2 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6c4c757e7425b577506708f80e82b7fb.mp3 f66d52c6038b9060c3f79457d1e0c46f 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 m4a Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:23:42 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 Monument Without a Tomb:" St. John's Celebrates Major Scenes from Shakespeare's First Folio Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a tutor panel given by tutors Alison Chapman, Charlie Barrett, Krishnan Venkatesh, & Jay Smith as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: “In his preface to the First Folio (1623), Shakespeare’s friend and fellow author Ben Johnson described the bard as a “monument without a tomb,” attempting to capture Shakespeare’s enduring vitality as both poet and playwright. St. John’s College students know deeply the truth of these words, as the bard lives in so many parts of our campus – in our seminars, in our tutorials, and on stage in the Great Hall. In honor of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the Dean’s Lecture Committee is pleased to present a Tutor Panel that will consider major scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. The talks given by the Tutors will be in conversation with the scenes performed by Chrysostomos earlier in the week. We hope that members of the community will attend both events and bring their thoughts and reflections for the question period.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chapman, Alison Barrett, Charlie Venkatesh, Krishnan Smith, Jay 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 2024-04-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library as 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 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. First folio of Shakespeare. 1623 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_ChapmanA_et_al_A_Monument_Without_A_Tomb_2024-04-05 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b7e04bd419d83ac6518790016c792369.pdf f427e7f792841043bfc56865460d933f PDF Text Text ihno(^ David Lawrence Le\ ine **/!/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Frida\ Niaht Dean's Lecture, Ausust 29. 2003 Page 1 14.\ *'At the Very Center of the Plenitude^ Goethe^s GrandAttempt to Overcome the 18'^ Century' Or How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe From the General Sickness ofhis Age ""Nature has become the fundamental word that designates essential relations...to beings." Heidegger^ "We have failed to restore to the human spirit its ancient right to comeface toface with nature." Goethe"* "Goethe teaches coin-age...ihzi the disadvantages of an\' epoch exist only to the fainthearted." Emerson^ 1. Incidental Thoughts, Fniitfiil Life: To everyone: Welcome! To our freshman in particular a special Welcome! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, we know him first as a poet and playwright—seniors will read his Faust ne.xt week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well loiown but who, from his own point ofview, isofequal, if not greater consequence,^ the Goethe who spent his life studying nature—botan\'. zoolog}', geologv', meteorolog>', theory of color—^and is known, in this regard, for his work in morpholog\'. I would like to speak about this lesser known Goethe tonight. There are two subtitles to this evening*s lecture "At the Very Center of the Plenitude." The first is given to it by Friedrich Nietzsche, the second. m\- own curious invention. The first is "Goethe's Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18"' Centur}-." As we will see. from Nietzsche's perspective Goethe was a philosophical thinker of the highest order who inherited, as we all do, ideas from previous generations and thinkers, ideas that he thought were ill conceived and needed to be rethought. Thanks to these ideas, we had become, according to Goethe, "blind with seeing eyes." Similarly the second subtitle. "How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe from the General Sickness ofhis Age." This clearly reflects our unique studies here at St. John's. Here too we see something of greater moment than we might first have seen. Here we wall have a chance to see that his life work studying nature—^as seen in the paper that we read in freshman laboratory—has a far greater significance than just'science.' great though this is in its own right.^ For Goethe the smdy of namre was the necessary antidote to a growing tendency—"sickness'" he called it—^that needed to be countered for the sake of our lives and health. n U We have our work cut out for us this evening. " .LM? Lcc ! •-! ^ •i St. John's Colfe^"^ - Meem Library �Da^ id Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center of the Plenitude^" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 2 14x Goethe's thinking, though philosophical, is not s\"stematic. and that means there's no one place where his deepest thinking is to be found. Just the opposite, his profoundest thought is to be disco\ ered throughout his works, and not just in his major works, but minor ones too, often just jottings here and there, on slips of paper, in the margins of books, the comers of newspapers, in brief letters, in short wherever occasion found a suitable surface for pen and ink to secure for a time his emergent thoughts. These were often then collected into "maxims and reflections." sometimes inserted as the thinking of one of the characters of his novels, sometimes collected under his own name. These occasional thoughts will provide much of the material for tonight's talk. But incidental thoughts are not necessariK" insignificant thoughts.' Not unlike flotsam and jetsam, thoughts appear throughout our da\". Are these daih' musings 'distractions of the moment' or 'disclosures of moment'? Such irrepressible thoughtftilness and imagination gives added dimension to the thin linearity of time. A da\' punctuated b>' the wondrous, sparked by light, is not just another day. DaiK^ discoveiy* is meat not spice. nourishmenL not just flavoring. And its joy is invigorating. The mundane is thereb>" transformed. Thinking happens. One such collection of thoughts is a book of selected conversations by his secretary Johann Peter Eckermann, a man of no small talent, who took it upon himself to record for posterit} personal con\ersations he had \%ith his world famous employer during the last nine >ears of his life. These are intermittenth* and imperfecth' recorded, often self-conscious, sometimes seem contrived, and are frequenth' without a definite outcome. There we find observations about passing acquaintances, deliberations about the wine list for the evening dinner, plans for journeys to be taken, personal estimates about famous and not so famous authors and statesmen. latter->'ear reflections and regrets about his youthful writings, plans for the reconstruction of the local theater that had burned down, conversation with his patron the Grand Duke of Weimar, observations about his wife and children, expressions of hope and disappointment about friends, frustrations about works of his that had been overlooked or were under appreciated. But throughout the rich array, there emerge as well recurrent themes and persistent questions of consequence. The same author mentioned above. Nietzsche, sa\s the following: "Apart from Goethe's [own] writings, and in particular Goethe's conversations M'ith Eckermann, the best German book there is. what is there realK" of German prose literature that it would be worthwhile to read o\'er and o\er again?'"'^' 'The best German book there is." worth "reading over and over again"? Hardly on the face of it. Though perhaps prone to hyperbole and "philosophizing with a hammer,'* Nietzsche was not prone to misrepresentation. What could he mean b\ such e.xaggerated praise? Perhaps what is remarkable is not the book per se. but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its ultimate literaiy value—^the book is not on our program—^but the attempt to record a life that is in no wa>' ordinaiy? Indeed, even through Eckermann's eyes we glimpse new possibilities for a human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibilit\" rarely seen. We glimpse a paradigm of a full\- engaged, e\ er creati\e. wholesome fecundit>. In shorL we see philosophy as a way of being in the world. not as a book bound between leather covers. 2. '•^Everything Nowadays is Ultrai In 1825. late in life. Goethe wrote a letter to his friend, the composer Zelter in which he reflected on the character of life as it had come to be lived in their lifetime: �Da\ id Lawrence Levine *'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 3 14x Everything nowadays is ultra, [he \\rites] eren thing is being transcended continually in thought as well as in action. .Vo one hw^vs himselfany longer, no one can grasp the element in which he Ih es and works or the materials that he handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of simplifiers we have enough. Young people are stirred up much too early in life and then carried away in the whirl of the times. Wealth and rapidit>" are what the world admires.... Railways, quick mails, steamships, and every possible kind of rapid communication are what the educated world seeks but it only oxer-educates itself and thereby persists in its mediocrity. It is. moreover, the result of universalization that a mediocre culture [then] becomes [the] common [culture].... He then adds ruefully: "We and perhaps a few others \\ ill be the last of an epoch that will not soon return."" According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our wa\' of being has taken place: 1) a change in the character of human thought and action. 2) a change in our knowledge of ourselves, 3) a change in our sense of place, and finally, 4) a change in the character and efficacy of education. "Exeiything noM cidays is ultra " As earh' as the beginning of the nineteenth century, what was coming to characterize human life—^and thereb\" change the face and depth of human experience—^Nvas the speed [die Voloziferishe] at which life was lived, a hitherto unheard of, dizzying and disorienting pace suchthat \oung people—^but not only—could only be caught up in "the whir! of the times." "Being caught up" means living some other life than one's own, being inauthentic. "Railways, quick mails, steamships:" Ever faster communication changes the lived dimensions of life: time quickens, distance collapses. There is no delaj- between an event and its hearing. "It's as if we were right there.'* A leisureK^ walk is replaced by a carriage ride, thereafter b> a train ride, then a jet plane, and now b\"... a transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The \\ ait for "news" from the pon}' e.xpress. a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues to shrink. Our e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about an event "as it happens" no matter the distance. Life, in short, is lived in fast forward. Goethe asks "Who can possibly keep up with the demands of an exorbitant presentand that at ma.\imum speed?"'" This matter of life's ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for Goethe. "The greatest misfortune [L'nheil] of our time.'* he says elsewhere, "which let's no thing come to fruition, is that one moment consumes the next,"^'" While the speeding up of things may assist us in "keeping informed" and "staying in touch," it also subtracts from other essential dimensions once thought definitive of human life. It makes certain things more difficult, if not impossible, specificalh" those things that take time, for e.\ample, those that require slow assimilation and acclimation. abo\e all human learning and experience. It takes time cnxay from thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness. For time and leisure (skole) are tlie proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care. We hear too that our thought processes are affected: "e\'eiything is transcended in thought [as well as in action]." We have somehow been made to think different!)'. We live at a new level of abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple. ob\ ious. primary world, such that w-e no longer e\ en understand "the element in which we live." What could this mean? �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 4 '^'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude^'' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ And most curious of all. Goethe sa\s ""No one knows himself an}- longer.** How is this even possible? Elsewhere he says: "Learning fails to bring advancement now that the world is caught up in such a rapid turnover: by the time }ou ha\e managed to take due note of eveiything. vou have lost your Are we not alwa\ s the same no matter our circumstances? Education too is thereb}- affected. It is suggested that we might even become "overeducated,"' mis-educated, that education itself has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: "For almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men engaged in them."'" Rather than distinction, we ha\e mediocrity: rather than a high culture, we have an ordinary one. What then of the rewards of "perspective." "balance" and "e.\cellence" once thought the outcome of an ennoblingeducation? The "whirl of the times" has only accelerated many, many fold since 1825. The author could not possibl}- have en\ isioned the pace at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first hearing, one might be inclined to take the above obsenations as the grumbling of a man seeing the world pass him by (empt}- biographism). We might however, also take this as notice to think better about the character our li\ es in our ultra-ultra world. 3. "The General Sickness of the Agef "Life is our lot rather than reflection."'^ Goethe's exclamation that "nowadays... no one knows himself any longer" clearly needs further consideration. How could this be? Don't we kno\^• ourseh es? Throughout the modem disciplines—the ph}sical sciences, histon', even poetn- and literature—^was a growing trend, evident to Goethe, to what he called "subjecti>ity." Juniors and ' seniors will remember, in the Discourse on Method^ Descartes' identification of the "ego" as the primordial truth about which we alone can be immediatel}' "certain." The immediate evidence of this self-intuition then pro\ides the standard of truth for all else, now thought true only if "clearh and distincth" concei\ able to us. Odd though this ma}- sound, this new self-certaint}- leads to our world being reconceived as "the external world.'* about which we can now have only a small measure of certainly- and that of its radically stripped dow n mathematical qualities. To be sure, this made a "modem science" of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new- definition and sense of self that was problematic.' This excessivel}- polarized and reduced view- of the ego as "subject"—understood as standing "o\-er against"'^ some bare objective world—is what Goethe meant b\" "subjectivit}:'* polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior world, and thereby alienated from an}- sense ofworld in which it could feel itself integrated or at home.'^ For Goethe the consequences of this influential (na}-, fateful) redefinition of self are now here better seen than in his own vocation, poetry-. We have all heard the caricamre of the modem "romantic" poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret, whose on!}- truth is his inner pain. But for Goethe there is. unfortunate!}-, an element of truth to be found therein: He observ es: "All the poets [toda}-] write as if the}- were ill and the whole wwld were a lazaretto [leper colon}-]. The}- all speak of the woe and misery- of this earth and the joy of a hereafter: all are discontented.... This." he adds, "is a real abuse of poetiy....""® "I attach no value to [such] poems ....'*"' From Goethe* s perspecti\'e, "whoe%-er descends deep down into himself will always realize he is onK half a being...,"" and being half will discover there limited resources for creati\-it}-. "...A subjecti\e nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at last _ �David Lawrence Le\ ine Page 5 "Af the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x ruined by mannerism [that is. excessive affectation],"" he notes regretfulh'. ""Such people look at once within: they are so occupied b>' what is revoi\ ing in themselves, [that] they are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without seeing them."""* With reduced openness to the world around them. the\" have become "blind with seeing eyes." This excessive one-sidedness. and consequent risk of self-absorption. Goethe named "the general sickness of the present age [heinigen Zeif]f" and led Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: ""What is Classical is healthy; what is Romantic is sick.'"^^ Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive, foundation less, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest selves. Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the di^•ide where, for all our efforts to think about each separateh". subject and object were being ever more pulled apart. This experiential breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is over-polarized—^when the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the Morld is diminished as external. e\ en foreign, barren res extensa—^both subject and object are diminished for want of their natural correlate. If I ma\' indulge in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man standing between two horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—^for the sake of health"'—^he had everything he could handle to keep himself and the world whole."^ Goethe himself thus resisted being "caught up in his time:" he was not a "romantic." As he said. "m>- tendencies were opposed to those of my time, which were wholly subjective: while in m> objective efforts. I stood alone to m>' disad\ antage.""' His "objective efforts'? How could he resist the subjective tendencN? 4. "The Element in which we Live:'^ In all natural things there is something wonderfuL... So we should approach the inquiry...without aversion, knowing that in all of them there is something natural and beautiful.. Aristotle'® Surprising though it ma>' seem to some, the answer is nature. Thus it is apt that the Goethe we first meet is not the poet but the Goethe who spent his whole life researching 'the element in which we live." that is researching into nature. It is this "objective" involvement that saved him from the excesses of his—and our—^time. nor to mention giving him "the most wonderful moments of his life."*' So. what is nature?.... OK. a simpler question.... what is a plant? Which grammatical form best names its being, a noun or a \ erb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static state or an acti\ it}' alive with change, something that has grown or some process of growth?"'" Clearh' we need to name hotb. form that is also in the process ofself-formation. **G^o^^th is the point of life."'" For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak. aspen, pinon. mallow and mullen are different kinds of plants. The principle at work is the same throughout the stages of the life cycle of a mallow, for instance, from seedling to flowering. fructil\ ing plant. Hence we name it one thing— a mallow—despite all these various stages and differing formal manifestations.'"* But it is not onlv this individual plant that is before us. so is the species "mallow." and e\ en further so is the kingdom "plant." and these, as Goethe will insist not as abstract concepts in the mind but somehow in the living instance itself. Thus Goethe sought to account for plant �Da\ id Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center of the Plenitude " Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 6 14x life as such, despite the dizz\ ing fact that they take infiniteh man>" and wondroush" different shapes. Sumac, aspen, mallow are in "inner essence" still "plants.""" What is needed in this view is to identify- the imify ing principle at work (not "underK ing') in each and every form at whatever stage of gro\\"th and complexit\- the>' might be. But how to do so? And how to find a language that captures this universalK" active principle of forms forming themselves? To do so Goethe had to depart radicalK -ffom his contemporaries and from their analvtical approach. But in so doing this departure brings him closer to us. We can see this at the outset of the Metamorphosis of Plants that we read in freshman laboratory, where he appeals, not to results of the latest scientific journals, but to our own untutored experience. He begins: "Anyone M-ho has paid a little attention to plant growth..."'^ [2.\]. This means that we. ordinary human beings, still have access to a realm of primaiy significance, one not to be diminished as "prescientific." if what is meant thereb> is "pre-insightful." Rather we, >ou and me, have deep access into what is before us." Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning, we ma}* on the contrary be closing ourselves offfrom this primary le\el of our experience. He often referred to a passage in one of his earh" plays to illustrate this eclipse ofexperience by theory: ...as it is said in my Goetz von Berlichingen. that the son, from pure learning, does not know the father, so in science do we find people w-ho can neither see nor hear, through sheer learning and Inpothesis. Such people look at once within: the>" are so [pre-] occupied b\' what is revoh ing in themselves, that the%are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends in the street without seeing them. [Rather] the observation of nature requires a certain purity of mind that cannot be disturbed or preoccupied b> an>thing....It is just because we carry- about with usa great apparatus of philosophy and hvpothesis, that we spoil all.*® "Like a man in passion:" Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold of our minds, preventing us from seeing what might othenvise be evident and therebv" preventing us from attending to our primary experience.'^ So overwhelming are our present-day theoretical preoccupations that—in one of his most shocking statements of all—Goethe claims that we no longer even concern ourselves with nature! "That nature, which is our [modem] concern. isn*t nature any longer....'" he says."*^ [2x] Extraordinary! What has been lost, in Goethe's view, is a sense of the wholeness of wholes and the interrelatedness and integration of all things, in short, Nature (capital N). This loss is the necessary consequence of an>- approach wherein wholes are but "b>-products"^' of uncoordinated, underh ing, isolated forces and elements ("mater in the void"). Looking at things in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—anaKtical ways of thinking stumble in the face of the Humptv Dumptv- problem: how to put the whole back together again."*" If we begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the wholeness of things, the integral realitv-. remains a secondary phenomenon, a mystery, if not an accident."*' Here too we've become "blind with seeing eyes.'* Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes' famous experiment with the wax at the end of Meditations n. There Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wa.\ near a burning candle, whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, te.xture and shape (i.e. primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses all its original properties but res extensa, mere e.xtension (though this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring us to see �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 7 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ what is "elementar* (if not fundamental). Descartes then proceeds to claim that b\- "an act of intuition of reason" he—and we—^wouid know thistransmogrified, charred lump in front of us to be the same thing as before his infernal e.xperiment. He asks, yvho M ould not so conclude thus? (Aristotle, for one) Well... if that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax. M'ho M ould concur M idiDescartes that what remains is the same as what was putto the flameT*^ The anahtical flame dissociates or separates what originally was together. It "kills." So this method."*' The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but. the li\ ing whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before Descartes is '^he same" only if life and death are not different, and if form is not an acti\e principle but a derivative by product. With this "lethal generality'"*^ we lose—and lose sight of—^"the spirit ofthe whole." as Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as well that the modem approach—subjecthelv predisposed to take the objects of our e.\perience in such a reduced way—loses its claim to "objectivity.""* The question for Goethe—and for us—is whether and how we can recover the whole. Is it still possible to begin elsewhere, think differently such that the whole is retained along with its manifold parts? Can we yet begin where we naturally begin, with what is "first for us" (Aristotle), with integral wholes? 5. Our Ancient Right: The spirit of the actual is the true ideal." ""No one who is observant will ever find nature dead or silent.""*^ Goethe thus sought "another way." in order, as he said, "to restore to the human spirit, its ancientright to comeface toface with nature." "*' [2x] He asks: "What does all our communion M-ith nature amount to... if we busy ourselves with analyzing only single portions, and do not feel the breath of the spirit that dictates the role of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through an immanent law ?""® Thus "phenomena once and for all must be remo\ed from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture] chamber [Materkammer]." he said, "and [be] submitted [rather] to the jury of [common human understanding]."'^ But how^ are we to do this, to return to "common human understanding"? Since apparently we can live in more than one world. Goethe makes his bid—^"naively" yet knowingly"'—^to reclaim nature as our home-world. "If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless muhiplicir\\ atomization and complexit}- ofthe modem natural sciences" he says, "and get back to the realm of simplicity [Einfache]. we must always consider [this] question: how would Plato [or any non-modern] have reacted to fundamentally one unity as it still is, how would he have \ iewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?"'* We need to remove what "now" stands in the way.'"* We need somehow to shuck off our modem predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted'" and see our world, rather, as one might whose \ ision was not so refracted. But how? Mindful that "the first stages of a discovery lea\-e their mark on the course of knowledge.*'"^ Goethe first seeks to reorient us. To begin with, "anyone who has paid a little attention" has to acknowledge that our primary and original experience of things is otherM ise than we've been brought to conceive. 'To nature," he said, ""we never see anything isolated: �Da\ id Lawrence Levine ""At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 8 everything is in connection with something."* An\- account, then, of our experience must begin here M'ith the wiiTy and interrelatedness ofall things. Herein lays Goethe's unified field theoiy: "I abide bv what is simple and comprehensive, he says."^ (This he also calls his "stubborn realism."*'') As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind—clarit>-. breadth of sur\ e> . anention to manifest differences—is the pre-requisite to an>- genuine openness. In the garden, along a path, in the laboratoiy. we need first to see the things themselves, to recognize the ways and means that the plant [or whatever our object] uses.'*^ "...to follow it carefully throu^ all its transitions.'"^' in short. "...xo folloM- as carefully as possible in thefootsteps of nature.' ' "In the process.'' he sa\s. "we become familiar with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point of \ iew everything gradually falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to reason through \%ords and h\potheses. but to our intuitive perception \Anschauiing^ through phenomena.^" In this way. our relationship to things is not at first "speculative." but what Goethe calls "practical." that is grounded in the concrete experience of individuals and the real.^ (Here have we a model of openness and e.xtreme care that will serve us well, not onl\- in the laboratoiy . but throughout our work at the college.) Given this, gi^•en observation that is undertaken with a"truly sj*mpathetlc interest."^* a remarkable transformation can then begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted passage from the Introduction to his Outline ofa Theory of Color. Goethe addresses this process of natural ideation. He writes: An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met...that [bare] empirical data should be presented without any theoretical context.... This demand is odd because it is useless to simpK" look at something. Everyact oflooking [naturally] turns into obsen-ation. every act of observation into reflection, eveiy act of reflection into the making of associations: tints it is that we theorize every time we look carefully at the world. The abilit\ to do this with clarity of mind^ with self-knowledge, in a free wa>, and (if I may venture to put it so [he adds]) with irony, is a skill we need in order to avoid the pitfalls of [modem scientific] abstraction.''^ Nature con\erses with us. Like an\" organic transition, thought is the natural and continuous outgrowth of its prior condition, the fmit ofconcrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a higher integration through *\..tbe practical and self-distilling processes of common human understanding"!'^ [2.\] "We theorize every time we look careful1\- atthe world." When we are able to sune\' an object in eveiy detail, grasp it carefully and reproduce it in our mind's e\e [he reflects, then] we can sa>- we have an intuitive perception [.•inschauimg] of it in the truest and highest sense. We can [rightfully] sa)' it belongs to us.... And thus the particular leads to the general [as well as] the general to the particular. The two combine their effect in eveiyobsen'atioD, in every discourse.^ As much as we take the lead in inquiry, then so too are we led by what we are inquiring into. Experience is bi-directional. Subject-object: object-subject. Tme sympathetic observation results in the recapitulation in our summary imagination of the originating principle. The object becomes for us as it is in itself. In this way the object "belongs" to us as much as we. in communion, belong with it. Our natural correlation is thereby reestablished, the Cartesian �David Lawrence Le\ ine Page 9 "/4/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not re\ ersed. and a kind of renewed originaiin* is returned to human experience, widening and opening our puniew®'. whereby we might be thought once again to come "face to face" with nature. Our ancient right is restored. 6. The Original World: "...the sublime tranquilit\' which surrounds us when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature. vast and eloquent." "A living thing cannot be measured b>" something external to itself."" ^ This reunion of obser\ er and world—^we should sa\' union—is possible because of a unique human facult}'—one out-rightK" denied " or at least overlooked by other modem thinkers—but to which Goethe again and again retums our attention. As we read: "When we are . able to sur\€y an object in every detail, grasp it carefulh^ and reproduce it in the mind's eye. we can say we have an intuitive perception of it in the truest and highest sense." This capacit>- for "concrete imagination" or summary "intuition" (intuitive perception, Anschauung) is our faculty for e.xperiential wholes wherein the acti\ ely unii} ing principles at work in the world manifest themselves. (Deny it and we haNe no wholes). They are not deduced, inferred, or synthesized. We do not ha\ e to go be\ ond or behind *the phenomena to see these at work. These are made known to us at the level of our primary e.xperience. We "see" them. There's a famous story: At. a meeting of the Society' for Scientific Research in Jena there was a 'Tortunate encounter" between Goethe and the poet Friedrich Schiller—^whose poetry at the time Goethe thought too romantic, too subjective. Goethe sought to explain to him his own attempt to articulate such a principle whereb\" the natural plenitude of plant life might be accounted for. His "idea" was. he admits, ''the strangest creature in the world**'^ wherein the whole range of plant formation might be seen as "stemming" or "derived'* from an aboriginal form that was in this regard the formal progenitor of the whole kingdom. Goethe named this the Urpflanze^y the original ororiginary plant. ^ Schiller's first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in particular his indebtedness to Kant. "This is not an obser\ ation from experience." he said. "This is an idea. " Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he scnw He was disinclined—^as we ma\' be—^to grant that this was an\*thing but a "regulative idea" constructed b\" reason to help it organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the phenomenal arra\" of plant forms. It was mereh* an idea, merely "subjective." For him and for Kant, it couldn't be anything more, as in their \ iew phenomena are themseh es constituted b>' consciousness and are thus not things in themselves. Convinced, rather, that he had identified the objective generative source of all plant forms. Goethe replied: "Then 1 may rejoice that I ha\ e ideas without knowing iL and can even see them with my own eyes,"* For Goethe, perception and reason, as moments of a natural process, are not disparate faculties, but continuous. Thus this, and all other ITr-phenomena. immanent and at work throughout our experience, are real and hence must be available to us on the primary level of common human understanding ^. He wonders: "Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of etemalK" creative nature we may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?" He thus insisted that he �Da\ id Lawrence Levine Page 10 ""At the Ven' Center ofthe Plenitude" Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Hx could see with his eyes something to which others seern to have become blind. ^ (Despite this ftindamental difference, the two became close friends.) But more needs to be said about this "strangest" of all creatures that holds, in Goethe's words, "the secret of the creation and organization of plants" (or any family of phenomena). As we mentioned earlier. Goethe's interests were vast and not restricted to botany; he also did research in osteology" or bone formation. Indeed it was Goethe who discovered the role of the intermaxillaiy- bone, the missing link that alIo\\ed zoologists to connect man and ape anatomicalK'. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see most clearly the point of origination of his thinking concerning £^r-phenomena: The distinction between man and animal long eluded discovery. Ultimately it was belie\ ed that the definiti% e difference between ape and man la\' in the placement of the ape's four incisors in a bone clearly and physically separate from other bones. [Goethe provides the link.]... Meanwhile I had devoted my fiill energies to the stud}' of osteolog}'. for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of ever}' form is preserved conclusively and for all time. The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the history of successive generational transformations is preser\ed and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form. Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate ph} logen}'. so more generally can any such morphological account. This "pregnanc}"^' of the present form allows of a new kind of thinking to uncover the C/r-principle at work, a re\"erse thinking that ''traces the phenomena [back] to their [empirical] origins.''®" (This is the first methodological principle of the new science of morpholog}'"). In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle. now also called an "archetype:" •\.. an anatomical archet}pe will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all animals as potential [2x], one which will guide us to an orderly description of each animal.'"®^ The £/r-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out of which the whole pohmorphic metamorphosis issues. "All is leaf" As such these are not ideas in the usual sense of Plato or KanL neither separate nor abstract. Rather the}' are like ideas in enabling us to give an account of the unify ing principles at the origin of the plenitude. They are like ideas, as well, in that they might ser\'e as a kind of "formula" providing a way to generate new forms—if only in imagination.®' (The "deri\'ation®^' is not ofhypothetical but real possibilities.) Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying the manifold fruitfulness of nature, here ho\N'ever "the secret of the creation and organization" ofthe family of forms. (He sometimes called itentelechy} ) Thus whatever the family of phenomena—^botany, osteolog'. geology, meteorology, color—C/r-phenomena emerge. We come to see the unify ing principle, the spirit 'That dictates the role of e\'er}' part and restrains or sanctions all excess through immanent law." From this "empirical summit.®®" all things can be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos®', integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended. Therefore when you pick up Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants to read, or any of his other writings on nature, do not close yourseh es off when hearing its foreign language, rather attempt to hear its new \'oice and direction for the understanding of nature, "the element in which we live." Whether, indeed. Goethe has bequeathed us afi uirfidpath by means of which I ^ �Da\ id Lawrence Le\ ine Page 11 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'^ Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x our ancient right might be restored or whether it is but a false porta. is for each of us to determine for ourselves. 7. Against Self-knowledge: "Eveiything that liberates our mind without at the same time impartina self-control is pernicious Where are we. then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be learned about ourselves from this "other \\ ay of studying nature"? As we'\'e seen there are two unities that are reestablished by Goethe's wa}- of thinking: there's the unit}' of wholes that had been fragmented, and the unit}' of obsen er and world that had been alienated. Let us think more about the latter. This unit}" of obsen er and world means that, like any organism, man cannot be known, nor know himself, apart from his world—his environment— which sustains him and of which he is an integral part. Given the polarized, inauthentic. and diminished sense of self that is the consequence of the di\ orce of the "ego'* from its world in modem thought, it is understandable, then, that to Goethe "no one knows himself an}' longer." This led him to his famous—if at first shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: "I mustadmit.'" he said, 'ihat I have long been suspicious of the great and important sounding task: 'know-thyself.' This has always seemed to me a deception practiced b}' a secret order of priests who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands, to divert attention from acti>it}' in the outer world to some false inner speculation.*'" Self-knowledge—or what we take to be such—can be misleading, indeed disabling. But how can we make it truthful...and enabling? As we would expect, for Goethe the success of our efforts to know ourselves depends on the degree to which we are willing to extend ourselves be}ond ourselves. "Man is b}' all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the world around him....'"'* he stresses, and thus "the human being knows himself only insofar as he knows the world: he percei\ es the world onl} in himself and himself only in the world."'" This brings to mind his earlier obser\'ation: "WTioe\'er descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half a being:" this thought was then completed with 'iet him find ...a world....and he will become whole."" In short, that we might be drawn out of our overly selfpolarized existence, we need to reestablish ourselves once again as "worldly beings, full}" engaged with and in our natural correlate "the outer w orld." Thus he answers the question "How can we learn self-knowledge?" in this wa}": ""'"Never by taking thought but rather by action."'" [2x] This reph' should not surprise us. for itwas our history that our very attempts to thwk about ourseKes and the world brought us to this unnatural polarization. Thus it is •'acti^'it}' in the outer world" alone that is necessary" to restore a balanced polarit}'and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe's own ''objective activit} :" Without my attempts in natural science, [he said] I should never have learned to know mankind [including himself] as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closeh' observ e errors of the sense and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character. All is more or less pliant and wavering...but nature understands no jesting; she is always true. alwa}'s serious: alwa}'s severe... the errors and faults are alwa}'s those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her. she despises: and only to the apt. the pure and the true, does she resisn herself and res eal her secrets.'^ �David Lawrence Levine Page 12 "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" FridayNight Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were thought the fruit of introspection and the stud\' of the human sciences. The book of nature, as other texts, can serve as an occasion for self-reflection. 'The apt. the pure, and the true'* learn about themselves and other human beinas as the\ self-criticalK" open themseh es up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage. "For"almost a centuiy now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds ofmen engaged in them:" comes to mind. It is followed b>-: "it is a real piece of good fortune that nature inter>'ened. drew the essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a true humanitarianism from its side."^" The stud>- of nature can thus be a liberatingstudy, freeing us from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness wherein we. once asain. can open oursel\"es to our fullest possibilities. In this wa\. the study of nature is properly a liberal art. 8. The Grand Attempt: "Where do we meet an original naturel Where is the man with strength to be true, and to show himselfas he is?"'® FinalK". certain questions emerged earlier about our modem way of life. How are we, given the ^'demands of an exorbitant present,*" not to get ""caught up" in the whirl of our times and to reclaim a sense of productive leisured For Goethe the answer is ...nature, whose rhythms, it was once thought, could not be accelerated, and through our study of which intimations of timeless self-sameness might prove a refuge and shape our own being in the world. How are we to regain afooting ""where everything is in flux of continual change"? Here too. the answer for Goethe is nature, our home world, whose inherent lawfulness, as evidenced in the unities of life forms, can thus provide a secure base upon which to take our next steps. How are we to know ourselves more completely? Nature is especially needed here to offset our tendency^ to over self-involvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And how are we to educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modem education only brought us, in Goethe's view, to become "blind with seeing eyes." he sought in nature a complement—not to mention an antidote—^whose truthfulness would bring us "to see with seeing eyes" that fullness of view, perspective and measure that is the proper fmit of serious study. Our question: can our own sustained reflection on these questions, beginning with freshman laboratory, lead to lessons such as these as well?" B\ way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last time. Toward the end of his life (1889). he himselftried to capture in one of his aphorisms "the European event" that was Goethe. This distillation lis es up to his well-known boast that he "wrote whole books in one sentence.""''® though in this case he is somewhat more loquacious, for it took him a whole paragraph to epitomize this extraordinary life: Goethe - not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century through a retum to nature, through a going-z/p to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-ov ercoming on the part of that century. - He bore within him its strongest instincts: sentimentality, natureidolatiy. the anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionaiy.... He called to his aid history, the natural sciences, antiquity , likewise Spinoza, above all practical activity; he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons; he did not sever himself from life, [rather] he placed himself within it [that is, ""at the very center of the plenitude"]; nothing could discourage him and he took as much as possible upon himself, above himself, within himself. What he ^ �David Lawrence Le\ ine ''At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude*' Page 13 Friday Night Dean's Lecture. August 29,2003 14x aspired to was rotaliry: he stro\ e against separation of reason, sensualit}'. feeling, will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism b> Kant, the antipode of Goethe): he disciplined himself to the whole, he created himself...Goethe was, in an epoch disposed to the unreal, a convinced realist: ...Goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who, keeping himself in check and having re\ erence for himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, [one] who is strong enough for this freedom .... A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a jojful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and indi\idual ma>' be rejected, that in the totalit>- everything is redeemed and affirmed - he no longer denies ... But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name [...] Dionysus.— Those who've read more wideK" in Nietzsche will recognize this last act of baptism as extraordinary: there is no higher, nor deeper, nor more original mode of being for Nietzsche than this aboriginal and creative life force that he identifies in the person of Goethe: 1) this rare independence from it's times. 2) this extraordinary, if circumspect, positivity, 3) this unlimited and deep interest in all things. 4) this secure groundedness in practical, concrete reality-, 5) this insistence on our original, primary experience. 6) this noble distance from suffering, 7) this incomparable sense of measure, and of course 8) this Olympian courage. If not Dionysus, then what name or word would be appropriate? Goethe and Nietzsche saw that we modems ha\e a hard choice before us: between disaffection and engagement, between c\nicism'*'" and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to affirm life, to sav YESl'*^* So we ask you tonight to consider this figure, how he might move you to "discipline yourselves to the whole" and summon the natural fecundity of your inherence. .\nd we ask you tonight "to place yourselves within life." to seek out what is primary and original and. daring to speak the language ofdisco\'ery. to speak "poetically.'^" And we ask you tonight to "make time" for thoughtfulness. that you transform the mundane with thejo> s of daily discos eiy. that\ our life be rich and yourdays notordinary ones. One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until Goethe's last da>'S (that is. into his 83"^ year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well. Thank vou. �David Lawrence Levine ".4r the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Page 14 Fridav Nidit Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14.\ Endnotes ' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. .Maxim and Reflections. = 337: also 664 [hereafter MR]. Given as the annual Fridav niaht Dean's Lecture' to open the 37'" academic year at St. John's College. Santa Fe. See MR = 864. This talk is a further development of work begun in 1966 (see Levine. "The Political Philosophy of Sature. .4 Preface to Goethe s Human Sciences." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. XL 1986. pp. 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Lowith. and all three who introduced me to the depth of Goethe's thinking: m\ debt to them continues. For the ambiguiiv' and greatness of Goethe's "grand anempt." see Johann Petet Eckermann. Conversations with Goethe, translated by John Oxenford. London. 1951 [1850]. [hereafter ECK]. October.20.1828. .As alwa>s my deep gratitude to Jacqueline Levine and John Comell for their thoughtful suggestions. I " Nietzsche. Twilight ofthe Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, translated by R.J. Holilingdale. 1968 [1889]. = 49. p. 102[hereafterTl\. •' .Martin Heidegger. "On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in .Aristotle's Physics B. 1." Pathmarks, Cambridge. 1998. p. 183 [hereafter Phusis]. " .Analysis and Synthesis [hereafter .AS], in Goethe. Scientific Studies, vol. 12. edited and translated b\- Doualas Miller. The Colleaed ff'orks. Princeton. 1995. p. 48 [hereafter SS]. The publication of this collection of Goethe's disparate scientific workshas provided a new occasion for further reflection about his"grand anempL" • Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Goethe, or the Writer." Representative Men. New York. 1995 [1850]. p. 195. ^ ECK Januaiy 4. 1824. May2. 1824. Februaiy 18and 19. 1829. ECK Februaix 26. 1824: also .MR = 662. ' ECK March 1. 1830. ' Outline of a Theory of Color [hereafter OTC]. SS. = 743 see also note 21. 10 Nietzsche. "The Wanderer and His Shadow. " Human at! too Hunum, A Bookfor Free Spirits, translated by R. J. Hollingdate. Cambridge. 1986. Vol. II. Pt II = 109. p. 336 Lener to Zelier. June 7. 1825: in Ldwith. Karl. "The Historical Background of European Xihilisin." "The Fate of Progress." .Mature, History, and Existentialisnu and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History'. E\anston. 1966. pp. 4. 156-7: Front Hegel to Sietzsche. the Revolution in Sineteenth Century Thought. New YorL 1964. pp. 27-8. 177-181 [hereafterHN): also MR = 480. i MR =474. • MR = 479. '•* .MR = 770. HN p. 226. The EnterpriseJustified. On Morphology. SS. p. 61. The ego or modem selfis doubtful of all but bare existence, where even the e.xiemaliiv . the worldness of the world, is in question. Foran interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polaritv . see Heidegger. Phusis. p.188. .A modem ironv: man is least at home in a world of his own conception. �David Lawrence Levine Page 15 the Very Center of the Plenitude" Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 14x ECK September 24. 1827. ECK September 18. 1823. Bj-contrast, all of Goethe's poetn* was insistently "occasional." that is objecti\ ely motivated: "The world is so great and rich, and life so full of \ ariet>*. that \ou can ne\er want for occasions for poems. But the\ must be occasioned [poems] [Geiegenheitsgediche]: that is to sa\. realin- {lVirklichkeif\ must give both impulse and material. .A panicular even becomes universal and poetic by the veiy circumstance that it is treated bv- a poet. .All mv poems are occasioned poems, suggested bv- real life, and having therein a firm foundation." ,A radicalh different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January 29. 1826. MR ^ 337.393. 119. " MR = 935. ECK Januarv- 29. 1826: also .MR =1119. ECK .May18.24. - ECKJanuaiv 29. 1826. MR = 1031: ECK .Mav 2.1829. .A comparison wiih Nietzsche is appropriate here. ECK March. 14. 1830; also December 21. 1831: ITP p. 39. 29 ECK .April 14. 1824: also 77je Cement Prefaced. On Morphology. SS. p. 67. and HN pp. 6-7. On the Parts of.Animals, l.v. 645al6. 19-27. Fortunate Encounter [hereafter FE], SS. p. 18. "The Germans." Goethe notes, "have a word for the complex of existence present in the physical organism. Gestalt [or structured form]...[whereby] an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character. But if we look at all these Gestalten [all these forms], especiallv- organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent nothing is at rest or defined—everything is in flux of continual motion. This is why the Germans fi-equentlv- and fininglv- make use of [another] wordBildung[formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is in process of production as well." The PurposeSet Forth. On .Morphology. SS. p. 63. Significant Help Given by an Ittgenious Turn ofPhrase [hereafter ITP]. SS. p. 40. See CP p. 69: also Eric Heller. "Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth." The Disinherited Mind. New York. 1959.p. 10 [hereafter Heller]. *' Metamorphosis ofPlant [hereafter MoP]. SS. ^ 60.67. MoP. p. 76. OTC - 743. ECK. .Mav- 18. 1824: also January 17. 1830. This is the "modem cave." We may not be disposed at first to include the philosophers among the "opinion makers" parading above and behind the chained onlookers in Plato's cave {Republic VII). But they are word smiths and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses as well: see also Hegel. "Preface." Phenomenology of Spirit, translated bv .A. \'. Miller. Oxford. 1977. =33. pp. 19-20: "In modem time the individual finds the abstract ready made.... Hence the task nowadays consists...in freeing determinate thoughts from their fixity so as to give actuality to the universal and impart to it spiritual life. " �Da\ id Lawrence LeN ine Page 16 '\4t the Ven' Center ofthe Plenitude*" Frida\- Niaht Dean's Lecture. Auaust 29. 2003 14x r^ MR = 1364. Lucreiius. On the yantre of Things. II. •*" "These anempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to an e.\ireme. To besure, what is ali\e can be dissected into its component parts, but from these pans it will be impossible to restore it and bring it back to life" (PSF p. 63). The natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the anahiical dissolution or decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger's characterization: the original "atomic bomb" is to be found here in our modem analuical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, pans and panicles {"The Thing." Poetry, Language, Thought, ed. byHofstadter. New Tork. 1971, p. 170). .And thus the diminished realii>- of those who think that a home is bricks and monar. and humans their chemical makeup. ~ Rene Descanes. Meditations on First Philosophy. 11. .AT pp. 19-34. How someone could e\en think this is wonh fiinher thought. .A. science that had given up trying to e.\plain our e.\perience was simply incomprehensive—not to mention infuriating—^to one so firmly rooted in theactual ("at the very center of the plenitude"). The Extent to ff'Ttich the Idea 'Beauty Is Petfection in Combination with Freedom' May be .Applied to Living Organisms, SS 22: also ECK September 2. 1830: see also Goethe's longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their tendenc\ to substitute secondaiyfor primary phenomena: OTC = 176. 718. TheEnterprise Justified. On .Morphology, SS p. 61. In this regard one might want to compare Goethe and Nietzsche's respective anempts to "sta\e off the nihilistic consequences of modem science" (Levine. .4 World ofWoridless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy). 4S OTC= 158. .AOS p. 48. ECK September2. 1830:also Heller, p. 16. MR = 430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not "common sense"): cf. Empirical Observation and Science, [hereafter EOSJ. SS p. 25. "" Naively Levine. "The .Antinomy and Irs Political Resolution." The Political Philosophy of.\ature. pp. 170-172. .MR = 664: also ECK January 29. 1826: "People alwa\s talk of the study of the ancients: but what does that mean, except that it sa\s. turn your attention to the real world....": see also OTC = 358. Yet as we shall see Goethe is not an ancient but seeks to car\e out a middle position between ancient and modem science. While there is deep asreement with .Aristotle about ourexperience of nature in terms of wholes, there isdisagreement aboutwhat is eternal. In making form eternal. .Aristotle, hesaid, was prone to "precipitousness" (....) By contrast forhim it is theprocess, not the form, which abides. "E\erything is in flux of continual motion." Goethe has sought to establish hisown "theory of relativity. a relational and immanent measure, amidst the ever-changing" (Levine. The Political Philosophy ofSature. p. 174)." *•' "There is no worse mistake in ph\ sics or an\ science than to treat secondary things as basic and...to seek an explanation for the basic things in secondary ones" (OTC = 718). It'sas ifwe were "toenter a palace b>" the side door and thereafter base our description of the whole on our firsL one-sided impression {General Observation [hereafter GO], SS. p. 42 and OTC p. 160): also. = 177. 716 and its application tothe "grievous" Newtonian error at= 176. " See Heidegger. Phusis: "The act ofself-unfolding emergence isinherenth" a going-back-into-itself. This kind ofbecoming present isphusis. But it must not be thought ofas a kind of built-in 'motor* that drives something nor as an oraanizer" on hand somewhere, directing the thing. Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion that p/»;iv(-detemiined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easiK' and spontaneoush' does this idea suggest �David Lawrence Le\'ine "/4/ the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'^ Frida}' Night Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 17 14x itself that it has become normative for the interpretation of li\ ing nature in particular, a living being has been understood as an "organism." No doubt a good deal of time has yet to pass before we learn to see that the idea of organism' and of the 'organic' is a purel> modem, mechanistic teleological concept according to which "growing things' are interpreted as ariijbcis that make themselves. E\en the word and concept "plant' takes what grows as something "planted." something sown and cultivated (p. 195)" and "But is notphusis then misunderstood as some son of self-makingartifacti Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the onl\ possible interpretation of phusis. nameh. as a kind of technel This almost seems to be the case, because modem metaphysics, in the impressive terms of ...Kanu conceives of "nature" as a "technique" such that this "technique" that constitutes the essence of nature pro\ ides the metaphysical ground for the possibilii>. or eN en the necessit>-. of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology (p. 220)." 56 GO p. 42. ECK. May 12. 1825; also .AS p. 48. 58 ECK .April II. 1827. 59 FE p. 20. 60 The Influence of.Modern Philosophy, (hereafter IMP], SS p. 28. MoP = 77. 62 .MoP = 84. o r e = 175. 64 EOS p.25. OTC = 665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl's phenomenological approach, in panicular in The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject [hereafter EMOS]. p. 16. and LALO p. 22. where the rigor and thoroughness of something like "eidetic variation" seems to be proposed. The question is li\ ing form: ""...We cannot find enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception to avoid killing it when we anahze it" that is. multiple adumbrations may give us a kind of whole but at the risk of rendering the outcome a "mental composition' (as in Kant). It would be interesting to see how Husserl and Heidegger treat life in its original vitality. See also OTC = 166. ^ Preface. OTC p. 159. We'\ e taken the liberty to add the specification "modem scientific" to abstraction. Throughout his OTC Goethe addresses the problems of scientific cognition and its tendency to excessive abstraction (== 310. 716. 754.and p. 162). ForGoethe, as for Hegel, this tendency is consequential and reckless. See note52. EOS. SS p. 25. 68 Polarity. SS p. 155: OTC = 175: Lenerto Herder. .May 17. 1778 (in Heller, p. 10). OTC = 732 (""expanded empiricism"). On Granite. SS. p. 132. .4 Study Based on Spinoza, SS. p. 8. Despite Kant's denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment. Goethe found a window ofopponunity. He wrote that Kant had "... a roguishly ironic way of working: at times heseemed determined to put the narrowest limit on our ability to know things, and at times, with a casual gesture, he pointed beyond the limits he himself had set." The passage in Kant that Goethe alludes to reads thus: "He can...think [of a kind of] understanding which [unlike our discursive one is}... intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal tthe intuition of the whole as suclu to theparticular, i.e. from the whole to theparts.... It is here notat all requisite toprove that such an iniellecius archerypous is possible, but only that ue are led to the idea of it—which too contains no �Da\ id Lawrence Le\ ine "'At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude" Friday Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 Page 18 14x contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding, which has need of'images finiellectus ect}pust and to the contingenc}- of'its constitution." However. Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion: "Whyshould it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy of participating spirituallyin its creative process?." he wonders. "Impelled from thestart byan inner need. I had stri\ en unconsciously and incessantl>' toward primal image and prototype, and had even succeeded in building up a method of representing it which conformed to nature. Thus there was nothing ftinher to prevent me from boldly embarking on this "adventure of reason" (as the sage of Ronigsberg himself called it)." Judgment through Intuitive Perception [hereafter JIP]. SS pp. 31-2: also E.MOS. pp. 11-17. Contrast Kant's "aesthetic normal idea" Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, § 17. OTC = 177. Lener to Herder. .Ma\ 17. 1787:"...1 am ver> close to discovering the secret of the creation and organization of plants....The crucial point from which evetyihing else must needs spring.... The i'rpflanze is to be the strangest creature in the world.... .After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to in\ ent plants ad infininim. which will all be consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity . .And the same law will be applicable to every thing alive (Heller, p. 10). .Also OTC ? 175. Polarity p. 155. "• Vrpflanze is often translated as"symbolic plant." While this rendering might behelpful if we keep a strictK" Goethean notion of symbol in mind (as in MR = 314). this translation more often misdirects us if it suggests to the reader either a mental abstraction or a literaiy device. Rather it seeks to embody the manifold fruitfiilness of nature "in potential" (Outline for a General Introduaion to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with Osteology [hereafter GIC.A]. SS. p. 118). ".All is leaf." .MoP =119: OTC = 120. Fortunate Encounter [hereafterFE], SS. p.20: ECK No\"ember 14. 1823. ^ Leners to Schiller. Februaiy 10. 14. 1787 (in Heller p. 20). Hegel too—who other\vise was well disposed to Goethe's project, indeed helped Goethe see how it fit into the larger scheme of the development of ideas—Hegel too nevenheless failed to see the i'rpflanze as anjthing but an abstracted archet> pe(See Hegel, The Letters, translated b> Butler and Seller. Indiana. 1984. pp. 681-711: HN. p. 11). ^ CP, SS. pp. 68-9. .And we read in the .Metamorphosis of Plants of the cal\-x that it "...betrays its composite origins in itsmore or less deep incisions or divisions. ITPp.41. OTC p. 166. This ma\ sound like "deconstruction." yet we would have to consider whether it represents a true break with anaKiical thinking, as Goethe seeks to do here. CP. SS p. 69. Just as it led to his "discovering" the Ur-principle of the plant kingdom, so Goethe is led in his other studies to "postulate" one for the mammal famih': "In the process 1 was soon obliged to postulate a prototype against which all mammals could be compared asto points of agreement and divergence. .As I had earlier sought out the archet>pal plant 1now aspired to find the archet> pal animal: in essence the concept or idea of the animal." S4 GIC.A p. 118. Letter to Herder. .Vlay 17. 1787; OTC = 175:Polarity p. 155. 86 ITP p. 41 ("...m> wholemethod relies on derivation...."). .Aristotle's eidos is not subject to metamorphosis. On the other side, in Darwin the metamorphosis of form is not an unfolding of immanent form but the haphazard "evolution of species" and creati\e adaptation on the pan of activ e wholes becomes ""random selection." See note 51. My thanks again to John Cornell for his helping me think this through. i,—^ f > �David Lawrence Levine "At the Very Center ofthe Plenitude'' Page 19 Fridav Niaht Dean's Lecture. August 29. 2003 ss I4x OTC = 720. OTC = 109. 90 MR = 504. ITP p. 39. .Also "if we take the significant dictum 'know rhyself and consider it. u-e niitsm'r interpret itfrom an ascetical standpoint. It does not b>' an> means signifi" the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our modem hjpochondriacs. humorists, and 'Heatttotimontmens' [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch what you are doing so that \ ou come to realize who \ ou stand vis-a-ris your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological self-torture'. an\-capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone I.MR = 657)." He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the subjective sciences and psychologies thatare heirto the fateful alienation, if notdivorce, of the egofrom theworld. ECK.April 10. 1829: OTC# . ITP p. 39. See also Goethe's ad\ ice to the \ oung Schopenhauer ( ). MR = 935: the whole passage reads"...let him find a girl or a world, no matter which, and he will become whole." This is t>pical (see Eric Heller. "Goethe in Marienbad." ThePoet's Self and ThePoem. London. 1976). MR # 442 ("Try to do \our dut\- and \ou'll soon disco\er what \ou're like."): also #= 770. 935: ECK Januar\"29. 1826. 96 ^ ECKFebruar\ 13. 1829. HN p. 226: Levine. The Political Philosophy of Sature. p. 173. .Also ECK October 18. 1827: In a conversation with Hegel about the potential tor modem sophistry of the "dialectic disease." Goethe sa\s: "Let us only hope that these intellectual arts and de.vterities are not frequentb misused, and emplo\ edto make the false true and the true false The study of nature preserves me from such a disease. For here we have to deal with the infinitely and etemalb" true, which throws off as incapable e\'eryone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment and observ ation of his subject. I am also certain that man\- a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the stud\ of nature." ^ ECK Januarv 2. 1824; also .March 12. 1828. ^ .And one lunher question: now that "nature" is at risk of being obscured b\" modem thought and being made artificial b\ modem technological advances, can it yet serve as a point of reference any longer, not to mention a standard? Twilight oftheIdols, or How to Philosophize l^lth a Hanmxer [1889). = 49. pp. 102-3: cf. MR=864. ECK January2. 1824: letterto Zelter.June 18. 1831 (in HN p. 27). See also ECK Januaiy 24. 1825. October 12. 1825: February 1. 1827; October 18. 1827; February 12. 1827; MR =191 and 1121. See Nietzsche. Zaraihustra This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed he was envious of this, for it was not available to him. See Levine. Afterword: Goethe and Sietzsche. ".-I ff'orld of Worldless Truths, .An Invitation to Philosophy." KU A More Intense Chemical Activityin Primordial Maner, SS, p. 137. � 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 "At the very center of the plenitude" : Goethe's grand attempt to overcome the 18th century, or how freshman laboratory saved Goethe from the general sickness of his age Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on August 29, 2003 by David Levine as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Levine, David Lawrence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-08-29 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 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000772 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e553d77c227b743eed847bbe38d4704c.mp3 e1e55650b68017acf147c0834d00b31d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:44:39 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Deeds of balanced vengeance" and the end of The Iliad Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on October 26, 2018 by Emily Austin as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Austin, Emily Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-10-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Homer. Iliad Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Austin, 2018-10 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6626ab6196c4611b835a97b6b7725714.pdf f4c0d71c0699e6beddf27c82d21d9f44 PDF Text Text Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 1 “Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch What You Are”: Machiavelli on Human Nature How do the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli appear to us today? There is no small risk that, whenever we crack the spines of The Prince or the Discourses on Livy, we will find these books to be boring. Full of historical details, full of admittedly colorful and even shocking anecdotes, they nonetheless appear to teach us only what we already know: the maxims of amoral, or immoral, prudence, that ‘the end justifies the means,’ or that ‘might makes right.’ To say that we already know such things does not mean that we believe them, of course. Perhaps in extreme circumstances, with lives at stake, we might grant that it is necessary to be Machiavellian; but who really expects to find himself in extreme circumstances? Most of the time, among family, friends, and fellow citizens, we try to be good, to do what is right. We might grant, while smothering a yawn, that we sometimes need to be Machiavellians. But we would not say that we are Machiavellians. And yet Machiavelli’s books are not just full of striking maxims about how we should live, like “men should either be caressed or eliminated” [P 3:10].1 They are also full of striking claims about how we do live, claims that Machiavelli offers in support of these maxims. “[M]en should either be caressed or eliminated, because they avenge themselves for slight offenses but cannot do so for grave ones” [P 3:10] – because, that is, only death can stop a human being from seeking revenge, even for a slight injury. Behind or beneath the Machiavellian maxims about how we should live, there appears to be a Machiavellian account of how we do live – an account of what human beings are, an account of human nature. Could this account be true? And if we find it to be so, are we compelled to be, not just rainy day Machiavellians, but Machiavellians �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 2 through and through? These questions, it seems to me, run a lesser risk of being boring. Tonight I will sketch this Machiavellian account of human nature, chiefly as it is found in The Prince, but with some reference to the Discourses on Livy. In concentrating on these two books, I will be following Machiavelli’s advice, at least to some extent. In the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince, he suggests that it contains all that he has learned and understood; while in the Dedicatory Letter of the Discourses he writes that it contains as much as he knows and has learned [P DL:3-4; D DL:3; compare TM, 17]. Either book on its own would presumably suffice for the experienced student of Machiavelli. But for relative beginners like ourselves, it is helpful to have the same matter given two different forms. What I hope to show by this sketch is that we underestimate Machiavelli if we consider him simply as a teacher of amoral or immoral practices that we can take or leave as we conduct our lives. To the extent that Machiavelli’s account of human nature is shared by his successors, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau – to whose thought we trace our political institutions and our understanding of ourselves – we may be forced to acknowledge his account of human nature as our own. It may turn out that deep down, where it counts, we are Machiavellians, even though we do not appear to be so, even to ourselves. This lecture will have three parts. In the first, I will offer the desire to acquire as the main element of human nature as Machiavelli depicts it, and show how in a political setting this desire ramifies into two humors, that of the great and that of the people. In the second I will sketch goodness as the excellence of the popular humor and virtue as the excellence of the humor of the great, and I will connect Machiavelli’s distinction between goodness and virtue to the famous ‘turn’ in Chapter Fifteen of The Prince from the imagination of a thing to its effectual truth [P 15:51]. In the final part I will suggest that Machiavelli’s view of human nature points to �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 3 a science of human nature without a distinctively human element – what Machiavelli calls a “science of sites” – and I will raise some difficulties with this science, difficulties that originate in Machiavelli’s own writings. I Readers who leaf through the pages of The Prince or the Discourses in search of the phrase ‘human nature’ are bound, at first, to be disappointed. As far as I can tell, Machiavelli never uses the phrase in either work. Mentions of nature, by contrast, are easy to find. In The Prince, for example, Machiavelli writes of the natures of nonliving things, like sites, mountains, low places, rivers, and marshes [P DL:4, 14:59]. He writes of the natures of living things, like beasts, foxes, and lions [P 18:69, 70; 19:78]. He writes of the natures of particular human beings, alone or in groups, like peoples, governments, ministers, emperors, princes, and cautious men [P DL:4; 6:24; 4:18; 7:30; 17:68; 19:76; 23:95; 25:99, 100]. He even writes of nature in general as something that contains things [P 7:26], and that causes particular men to incline in a certain way [P 25:100].2 But each time he writes about nature, Machiavelli sidesteps the phrase ‘human nature.’ He is willing to write as if particular beings have natures, he is willing to include particular human beings among these beings, and he is willing to imply that all beings fall within nature in some general sense; but nature in each of these cases is subhuman or superhuman – that is, not specifically human. The closest Machiavelli comes to writing about human nature in The Prince is a single claim he makes about the “nature of men” – that they are “obligated as much by benefits they give as by benefits they receive” [P 10:44]. Even there, he does not dignify the nature of men with the specific adjective ‘human.’ Nonetheless, there are plenty of hints in The Prince that Machiavelli thinks that human �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 4 beings do have a nature, if only in the sense of an abiding character. Early in the work, for example, he considers “a natural difficulty” and “another natural and ordinary necessity” that confront a new prince: that “men willingly change their masters in the belief that they will fare better,” but that “one must always offend those over whom he becomes a new prince” [P 3:8].3 In the immediate sequel Machiavelli treats these natural necessities that follow from the character of men as “universal causes” [P 3:9],4 and suggests that they contribute to an apparently permanent “order of things” [P 3:11] that endures despite the changes brought by time [P 3:13; 10:44].5 Later in The Prince he invokes “human conditions” in much the same way, to explain why a prince cannot have, nor wholly observe, all of the qualities that are held good [P 15:62]. The conditions in question can be summarized in a single phrase: men are wicked unless necessity makes them good.6 As with the other natural necessities felt by a new prince, Machiavelli implies that these conditions will never change, as long as there are human beings. If they did change, his description of the situation of the new prince, and of the political situation more generally, would cease to be true. Similar claims about the abiding character of human beings can be found in the Discourses, in a somewhat more explicit form. In that work Machiavelli warns early on against the error of thinking that men, among other things, have “varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity” [D I.P.2:6]. To the contrary, “[w]hoever considers present and ancient things easily knows that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same humors, and there always have been” [D I.39.1:83].7 Not just human beings but human things have a permanent character: they “are always in motion, either they ascend or they descend” [D II.P.2:123]. Perhaps as a result, the world has a permanent character too: “I judge the world always to have been in the same mode,” Machiavelli writes, “and there to have been as �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 5 much good as wicked in it” [D II.P.2:124]. He even flirts, indirectly, with the idea that the world is eternal. “To those philosophers who would have it that the world is eternal,” he writes, “I believe that one could reply that if so much antiquity were true it would be reasonable that there be memory of more than five thousand years – if it were not seen how the memories of times are eliminated by diverse causes, of which part come from men, part from heaven” [D II.5.1:138139]. It is reasonable, then, that there be no memory of more than five thousand years, even if the world is eternal. So is the world eternal? However this may be, Machiavelli regards the world as lasting enough that he can claim that human things have an abiding character. “It has always been, and will always be,” he announces, “that great and rare men are neglected in a republic in peaceful times” [D III.16.1:254]. Men “have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity result in the same effect” [D III.43.1:302]. If it were to turn out that the abiding character of human beings included an element specific to human beings, an element that was a cause or principle of human motion and rest, then despite his avoidance of the term, Machiavelli could be said to have an account of a specifically human nature. The best candidate for such an element, in The Prince and the Discourses, is the desire to acquire. In The Prince this desire sets the tone for the whole book. Machiavelli mentions it in the first sentence of the Dedicatory Letter, writing “[i]t is customary most of the time for those who desire to acquire favor with a Prince to come to meet him with things that they care most for among their own or with things that they see please him most” [P DL:3]. In the particular form of the desire to acquire a principality, this desire dictates the concerns of the first half of the work, and is mentioned in three of the first fourteen chapter titles;8 while the second half, which examines “what the modes and government of a prince should be with subjects and with friends” [P 15:61], can be understood as containing advice about how to keep an acquisition. But when �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 6 Machiavelli formulates this desire as a principle, he writes, “truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire” [P 3:14], without saying for whom, or for what, this is very natural and ordinary. He does continue, in the immediate sequel, “and when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here lie the error and the blame” [P 3:14-15], but this amounts to saying that praise and blame are specifically human, not that the desire to acquire is.9 In the Discourses Machiavelli elaborates: “nature has created men so that they are able to desire everything and are unable to attain everything” [D I.37.1:78]. As a result, “human appetites are insatiable, for since from nature they have the ability and the wish to desire all things and from fortune the ability to achieve few of them, there continually results from this a discontent in human minds and a disgust with the things they possess” [D II.P.3:125]. While Machiavelli says that the insatiable appetites and the discontent and disgust that they produce are specifically human, they are also effects of a cause that is not specifically human: nature in general. Not only does Machiavelli fail to insist that the desire to acquire is specifically human; he also fails to assign the desire a specific end. In The Prince and the Discourses he depicts human beings who desire to acquire material things like cities and provinces, states and kingdoms, friends and partisans, and spiritual things like reputation, glory, and knowledge. But he never argues that these are the proper objects of the desire to acquire. Instead, he asserts in the Discourses, “each willingly multiplies that thing and seeks to acquire those goods he believes he can enjoy once acquired” [D II.2.3:132; compare II.4.2:137]. The desire to acquire can have anything as its object, then, so long as the one who acquires it believes he will enjoy it. But the omnivorousness of the desire points again to its insatiability. Since the object of the desire is nothing in particular, but rather acquisition for the sake of enjoying possession, and since �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 7 possession inspires only disgust and discontentment, the acquiring being goes from expecting future enjoyment to feeling present dissatisfaction, and the desire to acquire must seek a new object. Machiavelli is right, then, to call this desire a desire to acquire, since it aims at no object in particular, but rather at acquisition, which is to say the feeling of acquisition, in general. Human beings feel discontent and disgust with what they have; they enjoy only when they feel that what they have is increasing.10 The desire to acquire thus resembles a drive to grow, since its end is an increase in one’s own, without any intrinsic concern about whether one’s own is also good.11 Understood in this way, the desire to acquire has both external and internal consequences. Externally, this desire drives isolated human beings to acquire without limit and without exclusion – in the Discourses Machiavelli mentions that it is even possible to “acquire the world” [D I.20.1:54]. It follows from this that isolated human beings are almost entirely formless.12 Perhaps this is one reason for Machiavelli’s practice of using “matter” as a term for the human beings who are potential subjects of a prince [P 6:23; 26:102, 104]. But in a political setting, when human beings live together, their desires to acquire interfere with one another, and form arises. In The Prince, Machiavelli proclaims that in every city and every principality, “two diverse humors are found” [P 9:39; compare 19:7613]: the people and the great. These humors are defined by their characteristic appetites: “the people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the people” [P 9:39].14 In the Discourses, Machiavelli calls these humors the nobles and the ignobles, and writes, “[w]ithout doubt, if one considers the end of the nobles and of the ignobles, one will see great desire to dominate in the former, and in the latter only desire not to be dominated; and in consequence, a greater will to live free, being less able to hope to usurp it” – that is, to usurp �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 8 freedom – “than are the great” [D I.5.2:18].15 Lest we think that Machiavelli means that the people or the ignobles do not desire to acquire, and that his two humors are therefore different natures,16 rather than ramifications of the desire to acquire, Machiavelli points in the Discourses to their common source. Having just characterized the difference between the nobles and the ignobles, he restates it paragraphs later as the difference between “those who desire to acquire” and “those who fear to lose what they have acquired,” and then explains that tumults are most frequently generated by those who possess, because “the fear of losing generates in [them] the same wishes that are in those who desire to acquire; for it does not appear to men that they possess securely what a man has unless he acquires something else new” [D I.5.4:19].17 Machiavelli thereby blurs the difference between the people and the great: fearing to lose has the same effects as desiring to acquire. Later in the Discourses he makes much the same point, insisting that the difference between a prince’s and a people’s way of proceeding “arises not from a diverse nature – because it is in one mode in all” [D I.58.3:117], and that the popular desire for freedom is an effect of the desire to acquire [D II.2.1:129].18 If these assertions are not enough, Machiavelli also tells a characteristic story in the Discourses about Clearchus, the tyrant of Heraclea, who, finding himself caught “between the insolence of the aristocrats… and the rage of the people,” “decided to free himself at one stroke from the vexation of the great and to win over the people to himself.” By having all the aristocrats cut to pieces, “he satisfied one of the wishes that peoples have – that is, to be avenged. But as to the other popular desire,” Machiavelli continues, “to recover freedom, since the prince cannot satisfy it, he should examine what causes are those that make [peoples] desire to be free. He will find that a small part of them desires to be free so as to command, but all the others, who are infinite, desire freedom so as to live secure” [D I.16.5:46]. Even if the humor of �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 9 the great is eliminated from a city or a principality, the remaining popular humor reforms itself into two humors: the people, and the great. These Machiavellian indications that the humors of the people and the great are ramifications of the more fundamental desire to acquire also indicate that it is political life that chiefly causes these ramifications. In isolation the desire to acquire knows only the feelings of pleasurable increase or disgusting stasis; the desire to oppress, on the one hand, and the fear of oppression on the other arise only in the political encounter with other more or less powerful desires to acquire. Machiavelli acknowledges this in his brief account of the origins of political life in the Discourses. “[S]ince the inhabitants were sparse in the beginning of the world,” he writes, “they lived dispersed for a time like beasts; then, as generations multiplied, they gathered together, and to be able to defend themselves better, they began to look to whoever among them was more robust and of greater heart, and they made him a head, as it were, and obeyed him” [D I.2.3:11].19 Thus arose the universal political struggle between the two humors, in which the great give reputation to one of their number “so that they can satisfy their appetite under his shadow,” while the people give reputation to one of the great “so as to be defended with his authority” [P 9:39].20 The desire to acquire also has internal consequences: namely, the ramification of the present into the past and the future. Like any desire, the desire to acquire involves opposing a painful, factual present to a pleasant, counterfactual future. A being animated by such a desire must be able to distinguish what it actually possesses from what it might possess, in order to direct itself away from the former and toward the latter. So a being who desires to acquire, in particular, must have memory, a continuing sense of its possessions, and foresight, a sense of what its possessions might become. In the healthy case, its memory will be the basis of its �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 10 dissatisfaction with the present, and its foresight, the basis of its hope for the future. As Machiavelli puts it in the Discourses, the insatiability of human appetites makes men “blame the present times, praise the past, and desire the future, even if they are not moved to do this by any reasonable cause” [D II.P.3:125]. It is the people or the ignobles in particular who blame the present and praise the past, since their knowledge of the past is less accurate than their knowledge of the present, and past things in general are neither feared nor envied [D II.P.1:123]. Moreover, memory supports the popular form of the desire to acquire – the fear of loss – by preserving an inaccurate but venerable past, and arguing that excellence consists in this preservation [D I.10.2:31]. Memory encourages men to honor the past and obey the present, and thereby discourages conspiracies [D III.6.1:218]. And when it involves fearsome events, memory can bring a state back to its beginnings, and so preserve it [D III.1.3:211]. Perhaps unsurprisingly, memory is therefore also an obstacle to the great or the nobles’ desire to acquire, especially when acquisition brings innovation [P 2:7, 4:19, 5:21]. It is the first concern of new sects to eliminate the memory of their predecessors, for example [D II.5.1:139]. But memory can also serve the foresight of the great: if it helps to maintain a nation in the same customs for a long time, it makes it easy for human beings to know future things by past ones [D III.43.1:302; compare I.39.1:83-84].21 Since the future is on this account the realm of hoped-for acquisition by the great, or feared loss by the people, while the present is the realm of real possession, whether unsatisfying to the great or satisfying to the people, the ramification of the present into the past and the future is also a differentiation between the factual and counterfactual worlds, or between the real and the imaginary. Taken together, the humors of the people and the great and the ramification of the present into the past and the future explain the typical progressivism of the great, who want �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 11 to live in the future that their desire to acquire foresees, and the typical conservatism of the people, who want to remain free of this future.22 Taken together, these forms of the desire to acquire explain why each of Machiavelli’s humors has its corresponding understanding of human excellence. II So far we have considered the desire to acquire as the core of human nature, according to Machiavelli. We have also sketched the chief implications of this desire, showing how in political settings it issues in a progressive great and a conservative people. Each of these humors, it turns out, also has a characteristic understanding of human excellence: for the people excellence is goodness, and for the great, excellence is virtue [D I.17.1-3:47-48; compare MV, 24-25]. We will discover, as we try next to fill in the content of goodness and virtue according to Machiavelli, that the difference between goodness and virtue is also connected to his famous distinction, made in The Prince, between the “effectual truth” and “imagined republics and principalities” [P 15:61]. Perhaps because of its focus on the perspective of the great, goodness is only mentioned twice in The Prince, both times in an ironic and disparaging way. Having begun his consideration of ecclesiastical principalities with the claim that they are maintained without virtue or fortune, Machiavelli concludes with the pious hope that “with his goodness and infinite other virtues” Pope Leo X will make the pontificate “very great and venerable” [P 11:47]. In a likeminded remark later in the book, during his survey of the fates of the Roman emperors, Machiavelli notes that Emperor Alexander was of such goodness that he never made use of summary execution. But he was also held to be effeminate, for which he was despised, �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 12 conspired against, and assassinated [P 19:77]. These examples distinguish goodness from virtue, and can hardly be said to recommend goodness to a prince. In the Discourses, by contrast, there is a fuller and less dismissive discussion of goodness. Machiavelli claims that it is the characteristic excellence of peoples, as opposed to princes, writing that if the glories and the disorders of princes be reviewed, “the people will be seen to be by far superior in goodness and glory.” Princes, he explains, are superior to peoples in ordering, but peoples are superior to princes in maintaining the things ordered – which is why they attain the glory of those who order [D I.58.3:118]. Despite having characteristically retracted half of his praise of peoples, Machiavelli leaves them with their superiority in goodness. This excellence consists, then, in maintaining what is ordered at the founding of a sect, a republic, or a kingdom, and promulgated by education [D III.1.2:209; III.30.1:280]: namely, the laws, which are maintained by being obeyed by the people. Both peoples and princes show goodness when they obey, and so are restrained by, the laws [D I.58.2:116; compare III.24.1:270, III.46.1:307]. Indeed, early in the Discourses Machiavelli asserts, “the knowledge of things honest and good” first arose out of the people’s obedience to the great. “[S]eeing that if one individual hurt his benefactor,” he explains, hatred and compassion among men came from it, and as they blamed the ungrateful and honored those who were grateful, and thought too that those same injuries could be done to them, to escape like evil they were reduced to making laws and ordering punishments for whoever acted against them: hence came the knowledge of justice [D I.2.3:11-12]. Now because goodness consists chiefly in obedience to the laws, it is closely connected to religion as the basis of the laws [D I.11.3:35; I.55.2:110, 111], and to conscience as their internal enforcement [D I.27.1:62; I.55.2:110]. Through obedience to the laws, goodness procures and defends freedom [D I.17.1:47], which as we have seen is the goal of the people’s modified desire to acquire. Lest we think that goodness consists solely in obedience to the laws, �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 13 Machiavelli mentions one example that “shows how much goodness and how much religion” were in the Roman people. When the Senate issued an unpopular edict that required the plebs to sacrifice to Apollo a tenth of the booty taken in a recent victory, “the plebs thought not of defrauding the edict in any part by giving less than it owed, but of freeing itself from it by showing open indignation” [D I.55.1:110]. Goodness consists chiefly in obedience to the laws, but perhaps more importantly, in the refusal to use fraud even when one disobeys. It is almost the same thing as honesty. Machiavelli signals, in several places, that the opposite of goodness is corruption [D I.17.1:47; I.55.1:110; III.1.2:209; III.30.1:280]. But there is reason to think that a more thoroughgoing opposite to this excellence of the people is the excellence of the great, virtue. This is not just because, as we have seen, Machiavelli is contemptuous of goodness in his book on princes, nor just because the superiority of princes to peoples in ordering means that they must destroy a prior order that others are trying to maintain. It is not just because virtue is inimical to goodness. Rather, it is because goodness can also be inimical to virtue. We see how so in one of the examples Machiavelli gives to illustrate the goodness of the matter and the orders of Rome: that of Manlius Capitolinus, who found no one to support his rebellion against the Senate and laws, and was condemned by the Roman people to death. “I do not believe that there is an example in this history more apt to show the goodness of all the orders of that republic than this,” Machiavelli concludes, “seeing that no one in that city moved to defend a citizen full of every virtue, who publicly and privately had performed very many praiseworthy works” [D III.8.1:238].23 In contrast to his account of goodness, Machiavelli’s account of virtue is developed more fully in The Prince, and in particular in the book’s second half, Chapters Fifteen and following, �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 14 where he turns to consider “what the modes and government of a prince should be with subjects and with friends” [P 15:61]. This statement of what remains of his project implies that the first half of the book considered what the modes and government of a prince should be with foreigners and with enemies; and when we see that the explicit subject of the first half of The Prince is “How Many Are the Kinds of Principalities and in What Modes They Are Acquired” [P 1.T:5] – that is acquisition – this implication is confirmed. We seem to be on a firm Machiavellian footing: with foreigners and enemies the prince follows the desire to acquire, while with subjects and friends he practices virtue. The generality of Machiavelli’s opening statement on virtue might therefore come as a surprise. “A man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good,” he writes. “Hence it is necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity” [P 15:61]. Necessity, and not the difference between friend and enemy, or subject and foreigner, determines whether the prince should be good or wicked. The “so many who are not good” include friend and foe alike. To be able to act as necessity demands, we will learn, is virtue. Machiavelli connects his new account of virtue to his famous move from the imagination of a thing to its effectual truth, or from how one should live to how one lives [P 15:61]. Before considering this connection, though, let’s follow his development of this account of virtue in the chapter of The Prince devoted to whether a prince should be honest. Since combat with laws – what we might call the combat of the good – is often not enough, one must have recourse to combat with arms: so “it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man” [P 18:69]. The ancients understood this necessity, and communicated it by depicting the centaur Chiron as the teacher of Achilles. “To have as a teacher a half-beast, half-man,” �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 15 Machiavelli writes, “means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both natures” [P 18.69]. We have mentioned that Machiavelli is willing to say that there is a nature of princes [P ED:4]: this nature now seems to be something more comprehensive than the nature of a man or the nature of a beast, if it is capable of using, or imitating [P 19:78], both of these natures. “Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast,” Machiavelli continues, “he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves” [P 18:69]. Each animal, then, has a single defect that is remedied by the other: the fox’s astuteness remedies the lion’s gullibility, while the lion’s fierceness remedies the fox’s contemptibility [compare P 19:79]. But if each of the two bestial natures that the prince should use has a single defect that is remedied by the other, what use does the prince have for the other component of the centaur: the nature of a man? Machiavelli has implied that this nature is needed for combat with laws, since this is “proper to man” [P 18:69]; but we would be forgiven for doubting him, since he has also claimed, six chapters earlier, that good arms are the necessary and sufficient condition of good laws [P 12:48]. We might begin to suspect that combat with arms is also sufficient, and that the prince who knows well how to use the nature of the fox and the lion has no need of the nature of man in addition – that he could be entirely inhuman, all beast. But Machiavelli has more to say. “[I]f all men were good, this teaching would not be good,” – if all men were honest, that is, there would be no snares, and it would suffice for a prince to be a lion – “but because they are wicked and do not observe faith with you, you also do not have to observe it with them” [P 18:69]. There are infinite modern examples, he claims, in which “the one who has known best how to use the fox has come out best,” because a faithless prince has ensnared the gullible. “But it is �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 16 necessary,” Machiavelli continues, “to know well how to color this nature, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple and so obedient to present necessities that he who deceives will always find someone who will let himself be deceived” [P 18:70]. The nature of the fox needs to be colored because its astuteness is limited to recognizing snares, as opposed to setting them. There is a use for the nature of man after all: it equips an otherwise brutish virtue with the specifically human ability to lie. In restating his conclusion, Machiavelli makes it clear that his discussion of “In What Mode Faith Should Be Kept by Princes” [P 18.T:68] is really a discussion of his account of all virtue, which is to say a discussion “Of Those Things for Which Men And Especially Princes Are Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61], or a discussion of human excellence in general. “[I]t is not necessary,” he writes, “for a prince to have all the above-mentioned qualities [the traditional virtues and vices] in fact, but it is indeed necessary to appear to have them” [P 18:70; compare 15:62]. Lest we infer that it is necessary to have some of these qualities, he then sharpens his restatement: since “by having them and always observing them, they are harmful; and by appearing to have them, they are useful,” it is necessary to “remain with a spirit built [edificato] so that, if you need not to be those things, you are able and know how to change to the contrary” [P 18:70]. To use a nature, or to imitate a nature, turns out to mean not to have but to appear to have that nature. But to appear to have a nature one does not have is to lie. So the specifically human ability to lie seems sufficient to generate the appearance of, and therefore sufficient to make use of, all the other natures a virtuous prince might need. This reading is supported by the discussion of Severus in the next chapter of The Prince. Since Severus was a new prince whose actions were great and notable, Machiavelli wants “to show briefly how well he knew to use the persons of the fox and the lion, whose natures I say �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 17 above are necessary for a prince to imitate” [P 19:78]. These natures are now persons, things that can be impersonated. “[W]hoever examines minutely the actions of this man will find him a very fierce lion and a very astute fox” [P 19:79], Machiavelli continues, again omitting to mention the person or nature of a man. But it turns out that being like Severus is not sufficient for the best kind of prince: “a new prince in a new principality… should take from Severus those parts which are necessary to found his state and from Marcus [Aurelius] those which are fitting and glorious to conserve a state that is already established and firm” [P 19:82]. Since we know from the Discourses that those parts are called goodness, we might conclude that this is the use of the nature of a man. But Marcus was an enemy of cruelty [P 19:76], whereas Severus was very cruel [P 19:78], so the new prince who combines their parts will be neither, though he will know how to appear to be both. In other words, the virtuous desire to acquire uses the specifically human ability to lie to impersonate a man, just as much as to impersonate a lion or a fox. Understood in this way, the nature of the prince is something built, rather than something grown. But this is also true of the nature of peoples. Recall Machiavelli’s practice of referring to the people as “matter” to be formed by the prince [P 6:23; 26:102, 104], and his claims that knowledge of goodness arises from obedient gratitude to the great, and knowledge of justice from laws to protect against ingratitude [D I.2.3:11-12]. If the excellence of the people is goodness, the maintenance of orders founded by the great, then the nature of peoples is something built by the great, just as the nature of the great is something built by the great themselves. The great, we might say, and especially the prince, give form both to their own formless desire to acquire, and to that of the human beings around them. And they are guided in this formation by necessity. �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 18 Machiavelli means this foundation on necessity to justify his claim in The Prince that by departing from the orders of others in his discussion of virtue and goodness, and focusing on “the effectual truth of the thing” rather than on the imagination of it, he is writing something “useful to whoever understands it” [P 15:61]. Imaginary republics like Plato’s and imaginary principalities like Christ’s, which “have never been seen or known to exist in truth,” are used to illustrate how one should live – that is, they are used to support goodness. Real republics and principalities, by contrast, are used by Machiavelli to illustrate how one does live. That there is a difference between how one should live and how one does live is a sign of the failure of the imaginary realm to make human beings completely good, and a sign of the need to turn to the real. “Hence it is necessary for a prince,” Machiavelli concludes, “if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity” [P 15:61]. So the virtuous live in the realm of the real, according to Machiavelli, while the good live for the most part in the realm of the imaginary, or the counterfactual. The virtuous live in the present, which exists, while the good live mostly in the future, which does not. What is surprising about this conclusion is that it exactly contraries the conclusion we came to in our analysis of the desire to acquire, which had the humor of the people seeking to maintain present possessions, and the humor of the great hoping for future acquisitions. In other words, each humor of human nature, each way that the desire to acquire expresses itself in a political setting, must need the native realm of the other. The good people need an imaginary future because their desire to acquire, frustrated by the competing desires of the great, is limited in the real world to a hope for maintenance; only in another world, or in a city in speech, can they hope to avenge their subordination and become great. The virtuous great, by contrast, need the present because their �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 19 practice of lying – that is, their construction of imaginary worlds – for the sake of future acquisition needs to be informed by present necessities imposed by the people they are lying to; in other words, they require goodness for their virtue to be effectual. The difference between goodness and virtue, we could say, is the difference between an ignorant self-deception and a knowing deception of others. III Having concluded our sketch of Machiavelli’s view of human nature, understood as the desire to acquire, with its two humors and their corresponding excellences, we might begin to wonder whether this view is true. This is too big a question to explore in the final part of this lecture, though Machiavelli’s view does have the merit of explaining a common moral phenomenon: the concern of those who are trying to be good, that they might be the dupes of those who are not. Instead, this final part is devoted to a narrower, though related, question: does Machiavelli think that his account of human nature is true? Recall that in the fifteenth chapter of The Prince Machiavelli claims to turn from the imagination of a thing to its effectual truth, and from how one should live to how one lives [P 15:61]. He makes these claims right after announcing his turn to “what the modes and government of a prince should be with subjects and with friends” [P 15:61], and presumably away from what his modes and government should be with foreigners and with enemies. The first chapter of The Prince, by contrast, refers in its title to the modes in which principalities are acquired [P I.T:5], and so announces the subject of the first part of the work. The suggestion in both parts of The Prince, then, is that what human beings should do follows directly from what they in fact do. What human beings in fact do provides the content of necessity, on the basis of �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 20 which virtue acts. Moreover, Machiavelli’s distinctions between foreigners and subjects, or between foes and friends, vanish from the perspective of necessity. The first part of The Prince focuses on acquisition, and so on foreigners and foes, but it treats in the same spirit how acquisitions are maintained, and so mentions subjects and friends [for example, P 7:29-30]. Similarly, the second part focuses on how the prince should treat subjects and friends, but the virtues that Machiavelli discusses in this part are needed also for dealing with foreigners and foes [for example, P 17:67-68]. Perhaps the clearest indication that these divisions vanish from the perspective of necessity is the title of the fifteenth chapter of The Prince, “Of Those Things for Which Men and Especially Princes Are Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61]. Attentive readers will remember that Machiavelli has already, much earlier in the work, said what these things are: “truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and want to do it anyway, here lie the error and the blame” [P 3:14-15]. The difference between the first and the second parts of The Prince is the difference between what human beings do to acquire, and what they ought to do. The first part of the work is chiefly descriptive, the second chiefly hortatory; and Machiavelli’s exhortation is based on his description: men should learn not to be good – that is, to be virtuous – because men are not good – that is, they are corrupt. In other words, Machiavelli’s exhortation to virtue requires two things to be true: that men are corrupt, and that there is a difference between corruption and virtue. Let’s look at each of these criteria in turn. One objection to Machiavelli’s claim that men are corrupt is that this may accidentally be so, but it is not so necessarily. As we have seen, human nature, according to Machiavelli, consists of a matter that is not specifically human, the desire to acquire, that can be formed to have specifically human excellences, goodness and virtue. In other words, human nature is �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 21 malleable. (Moreover, Machiavelli is evasive about what is specifically human in goodness and virtue: in The Prince, as we have seen, he guardedly identifies fraud, which uses or imitates brutish natures, as specifically human; but since fraud merely serves the desire to acquire, it does not serve a specifically human end.) In the Discourses Machiavelli makes this malleability more explicit when commenting on Livy’s disparaging claim that the French begin battles as more than men, but end them as less than women. “Thinking over whence this arises,” he writes, “it is believed by many that their nature is made so, which I believe is true; but because of this it is not that their nature, which makes them ferocious at the beginning, cannot be ordered with art, so that it maintains them ferocious to the last” [D III.36.1:292]. To be precise, the nature of the French makes them ferocious at the beginning of battles; it is the failure of this nature that makes their ferocity lapse. This failure can be avoided, and their nature maintained, by the order imparted by art. The Roman army, Machiavelli indicates later in the same chapter, exemplifies such ordering. Nothing its soldiers did was not regulated: “they did not eat, they did not sleep, they did not go whoring, they did not perform any action either military or domestic without the order of the consul” [D III.36.2:292]. Not only can the difference between male and female be maintained by art; art can also constrain the natural movements of growth and reproduction. This artful ordering of nature produces the excellences that Machiavelli names goodness and virtue. But Machiavelli also admits in the Discourses that there are limits to what art can achieve with its human material. He mentions two reasons why we are unable to change our natures as necessity demands: “one, that we are unable to oppose that to which nature inclines us; the other, that when one individual has prospered very much with one mode of proceeding, it is not possible to persuade him that he can do well to proceed otherwise” [D III.9.3:240]. These �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 22 reasons, which correspond to Machiavelli’s injunction in The Prince that one must both be able to change one’s nature, and know how to do so [P 18:70], suggest that the limits to malleability are imposed by the energy and the opinions of each human being.24 Since there will not always be a human being available with the needed energy and opinions to do what necessity demands in each case – and this is especially so if, as Machiavelli implies, success renders one’s opinions inflexible – art will eventually fail to order nature, with a consequent failure of virtue and of the goodness it orders. A permanently good human order, then, is not to be hoped for, despite the malleability of human nature. Corruption is necessary, and so virtue is needed. The requirement that virtue be different from corruption is trickier to establish. We have seen that both of these forms of human nature are opposed to goodness; they differ because virtue in departing from goodness looks to a different standard, necessity, whereas corruption in departing from goodness does not. The difference between virtue and corruption depends, then, on the existence of knowable necessities in human life. Now we have seen Machiavelli write as though necessities are knowable by human beings; this is what he seems to mean when he urges princes to “learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity” [P 15:61].25 In other words, Machiavelli seems to think that there is a science of necessities. But in The Prince and the Discourses taken together, Machiavelli mentions science only twice: both times in a chapter late in the Discourses that asserts that a captain must be a knower of sites, or of “the nature of countries” [D III.39.T:297; III.39.2:299]. The argument of this chapter closely parallels that of a similar chapter in The Prince, titled “What a Prince Should Do Regarding the Military” [P 14.T:58] – a chapter where, admittedly, science is not mentioned. In these two places, Machiavelli advises that princes, captains, and the great should train in hunting, part of the practical mode of the peaceful exercise of the art of war [P 14:59].26 Hunting yields �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 23 particular knowledge of the country in which one trains. “First,” Machiavelli writes in The Prince, “one learns to know one’s own country, and one can better understand its defense; then, through the knowledge of and experience with those sites, one can comprehend with ease every other site that it may be necessary to explore as new” [P 14:59]. Particular knowledge becomes general knowledge, and defensive ability becomes offensive ability, because of a “certain similarity” between the corresponding features in every country, “so that from the knowledge of a site in one province one can easily come to the knowledge of others” [P 14:59].27 Machiavelli makes sweeping claims for his science of sites. Not only is it necessary for a captain to have this “general and particular knowledge” of “sites and countries” if he wants to work anything well [D III.39.1:297-298], but it will allow a prince to know “all the chances that can occur to an army” [P 14:60]. While Philopoemen, Machiavelli’s example of a possessor of this science, led his army, “there could never arise any unforeseen event for which he did not have the remedy” [P 14:60]. As long as we have the energy to be able to act as necessity demands, the science of sites guarantees that we will know how to do so. We might grant Machiavelli’s claim that there are no supernatural kingdoms: that because all countries are alike in nature, knowledge of one leads to knowledge of all. But why does he think that a perfected science of sites allows a prince to overcome fortune? A sentence from the Discourses is helpful here. “Whoever has this practice,” Machiavelli writes, “knows with one glance of his eye how that plain lies, how that mountain rises, where this valley reaches, and all other things of which he has in the past made a firm science” [D III.39.2.298]. This talk of plains, mountains, and valleys should remind us of the comparison in the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince, between the natures of peoples and of princes, on the one hand, and the natures of mountains or high places and of low places, on the other [P DL:4]. By limiting his use of the �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 24 word “science” in The Prince and the Discourses to the science of sites, Machiavelli indicates that there is no science specific to human beings, nor even one specific to living beings. Human nature and living nature are continuous with nonliving nature, and psychology is continuous with geography – or better, with physics. The malleability of human nature, then, is great enough that nonhuman and nonliving phenomena are imitable by human beings, but not so great that human beings become incalculable as a result.28 Just as there are no superhuman kingdoms, there are no supermen – though as we have seen there are centaurs. This understanding of Machiavelli’s science of sites is puzzling, though, because it seems to require a descriptive treatment of virtue, rather than the hortatory one that we find in the second part of The Prince. If human beings are as determined and predictable as nonhuman bodies, why not describe what they do, rather than fruitlessly exhorting them to behave otherwise than they do? In particular, we would expect Machiavelli to insist that princes do learn to be able not to be good, and to use it according to necessity, to the extent that they have the most excellent form of the desire to acquire. Instead, as we have seen, he insists, “it is necessary for a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity” [P 15:61; emphasis added]. Now what sense does this condition, “if he wants to maintain himself,” make in the light of Machiavelli’s claim that all human beings, and the great above all, are driven by the desire to acquire? Since acquisition presupposes the persistence of the acquiring being, how could a prince not want to maintain himself?29 In the chapter of The Prince devoted to conspiracies, Machiavelli admits that there exist very rare human beings with “an obstinate spirit,” who do not care about death. A prince cannot avoid death at the hands of such a conspirator, because “anyone who does not care about death can harm him” [P 19:79]. Since the threat of death and the consequent loss of all one’s �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 25 acquisitions – the threat of ruin, as Machiavelli puts it – is the paramount necessity faced by human beings [for example, P 15:61], these very rare human beings apparently fall outside the scope of this necessity, and therefore outside the scope of the science of sites.30 There is no remedy available to princes for such unforeseen events. We might expect Machiavelli to try to account for the existence of such human beings by tracing their obstinacy back to the desire to acquire, saying, for example, that they do not care about death because they hope for an afterlife in which they will be rewarded. But he does not do so; instead, he says only that they are motivated by the desire to avenge a “grave injury” [P 19:79-80; see also D III.6.11:227] – a desire that can be satisfied in this life, even if one does not long survive its satisfaction. In the Discourses Machiavelli claims, “private men enter upon no enterprise more dangerous or more bold” than a conspiracy against a prince [D III.6.1:218; see also III.6.4:223]. In The Prince, by contrast, he writes, “nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than to put oneself at the head of new orders” [P 6:23]. The obstinate spirit one needs to brave the greatest danger in a conspiracy is presumably also needed to brave the greatest danger in founding something entirely new, for every new foundation begins as a conspiracy against the old. We might wonder, then, whether this account of human nature is adequate to explain the activity of the new prince, or even Machiavelli’s own activity. Is Machiavelli himself motivated by the desire to acquire? We cannot seriously believe that a virtuous possessor of the science of sites, for whom, as long as he is armed, no accident can arise for which he does not have the remedy [P 14:60], could be compelled to endure a “great and continuous malignity of fortune” [P DL:4]. Machiavelli does make it seem, at the beginning of the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince, that he desires “to acquire favor with a Prince” [P DL:3]; but in the Preface to the first book of the Discourses he claims instead that he has �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 26 always had a “natural desire… to work, without any respect, for those things I believe will bring common benefit to everyone” [D I.P.1:5]. These doubts about Machiavelli’s science of sites – that it ought to preclude the hortatory character of the second part of The Prince, and that it cannot account for human beings who are contemptuous of death – suggest that the account of human nature in The Prince and the Discourses is partial, and that Machiavelli knows it.31 Through these works he means to shape human nature, to the extent that it can be shaped, by an education that claims that human nature is more malleable and more predictable than Machiavelli really thinks it is. For the sake of the common benefit, he means to persuade the great to act as if they are acting only according to necessity. This project would amount to nothing more than a curiosity in the history of political thought were it not for its remarkable success. We are the indirect beneficiaries of Machiavelli’s questionable attempt: we who believe that our natures are malleable, especially by technology; we who believe in rights founded only on necessities; we who believe ourselves great because of the dream of acquisition without limit; we who believe in progress, and in the necessity of a better future; and we who believe ourselves to be the people whose acquisitions the laws of nature and of nature’s God secure. Without attention to Machiavelli’s account of human nature we run the risk of remaining the unconscious inheritors at third hand of a partial account, of a project, posing as a science, to narrow human possibilities through education. We risk being Machiavellians without knowing it. How is this to the common benefit of everyone? Jeff J.S. Black Annapolis, Maryland 20 June 2012 �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 27 Notes 1 References to The Prince and to the Discourses will be given in the text, in the forms [P Chapter:page] and [D Book.chapter.paragraph:page], respectively. In these references, DL stands for dedicatory letter, P for preface, and T for title. The editions used are Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. A New Translation with an Introduction, by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), and Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996). I also refer to Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001) in the form [MNMO, page]; to Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli's Virtue. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996) in the form [MV, page]; and to Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1958) in the form [TM, page]. 2 In the former passage, Machiavelli writes, “states that come to be suddenly, like all other things in nature that are born and grow quickly, cannot have roots and branches” [P 7:26], while in the latter he writes that a man cannot be found who is so prudent to accommodate himself to changes in fortune, in part “because he cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to” [P 25:100]. In two passages in the Discourses analogous to the latter passage in The Prince, Machiavelli writes that we are unable to change in part because “we are unable to oppose that to which nature inclines us” [D III.9.3:240], and “it is given by nature to men to take sides in any divided thing whatever, and for this to please them more than that” [D III.27.3:275]. In these last three passages we might expect Machiavelli to write “his nature” or “our nature,” but he does not. There is one passage in the Discourses where he refers to “the wicked nature of men” [D III.29.1:277], but he makes the reference while quoting a view with which he does not agree. 3 In nearby chapters at the beginning of The Prince, Machiavelli uses the phrases “natural prince” [P 2:7] and “natural affection” [P 4:17] to refer to the prince who inherits a principality and the affection felt for him. The natural and the ordinary are closely connected at this point in the work, and they both refer primarily to the sequence of human generation. The new prince is opposed to the natural or ordinary prince in Machiavelli’s argument, and the natural and ordinary is both an obstacle and an opportunity for him. 4 Machiavelli may mean to contrast these “universal causes” with the “superior causes” that he mentions in his discussion of ecclesiastical principalities [P 11:45]. 5 “[T]ime sweeps everything before it and can bring with it good as well as evil and evil as well as good” [P 3:13], according to Machiavelli, and “worldly things are so variable that it is next to impossible for one to stand with his armies idle in a siege for a year” [P 10:44]. There is another reference to an “order of things” much later in The Prince: “in the order of things it is found that one never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the qualities of inconveniences, and in picking the less bad as good” [P 21:91]. 6 “[O]ne can say this generally of men,” Machiavelli writes, “that they are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain. While you do them good, they are yours, offering you their blood, property, lives, and children… when the need for them is far away; but, when it is close to you, they revolt” [P 17:66]. Having taught his reader later in The Prince that a prudent lord cannot observe faith, he continues, “if all men were good, this teaching would not be good; but because they are wicked and do not observe faith with you, you also do not have to observe it with them” [P 18:69]. Indeed, “men will always turn out bad for you unless they have been made good by a necessity” [P 23:95]. Machiavelli’s other claims about the apparently abiding character of men include, “men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands, because seeing is given to everyone, touching to a few” [P 18:71], and, “men are much more taken by present things than by past ones, and when they find good in the present, they enjoy it and do not seek elsewhere” [P 24:96].   �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 28   7 Machiavelli repeats this claim much later in the Discourses, in a way that suggests an amendment. “Prudent men are accustomed to say,” he writes, “and not by chance or without merit, that whoever wishes to see what has to be considers what has been; for all worldly things in every time have their own counterpart in ancient times. That arises because these are the work of men, who have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity result in the same effect” [D III.43.1:302]. What prudent men say by custom rather than by chance, and not without merit, is then corrected by what Machiavelli says in the immediate sequel: that it is true that the works of men “are more virtuous now in this province than in that, and in that more than in this, according to the form of education in which those people have taken their mode of life” [D III.43.1:302]. Education can shape nature, such that “Men Who Are Born in One Province Observe Almost the Same Nature for All Times” [D III.43.T:302; emphasis added]. Similarly, when investigating “Whence It Arises That One Family in One City Keeps the Same Customs for a Time” [D III.46.T:306], Machiavelli argues that this “cannot arise solely from the bloodline, because that must vary through the diversity of marriages, but it necessarily comes from the diverse education of one family from another” [D III.46.1:306]. 8 “How Many Are the Kinds of Principalities and in What Modes They Are Acquired” [P 1.T:5]; “Of New Principalities That Are Acquired through One’s Own Arms and Virtue” [P 6.T:21]; “Of New Principalities That are Acquired by Others’ Arms and Fortune” [P 7.T:25]. 9 This suggests another reason why Chapter XV, titled “Of Those Things for Which Men And Especially Princes are Praised or Blamed” [P 15.T:61] is also about acquisition. 10 The desire to acquire thus amounts to a desire for novelty. Later in the Discourses Machiavelli writes “men are desirous of new things, so much that most often those who are well off desire newness as much as those who are badly off. For, as was said another time [at D I.37.1:78], and it is true, men get bored with the good and grieve in the ill” [D III.21.2:263]. 11 And just as reproduction is growth by other means, so are one’s offspring and their acquisitions one’s own acquisitions, by other means. Consider Machiavelli’s hints about how Alexander VI used Cesare Borgia [P 11:46]. Death is not simply a limit of the desire to acquire. But compare note 27, below. Machiavelli does occasionally refer to a good that is the goal of acquisition. For example, in the Discourses he writes, [i]t appears that in the actions of men, as we have discoursed of another time [D I.6.3:21-22, where he wrote of “inconveniences”], besides the other difficulties in wishing to bring a thing to its perfection, one finds that close to the good there is always some evil that arises with that good so easily that it appears impossible to be able to miss the one if one wishes for the other. One sees this in all the things that men work on. So the good is acquired only with difficulty unless you are aided by fortune, so that with its force it conquers this ordinary and natural inconvenience” [D III.37.1:294]. But it is not clear that by “the good” here Machiavelli means anything other than any acquisition that can be felt and so enjoyed. Also, there are occasional hints in The Prince and the Discourses that some acquisitions can be harmful to the body that acquires them. In The Prince Machiavelli first raises the possibility of such acquisitions when he tells his reader that to keep an acquisition the prince must ensure that the acquired body becomes “one whole body” with the acquiring body [P 3:9]. If the new acquisition instead remains disparate with respect to the prince’s other possessions, then he runs the risk of losing it. A powerful foreigner can easily gain the lesser powers in a disparate province, since the lesser powers, moved by their envy of their rulers, quickly and willingly make “one mass” with the foreign invader [P 3:11]. A prince who rules a disparate state, and who fails to prevent powerful foreigners from taking advantage of this disparity, will soon lose his new acquisition, and “while he holds it, [he] will have infinite difficulties and vexations within it” [P 3:11]. So acquisitions can be harmful to the prince and his state as long as they remain disparate with his other possessions; in general, Machiavelli claims, “the disparity in the subject” explains why some conquerors hold their acquisitions while others lose them [P 4:19]. This disparity can be eliminated, and the new acquisition made into one whole body with the acquiring state, by eliminating the new acquisition’s memory of its previous way of life [P 4:19] – that is, by making the acquisition more complete.   �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 29   Acquisition in Machiavelli’s account thus resembles nutrition, in that the acquired body must become like the acquiring body before it can be good for the acquiring body. As long as an acquisition remains disparate, it remains undigested, and a cause of “difficulties and vexations.” But it is not until he considers cities and principalities that live under their own laws before they are acquired that Machiavelli suggests that some acquisitions are by their nature indigestible. Considering the case of a city, he claims at first that “a city used to living free may be held more easily by means of its own citizens than in any other mode, if one wants to preserve it [P 5:20]. But Machiavelli soon admits that this is impossible: “in truth there is no secure mode to possess them other than to ruin them” [P 5:20]. The acquisition of a free city is necessarily harmful: “whoever becomes patron of a city accustomed to living free and does not destroy it, should expect to be destroyed by it” [P 5:20-21]. The indigestibility of such a city results, as we might expect, from the persistence of the memory of its way of life, despite length of time, benefits received, and anything short of destruction [P 5:21]. So the only secure way for a prince to keep such an acquisition is to eliminate it, or to live in it – that is, rather than digesting it, to be digested by it [P 5:21]. This marks the extent of Machiavelli’s admission in The Prince that some acquisitions are not good for the acquiring body. In the Discourses he writes that “[t]he intention of whoever makes war through choice – or, in truth, ambition – is to acquire and maintain the acquisition, and to proceed with it so that it enriches and does not impoverish the country and his fatherland” [D II.6.1:140]. Machiavelli thereby admits that there can be acquisitions that are not good. A later chapter title, “That Acquisition by Republics That Are Not Well Ordered and That Do Not Proceed According to Roman Virtue Are for Their Ruin, Not Their Exaltation” [D II.19.T:172], suggests that virtue might be the necessary and sufficient condition that makes acquisitions good, though Machiavelli ends the chapter by suggesting that “acquiring was about to be pernicious for the Romans in the times when they proceeded with so much prudence and so much virtue” [D II.19.2:175]. His most general remark about the goodness of acquisition in the Discourses comes in a chapter whose title proclaims its concern in part with the causes that eliminate the memories of things, where Machiavelli asserts in passing that “in simple bodies, when very much superfluous matter has gathered together there, nature many times moves by itself and produces a purge that is the health of that body” [D II.5.2:140]. But this remark about the goodness of acquisition, like the analogous discussion in The Prince, reduces goodness to similarity to the acquiring body: that is, it reduces the good to what is one’s own. It does not point to the an account in terms of a good that is independent of one’s own. 12 Almost, because the presence of other competing desires to acquire is likely not the only source of formative effects on the desire to acquire. To the extent that circumstances resist acquisition – one is not strong enough, for example, to climb the tree to reach the desired apple – the desire to acquire is also given form. But these formative effects are presumably not as lasting as political ones. If they were, then our common experience of infantile weakness would yield in everyone the humor of the people. 13 Here Machiavelli writes, “in other principalities” than the Roman empire, “one has to contend only with the ambition of the great and the insolence of the people” [P 19:76]. In the Roman empire one had to contend as well with the cruelty and avarice of the soldiers. 14 Later in the same chapter Machiavelli will reformulate this distinction, writing, “the great want to oppress and the people want not to be oppressed” [P 9:39]. The disappearance of command from his formulation calls for an explanation, and Machiavelli provides one in the sequel when he claims, “when a prince who founds on the people knows how to command,” among other things, “he will see he has laid his foundations well” [P 9:41], since “citizens and subjects” can become “accustomed to receive commands” [P 9:42]. Where oppression is concerned, the great and the people have nothing in common; but they do have something in common where command that is not oppressive is concerned. Command is thus the closest thing to a political solution to the existence of two humors. 15 One difference between the perspectives of The Prince and the Discourses is signaled by Machiavelli’s different description of the desires of the two humors in the two works. ‘Command and oppress’ in The Prince becomes ‘dominate’ in the Discourses. In the former work Machiavelli distinguishes between kinds of domination; in the latter he does not. 16   Mansfield writes that according to Machiavelli, morality �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 30   is controlled by natural temperament, by the two humors that divide all mankind and underlie all moral behavior and opinion. By speaking of humors Machiavelli indicates that they are not habits of the mind nor mental in origin but prerational dispositions. Not being rational in nature, they cannot be reconciled by speech or argument. These are two human types who do not understand each other – the one preferring security and comfort, suspicious of anyone who desires more, the other seeking risk and demanding honor, unbelieving that anyone could be satisfied with less [MV, 24]. 17 Machiavelli’s sudden shift from the plural to the singular in the course of this passage is both striking and puzzling. Could he mean to imply that men can be made to feel secure in their possession if only one man among them – their prince, for example, who in a sense has what they have – acquires something new? 18 “It is an easy thing to know whence arises among peoples this affection for a free way of life for it is seen through experience that cities have never expanded either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom” [D II.2.1:129]. Moreover, if a republic “will not molest others, it will be molested, and from being molested will arise the wish and the necessity to acquire” [D II.19.1:173]. The desire to acquire is also an effect of the desire for freedom. 19 There is a similar but less detailed account in the previous and first chapter of the Discourses. Since all cities are either founded by natives or by foreigners, and all foreigners were natives elsewhere, then the original foundation of cities occurs when it does not appear, to inhabitants dispersed in many small parts, that they live securely, since each part by itself, both because of the site and because of the small number, cannot resist the thrust of whoever assaults it; and when the enemy comes, they do not have time to unite for their defense. Or if they did, they would be required to leave many of their strongholds abandoned; and so they would come at once to be the prey of their enemies. So to flee these dangers, moved either by themselves or by someone among them of greater authority, they are restrained to inhabit together a place elected by them, more advantageous to live in and easier to defend [D I.1.1:7]. 20 That the command of one of the great produces a political struggle between the two humors indicates that this command is not a perfect solution to the existence of the two humors. This is partly because the great continue to desire to acquire by oppressing the people. But it is also because the satisfaction of the people’s desire to be free of oppression cannot amount to a satisfaction of their more fundamental desire to acquire. Even a free people is compelled to recognize the superiority of the great, whose fundamental desire they share, and to see this superiority as an obstacle to the satisfaction of their desire to acquire. The result is envy: the desire that the great be deprived of their superiority. Machiavelli acknowledges this difficulty early in The Prince, when he considers the challenges a prince faces in holding a recently-acquired province that is disparate from those he already holds. “[T]he order of things is such that as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a province, all those in it who are less powerful adhere to him, moved by the envy they have against whoever has held power over them” [P 3:11]. Even or especially founders face envy [P 6:25], though Machiavelli conceals this difficulty in his concluding exhortation of a prince to seize Italy and free her from the barbarians [P 26:105]. Since envy persists among the people even when they are free from oppression by the great, and arises among the great when they elevate one of their number to command the people, Machiavelli distinguishes envy from fear [P 7:31; D II.P.1:123] and elevates it to a characteristic of human beings in the Discourses. “[T]he envious nature of men,” he writes there, “has always made it no less dangerous to find new modes and orders than to seek unknown waters and lands, because men are more ready to blame than to praise the actions of others” [D I.P.1:15]. The political solution to the existence of the two humors is not just command, but hidden command. 21 According to Machiavelli, there may be airborne intelligences, by contrast, who foresee future things by “natural virtue” [D I.56.1:114]. 22 This is not to deny that the people, and especially an oppressed people, might long for a future in which they are free from oppression. But such a future would require that the great be deprived of their superiority. The people are   �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 31   typically conservative as long as they cannot imagine a satisfaction for their envy. In a chapter titled “The Multitude is Wiser and More Constant than a Prince,” Machiavelli admits that under a corrupt prince the people fear the present more than the future, while under a corrupt people they fear the future more than the present, because in the future a tyrant might emerge [D I.58.4:119]. But the corrupt case is not the typical one. Similarly, circumstances might require the great to fear the loss of their acquisitions, rather than to desire further acquisitions – for example, when threatened by a superior desire to acquire. But this is also an atypical case for the great. 23 Manlius’ fate points to another of Machiavelli’s remarks about goodness. Later in the Discourses, in a chapter partly titled “For One Citizen Who Wishes to Do Any Good Work in His Republic by His Authority, It Is Necessary First to Eliminate Envy” [D III.30.T:278], Machiavelli suggests first that “virtue and goodness” can eliminate envy, and then characteristically revises his claim by adding that “goodness is not enough” [D III.30.1:279, 280] – implying that virtue, if not sufficient, is at least necessary. 24 Extraordinary energy is needed for a prince to avoid the dangers of either being loved or being feared, according to the Discourses. “One cannot hold exactly to the middle way,” Machiavelli writes, for our nature does not consent to it, but it is necessary to mitigate those things that exceed with an excessive virtue” [D III.21.3:263; compare 22.3:266]. Perhaps most difficult is the apparently miraculous feat of ordering virtue and goodness in the same human being. In the same work Machiavelli praises the generosity of spirit of those [Roman] citizens whom, when put in charge of an army, the greatness of their spirit lifted above every prince. They did not esteem kings, or republics; nothing terrified or frightened them. When they later returned to private status, they became frugal, humble, careful of their small competencies, obedient to the magistrates, reverent to their superiors, so that it appears impossible that one and the same spirit underwent such change [D III.25.1:272]. 25 In a later formulation, Machiavelli writes that the prince “needs to have a spirit disposed to change as the winds of fortune and variations of things command him” [P 18:70]. 26 The theoretical mode of the peaceful exercise of the art of war involves reading histories and imitating some excellent man in the past [P 14:60]. The practical and theoretical modes of the peaceful exercise of the art of war, added to the wartime exercise of this art, make up the whole art of war, which Machiavelli says should be the only art of the prince, because many times it enables men to acquire states, and it helps them to maintain them [P 14:58]. Machiavelli wrote a book called The Art of War. 27 Machiavelli repeats this reasoning in the Discourses. “Once one individual has made himself very familiar with a region, he then understands with ease all new countries; for every country and every member of the latter have some conformity together, so that one passes easily from the knowledge of one to the knowledge of the other” [D III.39.2:298]. Without this familiarization with one’s own country, one comes to know new countries either never, or only after a long time and with difficulty. 28 As Mansfield puts it, Machiavelli adumbrates the modern scientific understanding of nature that, with Bacon, abandons natural beings and begins the search for natural laws, but he does no more than adumbrate. Since he approaches the question of the nature of nature from the standpoint of what is good for human beings, he remains faithful to the fact that in morals and politics, different natures appear distinct to us, above all the difference between good and evil [MV, 21]. I mean here to fill out the content of Machiavelli’s adumbration with respect to human nature, and to point out the resulting tension between his abandonment of natural beings and his fidelity to the natural difference between good and evil. One sign of this tension is that while the science of sites seems to entail a mechanical or hydrodynamic account in which lifeless nature is primary [see, for example, P 25:98-99], the examples that Machiavelli offers for the excellent human being to imitate are chiefly living beings [compare P 25:100-101]. It is not clear whether the living or the nonliving is the primary category for Machiavelli’s comprehensive science.   �Black, Machiavelli on Human Nature, Page 32   29 A reader who remembers the example of Pope Alexander VI from The Prince might object at this point that Alexander hoped to continue acquiring after his death, using his son Cesare Borgia as “his instrument” [P 11:46]. But acquisitions made through one’s offspring can be lost to death just as well as one’s own acquisitions, as long as one’s offspring are also mortal [P 7:31-32]. Also, it may necessarily be the case that a prince’s instruments are always inferior to him; had he lived, Alexander VI might not have made the errors that Cesare Borgia made [compare P 7:32-33 with 18:70]. Lastly, the pleasure of an predicted acquisition might necessarily be poorer than the pleasure of a real acquisition, if one has doubts about the possibility of enjoying it. 30 We learn by Machiavelli’s treatment of the same episode in the Discourses that the centurion with the “obstinate spirit” was not in fact the initiator of the successful conspiracy. Rather, he was the instrument of a prefect, who was himself driven to conspire against his emperor by the necessity imposed by the prefect’s fear of death [D III.6.11:227]. This elaboration does not detract from Machiavelli’s admission that some human beings cannot be compelled by the threat of death, and so his admission that his science of sites is not comprehensive. 31 There are other details in The Prince that raise similar doubts about the science of sites. For example, Machiavelli suggests that “obedience to present necessities” is what makes human beings vulnerable to being deceived [P 18:70]. He seems to mean not just that necessities can be manipulated [compare D III.12.1:247], since a human being would be no less excellent were he to be responsive to artificial necessities as well as to natural ones, nor just that necessities can be apparent rather than real, since a science of sites would distinguish only real necessities. Instead, he seems to mean to qualify his claim that it is sufficient for virtue to orient itself by necessity. In the same chapter Machiavelli also warns that “the vulgar are taken in by the appearance and the outcome of a thing”; and there is a similar passage in the Discourses where he writes, “all men are blind in this, in judging good or bad counsel by the end” [D III.35.2:291]. Again, if necessity were as knowable as Machiavelli elsewhere claims that it is, judging by the end would not be an instance of blindness or gullibility. � 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. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 32 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Everyone Sees How You Appear; Few Touch What You Are": Machiavelli on Human Nature 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 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-06-20 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I herby 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. To make a copy of my typescript available online." Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527 Philosophy, Renaissance Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 80134 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on June 20, 2012 by Jeff Black as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Mr. Black is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His talk is on exactly what constitutes human nature in the work of Machiavelli. In particular, he considers how this view has affected the way we see Machiavelli's works and what it has to teach us about his writings. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Deans Graduate Institute Summer lecture series Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d84ca11a60a19e2865f6fd6664837a3c.pdf 62621e517f0fc06870510977af358f90 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 Hector Humphreys Papers Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource The Hector Humphreys papers include letters, sermons, a commencement speech, and a manual for farmers. <br /><br />Series I contains letters written to Humphreys between 1821-1856. Correspondents include students and colleagues from Yale and Washington College, religious colleagues, and a letter from his niece, Adeline C. Griswold. Humphreys also corresponded with Denison Olmsted, a professor at Yale, about a scientific apparatus, demonstrating Humphreys's interest in science and his search for materials to improve St. John's science program. <br /><br />Series II contains Humphreys's sermons, an 1852 St. John's College commencement speech, and a manual for farmers on the chemistry of soil and manure. All items are hand-written and bound, and illustrations of soldiers or other men are pasted on the front cover of the sermons and commencement speech. The sermons were given in churches around Annapolis and Eastport such as St. Anne's Episcopal Church, All Hallows Church, St. Margaret's Church, and the Naval Academy. <br /><br />For more information about this collection, see the <a href="https://sjc.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/16">finding aid</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM 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 "His Flesh Shall Be Fresher Than a Child" Description An account of the resource "His flesh shall be fresher than a child." circa 13 March 1842-26 February 1847. A sermon written by Hector Humphreys given at St. Anne's Episcopal Church, All Hallows Church, and St. Margaret's Episcopal Church. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Humphreys, Hector, 1797-1857 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 1842-03-13 1847-02-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hector Humphreys papers Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM_001_016 Christianity Hector Humphreys https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1f0c09dc8b3d4c83f482b4bfa32f1eb4.pdf 8de6ffa190c2406488fbbf749bc1e523 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 Hector Humphreys Papers Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource The Hector Humphreys papers include letters, sermons, a commencement speech, and a manual for farmers. <br /><br />Series I contains letters written to Humphreys between 1821-1856. Correspondents include students and colleagues from Yale and Washington College, religious colleagues, and a letter from his niece, Adeline C. Griswold. Humphreys also corresponded with Denison Olmsted, a professor at Yale, about a scientific apparatus, demonstrating Humphreys's interest in science and his search for materials to improve St. John's science program. <br /><br />Series II contains Humphreys's sermons, an 1852 St. John's College commencement speech, and a manual for farmers on the chemistry of soil and manure. All items are hand-written and bound, and illustrations of soldiers or other men are pasted on the front cover of the sermons and commencement speech. The sermons were given in churches around Annapolis and Eastport such as St. Anne's Episcopal Church, All Hallows Church, St. Margaret's Church, and the Naval Academy. <br /><br />For more information about this collection, see the <a href="https://sjc.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/16">finding aid</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM 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. 21 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 "How Shall A Man Be Just with God" Description An account of the resource "How shall a man be just with God." circa 1831-1857. A sermon written by Hector Humphreys based off of the book of Job. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Humphreys, Hector, 1797-1857 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1831-1857 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hector Humphreys papers Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM_001_015 Christianity Hector Humphreys https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/95696876ebdbc5a675af4d563e36b1f2.pdf 1379b77c8df641a30acff7ebf9dc2504 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 "I hate books" or making room for learning Description An account of the resource Transcript of the Graduate Institute convocation address given on June 15, 1997 by David Levine in Santa Fe, NM. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Levine, David Lawrence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-06-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Emile. Education Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000406 Convocation Graduate Institute https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/87b35e3d407c47ade3299c81cfc53b01.mp3 bb9a2fd63fb225d5e3928df7584f14a4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio cassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:55:01 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "I think, therefore I am" Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 22, 1971 by Samuel S. Kutler as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kutler, Samuel S. 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 1971-10-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual 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 typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Kutler_Samuel_1971-10-22 Subject The topic of the resource Descartes, René, 1596-1650 Philosophy, Modern Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3de7b4180c4d6f2efa49aa5381e59e33.pdf 995d746ab663358b47f5b3254100efa8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Microsoft Word 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 "In Want of a Wife..." or a Husband, in <em>Pride and Prejudice</em> Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on April 17, 2015, by Suzy Paalman as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Paalman, Susan R. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-04-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make typescript copies of my lecture 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 Paalman_Susan_2015-04-17 Subject The topic of the resource Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Pride and prejudice Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9c400c66a03563ce5e0085e6b1c4c7bd.mp3 30ac09e89a36f6a8836e94a956b0c461 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:56:58 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Making New Gods?": Reflections on Plato's <em>Symposium</em> Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on March 21, 2008, by Mitchell Miller as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Miller, Mitchell H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-03-21 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 a recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John’s College Greenfield Library; make a recording of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Symposium Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Miller_Mitchell_2008-03-21_ac Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bf4e5164d43e8cad5ccd0e9a54a8638a.mp4 a8307b6f6d08799c46b145f38eac8288 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:22 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 "Poet, That’s Just Like You!": Language and the Figure of Echo (Steiner Lecture) Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 11, 2022, by Ange Mlinko as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mlinko is the poetry editor of the Nation, an associate professor at the University of Florida, and a Guggenheim fellow. Mlinko describes her lecture: "Poetry is an enormous subject, but it can be distilled into a single figure. This figure is Echo, who manifests in three ways: as a prosodic device at the level of the line and stanza; as a poetic form; and as a nymph from Greek mythology, who may stand in for literature itself. We will look at the many ways in which Echo informs poetry and teaches us to read it.” This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series, which is made possible by a gift from the Steiner family in memory of Andrew Steiner, an alumnus of the college from 1963. The lecture series was established to bring notable speakers to campus from a variety of disciplines and endeavors, in recognition of Steiner’s intellectual versatility, and for the sake of continued learning. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mlinko, Ange 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 2022-02-11 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 to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Poetry Echo (Greek mythology) Echo verse Frost, Robert, 1874-1963 Valéry, Paul, 1871-1945 Tyni︠a︡nov, I︠U︡. N. (I︠U︡riĭ Nikolaevich), 1894-1943 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844-1889 Barnes, Barnabe, 1569?-1609 Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D. Metamorphoses Poussin, Nicolas, 1594?-1665 Webster, John, 1580?-1625? Duchess of Malfi Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911-1979 Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Mlinko_Ange_2022-02-11acccess Alumni Friday night lecture Steiner lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/af3c8ef2aaa35620de108411e8c7f44e.pdf 1a095a93b2ded6b5c6898a93ee621192 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 Hector Humphreys Papers Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource The Hector Humphreys papers include letters, sermons, a commencement speech, and a manual for farmers. <br /><br />Series I contains letters written to Humphreys between 1821-1856. Correspondents include students and colleagues from Yale and Washington College, religious colleagues, and a letter from his niece, Adeline C. Griswold. Humphreys also corresponded with Denison Olmsted, a professor at Yale, about a scientific apparatus, demonstrating Humphreys's interest in science and his search for materials to improve St. John's science program. <br /><br />Series II contains Humphreys's sermons, an 1852 St. John's College commencement speech, and a manual for farmers on the chemistry of soil and manure. All items are hand-written and bound, and illustrations of soldiers or other men are pasted on the front cover of the sermons and commencement speech. The sermons were given in churches around Annapolis and Eastport such as St. Anne's Episcopal Church, All Hallows Church, St. Margaret's Church, and the Naval Academy. <br /><br />For more information about this collection, see the <a href="https://sjc.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/16">finding aid</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM 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. 21 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 "Sanctify the Lord God" Description An account of the resource "Sanctify the Lord God." Circa 15 September 1850-1854. A sermon written by Hector Humphreys and given at St. Anne's Episcopal Church. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Humphreys, Hector, 1797-1857 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 1850-09-15 1854 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hector Humphreys papers Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM_001_019 Christianity Hector Humphreys https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ea0224501ba2d0795847c24af1193597.mp3 d091ce51dc23419988871a3502539734 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:20 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Something before her time delivered" : wonder, grace, and time's creation in The winter's tale Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on August 30, 2019 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter 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 2019-08-30 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 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Winter's tale Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_SterlingW_Something_Before_Her_Time_Delivered_2019-08-30 Deans Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8fd6e550c715c92e7abbd6506394b59a.mp3 607e3bfd3d1e1077c2aacd324cebf1d7 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 m4a Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:46 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 "Sounding Alarm: (circa 1850)" Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Alexander Rehding on February 3, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "The nineteenth century was a time of progress but also of crisis – and the study of musical sound was no exception. While around 1800 a sense prevailed that scientists like E.F.F. Chladni and Thomas Young had lifted the secret of sound, this was just the calm before the storm. The presentation of the mechanical siren in 1819 sounded an alarm—literally and metaphorically: the new mechanism threatened to overturn the foundations of the old theories and threw the study of sound into a profound crisis. But this crisis was also a time of great creativity: figures like F. Opelt and J.-G. Kastner came up with innovative approaches that turned the study of music and sound in new and unexpected directions. The important scientist H. v. Helmholtz managed to put a damper on this crisis in the 1860s with some wise and conciliatory pronouncements, but the benefits for music remained and continued to be developed – in compositions by Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, and far beyond." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rehding, Alexander 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 2023-02-03 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 Sound. Music. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_RehdingA_Sounding_Alarm_circa_1850_2023-02-03 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9d9baccda5840522e8f8ccc720727f6d.mp3 b7dbad7f341c9720b4494d06c9786eb1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:55:42 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 "Sweet are the uses of adversity" : Hegel's exaltation of comedy and Rosalind's education of Arden in Shakespeare's As you like it Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on August 24, 2018 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-08-24 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 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. As you like it Hegel, Georg Ludwig Friedrich, 1807-1831 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, 2018-08 Deans Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/37f22ac1e1a3ae9f9901d4932a844796.mp3 d80fed73e0576147a7d961997391c542 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:56:13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Tel us som moral thing" : moral certainty and the art of story in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on September 27, 2019 by Maggie Evans McGuinness as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McGuinness, Meagan 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 Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-09-27 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 Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400. Canterbury tales Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_McGuinnessM_Tel_us_som_moral_thing_Moral_Certainty_and_the_Art_of_Story_in_Chaucers_Canterbury_Tales_2019-09-27 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b7b105abbc76a64470bdfac7044ead6b.mp3 23f3d2fccc9ca91b0d6e17303be8dd6f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:15:22 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 greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself" : Reflecting with Montaigne on liberation of the intellect and education in times of crisis Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by J. Walter Sterling on September 11, 2020 as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Dean Sterling provided this description of his lecture: "The lecture will blend reflections on education in times of crisis, including a discussion of the founding of the St. John’s Program, with an examination of Montaigne’s understanding of education and its ends. Montaigne, who lived through plague and civil war, is one of the few authors who can stake a claim to have forged the modern individual. His response to the crises of his times was to cultivate a new literary form, the 'essay,' devoted to a new topic, 'myself,' and to send out a renewed or radicalized call for freedom of thought, independent judgment, and self-possession." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter 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 2020-09-11 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 Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_SterlingW_Reflecting_with_Montaigne_on_Liberation_of_the_Intellect_and Education_in_Times_of_Crisis_2020-09-11.mp3 Deans Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/150b684e183eb974b8cbbe614d71cf1f.mp4 5eb1a2c213cd8165190a71ba31423016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom video conference Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:05:32 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 "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself": Reflecting with Montaigne on Liberation of the Intellect and on Education in Times of Crisis Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered by Walter Sterling, Santa Fe tutor on February 5, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Sterling describes his lecture: "The lecture will blend reflections on education in times of crisis, including a discussion of the founding of the St. John’s Program, with an examination of Montaigne’s understanding of education and its ends. Montaigne, who lived through plague and civil war, is one of the few authors who can stake a claim to give birth to the modern individual. His response to the crises of his times was to cultivate a new literary form, the 'essay,' devoted to a new topic, 'myself,' and to send out a renewed or radicalized call for freedom of thought, independent judgment, and self-possession." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter 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 2021-02-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual 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 typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592 Education--United States--Philosophy Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7486" title="Audio">Audio</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling_Walter_2021-02-05 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/44af01d084367af610bcc50f07358648.mp3 ac44e4aa3acdde3df35a9fd89a063050 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom video conference Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:05:32 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 "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself": Reflecting with Montaigne on Liberation of the Intellect and on Education in Times of Crisis Description An account of the resource Audio track from the video recording of a lecture delivered by Walter Sterling, Santa Fe tutor on February 5, 2021 as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Sterling describes his lecture: "The lecture will blend reflections on education in times of crisis, including a discussion of the founding of the St. John’s Program, with an examination of Montaigne’s understanding of education and its ends. Montaigne, who lived through plague and civil war, is one of the few authors who can stake a claim to give birth to the modern individual. His response to the crises of his times was to cultivate a new literary form, the 'essay,' devoted to a new topic, 'myself,' and to send out a renewed or radicalized call for freedom of thought, independent judgment, and self-possession." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter 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 2021-02-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating: "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audiovisual 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 typescript of my lecture available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592 Education--United States--Philosophy Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Macfarland, Joseph C. Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7485" title="Video">Video</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling_Walter_2021-02-05audio Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f5192d0375798ca539603e47f4356785.pdf 7f21ca06e2d9b32465fe3b2c52eb85a4 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 Hector Humphreys Papers Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource The Hector Humphreys papers include letters, sermons, a commencement speech, and a manual for farmers. <br /><br />Series I contains letters written to Humphreys between 1821-1856. Correspondents include students and colleagues from Yale and Washington College, religious colleagues, and a letter from his niece, Adeline C. Griswold. Humphreys also corresponded with Denison Olmsted, a professor at Yale, about a scientific apparatus, demonstrating Humphreys's interest in science and his search for materials to improve St. John's science program. <br /><br />Series II contains Humphreys's sermons, an 1852 St. John's College commencement speech, and a manual for farmers on the chemistry of soil and manure. All items are hand-written and bound, and illustrations of soldiers or other men are pasted on the front cover of the sermons and commencement speech. The sermons were given in churches around Annapolis and Eastport such as St. Anne's Episcopal Church, All Hallows Church, St. Margaret's Church, and the Naval Academy. <br /><br />For more information about this collection, see the <a href="https://sjc.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/16">finding aid</a>. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM 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. 14 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 Laws of Thy World" Description An account of the resource "The Laws of Thy World." 1844. A sermon written by Hector Humphreys based off of the book of Romans. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Humphreys, Hector, 1797-1857 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 1844 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/ Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hector Humphreys papers Subject The topic of the resource Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HUM_001_017 Christianity Hector Humphreys