a particle. It is greater than or equal to Planck's constant. This is of course the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Relation. It says that there is a fundamental, and not simply an experimental, limit to our
knowledge of the location of a particle and its momentum.
Slide 3: Slide of single slit diffraction and its relation to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
�A particularly helpful illustration of the Heisenberg derivation (and one that will be useful to us later in
this lecture can be had by looking at single-slit diffraction of a plane wave. The wave can be a wave of
light, an elementary particle like an electron, or even a water wave. If it originates from a far-distant
source, the wave is essentially a series of parallel troughs and peaks with its propagation direction
perpendicular to those troughs and peaks. When we allow it to approach a screen so that the peaks and
troughs (as seen from above) are parallel to the screen, we can watch the interaction of the barrier with
the oncoming waves. If there is an opening in the barrier that is of the same order as the wavelength of
the waves, a fraction of the waves can pass the barrier. When this happens, a part of the wave front
gets through the barrier, but for some fraction of the waves, the direction of the waves is changed
because of the wavesfront's interference with itself. This interference produces a dispersion of the
wave front that gives its velocity a vertical component. It is important to note what has happened here.
We have limited the wavefront in the vertical direction to a x that is essentially the width of the slit. It
has produced a dispersion in the velocity of the wave in the vertical direction, a v.
In Schroedinger's terms, this dispersion in the velocity of the wave in the vertical direction (that is, in
the same direction as the opening of the slit) is an uncertainty in the velocity. If we consider the wave
as representing the motion of a particle, then the localization of the particle within a delta x produces an
uncertainty in the momentum of the particle of order delta p. This illustration is not entirely fanciful.
In fact, Heisenberg uses it as one of his derivations of the Heisenberg Uncertainty relation.
Furthermore, the smaller the slit, that is, the smaller the uncertainty in position, the greater the
uncertainty in the momentum.
This has led to no end of problems in interpretation. One example of this is the fact that elementary
particles (be they electrons, protons, or photons), when emitted from a source and directed toward a
screen or grid whose spacings are the same size as the wavelengths of the elementary particles, will
show a diffraction pattern on a screen downstream from slits. For the sake of clarity, we will consider
only photons, although the discussion could as well apply to any elementary particle, including
neutrons, protons, electrons, etc.
Let a stream of photons set forth across the chaotic gulf toward a screen. Imagine this as like a scene
from Milton's Paradise Lost as Satan launches himself across the chasm between hell and paradise.
These photons are transmitted and diffracted as though they are electromagnetic waves. When they
reach two slits in the screen, the waves interfere with one another so that there is a very specific pattern
of light and dark lines on the screen downstream from the slits called a “two-slit” pattern.
�Slide 4: Slide on single-slit vs. double-slit pattern here
Suppose we turn down the intensity of the light. Let us make the light exceedingly dim, so that when
we look at the screen or detector, we find only one cell on the screen illuminated or exposed (you
remember photographic film, I trust?) at a time.
Slide 5: Low Light/Flux level slide goes here
What happens next is remarkable. This figure shows the buildup over time of electrons in a two slit
experiment at very low flux levels. We see one quantum at a time arriving . As we watch, the
�diffraction pattern begins to develop. We see the characteristic two-slit pattern. But we have allowed
only one quantum (in this case, electrons) to be emitted at a time. How can we possibly get a two-slit
pattern. Such an experimental apparatus exists. The results from it behave exactly as I have said.
Apparently, the individual light or particle quantum goes through both slits at once. It is spread out
over the entire space of the experimental screen (or more properly, the experimental volume) and then
excites only one element of the detector. If this seems quixotic to you, it is. It is known as “the
problem of measurement” in the vernacular of Shady Bend. The wave function (remember all those
waves adding up to produce the wave packet) is spread out even for a single particle or quantum of
light. The moment before it hits the detector screen, it is everywhere on the screen. At the next instant,
it collapses into a single point. This is known as the “collapse of the wave function.” The collapse is
apparently instantaneous. If these are material particles or quanta of light, they sort themselves into a
single area on the screen instantaneously.
There were many objections to this explanation, not the least of which was that it violates causality.
The wave-packet description of the two-slit experiment requires that the waves instantly collapse to a
single point, after having, a moment in time before, occupied the whole of the experiment.
Bohr and Heisenberg made noble efforts to resolve this apparent contradiction by supposing that the
wave function description of elementary particles was merely a calculation of likelihood or probability.
Since probability is only a likelihood, the collapse of the wave function is merely the result of a
measurement. And like any measurement, once it occurs, the answer is always, “Yes. That's what
happened!”
Einstein would have none of it. His famous quote, “God does not play dice!”, about the so-called
Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was an indication of his objection to the probability
interpretation of the Psi-function. In his view, there was an underlying causal relation between the
elements of the experiments and their outcomes that was not represented by quantum mechanics (QM).
Yet QM is a remarkably successful theoretical method.
In a paper in response to the probability interpretation of QM, Einstein, Podolski and Rosen (EPR) tried
to show that the uncertainty relation developed by Heisenberg was flawed, and that some variations of
the single or two slit experiment would give an inroad into figuring out precisely what the momentum
and position of the particle would be. One of the thought experiments proposed to measure the
momentum transferred to the screen by the impact of the particle, This (by conservation of
momentum) would allow the particle momentum to be measured exactly, while the position would be
localized to the region within the slit. But when one took into account the uncertainty in the position of
the screen, the Heisenberg Uncertainty limit returned.
A variant of one of the thought experiments used two particles that interacted prior to the slit, and then
had one transfer its momentum to one screen while another's position was determined independently.
Again, by conservation of momentum the second particle's momentum and its position were to be
determined beyond the Heisenberg limit. Each response to EPR by Heisenberg and Bohr led EPR to a
further amplifications of the experimental apparatus. While the correspondence in the scientific
literature led many to accept the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Heisenberg Uncertainty limit,
Einstein was never able to believe the probabilistic nature of Bohr and Heisenberg's interpretation.
Yet the alternative to a probabilistic interpretation was an instantaneous collapse of a physical wave
function. This instantaneous collapse would clearly exceed the speed of light, and thus render it
�difficult to accept, since the limiting speed of the transfer of information in Special Relativity is the
velocity of light. This is one of the fundamental hypotheses of Special Relativity.
This led John Bell to a further analysis of the two slit experiment, and the theoretical development of
Bell's Theorem (or Bell's Inequality), which has allowed many experimental test of locality, causality,
and the predictions of quantum mechanics. It appears to contradict Einstein's hopes for a “hidden
variable” theory, wherein true causality would be returned to the world. Apparently, this is not to be
realized.
�3. Bell's Theorem (or Bell's Inequality)
Bell's work at CERN
a synopsis of Bell's inequality via entangled particles
Bell's untimely death
Henry Pierce Stapp's paper on Bell's Theorem and it's implications
three reasonable demands: locality, causality, and individuality
must abandon one of the three
best option: abandon locality
Experimental foundation:
Stern-Gerlach correlation experiments
and more recent experiments with quanta of light
Professor Carol Alley's indignation
But how does this happen? Bell's theorem is essentially a test of whether or not two particles, once
they interact, can be separated enough so that their states do not influence one another. Remarkably, it
is posed in such a way that it can be implemented as an experimental test.
Schroedinger called this phenomenon, wherein the wave function of two particles becomes joined by
their interaction, an “entanglement” of the wave functions of the particles. And you recall that all
particles have a wave function description that guides or governs their behavior.
This hypothesis bears on EPR's paper. To reiterate, if two particles interact, then the momentum of one
could be determined by inference due to measuring the momentum of the other, since the momentum of
the pair has to be conserved. At the same time, the position of the first particle, for which we inferred
the momentum, could be accurately measured for its position as long as the pair were sufficiently far
apart. Thus, the momentum and position of a particle could be measured at a precision which violated
the Heisenberg uncertainty limit. At this point, EPR could claim that the Heisenberg Uncertainty
relation was merely a practical limit, and that there was some underlying, governing relation which we
simply needed to find, some sort of “hidden variable” that really determined the evolution of the
system.
J.S. Bell was sympathetic to EPR's view. His theorem (called variously Bell's Theorem or Bell's
Inequality) was an attempt to establish whether or not EPR's hypothesis could be tested experimentally.
The experimental setup is remarkably simple, but not trivial. Two particles would be allowed to
interact, to become “entangled,” and then would separate and go off in opposite directions. After a
time, the particles would each be measured to determine their properties. As with the EPR paper, the
hypothesis that their states could no longer interact would produce one result, whereas the hypothesis
that their states were still entangled when they were measured would produce another result.
The next figure shows the results of one of the experimental tests of Bell's Theorem, in this case the
orientation of the polarization of photons measured by two separated systems. The red (straight) line
shows the limit of a “local, realistic” hypothesis, that is, that the results are uncorrelated. Any
experimental result below the diagonal red line indicates a correlation (that is, an entanglement)
between distant particles and their experimental apparatuses. Perhaps most important, the results
predicted by QM show a very close agreement with the data!
In some later experimental tests, groups have tried to estimate the speed of the transmission of the
correlations by changing slightly the timing of the setting of the measuring apparatuses. In a groundbreaking paper entitled “What is the Speed of Quantum Information,” the result of a measurement
�conducted at CERN is that the correlations happen at a velocity at least 10,000 times the speed of light
over a distance of 18 kilometers. I say “at least” because the electronics of the experimental setup
could not measure a faster correlation. So for all intents and purposes, this speed is a lower limit. The
correlations occur effectively instantaneously.
What are we to make of such results? Henry Pierce Stapp's paper, entitled “The S-Matrix Interpretation
of Quantum Theory”, provides a highly recommended discussion of Bell's Theorem, despite the
imposing title. But by way of a friendly warning, it's best to read Section X, Ontological Problems, and
Appendix B, World View, first to get a bit of orientation.
To give you some idea of Stapp's take on Bell's Theorem, I quote from his paper at a point just after he
shows a concise proof of that theorem.
A conclusion that can be drawn from this theorem is that the demands of causality, locality, and
individuality cannot be simultaneously maintained in the description of nature. Causality
demands contingent predictions; locality demands local causes of localized results; individuality
demands specification of individual results, not merely their probabilities.
For a more readable proof of the theorem, Nick Herbert's article, “Quantum Reality” and his account at
http://quantumtantra.com/bell2.html, and in N. Herbert, Am Jour Phys 43, 315 (1975) and in N.
Herbert, New Scientist 111, 41 (1986).
�Slide 6: Bell's Theorem results.
As Stapp puts it:
I can see only three ways out of the problem posed by Bell's theorem.
1. The first is to accept, with Everett, the idea that human observers are cognizant only of
individual branches of the full reality of the world: The full physical world would contain a
superposition of a myriad of interconnected physical worlds of the kind we know. An
individual observer would be personally aware of only one response of a macroscopic
measuring device, but a full account of reality would include all the other possible outcomes on
an equal footing, though perhaps with unequal “weights.”
�2. The second way out is to accept that nature is basically highly nonlocal, in the sense that
correlations exist that violently contradict – even at the macroscopic level – the usual ideas of
the space-time propagation of information. The intuitive idea of the physical distinctness of
physically well-separated macroscopic objects then becomes open to question. And the
intuitive idea of space itself is placed in jeopardy. For space is intimately connected to the
space-time relationships that are naturally expressed in terms of it. If there are, between farapart microscopic events, large instantaneous connections that do not respect spatial separation,
then the significance of space would seem to arise only from the statistical relationships that do
respect it.
3. The third way out is to deny that measurements that “could have been performed, but were
not,” would have had definite results if they had been performed. This way out seems, at first,
to be closest to the spirit of the Copenhagen interpretation. However, it seems to contradict the
idea of indeterminism, which is also an important element of the spirit of the Copenhagen
interpretation. (Henry Pierce Stapp, 1971, Physics Review D, Vol. 3, no. 6, pp 1303-1320).
Some comments are clearly in order here. The third option Stapp articulates bears remarkable
similarities to Laplace's Demon or Leibniz's God as architects of the best of all possible worlds. In that
instantiation of reality, what we choose is exactly what we will. But what we will as a predicate of our
being is completely known by the Deity and determined by it.
The first option is known as Stapp's “many-worlds” interpretation. That option is often mentioned in
the same breath as Schroedinger's Cat.
Slide 7: Picture of Schroedinger's Cat here:
In that interpretation, as Stapp says, the cat is both alive and dead in the multiply unfolding universe of
outcomes. Each point where the quantum hits the screen represents a starting point for a separate
future.
As an interesting aside, we have some hopes of conducting Bell's Theorem type experiments here at St.
John's in a room in the basement appropriately called the Quantum Lab. But of course, no cats will be
allowed therein.
Most people find the second option, non-locality, most “appealing,” if that is the right phrase.
�In the case of the first experimental measurements, conducted with two low-energy neutrons colliding;
then recoiling down separate arms of a vacuum line; and finally having their angular momenta
determined by a Stern-Gerlach apparatus (I will spare you the details), there were (some thirty or forty
years ago) five measurements, four of which agreed with Bell's inequality. Since then, all of the
experimental tests of Bell's theorem have confirmed it.
To emphasize how surprising this has been, I recall a conversation I had with Professor Carol Alley at
the University of Maryland when I was a graduate student there. He is a famous experimental
physicist, one who used a laser to measure the distance to the Moon from a site near Goddard Space
Flight Center during one of the Apollo Lunar Landing missions. As we talked about Bell's theorem,
and it's apparent experimental corroboration, standing in the hallway in the Physics Building at the
University of Maryland, he was clearly quite perplexed that there was any corroboration of the
inequality. As we spoke, his voice was getting louder and louder. Finally, I said to him, “Professor
Alley, you realize that you are shouting at me?” He laughed and said, “Well, it's certainly not you that
I'm shouting at, Jim. It's the idea of this result!”
Left with the options Stapp articulated, which would you abandon: causality, locality, or individuality.
You cannot have all three! Most people, faced with these options, give up locality.
4. Like shadows on a Cave Wall: Leibniz's ideas of “space” as a kind of answer to the problem
of non-locality
It is time to recall one of the things I am attempting in this lecture: to use Leibniz's conceptions of
space and time in the Monadology as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of no-locality in quantum
mechanics.
Let us reiterate the properties of monads. Monads are singular. That is, they have many properties, but
no parts. They have no windows. All their impressions and reflections of the Cosmos come through
their reflection and articulation of the Deity, which they represent in a small part.
Finally, it is likely, based on the experimental results of Bell's Theorem, that our intuitions of space and
time are far removed from the way the Universe actually is.
5. Concluding remarks
The coherence of mind - The Emporer's New Mind: Roger Penrose on the unity of cognition
The commonality of experience
The problem and promise of entanglement
I conclude this lecture with two principal points and some speculations.
First, it was many years ago that Roger Penrose in a book called The Emporer's New Mind, tried to
explain the coherence of mind by the physical effects of non-locality on a relatively small scale – the
electrochemical and quantum mechanical processes in the human brain (cats, also, most likely, since
Penrose is fond of cats). This coherence would require entanglement of the prior physical states of
these electrochemical wave fronts, but this does not seem terribly surprising.
Second, entanglement does not depend simply or perhaps even necessarily on proximity. At a fairly
formal level, entanglement depends on interaction. The entanglement of cognitive processes with the
�experiential world might be sufficient to explain the commonality of experience, a term which I coin
here in this essay, especially given that the correlations persist over manifestly macroscopic differences.
This bears, quite generally, on our ideas of culture, also. As an example, think of how easy or difficult
it can be to change ones entire conception of the world via a single conversation. I thank Mr. William
Braithwaite for the suggestion.
The concept of non-locality thus articulated can extend far beyond the possibility of common
experience to the possibility of kindredness with our common weal. We might not, actually, be
separate spheres, hoping to connect, hoping to touch and know the World. Like shadows on a Cave
Wall, both we as individuals and the rest of the sensible world could actually be sprung from a common
light.
Finally, and this is a bit more speculative, but hardly original, the entire evolution of the history of the
Cosmos has involved some pretty heavy entanglement. We now call it the Big Bang.
This brings us to a further point regarding Leibniz's Deity. God might not have simply said, “Let there
be Light.” God might have actually been that light.
Thank you.
Jim Beall
St. John's College
Annapolis
December 4th, 2015
�
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
19 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
Leibniz's Monadology and the Philosophical Foundations of Non-Locality in Quantum Mechanics
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on December 4, 2015, by James Beall as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Beall, J. H. (James Howard), 1945-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-12-04
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 83339
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/258">Audio recording</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
Quantum theory
Bell's theorem
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3f0695cc8bf55422cb7f8b8dcce7fe2f.pdf
dfae78ce5397a4404e0da586c4926451
PDF Text
Text
The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art
Daniel Harrell
July 8, 2015*
Contents
Introduction
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Acknowledgment
Introduction
The title of my lecture tonight, “The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art,” is meant to
express a worry I have about the future of liberal education. This puts me in a
sizable club. To have worries at all has become reflexive among those of us in
any way devoted to this education. And there is no end these days, it seems, to
prophecies, even pronouncements, of death. Type the words “death of liberal
education” into Google, and you get back such headlines as
Why Liberal Arts Education is Dying (or Already Dead)
Is the Four-Year, Liberal-Arts Education Model Dead?
The Death of Liberal Education
The Death of Liberal Education
Who Killed the Liberal Arts?
Liberals are Killing the Liberal Arts
Conservatives killed the liberal arts
In Our High-Tech World, Are the Liberal Arts Dead?
The Liberal Arts Are Dead; Long Live STEM
Jobs: The Economy, Killing Liberal Arts Education
The Liberal Arts Major: Would you like fries with that?
*A
lecture given on the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.
1
�All these headlines, I think, have one thing in common. While they may disagree about the threat to liberal education, they agree in distinguishing liberal
education from the threat, as if the threat were external. The headlines make
you think something else is killing liberal education, whether it be liberals or
conservatives or technology or the economy. And it is hard to envision a defense of liberal education without such a distinction, even if headlines draw it
simplistically, or even inaccurately. For if liberal education itself were somehow
the threat, then death might well be liberal education’s best defense, but in
defeat. No surprise, then, that those of us devoted to liberal education are wont
to conceive its threats as if they came from outside it. For this justifies a defense
that succeeds only if liberal education survives.
And there is no shortage of such defenses. Type the words “defense of liberal
education” into Google, and you will find one, it seems, for every headline predicting the death of liberal education. And not just in articles. There are books
to defend liberal education, most recently a bestseller by Fareed Zakaria, bearing the title In Defense of a Liberal Education.1 There are blogs to defend
liberal education, including one at St. John’s featuring regular posts by Christopher Nelson, the Annapolis president.2 There are campaigns to defend liberal
education, with slogans like Securing America’s Future: The Power of Liberal
Arts Education, to mention just one initiative, launched in 2012 by the Council
of Independent Colleges.3 And behind these campaigns are associations to defend liberal education, like the just-mentioned Council of Independent Colleges,
or the Association of American Colleges and Universities, or the Association for
General and Liberal Studies, or the Association for Core Texts and Courses, or
the American Academy for Liberal Education. There are so many defenders of
liberal education, in fact, that you can even find think-pieces pondering why
they seem to have failed, since liberal education remains in peril.
But what if the defenders have succeeded—by putting liberal education in peril?
What if the threat to liberal education comes from within? This is my worry.
Let the idea of a liberal art, for the moment, simply mean whatever it is that
distinguishes a liberal education from any other form of education—a technical
education, say. What if our many defenses of liberal education have made us
forget this idea? What if the idea of a liberal art is lost?
Back to top
1 Other books include Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters by Michael
S. Roth; and College: What It Was, Is, And Should be by Andrew Delbanco.
2 Other blogs include “The LEAP Challenge Blog,” sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities; and The Power of Liberal Arts “Blogs” page, sponsored by the
Council of Independent Colleges, that gathers blog posts defending liberal education.
3 Other campaigns include Liberal Education and America’s Promise, launched in 2005 by
the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
2
�Part One
Now in one sense, I think, the threat to liberal education must always come from
within. The fate of liberal education, after all, will not be decided in headlines,
but in choices made by each of us about the best education, once education
matters. Not the best education, then, in general, as such, per se; but the best
education for my daughter, or my son, or me. In having to make such choices,
those devoted to liberal education are no different from those dismissive of it.
And in this respect, the threat to liberal education can never lie outside it. To
pursue an education at all, liberal or no, is to have answered a question that a
liberal education obliges each of us to ask, and ask on our own behalf: What
does it mean to be educated? And we might well answer this question in a
choice against liberal education, even at the risk of its extinction, if the same
choice is made repeatedly. But this is perhaps the best evidence we have that
the question is real, and the threat to liberal education therefore intrinsic to
it. The death of liberal education, so understood, would similarly come from
within, in a proof of its life, and perhaps the only proof of life.
But again, those of us devoted to liberal education are unlikely to want this
death, especially just to show we were devoted to something rather than nothing.
And while the threat may be internal in this general sense, it is still external, I
think, in a specific sense. For if the threat to liberal education does come from
within, in a question it would have us ask for ourselves about what it means to
be educated, then while we may well answer this question in a choice against
liberal education, we may also answer the question otherwise, by choosing liberal
education. Liberal education would then be a second answer to the question,
opposed to the first. And insofar as one answer opposes the other, the threat
to liberal education would be external.
But if the threat is external, as one answer opposed to another, then we can
infer at least one thing, I think, about any defense of liberal education against
this threat. It will have to convince us that liberal education does provide an
answer, even for those who give a different answer. It will have to show us
that something is lost in a choice against liberal education, whatever might be
gained; and that the answer we give in such a choice, even if it turns out right,
risks being wrong. And showing this much, it seems, means showing there is
something learned in liberal education, that would otherwise go unlearned. To
show, in short, that liberal education has a subject-matter. Or, in a word:
content.
But what, then, is this content? What should we say is learned in a liberal
education alone? Traditionally, the content of a liberal education was identified
with a curriculum of seven liberal arts, a so-called trivium of grammar, logic, and
rhetoric; and a quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Each
of these arts was thought to wed a skill to a subject. And together, these arts
were thought to form a whole. This is why one could say there was something to
learn in a liberal education, rather than many things, or anything, or nothing.
3
�This is also what I want to say is contained in the idea of a liberal art: a skill
wedded to a subject, in a whole of such skills and subjects, that gives a liberal
education its content.
But one might also suspect that a liberal education has no content in this sense,
and that the liberal arts as traditionally conceived show us why. They were
learned, after all, by the few rather than the many—the leisured few, in that
sense already free from servitude. Perhaps the education they received was
‘liberal,’ then, not in liberating them, but in shaping them, stamping them, and
perpetuating them. And the same might be suspected of any content. For in
what sense could we be freed by it, rather than bound to it? What distinguishes
content, so-called, from dogma, or doctrine? What keeps it from closing the
mind that a truly liberal education is meant to open?
This suspicion of content can also come from the opposite direction, so to speak:
by what we take to threaten liberal education, or indeed any form of education.
For leaving headlines aside, this threat can seem to reflect a kind of triumph of
content over context, from college rankings and scorecards at the start, to tests
and grades at the end, making the very meaning of education a matter of datadriven results; and a choice against liberal education the answer to a question
never asked. Or we might conceive this threat in economic terms, reducing
education to just another a product with a price in the global marketplace.
Against all this, the first thing we might think to say in defense of education is
that products are not enough, results are not enough, answers are not enough,
content is not enough.
Defenses of liberal education, accordingly, have generally made education a
matter of context rather than content. And the most common way of doing this
is to locate learning not in a set of subjects, but instead in the self. Thus it is
said that “the maturation of the student—not information transfer—is the real
purpose of colleges and universities.” Or that “if we are to navigate skillfully
the turbulent changes of the twenty-first century, we must educate students not
only to process information effectively, but to think wisely and well.”
And talk of turbulent changes points to another way that defenses of liberal
education have made it a matter of context: by locating the self in an everchanging world. A good example comes from an address by President Nelson:
With boundaries among the disciplines vanishing, with job requirements and needs changing rapidly, we need citizens prepared for
change, prepared to adapt to jobs that do not yet exist, prepared
to enter an unknown world with a kind of fearless determination to
undertake whatever is required to succeed. We will need skills of
inquiry to enter a world we cannot yet even envision.
We can begin to see from this quote why making liberal education a matter
of context rather than content, means forgetting, more or less deliberately, the
4
�idea of a liberal art. For suppose we did live in a world that changes more than
it abides, where our freedom, to the extent this depended on skill, were a matter
of adaptation more than application. Any art that deserved the name ‘liberal’,
in that case, would involve a skill more likely divorced from any subject than
wedded to one; which is to say, a skill that can be applied to many subjects, even
to every subject. And suppose the number of such subjects to have multiplied
past counting, in one way the world indeed seems to have changed, since the
advent of modern science. If the liberal arts could still be said to encompass a
set of subjects, then it would seem better understood as a diversity than as a
totality.
So once defenses of liberal education make it a matter of context, it is unsurprising that they separate its skills from its subjects. The subjects, if they are
specified at all, are specified to give an impression of breadth, as if there were
many things one might learn in a liberal education rather than just one. The
current St. John’s website, for example, speaks of the college’s “wide-ranging, interdisciplinary curriculum,” where “areas of study include philosophy, literature,
history, mathematics, economics, political theory, theology, biology, physics,
music, chemistry, and languages.” Other lists of subjects are even more expansive. One from the earlier-mentioned Power of Liberal Arts campaign makes it
sound as if you might study anything:
You might be surprised by the kinds of subjects and majors that are
included in the liberal arts. They include much more than studio
art and English classes (though those are great!)—they range from
mathematics to Mandarin, from statistics to sociology. At liberal
arts colleges and universities students can study the sciences—such
as biology, chemistry, and physics—and social sciences—including
economics, political science, and psychology. Students can study
newer subjects, such as environmental science and neuroscience, and
traditional ones, too.
This same impression of breadth is given in the way defenses of liberal education
present its skills apart from subjects. You can indeed learn anything, then, in
learning how to learn. And this encompasses a range of skills similarly presented
apart from subjects: how to read, how to write, how to speak, even how to
think.4 St. John’s current way of putting this is to claim that its students “learn
to speak articulately, read attentively, reason effectively, and think creatively.”
In a similar vein, defenses of liberal education will call the liberal arts “transferable skills,” 5 , again against the backdrop of an ever-changing job market.
And “usefulness” has become a ubiquitous word to counter the opinion, and
4A
good example of this is found in Fareed Zakaria, “What is the Earthly Use of Liberal
Education.”
5 “Although modern liberal arts curriculums have an updated choice of a larger range of
subjects, it still retains the core aims of the liberal arts curricula maintained by the medieval
universities: to develop well-rounded individuals with general knowledge of a wide range
5
�the traditional conviction, that the liberal arts are useless. It is more generally
the habit in defenses of liberal education to talk of the liberal arts as if they
empowered us rather than enlightened us—the aforementioned Power of Liberal
Arts campaign being the most explicit example.
There are deeper strains in this line of defense, that try to reach beyond a
liberal education’s usefulness for any career, to the way it might be useful for
life, making the self, in sense, the subject of its skills. A liberal arts education can
be “truly, enduringly useful,” so one recent defense puts it, once it is “oriented
towards the question of how to live.” Or as President Nelson has written:
The primary purpose of college—contrary to the opinion of hiring
managers—is not to provide trained-up workers for business, nor
even to provide young people with the skills needed to make a living.
The primary purpose is to help young people develop the character
and the judgment to shape a life worth living.
In these appeals to the way a life might be shaped, defenses of liberal education
might be said to deepen the sense in which liberal education is a matter of
context, not content, by locating what is learned in a cultivated readiness for the
world, whatever the world may hold. Here is how a recent St. John’s graduate
puts it:
After my two-year commitment with Teach For America, I hope to
continue my work in the field of education. But really, I can do
anything. St. John’s has given me the tools: the ability to listen,
to think, to speak, to write, and ultimately, to act. I need only to
decide where to direct my passion, and the world is mine, thanks to
the incredible education I have had the blessing to receive here. 6
And there are ways to deepen this context still further; the most common being
to take this readiness for the world as an openness to the world, whether the
self so opened is described as curious, inquisitive, imaginative, self-critical, or
sympathetic. Thus we find Martha Nussbaum, to pick on a famous example,
defending liberal education insofar as it develops
1. The capacity for Socratic self-criticism and critical thought about one’s
own traditions.
2. The ability to see oneself as a member of a heterogeneous nation and
world.
of subjects and with mastery of a range of transferable skills. They will become ‘global
citizens’, with the capacity to pursue lifelong learning and become valuable members of their
communities.” http://www.topuniversities.com/blog/what-liberal-arts-education
6 This comes from Grace Tyson, “‘When You Know Better, You Do Better’: A Senior’s
Reflections on St. John’s. Parts of this address are also quoted in Christopher Nelson, Is It
Worth It?.
6
�3. The ability to sympathetically imagine the lives of people different from
oneself.
And as suggested by Nussbaum’s reference to Socrates, the sense in which a truly
liberal education opens minds rather than closes them has particular appeal at
St. John’s, where it would now sound antiquated to claim, as Scott Buchanan
did in the first catalog of the New Program, that the liberal arts put us in
possession of the truth.7 What we say instead is self-consciously Socratic. Thus
President Nelson will say that “liberal education is the best and quickest way to
become comfortable not knowing.” Or that “learning is grounded in recognition
and acceptance of one’s own ignorance.” Or as the same St. John’s graduate I
quoted earlier puts it:
I have learned that great questions lead to more and more questions,
not necessarily to answers, and I have learned that the greatness of
the human spirit shows itself in just this realization. As Socrates says
in Plato’s Meno: “We shall be better and braver and less helpless if
we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we
indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in
seeking to know what we do not know.” We must have intellectual
bravery, that is, the courage to push forward, to continue seeking
truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.
It is this same Socratic self-consciousness that explains how St. John’s can make
even an all-required program of books, which might thought inescapably full of
content, into a matter of context. For anything written down, we might claim,
is simply doctrine, until a reader puts it into dialogue by questioning it rather
than assimilating it. And underlying this shift from doctrine to dialogue is
perhaps the deepest belief one can have about a truly liberal education: that
we are only able to learn, truly learn, insofar as we do this for ourselves. It
would seem to follow directly from this that what we learn is found indeed in
the self, or even the soul, rather than in a set of subjects. And the more liberal
an education becomes, so we could say, the more that what we learn is a matter
of how we learn, and who we become in learning it. Which at this college, at
least, means the more that any so-called subject is found in a book, which is
found in a reader of that book, who is found in a conversation about that book,
which brings the book to life, with all it may contain. And this conversation,
both with others and with oneself, might then be said to exemplify the sense in
which a liberal education is ultimately a matter of context rather than content.
For this is an education in selfhood rather than subjects, where the something
we finally learn is what it means to learn, and even what it means to love it.
The suspicion that a truly liberal education has no content, then, can be cast in
terms that encompass what many of us, I think, might say a liberal education
7 “The arts of apprehending, understanding, and knowing the truth are the liberal arts, and
they set their own ends.” (Bulletin of St. John’s College in Annapolis, 1937–38).
7
�finally is, and where any appeal to a number of liberal arts seems beside the
point. St. John’s even tried dropping any reference to the liberal arts, along
with any mention of liberal education, when it first launched its new website,
as if indeed to forget the whole idea. But it did this, I think, to locate the
place of a liberal education in the present rather than the past. It was only a
matter of months before the college restored these references to its website, since
there were prospective students still using such terms to find such things. But
St. John’s has otherwise remained embarked, like nearly every other liberal arts
college in the country, on a communications project carried out in images rather
than text, in the attempt not simply to say what a liberal education is, but to
show it, and capture something about the experience of a liberal education when
mere explanations are thought no longer enough. Gone are the days when the
college could package its education, as it were, in a brown paper wrapper, as if
the education were not only a matter of content, but the kind of content that
couldn’t be seen from outside. Even the first video St. John’s made of itself, back
in 1954, was mostly staged and performed in vignettes, retaining at least that
much separation from the ongoing world. But it is just this separation that is
now deemed better erased than preserved, leading to efforts that range from the
Summer Academy to the college’s Instagram feed, as if to give the impression
that what separates the college from the outside world is only a window, and
a window more often open than shut. At its worst, this project might be said
to pander or flatter rather than inform or educate; but at its best, it might be
said to make St. John’s finally look like a college rather than a cult. Or to put
the sense of this strategy more generally: it tries to defend liberal education by
locating the place of liberal education within the world rather than apart from
it. —And this is perhaps the most visible way that a liberal education is now
being made a matter of context rather than content.
Back to top
Part Two
By this point in my lecture, however, I think one could make an objection. For
I haven’t yet given any grounds for worrying about any of this. If we have lost
the idea of a liberal art, by making liberal education a matter of context rather
than content, then at most all I have shown so far is that we have lost this
idea deliberately, in what might be called an act of forgetting. So let me now
explain my worry, which the rest of the lecture will try to justify. My worry is
that in losing this idea, more or less deliberately, we risk another loss beyond
our control: which is to lose any way of giving a clear and compelling answer
to the question of what it means to be educated. —Which is to say, an answer
that distinguishes liberal education from any other form of education; and that
sheds any light, in turn, on what is lost in a choice against liberal education,
whatever might be gained. I worry, then, that once the idea of a liberal art is
lost in defense of liberal education, the defense is lost. And once the defense is
8
�lost, liberal education is lost.
To begin to see all this, I want now to revisit the various ways that defenses
of liberal education have made it a matter of context. For example: the basic
set of skills, again separated from subjects, that defenses of liberal education
claim are imparted by it. There is no doubt that learning how to learn, along
with how to read, write, speak, and think, are useful skills; and one might even
grant their necessity for a life lived in freedom. But it is hard to see how these
skills belong to a liberal education rather than to any education. And the more
indispensable these skills sound, the harder it is to conceive them as liberal
rather than remedial. Shouldn’t we already know how to learn, and read, write,
speak, and think, before we go to college?
There are, of course, ways to specify such skills, but they reflect another aspect
of the problem. To recall St. John’s way of doing this, in a liberal education
you learn how to speak articulately, read attentively, reason effectively, think
creatively. But are we we then to believe that you’ll be left speaking inarticulately, reading inattentively, reasoning ineffectively, or thinking uncreatively,
if you choose another kind of education—say, to pursue a degree in computer
programming? This is doubtful. But if so, then what again distinguishes a
liberal education from any education?
The same problem emerges from the attempt to distinguish a liberal education
on higher-sounding grounds. In one of his blogposts, for example, President
Nelson writes: “St. John’s College is the right fit for someone who is seeking
a special sort of education—an education in the arts of freedom, an education
in how to make learning and life their own.” But one could ask how such encompassing terms could distinguish a St. John’s education from any education,
or even from human experience as such. For isn’t the distinction between experience and innocence, or experience and endurance, found in just the kind
of learning, and living, that is necessarily one’s own? Or suppose we take our
bearings from Socrates, and claim that St. John’s will teach you intellectual
courage: how to persevere in the pursuit of knowledge rather than yield in the
face of ignorance. Perhaps St. John’s will, but so then will any field of research
one might pursue, it could be argued, that relies on science to reach its results
rather than superstition. And direct appeals to Socrates, as if the Enlightenment never happened, won’t be enough to distinguish St. John’s in particular,
or liberal education more generally, on the matter of intellectual courage.
But there is a whole other side to this problem. Insofar as it becomes hard to
distinguish a liberal education from any education when it is made a matter
of context, it becomes easy to make a choice against liberal education merely
by wanting an education with content. To consider this problem from one
angle, take the penchant in education nowadays for testing and ranking and
training and specializing. It may be good and even necessary to speak against
all this in defense of liberal education. But this risks the impression that a
liberal education is an education for dilettantes, providing an escape from being
challenged or judged or driven or dedicated. And what can be said to correct
9
�this impression, if in a liberal education, these virtues are matters of context
rather than content? Matters, that is, about which nothing more, really, can
be said, but only shown—where you see such students for yourself? Or even be
such a student yourself? For as one noted defender of liberal education, Andrew
Delbanco, has put it:
One of the difficulties in making the case for liberal education against
the rising tide of skepticism is that it is almost impossible to persuade
doubters who have not experienced it for themselves. The Puritan
founders of our oldest colleges would have called it “such a mystery
as none can read but they that know it.”
This way of putting the problem captures what is potentially self-defeating in
defenses of liberal education that make it a matter of context. For if the point of
any defense is to persuade people to experience liberal education for themselves,
then how can there be a defense that depends on such an experience to be
persuasive?
There are, of course, ways of trying to capture this experience in images, as
I earlier discussed in the case of St. John’s. But this same case reflects the
problem. If we make its education a matter of context, by showing a student
playing croquet, or reading a book on a bench near a tree, or even speaking
with passion and eloquence about how much her education means, we haven’t
yet distinguished St. John’s from any other college where such things might
be said or done—even though St. John’s is unique, in having renounced the
elective system and established an all-required curriculum. But St. John’s is
unique, then, as a matter of content, not context. And something similar by
way of distinction-erasing might be said of the defenses of liberal education more
generally. For if these defenses were products of a liberal education, one might
have expected them to reflect a diversity of views, or an originality of thought.
But so far as these defenses make liberal education a matter of context, and
speak of the kind of skills one needs to flourish in life, it becomes hard not
to speak in platitudes or commonplaces. And indeed these defenses more or
less follow a script: In an ever-changing world, now more than ever, we need
the truly useful arts of a liberal education. Even President Nelson hasn’t quite
managed to liberate himself from this script, even though I regard him as a
gifted writer, who is making the most of the script.
Still, I suspect that those of us devoted to liberal education will need more than
a script to survive. And if my lecture so far is right, this means finding what
we have lost, or recollecting what we have forgotten. So in the time I have left,
I want to sketch one way back to the idea of a liberal art.
Back to top
10
�Part Three
To take the first step back, I want you to imagine that we have shut every
window at St. John’s College, and drawn every curtain; as if St. John’s were
indeed a cult. Or to put this more generously: as if the place of liberal education
were not within the world but apart from it. But why would we believe this? We
would believe it, I think, because of something we believed about the freedom
promised by a liberal education. We would take this freedom to be important
enough, yet fragile enough, to protect its pursuit. We would regard this freedom
as invaluable, then, but not indispensable. A life could be lived, and even lived
well, without it. And this would be why its pursuit would need protection from
the outside world. For it would be a freedom that might well be forgotten in the
living of life; or even dismissed, or denied—for example, in the choice of another
form of education. Or in the quest for power, or the drive to succeed. The kind
of freedom that someone like Meno might not want, but that his slave-boy might
need, to be free at all. The kind of freedom, then, that might be possessed even
by those in chains, or in prison, or in poverty. The kind of freedom we can still
possess at the moment of death, when there is no life left to live. The kind of
freedom you can count on, then, not when you might do anything, but when you
can do nothing. At moments of life when you might be said to need a useless
skill, not a useful one.
But what kind of freedom could this be? The answer takes us a second step
back. For this would be a freedom, I think, that transcends the horizons of life,
and indeed be the freedom it is—perhaps the highest kind there is—in having
no horizons. But what does having no horizons mean? Here is one answer, and
to my mind the best answer: having no horizons means having the truth. And
a liberal education, then, would promise you the truth.
If this promise sounds ridiculous, then good. For if what I have so far argued
is right, then we are better off saying ridiculous things than obvious things in
defense of liberal education. But this promise, you’ll also have to admit, is
one way, and perhaps the simplest way, to claim that a liberal education has
content. And truth might be the only way to understand a content that frees
us rather than binds us. The promise of truth should also sound attractive,
at least if there is any chance to keep the promise. But perhaps you think no
liberal arts college these days would dare to make the promise. Well, you would
be wrong. At the time I write this sentence (which was yesterday), the college
whose curriculum most resembles St. John’s had the slogan “Truth Matters”
emblazoned across its home page. And this same college began its own defense
of liberal education by claiming that “to learn is to discover and grow in the
truth about reality. It is the truth, and nothing less, that sets men free.”
Now, I have to admit that the college in question is Thomas Aquinas. And
perhaps you would tell me their belief in truth is based on their belief in Christ.
I would agree, but hasten to add that St. John’s has a source of its own for
a belief in truth. Which takes us a third step back. For though we may not
11
�have to believe in Christ to believe in truth, perhaps we do have to believe in
Ptolemy.
But what do I mean by a belief in Ptolemy? To explain what I mean, and to
take yet another step back to the idea of a liberal art, I’m going to turn now not
to Ptolemy, but instead to Socrates; and indeed, a Socrates we are all familiar
with, from Plato’s Meno. I do this because if St. John’s can already be said to
believe in anything, it believes in this: you can only learn, truly learn, insofar
as you do this for yourself. But if Socrates’s myth of recollection to Meno can
be believed, then learning for yourself would be impossible, unless you somehow
already possessed whatever you might learn. Which is all but to say: unless
you somehow already had the truth. Of course, we might take this myth to
be merely myth; and one sign of its doubtfulness even at St. John’s can be
glimpsed in what I earlier quoted from a St. John’s graduate, when she claimed
that “We must have intellectual bravery, that is, the courage to push forward,
to continue seeking truth even in the face of doubts about its very existence.”
I think Socrates’s myth is meant to suggest, to the contrary, that all doubts
about truth’s existence are put to rest, as soon as we start to learn.
But I call this a suggestion, because the proof, I suspect, actually lies in
Socrates’s dramatic turn to the slave-boy, and a shift from myth to mathematics. Which brings me to my final step back. For it is in Socrates’s encounter
with the slave-boy, I think, that we can find the lost idea of a liberal art. And
to recover it, I now offer what I call a loose reading of this encounter.
The central question of this episode is: how long, exactly, is the side of an
eight-foot square? (Meno 82e) Now, as you no doubt know, because the line in
question is irrational, there is no answer to the question in terms of feet. But I
prefer to put this a different way. There is an answer, but only insofar as the
answer is made into a matter of research, with a divide-and-conquer approach.
And this is one way to describe the slave-boy’s initial stab at the question, when
he finds that the line in question is between 2 feet and 3 feet in length, before
giving up. (84a) But under one idea of intellectual courage, we could say, we
should not give up. And we could forge ahead, on the slave-boy’s behalf, in
further research, by dividing the 3 foot line even more. And putting the results
in suitably modern terms, we learn that the line in question is between 2.8
and 2.9 feet; then we learn it is between 2.82 and 2.83 feet; then we learn it is
between 2.828 and 2.829 feet. Or to put what we learn still more exactly: the
first number in the length of the line is 2; and the next is 8; and the next is
2; then 8; then 4; then 2; then 7; and so on. There would be no pattern in
the numbers thereby found, but this is what would make every number found
a genuine discovery, which carried us ever farther in truth, leading us from one
learned thing to the next. We could even say we were learning for ourselves,
and persevering in the pursuit of knowledge rather than yielding in the face of
ignorance. And I think this more or less captures the meaning of learning in
what I will call the idea of a field of research, which we have inherited from
modern science.
12
�But again, the slave-boy gives up on this approach at the very first number 2.
And Socrates doesn’t exhort him to keep at it, or show him how to divide the 3
foot line any further. Instead, Socrates says to the slave-boy: if you don’t want
to count the line out, then just show it to me. (84a) —It’s as if Socrates had a
different idea of intellectual courage, a different idea of learning, and a different
idea of how the question should be approached, forming a different discipline
from a field of research. And I think we can already say why. For while you
can certainly make the line in question a matter of research, you thereby put
it out of reach—as a matter of recognition. For there is no end to the numbers
you will find in the divide-and-conquer approach to the line in question. So
you are learning more and more about an object that you will never get to see,
and in that sense, never get to know. We will always be left, as it were, at the
first number we find, with an ever-expanding but never-vanishing horizon at the
latest number we find. Or more simply put, we will be seeking the truth, and
even advancing the truth, but never possessing the truth.
So what idea of approach does Socrates have in mind instead? We can see it
coming-to-be in the very next thing he does with the slave-boy. For the slaveboy is truly stumped, and can’t even show the line in question. For of course it
is not in front of the slave-boy yet; and in his mind, we might say, it is not yet
a matter of recognition, but still a matter of research, even though he’s given
the project up. So in perhaps his one outright act of teaching, giving birth, we
might say, to the very idea of a liberal art, Socrates simply draws the line in
question—erasing at once any remaining horizon of discovery, and showing we
are already in possession of the truth. (85a) And what he does in drawing this
line radically changes what it means for the slave-boy to learn. For this is no
longer to discover any more about the line in question, but instead to recognize
the line in question. Or perhaps I should say recollect the line in question. But
in either formulation, this means seeing that the line Socrates has drawn is
indeed the line in question. And the slave boy does this in yet another act of
recognition, when he sees that the figure Socrates draws, upon the line that he
draws, is indeed the eight-foot square in question.
But let me try to clarify this by generalizing it. Let us suppose that Socrates
has asked the slave-boy a more encompassing question. Such as: “Why do
the heavens move as they do?” One way to answer this question is again to
make it a matter of research, producing fields and even sub-fields of research,
in a divide-and-conquer approach to the question. But this risks putting the
matter beyond the reach of recognition. True, we will learn more and more about
heavenly motions in this approach; but there is no promise that we will ever learn
enough to finally answer the question. And this reflects one way to understand
learning, leading to one interpretation of “astronomy,” that we have inherited
from modern science. But there is still another way to understand learning,
leading to another interpretation of “astronomy,” that we have inherited from
ancient science, and that promises us an answer, in promising us the truth. And
a college like ours is committed to it, I think, if we believe that learning is a
finally a matter of recognition.
13
�So another way of answering the question “Why do the heavens move as they
do?” that we can still call “astronomy,” produces a liberal art. And in this
approach, strange as it may sound, we can simply answer the question, in already
possessing the truth. We don’t even have to stop at one answer: Ptolemy, as
I recall, gives us two—suggesting that the truth is more generous than frugal.
And we don’t even need any telescopes. All we have to do is draw lines just
like Socrates did, that allow us to see, or more exactly see again, the object in
question. Which in this more encompassing case is the motion of the heavens;
hence we have to draw the lines—circles, basically—that allow us to see again,
and in that sense to recognize, the very motions of the heavens we were asking
about. And in this way we can give a true account of these motions, since this
account allows us not simply to explain what we see, as if to move past it, but
to recognize what we see, in a recovery of it.
But now suppose we made the question Socrates asks the slave-boy allencompassing—something like: “Why is the world the way it is?” In one
approach—let us call this a technical education—we would be led into ever-more
numerous fields of research to answer the question, with no promise that we
will ever recover the world by the end, in an act of recognition. But in another
approach—let us call this a liberal education—we would be led to seven liberal
arts to answer the question, where this recovery of the world in an act of
recognition is precisely the point. And this is why, I think, these antique seven
arts might still be said to form a whole, that gives a truly liberal education its
content.
But let me say one final thing in this spirit of recollection on behalf of St. John’s
College. Let us suppose that the truth is very generous. So generous, that when
we ask the question “Why is the world the way it is?” there is not just one
answer, or two answers, or seven answers, but something closer to a hundred.
And let us suppose that the lines that might be drawn to produce this hundred
are drawn, not to form squares, or circles, but letters; and that the letters are
suitably arranged in words, sentences, paragraphs, to compose what we might
call “books.” Any of the hundred so-called books, in that case, would allow us
to recover the world in an act of recognition. And we could recognize the world
in such a book, by reading it with the same generosity possessed by the truth.
The book would be inescapably be full of content, in being inescapably full of
truth. These are the books I think we read at the college, and believe in. And
in being full of truth, they give, to any conversation at the college that brings
them to life, a purpose, and a point, beyond that life; proving there is more,
even to life, than life. Truth.
14
�Acknowledgment
Much of the thinking in this lecture is indebted to Barbara McClay. So I wanted
to thank her for that, and dedicate the lecture to her. For more on her own
defense of liberal education, which is much better than the defenses I discuss
here, see:
“In Defense of Liberal Arts”
“ ‘What is Liberal Education For?’: A Preview”
“We’re All Pinmakers Now: Liberal Education in a Specialized Age”
“With Friends Like These”
Back to top
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/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
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
The Lost Idea of a Liberal Art
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 8, 2015 by Daniel Harrell as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Mr. Harrell is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. His talk delves into the conversation surrounding the liberal arts education. In particular, he examines this argument through certain calls for "relevance" as well as the truth of the liberal arts in general. He further meditates on the relationship between the liberal arts and the world at large, and those tensions and rewards offered by a student of the liberal arts.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harrell, Daniel
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-08
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
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
Bib # 82742
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/275">Audio recording</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Education, Humanistic
Education
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/701fee2f60505eb351509b8196e23155.pdf
769bd7353f9a0f96adda64166903a1e0
PDF Text
Text
Making Time Count
Daniel Harrell
March 21, 2014∗
Lecture
If you asked me the question “What is the time?” I could look at my watch—or
these days, at my phone—and tell you. It’s 8:05. But what if you changed your
question, by leaving out the definite article? Suppose your question weren’t
“What is the time?”, but more simply, “What is . . . time?”
In that case, it’s hard to know what my answer would be, but easy to
suppose that it could not be as immediate, or exact, or conclusive as the time
8:05 was to your first question. And about a matter less suited to our phones
than to some philosophy about the nature of time.
The Freshmen, in fact, have just finished reading one—Aristotle’s; and my
debts to it in this lecture should be clear before I’m done. But so will my
debts to Euclid. And the question that guides me tonight will not be “What
is time?”—at least if asking this question means turning away, either at once
or for good, from our phones, our watches, our clocks; or more generally, from
the numbers we use to tell time, and as if our telling of time had nothing to tell
us—to teach us—about the nature of time. My question, then, is something
less like “What is time?”, and something more like: “What is it about time
that allows it to be told?” What is it about time that allows us to ask about
the time—definite article reintroduced—and to answer that question with all
the immediacy, the exactness, and the conclusiveness of “it’s 8:05”—or rather,
“8:07.” My conjecture for the next hour, then, will be that in telling you
it’s 8:07, or indeed in referring to “the next hour,” and more generally in every
ready-at-hand way we have through numbers of marking time, measuring time,
reckoning time, there is something important to discover, even essential, about
the nature of time. Something that accounts for time, in our counting of time.
But what could this be? After all, there is nothing essential in my calling
the next hour “an hour.” For I could just as well have called this hour “60
minutes.” Or even “3,600 seconds”—if I’ve done my math right; and despite
the fact that the number 3,600 is not the number 60, nor is 60 the number
1—if there is such a number. Our counting of time in this sense, the sense in
∗A
lecture delivered on this date at the Annapolis campus of St. John’s College.
1
�which we use numbers to mark intervals of time, seems borrowed and arbitrary
rather than rooted or necessary—a matter of convention rather than essence.
And there is even more convention, it would seem, in the counting of time
that led me to say it was 8:05, or 8:07, or, right now, 8:08. This is the count
where we use numbers to mark moments of time rather than intervals. For
while it may be 8:08 in Annapolis on this side of King George Street, on
the other side, it is 20:08—and in Santa Fe, only 6:08. I could also call it
6:08 in Flagstaff—if I were giving this lecture before Spring Break. But in
giving it tonight, I will have to admit that it is only 5:08 in Flagstaff, since
Daylight Saving Time goes unobserved in Arizona. And if I were giving this
lecture before the Uniform Time Act of 1966, I wouldn’t know what to say
about the time elsewhere. For back then, cities in the United States could
choose their own dates for Daylight Saving Time at will; and they did, in what
Time Magazine called a “chaos of clocks.” Not the clocks we find populating
Einstein’s theory of relativity, as if cities had discovered themselves in different
frames of reference with no present moment in common; but rather the clocks
we more innocently use in everyday life, where there is taken to be a present
moment in common, but no like moment in number, it seems, no “now” that
belongs to number to stop us from assigning the present moment different
numbers at once—where “now” is 8:10 in Annapolis, 7:10 in Memphis, 6:10 in
Santa Fe, or 5:10 in Flagstaff.
Giving content to this present moment, moreover, still gives us no sense
of the number that might belong to it. The “now” that begins Friday Night
lecture in Annapolis, for example, is officially 8, but it used to be 8:15. In Santa
Fe it is 7:30, but used to be 8. Similarly with the “now” that begins seminar:
for undergraduates in Annapolis, this is 8, but for GI students 7:30—and 7:30
in Santa Fe for both. —Except for the 4:30 seminars, one for each class, the
year I was in Santa Fe. And if we include seminar-parties, where the start-time
is assigned at will, well—there would seem no number excluded in principle:
which is again as if there is no “now” in number. And if time itself exists only
“now,” in the present moment, since the past is no longer and the future not
yet, then there is nothing of time in number.
But then we might have inferred this much—that time is one thing and
number something else—even without such examples. For if we think of time
as having any existence beyond the present moment, it is most likely when
we think of this moment as ever-new, making time like a river, flowing ever
onward. But our counting of time uses number to form a different kind of
succession, which is never continuous, and usually recurring: going repeatedly
back to 1 from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year,
even as time itself rolls on—a fact soon enough written on our faces, even if we
erase it from our clocks and calendars.
Our counting of time in these respects even suggests that the count is not
really of time, but rather of place, in following motions that, unlike time,
continue and finally complete themselves with respect to place. We count to
365, then, in following the yearly trip of the earth around the sun; as we count
to 30—or close enough—in following the monthly trip of the moon around the
2
�earth; or to 24, in following the daily trip of the earth around itself. And
dividing this 24 into its units, accordingly divides the earth into twenty-four
places—each a so-called time zone, explaining the difference in time between
Annapolis and Santa Fe as really a difference in place. Even our weekly count
to 7 in this sense, which otherwise has no source in the completed motion of
any celestial body, might still be said to follow one—the very motion that, on
one account at least, created every celestial body, along with everything else,
over six days of work finished by a seventh of rest. Nor need we look so far
above us for seeming proof that our telling of time is really of place. For we
can find this proof writ small on the face of any watch, where every number
has its place, and every time in turn, its position. Yet if time itself has no
place or position—and we might even consider it a negation of any place or
position—then our every clock, it seems, tells a bald-faced lie.
But this is to argue against what I earlier called my conjecture for the next
hour—now my conjecture for the next forty-five minutes—which is that our
every clock tells the truth. And perhaps it is time—whatever that may be—to
make the case for clocks. Consider again our sense of time itself, when we think
of it like a river. In certain respects—decisive respects, I think—the simile falls
short. For the motion of a river, we can see and say, is made by the river, as it
moves along its banks, now more swiftly, now more slowly. But in the motion of
time, there is nothing like the river or its banks to see, nothing visibly moving
relative to anything else. And no surprise, for there would only be anything
visible, it seems, if the motion of time were a motion in space. This motion is
already peculiar, then, in belonging to time and time alone. And it becomes
still more peculiar when we consider its progress. We sometimes fancy that,
again like a river moving swifter or slower, time itself can fly or drag. But if
time could really do this, how would we know? When anything else changes its
speed, after all, we can use some unit of time to confirm it, as a change in the
distance traveled, for example, per minute. But we are deprived of this unit
to confirm any change of speed in time itself; for the unit is now in question:
is this minute, when compared to the last, or the next, faster or slower, longer
or shorter? And even before this question we must ask another, since to say
that time can change its speed assumes that time has a speed. But what could
we mean by time’s speed? In what sense could time itself travel any distance,
if we are then deprived of any measure in space to account for it? And how
long would it take time to travel this distance, if we are then deprived of any
measure in time to account for it?
It begins to look as if our attributing any motion to time involves a category
mistake, claiming for time itself, and apart from space, what can only happen
in time and space together. And this correction suggests that time itself is
not a motion, but rather a medium for motion—a qualification implicit in our
sense that when something moves from place to place, it does so in, or even
through, some corresponding length of time. But to admit even this much risks
another conflation of time and space; for what could we mean by a “length” of
time? Indeed, the only conception of time so far that promises to escape any
such conflation with space, is one that reduces the length of time to “now,” the
3
�present moment, since the present moment can be conceived to have no length.
It makes sense to think that this moment lasts only, well, a moment, or instant,
before a new such moment takes its place, so to speak. Or, to borrow an earlier
formulation, it makes sense to think of the present moment as ever-new. But
this is also what tempts us to compare time to a river. And if that analogy is
false in being spatial, then what is time really like in being temporal?
It is just here, I think, that our counting of time deserves some credit. For
let us suppose that the present moment indeed has no length. If it has no
length, then it is no larger, we could say, than a geometric point. But saying
this risks another spatial analogy. For even though the point has no part
according to Euclid’s definition, its integrity in this sense, being spatial, makes
the point a position, or location. The point is where a line begins and ends,
for example; or where any two lines intersect. But the integrity of the present
moment, being temporal, is opposed to this; and we might even characterize it
as if it negated the integrity of the point, by saying that the present moment
can occupy every location in space, not just the one location occupied by a
point. But saying this still relies on an appeal to space—all of space in fact.
So what should we say instead? A more promising characterization, I think,
is one I just mentioned a moment ago: namely, that the present moment is
ever-new. For as the present moment begins, it ends, in having no parts; and
as it ends, it is replaced, in having no position. This is why the integrity of
the present moment is temporal rather than spatial; for in having neither part
nor position, this moment establishes time as a dimension of succession rather
than simultaneity. But this gives us a way to distinguish absolutely the present
moment from the geometric point. For if the present moment is indeed evernew in lacking parts and position, then one such moment will be replaced by
the next immediately, without any space between the two. And the lack of
space would be another mark of the moment’s temporal integrity. But space is
precisely what remains as a mark of spatial integrity, as the position without
parts possessed by the point, allows it to occupy space without consuming it.
Thus, there is no way to encounter points in succession, from one to the next;
between any two, no matter how close, there will be space enough for a third.
But the present moment, then, is not only not a point, it is not even like a
point. And if we have any hope of finding something that the present moment
is truly like, it will have to be what has neither parts nor position.
But saying “what has neither parts nor position,” as it happens, is one way
to define the unit, out of which, at least according to classical arithmetic, every
number is made. I say “classical,” since we are tempted, by later developments
in the theory of number, to think of the unit itself as a number. I even mentioned the number 1 near the beginning of my lecture, before catching myself.
And if we do think of the unit as a number, then it is easy to suppose it has both
position and parts, being the first of the so-called counting numbers, which we
can always divide by a larger such number to yield some fraction of itself. But
it is precisely those suppositions that the classical understanding of number
calls into question. And it is the unit on that understanding, I now propose,
that not only makes most sense of how we count when counting time; but is
4
�also what time is most like when we erase any hint of space from our sense of
it. Or to put this proposal another way: we are all Euclideans when we tell
the time—and time itself is Euclidean most of all.
To make sense of this proposal, let me first offer a simple sketch of the
likeness between number and time that I have in mind. I just concluded that
the present moment, in lacking parts and position, is ever-new. But then we
could also say this of the unit, since it too lacks parts and position. Or to put
this another way, since the unit lacks parts and position, we can think of it as
a recurring whole, which corresponds to the ever-new present moment. And
if we then assign the numeral “1” to the unit, we can conceive its recurrence
as producing a count of the ever-new present moment, like so: 1, 1, 1, and
so on. But if the unit remains whole in its recurrence, then it would seem as
if the unit must somehow encompass its recurrence. That is, the unit must
somehow encompass the fact that it is being taken once, twice, thrice . . . , in
the count 1, 1, 1. . . . So the count in question is better conceived as going 1,
2, 3, and so on, proceeding through every number in turn. And as the evernew present moment establishes the succession we call time, this count of the
present moment can be understood as belonging to time, as being a counting
of time.
In light of this sketch, which all but identifies time with number, my earlier
reasons for denying any connection can be reconsidered. The first of these
reasons was that there seems to be nothing essential in my calling the next
hour “an hour.” For I could just as well call this hour 60 minutes, or even
3,600 seconds. If my sketch above is correct, however, I think we will have to
say that this is mistaken. For counting to 3,600 is different from counting to 60,
while counting to 1 isn’t even possible, since 1 defines the start rather than the
end of any count. But why, then, would we think that the different numbers in
this case are equal, and equal in turn to the unit? I think it’s because we are
once again conflating time and space. We refer to the next hour and divide it
at once into minutes, as if the hour we tell time by had position and parts. But
when we give the unit position and parts, we are no longer telling time by it;
that is, we are no longer using the unit for counting. We are rather using the
unit for measuring. Or to put it another way, the unit that can indeed possess
position and parts makes for the numbers we read off a ruler, not the numbers
we read off a clock.
What I mean by this is that the succession of numbers on a ruler, say from
1 to 12, is meant to carry us through space rather than time, in an act of
measurement rather than counting. For when we apply the ruler to a length,
the length, being spatial, will carry us through the successive numbers on the
ruler at once. And if the length should end somewhere between two such
numbers—say between 8 and 9—there is nothing to stop us from dividing the
unit between them into as many parts as needed, again at once, to give a more
accurate reckoning of the length. And this reckoning, so-called, will thus be a
matter of inspection rather than calculation. But on a clock, at least if we are
using it for a reckoning of time, numbers work radically differently, even if they
look the same. And this is why a clock tells the truth. As an example, take
5
�the current time on my phone: 8:29. At first glance, this time may look like
the number in my ruler example: a number between 8 and 9, which is taken
by dividing the unit between 8 and 9 into parts—in this case, sixty parts, or
minutes. But one sign this first glance is deceptive is the punctuation mark I
see on my phone—a colon—that separates the 8 from the 29 And if I confirmed
the time on my phone by looking at a watch, my having to read the 8 from the
position of one hand and the 29 from the position of another hand would reflect
the truth. The time 8:29 is really composed of two numbers, neither of which is
reached at once, but rather in separate counts. The one number is reached in a
count to 8; while the other number is reached in a count to 29, preceded by at
least 8 counts to 60. And we are stopped, then, from dividing the unit between
8 and 9 into parts in this case—our so-called “next hour”—since there is no
unit to divide: the count that reaches 8, in being a count, hasn’t yet reached 9;
while the count that reaches 29, in being a count, started at 1, in a reflection
of the unit’s integrity rather than divisibility. So while different numbers may
make no difference to a measurement of time; they make all the difference to
a reckoning of time.
In this analysis of the numbers on a clock, however, there is a strange
implication for the present moment, which I will only mention here before
returning to it later. If we are making two counts when we tell the time, in this
case having reached 8 by the one count and 29 by the other, then it looks as
if there are two present moments: the one that belongs to 8, and that we call
“the hour”; and then the one that belongs to 29, and that we call “the minute.”
It would be easy to say that the minute is contained in the hour, reducing the
two moments to one, if we could say that the hour had parts. But I just argued
against this. Yet how could the hour, then, be one present moment and the
minute be yet another present moment? Especially if the present moment, in
having no parts, has no length, and ends as soon as it begins? Doesn’t this
imply that there can be merely one such moment at once, and indeed that our
reckoning of it, whether by hours or by minutes, is rough? Inexact?
As I said, I will return to this matter later, but I think I must accept the
strange implication. If time and number are identified in the way I sketched
above, then I think we will have to admit more than one present moment at
once—indeed, as many such moments as are reached in different counts. And
when I declare the time to be 8:29, or rather 8:34, I am counting to different
present moments at once, the one that still belongs to 8, and the one that now
belongs to 34. We will also have to admit, I think, that there is nothing rough
or inexact in either count, since the present moment, in having no parts, is no
bigger or smaller than the unit in either count, which also has no parts.
But this brings me to the second reason I gave earlier for thinking that time
is one thing and number something else. For if it is now 8:34 in Annapolis, then
it is now 6:34 in Santa Fe. Before, I took this to mean that while Santa Fe and
Annapolis share the same present moment, they assign it different numbers,
and that this reflected a difference in place rather than time. But if my sketch
above is correct, I think we will have to say that Santa Fe and Annapolis do
not share the same present moment, and for reasons unrelated to any theory
6
�of relativity. For Annapolis has reached the number 8 in a count by hour that
Santa Fe has only made to 6, which in turn means that our respective counts by
minute differ by factors of 8 and 6. Thus, Santa Fe’s present moment is indeed
different from ours, and in fact a present moment that lies in our past, in just
the way that 6 is different from 8, and in the count to 8, already passed. So
because Santa Fe is at a lesser number in its counting of time than Annapolis,
Santa Fe is, right now, at an earlier moment in time than Annapolis, right now,
apart from any difference in place. And again, in a matter I will have to return
to, it looks as if identifying time with number means admitting that there can
be more than one present moment at once; and in this case we have at least
four: the two that belong to the counts of hour and minute in Annapolis; and
the two that belong to the counts of hour and minute in Santa Fe.
This multiplication of present moments, moreover, is implicit in the way I
would now want to correct my earlier conclusion about the difference between
time and number. Then, I said there was no “now” belonging to number to
stop us from assigning the present moment different numbers at once. But in
identifying time with number, I think I will have to say just the opposite: for the
“now” belongs to every number in turn; which means there is indeed something
stopping us from assigning the same present moment different numbers at once.
For if the numbers are different as the result of different counts, then the present
moments are different as well.
This brings me to my last reason, which was more general, for denying any
connection between time and number. I said that the present moment, being
ever-new, makes time like a river, flowing ever onward; while our counting
of time uses number to form a different kind of succession, which is never
continuous and usually recurring. But since then, I think I’ve given us better
reasons for denying that time is like a river. And on the matter of continuity,
I think we can say that temporal succession is no different from numerical
succession, at least if we conceive the numerical in this case, again, along
classical lines. For then there will be no gaps in our count, as every number
is composed by the unit, and reached by the unit in turn. This is continuity
enough to reckon with the like succession of time, where every present moment
leads directly to the next, leaving no gap in the event.
But what about the matter of recurrence? For this does seem to distinguish
a temporal succession, where every moment leads directly to the next, from any
numerical succession where we reach some number in our count only to start
the count over at 1; and for reasons, so it seemed, having nothing to do with
time, and everything to do with space. We count to 365, or to 30, or to 24, so I
said, in following the circuits of celestial bodies. But in fact the most important
examples of a recurring count are not found in our calendars and clocks, but
rather in a waltz, or a line of iambic pentameter. And in those cases, the sense
of the count’s recurrence seems to lie within rather than without, as we can
hear the recurrence in sound without needing to see anything in space make a
circuit, or even have what we hear in sound be made explicitly numerical. If I
simply go: da-dah, da-dah, da-dah; or, dah-da-da, dah-da-da, dah-da-da—the
recurrence of a count is plain. And this recurrence is made articulate in the arts
7
�of poetry and music, which we credit for having somehow shaped time rather
than space into a whole. So even if the recurring counts in our calendars and
clocks typically follow some completion in space, these same recurring counts
ought to make a temporal sense in themselves, as if they produced a completion
in time.
But what kind of sense could this be? Indeed, how could there be a whole
in time, if the succession of moments that constitutes time can only compose
this whole part by part, but leaves every such part at that moment in time,
preventing the parts from ever coming together as a whole? I think there is an
answer to this question; and it returns me, at last, to the strange implication
about the present moment that I mentioned before. For let us suppose there
can be more than one present moment at once. As an example, take again the
time on my phone, which is now 8:41. And I will again interpret this time as
involving two counts of two present moments, the hour that belongs to 8, and
the minute that belongs to 41. And again, we might reduce the two present
moments to one, if we could say that the hour at 8 contained the minute at 41.
But we can’t say this, I continue to think, without wrongly dividing the hour
we tell time by into parts. But what I think we can say is almost the opposite:
it is not that the hour contains the minute, but rather that the minute contains
the hour, in the following sense. This minute, or present moment, belongs to
a count that will go to 60, and then start over at 1. But why? Why start the
count over? We start this count over, not to follow the circuit of any celestial
body, but rather to follow the count of the hour at 8, as it proceeds to 9. And
by going from 60 back to 1 as 8 proceeds to 9, we take what was encompassed
in the count to 60, and relate it at once to what was reached in the count to
8, in a still-larger encompassment. Or in more temporal terms: we contain
the present hour in a succession of minutes. And since this hour is whole, the
succession of minutes becomes whole. If this analysis is right, then it suggests
that there can indeed be temporal wholes, but only if there can be more than
one present moment at once.
There is, however, a question that remains if everything I have said so far is
correct. For again, I have all but identified time with number, by reducing them
both to elements that lack any position or parts. It is difficult, then, to tell
any difference between the present moment and the unit; and difficult in turn
to tell any difference between time and number. But is there any difference?
Aristotle, for one, thought that time is a number, and I hope my lecture has
given a sense of how definitive a thought this might be. For the answer to
the question could well be simply no. And in that case, there is no difference
between time and number precisely because time is a number—and perhaps
every number in turn. If this is right, then our telling of time tells the truth,
and perhaps the whole truth. And the next time someone asks you “but what,
then, is time?” you might look at your phone, and say: it’s 8:45.
8
�Afterthoughts
I tried to do without two things in this lecture that one finds explicit in Aristotle’s account of time: the first is motion, insofar as time, for Aristotle, is a
number of motion; and the second is the soul, insofar as this number of motion requires an enumerator. I was hoping, by contrast, to make sense of time’s
relation to number as if it were an identity, which means as if the enumeration
could happen on its own, by the very nature of a unit without position or parts;
and also as if the enumeration made sense without any additional reference to
a motion (whether this be the motion of a planet, or a pendulum, or an atom).
Or to put what I was hoping to do without another way, I wanted to make
sense of time as if the clocks we tell it by were made by time rather than by
us.
The Question Period (for which I thank all the participants) showed me
that it may be impossible to make complete sense of time on this level of
abstraction, even if I still think it was worth the try.
9
�
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
9 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Making Time Count
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on March 21, 2014, by Daniel Harrell as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Mr. Harrell describes his lecture: "What is time? It is tempting to look straightaway to some theory or philosophy of time for an answer to this question, even though we 'tell the time' by watches, clocks, and nowadays even phones. And I think that our telling of time indeed tells us something about the nature of time, as well as about the nature of number. In my lecture I hope to show why that is, and what it is."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harrell, Daniel
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
2014-03-21
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. 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
Subject
The topic of the resource
Time
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 81878
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/274">Audio recording</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c9c679062cfd612200246540fa3a9f5a.pdf
3f026cf740641408fa28fcbbf54f6cec
PDF Text
Text
Learning to Read Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
Judith Seeger
Tutor
St. John’s College
January and December 2016
�1
Learning to Read Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
My knowledge goes forth to point out the way,
To pave straight its road.
Lo, everyone who goes astray in the field of Torah,
Come and follow its path.
The Unclean and the fool shall not pass over it;
It shall be called Way of Holiness.
The Guide of the Perplexed is, simply, one of the oddest books I have ever read. The poem above,
placed at its beginning claims that wisdom will point out a straight path. But, unlike a philosophical
treatise, which (however hard it may be to understand the difficult questions it poses) tries to be clear
and direct, Maimonides’ treatise is, well, tortuous: reading it, you can’t help running into walls he has
erected. While those walls have gates, the gates are locked and you don’t have the keys. Circular
speech makes a maze, so it seems, and significant silence a pitfall. (Just look at the poem! Who is
speaking? What is this wisdom? A straight way to where? And those are only the beginning. Welcome
to the Guide!) Tonight I will follow one of the many paths that weave their way through these fields
from the book’s beginning to its end. The question I will ask Maimonides will be “What does it mean for
us to be created in the image and likeness of God?” The question I will ask myself – and you – will be
“How do we read this, or (for that matter) any, book?” But first I will give a very brief summary of
Maimonides’ life and the as yet unresolved problem of reading posed by the Guide, followed by
consideration of why he writes as he does and then of how he does it.
�2
Moses son of Maimon, known to us by the Greek form of his patronymic, Maimonides, was born in 1138
in Cordoba, at that time the capital of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) and the largest and most affluent city
in Europe. Under the reign of the Umayyads (756-1031) Cordoba and what we now call Andalusia
reached a high level of civilization in art, literature, history, science, music and jurisprudence. Moses’
ancestors were scholars who had served as judges and communal leaders for seven generations. But in
1148 the fundamentalist Almohads invaded Andalusia and occupied Cordoba. Resident Jews had to
convert to Islam or face exile or death. Moses’ family left the city when he was 10 years old. They
wandered in Andalusia for twelve years or so, and Moses began to study sciences and to become
familiar with the Andalusian school of Aristotelian studies with a neoplatonic component, traditions
passed on and interpreted by Islamic scholars including al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl.
Around 1160 the family immigrated to northern Africa where they lived until about 1165. But that
region, too, was under the rule of the Almohads. So they moved on, eventually settling near Cairo,
where the ruling dynasty supported philosophical studies. In 1171 Saladin became sultan of Egypt.
Maimonides may have served as Saladin’s physician; he certainly served his son. Throughout this time
he studied and wrote copiously. He died in Cairo in 1204. Most notable among his many works are his
vast compendium of Jewish law, called the Mishneh Torah, written from 1168 to 1177, and The Guide of
the Perplexed, written from 1185 to about 1190. The Guide was composed in Judeo-Arabic, that is,
Arabic written in Hebrew characters. A Hebrew translation was published during Maimonides’ lifetime.
I am using Shlomo Pines’ English translation of 1963. Words in italics on the slides I will show are in
Hebrew in the original.
Very briefly, the Guide purports to provide a way out of the crisis of faith – here called perplexity – that
inevitably assails a believer in the Torah (that is, the first five books of the Bible, also known as the
Pentateuch and the Five Books of Moses) who, without proper preparation, has encountered
�3
philosophical teachings. The Guide, its author tells us, will show a way to reconcile the truths of the
Bible with those of philosophy. There have been numerous attempts to locate that promised way. But
the interpretations proffered as definitive contradict each other and, in the better part of a millennium,
none of them has carried the day. As I am far from being an expert on the history of the Guide, I will
appeal to Moshe Halbertal to summarize the situation for me. In his book Maimonides: Life and
Thought, published in Hebrew in 2009 and in English in 2014, Halbertal groups the attempts to reach
that elusive definitive interpretation into four categories, which he calls the skeptical, the mystical, the
conservative and the philosophical (pp. 354-6). In brief, what he calls the skeptical reading holds that –
as Maimonides demonstrates that philosophical exploration and language itself are insufficient to attain
knowledge of God – the perplexed person should abandon philosophy altogether, return to the world
and worship in silence that which he will never understand. The mystical reading, accepting the same
human shortcomings, sees failed linguistic and philosophical interpretations as clearing the way for a
meta-linguistic, meta-rational experience of the sublime. The conservative reading provides solace in
the fact that, as philosophy cannot prove the eternity of the world, there is no fundamental conflict
between it and religion founded on creation: therefore, both may be pursued simultaneously. Finally,
the philosophical reading maintains that there is a difference between true beliefs – those achieved
through philosophical investigation – and necessary ones – those required for living in a human
community, which are taught by the Bible. The question is not whether such a distinction exists;
Maimonides says that it does. The question is where to draw the line between truth and political
necessity. In this case, as in the conservative reading, there is no conflict between philosophy and
Scripture, as they reign in different realms. Clearly, these four interpretations, all of which have been
cogently and persuasively argued, are mutually exclusive. Halbertal refuses to choose among them.
Instead, he claims that Maimonides may well have meant to leave all four readings open to the reader,
�4
telling him, in effect, that he is free to live a fully human life consisting of both piety and intellectual
inquiry in accord with whichever of these interpretations suits him.
Now I can easily imagine receiving this claim with incredulity. How can it really not matter, for example,
whether the world is eternal (as Aristotle holds) or was created in time (as the Bible proclaims)? How
can it really not matter whether I consider my inability to know God through reason as evidence of
insuperable human limitations with which I must be satisfied or the gateway to mysticism? Despite his
claim that he will “liberate the virtuous one from that into which he has sunk” and “guide him in his
perplexity until he becomes perfect and [ … ] finds rest” (17), Maimonides seems to have led his readers
into a morass. We will see how he does that shortly, but first let us consider why he feels it necessary to
design the treatise to be so difficult to read.
I think there are three reasons for his decision. First, like his Islamic precursors, Maimonides takes very
seriously the dangers of revealing the speculative teachings of philosophy to adherents of a religion
based on revelation. The danger is real, for anything that might appear to cast doubt on holy writ could
put society itself as well as the life of the purveyor of knowledge at risk (a notion that can, in the
philosophical tradition, be traced back to Plato’s Republic), as the community based on faith, perceiving
itself attacked, could turn to violence to defend itself. Social disruption related to religious stress was a
constant and legitimate preoccupation for Islamic philosophers, including Maimonides’ Andalusian
contemporary Ibn Rushd (known to Christian tradition as Averroes). For Maimonides himself the danger
of religious turmoil, as you have seen, was not merely theoretical. The Jewish community in particular,
caught between Christendom and the caliphate, was assailed from outside, but there was internal strife
as well, for within Judaism, as within Islam and Christianity, there were quarreling sects seeking
legitimacy, eager to appropriate evidence that would support their convictions and denounce evidence
that seemed to contradict them. Anything written by a scholar of Maimonides’ stature that might seem
�5
to question biblical revelation would endanger the spiritual health of his own people. I am inclined to
read his references in the Guide to secrecy for the sake of the “multitude” less as intellectual arrogance
than as genuine concern for the wellbeing of those who might not have the inclination or wit, or even
simply the considerable time required to pursue philosophical questions.
Second, and more specifically, Maimonides had to contend with rabbinic prohibitions against discussing
certain scriptural matters in public. In the Guide he states, for example, that what is called in Jewish
tradition the Account of the Beginning (that is, the creation story in Genesis 1) is identical with natural
science, while what is called The Account of the Chariot (that is, Ezekiel’s visions in Ezekiel 1 and 10) is
identical with divine science (6). But Maimonides knows that interpretations of these two accounts
must not be promulgated. Indeed he follows his statement of those identities by citing rabbinic
prohibitions found in the Babylonian Talmud against divulging them. (Very briefly, for those of you who
are unfamiliar with it, the Talmud is the record of rabbinic teachings that spans a period of about six
hundred years, beginning in the first century C.E. and continuing through the seventh century C.E.) The
authors of the Talmud, called the sages, state that “The Account of the Chariot ought not to be taught
even to one man, except if he be wise and able to understand by himself, in which case only the chapter
headings may be transmitted to him” (6), and that “The Account of the Beginning ought not to be taught
in the presence of two men” (7). Clearly, publishing interpretations of those accounts, even if only a
small elite group could read the text, violates those very specific prohibitions. Maimonides does not
always agree with the sages – at one point in the Guide, for example, he cites sages “to whom the term
Sages may truthfully be applied” (488, see also 492) – and, in any event, the sages don’t always agree
with each other (although they may agree on this point). He does, however, take these interdictions
seriously enough that he feels he has to explain why he is contravening them, adding that he has
struggled with the fear of revealing too much to too many. But the Jewish community is dispersed and
demoralized; you can no longer count on its being possible for two scholars to meet alone in a room.
�6
Feeling the need to pass on what he knows so that it will not be lost (or, strictly speaking, lost again, for
he says that it has been lost already but that through his studies he has recovered it [415-16]), he faces a
dilemma. Whatever other concerns moved him, Maimonides’ conviction that the fragile thread of oral
transmission was in imminent peril of being cut forever was surely a powerful reason impelling him to
write and publish the Guide. Now, it does not occur to Maimonides, as it does to his successor Spinoza,
to question the authorship of the Bible. The Torah, which he calls a guide itself, is for him an esoteric
text, written by the greatest of prophets, Moses, in what Maimonides, following the sages, calls “the
language of the sons of men” in order simultaneously to reveal the Mosaic Law to all people and to
conceal from the multitude the truths required for knowledge of God, by expressing those truths in such
a way that they can be seen only by those who have the intellectual and moral capacity to understand
them. Longstanding rabbinic tradition forbids unraveling in public the knot the original authors have
tied. So, to keep the Torah’s secrets from falling into the wrong hands, like Moses and the sages before
him, Maimonides will both reveal and conceal.
But there is also a third reason for writing as he does, and to consider this reason we need to look more
closely at the man (or men) he is addressing. The Guide is presented as a series of letters sent, chapterby-chapter, to Joseph ben Judah, who had been Maimonides’ student while both were living in Egypt. In
the Epistle Dedicatory, which opens the treatise, Maimonides praises Joseph as a man of noble soul who
has “a strong desire for inquiry” and a “powerful longing for speculative matters.” Joseph writes in
rhymed prose and has studied astronomy and mathematics with Maimonides, who extols the excellence
of his mind. He is also a fine student of the art of logic (4). And he is perfect in religion and moral
character. All of these qualities, as well as Joseph’s professed desire to learn “certain things pertaining
to divine matters” (4), have raised Maimonides’ hopes for his gifted pupil. But Joseph has also acquired
some smattering of divine science from others and has become perplexed, even stupefied, by the
contradictions he has encountered between philosophy and Scripture. Moreover, as a young man, he is
�7
overhasty in his desire for answers. Maimonides in their meetings has counseled order and restraint.
But now, in 1185, Joseph has had to leave for Syria. Maimonides believes that God has decreed their
separation (4), and this divine decree has, he says, aroused in him a resolution that had slackened: to
write and publish important scriptural and philosophical matters he has learned in his years of study. He
believes that Joseph and those like him can be rescued from perplexity by being led to see that the Bible
is an esoteric work whose deepest teachings are secret. But how does one learn to read an esoteric
text? In order to teach the necessary skills (including the patience that young men lack) Maimonides
resolves to write an esoteric work himself. Indeed, he virtually trumpets the esotericism of his own
treatise while simultaneously proclaiming that it will provide a path to understanding.
So that is the task he sets himself. And here, in short, is how he does it: In the first place he states that
he will not tell his reader everything: that many (and perhaps even the most important) things will be
left unsaid. But he does more: He tells us that of the issues he does cover he will deliberately introduce
topics that are related to each other out of order and only briefly in what he calls “chapter headings.”
But he does yet more: He claims that he will purposely contradict himself, both for pedagogical
purposes and to conceal from the multitude very obscure matters that must remain hidden (18). (Let
me observe in passing that encountering contradictory and contrary [or apparently contradictory or
contrary] statements is a frequent and frustrating experience while reading this book.) And finally, lest
we succumb to the temptation to imagine that Maimonides might have nodded, as Homer is said to
have done in his long epic, he tells us that every word and its placement in the treatise have been
chosen with exquisite care (15). So – what with studied silence, purposeful disorder and intentional
contradiction or contrariety – the text is deliberately difficult. But surely it must be possible to
understand something, providing (as Maimonides keeps reminding us) we always consider the context.
So let us set out on our journey, proceeding slowly and carefully. Maimonides says he will teach his
stupefied student how to read Scripture in two ways. The first way is by showing that the apparently
�8
univocal terms found in the Bible (that is, words that appear to have only a single meaning) may instead
be equivocal (having more than one meaning), or derivative (having a figurative meaning derived from
an original meaning), or amphibolous (which he defines as “at times believed to be univocal and at other
times equivocal”) (5). The second way is by explaining “very obscure parables occurring in the books of
the prophets, but not explicitly identified there as such” (6).
Let us look first at how Maimonides teaches us to read words that have more than one meaning,
beginning with Chapter 1 of Book I. In this chapter Maimonides states that his intent is to “refute the
doctrine of the corporeality of God and to establish His real unity – which can have no true reality unless
one disproves His corporeality” (21). At first glance, refuting that doctrine seems impossible. Everything
about the account of creation as it appears in what Maimonides will call the external meaning of the
text of Scripture is problematic. As the reader of the Guide will learn, he does not accept as simply true
the opinion (for that is what he deems it to be despite its sacred source) that the world was created in
time as Genesis 1: 1 seems to say. And as for the incorporeality of God, problems arise as early as Verse
3, where God creates light by speaking. How can one speak without a body?
These are fundamental difficulties that will be addressed throughout the Guide. But curiously perhaps
(as they appear at the very beginning of the Torah) Maimonides does not begin with either of them.
Instead, he begins his treatise proper with the famously perplexing verse, Genesis I: 26: “Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness.” Maimonides does not censure naïve worshippers of the past,
brought up as idolaters, who inferred from this verse that God had a body. In fact, he says, in order not
to give the lie to the biblical text those worshippers could only understand from it that “God was a body
provided with a face and a hand, like them in shape and configuration” though “bigger and more
resplendent than they themselves, and the matter of which he is composed is not flesh and blood” (21).
But now those who wish to read the Torah correctly must learn that it is precisely the corporeal
�9
interpretation that gives the lie to Scripture because that way of reading sets up a mental image of an
embodied God. And such an image – because it is internal – is even more pernicious than the physical
images called idols. In order to show that this bodily image is not the one intended by Scripture
Maimonides appeals to the language in which the Torah is written. The Hebrew word for image in verse
26 is ṣelem, while that for likeness is demuth. To address the meaning of image, he points out that the
popular Hebrew term for physical shape and configuration is to’ar, used elsewhere in that sense in the
Bible, whereas ṣelem refers (or, at least, may refer) to what he calls the natural form, the specific form:
the soul. This he claims is the true reality of man: namely his intellectual apprehension or reason, which
“is not found in anything else that exists under the sphere of the moon” (23). He points out that the
reason idols are called images is not their shape or configuration but rather the notion of divinity and
power that is deemed to subsist in them and he continues that even if ṣelem may be used in some
contexts to denote physical shape or configuration the term must be regarded as equivocal or
amphibolous.
As for demuth, it signifies “likeness in respect of a notion.” An attentive teacher, Maimonides gives, first,
an easy example of the equivocality of the verb from which demuth is derived, from Psalm 102, verse 7:
“I am like a pelican in the wilderness,” which he says – plausibly enough – no one would take to mean
that the author had wings and feathers. Rather, even those who are not scholars understand this verse
to say that the author’s sadness is like that of the lonely bird. Quoting the verses, Their venom is in the
likeness of a serpent (Psalm 58: 5) and His likeness is that of a lion that is eager to tear in pieces (Psalm
17: 12), Maimonides makes the again unexceptionable point that both verses refer to a “likeness in
respect of a notion and not with respect to a shape and a configuration” (23). Then he gives another
example, less easy to interpret perhaps, as it is taken from Ezekiel’s vision known as The Account of the
Chariot, quoting “the likeness of the throne, the likeness of a throne,” (Ezekiel 1:26), and explaining that
the likeness in this case is in respect of elevation and sublimity, not in the throne’s square shape, its
�10
solidity, and the length of its legs. Finally, he quotes from the same prophetic vision “the likeness of the
living creatures,” referring to the figures Ezekiel saw, saying no more than that a similar explanation
should be applied to that likeness as to the throne. (23). Now, having prepared us to read that puzzling
verse concerning image and likeness, Maimonides at the end of Chapter 1 tells us how it is properly
understood. Here is the paragraph:
Now man possesses as his proprium something in him that is very strange, as it is not found in anything
else that exists under the sphere of the moon, namely intellectual apprehension. In the exercise of this,
no sense, no part of the body, none of the extremities are used; and therefore this apprehension was
likened unto the apprehension of the deity, which does not require an instrument, although in reality it
is not like the latter apprehension, but only appears so to the first stirrings of opinion. It was because of
this something, I mean because of the divine intellect conjoined with man, that it is said of the latter
that he is in the image of God and in His likeness, not that God, may He be exalted, is a body and
possesses a shape (23).
I hope you can begin to appreciate the care and artistry involved in Maimonides’ work. He begins with a
verse from The Account of the Beginning, but not with its very beginning. Rather, he chooses a verse
that is central to his purposes, at once managing both to address the perilous misunderstanding about
God’s corporeality fostered by the external sense of the text and to begin to establish what he calls the
true reality of man. With the example of the likeness to the pelican in the wilderness he calls our
attention to the fact that there is nothing controversial in principle about his claim that words may be
equivocal. In fact, we read figuratively all the time; we just may not be aware that we are doing so. By
the time he rises to the likeness of the throne in the Account of the Chariot we understand that a
figurative interpretation, despite our lack of direct experience with the likeness seen by Ezekiel, is
preferable to a literal one. Indeed, by listing the physical characteristics of a throne – square shape,
�11
solidity and length of its legs – he makes the literal interpretation sound almost as silly as that of a man
with wings and feathers, though he does point out that “wretched people,” – a category that surely
includes, and may in this context even be limited to, the obstinate – do misread in precisely this way.
Now, St. John’s students, having read De anima, will recognize that, without naming Aristotle (who is
first named in Chapter 5 of Book I), Maimonides has incorporated in his scriptural interpretation
Aristotle’s notion of the specific form of the human soul: reason or intellectual apprehension. And St.
John’s students, being careful readers, will also have noticed that this account does not, in fact, claim to
tell us anything true about what it means to say that man was created in the image and likeness of God.
Even granting that Maimonides’ understanding of the human intellect is correct, what does it mean to
say that this apprehension “was likened unto the apprehension of the deity” (and, moreover, only
according to the incorrect first stirrings of opinion) or that because of the divine intellect conjoined with
man “it is said” – by whom? – that man is in the image of God and in His likeness? It is certainly salutary
to say that we are created in the likeness of God because of our intellect, inasmuch as that
interpretation turns our internal gaze away from the pernicious image of God’s big shining body. But
Maimonides himself has not said that this is true, and a mere report does not make it so. Clearly, there
is more work to do.
For 33 more chapters – most of which are devoted to pointing out the equivocality or derivative
character of numerous terms in the Bible – Maimonides sets the question of God’s corporeality aside,
while continuing to lay the foundation for its denial. But in Chapter 35 of Book I he returns explicitly to
the issue, stating outright that every believer must deny to God both corporeality and affections.
Whether achieved through philosophical knowledge or as an article of faith, the denial of corporeality to
God is unquestionable, for if God is a body he must be divisible and finite and such a god cannot be true
unity. But the consequence of God’s incorporeality and concomitant lack of affections seems to be
�12
insuperable distance between us and him, for it leads to the realization that “there is absolutely no
likeness in any respect whatever between Him [that is, God] and the things created by Him; that His
existence has no likeness to theirs; nor His life to the life of those among them who are alive; nor again
His knowledge to the knowledge of those among them who are endowed with knowledge” (79-80). In
short, by I.35 we have learned that the “likeness” we see in Genesis 1: 26 cannot remotely mean
anything normally conveyed by that word. So where do we go from here?
One might at this point step back and ask – given our apparently definitive separation from God – what
evidence we have outside the assertions of the Torah that there even is a god. Maimonides does not
consider the question of God’s existence to be particularly difficult. To help us understand it, he tells a
tale about the ruler of a country. If you wish to make the existence of a ruler known to one of the
people of his country, who does not know him, you can draw that person’s attention to the ruler’s
existence in many different ways. You might appeal to accidents and say, for example, that the ruler is a
tall individual, white in color and gray-haired. Or you might say that he is the one you see from afar
surrounded by a great company of riders saluting him with banners, drawn swords and trumpets. Or
that he resides in a castle in a certain city or that he ordered a particular wall or bridge to be built or
other similar actions. Or you might indicate his existence through circumstances of what Maimonides
calls a more hidden nature. For example, if someone asks you whether the country has a ruler your
answer might be yes, and you would offer as proof that a big, strong, poor man does not take the wealth
of a weak, small, rich man. This example provides evidence that life in the country proceeds in an
orderly fashion because of fear of the unseen ruler (98-99).
Indeed, to reach the conclusion that God exists, you do not need the Bible, for, by analogy to the wellordered country, the orderliness of the natural world points to that existence. Nature itself, properly
understood (that is, in an Aristotelian and not in an Epicurean sense) shows that the world is a cosmos
�13
and not a haphazard heap of chance happenings, and that is no small thing. But nothing we can say
about that ruler gives us what Maimonides calls “an indication of the ruler’s essence and of the true
reality of his substance in respect of his being a ruler” (98). So we have made some progress, but those
who seek to know God cannot be satisfied with knowing simply that He exists. We also want to know
his essence and, ultimately, his likeness to us, which, despite Genesis 1: 26, seems now to have been
categorically denied. How, then, to get at that essence and that likeness? Appealing to descriptions of
God given in the Bible might seem to be a promising path. The books of the prophets and the Torah
itself shower God with attributes: he is jealous, he is merciful; he has a voice, a finger, etc. But, as the
one thing we now know about God through both philosophy and correct reading of the holy text is that
he is not a body, no attribute can indicate what Maimonides calls his true reality. Therefore, despite
perhaps being useful to encourage obedience and good behavior, none of them provides a path toward
knowledge of God. So we are left in ignorance, which might be bad enough, but, in truth, the situation
is far worse. Maimonides tells us that – in addition to presumptuously assuming that human traits can
meaningfully be applied to the deity at all – applying even one attribute to God violates his unity by
attributing multiplicity to him. From this it follows that the more attributes you apply to him the farther
you get from him. Consequently, anyone who affirms that God has positive attributes actually recedes
from him to the point that, in mounting attribute upon attribute, he “has abolished his belief in the
existence of the deity without being aware of it” (145). What one might have thought was the positive
way toward knowing God, then, turns out to be the way of infidelity. So that cannot be the right path.
But perhaps there is another way; as the positive way leads in exactly the wrong direction, let us turn
around and try going in the opposite direction: let us follow the negative way. According to this
approach, God cannot be defined; God has no attribute; God has no quality; God has no relation to time
or place or created things; though the Torah calls him jealous and avenging and keeping anger and
wrathful, in truth he suffers no passions (126), and so on. Indeed, Maimonides says, the more attributes
�14
you negate of God, the closer you get to him. The negative way, then, has the considerable advantage
over the positive way of making no heretical assertions about something we cannot know. But
negation, by its nature, cannot lead to knowledge of anything (136-7), so it certainly cannot help us with
what we are trying to learn. As there seems to be no way to understand what was said back in Chapter
1 of Book I about any relation between us and God, Maimonides quotes Psalm 65: “Silence is praise to
thee” (139).
I would like to observe here, for those of you who have not read the Guide, that Maimonides does not
fall silent at this point. The particular path I have taken to reach his conclusion that we cannot know God
is not the only possible one, but whatever path you follow, by the time you read the first of his several
exhortations to silence in the presence of wonder, in Chapter 50 (112), you have not completed even
Book I, which consists of 76 chapters, and is followed by two more books: the second with 48 chapters
and the third with 54. Here is a partial list of the topics he covers after counseling reverent silence: In
the rest of Book I he treats the names of God, the Sabians (the ancient pagans) and the defective
arguments of the Islamic philosopher-theologians for the existence of God based on creation of the
world in time. In Book II he examines Aristotle’s understanding of the heavens, showing it to be flawed;
he points out the philosophers’ inability to demonstrate the eternity of the world; he discusses angels;
the nature of proof; the danger of doubt; prophecy; The Account of the Beginning; miracles; the Sabbath
and the Gathering at Sinai. In Book III he treats The Account of the Chariot, matter and corruption,
providence, the nature and purpose of the Mosaic Law, the foundations of the Torah, the mysteries of
the Torah (though, of course, he doesn’t tell us what they are), and finally God’s purpose on earth.
So let us not fall silent either. There seem to be two more ways of pursuing the question of God’s
essence and our possible conjunction with the divine. One is philosophical, the other scriptural, though,
as you will see, the two will converge.
�15
In brief, a philosophical argument, whose summary you might recognize from Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Book Λ.7 and 9 is this: Maimonides begins Chapter 68 of Book I by stating what he calls the generally
accepted dictum of the philosophers: “that He [God] is the intellect as well as the intellectually cognizing
subject and the intellectually cognized object, and that those three notions form in Him, may He be
exalted (notice the un-Aristotelian praise!), one single notion in which there is no multiplicity” (163).
Now man, too, as a creature possessing intellect, is capable of intellectually cognizing a thing, though,
unlike God, who is intellect in actu (that is, always active), man is only potentially a cognizing subject.
When a person cognizes something, however – say, a piece of wood (this is Maimonides’ example) – by
stripping its form of its matter, he becomes temporarily an intellectually cognizing subject in actu. And
as long as he is engaged in the activity of cognizing, his intellect is identical with the essence of intellect.
Finally, to complete the analogy, Maimonides states that, as its act is identical with its essence, the
intellect temporarily in actu is also temporarily identical with the intellectually cognized thing, in this
case the pure form of the wood. So for a moment man is Godlike inasmuch as he is simultaneously
intellect, intellectually cognizing subject and intellectually cognized object. Now that was a pretty dense
passage, but it also (I believe) calls our attention to another rhetorical tactic that Maimonides uses to
reinforce his arguments, that is, word play, which in this passage is apparent even to those of us who are
reading the Guide in translation (at least to those of us who know a little Greek). For he goes on to
characterize man’s embodied intellect as hylic, using not the normal Arabic word for material but rather
a word used by the Islamic philosophers and derived from the Greek ὕλη, whose original meaning (as I’m
sure you know) was “wood.” So, with a wink and a nod to his philosophically sophisticated readers, the
woody intellect becomes one with wood! But suppose we turn that material intellect away from
material things and toward the divine. As Maimonides says at the end of the chapter, speaking now of
the essence of God: “Thus His essence is the intellectually cognizing subject, the intellectually cognized
object, and the intellect, as is also necessarily the case with regard to every intellect in actu” (166). In
�16
agreement with the philosophers, then, we can turn away from our material selves and share the
essence of the divine, however briefly, if we direct our intellect toward divinity.
This seems promising but there still must be something missing, because Maimonides does not stop
here, either. To find that missing thing we have to turn to the Bible, specifically to the second of his
biblical concerns: the parables. So first, let us ask ourselves what a parable is; second, how we recognize
that a story is one, given that the Bible does not always identify a parable as such; and, third, how,
having determined that a story is a parable, we should go about interpreting it.
As to the first question, adopting the imagery of Proverbs 25: 11 and an unnamed sage Maimonides
gives us a venerable and lovely simile for a saying that has two meanings. Such a saying, he tells us, “is
like an apple of gold overlaid with silver filigree-work having very small holes“ (12). A parable, he
explains, like an equivocal or amphibolous word, has an external and an internal meaning. Its external
meaning ought to be as beautiful and precious as silver while its still more beautiful and precious
internal meaning ought to be as gold to the silver that encases it. Applied to the parables of the
prophets this simile can be interpreted as teaching that “their external meaning contains wisdom that is
useful in many respects, among which is the welfare of human societies, as is shown by the external
meanings of Proverbs and of similar sayings. Their internal meaning, on the other hand, contains
wisdom that is useful for beliefs concerned with the truth as it is” (12).
It is, of course, crucial to the simile that the golden apple inside the silver filigree, though difficult to see,
not be completely sealed off. From a distance, Maimonides tells us, the piece appears to be simply of
silver; but a keen-sighted observer, looking closely, will perceive the tiny holes. That is, the external
meaning of the parable will contain in it something that indicates to someone contemplating it with care
what is to be found in its interior. Maimonides will help us learn to see past the silver filigree, but even if
we can recognize that a story is a parable, we still have the problem of knowing how to interpret it.
�17
Fortunately, in the introduction to the work, Maimonides has given us a clue about the interpretation of
parables, though, not surprisingly, he doesn’t do all the work for us. Parables are of two sorts, he tells
us: those (like Jacob’s ladder) in which you should interpret every detail and those (like Solomon’s
parable of the married harlot in Proverbs 7:6-23) whose single teaching – that “all the hindrances
keeping man from his ultimate perfection, every deficiency affecting him and every disobedience, come
to him from his matter alone” (13) – does not depend on the details as they all point to that teaching. In
short, even within parables there are different sorts of speech, some of it meaningful and some not.
Part of the work of interpretation is to determine which is which. Let us see how Maimonides goes
about that work.
I will say nothing more about The Account of the Beginning and The Account of the Chariot than that
Maimonides considers both of them to be parabolic and that he gives a partial interpretation of each
(The Account of the Beginning in II.30 and The Account of the Chariot in III.1-7). But after his
interpretation of The Account of the Chariot, in the beginning of Book III, which is arguably the
culmination of the journey upward toward divine truth, we are suddenly plunged back down into the
miasma of matter, the world of uncertainty at best and calamity at worst. In the context of our painful
doubt Maimonides turns to the story of Job and the trial of Abraham, both of which he considers
parables.
Maimonides devotes Chapters 22 and 23 of Book III to the Book of Job, a story he calls extraordinary and
marvelous (486). The sages disagree, he says, about whether Job himself existed or not, but everyone
“endowed with intellect” agrees that the prologue relating Satan’s conversation with God in heaven is a
parable. He points out that the name of Job’s country, Uṣ, is equivocal and suggestive, as it can be both
the name of an individual and the imperative of a Hebrew verb meaning to reflect and meditate. It is,
he says, as if Scripture itself exhorts us to meditate on the parable. Choosing to obey that perceived
�18
exhortation, Maimonides will interpret the story, an activity that he claims will banish the considerable
doubts and perplexity it inevitably raises for the serious reader. After a fairly detailed interpretation of
the prologue he turns to the story itself, pointing out its significant features. First, Job and his friends do
not know (as we readers do) that the agent at work is not God, but Satan, whom Maimonides identifies
with the angel of death and, more prosaically, the imagination, which, in turn, he calls the evil
inclination (490). Moreover, the misfortunes Job suffers are graduated according to the various
circumstances of people – loss of fortune, death of children, physical pain – so that, whether or not they
ever happened to a man called Job, they are pertinent to us all. Finally – and this is what Maimonides
says is the most marvelous and extraordinary thing about this story – knowledge is not attributed to Job,
and Maimonides has already said in I.54 that God’s “favor and wrath, His nearness and remoteness
correspond to the extent of a man’s knowledge or ignorance” (124). Job is morally virtuous and
righteous but he is not called wise, comprehending, or intelligent. Maimonides continues to interpret
the story by considering the discourse of Job and his three friends in which they express opinions that
correspond to four known opinions about providence. Job’s initial opinion he identifies with that of
Aristotle, that of Eliphaz with that of the Mosaic Law, and those of Bildad and Zophar with the opinions
of two Muslim sects. And all of them he says are mistaken. Only Elihu, distinguished in the story as both
the youngest and the wisest, is correct. Maimonides summarizes his opinion, telling us that the Book of
Job as a whole calls our attention to the inference to be drawn from natural matters, “so that you
should not fall into error and seek to affirm in your imagination that God’s knowledge is like our
knowledge or that His purpose and His providence and His governance are like our purpose and our
providence and our governance. If a man knows this, every misfortune will be borne lightly by him. And
misfortunes will not add to his doubts regarding the deity and whether He does or does not know and
whether He exercises providence or manifests neglect, but will, on the contrary, add to his [that is, the
person’s] love, as is said in the conclusion of the prophetic revelation in question: Wherefore I abhor
�19
myself, and repent of dust and ashes. As [the Sages], may their memory be blessed, have said: Those
who do out of love and are joyful in sufferings” (497). Maimonides ends his interpretation by telling us
(punning on the name of Job’s country) that if we meditate on this parable, its truth will become clear.
So the story of Job is a parabolic version of the incommensurability between God and human beings that
we have encountered before, but, in this prophetic revelation attained through speculation regarding
natural science (493 and 496), Job’s recognition that God’s knowledge, purpose, providence and
governance are nothing like ours leads not to sorrowful resignation but to love and joy in sufferings.
Now, this interpretation was more surprising to me than it would have been to Maimonides’ intended
readers. For they would have been familiar with the words he quotes of the sages, while I knew only the
biblical account. And the Bible verse Maimonides cites does not mention love. But even if the notion
that love is Job’s response to understanding stems from a long tradition, its appearance here is
remarkable, as love has hardly appeared in the Guide until now. To be sure, Maimonides mentioned in
Book I, Chapter 39 that love is associated with the heart (the word he was interpreting in that chapter)
and he has several times cited injunctions from the Torah to love God. But under Job’s circumstances
(which, remember, are the circumstances of us all), expecting him to love God because he was told to do
so would be futile, not to say cruel. In order to truly love he had to move beyond simple acceptance of
traditional authority and become wise.
The next four times that love is mentioned occur in the next chapter (III.24), whose subject is Abraham’s
binding of Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Now, Maimonides does not question whether Abraham existed or not,
but he does interpret the story of the binding as a parable. He knows the story is a parable (he tells us)
because – despite the fact that the Torah mentions trials in six passages of which the binding is merely
the most difficult – God, as he understands him, simply cannot require a trial to discover whether
anyone fears or loves him. For Maimonides the true reality of the parable consists in two “great notions
that are fundamental principles of the Law,” both of them models for the community (500). The first is
�20
that the extent of Abraham’s devotion is intended to teach the limit that the fear and the love of God
must reach. For Abraham, he tells us, carries out God’s will in the carefully considered spirit of both fear
and love (500-501). The other is “making known to us the fact that the prophets consider as true that
which comes to them from God in a prophetic revelation” (501). For Abraham would not have hastened
to perform a deed so extraordinary, Maimonides writes, that one would not imagine human nature
capable of it, if he had had the slightest doubt about the source of the terrible request. So this story has
both an external and an internal meaning, and is therefore a parable, though the Torah does not identify
it as such. Indeed, its external meaning is beautiful only if you can see through it to the gold inside. For
if you can’t, you risk believing that God is so ignorant that he must test even his most devoted follower
to discover if he truly fears and loves him. Maimonides considers this the evil belief of ignorant fools
(502).
But we have seen that the protagonist of Job’s story could have been anyone; in this respect the parable
of the binding is different. Maimonides writes: “In truth it was fitting that this story, I mean the binding,
should come to pass through the hand of Abraham and in regard to someone like Isaac.” And here is
the reason: “For Abraham our Father was the first to make known the belief in Unity, to establish
prophecy, and to perpetuate this opinion and draw people to it” (502). Like Job, Abraham was morally
upright and virtuous; unlike him, he was wise, comprehending and intelligent. In Maimonides’
estimation, following long Jewish tradition, Abraham was not simply Abram, son of Terah, who had
sufficient faith to leave his home country and set off for a strange land at God’s sudden bidding and
promise that he would make his descendants a great nation (Genesis 12: 1-4). He was instead an exile
from his home country because, despite having been brought up among pagans (as the original belief in
monotheism had been lost), after a prophetic revelation (515), he realized and began to teach that there
is only one God. Maimonides saw Abraham as a knower, a philosopher, and a link in a tradition of
speculative knowledge of God – repeatedly lost and rediscovered over many centuries – that began with
�21
Adam and culminated with Moses. The characteristics that make Abraham a fitting protagonist for the
story of the binding – in particular his knowledge combined with his fear and love of God (as in the story
of Job, not named in the biblical text, which mentions only fear) – are what make the parable deeply
true. To recognize the true reality of this parable, like that of the parable of Job, means to realize that
with knowledge of God come not only trust but also love of him.
There is one more chapter concerning love and that is Chapter 51 of Book III, which Maimonides calls a
kind of conclusion (618), though three chapters remain before the end of the book. The chapter begins
with another parable of a ruler followed by its interpretation. This one is unlike the first one I recounted
for you in two respects. One is that we are no longer in the country distant from the ruler’s palace, but,
rather, in the city, close enough to see and even to enter the palace if we choose to do so. The other is
that, while fear and awe remain – for the ruler, though closer now, is the ruler after all, and (as we have
learned) utterly unlike us – love has entered the city. There was a detail from the earlier parable of the
ruler that I did not relate fully when recounting it, and this is it: To exemplify the hidden and most telling
proof of the ruler’s existence, Maimonides writes of the encounter between the rich money-changer
and the poor man: “This proof is to be found in the fact that while this money-changer is, as you see, a
weak and small man and this great amount of dinars is placed before him, this other big, strong, and
poor individual is standing in front of him and asking him to give him as alms a carob-grain and that the
money-changer does not do this, but reprimands him and drives him off by means of words. For, but for
his fear of the ruler, the poor man would have been quick to kill him or to drive him away and to take
the wealth that is in his possession” (97). When I saw this example I thought, “This is cruel and vicious.
Maimonides can’t have meant it!” But of course he did. For that was a dismal, albeit orderly, country
ruled by fear alone, in which the true God and, therefore, charity, had no place. In the intervening
chapters we have come on a long journey, up the mountain to Sinai and Ezekiel’s prophetic vision. Back
down on earth we have read Maimonides’ explanation of the wisdom behind the 613 commandments
�22
given in the Torah, observance of which he says perfects (indeed heals!) both our bodies and our souls.
Not everyone will choose to enter the ruler’s palace, but those who are prepared may reach even its
inner chambers. You will not be surprised by Maimonides’ description of what it means to enter. The
one, he writes, who “has achieved demonstration, to the extent that it is possible, of everything that
may be demonstrated; and who has ascertained in divine matters, to the extent that that is possible,
everything that may be ascertained; and who has come close to certainty in those matters in which one
can only come close to it – has come to be with the ruler in the inner part of the habitation” (619).
And this brings Maimonides – and us – back to the notion of human intellect conjoined with the divine.
True worship, he tells us, is not following a mere imagining or the authority of somebody else. “If,” he
says, “you have apprehended God and His acts in accordance with what is required by the intellect, you
should afterwards engage in totally devoting yourself to Him, endeavor to come closer to Him, and
strengthen the bond between you and Him – that is, the intellect” (620). Our intellect is now called the
bond between God and us. But how strong that bond will be is up to us; we, not God, are the ones who
will determine its strength by the direction in which we turn. And that bond will involve the heart as
well as the intellect, for love, not mentioned in Book I Chapter 1, is now present and is proportional to
intellectual apprehension (621). Maimonides has told us earlier that Moses’ apprehension of God was
like that of no other. In Chapter 51 of Book III he tells us that Moses, followed closely by Miriam and
Aaron, achieved the highest form of passionate love, as tradition tells us that all three siblings died by
God’s kiss, or, in Maimonides’ interpretation of the metaphor, “in the pleasure of this apprehension due
to the intensity of passionate love” (628). As for the rest of us, even if no one else will ever reach that
degree of apprehension and love, anyone can work, joyfully, to attain the highest understanding that is
possible for him or her, hoping to reach, at the moment of death, a “condition of enduring permanence,
[in which] that intellect remains in one and the same state, the impediment that sometimes screened
him off having been removed. And he will remain permanently in that state of intense pleasure, which
�23
does not belong to the genus of bodily pleasures” (628). Superseding corporeality, if only at the
moment of death, this person will achieve true intellectual pleasure and the permanence that is divine.
In the three chapters that remain of the treatise Maimonides returns to the activity with which he
began, interpreting the meaning of three terms applied in the Bible to God because of his perceived
actions – loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness – and speaking of the four senses in which the
term wisdom is used, culminating with the human intellect, whose excellence will, in a metaphor often
used in the treatise, necessarily overflow into worldly actions. He ends the body of the treatise with the
following passage: “It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired
by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him, may He be
exalted, and who knows His providence extending over His creatures as manifested in the act of bringing
them into being and in their governance as it is. The way of life of such an individual, after he has
achieved this apprehension, will always have in view loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgment,
through assimilation to His actions, may He be exalted, just as we have explained several times in this
Treatise” (638). These words read like a description of what Maimonides himself might have hoped to
attain as a scholar, a teacher and a man, and what he might have hoped for his gifted pupil. They sound
a ringing affirmation of the height of human excellence both intellectual and moral, which can be seen in
the individual whose decision to turn toward the divine is manifested in the world by the lovingkindness, judgment and righteous actions that necessarily flow from that decision. This person is,
indeed, the living image and likeness of God.
If the Guide were a normal book it would end here. But it isn’t and it doesn’t. In an echo of the Epistle
Dedicatory Maimonides follows the above statement with a direct address to Joseph and those like him:
This is the extent of what I thought fit that we should set down in this Treatise; it is a part of what I
consider very useful to those like you. I hope for you that through sufficient reflection you will grasp all
�24
the intentions I have included therein, with the help of God, may He be exalted; and that He will grant us
and all [the people of] Israel, being fellows, that which He has promised us: Then the eyes of the blind
shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light; they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
AMEN
God is very near to everyone who calls,
If he calls truly and has no distractions;
He is found by every seeker who searches for Him,
If he marches toward Him and goes not astray.
Remember, the words in italics are in Hebrew in the original; you will perhaps recognize the quotes from
the book of Isaiah. The Guide of the Perplexed is a long and dauntingly complex work and yet, its author
writes on its final page, it contains only “the extent of what I thought fit that we should set down in the
Treatise” and “a part of what I consider very useful to those like you,” followed by the hope expressed
that “through sufficient reflection” (and with God’s help) “you will grasp all the intentions I have
included therein” (638). It is as if only now at the end of the treatise is the reader ready to begin the
real work, and that is to understand what has not been said, to read the silence as well as the speech.
Maimonides has never claimed to know all the secrets of the Torah; in fact, he has said more than once
that he does not know everything. But he does claim to know more than he is telling and he is telling us
here that we too can know more if we proceed properly. For all that he has told us about the Bible and
its relationship to the Greek philosophical tradition – and he has told us quite a lot – he has only hinted
at the most significant of the secrets the perplexed person must know in order to reach peace and rest
�25
and safety. His last words to attentive readers exhort us to go back and read between the lines. This is
not bad advice for any worthy book!
*****
This lecture was delivered in Annapolis in January and in Santa Fe in December of 2016. It was
supported by slides, which I have either omitted or incorporated into the text. At the end of the lecture
I showed a slide from a copy of the Guide located in the National Library of Israel. Its left-hand page is
the penultimate page of that book, analogous to the last page of our translation, with an added prayer
in Aramaic. The poem of the translation and some other material are on the final page. If you care to
consult it, you can find it in the World Digital Library.
�
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
19 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
Learning to Read Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 29, 2016 by Judy Seeger as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Seeger, Judith Leland, 1944-
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
2016-01-29
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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 83855
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/720">Audio recording</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/afafcd406850a069e61f61d5d33b41d4.pdf
d7c40006c132fc4e2aacaed7da7b6d60
PDF Text
Text
������������������
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
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
18 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
Toqueville's American Odyssey
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on July 1, 2015 by Steven Crockett as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.<br /><br /><span>Mr. Crockett is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. His talk centers on the year of Tocqueville's journey to and in America that would become the foundation for his work <em>Democracy in America</em>. His talk looks at letters, reflections, and memorabilia from the young Tocqueville who at that time was only 25-26. It explores his initial reactions and how those would mature into his later works and related to events happening back in France.</span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Crockett, 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
2015-07-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
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
Bib # 83173
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/272">Audio recording</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. De la démocratie en Amérique.
United States
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. Correspondence. Selections
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2fb229095aeff924b83e5b571bb603d5.pdf
803664a11eb8c359b4b0d4ff3b6432c2
PDF Text
Text
The Very Pictures of Education: On Rousseau’s Illustrations in Emile
Do great books need pictures?
This question arises once we notice that some great books have pictures, while others do
not. Once printing began to spread through Europe, in the sixteenth century, great books began
to appear with engravings, called frontispieces, placed at their beginnings. Francis Bacon’s
Great Instauration (1620) [Slide 1],1 whose frontispiece depicts two ships passing beyond the
Pillars of Hercules – that is, the Strait of Gibraltar – in search of a new world; Thomas Hobbes’s
Leviathan (1651) [Slide 2], whose frontispiece depicts the incorporation of the body politic, the
sovereign, from the bodies of its subjects; and Giambattista Vico’s New Science (1725) [Slide 3],
whose frontispiece depicts a collection of objects of allegorical significance, meant to help the
reader’s memory of the idea of the work [NS 1]2 are three famous seventeenth and eighteenthcentury examples. But by the nineteenth century, the use of frontispieces seems to have ended,
although the technology needed to include them remained available. Some authors of great
books seem to have chosen not to include pictures, then, though it was possible for them to do
so.
This historical record tempts us to dismiss the use of pictures as a fashion in printing.
But our question – do great books need pictures? – recurs from another, more serious,
perspective. Ever since Plato’s Socrates raised, in the Phaedrus, the possibility that a piece of
writing could be composed according to “some necessity” that dictates the order of its parts and
their suitability “to each other and to the whole” [264b-c],3 we have been reminded to ask
whether the author of a great book can give an account of the reason for its parts, according to
this principle of logographic necessity. From the perspective of this principle, then, the
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 2
difference between those authors who could have added pictures to their great books and did, and
those authors who could have but did not, looks like evidence not of a historical fad, but of a
disagreement over whether great books need pictures. This disagreement concerns us, as readers
of great books, not least because their contemporary publishers sometimes disagree with their
authors about the need for their pictures, and omit them from their editions, without notice.
Tonight I mean to consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s answer to this question – ‘do great
books need pictures?’ – by examining some of the pictures Rousseau provided for his great
books. Each of the three books that Rousseau says make up his “system,” the Discourse on the
Sciences and the Arts (1750), the Discourse on Inequality (1754), and Emile (1762) [CW 5:575]4
has a frontispiece; Emile also has four additional illustrations, so that it has five in total: as many
pictures as books. Rousseau also commissioned twelve illustrations for Julie, his epistolary
novel.5 In each case, moreover, there is evidence that the pictures are, in an important sense,
Rousseau’s. Apprenticed unhappily as an engraver in his youth [CW 5:26-37], Rousseau
corresponded extensively with the artists who worked on his illustrations; and while these letters
have been lost, we do have letters to others in which Rousseau indicates the attention he devoted
to the pictures for his books. Lamenting his publisher’s difficulties with the engravings for Julie,
for example, Rousseau writes,
the details into which I entered were not the sort to be carried out to the letter. It
is not what the designer must draw, but what he must know so as to make his
work conform to them as much as possible. Everything that I have described
must be in his head in order to put in his engraving everything that can be
admitted there and to put nothing contrary [CC 4:408; translation mine].6
Despite this evidence of Rousseau’s care in instructing his artists, publishers of his works have
not scrupled to omit his illustrations from their editions – sometimes even along with passages
that mention them – presumably because they consider them unnecessary adornments of
Rousseau’s books.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 3
This lecture will have eight parts. In the first two, I will briefly examine the frontispieces
to the First and Second Discourses, considering them as preparations for Rousseau’s illustrations
in Emile. In the next five sections, I will briefly consider in turn each of these illustrations,
reading them first in themselves, then in the light of his explication of each, then in the light of
their mythological sources, and lastly in the light of their relation to the argument of Emile.
Finally, in the eighth and longest part, I will sketch what I take to be Rousseau’s answer to our
question – do great books need pictures? – with reference to his brief discussion in Emile of what
he calls the language of signs, and his fuller explanation of this language in the Essay on the
Origin of Languages.
Part One: Prometheus, or the Failed Frontispiece?
Rousseau’s literary fame dates from the publication of his First Discourse, his anonymous entry
into the Academy of Dijon’s prize competition, in which the academy asked whether the
restoration of the sciences and the arts has contributed to the purification of morals [FD 3;
compare 5]. In the Discourse Rousseau argues that, to the contrary, scientific and artistic
progress causes moral corruption [FD 9]. Rousseau’s use of illustrations in his works also dates
from the publication of the First Discourse, whose printed version was accompanied by a
frontispiece. Across from the work’s title page is an engraving of three figures in an outdoor
setting, with some vegetation in the foreground, and perhaps a mountain in the background
[Slide 4]. The leftmost figure is a muscular, bearded male, naked except for a cloak draped over
his shoulder. He holds a torch in his right hand, the flame of which strangely seems to burn
horizontally, rather than vertically. His left hand rests on the central figure’s shoulder;
otherwise, the leftmost figure seems to hover in midair, straddling a billowing cloud. He gazes
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 4
intently at the other figures in the scene. The central figure is another male, more slightly built
than the first, and wholly naked. He stands on a block, in a statuesque pose, with both hands
open, their palms visible. He could be looking rapturously at the face of the leftmost figure, or at
the torch that he holds. Lastly, though he is partly obscured by shadow, we see enough of the
rightmost figure to conclude that he is not fully human: he has horns and cloven hooves. A cloak
worn over his right shoulder partly covers his nakedness, and we can make out pan pipes slung
over the same shoulder. Of the three figures in the scene, the rightmost is the only one to have at
least one limb on the ground. His left hand is raised, palm upward, in an expressive gesture,
while his right hand is concealed behind the central figure, into whom he leans. He gazes avidly
at one or both of his companions, or perhaps at the torch in the leftmost figure’s hand.
This frontispiece also features a caption: “Satyr, you do not know it. See note page 31”
[FD 2]. It directs us to the center of the First Discourse, to the beginning of Part Two of the
work, to a footnote to Rousseau’s claim that, according to an ancient Egyptian tradition, the
sciences were invented by “a god inimical to men’s repose” [FD 16]. The footnote compares
this Egyptian myth about the god Theuth to the Greek myth about Prometheus, and points out
that both peoples regarded their divine benefactors with disfavor. “‘The satyr,’” Rousseau
quotes from an ancient fable, “‘wanted to kiss and embrace fire the first time he saw it but
Prometheus cried out to him: “Satyr, you will weep the loss of the beard on your chin, for it
burns when you touch it.”’ This is the subject of the frontispiece” [FD 16 n *]. It is not hard to
find the satyr among the figures in the illustration. But which is Prometheus? He could be the
leftmost figure, who bears a lit torch and hovers in the air like a god. But then who is the third
man?
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 5
Six years after the publication of the Discourse, Rousseau judged its frontispiece to be
“very bad” [CC 4:408]. It was certainly not understood by all of the Discourse’s readers. One of
them, Claude-Nicolas Lecat, wrote an anonymous Refutation of the work, in which he claims
that the central figure in the illustration is man, “naked and leaving the hands of Prometheus, of
nature.” The satyr, he maliciously continued, is Rousseau himself, ignorantly admiring the
image of natural man, which image is about to be burnt to ash by Prometheus’ fire [CW 2:156].
This tendentious interpretation provoked Rousseau’s retort that he would treat his readers “like
children,” and interpret for them the “clear allegory” of the illustration. “Prometheus’ torch,” he
says in the Letter to Lecat, “is that of the sciences, created to inspire great geniuses.” “[T]he
Satyr who, seeing fire for the first time, runs to it and wants to embrace it, represents common
men, seduced by the brilliance of letters, who surrender indiscreetly to study.”7 And
“Prometheus who cries out and warns them of the danger is the Citizen of Geneva” – that is,
Rousseau himself [CW 2:179].
Rousseau’s insistence on the clarity of his allegory should not make us forget that he still
only identifies two of the three figures in the frontispiece: Prometheus-Rousseau, the leftmost
figure, is known by his torch, while the satyr-common man, the rightmost figure who reaches for
Prometheus’ torch, is known by his shape. Again, who is the third man? We can make an
educated guess with the assistance of the illustration’s caption. The phrase “fire burns when one
touches it” [CW 2:12 n *] comes from Plutarch’s essay “How to profit by one’s enemies,” where
it is followed immediately by this qualification: “yet it furnishes light and heat, and is an
instrument of every craft for those who have learned to use it” [II.9].8 If Rousseau’s studied
omission of this sequel has the same cause as his studied silence about the identity of the third
man in the illustration, then it seems likely that this third man must be a “great genius,” whom
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 6
Prometheus’ torch was made to enlighten. In particular, it seems likely that this man must be the
great genius whose enlightenment leads him to keep enlightenment from the common people,
lest scientific and artistic progress corrupt their morals – namely, Rousseau himself. In the
frontispiece to the First Discourse, then, we see the first example of Rousseau doubling himself
in an image. Soon we will see another example of this practice in one of the illustrations in
Emile.
Years after the publication of the First Discourse, Rousseau complained in the Letter to
Beaumont that none of his adversaries had been able to understand his distinction between the
suitability of enlightenment for individuals, and its dangerousness for peoples – though he
always drew this distinction with care [OC 4:967]. We might blame precisely Rousseau’s care in
drawing this distinction for his adversaries’ failure to notice it. As we saw, Rousseau compares
Prometheus with the Egyptian god Theuth, who is mentioned in the discussion of the
“seemliness and unseemliness of writing” in Plato’s Phaedrus as the inventor of written letters,
among other sciences [275c-276c]. In this discussion, the question arises whether a piece of
writing can have the power to defend itself, by knowing how “to speak and keep silence toward
those it ought” [276a]. By trying, with the frontispiece to the First Discourse, to speak
differently to different readers, Rousseau seems to have spoken unclearly. But he would soon
have a second chance.
Part Two: The Hottentot, or the Literal Frontispiece
Four years later, Rousseau published his Second Discourse, a work that seeks to uncover man’s
original condition, and to describe the history of his development from this original condition to
his present state. Once again, Rousseau furnished this writing with a captioned frontispiece,
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 7
located across from its title page [Slide 5]. Again, the setting is outdoors, with vegetation in the
foreground and, this time, the ocean in the distance. But this frontispiece features a stark visual
and thematic division, cutting down the middle and through its principal figure. To his left we
see a group of five adult males, wearing broad-brimmed, feathered hats, with elegant clothes and
tasseled shoes. Four of them are standing, apparently disputing with one another: two have their
hands raised in animated gestures. The fifth man, perhaps their leader, sits on an ornate box.
One of his hands is raised to his face is a gesture familiar from our classes: the gesture of
pondering, or perhaps of duplicity. Behind this group, a crenellated keep rises, with two
machicolated bartizans. Over this left side of the image hang dark clouds, casting their shadows
on the keep and the ground below. To the right of the principal figure, by contrast, we see two
rows of low huts, set on a beach that slopes gently to the water. In front of the closer row of
huts, we can just make out five or six dark-skinned figures. Behind these huts, on the water, five
or six ships are moving under sail, their pennants streaming in the wind. Over this right side of
the image, the clouds are lighter, the sky brighter, and birds fly in the distance.
The principal figure stands between the two halves of this scene. He is a dark-skinned
male, wearing fur breeches, a necklace, and a sword at his hip. A bundle of fabric lies in the
foreground; peeking out from it is a broad-brimmed feathered hat like those worn by the other
men. While looking down at the leader of the group to his right, the central figure gestures with
his left hand at the huts on the beach or the ships on the water, and with his right at the bundle at
his feet. While his left foot is planted on the ground, his right heel is lifted, as if he were about to
take a step.
The caption to this illustration reads, “[h]e returns among [chez] his equals. See Note 13,
page 259” [SD 112; I have altered the translation]. Turning there, we find Rousseau observing
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 8
that despite every effort by Europeans, no savage has ever been won over to the European
religion and way of life. Anticipating the objection that this is due not to the superiority of the
savage life, but to their habitual attachment to it, which makes them insensible to the advantages
of the European way, he quotes at length from a traveler’s tale by Peter Kolben. The Dutch
governor of the Cape of Good Hope took an infant Hottentot, and had him raised in the European
religion and way of life. After he had been educated and had traveled, this Hottentot returned to
the Cape, and soon decided to visit his relatives. During this visit, he discarded his European
clothes and dressed himself in a sheepskin; he then returned to the Dutch fort, carrying his
former outfit, and told the Governor the following (and here Rousseau tells us to see the
frontispiece):
[b]e so good, Sir, as to note that I forever renounce these trappings. I also
renounce the Christian Religion for the rest of my life; my resolution is to live and
die in the Religion, the ways, and the customs of my Ancestors. The one favor I
ask of you is to leave me the Necklace and the Cutlass I am wearing. I shall keep
them for love of you [SD 220-221].
Then, without waiting for a reply, the Hottentot ran off, never to be seen in the Cape again.
The footnote containing this story is connected to a passage in the main text of the
Discourse, where Rousseau asserts that the savage state, “occupying a just mean between the
indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our amour-propre, must have been the
happiest and the most lasting epoch… the least subject to revolutions, the best for man” [SD
167]. So at first it looks like the note and the frontispiece are meant to support these assertions.
The stability and superiority of the savage state are proven by the story of the Hottentot who –
although wholly familiar with the European religion and way of life, and wholly unfamiliar with
the savage alternative – prefers the savage way as soon as he learns of it. But Rousseau cautions
his reader that his notes “sometimes [stray] so wide of the subject that they are not good to read
together with the text” [SD 129]. And indeed, some of the details of the Hottentot’s speech are
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 9
puzzling. It is unreasonable to believe, for example, that he keeps the necklace and the sword for
love of the Governor of the Cape – the man who kidnapped him and deprived him of a childhood
and youth lived in the best and happiest way for a human being. Why then does the Hottentot
take these items, and run away without waiting for a reply?
Rousseau’s illustration helps us to answer this question, by showing us that in keeping
the necklace and sword, and indeed in wearing the sheepskin, the Hottentot is not returning to his
equals. These have neither swords nor necklaces; they do not even wear pants [Slide 6]. The
illustration also shows us that, while saying what he says, the Hottentot gestures not only at the
beach huts of his native people, but also at the ships of his adoptive people. These ships mean
that there will always be more Dutch, more Europeans, more civilized and enlightened human
beings arriving at the Cape of Good Hope, in a flood that the religion, ways, and customs of the
Hottentot’s ancestors cannot hope to survive – unless they can take advantage of European
military technology and luxury economics. The frontispiece to the Second Discourse thus shows
us that the Hottentot chooses not to return to the savage state, the mean between our primitive
and civilized states, but rather to combine the best of the savage state with what is necessary
from civilization. He means to try to be a natural man in civilized society. He means to try to be
an Emile.
Part Three: Thetis, or the Mother9
Emile, which Rousseau thought of as his best work [CW 5:473], depicts the education of an
imaginary child, named Emile, from birth or even before birth, until his marriage to a woman
named Sophie and the announcement of her pregnancy. Its first book lays out the reasons for
Rousseau’s educational project, and follows the child during his infancy. As a whole, Emile
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 10
consists of five books, each with an illustration commissioned by Rousseau.10 The first of these,
titled “Thetis,” is said, in Rousseau’s “Explication of the Illustrations,” to relate to the first book
and serve as the frontispiece to the work [E 36; I have altered the translation].11 As befits a
frontispiece, it appears across from Emile’s title page.12
Turning there, we find that we begin in the cave [Slide 7]. Five women are gathered
underground, on the bank of a river. Behind them, up and to the left, a twisting path rises to
daylight. One of the women, adorned with a necklace and bracelets, with jewelry in her hair and
wearing a fancy dress, kneels at the water’s edge, holding her skirts back with her left hand,
while with her right she dips a naked infant headfirst into the water. Behind her, and more
plainly dressed, the other four women are caught in animated poses. One holds a hand up in the
air, in a gesture that perhaps indicates astonishment; a second has her arms around the shoulders
of the first; a third holds the well-dressed woman’s cloak in one hand, while her other hand rests
on the woman’s arm – perhaps to comfort her, perhaps to keep her from falling into the river; a
fourth woman crouches at the water’s edge, her dress hitched up in her left hand. At least two of
these women have their blouses open and their breasts bared, as though they have just been
nursing. And finally, lurking in the darkest part of the scene and barely discernible, we can see a
muscular but hunched figure in a raft on the river, bearing a pole or an oar, and accompanied by
a shrouded companion [Slide 8].
Rousseau’s explication says that the illustration “represents Thetis plunging her son in the
Styx to make him invulnerable” [E 36]. The well-dressed woman, then, is Thetis; and the naked
infant is her son, whom readers of the Iliad will know as Achilles. If the river is the Styx, then
the figure in the raft must be Charon, ferrying a shade to the underworld. Rousseau’s use of this
image as a frontispiece to the whole work leads us to infer that the education described in Emile
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 11
is to be a type of ‘invulnerability treatment,’ and Emile a type of Achilles. But why include
Charon in the image, then – especially since Rousseau tells us outright that the river depicted is
the Styx? And why title the engraving “Thetis,” rather than “Achilles”?
Rousseau’s explication ends by directing the reader deep into the text of Book I.13
Following his direction, we find a paragraph about the two ways that mothers can depart from
nature: by neglecting their children – for example, by failing to breastfeed them – or by caring
excessively for them. In this context Rousseau mentions the fable of Thetis plunging Achilles in
the Styx, which he say contains a “lovely” and “clear” allegory.14 “The cruel mothers of whom I
speak do otherwise,” Rousseau concludes: “by dint of plunging their children in softness, they
prepare them for suffering; they open their pores to ills of every sort to which they will not fail to
be prey when grown” [E 47]. The example of Thetis thus seems like an instance of natural
mothering – her ‘invulnerability treatment’ for Achilles is neither too harsh, nor too soft, but just
right. And yet the engraving of Thetis suggests that she is not breastfeeding her son, but
confiding this task to wet nurses.
What is worse, a scant few pages later, in the context of a discussion of how doctors
cause their patients to fear death, Rousseau has the following to say about Achilles: “[i]t is the
knowledge of dangers that makes us fear them; he who believed himself invulnerable would fear
nothing. By dint of arming Achilles against peril, the poet takes from him the merit of valor;
every other man in his place would have been an Achilles at the same price” [E 55]. Had Thetis’
‘invulnerability treatment’ for Achilles succeeded, it would have protected him from death,
though at the cost of depriving him of the opportunity for virtue. But it did not succeed: Achilles
remained vulnerable in one place, and was therefore given the opportunity for virtue, but at the
cost of increasing his fear of death. The ‘Thetis’ engraving completes the argument of the text,
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 12
first by showing that Thetis was at once too hard and too soft – she neglected to breastfeed her
son, and she tried to make him invulnerable – and second by showing that the fear of death is
both the cause and the effect of both kinds of excess:15 the cause in the case of Thetis, the
mother, and the effect in the case of her son. Hence Charon, barely visible in the gloom, is the
most important figure in this illustration.
Part Four: Chiron, or the Tutor
While it seems reasonable to attribute Achilles’ wrath to his fear of death, it might occur to those
of us who know Homer well that in the Iliad there is no mention of Thetis dipping the infant
Achilles in the Styx to make him invulnerable. So the Iliad cannot be the text to which the first
illustration in Emile refers. Rather, the story comes from a later, and to us less-known epic: the
Achilleid, by Statius [I.133-134].16 As it happens, this epic is also the likely source of the fable
behind the second illustration in Emile – suggesting that these two illustrations are best
interpreted together.
Book Two of Emile describes Emile’s childhood: the conditions of his happiness, his first
experience with property, his learning to speak, and the training of his senses. Turning to the
illustration found at the head of this book [Slide 9], we see two figures meeting on a
mountainside. To their right, from our perspective, the ground slopes downward to some trees;
to the left it slopes steeply upward to some tree-studded crags. In the distance we see some
clouds in the sky. The figure on our right is a young child, dressed in a tunic. In his right hand
the child holds a rabbit by the ears; it is not evident whether the rabbit is alive or dead. The
child’s streaming hair and posture, with one leg flexed but planted on the ground, and the other
in the air, suggest that he has arrived running. With his left hand the child reaches out for an
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 13
apple proffered by the figure on our left, as he gazes into his face. This figure is clearly a
centaur. His human upper body is clothed by some sort of cape, and his face is bearded. The
posture of his equine lower body is strange: with one foreleg straightened and planted on the
ground, and his one visible hind leg flexed, he could be rising from a crouching position. The
centaur gazes into the child’s face, extending the apple with his right hand, and reaching with his
left, not for the limp rabbit, but past it to caress the child’s cheek. At the centaur’s feet we can
barely make out a basket of apples to his left, and a heap of items to his right, including what
look like a crested helmet, a shield, a scroll, perhaps a lyre, a pad of paper, and perhaps even a
potted plant.
According to its title, the subject of this engraving is Chiron, the centaur; and the action
depicted, according to Rousseau’s explication, is “Chiron training the little Achilles in running”
[E 36]. The citation accompanying this explication directs us to “Page 382” of Emile’s first
volume, where we read the story of “an indolent and lazy child who was to be trained in
running” – a child who, like Achilles, “was intended for a military career.” This child prided
himself to such an extent on his noble birth that he persuaded himself that rank can take the place
of ability. “To make of such a gentleman a light-footed Achilles,” Rousseau tells us, “the skill of
Chiron himself would hardly have sufficed” [E 141]. To make a long story short, the tutor in this
example goads his pupil into competing with other children in running, using cakes as a prize.17
By secretly manipulating the conditions of each race, the tutor is able to arrange an initial victory
for his vain and lazy charge, and to ensure subsequent victories at his, the tutor’s, will. Not only
does this child become accomplished at running. “This accomplishment produced another of
which I had not dreamed,” writes Rousseau. “When he had rarely carried off the prize, he almost
always ate it alone, as did his competitors. But, in accustoming himself to victory, he became
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 14
generous and often shared with the vanquished. […] I learned thereby what the true principle of
generosity is” [E 142].
Leaving aside for the moment this puzzling conclusion, we might also be puzzled by
Rousseau’s choice of an illustration for this text. The engraving depicts a race run for an apple,
not for a cake; and the competition in the race seems to be a hare, rather than another child.
Moreover, why say that the illustration depicts Achilles, and not just a lazy child; and why depict
the centaur Chiron rather than a human tutor? It turns out that the fable about Chiron’s education
of Achilles comes not from the Iliad18 but from the Achilleid, so that there is a close thematic
connection between the first two illustrations to Emile. Now the Achilleid begins with Thetis
witnessing the abduction of Helen by Paris, and realizing that the Trojan war will result. Fearing
that Achilles will be sought for, will want to fight, and will die [I.37-38, 74-76], she first tries
and fails to persuade Neptune to sink Paris’ ships [I.80-81], then seeks out Chiron [I.104-106], to
whom she had sent Achilles for his education. “High up his lofty dwelling bores through the
mountain” [I.106-107], Statius writes,
[h]ere are no darts that have tasted human blood, no ash trees fractured in festive
combats, nor mixing bowls shattered upon kindred foes, but innocent quivers and
empty hides of wild beasts… [f]or at this time unarmed his only labour was to
know herbs that bring health to living things in doubtful case or to limn with his
lyre the heroes of old for his pupil [I.112-118].
Thetis finds Chiron awaiting Achilles’ return from the hunt, and persuades him to release
Achilles to her – citing, among other things, her frequent nightmares about dipping Achilles in
the Styx [I.133-134]. Chiron assents, because Achilles has become unmanageable [I.149-155],
though Statius tells us that Chiron never would have done so had he known of Thetis’ plan to
disguise Achilles as a woman, in the hopes of avoiding his recruitment to fight at Troy [I.141143]. When Achilles finally appears, he is armed, accompanied by Patroclus, and bearing lion
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 15
cubs that he has abducted after killing their mother [I.158-177]. Achilles and Thetis depart the
next day.
By alluding in this way to the Achilleid, the ‘Chiron’ illustration helps us to interpret its
details. Now we see why the scene is set on a mountainside, why Chiron is clothed in animal
skins, and why a helmet, a shield, a lyre, and a potted medicinal plant lie in the foreground. But
more importantly, the illustration deepens the story in the text to which it refers, both through its
allusion to the Achilleid and through its departures from that work. First, when compared with
the ‘Thetis’ illustration and interpreted in light of the Achilleid, the ‘Chiron’ illustration teaches
us that the mother and the tutor are antagonists in the education of the child. The mother, moved
by the fear of death, seeks to preserve her child from harm, while the tutor, whose motives are
unknown, seeks to prepare him to face it. This antagonism is touchingly depicted in the
Achilleid, when Achilles, Patroclus, Chiron and Thetis spend the night together in Chiron’s cave.
Statius writes, “[t]he huge Centaur collapses on stone and Achilles fondly twines himself about
his shoulders, though his faithful mother is there, preferring the familiar bosom” [I.195-197].
Tutor and mother both have a medicine for the human condition, but the mother’s medicine is
harmful – it culminates in proud wrath – while the tutor’s medicine is beneficial: it turns pride
into generosity, whose principle, the text implies, is confidence that there will always be more
cake – or in other words, ignorance of death.19 Second, in its departures from the Achilleid, the
‘Chiron’ engraving implies that Rousseau’s Achilles has been training in running, rather than
hunting; that his skill is with defensive weapons; and that he is a vegetarian, and so more capable
of pity.20 Rousseau’s Chiron, by contrast, may still be a carnivore; the fate of the hare is
unknown.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 16
Part Five: Hermes, or the God
Book Three of Emile spans the years between childhood and puberty, and covers Emile’s
introduction to the elements of the natural sciences and the trade of carpentry, as well as the
completion of the training of his senses. The third illustration in Emile appears at the beginning
of this book, which in the first edition falls at the beginning of its second volume. Appropriately
enough, this illustration also makes a new thematic beginning. Turning there we discover
another outdoor scene, populated by three figures [Slide 10]. The chief figure stands on a step in
the foreground, with one foot on the earth. He is nearly naked, clad only in a cloak draped over
his left shoulder, and a winged, soft-brimmed cap. His ankles also seem to be winged. In his left
arm he cradles a slim wand entwined by two serpents. With his right hand he uses a stylus to
draw what look like geometrical figures on one of the two broad columns that stand in the center
of the scene. And at his feet, in the foreground, are piled mathematical instruments: an armillary
sphere, a protractor, and a sundial are easily discerned, while the other objects may include a
writing desk with geometrical proofs, a book, a model star, and a carpenter’s square. In the
bottom right of the illustration, far from the mathematical instruments, a plant grows. The other
two figures in the scene seem to be an older, bearded male and his younger, beardless
companion. Both are dressed simply: the former in a cloak, the latter in an open-necked shirt.
Both are also gesturing expressively: the elder points discreetly with his right hand to the chief
figure’s activity, while perhaps restraining his companion with his left arm; the younger of the
men has his left hand raised in a gesture of wonder. The statue of what may be a sphinx beside
them, and the elongated pyramid or obelisk behind them, suggest an Egyptian setting – though
the tree on the left margin of the image, and the gently rising hill in the right background, are not
reminiscent of Egypt.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 17
Rousseau gives ‘Hermes’ as the subject of this engraving, and writes in his explications
that it depicts “Hermes engraving the elements of the sciences on columns” [E 36]. The
accompanying reference to the text is to “Page 76.” Turning there, we find Rousseau
proclaiming
I hate books. They only teach one to talk about what one does not know. It is
said that Hermes engraved the elements of the sciences on columns in order to
shelter his discoveries from a flood. If he had left a good imprint of them in
man’s head, they would have been preserved by tradition. Well-prepared minds
are the surest monuments on which to engrave human knowledge [E 184].
So the ‘Hermes’ engraving, like the ‘Thetis’ engraving, depicts a misguided action. Just as
Thetis should have trained her son in running, rather than trying to make him invulnerable, so
Hermes should have engraved the principles of the sciences in the minds of men, rather than on
columns. But how does one do this? Rousseau gives a clear answer in the immediate sequel:
with a book, indeed with one book in particular – Robinson Crusoe. While the general danger of
books is that they give their readers words that do not correspond to things, and so the opinion of
knowledge without the reality, books like Robinson Crusoe escape this danger by putting their
readers in imaginary situations that force them to attend to things, and in particular to their real
utility, apart from opinion [E 185]. This interested attention to utility is the only lasting
foundation of the sciences.
Rousseau’s example of a book that escapes the dangers of books helps us better to
interpret the ‘Hermes’ illustration. In our treatment of the frontispiece of the First Discourse, we
mentioned the possibility raised in Plato’s Phaedrus: that a piece of writing can overcome the
defects of writing, by knowing how “to speak and to keep silence toward those it ought” [276a].
A suitably edited Robinson Crusoe,21 it seems, is such a piece of writing: it keeps silent to those
interested in words, for whom it is only a quaint story, but it speaks volumes to those interested
in judging the true utility of things. But Rousseau also says that the frontispiece to the Discourse
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 18
depicts a fable found allegorically in the “ancient tradition passed on from Egypt to Greece” [G,
16] about the Egyptian god Theuth, known to the Greeks as Hermes. Now we see the reason for
the Egyptian objects – the sphinx and the pyramid or obelisk – in the otherwise Greek scene of
the ‘Hermes’ illustration. Rousseau takes the fables of Prometheus, Theuth, and Hermes to have
the same meaning.22 They raise the question of how the sciences and the arts can be cultivated
without causing moral corruption.
Putting the ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Hermes’ illustrations side by side, we see that they have
similar structures [Slide 11]. There are three figures in each: a divinity who possesses the
sciences and the arts, a figure who is kept from them, and an intermediary between the two. But
the satyr who is kept away in the ‘Prometheus’ illustration, and who represents “common men”
[CW 2:179], is replaced in the ‘Hermes’ illustration by a young man who is kept from Hermes’
engravings, and yet shown them at a distance. The naked man, whom we guessed to represent
great geniuses who are suited to the sciences, is replaced by an older, bearded man, who at once
restrains his charge and points out Hermes’ work. Lastly, Prometheus himself is replaced by
Hermes. If it follows that Hermes also represents Rousseau,23 then the move from the First
Discourse to Emile involves a move from a project to keep the sciences and the arts away from
the common man, and in the hands of great geniuses, to a project to preserve the useful elements
of the sciences and the arts, by teaching them to ordinary intellects [compare E 52]. Far from
being uselessly employed in engraving these elements on columns, Hermes is usefully employed
in engraving them on the minds of men, using the writing that overcomes the defects of writing.
It is more than a joke that Emile’s central engraving is an engraving of Rousseau engraving.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 19
Part Six: Orpheus, or the Priest
Book Four of Emile is long, and treats the social but not fully sexual consequences of Emile’s
emerging erotic desires: his education in compassion, his study of history, and the education of
his taste. The book is made longer, though, by Rousseau’s exceptional inclusion of a distinct
writing in its midst, called “The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” [E 266-313]. The
illustration to Book Four is also exceptional, because it is found not at the beginning of the book,
as the second and third illustrations were found at the beginnings of their respective books, but in
the middle of the fourth book – which in the first edition falls at the beginning of the third
volume.24 In effect, this makes the illustration into a frontispiece for “The Profession of Faith,”25
whose preamble begins right after the engraving, where Rousseau writes, in reference to
religious matters, “[i]nstead of telling you here on my own what I think, I shall tell you what a
man more worthy than I thought” [E 260].
Turning to the illustration, we find another outdoor scene, set in the wooded foothills of a
mountain [Slide 12]. The center of the engraving is dominated by a man standing on a raised
patch of earth, and dressed in sandals, a tunic and a cloak. His left hand holds a fold of his cloak,
or perhaps a sheaf of paper, while his left arm cradles a lyre.26 His right hand is raised palm
upward in a gesture to the sky. By contrast, his serene gaze is directed downward, to the crowd
gathered around him. This crowd is chiefly composed of bare-chested men, old and young – or
at least bearded and beardless. Unlike the central figure, they are dressed only in animal skins
wrapped around their waists, and they are barefoot. One of these men cowers, one kneels, two
crouch; but all of them, except the cowering man, look up at the sky with expressions of awe.
The remainder of the crowd, to the central figure’s right from our perspective, consists of
animals. We can make out a small rodent, a sheep, an ox, a horse, and several birds, including a
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 20
bird of prey that seems far too large for the branch it perches on. As far as we can tell, there are
no women present.
Rousseau titles this illustration “Orpheus,” and writes that the engraving “represents
Orpheus teaching men the worship of the gods” [E 36]. The illustration itself refers to “Page
128” of Volume Three. Turning there, we find an intermission in the “Profession of Faith,”
during which Rousseau remarks, “[t]he good priest had spoken with vehemence. He was moved,
and so was I. I believed I was hearing the divine Orpheus sing the first hymns and teaching men
the worship of the gods. Nevertheless I saw a multitude of objections to make to him” [E 294].
Rousseau thus likens the Savoyard Vicar, whose views on religion are given instead of
Rousseau’s own, and with whose views Rousseau does not agree,27 to Orpheus.
It will help here to review some of the details of the Orpheus myth. In Ovid’s version in
the Metamorphoses, Orpheus loses his bride Eurydice to death, and is so overcome with love for
her that he decides he cannot live without her [X.26].28 He pursues her into the underworld,
where his music charms everyone, and secures Eurydice’s release – on the condition that, as he
leads her to the surface, he not look back at her. We should understand this otherwise arbitrary
condition as a test of Orpheus’ trust in Eurydice: a test of his confidence that she would rather
accompany him than stay in the underworld. But when “they were nearing the margin of the
upper earth,” Ovid writes, “he, afraid that she might fail him, eager for the sight of her, turned
back his longing eyes; and instantly she slipped into the depths” [X.55-57]. Orpheus is stunned
by her second death; he tries to pursue her, but his descent is barred.
Orpheus mourns Eurydice for three years, spurning the other women who try to console
him.29 His lack of confidence in Eurydice becomes a mistrust of all women. He sings in
mourning, and Ovid reports that his songs draw to him “multitudinous birds,” “snakes,” a “train
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 21
of beasts,” “oxen,” and some “stout peasants” [XI.20-21, 31, 33] – suggesting that Ovid’s
description provides some of the details of Rousseau’s illustration. Even the trees and the stones
are moved. But Orpheus’ song also attracts the local women who, offended by his contempt for
them, drown out his song and finally tear him to pieces. A nearby river carries off his head, still
singing, and his lyre, still sounding, while his shade is reunited at last with Eurydice’s in the
underworld.30
So Rousseau’s illustration compares the Savoyard Vicar to Orpheus, and Ovid’s telling of
the Orpheus myth suggests that the singer was destroyed by his soured love for a woman. Does
Rousseau mean thus to suggest that the “Profession of Faith” – the Vicar’s teaching concerning
the gods, his song – is also based on erotic love gone wrong? If we look at the details of what
the Vicar says, this is exactly what we learn. In his preamble we learn that the Vicar is miserable
because of a scandal caused by a conflict between his erotic desires and his respect for marriage.
The Vicar cannot be chaste, but he cannot marry; nor can he bring himself to commit adultery.
So he sleeps with an unmarried woman, and she becomes pregnant, without a husband on whom
to blame the pregnancy. The lovers are discovered and torn from one another’s arms [E 267].31
“A few such experiences lead a reflective mind a long way,” the Vicar confesses to JeanJacques. We see how far the Vicar was led when we read his “Profession of Faith.” There he
outlines a metaphysics in which the soul is enslaved to, and yet feels contempt for, the body: the
soul is “subjected to the senses and chained to [the] body which enslaves it and interferes with
it,” but “care for [the] body’s preservation incites the soul to relate everything to the body and
gives it an interest contrary to the general order, which the soul is nevertheless capable of seeing
and loving” [E 292]. Having been torn, like Orpheus, from his love, the Vicar is now
figuratively torn apart, like Orpheus was literally, by contempt for his own erotic desires.32
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 22
Now Rousseau does not wholly agree with the Vicar’s “Profession of Faith,” and Emile
will hear nothing like it from Jean-Jacques.33 Rousseau’s own view seems to be that the conflict
erotic desire can foment between the soul and the body is not necessary: it can be forestalled by
correct education. To the extent that otherworldly metaphysical teachings arise from thisworldly
sexual conflict, then, they too are not necessary – and they too can be avoided by correct
education. This conclusion reminds us of another, less-known thread of the Orpheus myth. In
the Argonautica Apollonius mentions Orpheus first among the Argonauts [I.23],34 and depicts
him saving his crewmates on two occasions: once when he sings of the origin of the cosmos and
of the gods, to stop the Argonauts from quarreling [I.492-511]; and once when he sings to drown
out the voices of the Sirens [IV.903-909].35 Apollonius’ version of the Orpheus myth suggests
the possibility of another, more successful Orpheus who can protect his comrades against the
dangers of erotic desire, and reminds us of another hero, more successful than Achilles, who
resisted the Sirens’ song, who did not lose but regained a wife, and whose image governs the last
two books of Emile, as Achilles’ image does the first two.
Part Seven: Circe, or the Woman
The fifth and final book of Emile begins with a discussion of the natural differences between
men and women; it goes on to describe the education of Emile’s intended wife, Sophie, their
courtship, Emile’s travels, and their marriage. Rousseau places the illustration for this book at its
beginning, which falls at the beginning of the first edition’s fourth volume. The engraving
depicts our first indoor scene, with two figures in the foreground [Slide 13]. On our left is a
young woman, richly clad in a patterned dress and a cloak, and adorned with a ribbon in her hair
and bracelets on her wrist. Her head is tilted to her left, and she wears a serene, welcoming
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 23
expression; her arms are extended, palms open and fingers splayed, as if to invite an embrace.
At her sandaled feet lie a long stick and a shallow-bowled, broad-based cup. Behind her are a
striking table with a claw-footed leg, and the edge of a sumptuous, canopied bed [Slide 14]. On
our right is a bearded man, wearing a plumed helmet, a cloak, short breeches, and sandals. In his
right hand he holds a sword, but since his finger is across the hilt and stretched in the direction of
the blade, and since the sword point is on the ground, he seems about to lay it down. In his left,
he holds what looks like a sprig of vegetation, with his arm stretched out away from the woman.
The man’s left leg is extended, his knee unbent, and he gazes directly into the woman’s eyes, his
expression made unreadable by the shadow cast by his helmet. He looks like he is trying to step
into the woman’s embrace while setting down his sword, without bending his knee or looking
away from her gaze. Behind the man we see the snouts and bodies of four or five pigs; behind
them, columns reminiscent of the ‘Hermes’ illustration; and behind these a neoclassical temple,
its dome faintly visible, decorated with one figure in an alcove, and two more lounging to either
side of the pediment.
Rousseau titles this engraving ‘Circe,’ and says in his explications that it depicts her
“giving herself to Ulysses, whom she was not able to transform” [E 36]. We are referred to
“Page 304” of Emile’s fourth volume, where we find the conclusion to the following story.
During his courtship of Sophie, Emile and Jean-Jacques live nearby. Sophie only permits Emile
occasional visits: one or two a week, for a day or two at most. When Emile first met Sophie,
heard her name and heard her speak, he began “to swallow with deep draughts the poison with
which she intoxicates him” [E 415]; but now, when he is apart from Sophie, he “is Emile again.
He has not been transformed at all” [E 435]. Emile studies the neighborhood and works to
improve it, and at least once a week, or in bad weather, he and Jean-Jacques labor in a
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 24
carpenter’s shop in the city [E 437]. Alerted to this practice by Sophie’s father, one day Sophie
and her mother visit the workshop. They admire the respectability and the cleanliness of the
carpenter’s trade, and they are moved by how seriously Emile takes his low-paying job. Then
they prepare to leave, and Sophie’s mother invites Emile to leave with them. Emile sadly replies
that he cannot: he and Jean-Jacques are needed, and they have promised to work. So Sophie and
her mother leave, the mother in a fit of pique. Why didn’t Emile, who is rich, pay off his
obligation, and leave with them? But Sophie is happy with Emile’s choice. Had he paid off his
obligation, this would have meant “putting his riches in place of his duties” [E 438]. “It is for
me that he stays,” she tells her mother; “I saw it in his eyes” [E 439]. Here Rousseau interrupts
to explain that Sophie wants to be loved for her virtues, more than for her charms; so she wants
Emile to prefer his own duty to her, and her to all else. “She wants to reign over a man whom
she has not disfigured,” Rousseau concludes. “It is thus that Circe, having debased Ulysses’
companions, disdains them and gives herself only to him whom she was unable to change” [E
439].
Though Rousseau follows Horace in using the hero’s Roman name, Ulysses,36 the most
likely source for the myth behind this illustration is Homer’s Odyssey. In Book Ten, Odysseus
tells of how he came to Circe’s island after the loss of all but one of his ships [X.130-132].37
Spying her house from afar, he sends half his remaining men to scout. Circe invites them in,
gives them a potion to make them forget their country, and strikes them with her wand, turning
their bodies, though not their minds, into those of pigs [X.236-241]. Only one man, who
suspected treachery, escapes. When Odysseus learns of the fate of his comrades, he resolves to
go to Circe’s house alone. But on his way there, he meets Hermes, disguised as a youth. The
god tells Odysseus what to expect: Circe “will make you a potion, and put drugs in the food, but
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 25
she will not even so be able to enchant you, for this good medicine which I give you now will
prevent her” [X.290-292]. He tells Odysseus what to do –
as soon as Circe with her long wand strikes you, then drawing from beside your
thigh your sharp sword, rush forward against Circe, as if you were raging to kill
her, and she will be afraid, and invite you to go to bed with her. Do not then resist
and refuse the bed of the goddess, for so she will set free your companions, and
care for you also; but bid her swear the great oath of the blessed gods, that she has
no other evil hurt that she is devising against you, so she will not make you weak
and unmanned, once you are naked [X. 290-301] –
and he gives Odysseus a black root with a milky flower, whose nature he explains, called moly
by the gods.
Events unfold as Hermes predicts. Circe offers Odysseus the potion; he drinks and is not
enchanted. She strikes him with her wand; he rushes her with drawn sword. “[S]he screamed
and ran under my guard,” Odysseus narrates, “and clasping both knees in loud lamentation spoke
to me” [X.323-324]. Circe wonders at Odysseus’ immunity to her drugs; she says, “[t]here is a
mind in you no magic will work on” [X.329]. She recognizes him as Odysseus, whose arrival
was foretold to her many times by Hermes. She invites Odysseus to bed, and he complies – but
only after securing her oath, as Hermes recommended. Later, he will require her to restore his
men to human form.
With Homer’s assistance, we can now recognize Circe’s “long staff,” and the potion
goblet at her feet. The plant in Ulysses’ left hand is no doubt the moly, and the pigs in the
background are Ulysses’ unfortunate companions – moved from the pens Homer mentions [X.
238] to Circe’s bedroom for visual effect. The meaning of the bed behind Circe, of her
expression and gesture, is unmistakable. But what of Odysseus’ claim in Homer that Circe ran
under his guard and clasped his knees? Here both parties are standing. And what of Rousseau’s
offhand comment that Emile has already drunk of Sophie’s poison, and been transformed [E 415,
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 26
435]? Lastly, what of the implication of Rousseau’s carpentry story: that it was Sophie’s mother
who tried to make Emile into a rich pig, whereas Sophie herself had no intention of doing so?
By juxtaposing illustration, myth, and text in this way, we see that Rousseau has tinkered
meaningfully with his Homeric precedent. Whereas the Homeric Circe tries both her potion and
her wand on Odysseus, and only submits out of apparent fear when both fail,38 the Rousseauean
Circe-Sophie tries her potion, succeeds in making Ulysses-Emile forget his country, and then
drops her wand, preferring to offer herself willingly to the man who, despite being enchanted by
her, nonetheless still prefers his duty. Accordingly, Ulysses-Emile holds the moly off to one
side; it is not needed in this encounter. Instead, it will be needed later in Book Five. There, in a
final reference to the ‘Thetis’ illustration, which Rousseau has called a “frontispiece to the
[whole] work” [E 36], Rousseau recounts how Jean-Jacques must use the authority granted to
him by Emile to compel Emile to leave Sophie and travel for a year. The stated purpose of these
travels is for Emile to study the principles and practice of government [E 455] – that is, to
remind Emile about his country – but they have an additional purpose: to satisfy Jean-Jacques, as
Sophie is satisfied, that Emile loves his duty more than he loves her [E 443]. So after gaining
Emile’s attention, and stunning his reason, by making him envision Sophie’s death, Jean-Jacques
speaks at length about how Emile’s love for Sophie exposes Emile to hurt. “[I]t is in vain,” JeanJacques tells him, “that I have dipped your soul in the Styx; I was not able to make in
everywhere invulnerable. A new enemy is arising which you have not learned to conquer, and
from which I can no longer save you. That enemy is yourself” [E 443]. That it is not Thetis but
Chiron-Hermes-Jean-Jacques who does the dipping, and not Emile-Achilles’ body but his soul
that is dipped, shows us how far we have come from the mistaken motherly care of the beginning
of the book. Sophie is both a necessary condition for the man raised uniquely for himself to be
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 27
good for others [E 41], and Emile’s Achilles heel. The gravity of this vulnerability is hinted at
by Rousseau’s title for the unfinished and unpublished sequel to Emile: Emile and Sophie, Or the
Solitaries [CW 13:685].39
Part Eight: The Very Pictures of Education?
Now that we have surveyed each of the illustrations in Emile, let’s return to our opening
question: do great books need pictures? Is there “some necessity” in writing that dictates that a
great book should have illustrations as well as text? In our survey we have given Rousseau’s
illustrations four cumulative readings: first as pictures, then as pictures informed by Rousseau’s
explications, then as pictures informed by ancient myths, and lastly as pictures informed by the
text of Emile. To understand Rousseau’s answer to our opening question, then, we should ask
him why each of these readings is necessary. He gives us an answer in a passage from Book
Four of Emile, and additional assistance in passages from the Essay on the Origin of Languages
and the Second Discourse.
First, why are the illustrations themselves necessary? At a climactic moment in Book
Four of Emile – Jean-Jacques is about to give his ‘Savoyard Vicar’ speech to Emile, wherein he
will reveal all he has done for Emile’s education, warn him of the dangers of sex, and extract
from him an unconditional promise of future obedience; that is, Hermes is about to give Ulysses
the moly to protect him from Circe – Rousseau pauses the action to discuss how to prepare Emile
for this speech. Since his lesson about sex should influence Emile “for the rest of his days,” the
instruction it contains ought “never to be forgotten.” “Let us try therefore,” Rousseau proposes,
“to engrave [graver: OC 4:645] it in his memory in such a way that it will never be effaced” [E
321]. The verb he uses here, graver, is related to one of the nouns for engraving, gravure, which
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 28
suggests a connection between Jean-Jacques’s goal in setting the scene for his speech to Emile,
and Rousseau’s goal in providing illustrations in his book.40 The way to achieve this goal,
Rousseau continues, is to use “the most energetic of languages”: “the language of signs that
speak to the imagination” [E 321], a language that consists of actions.
While this goal of making a teaching more memorable reminds us of the illustration of
Hermes engraving the elements of the sciences on columns, and responds to the concern raised in
the Phaedrus that writing causes “forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through
neglect of memory” [275a], it is not the chief reason for Rousseau’s interest in the language of
signs. In the discussion in Emile he turns quickly from the mnemonic use of this language to its
persuasive use: to make human beings act. Unadorned reason, Rousseau pronounces,
“sometimes restrains, it arouses rarely, and it has never done anything great” [E 321]. If you
want great actions from human beings, you need reason adorned with images of action, whose
energy makes a stronger impression than unadorned reason does, by speaking to the heart.
Rousseau does not say why this is so in Emile, but passages from the Second Discourse and the
Essay on the Origin of Languages explain that the energy of the language of signs is due to the
particularity, the variety, the expression, and the compression of the images that make up its
vocabulary.41 So Rousseau’s answer to the question ‘why are the illustrations in Emile
necessary?’ is that he hopes that they will persuade human beings to act.
Why, then, must the illustrations be explicated? Rousseau’s next move in Book Four of
Emile is to launch into a four-paragraph “digression” [E 323] that purports to show, through
historical examples, that the ancients knew how to persuade men to act through the language of
signs, whereas the moderns, through neglect of this language, can move men only by self-interest
or force. The ancients had such a command of this language, Rousseau asserts, that “often” [E
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 29
322] – though pointedly not always – an object they exhibited to the eyes of their audience was
able to say everything. Rousseau’s favorite example of this, which he uses both in Emile and in
the Essay, is the gift given by the king of the Scythians to Darius, the king of the Persians, when
the latter were invading Scythia: a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows. “This terrifying
harangue made its point,” Rousseau writes, “and Darius hurried to get back to his country in
whatever way he could” [E 322] – whereas a threatening letter in place of these signs would only
have been laughable.
But if we look up the source of this story, in Book Four of Herodotus, we learn that the
Scythians gave the Persians the gift as a puzzle42 – likely hoping to detain them in Scythia – and
that the Persians gave the gift two opposite interpretations: as a surrender, and as a threat.
Herodotus does not tell us which interpretation was correct, and it’s not even clear from his
account that the Scythians knew what they meant to say. He merely recounts that an accidental
defeat led Darius to conclude that the Scythians despised the Persians, and to prefer the
interpretation that their gift was a threat. If we give the same treatment to the rest of Rousseau’s
historical examples from this passage in Emile, and the corresponding passage in the Essay, we
find that in several of them he suppresses a detail that is mentioned by his source: that the signs
in question did not say everything, because they were accompanied by a speech.43
Once again, we find a helpful explanation in the Essay on the Origin of Languages.
There Rousseau concludes from his historical examples that “one speaks much better to the eyes
than to the ears,” and that “[t]he most eloquent discourses are even seen to be those with the
most images embedded in them” [EOL 250].44 But then he admits that
when it is a question of moving the heart and inflaming the passions, it is an
entirely different matter. The successive impression made by discourse, striking
with cumulative impact, succeeds in arousing in you a different emotion than does
the presence of the object itself which you take in all at once glance [EOL 250].
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 30
Rousseau distinguishes between the power of images and the power of sounds by stating that
“visible signs make for more accurate imitation, but… interest is more effectively aroused by
sounds” [EOL 251]. It follows from this distinction that while images can concentrate the
interest of their viewers, they cannot generate this interest, nor ensure that it is directed rightly.45
This account explains why the language of signs needs the assistance of discourse, as we
see from many of Rousseau’s historical examples; but it does not explain what can be done for
illustrations in a written work – which, unless it is read dramatically aloud, cannot rely on sounds
to generate interest. If we read further in the Essay, though, we find another helpful section,
where Rousseau writes, “we do not realize that often [sensations] affect us not only as sensations
but as signs or images, and that their moral effects also have moral causes” [EOL 284].
Sensations of beautiful colors, for example, are given life by drawing, by imitation, so that “it is
the passions which they express that succeed in arousing our own, the objects which they
represent that succeed in affecting us” [EOL 284]. This is why colors can be removed from a
painting – it can be turned into a drawing – without it moving us less. When illustrations are
used to depict an action, then, the passions that motivate action are concentrated by the
simultaneity of the drawing, but generated – in the absence of sounds – by the meaning of the
things drawn. So if the viewer knows what the images mean, either because he recognizes them,
or because he can read an explication of what they represent, they will generate and concentrate
his interest. This is Rousseau’s answer to why the illustrations must be explicated: so that the
energy of the language of signs will be properly directed, and the right action will be more likely
to ensue.
But why, third, must the images and their explications refer to ancient myths? After all,
the frontispiece to the Second Discourse makes no such reference, and yet there is no sign that
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 31
Rousseau considered it a failure. We can infer Rousseau’s answer to this question once we
notice another implication of his historical examples: that the language of signs is more
successful the more the communicating parties have something in common. We can treat the
example of the Scythian gift as one in which the parties had little in common, and in which the
language of signs failed – presuming that communication was ever intended in the first place.
By contrast, in Book Four of Emile Rousseau offers several examples46 of the successful use of
the language of signs, in which the sign alone did say everything. The first of these,
“Thrasybulus and Tarquin cutting off the tops of the poppies” [E 322], partly refers to another
story in Herodotus, one that is substantially repeated with different characters by Livy. When
Periander came to power in Corinth, he sent to Thrasybulus, tyrant of neighboring Miletus,
asking about the “safest political establishment for administering the city best” [V.92].
Thrasybulus led Periander’s messenger outside the city, and, speaking with him about unrelated
matters, cut down each stalk of corn that had grown higher than the rest. He then sent the
messenger back to Periander. Now according to the messenger, Thrasybulus made no reply to
Periander’s query. But once he heard what Thrasybulus had done, Periander understood that the
safest political course was to “murder the most eminent of his citizens” [V.92].
In this example, communication by the language of signs succeeded between the two
tyrants because of their similar situations and inclinations; but it was accomplished by a
messenger who was unaware of the message he carried, because of the difference between his
situation and inclination and those of the tyrants.47 We see that the same sign can have meaning
among those who have something in common, while being meaningless to those who do not.
And this helps us to see how allegorical illustrations can be suited to audiences composed of
those with various levels of education. To readers who know the Achilleid, the Phaedrus, the
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 32
Metamorphoses, the Argonautica, and the Odyssey, at one extreme, Rousseau’s illustrations will
be full of detailed meaning; those who do not even know the names Thetis, Chiron, Hermes,
Orpheus and Circe, at the other, will only find as much meaning as one sees in a picture of a
woman dipping a baby in a river.48 So we have Rousseau’s answer to the question of why his
illustrations must refer to ancient myths: to single out his educated readers, and in particular
those who pride themselves on their devotion to the highly questionable modern project of
enlightenment.
Lastly, why then must the images in Emile refer also to passages in Rousseau’s text – and
do so, as I have suggested, in a way that complicates and corrects their corresponding ancient
myths? One final observation will be helpful here about the examples in Rousseau’s
“digression”: they quietly point out that the chief users of the language of signs are tyrants.
Rousseau begins his digression by listing four ancient examples of Biblical covenants based on
threats of divine force;49 then he refers in a footnote to the modern example of the signs used by
the Roman clergy and the “tyrannical government” of Venice [E 322 n *]. After the examples of
Thrasybulus and Periander, of Tarquin and his son, already mentioned, who communicate their
tyrannical designs by signs, he concludes with the example of Mark Antony, who failed to save
the Roman republic because, according to Plutarch, he was “swept away by the tide of popular
applause,” and by “the prospect, if Brutus were overthrown, of being without doubt the ruler-inchief” [II, 489].50 Now if the language of signs is meant to give its users a hold on human beings
other than “by force or by self-interest” [E 321], it must be appealing to those who are unable or
unwilling to use force, but also unable to appeal to self-interest, in either its uneducated or its
educated form. And since human beings act either willingly or unwillingly, persuasion does not
amount to a third option – rather, it amounts to a combination of the two: human beings thinking
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 33
that they act willingly, while in fact they are acting unwillingly. But this requires that the
interests that cause actions in human beings be connected with actions that are not ordinarily
their result: that the Achilles or the Odysseus that causes admiration, for example, be
surreptitiously replaced by the Emile who is both and better than both. This, then, is Rousseau’s
answer to the question why his illustrations must refer to passages in his text: that only by so
doing can he persuade his educated and enlightened readers to turn their attachment to ancient,
mythical heroes into an attachment to Emile.
So Rousseau’s answer to our opening question – do great books need pictures? – is a
resounding yes. They need pictures, he says, as long as their readers have hearts as well as
heads, and as long as their authors mean to make their readers act. They need pictures of
mythological figures as long as their authors want especially to reach and move their educated
readers. And they need to juxtapose these figures with arguments in their pages as long as they
want to persuade their educated readers to act in new ways. As the ancients knew, and Rousseau
himself knows, persuasion, which does not attempt to enlighten self-interest, but does not crush
with force, is the very picture of education.
Jeff J.S. Black
Annapolis, Maryland
June 18, 2013
Delivered June 19, 2013
Explication of the Slides
Slide 1 represents the frontispiece of Bacon’s Great Instauration, which may be found in Francis Bacon, Novum
Organum. Translated and Edited by Peter Urbach and John Gibson. (Chicago: Open Court, 1994), ii.
Slide 2 represents the title page of the Head Edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, which may be found in Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan, with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Edited, with Introduction, by Edwin Curley.
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), lxxviii.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 34
Slide 3 represents the frontispiece of Vico’s New Science, which may be found in Giambattista Vico, The New
Science of Giambattista Vico. Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744) with the addition of “Practic of
the New Science.” Translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Frisch. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1984), 2.
Slide 4 represents the frontispiece of Rousseau’s First Discourse, which may be found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
The Discourses and other early political writings. Edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2.
Slide 5 represents the frontispiece of Rousseau’s Second Discourse, which may be found in Rousseau, The
Discourses and other early political writings, 112.
Slide 6 represents and magnifies the detail from the bottom right-hand corner of the frontispiece of the Second
Discourse, wherein the huts of the Hottentots are depicted.
Slide 7 represents the ‘Thetis’ illustration from Emile, which may be found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On
Education. Translation and Introduction by Allan Bloom. (New York: Basic Books, 1979), ii. A portion of the
illustration on the middle left margin has been boxed in red.
Slide 8 represents and magnifies the detail from the middle left margin of the ‘Thetis’ illustration, wherein the figure
of Charon can barely be discerned.
Slide 9 represents the ‘Chiron’ illustration from Emile, which may be found in Rousseau, Emile, 76.
Slide 10 represents the ‘Hermes’ illustration from Emile, which may be found in Rousseau, Emile, 164.
Slide 11 juxtaposes the frontispiece of the First Discourse from Slide 4 with the ‘Hermes’ illustration from Slide 10.
Slide 12 represents the ‘Orpheus’ illustration from Emile, which may be found in Rousseau, Emile, 261.
Slide 13 represents the ‘Circe’ illustration from Emile, which may be found in Rousseau, Emile, 76.
Slide 14 represents and magnifies the detail from the top left margin of the ‘Circe’ illustration, wherein a bed canopy
is depicted.
Notes
1
Readers of this lecture, who cannot benefit from the slideshow that accompanied it, should consult the
“Explication of the Slides,” above.
2
Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744)
with the addition of “Practic of the New Science.” Translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch.
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968). Citations to this edition are given in the form [NS page].
3
Plato, Phaedrus. Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Interpretive Essay by James H. Nichols Jr. (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1998).
4
Quotations from Rousseau’s writings are taken from the best editions that are widely available. Quotations from
the First and Second Discourses and the Essay on the Origin of Languages are from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The
Discourses and other early political writings. Edited and Translated by Victor Gourevitch. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), and are given in the forms [FD, SD, or EOL page]. Quotations from Emile are from JeanJacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education. Translation and Introduction by Allan Bloom. (New York: Basic
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 35
Books, 1979), and are given in the form [E page]. I also refer in the text to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Correspondance
complète de Jean Jacques Rousseau. Édition critique établie et annotée par R.A. Leigh. Fifty-Two Volumes.
(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1965-1998), in the form [CC Volume:page]; to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected
Writings. Thirteen Volumes. Series Editors Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. (Hanover, NH: University
Press of New England, 1992-2010), in the form [CW Volume:page]; and to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres
complètes. Five Volumes. Series Editors Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond. (Paris: Bibliothèque de la
Pléiade, 1964-95), in the form [OC Volume:page]. Translations from CC and OC are my own.
5
These engravings were not ready for the first edition of the novel, and so were at first published separately,
accompanied by narrative descriptions of the “Subjects of the Engravings” [CW 6:621-628] that indicate the high
level of detail Rousseau meant his illustrations to communicate. As he writes at the beginning of his discussion of
these illustrations,
Most of these Subjects are detailed so as to make them understood, much more so than they can be
in the execution: for in order to realize a drawing felicitously, the Artist must see it not as it will be
on his paper, but as it is in nature. The pencil does not distinguish a blonde from a brunette, but
the imagination that guides it must distinguish them. The burin cannot render highlights and
shadows well unless the Engraver also imagines the colors. In the same way, with figures in
motion, he needs to see what precedes and what follows, and accord a certain latitude to the time
of the action; otherwise one will never capture well the unity of the moment to be expressed. The
Artist’s skill consists in making the Viewer imagine many things that do not appear on the plate;
and that depends on a felicitous choice of circumstances, of which the ones he renders lead us to
presuppose the ones he does not. Therefore one can never enter into too much detail when one
wants to present Subjects for Engraving, and is absolutely ignorant of the art [CW 6:621].
6
For an example of Rousseau’s care with the details of his illustrations, consider this passage from a letter to his
publisher, Duchesne, written on March 7, 1762:
The change that was made to the flames [in the Thetis engraving] on my advice is very bad, and
spoils the effect of the engraving which the lit portion brought out a great deal; I would wish that
my stupidity in this respect be fixable. I will be more hesitant the next time to give my advice, for
fear of committing another. And yet to this point I have not been mistaken in matters of effect [CC
10:142-143].
7
Why is a satyr an appropriate allegorical representation of common men? Rousseau writes at some length about
the mixed or monstrous character of modern human beings in Book One of Emile [E 37-41]. He attributes this
mixture to contradictions between the education we are given by nature, and the one we are given by men. The
satyr, half beast and half man, is a good image for the kind of monsters that we are, according to Rousseau. It
follows that if the education of nature were to have its way with us, we would be nothing other than beasts.
8
See Plutarch, Moralia. Volume Two. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1962). Citations from this work are given in the text in the form [Volume.section].
9
My discussion of Rousseau’s illustrations in the next five sections of this lecture has benefited considerably from
John T. Scott’s unpublished paper “The Illustrative Education of Rousseau’s Emile,” which he was kind enough to
share with me.
10
Charles Eisen, who designed the engraving for the Second Discourse, also designed the engravings for Emile
[Scott, 6].
11
Rousseau rejected the idea that the engravings should be identified by inscriptions explicating the action depicted
in each. In one letter to his publisher he writes,
I do not believe that inscriptions at the bottom of the engravings are needed: one ought not to
explain at all what is clear: we could just number the page and the volume there, to which each
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 36
engraving is related; but I fear that the binder will move it [each engraving] to that page, whereas
each engraving ought to be at the head of a book” [CC 10:143].
In a later letter, Rousseau continues,
[i]t is not possible, Sir, that the inscription of the engraving remain as it is; the way in which it has
been cut into two lines forming two sort of little rhyming verses, [is] very ridiculous, and I must
warn you that anyway we will redo the inscriptions; since there are changes to be made to those
that I have sent you, one ought not to have them engraved without alerting me. I would be of the
opinion, then, that we erase the inscription completely, if it’s possible to do so without much
trouble. If you would rather leave it in, and consequently put one on all the others (and I consent
to it if you judge it appropriate) in this case this one absolutely must be rewritten in the following
way, since once again it cannot remain as it is. Thetis dips Her son / in the Styx. See p. 37 [CC
10:150].
12
Rousseau instructed his publisher that, with the exception of “Orpheus,” each engraving was to be placed
opposite the first page of each book:
The citations of pages that you had engraved at the top of each engraving will certainly lead the
binders and signature-sewers to commit an error. They will place the engraving facing the cited
page, instead of putting it at the beginning of the book or volume, as is said in the explication.
You must attempt to prevent this. There should be an engraving as frontispiece for each volume
and another in the first volume at the head of the second book [CC 10:222-223].
13
As Scott rightly notes, Bloom mistakenly has the explications point to the pages on which the engravings are
found, rather than the pages of the text to which the engravings refer [Scott, 9-10].
14
Rousseau also uses the terms “fable” and “allegory” in his description of the frontispiece to the First Discourse.
See the discussion of the Prometheus illustration, above, the Discourse itself, [G, 16 n *], and the Letter to Lecat
[CW 2:179].
15
How does the fear of death cause Thetis to neglect to breastfeed her son? Breastfeeding might entail implicit
acknowledgement of one’s mortality, because it involves explicit acknowledgement of one’s subordination to one’s
offspring. Rousseau advocates familiarizing young girls with the fear of death early in their educations, whereas he
recommends keeping this fear from young boys. See Book Five of Emile [E 379-380].
16
References to this work are to Statius, Achilleid. Edited and Translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), and are given in the text in the form [Book.line numbers].
17
Scott points out that Rousseau is “coy” about whether the tutor and the pupil in this example are Jean-Jacques and
Emile. In the example itself he distinguishes himself from “the man who speaks in this example” [E 141], and
presumably thereby distinguishes the pupil from Emile. But in one place later in the text he refers to Emile as the
pupil in the example [E 153], and in another to Emile’s “former races” [E 436]. Earlier, Rousseau had written that
he “will not be distressed if Emile is of noble birth” [E 52]. See Scott, 18.
18
Scott notes that the only reference in Homer to the “most righteous of the centaurs” is to his medicinal skill,
which he taught to Asclepius and to Achilles. See Iliad IV.219 and XI.832. It may be significant that Asclepius
tried to use these skills to overcome death. Scott also helpfully directs us to the first chapter of Xenophon’s
Cynegeticus, where Chiron is mentioned as a master of hunting, and to the eighteenth chapter of Machiavelli’s
Prince, where he is a metaphor for knowing “how to use the beast and the man.” See Scott, 15-16.
19
Another difference between Thetis’ and Chiron’s treatments is that Thetis’ are physical, whereas Chiron’s are
psychic. Chiron is a singer, and he teaches Achilles to sing as well. This points to a connection between the
‘Chiron’ illustration and the ‘Orpheus’ illustration.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 37
20
Rousseau devotes a few pages of Book Two of Emile to a discussion of carnivorousness. Human beings are
naturally vegetarians, he argues, and it is “above all… important not to denature this primitive taste,” not for the
sake of health, but for the sake of character: “it is certain that great eaters of meat are in general more cruel and
ferocious than other men” [E 153]. He follows these claims with a lengthy quotation from Plutarch, of a lurid
passage that argues that while the first carnivorous human beings must have overcome a deep repugnance to eat
animal corpses, they were compelled to do so by natural scarcity [!], whereas modern human beings have no such
excuse [E 154-155]. It may be relevant to note that Statius’ carnivorous Achilles does indeed seem to be cruel and
ferocious. Thetis wants to keep him from the Trojan war by disguising him as a girl and hiding him among the girls
of Scyros. Ashamed to comply, especially by the thought of what Chiron might say, Achilles only goes along with
her plan after he is seized by lust for one of the girls, Deidamia [I.301-303]. Soon afterward, he rapes and
impregnates her [I.640-643]. In some respect, the rest of the story of Emile could be understood as Rousseau’s
attempt to avoid this outcome for his Achilles. Compare the interpretation of the Circe engraving, below.
The vegetarianism of the Achilles depicted in the Chiron illustration could just as well have been indicated
by the depiction of a cake as by the depiction of an apple. Perhaps Rousseau chose the latter to allude to the story of
Adam and Eve, or to the story of the beauty contest that was the first cause of the Trojan War. Or perhaps an apple
is easier to identify in an engraving than a cake.
21
“This novel,” Rousseau writes,
disencumbered of all its rigmarole, beginning with Robinson’s shipwreck near his island and
ending with the arrival of the ship which comes to take him from it, will be both Emile’s
entertainment and instruction throughout the period which is dealt with here [E 185].
It is instructive to see which parts of the novel, falling before Robinson’s shipwreck and after the arrival of his
rescuers, Rousseau considers to be “rigmarole.”
22
Scott points out that the identification of the Egyptian god Thoth or Theuth with the Greek god Hermes only came
after the age of classical Greek literature, in the person of Hermes Trismegistus of the hermetic tradition [Scott, 20].
23
It also makes sense to interpret the beardless youth as Emile, and the older, bearded man as his tutor, JeanJacques – though Rousseau has argued earlier in Emile that a tutor should be as near in age to his pupil as possible:
“a child’s governor ought to be young and even as young as a wise man can be” [E 51]. This interpretation has the
advantage of agreeing with the story of Book Three, wherein Jean-Jacques shows Emile the elements of the
sciences, without allowing him to approach any of the sciences very closely. “The issue is not to teach him the
sciences,” Rousseau writes, “but to give him the taste for loving them and the methods for learning them when this
taste is better developed” [E 172]. It also has the advantage of repeating the strange doubling of Rousseau that we
saw in the ‘Prometheus’ illustration. There Rousseau was at once Prometheus the titan (or Rousseau the author) and
the Citizen of Geneva; here he is at once Hermes the god (or Rousseau the author) and Jean-Jacques the tutor.
24
Another indication of the exceptional character of the ‘Orpheus’ illustration is that in his “Explications” Rousseau
tells us that it “belongs” to the fourth book – again, unlike the illustrations to Books Two and Three, each of which
was said to be “at the beginning” of its book, or the illustration to Book One, which was said to “relate” to that book
[E 36; I have altered the translation]. John Scott details the convincing circumstantial evidence that this engraving is
a late addition: Rousseau’s
instructions for the division of [the] published work come in November 1761, just six months
before it appeared, and include his specification that the third volume should open with the
dramatic introduction to the “Profession.” At this same time, Rousseau also sends his ideas to
Eisen for the engravings for the last two books, and thus his instruction for the engraving of
Orpheus. Finally, the textual reference in Book IV to Orpheus was added only during production.
See Scott, 25 and OC 4:1569.
25
Recall that Rousseau instructed Duchesne to place the ‘Orpheus’ engraving at the beginning of the Profession of
Faith of the Savoyard Vicar. See note 12, above.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 38
26
There is also a lyre in the ‘Chiron’ illustration.
27
We can detect this disagreement at the end of the Vicar’s speech, where he advises the young Rousseau:
[i]f my reflections lead you to think as I do, if my sentiments are also yours and we have the same
profession of faith... [g]o back to your own country, return to the religion of your father, follow it
in the sincerity of your heart, and never leave it again [E 311].
Since the young Rousseau did not take this advice, we ought to infer that he did not share the Vicar’s sentiment. An
indication of the ground of their disagreement may be seen earlier in the Profession of Faith, where the Vicar claims
that conscience is to the soul what instinct and the passions are to the body. He makes this claim in the context of an
argument that conscience and instinct or the passions are always at odds with one another, and that of these, it is
conscience that speaks with the voice of nature. The young Rousseau tries to interrupt the Vicar at this point, but the
Vicar will not let him speak [E 286-7]. To put the comparison crudely for the sake of brevity, Rousseau and the
Savoyard Vicar seem to agree that conscience is an innate principle of justice and virtue [E 289]; that it speaks in
sentiments rather than in judgments [E 290]; that it therefore differs from reason or the natural intellect, since reason
leads to knowledge of the good and conscience to our love of the good [E 286]; that both reason and conscience are
required for moral action [E 294]; and that the voice of conscience can be stifled but not eradicated [E 291]. But
Rousseau disagrees with the Vicar’s inferences from the contradictory demands of instinct or the passions and
conscience. The Vicar takes these demands to indicate that human beings are composed of body and soul [E 279].
This fundamental dualism leads him to a belief in human freedom [E 281], in the existence of God [E 275; cf. 290
and 295], in the natural sociability of human beings [E 290], and in an afterlife—understood as the place where the
soul, freed from the body, can finally pursue wholeheartedly the demands of conscience [E 282-5]. It also follows
from the Vicar’s hatred of the body and his reliance on the afterlife that, as he sees it, the demands of conscience are
not compatible with patriotism [E 295]. The importance of the Vicar’s dualism becomes clear in his comment that
[i]f conscience is the work of the prejudices, I am doubtless wrong, and there is no demonstrable
morality. But if to prefer oneself to everything is an inclination natural to man, and if nevertheless
the first sentiment of justice is innate in the human heart, let him who regards man as a simple
being overcome these contradictions, and I shall no longer acknowledge more than one substance
[E 279].
By claiming, in his own name, that conscience develops from the selfish human passions [E 235], Rousseau has
already suggested, earlier in Emile, how these contradictions may be overcome. According to his own argument,
then, the Vicar ought to abandon his dualism, and everything that follows from it.
28
References here are to Ovid, Metamorphoses. With an English Translation by Frank Justus Miller. In Two
Volumes. (London: William Heinemann, 1916), and are given in the text in the form [Book.lines].
29
Ovid adds here that Orpheus turns his sexual attentions to young boys, heightening the impression of Orpheus’
burgeoning dislike for women.
30
We find many of the same details in Virgil’s telling of the story in Book IV of his Georgics, though his imagery
does not correspond as closely with Rousseau’s engraving as Ovid’s does. Virgil attributes the fateful backward
glance to “a sudden frenzy [that] seized Orpheus, unwary in his love” [IV.488-489], rather than to any fear of
weakness in Eurydice. And he does not suggest that it was homosexual practices that turned the local women
against the singer. See Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid. With an English Translation by H. Rushton Fairclough.
In Two Volumes. (London: William Heinemann, 1916). The citation above from the Georgics is given in the form
[Book.lines].
31
The Vicar says that his resolve not to profane the institution of marriage
was precisely what destroyed me. My respect for the bed of others left my faults exposed. The
scandal had to be expiated. Arrested, interdicted, driven out, I was far more the victim of my
scruples than of my incontinence; and I had occasion to understand, from the reproaches with
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 39
which my disgrace was accompanied, that often one need only aggravate the fault to escape the
punishment [E 267].
32
As Rousseau later writes in reference to Emile’s first sexual experience, “I have reflected on men’s morals too
much not to see the invincible influence of this moment on the rest of his life” [E 318]. Compare his later
chastisement of readers who “do not sufficiently consider the influence which a man’s first liaison with a woman
ought of have on the course of both of their lives” [E 415].
33
Instead of receiving an otherworldly metaphysical teaching, Emile receives a thisworldly revelation in which
Jean-Jacques explains what he has done for his education [E 323], and then, having thus secured his attention,
initiates him into the mysteries and dangers of sex [E 324]. In reply, Emile asks Jean-Jacques to retain his authority
over him, in order to protect Emile from his own passions [E 325].
34
References here are to Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. With an English Translation by R.C. Seaton. (London:
William Heinemann, 1912], and are given in the form [Book.lines].
35
Jean-Jacques uses the Sirens as an image of the dangers of sex in his revelatory conversation with Emile, as a way
of impressing on Emile how difficult it will be to heed Jean-Jacques’s authority. “Just as Ulysses, moved by the
Sirens’ song and seduced by the lure of the pleasures, cried out to his crew to unchain him, so you will want to break
the bonds which hinder you” [E 316]. This passage, together with a reference to Ulysses at the beginning of Book
IV of Emile [E 212], leads John Scott to the thoughtful, and to my mind correct, hypothesis that, had Rousseau not
been required by the division of the work into volumes to place an engraving in the middle of Book Four, he would
have placed an engraving of Odysseus at the beginning of this book. “The engraving to Book V of Emile also
depicts Odysseus,” Scott writes,
and choosing the same figure to illustrate Book IV would have given the work as a whole a
symmetry with the first two books relating the story of Achilles and the last two the story of
Odysseus. […] The choice of Odysseus as the subject for an engraving for Book IV would be
appropriate for novelistic reasons, since the story of Emile’s wandering begins there and continues
into Book V. It would also be appropriate for theoretical reasons, for the taming of Odysseus’
wily pride and his return to domesticity would accord with Rousseau’s reinterpretation of the story
of Achilles in the first two engravings for the work and the philosophical thrust of the work.
See Scott, 25-26. It poses no difficulty for this hypothesis that Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens happens after
his encounter with Circe, according to the Odyssey. Homer writes that Circe warns Odysseus of the danger of the
Sirens, and tells him how escape despite listening to their song [XII.39-54]. In his Epistles, in a passage which
Rousseau knew well, Horace mentions the Sirens and Circe in this order. See note 36.
36
“You know the Sirens' songs and Circe's cups,” Horace writes in the Epistles; “if, along with his comrades,
[Ulysses] had drunk of these in folly and greed, he would have become the shapeless and witless vassal of a harlot
mistress – would have lived as an unclean dog or a sow that loves the mire” [I.ii.23-26]. See Horace, Satires,
Epistles, and Ars Poetica. With an English Translation by H. Rushton Fairclough. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1942). The reference is in the form [Book.epistle.lines]. It’s likely that Rousseau was familiar
with this source, the next line of which contains the line nos numerus sumus, et fruges consumere nati, which Lecat
cites in his Refutation of the First Discourse [CW 2:133], and which Rousseau later quotes in Book Two of Emile
[CW 13:296].
37
References to the Odyssey are to Homer, The Odyssey of Homer. Translated with an Introduction by Richmond
Lattimore. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), and are given in the text in the form [Book.lines].
38
Those who would argue that Circe offers herself to Odysseus because she recognizes who he is need to find a way
to explain the details of Hermes’ advice. He does not advise Odysseus simply to identify himself to Circe.
39
This work, which seems unfinished, and was not published during Rousseau’s lifetime, consists of two letters
written by Emile to his tutor Jean-Jacques. In the first, Emile describes how, after Sophie bears him a son and a
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 40
daughter, Jean-Jacques leaves, and Emile and Sophie’s misfortunes begin. Sophie’s parents soon die, then her
daughter by Emile. Consumed with grief, she is taken by Emile to the capital city for distraction, accompanied by a
friendly couple. They spend two years in the capital, during which time Emile and Sophie are both corrupted. Their
friends turn out to be libertines, and the female friend apparently ends by persuading Sophie to engage in an
adulterous affair with the friend’s husband. Sophie then reveals this affair to Emile, and the resulting pregnancy.
He is thunderstruck; he roams the capital in a passionate fury. But once he calms down, Emile leaves the capital and
takes work as a carpenter, while he deliberates about what to do. He decides to leave Sophie and to take his son
with him; but he is dissuaded from the latter on learning of a secret visit by Sophie, who fears precisely this.
Instead, Emile flees Sophie and the capital, heading south.
In the second letter we read that Emile, arriving eventually in Marseilles, embarks for Naples as a common
sailor. Unfortunately, the captain of his ship is in cahoots with the Barbary pirates. When the captain’s treachery
becomes clear, Emile kills him, but is taken by the pirates and – as soon as they see he will not be ransomed – sold
into slavery. As a slave Emile is put to use, first as a craftsman and then as a laborer on public works. When the
latter situation becomes dangerously onerous, Emile plots with his fellow slaves to go on strike: an action which
ends with Emile being made the overseer of the other slaves. He performs so well in this position that he attracts the
attention of, and is eventually sold to, the Dey of Algiers – at which point the primary manuscript breaks off. Two
passages in the first letter suggest that, had the work been completed, we would have read of the deaths of Sophie
and of Emile’s son as well [CW 13:685-721].
40
It would have occurred to Rousseau that illustrations could be used to this end if he was familiar, as seems likely,
with Vico’s New Science, whose allegorical frontispiece is composed of what Vico calls “hieroglyphs,” to which he
devotes thirty paragraphs of explanation, and which he says are intended “to give the reader some conception of the
work before he reads it, and, with such an aid as imagination may afford, to call it back to mind after he has read it”
[NS, 3]. There is no conclusive evidence, as far as I can tell, that Rousseau read Vico, but there are suggestive
similarities between their thoughts. The editors of the Pléiade edition remark that the Essay on the Origin of
Languages especially raises the question of whether Rousseau read Vico while he was in Venice, but that decisive
proof is lacking [OC 1:1548; 5:1545].
41
“Every general idea is purely intellectual,” Rousseau writes in the discussion of language in the Second
Discourse; but
if the imagination is at all involved, the idea immediately becomes particular. Try to outline the
image of a tree in general to yourself, you will never succeed; in spite of yourself it will have to be
seen as small or large, bare or leafy, light or dark, and if you could see in it only what there is in
every tree, the image would no longer resemble a tree. Purely abstract beings are either seen in
this same way, or conceived of only be means of discourse. Only the definition of a Triangle
gives you the genuine idea of it: As soon as you figure one in your mind, it is a given Triangle and
not another, and you cannot help making its lines perceptible or its surface colored. Hence once
has to state propositions, hence one has to speak in order to have general ideas: for as soon as the
imagination stops, the mind can proceed only by means of discourse [SD 148].
In the first chapter of the Essay on the Origin of Languages, Rousseau adds that the language of gesture, which
when frozen in time becomes drawing, is just as natural as spoken language, but easier and less dependent on
conventions: “for more objects strike our eyes than our ears, and shapes exhibit greater variety than do sounds; they
are also more expressive and say more in less time” [EOL 248].
42
While Rousseau claims that “[t]he ambassador [left] his present and [departed] without saying anything” [E 322],
Herodotus writes that the messenger said, “let the Persians… if they were clever [sophoi] enough, discover the
signification of the presents” [IV.131]. See Herodotus, The History. Translated by David Grene. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1987).
43
One of Rousseau’s examples in the Essay is of the Levite of Ephraim, who cut the body of his wife into twelve
pieces to rouse the tribes of Israel against the tribe of Benjamin. About this sign, Rousseau writes, “[a]t this ghastly
sight they rushed to arms… [a]nd the Tribe of Benjamin was exterminated” [EOL 249-250]. But in Judges, the
source of the story, we read that while the Israelites were outraged at the sight of the woman’s dismembered corpse
[19:30], they needed a speech to determine them to attack those responsible in Gibeah [20:4-9]. Another of the
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 41
examples in the Essay is of King Saul, who dismembered his plow oxen to being Israel to the assistance of the tribe
of Jabesh. But in I Samuel we read that Saul accompanied the parts of his dismembered oxen with a threat.
“‘Whoever does not come out after Saul and after Samuel, thus will be done to his oxen!’ And the fear of the Lord
fell on the people,” the scripture writer concludes, “and they came out as one man” [11:7]. Again, while Rousseau
claims in the Essay that the orator Hyperides got the courtesan Phryne acquitted “without urging a single word in her
defense” [EOL 250], we read the following in Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, XIII:
Hyperides spoke in support of Phryne, and when his speech accomplished nothing, and the jurors
seemed likely to convict her, he brought her out in public, ripped her dress to shreds, exposed her
chest, and at the conclusion of his speech produced cries of lament as he gazed at her, causing the
jurors to feel a superstitious fear of this priestess and temple-attendant of Aphrodite, and to give in
to pity rather than put her to death. Afterward, then she had been acquitted, a decree was passed to
the effect that no speaker was to lament on another person’s behalf, and that no accused man or
[woman] was to be put on display while their case was being decided [590e-f].
See Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters. Edited and Translated by S. Douglas Olson. Volume VI. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 411-413. Finally, the same criticism could be made of Rousseau’s use of the
example of Antony, at the end of his digression in Emile. “On the death of Caesar,” he writes, “I imagine one of our
orators wishing to move the people; he exhausts all the commonplaces of his art to present a pathetic description of
Caesar’s wounds, his blood, his corpse. Antony, although eloquent, does not say all that. He has the body brought
in. What rhetoric!” [E 322-323]. According to Plutarch’s “Life of Antony,’ though, Rousseau’s likely source,
Antony behaved differently:
[a]s Caesar’s body was conveying to the tomb, Antony, according to the custom, was making his
funeral oration in the market-place, and perceiving the people to be infinitely affected with what
he had said, he began to mingle with his praises language of commiseration, and horror at what
had happened, and, as he was ending his speech, he took the under-clothes of the dead, and held
them up, showing them stains of blood and the holes of the many stabs, calling those that had done
this act villains and bloody murderers. All which excited the people to such indignation, that they
would not defer the funeral, but, making a pile of tables and forms in the very market-place, set
fire to it; and every one, taking a brand, ran to the conspirators’ houses, to attack them [II, 489490].
Antony uses the language of signs to concentrate the passions generated by his spoken words.
44
Rousseau claims to be following Horace in drawing this conclusion. And indeed, we read in On the Art of Poetry,
“[l]ess vividly is the mind stirred by what finds entrance through the ears than by what is brought before the trusty
eyes, and what the spectator can see for himself.” Yet Horace follows up with this qualification: “you will not bring
upon the stage what should be performed behind the scenes, and you will keep much from our eyes, which an actor's
ready tongue will narrate anon in our presence [180-184].” The examples he gives of such things are of atrocities
and miraculous transformations. If these things are more striking when imagined than when feigned on the stage,
they may indicate a limit to the energy of the language of signs.
45
“The object that is exhibited to the eyes shakes the imagination, arouses curiosity, keeps the mind attentive to
what is going to be said” [E 322], Rousseau explains in Book Four of Emile.
46
The other examples are, first, “Alexander placing his seal on his favorite’s mouth,” and second, “Diogenes
walking before Zeno.” The first is a reference to Plutarch’s “Life of Alexander,” paragraph 39 [E 491 n 68]. The
story told there involves a friend of Alexander who had read a letter from Alexander’s mother, advising Alexander
to desist from giving magnificent gifts, because this made their recipients equal to kings and made them many
friends, while stripping Alexander bare. The gesture was meant to tell the friend to keep silent about the advice,
which Alexander had been keeping secret. The second phrase is a reference to Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the
Philosophers, VI.39 [E 491 n 69]. The text only says that when “someone” told Diogenes there is no such thing as
motion, he got up and walked around. In both examples, though, the significance of the action depends on the
communicating parties having a considerable amount of experience in common: the content of Alexander’s mother’s
letter, in the first case, and the claims of Zeno’s paradoxes in the second.
�Black, The Very Pictures of Education, Page 42
47
According to Herodotus, the messenger reported “that Thrasybulus had made no suggestion at all, and indeed he
wondered what sort of a man this was he had been sent to, a madman and a destroyer of his own property” [V.92].
Despite his ignorance of the message, the messenger’s judgment of Thrasybulus was good.
48
In the Letter to Raynal, an early reply to criticisms made of the First Discourse, Rousseau answers the claim that
“[i]t is impossible to be too emphatic about truths that clash so head-on with the general taste, and it is important to
deny chicanery every possible hold” by saying that “I am not altogether of the same opinion, and I believe that
children should be left some baubles” [G, 31; italics in the original]. Compare what Rousseau says about the
illustrations in Emile in a letter to his publisher: “I am very happy with the illustrator, and even with the engraver,
and I am, like children, quite taken with beautiful images” [CC 10:151].
49
Rousseau’s first examples showing the superiority of the ancients have to do with covenants. When the gods
ruled instead of force, he tells us, covenants were solemnly made in their presence, and these covenants were
recorded in the “book” of the earth: in stones, trees, and heaps of rocks. “[T]he faith of men was more assured by
the guarantee of these mute witnesses than it is today by all the vain rigor of the laws” [E 321]. He implies that by
swearing in the presence of these objects, the ancient Israelites made it more likely that their covenants be kept –
that is, that the language of signs persuaded men to act faithfully. What, then, was the basis of this persuasion?
Rousseau gives four examples of ancient covenants – all taken from Genesis. The first is to “the well of the
oath” [Genesis 26:32-33; Bloom, 491 n 65]. In this example, a pact is struck between Isaac and Abimelech in which
the latter pledges not to attack the former, because “[w]e have clearly seen that the Lord is with you” [Genesis
26:28], and a well is dug called the well of the oath. The evidence that the Lord is with Isaac seems chiefly to have
been the flourishing of the Israelites that followed once Abimelech realized that Isaac was Rebekah’s husband, and
put him under his protection. Second, Rousseau mentions “the well of the living and seeing” [Genesis 16:14;
Bloom, 491 n 65]. In this case Hagar encounters a messenger of the Lord, who promises her that she will bear a son
named Ishmael, “a wild ass of a man – / his hand against all, the hand of all against him, / he will encamp in despite
of all his kin” [16:12]. This covenant leads Hagar to return to Sarai and to endure her abuse, but it also promises
centuries of conflict. Third, Rousseau cites “the old oak of Mamre” [Genesis 18:1; Bloom, 491 n 65]. In this
passage, the Lord appeared to Abraham in the form of three men, and they promised Sarai that she would have a
child. The same three men went on to visit, and destroy, Sodom and Gomorrah. And finally, Rousseau mentions
“the mound of the witness” [Genesis 31:46-48; compare Bloom, 491 n 65]. In this last example we read about how
Jacob, having taken flocks and daughters from Laban, made a pact with the latter to draw a boundary between them
[31:52]. Jacob is able to make this pact because, he claims, God was with him [31:42] in his theft – that is, the theft
succeeded.
What these examples seem to have in common is that in each case the covenant symbolized by a natural
object was concluded against the backdrop of an indirect or direct demonstration of the power of God. We are led to
conclude that while the signs concentrated the memory of these demonstrations of power, it was the demonstrations
themselves – in other words, an experience of force – that aroused the interest of the contracting parties, and
persuaded them to be faithful. The examples thus illustrate how persuasion is based on the tyrannical exercise of
force.
50
The only exception, if that is what it is, to the rule that Rousseau’s historical examples of the language of signs
involve tyrants, is the example of Diogenes and Zeno [E 322].
�
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
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
42 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The very pictures of education: on Rousseau's illustrations in Emile
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on June 19, 2013 by Jeff Black as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Black, Jeff J. S., 1970-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-06-19
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 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
Subject
The topic of the resource
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Emile. Illustrations.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 81879
Deans
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dff22eb644a8770b623d66bdee102170.pdf
76c50e76cb97e50accb25fb95146fa07
PDF Text
Text
�������
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
7 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What is a question?
Description
An account of the resource
Typescript of a lecture delivered on October 16, 2015 by Daniel Harrell as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harrell, Daniel
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-16
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 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
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 83010
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/276">Audio recording</a>
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b70c11230755fc2c9e5a92d0bdc64ed4.mp3
7a33a2c43ca112db6876e3c9e72f677b
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
audio cassette
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:35:24
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
Depth and desire
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 31, 1990 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
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
1990-08-31
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heraclitus, of Ephesus
Communism
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/5">Typescript</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Bib # 10245
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/df7e73adbe6b258f8c61052aa12bd418.MP3
c504139340a75a554246304a9190d98e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
digital
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:17:32
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Homer on Military Leadership
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 10, 2015, by Jonathan Shay as part of the LCDR Erik S. Kristensen Lecture Series.
The lecture is the third in a joint lectures series between St. John's College and the U.S. Naval Academy to honor the memory of Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen. An alumnus of the United States Naval Academy and the St. John's College Graduate Institute, Kristensen, a Navy SEAL, was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. This lecture series aims to create even greater ties between the two schools, as well as to educate the public about civil-military relations and the place of the liberal arts in the education of naval and military professions.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Shay, Jonathan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission received.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Shay_Jonathan_2015-04-10
Subject
The topic of the resource
Command of troops
Homer
Kristensen lecture series
U.S. Naval Academy
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/4a48f13e24237d36a9a13c8fe76a2e49.mp3
36e7905501d5b8b105a687bd37d156f0
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:56:07
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mp3
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 I Still Scan Verse: Or, How to Sleep in a Procrustean Bed
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 19, 2013, by Elliott Zuckerman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Zuckerman, Elliott
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-04-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Versification
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Zuckerman_Elliott_2013-04-19_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/09d445d4c340b491804f6270b5df13d9.mp3
b5ea8525613c5445bfbe30b94897a392
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
CD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:59:49
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
What is a Q.E.F.? Reflections on the nature of geometrical making
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given on May 6, 2016 by Michael Augros as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Augros, 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
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-05-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Euclid. Elements.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8001fd8534b8966b3d4ff2f8aa8df68f.pdf
d0f5db502c0d7d300a17f0673c7e1129
PDF Text
Text
������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
24 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The broaken [sic] staff
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on September 23, 1983 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sacks, Robert D.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983-09-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Tempest.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000170
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/35d538bd69cf3d8bbe3e28469560669a.pdf
7806a8291c1296557ea6dac9952db604
PDF Text
Text
��������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
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
Leo Strauss's reading of the Bible and its implications
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on December 1, 1990 by Robert Sacks.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sacks, Robert D.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1990-12-01
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Strauss, Leo.
History (Theology)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000171
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/33ac127c661dc2a951e92c41e69540a0.pdf
9d581acc37222d8717b56137d973149a
PDF Text
Text
��������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
26 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
Readings and random thoughts from the book of Job
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on January 29, 1993 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sacks, Robert D.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-01-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible. Job
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000172
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/22d637bda662f96acd2e8dabee299aa1.pdf
f5507bb9d23b516e1ee09fbfbaf32035
PDF Text
Text
����������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 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
Samson's riddle
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given by Robert Sacks.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sacks, Robert D.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible. Genesis
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000173
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0b3a8cdc2d42ba167d69e9b6f615bf71.pdf
3a3e1f44fd7f17bb44c770927e0de8f0
PDF Text
Text
������������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
23 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
A ghost story
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2002 by Robert Sacks as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sacks, Robert D.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2002-04-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Lobachevskii, N. I. (Nikolai Ivanovich), 1792-1856.
Apollonius, of Perga.
Plato. Meno.
Euclid. Elements.
Geometry -- History.
Language
A language of the resource
English.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000640
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2bc31e414cc4957196e2623bf3c978f3.pdf
d30fcde5225a89eec6d7846b06ad829b
PDF Text
Text
�������������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
19 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
Faraday's electric eel, part 1 : the body electric
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on March 29, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-03-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003318
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8100038e13dd03ba823194df19c6177c.pdf
02be2d7b79cacc31c275cc81e03211b7
PDF Text
Text
�����������������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
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 at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
17 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
Faraday's electric eel, part 2 : an undulatory life
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2006-04-26
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003320
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ae09b2be30907e29f0eabd439f6cf2fa.pdf
1ae06bc4227ea8f393c2e75a4407f90c
PDF Text
Text
�����
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures
Description
An account of the resource
Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
speechespresentationsotherlectures
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
5 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Santa Fe Baccalaureate Address, Spring 1991
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a the address given on May 19, 1991 by James Carey as part of the Baccalaureate service in Santa Fe, NM.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Carey, James
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991-05-19
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24000381
Baccalaureate service