20 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eb67eeb9615175a6c256f462b4479004.pdf 11e5030c2cf03affd31ca9170482ff8b PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 56.2 (Spring 2015) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Allison Tretina The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401-1687. ©2015 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at http://www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review ��Contents Essays & Lectures Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics ..................................1 Eva Brann Reinventing Love: An Introduction to Plato’s Phaedrus..................14 John F. Cornell In the Heaven of Knowing: Dante’s Paradiso..................................36 Peter Kalkavage Knowing and Ground: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit ...............................57 Matthew Linck Poem Tercet ................................................................................................75 Elliott Zuckerman Review Liberalism and Tragedy A Review of Jonathan N. Badger’s Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy: Cities and Transcendence....................76 Paul Ludwig ��Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics Eva Brann You have been reading and talking about virtue for quite a while now; therefore, that is what your teachers asked me to talk about to you. So I drew a hot bath (since the mind is freest when the body is floating) and thought what might be most to the point, most helpful to you. Should I review some theories about virtue, perhaps give you my interpretation of Socrates’s or Aristotle's notions of virtue, perhaps dwell on whether from reading Platonic dialogues we can tell if Socrates and Plato thought the same and if Aristotle responds to either of them? Or should I introduce you to Kantian morality, a world apart from the ancients? Should I distinguish for you a vision of virtue that looks to an ideal heaven beyond and longs for perfection from one that pays regard to the world right here and goes for moderation? Should I explain to you that the Greek philosophers tends toward ethics, toward developing personal qualities of excellence, while the Judeo-Christian tradition tends toward morality, willingness to obey the laws of God and nature? Should I list for you different doctrines of doing right, such as eudaemonism, the teaching that happiness is the aim of virtue, or deontology, the account of virtue as duty and the obligation to obey commands, of which Kant is the most extreme representative? For while Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whatever their differences, think that ethics involves some sort of rightness in our feelings, emotions, and passions, Kant is clear that morality at its purest is a matter of reason alone. Reason is in its essence universal: to think rationally is to think unexceptionably, comprehensively. So to obey the commands of reason is to suppress all merely natural inclinations, all purely Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the “Windows on the Good Life” Course at Carlton College on 16 April 2014. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW idiosyncratic desires, and to intend only such actions as we would want to be intended by everyone—or even to be seen as commanded by a law of nature. This is the notorious “categorical imperative”: “imperative” means “command” and “categorical” means “without ifs and buts” (as when someone says to you “that's a categorical no!”). You'll see in a moment why I've brought Kantian morality into this talk. One last thing I might be speaking about, and which in fact I will talk of in a moment, is the word “virtue.” I'll argue that this translation of the word the Greeks use, aretē, has its virtues, but we should probably give it up, or at least use it with raised eyebrows. I now want to say why none of the above, except the last, appealed to me. I will tell you what seems to me the biggest trouble with academic study, and so with most of our eduction. I call it the problem of lost immediacy. This is what I mean: There are books—and if your teachers chose well, they will be great ones— that are full of substance. Then there are books and articles and lectures about books. The great books (or texts of any sort) contain opinions. The next level of books and articles also contain opinions, but they are opinions about the original opinions, because whoever interprets a primary text adds a perspective to it. Then here we are, your teachers, and we’ve absorbed some of these original opinions, as well as some of the opinions about them— and we’ve acquired some opinions of our own on top of that. All those levels of learning on our part can smother, drown out, your immediate relation to the book. But even a powerful, first-rate book—perhaps especially such a book—can also stand between you and yourself. It intervenes in your thinking and can capture it, so that you are content to think its thoughts and co-feel its feelings, rather than being immediately present to yourself. Or worse, it can put you off its possibly life-changing content because you see no direct entrance to it. Now I hasten to say that I pity people who have never been taken over by a book or even by a teacher in that way—if, that is, the being-taken-over is the beginning of an effort, a struggle, that issues in a gradual emergence or a tumultuous bursting out of a �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 discovery that is truly your own. And I pity even more students who have been turned off by a life-enhancing text because no one helped them to make a direct connection with it. A witty outside observer of my college used to tell the world that our students arrive knowing nothing and leave knowing that they know nothing. I hope it’s true, provided you keep in mind that to know that you know nothing is knowing a lot. What he meant, though, was that they had absorbed so many contradictory opinions from reading so many deep books that they were in a state of ultimate and utterconfusion. But in that he was surely mistaken. Such riches may be oppressive and discombobulating for a while, but that’s a state you work yourself out of into some clarity—clarity about “who you are,” which is a formulaic way of saying “what your thinking can accept and your feelings can embrace.” Therefore I think that the second-best thing we teachers can do for our students is to show how books can be, in a fancy term, “appropriated,” made one’s own—and not just a few books of the same sort, but many books of different sorts, different in genre, different in opinion. The very best thing we can do, of course, is to get students to read them well and talk about them to each other. Doesn’t that broad appropriation, you might ask, imply eclecticism, which is a sort of intellectual cherry-picking that disregards the generality of a well thought-out theory, and—especially if it’s an ethical or moral theory—its integration into a comprehensive view of the ways things are? Well, yes, if ecleticism means indiscriminately collecting low-hanging fruit from here and there, it will be cherry-picking, extracting now contextless bits and pieces. But no, if eclecticism has a basis in the very nature of things. In a moment I’ll explain this oracular pronouncement. But first, there’s the word “virtue,” the supposed subject of my talk. Let everyone talk as they wish, as long as they know what they’re saying; but I wish we wouldn't use “virtue” as a translation of that Greek word aretē—or at least that we would use it mostly with raised eyebrows. To be sure, it has a nice argument in its favor: “virtue” is related both to the Latin vis, force, and vir, man. Virtue is the energy of a being that holds it together, and gives it power, as when they say in stories: “All the virtue went out of �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW him.” Now as it happens, aretē is related to a Greek prefix ari-, meaning “very much, forcefully so”; thus aretē is the potency in a person or thing to be what it is supposed to be. (Some Greeks seem to have seen a relation between aretē and Ares, the powerful warrior-god.) Moreover, the moral virtue most highly regarded by Aristotle, courage, is literally called “manliness” (andreia) in Greek. So it all fits together. On the other hand, “virtue,” in a use that goes back to Shakespearean times and into the nineteenth century, was a woman’s particular kind of manliness, namely, well-girded chastity, her bodily and psychic inviolability. We have nothing left but a smile for such passionless purity. More recently, the adjective “virtual,” in its meaning of “inactual,” has come front-and-center as an attribute of cyberspace: “virtual reality,” that is to say, “unreal reality.” We ought to have a background awareness of the sphere of connotations of our words, including their history. But, as far as the contemporary connotations of the adjectival form of “virtue” is concerned, I don’t think we want to go there. This means, however, that for the moment I’m left without a word for my subject. And this lack raises two really interesting questions: Can we have a thought without a name? and Can we think without words? Powerful contemporary writers claim that it is impossible for two reasons: There can be no external proof that thinking is going on without someone saying something thoughtful: a furrowed brow is no evidence. In fact even our claim to be thinking doesn’t prove that we are thinking. And more important, to think is really to marshall meanings, and meanings are drifting vapours unless they are attached to a word or given structure in a sentence. Here I beg to differ with these contemporary writers. I think we all experience that sense of a disembodied meaning, of pre-verbal thinking, that moves in our mind, sometimes like a gentle aromatic breeze over the mental plain, sometimes like a powerful push of air pressure against a mental wall, rousing us to seek the right term to catch it, the accurate language to describe it, the suitable words to embody it. So then, what is this mental presence that is called virtue, effectiveness, excellence, dutifulness, goodness? I am supposing �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 here that to have too many words is equivalent to having no cogent idea. But that may be a mistake. The reason why there are numerous translations for the Greek word you’ve thought about under the term “virtue” may be that in fact it encompasses a number of ways of being what is called broadly, and so a little bluntly, “good”; there are many terms because there really are different ways of being humanly good. This possibility of earthly variety kicks the meaning they share, “goodness,” way upstairs, so to speak—up into the highest reaches of thought. In the Republic, Socrates says to the two very intelligent young men he is speaking with that he can’t explain this Good to them in the brief space of one evening. So I feel excused from even trying in this short hour. On the other hand, I do want to make use of the notion that there might be more than one way of being good—an idea that will probably underwhelm you. It would not even have shocked people who lived before the First World War, like your great-great-grand parents—though for different reasons. Nowadays many people, certainly among them the most articulate ones, believe that as long as we are socially right-minded and we don’t discriminate among our fellow humans for being what nature made them, we can be fairly forgiving of a loose personal morality. So there is public and private morality, one rigorous, the other relaxed. (Of course, these are generalizations, which are never true of those in whose hearing they are made.) Your ancestors, on the other hand, would have tended to believe what Socrates sets out in the Republic, namely, that members of different castes or classes belonging to one political community have different characteristic excellences. Moreover, they knew quite well that, even within their class, people—especially well-off men—lived quite comfortably within a double moral framework. For example, men could maintain a respectable but loveless marriage to one woman whom they publicly honored, while at the same time engaging in a passionate but disreputable attachment to a mistress who had only private privileges. My own uncle lived that way. When he and his wife fled Germany from the Nazis in 1939, his mistress was on the same train in a separate compartment. Here is what I want to do now, killing two birds with one stone �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (though I’m not so much for killing birds, especially not en masse). My first aim is to take off on my own, so that my primary point will not be so much to explain a theory found in a book—though, as you’ll see, I’ll have to do that too in order to achieve my second purpose. And that second purpose is to show how one might be eclectic without being incoherent, how we might engage in picking-out parts of theories of goodness without producing a mere self-pleasing miscellany, a tasty thought-goulash. This second purpose might be of real use to you if you’re feeling a little snowed by all the deep and sometimes difficult theories you’ve studied this year. I mean to show that you can fashion an opinion to live by through combining the most disparate conceptions. My first aim, however, is to think out something for myself and articulate it before a sympathetic audience. So now to it. One human being may indeed live with two moralities, one public, one private, and this duplicity is not always hypocritical; it may simply make life livable and prevent it from becoming worse. Or, looking at it another way, there is a saying that hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue: I think it’s better all around that there should be such respect, once humanly understandable and inevitable wrong-doing is on the scene. Again, coming to our day, some people quite comfortably cheat on their taxes and tell you that it’s a form of civic virtue to short-change a wasteful government, but they observe strict correctness when it comes to matters of social justice. They too live in a dual moral frame. But I want to introduce another, I think more fundamental, duality: the pacing of time, or, more accurately, of psychic motion. If you watch the stream of cars coming toward you on the opposite side of a highway, and there is a good deal of traffic, you’ll notice that the cars bunch up; they practically tailgate each other until the density dissolves into long stretches of lighter flow. The world is like that, and so are our lives; it and we are in sync. There’s an earthquake, a tsunami, a storm, an eruption all at once after years of nothing. A dreary winter has lasted for ever, suddenly it’s spring, the forsythia is in bloom, the trees are bursting into leaf, and it’s time for outdoor-idling, but there are summer jobs to be lined up, final exams, parties, last-moment bonding, packing, all at once. That’s outside, but it’s similar inside: There are undistinguished �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 times marked, very unremarkably, by routine and repetition; life flows away and is canceled, collapses into one-and-any-day’s schedule. Then suddenly time develops densities; all the momentous moments happen together, for better or for worse. When it rains, it pours, as the saying goes. I should remind you here that the exhilarating heights and tearful depths of time, or rather of eventfulness, separated by expanses of flat dailiness—these closings-up and drawings-apart of happenings—are a Western way of seeing the world and living in it. There are teachings of the East that make a virtue of unbunching time, of letting life flow evenly—every moment as charged with presence as any other. Thus when I called this talk “Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics,” I was thinking only of our half of the world. So now I’ll explain what I mean by momentary morality. I’ve been describing an experience of time and events that includes moments of crisis, either imposed on us by nature or manufactured by us from sheer cussed, willful Westernness. Although krisis is a Greek word meaning “separation” or “decision,” and so might just betoken any branching in the flow of events, we generally don’t mean something good by it. A crisis, as we use the word, is not so much a branching as a stanching of the flow of events that makes its elements pile up and then burst out, often in a kind of relieving demolition of the status quo. Certainly the living pace we share, consisting of stretches of eventless, quiet desperation or contentment, as the case may be, which are interspersed with somewhat frantic eventfulness, practically guarantees that every high will be at the expense of a low, as a hill is paid for by a hollow. I think that I’ve told things the way they really are, but that I’ve left two questions (at least) quite unanswered: Are the highs higher than the lows are low, that is, are there more great moments than sorry ones? and What is the logic, or better, the ontology of these eventpairings of high and low? Why is natural and human life subject to these oppositions? By “ontology,” which signifies an “account of being,” I mean the most fundamental explanation we can find for the way things are, including psychology in the non-medical sense: an account of the human soul. But I want to use this notion of bunched time, of high moments we may hope for and low ones we can expect, of events shaped in �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW time like wave packets connected by a flat line—unexamined though the image be—to speak about the type of morality which I call “momentary morality.” I mean those critical moments when you’re up against the wall, when it’s too late to think things out, when you need to be ready with an inner command to tell you what to do—what you must do—at that very moment. The human condition being what it is, what you must do will tend to be something you don’t want to do, or rather, something you will want with every fiber of your feelings not to do. If at that moment you waffle about what you ought to do, or if you fail to do as you ought, you’ll never forget that you were unprepared in a moral emergency or unsteadfast in doing your duty. You will be diminished in your self-respect. I’ve seen it written and heard it said that such moments of extremity reveal who a person really is. I don’t believe it. I think what you do day-by-blessedly-ordinary-day is more apt to reveal, even while it is shaping, who you are. But I do know that moral failure in a crisis sticks with you: I know it from myself, I know it from a tale one day told me, almost in passing, by a man I admired, and I know it from fiction, especially Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” There is a theory of morality that seems to me tailored for moments of crisis and, consequently, inept in daily use. It is the Kantian theory of the categorical imperative I mentioned earlier on. It is, in the compass of my reading, the most powerful, coherent, ingenious and, not incidentally, the most earnestly extremist theory of human goodness ever devised. Like all great specific theory it is embedded in a grand grounding of human consciousness. Kant would turn, nay, whirl in his grave to hear me assign it to so particular a use, so momentary an occasion. But since I am convinced that it is not possible to live well through the flats of life on Kantian morality (though I lack time in this talk to explain why) and find that even his own applications sometimes have repellent results, I feel less abashed at saving the pieces, so to speak. Let me explain as simply and briefly as I can how this morality might work in an emergency, and that explanation itself will go a little ways toward showing why one can’t live that way through extended time. We have, Kant says, a faculty for freedom, namely, our will, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 our free will. To be free means to take orders from no one but oneself. Thus the free will commands itself. It gives itself its own law. There must be law, Kant thinks, because if the will were lawless it would be the opposite of free—call it capricious, wanton. Now the will, Kant also thinks, is an aspect of reason, which has two sides. One side is theoretical reason. This reason gives nature its laws and then recognizes them as necessary. I will set this activity of reason aside here—it’s what I mean by ripping his moral theory out of the grand whole. The other side is practical reason; it gives itself its laws and so knows itself as free. You can see that it is identical with the free will. The will—really myself as a free person— should, of course, obey the command of its self-given law, its imperative. As I said earlier, this imperative permits no ifs and buts, admits no special cases, allows no individual exceptions, because it is addressed to reason, and reason does not contradict its own universal judgment, for then it would be self-contradictory. Above all, it avoids the necessities, the unfree determinism, of lawful nature. We human beings are in part natural, namely, in our inclinations and desires. Our free will, our practical reason, has no truck with the emotions and feelings that drive us. It chooses a course entirely because it is right and not in the least because we feel good about it; in fact, the more it hurts the better we know we are doing our duty, doing purely as we ought. And we have a test to tell us whether our decision is right, a test that expresses the essence of reason: If I can universalize my particular motive for choosing an action so as to turn it into a general law of human action or a conceivable law of nature, then I am choosing as I ought. I am preserving the purity of reason, namely its universality and its avoidance of self-contradiction by exception-making. Let me give a famous example by Kant himself. Suppose a persecutor comes to my door and asks if his intended victim is within. All my inclination is to deny it, to protect the fugitive. But if I generalize my motive it assumes this form: Under humanitarian pressure anyone may tell a lie. And then all trust in anyone’s declarations collapses, for anyone can construe an exception. So you must tell the truth, and you will have done your duty, come hell or highwater or the murder of a fugitive. I’ve told this example be- �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cause it seems to me to show how Kantian purity can turn into moral catastrophe when life is fraught with daily danger. Just imagine that you’re harboring a fugitive dissident in some totalitarian state, and, as you well know they might, the secret police come knocking at your door. Will you tell them the truth for the sake of the self-consistency of reason? No, you will have recourse—if you think you need it—to the very paralogical, paradoxical principle of the white lie. And, in general, I think that this absolutist morality is not only too inhumane, but also too joyless to be livable day by day. But let there be that one life-changing moment when, torn from the usually peaceful flux of ordinary life, you suddenly must decide. The occasion might be a temptation to commit a minor transgression in the world’s eyes, but one weighing heavily on your conscience. Or it could be an unexpected call on your courage, unwelcome but unavoidable, perhaps never patent to the world but well enough known to yourself. These are, I think, Kantian moments, spots of time when a morality is wanted that disparages our inclinations and prompts us to duty, that provides an effective on-the-spot test of what ought to be done, to wit: What if everyone did what it has just crossed my mind to do? That decisive moment’s morality is the kind which commands without hedging. But for most of us in this country these excruciating moments that, when they do come, tend, to be sure, to come in multiples, are blessedly sparse. The rational points on a mathematical line are said to be dense, meaning that they leave no empty interval and yet do not form a continuum (since the irrational points are missing). Such is the incident-line, the event-time of our ordinary daily life, in which every little station has its happening; but though they are all discrete, they are so closely packed together that they are scarcely discernible. Our day has 86,400 seconds and our week 604,800 seconds, and we can calculate the number of seconds in our month, our year, our decade, our lifetime. This flattish life-line of instants, with the peaks and troughs it occasionally develops, surely requires a different notion of goodness from the one that is marked by excruciating, disruptive moments. As I called the latter “momentary morality,” so I will call the former “extended ethics.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 Morality, remember, requires command-issuing universal law; ethics, on the other hand, demands natural and acquired personal qualities. Of the possible English alternatives to the term “virtue,” I think that “excellence” best expresses the connotations the ancient users of the word aretē seem to have had in mind, even before the philosophers got to discerning a comprehensive meaning. Let me list those connotations of aretē, understood as excellence, that I can think of: 1. effectiveness; 2. competition; 3. happiness; 4. enumerability; 5. habituation. They all have to do with the long runs of life, the flat stretches that may buckle into peaks and valleys of glory and misery; they have little or nothing to do with the up-against-the-wall decisions of a life fractured by a moral emergency. I’ve spoken of the notion of aretē as an effective, potent way of being that betokens a soul honed to a fine edge, just as a wellsharpened pruning knife is an efficient and perhaps somewhat dangerous object. There is a competitive tone to aretē, just as to be excellent means literally “to rise above,” as we say, “to be outstanding.” The possessor of aretē glories in it, vaunts and flaunts it, as do the Homeric heroes. A hero is high in self-esteem, in current language. Furthermore, the aretai, the excellences that everyone recognizes, can be counted off. Socrates regularly refers to four cardinal ones: wisdom, justice, courage, and sound-mindedness. These excellences require the right sort of body and soul— physical and psychic talent as we would say—but also practice, habituation. It is in this last element that the difference between Kantian morality and ethics, as I have delineated it, shows up most. Personal qualities are confirmed in habituation, in being habitually practiced, but the free will, the self-legislation of morality is essentially at odds with habituation. For habit puts the natural laws of psychology to work, and these are deterministic mechanisms. In fact, habit as a mechanism is an inhibition on spontaneousness, on freedom. What’s more, for Kant the will’s intention trumps practical execution. Indeed, all the points of the ethics of individual qualities are contrasted with law-morality. The categorical imperative has, to be sure, several forms, but it is basically one, a super-command- �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ment that the free will issues and obeys, while the human excellences are enumerably multiple. For although excellence as excellence may be one super-quality, it needs to assume various specifications, and these may even be at odds with each other. For instance, courage and sound-mindedness (whose Greek term, sophrosyne, is often translated as “moderation”) may pull in opposite directions. Certainly the competitive glorying of excellence is unthinkable in a dutiful moralist, and the sharp-set potency and effectiveness which goes with any excellence is absolutely out of play for the moral mode. Once more, in Kant’s great works of moral philosophy, the issue of execution, of how the passage from decision to effective action is accomplished, which is so crucial a juncture in ethics, is almost completely suppressed. Ethics is a way of being objectively good in the world; the doing is almost everything. Kantian morality is primarily concerned with being right with oneself, subjectively good; the intention is everything, though hard actions may, indeed should, follow. As Kant famously says: There is nothing unqualifiedly good except a good will. Note that he does not say “a good deed.” It is with respect to my middle point, happiness, that the difference is greatest and that ethics seems to me a far more livable, day-by-day useful theory. It is essential to moral intention that no hint of nature-bound desire should taint the purity of duty done for its own sake, meaning for the sake of self-rule; no psychic pleasure-seeking mechanism should confuse the clarity of a command obeyed for the sake of one's rational integrity, one’s rational consistency. Ethics, on the other hand, cooperates with nature; although it distinguishes between sound and corrupt pleasure, between excess and moderation, it nevertheless regards pleasure, in Aristotle’s words, as the bloom on our activity, and considers happiness, whatever its definition, as the proper, indeed self-evident, human aim. Recall that I have spoken about “extended ethics” as opposed to “momentary morality” and distinguished the two theories of human goodness by their relation to time, or rather, to eventuation. Morality was for intense, abrupt, exigent, emergent moments of up-against-the-wall decision making; ethics was for a looser, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 smoother, less urgent, more subdued tenor of life. And indeed, everything I’ve observed about ethics seems to me to fit this latter temporal mode better: our natural longing for accessible daily pleasure and sustainable long-term happiness in the world; our innocent, or not-so-innocent, human-all-too-human eagerness for admiration; our comfort in a being buoyed up by a tradition of recognizably articulated excellencies; our time-consuming growth into profitable habits and productive routines. Above I calculated our line of life in myriads of instants almost too brief for detection (as distinct from discernible moments). Yet each had to be occupied and vacated, lived in and through, for better or for worse. It seemed to me that this analogy of life to a line, at once dense and pointillistic, recommended to us a theory of goodness which allowed us to be all there as natural beings, driven at every point of temporal existence by desire, fastening on some moments for fulfillment, developing excellence and glorying in it, engaging with the world in action and with ourselves in thinking. But it also seemed that there were moments of heightened urgency when we must oppose our pleasure-seeking and happiness-enjoying nature and forget all the flourishing excellence promotes in order to obey the harsh self-command of “you ought”—no ifs and buts. My overarching purpose, however, was to persuade you that your studies of ways to be humanly good can be appropriated by you to fashion a way of your own, that they need not add up to mutual canceling-out of theories and all-round confusion of soul. In fact, I’m paying you a major compliment: I’m supposing that you’re taking your learning seriously, not just, as the phrase goes, “academically”—that you take your studies to heart as lifeshaping. �14 Reinventing Love: An Introduction to Plato’s Phaedrus John F. Cornell The English playwright Tom Stoppard has a dazzlingly erudite play called “The Invention of Love.” It is not one of his more popular works for the stage, partly because of its arcane references to classical philology, including substantial quotations from the ancient poets in Greek and Latin and some stunning observations on the critical role of the comma. The play centers on the nineteenth-century Oxford classicist and poet A. E. Housman as he dramatically reviews his life in the Underworld among the ghosts from his past. The title “Invention of Love” seems to derive from the debate, recalled in passing, about which Roman poet invented the love elegy: Housman wittily decides it in favor of Gallus, on the basis of his one surviving line. Yet the title turns out to be less academic when the drama takes up the hero’s alleged homosexuality. Housman invokes the shade of his contemporary, the flamboyant Oscar Wilde, who enters reading – or rather mocking – Housman’s poem about a youth who took his life for sexual shame. Shot? So quick, so clean an ending? Oh, that was right, lad, that was brave: Yours was not an ill for mending, T’was best to take it to the grave. To Wilde, Housman had tried to make art out of a newspaper stereotype, a cliché. But art – like love – is always personal, imaginative, and drastically original. Referring to his notorious John F. Cornell is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where an earlier version of this essay was delivered as a lecture on April 2011. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Maryanne HoeffnerCornell, Keven Schnadig, and Joshua Renfro for the responses and discussions that contributed to the development of the present essay. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 15 affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (nicknamed Bosie), Wilde declares: Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anyone if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself. By which he seems to mean that all love is a species of art, and that neither love nor love poetry would exist if people inquired too critically into these ferments of imagination. Thus Stoppard presents Housman the ascetic and Wilde the aesthete: the emotionally conflicted scholar, whose life was “not short enough for [him] not to do the things [he] wanted not to do”; and the creator of modern gay identity, whose “blaze of immolation threw its light into every corner where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness”1 – now freed, presumably, from thoughts of suicide. I cite this provocative drama because its two themes, homoeroticism and the invention of love, would certainly have intrigued Plato. For to “describe love” (Wilde’s understatement) Plato places Socrates in a similar theatrical dialogue and shows him, like Housman, curious about the poets’ innovation. Though neither Wilde nor Housman seem aware of it, in the Phaedrus Socrates identifies the poets as the cultural promulgators of pederasty – Greek man-boy love – and he undertakes to reinvent it. He reinvents it as initiation into the love of wisdom. Perpendicular to the modern polarity that Stoppard stages, of dejected self-repression versus exuberant self-assertion, Plato stages the polarity of common versus philosophic love of the beautiful. His hypothesis sounds at least as preposterous in our time as it must have sounded in his: the higher meaning of homoeroticism is companionship in the quest for being. Plato’s reinvention of love turns on a central question in his writings, namely, how philosophy is erotic. Philosophy is erotic not just in the sense that wisdom is someone’s all-consuming passion. It is 1. Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love (New York: Grove Press, 1997), 92-96. �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW erotic in that the pursuit of wisdom draws on the excess of sexual desire felt in the intimate relation between lover and beloved, which in the Greek polis centers on the courtship of a youth by an adult citizen. The philosopher is master of his desire for his beloved because he understands their attachment as a joint path of enlightenment. His love of wisdom puts his physical desire at the disposal of a dialogical friendship, reversing the usual tendency of love to subjugate the soul to the body. From this lover’s abstention derives the popular term “Platonic love,” used nowadays to describe any friendship that is sexless and might have been otherwise. But this popular idea of Platonic love misrepresents Plato’s idea insofar as its original source – the Phaedrus – is concerned with a particular, sexually charged bond, that of an older guide and his follower. No one can deny that there is a great deal to learn about romantic love from Plato’s great dialogue. However, the modern reader’s impression that Plato must disapprove of physical relations between all couples confuses the issue.2 For Plato there is indeed in love a theme that overreaches bodily passion; eros is a broader and more powerful force than the sexual drive. But the original aporia concerned how this overreach expressed itself in pederasty. Though it may appear to moderns as a settled institution,3 the Greek sexual relationship between men and boys was actually controversial in the polis because of its asymmetry. If we take sexual pederasty simply to be an ancient norm, and then universalize Plato’s sublimation of this desire, we run the risk of missing his 2. E.g., Glenn W. Most, “Six Remarks on Platonic Eros,” in Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern, ed. Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 42. “Plato does not downplay, neglect, or minimize the bodily erotic drive but instead evokes, intensifies, and even demonizes it – only to then explain it away as a misunderstanding or as a metaphor and to turn it against the body itself. In all this one is struck by a kind of Puritanism.” 3. Cf. James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love (New York: Random House, 2007), xxvi,; and Andrew Lear and Eva Cantarella, Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty (New York: Routledge, 2008), 18. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 17 point. It is the questionable naturalness of pederasty, the transgressive character of this relationship that is at issue in the Phaedrus (251a). If we ignore the possibility that this sexual liaison is existential pedagogy manqué, we obscure the dialogue’s insight into the connection between eros and philosophy. For Socrates the same-sex eros that sidelines procreation points dramatically to philosophy.4 He would bring this immoderate desire to its proper climax. It is as if there is a hidden purpose in the havoc it wreaks, as if it is only deceptively about friction of flesh. This explains the peculiar intensity in the original Platonic relationship, which the philosopher further intensifies through restraint – quite the opposite of repression. Mistrusting this drive toward his sexual like, the philosophic lover heightens his conscious urge toward being. How he does so is what the Phaedrus is about. I shall attempt here to look at how the dialogue prepares us to appreciate the new, philosophical pederasty (249a). I shall focus on the exchanges and speeches that come before Socrates’s famous speech, the great palinode where he describes the divine madness and the soul as charioteer driving mismatched steeds with broken wings. Now for many readers the parts of the dialogue that precede the palinode have two strikes against them. First, they are confusing. Second, they are not the palinode. That is, we tend to take them as “preliminary material,” not worth much trouble compared to Socrates’s spectacular discourse on love. After all, doesn’t Socrates himself repudiate the speeches that precede the palinode? While we may find the first parts of the dialogue hard to take seriously, we should be surprised if every joke and gesture of Socrates does not conceal some deeper meaning. I propose that the first sections of the Phaedrus dramatize an essential part of Socrates’s wisdom about eros and that the only way to glean this wisdom is to interrogate his dialogical tactics. To start with the question I have already raised about invention: invention is a topic in rhetoric. The Greek term euresis refers to 4. Cf. Leo Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, ed. Seth Benardete (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 50. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the originality of the argument or rhetorical strategy in a speech. It can also mean “discovery.” (My quotation of Stoppard’s Wilde also invoked this duality.) Socrates uses the term when discussing his approach in his first speech, building on Lysias’s thesis of the superiority of the non-lover to the lover. As usual, Socrates is ironic: in discussing “invention” he leads us to believe that he could say nothing very original, except perhaps on inessential points. (236a). Thus under the cover of a rhetorical contest he conceals his bold innovation in Greek love. Socrates’s radical views are – as is to be expected in Plato – set in contrast to the teaching of the poets who had long shaped the Greek experience of love. Indeed the English term “invention” (as a translation of euresis) may apply more to the poets, while the term “discovery” may better suit the philosopher who inquires into the nature of things. The poets (according to the term poiēsis) are makers and creators. They are not primarily interested in the truth about human affairs, nor about the cosmic order on which Socrates, by contrast, would ground the subject of eros. The poets, he says, have not sung nor will they ever sing adequately about the place beyond the heavens. They may presume to mediate between gods and men; but the philosopher gets nearer to the “essence of being itself.” (247c).5 The poets could therefore only give us love as an artifice – they helped and help us invent it. The philosopher tries to reveal love as it is by nature, as it might be discovered by the reflective mind. Now this difference comes up near the beginning of the dialogue in a striking way. Before beginning his speech in the match with Lysias, Socrates makes a point of saying how shallow the rhetorician is on the topic of love (235b). He prefers the original writers, like the poets Sappho and Anacreon, who at least knew 5. Translations from Greek are adapted, literally and sometimes loosely, from Plato in Twelve Volumes, Greek text of Phaedrus, Harold N. Fowler translation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), vol. 1; and Plato’s Phaedrus, translation, notes, appendices, introduction, and interpretive essay by Stephen Scully (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing, 2003). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 19 what needed to be said on the subject. He does not mean that the poets spoke or knew the whole truth; he brings them into this conversation because of their cultural influence. He says he could never have invented the original talk about love (ouden autōn ennenoēka, 235c). The poets poured it into his ears like a foreign stream – “foreign” (allotriōn) implying that this current was not native to him or perhaps to anybody else. Lysias may be the occasion of this impromptu contest of speeches, but for Socrates the real challengers are the poets. Notice Phaedrus’s reaction to Socrates’s genealogy of Greek love. “Don’t tell me, Socrates, even if I beg you, how or from whom you heard such talk” (235d). I suspect that here Plato is underscoring the antipathy between a shallow type of aesthetic experience and philosophy. Phaedrus is expressing resistance to having knowledge about the psychology of his pleasure. Pleasure is immediacy and knowledge would interfere with his passive enjoyment, supplanting it with the beginnings of self-consciousness about his response. Just as Oscar Wilde argues in Stoppard’s play, a certain self-deception facilitates both erotic attachment and poetic invention. So the question of origins carries a disturbing potential from which Phaedrus protects himself. It might force upon his attention the arbitrariness of cultural forms, and the power poets have over us beyond our own immediate experience. Subjection to love may be one with subjection to the rhetoric of its poetry insofar as our feelings may have capricious causes. Obviously in our interpersonal experience, love and rhetoric are intertwined. The passions that engage us intimately also induce us to wear masks or play rhetorical games in order to give safe expression to our feelings. At the beginning of the dialogue both Socrates and Phaedrus profess to be lovers of speeches, susceptible to the beauties of language. But they don’t mean quite the same thing by this pleasure, and they engage in a good deal of horsing around before they settle on their shared business. Each conceals his desire in a different way. Phaedrus hides his need to recite Lysias’s speech, to impersonate him before another, as if he could make Lysias’s powers his own (228a). He is even concealing the scroll of Lysias’s discourse, which he has with �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW him. Socrates will quickly expose the deception. By contrast, Socrates pretends weakness. He pretends to be sick with the love of hearing discourses, when (as we shall see) he is angling for a chance to expound his own views. So the difference is that Phaedrus is deceiving himself when he tries to hide his desire, whereas Socrates hides his desire with full awareness by pretending to be susceptible to a more common appetite. He pretends to be dependent on Phaedrus to hear any speeches, such that Phaedrus could easily lead him all around Attica. Though Phaedrus senses that Socrates is teasing him on this score, he does not appreciate how the quest for wisdom motivates Socrates. Thus Plato introduces us immediately to the difference that self-knowledge makes in desire’s need to be concealed and sustained. Ordinary desire conceals itself out of emotional self-interest. Philosophical desire, the interest in philosophy, conceals itself by imitating ordinary desire (cf. 227c-d). This is the irony of Socrates’s seduction in the Phaedrus. He has his own Lysian strategy but in reverse: the philosophical non-lover posing as common lover. Keenly aware of the role-playing, Socrates calls attention to it. He hopes that they might drop their masks and that Phaedrus might just recite or read Lysias’s speech. To shatter the fiction, he describes their encounter as third persons. O Phaedrus! If I don’t know Phaedrus, I have forgotten myself. But since neither of these things is true, I know very well that when listening to Lysias he did not hear once only, but often urged him to repeat; and he gladly obeyed. Yet even that was not enough for Phaedrus, but at last he borrowed the book and read what he especially wished. Then . . . he went for a walk with the speech, as I believe, . . . learned [it] by heart. . . . And he was going outside the wall to practice it. And meeting the man who is sick with the love of discourse, he was glad when he saw him, because he would have someone to share his revel, and told him to lead on. But when the lover of discourse asked him to speak, he feigned coyness, as if he did not yearn to speak; at last, however, even if no one would listen willingly, he was bound to speak whether or no. So, Phaedrus, ask him to do now what he will presently do anyway (228a-c). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 21 Unfortunately, it is not so easy to dispense with the disguises. When Phaedrus proves excessively enamored of Lysias’s speech, Socrates dons a mask even more ironic than that of the speechlover: he covers himself with his cloak. Expected to denounce the lover in behalf of the non-lover (according to Lysias’s model), he lets Phaedrus believe that he hides out of embarrassment for seeking Phaedrus’s admiration (237a). This misleads not only Phaedrus but also many readers. In fact, Socrates is speaking for himself as a philosopher, but is concealing it while he performs as Lysias’s rival. His concern for Phaedrus requires him to give counsel under cover, philosophical advice (237b-c). Now philosophical advice presupposes inquiry into the nature of things. He will define the nature of love, based on the inner workings of the soul, as clarification of these principles fosters unanimity of mind and whole-hearted decision. Similarly, his speech will denounce the bad lover for keeping his beloved from “divine philosophy,” lest the beloved become wise to him (239b). In short, Socrates is not representing a lecherous non-lover unfettered by love in the manner of Lysias. He is performing his own species of dispassion, the non-love of the philosopher who is nonetheless interested in his listener’s welfare. In his view, the irrational lovers are Lysias and all his kind, whatever they may pretend. A complex irony: while Socrates prevented Phaedrus from speaking as Lysias, with “Lysias” concealed in the scroll under his cloak (228e), Socrates contrives to speak as if he were a new Lysias, except under his cloak he has concealed himself and philosophy. In scripting Lysias and Socrates as protrusions under cloaks, Plato suggests the symbolism of the talking phallus – each man’s desire determining his speech. In this contest of rhetoric we witness not Socrates’s shame but his satyr play mocking Phaedrus’s infatuation. In keeping with his exposé of Lysias, Socrates’s account reduces eros to force. Eros tops a sequence of exorbitant desires. First he mentions the overmastering passion for food called gluttony, then the tyrannizing passion for wine; we seek a name for the amorous desire akin to these. �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW It’s relatively clear already, I suppose, why all this has been said, but things are altogether clearer if the reason is spelled out rather than left unstated: when passion without reason [overcomes] straight-minded opinion and is itself driven toward the pleasure of beauty, and further, when this passion is violently moved by kindred desires toward the beauty of the body and is victorious, it takes its name from that very force (rhōmē) and is called love (erōs). (238b-c; italics added.) Socrates’s definition of eros here is a picture of transgression and excess. Passion overcomes opinion concerning what is correct, epi to orthon, or (as Scully’s translation has it) it overcomes “straight-minded” opinion. The joke about pederasty seems to work in Greek as it does in English. In any event it underscores the rupture of conventional boundaries. But what are we to make of eros concluding a list of nutritional excesses? Gluttony, drunkenness, and . . . love! The implication is that what most people call “love” comes down to sexual appetite, the desire, as they say, to devour or snack on somebody. (Socrates would probably see the modern literature of vampires as suggesting our ambivalence about a sexuality enacted on the nutritional model.) All this seems a comic way of depicting an eros whose “naturalness” consists mainly of predation. He brings his whole speech to a close with the ditty: “Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his beloved!” (241d.) But the talk of erotic rapacity conceals a psychological theme, the theme of master and slave. We saw earlier how the passions Socrates and Phaedrus have for speeches made them vulnerable to each other’s manipulations; it is so much more the case with the desire to possess the idealized beloved, especially outside marriage or the friendship of equals. Here is where force emerges, in the disordered soul as well as between the lovers who vie for control. How does one get what one wants from another who is himself a free center of desire? The paradoxes of this struggle, which Hegel’s analysis of Spirit described as the master-slave dialectics, are hardly foreign to Plato. In fact, I would �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 23 propose that the struggle to be the master is what makes Lysias’s speech of genuine interest. What draws Phaedrus to this speech, whereby a man recommends himself as a non-lover in order to seduce a youth? Readers of the dialogue often take the speaker of Lysias’s speech (whom I call Lysias for short) for a clever scoundrel – a seducer whose only distinction is a weird strategy that touts his lack of passion. This cannot be the whole story. If Lysias has merely devised a new way to secure some recreational sex, then Phaedrus is a fool and Plato is giving Socrates a slight pretext for expounding his thinking about eros. The problem is to understand what makes Lysias’s position significant both for Phaedrus as candidate of his solicitations and, in a different way, for Socrates. First of all, one should note how Lysias has attempted to create legitimacy and respectability for a controversial liaison. He has made the love of boys into something sensible that will pass under public gaze without criticism. Thanks to his professed lack of passion, the older friend will provide the youth with reliable social benefits and meanwhile not be tempted to make any careless disclosures. The flaw in this solution to the problem of illicit love is not simply its deceitfulness or even its self-deception. The flaw is that, while Lysias has removed one of the obstacles to this passion, he has simultaneously removed one of its hidden motivations. He cannot remove the defiance of respectability – the pose of superiority to decent opinion – without removing some of the allure of the liaison. Thus Lysias has to inject it with a new power, the unconventional idea of the attraction of non-love. What Lysias’s novel seduction brings to the fore is the power of indifference and impassivity. The obstacles to Greek love that he removed in a social sense he recreates in a more seductive psychological one. Anyone who has ever played or watched the game of “hard-toget” might wonder if it doesn’t touch on something paradoxical in desire itself. In Lysias’s case, it is easy to see how the older person might capitalize on the youth’s attraction to him. As nonlover, he makes the youth into the lover and himself the prize. He is no slave of love; he need not surrender any ego-pride. He �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW simply denies love, denies his capacity to be captivated in that way. We are speaking, after all, about the orator whose interest is his superior ability to move others – someone whose erotic victory is inseparable from the rhetorical one. Meanwhile, Lysias’s listener, the younger person like Phaedrus, will have an idol to worship. For there can be little doubt about Phaedrus’s need for a hero. Why else would he insist three times on the definitiveness of Lysias’s speech? (236b.) And why offer, even in jest, to erect a statue of the winner of the speech competition? (236b.) It is Lysias’s turning of the tables on the beloved that supplies the special element of fascination. For Phaedrus, Lysias functions as the erotic unmoved mover. Socrates cannot fail to be struck by the distorted semblance of the philosopher in Lysias’s idea, the sublime aloofness of one who keeps his head in love. Even his criticism of the orator’s harping on this theme might indicate his interest (235a). And notice: when Phaedrus asks Socrates to give his own speech, a better and “quite different” one (mē elattō hetera, 235d), Socrates craftily avoids doing so. Let me make this clear: Socrates could easily now give, after Phaedrus’s recitation and at his request, what many take to be the “true” speech about eros as Divine Madness, the renowned palinode. But at this point he resists the invitation. To paraphrase, he tells Phaedrus: We needn’t go there. Lysias has not failed in every respect. Plus, you mustn’t imagine that feeble-minded Socrates could compose a discourse with brand new arguments! (235e.) Socrates pretends that he is required to adopt Lysias’s topic of non-love, and he distracts attention from this pretense with a questionbegging maneuver. “Take the subject of Lysias’s speech,” he says. “What person arguing that the non-lover ought to be more favored than the lover, could omit praise of the non-lover’s calm sense and blame of the lover’s unreason? These are necessary points.” (235e-236a.) Thus, while indicating what might be attractive about non-love, and using Lysias’s thesis as his alibi, Socrates submits to a non-existent rule of adopting the anti-love theme for his first speech. For his own reasons, the philosopher is intent on delivering a discourse against Greek love. He sim- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 25 ply wants it to appear as if he adopts the topic from Lysias at Phaedrus’s behest (236bB). Of course, Socrates has to unpack what’s going on in Lysias’s head to bring out the fraud in his rhetorical game. Lysias wants the beloved’s sexual favors as much as any lover; he only manifests in an exceptional way the lover’s desire to keep control. Thus, one of the things that Socrates’s counter-speech will do is to make explicit how an older lover (like Lysias) feels compelled to master the beloved, master his soul quite as much as his body. The bad lover seeks a boy who will bear witness to the lover’s superiority, who can be kept dependent and will never surpass him. This master denies the beloved’s needs as he excels in pursuing his own. His denial of the beloved’s individual humanity – Lysias’s speech purports to cover all cases – ensures that the beloved will pay all the psychological costs. Socrates, speaking as the true and wise non-lover, would protect his youthful addressee from such abuse. In fact, the wisdom in his speech is aimed at the real-life Phaedrus. There is a moment when he interrupts himself, “seeming” (so he says) to have lost control of his mind to the nymphs or Muses; he wishes to avert the attack (238d). But the immediate context gives Socrates’s wish another sense, too; for he insists that Phaedrus, the object of his enthusiasm, pay special attention. One attack that Socrates means to avert is that of an orator like Lysias. Thus Socrates continues his speech, pursuing his counter-attack not only on the bad lover, the “slave to pleasure” (238e) who preys on youth, but also on any professed non-lover (again like Lysias) with sexual designs. He proposes to describe the “advantage or harm coming from the lover or the non-lover to the youth who grants him his favors” (238e). Phaedrus misses the innuendo. When Socrates has finished his speech retailing the repulsive features of such seducers, Phaedrus expects to hear the other half of the declamation, the praise of the non-lover. Socrates pretends such an elaboration is superfluous: one could simply reverse the situation and attribute to the non-lover the advantages that parallel the disadvantages of the lover. But he hints that such a positive speech would be grand. He is already speaking in hexa- �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW meter! “If I begin to praise the non-lover, what kind of hymn do you suppose I shall raise?” (241e.) If we suspect that Socrates has his second speech up his sleeve, the palinode praising the divine madness, we might wonder if it might not be the very praise of the non-lover that Phaedrus is missing. It is significant (though it is rarely noticed) that, to introduce his second speech, Socrates continues to speak as the chaste critic of Greek love. He continues his stance as the advisor of the unwary youth. “Where’s the boy with whom I was just speaking?” he begins. “He must hear this speech, too, and not be in a rush to grant favors to the nonlover before he has heard me out” (243e;, italics added). In other words, Phaedrus must hear Socrates’s second speech, the palinode, in order to learn not to grant favors even to a non-lover. For the palinode will celebrate the true non-lover, who resists Greek love as a sexual practice; but it will also celebrate the true lover, who reinvents this love as an art of higher inspiration. The contraries love / non-love are reconciled in the superior idea of courtship expressed in philosophy. What I am proposing – as the upshot of these machinations – is that Socrates is committed to the first speech no less than to the second, and that the two are artfully connected. They have striking internal consistencies. Socrates is always Socrates. He says what he thinks is true, but his irony both hides and hints at his meaning. It is up to the reader to work out the implications and resolve the ambiguities. Such interpretive demands make the Phaedrus a confusing experience for the inexperienced reader, who runs for shelter in the palinode. But the idea that only the palinode represents Socrates’s essential teaching – an error made even by scholarly interpreters – is not compatible with his maneuvering both speeches into place. Socrates himself suggests the idea that the two speeches are intended to form a whole in the analytical discussion that follows them. (265a-266a). He proposes, for instance, that they are like right and left in an object with mirror-symmetry. Love and non-love harmonize in the two speeches because they are two sides of one thing. It would not be hard to show that the ideas of madness (265a), the accounts of the desire for beauty (238a), the sense of the mind’s rightful �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 27 rule (237e-238a), even the design to “capture” a boy (253c) – all agree in the two speeches as well. It is as if Socrates describes a single, expansive and indifferent force – called eros – only from two opposite points of view (cf. 263d). The difficulty is to understand why he dramatizes the movement from one perspective to the other as a personal religious crisis. Let us see how Socrates has plotted his rhetorical performance. If his two speeches are intended to form a whole (265c), then we have to entertain the notion that he planned them from some point early on in the dialogue – perhaps when he heard Phaedrus’s vehement defense of Lysias. If Socrates has taken up the guidance of his young friend from the start (cf. 261c, 265c), then certain confusing moments in his behavior are clarified. A couple of examples will suffice. First, is Socrates’s resistance to entering into competition with Lysias at all convincing? It is not just that Socrates wants to speak; he wants to make Phaedrus make him speak (cf. 237a10). Socrates has baited Phaedrus with the idea that he, Socrates, could give a better speech than Lysias, but then turns around and acts surprised when Phaedrus takes his jest in earnest and presses him to make good on his boast. How could anyone compete with the ingenious Lysias? (236b-c.) Phaedrus rises to the bait. He imagines that he now has a “fair hold” on Socrates and can also get him back for exposing his (Phaedrus’s) wish to impersonate Lysias. Phaedrus will use the tactic Socrates used on him: “if I don’t know Socrates I have forgotten myself,” “he yearned to speak, but feigned coyness,” and so on (236b). Phaedrus is enjoying his game of one-upmanship over Socrates. The real joke is that Socrates provoked Phaedrus’s entreaty so that he can blame him later for the first speech criticizing lovers and love. This, as we’ll see, allows him to include Phaedrus in the theological drama of its recantation. He sets up his second speech, the palinode, in an even more elaborate way. Phaedrus has bought Socrates’s excuse that there is no need for him to praise the non-lover; he also buys Socrates’s threat to go away before Phaedrus can exert any more power over him. �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Phaedrus, however, wants him to stay, specifically to talk over what’s already been said. In other words, once again Phaedrus would have accepted skipping the next part of the actual conversation, the palinode in this case, in favor of pursuing the dialogue that follows the speeches. It is Phaedrus, not Socrates, who uses the verb dialegō here (242a). What? Engage Socrates in dialogue? No way! To prevent his oratorical plan from going off course, Socrates pretends to misunderstand Phaedrus’s request: “Phaedrus, you are something divine when it comes to speeches. Who has been the source of more discourses than you, either speaking them yourself or compelling others to do so? There you go again, twisting my arm! Now another speech is coming upon me, all because of you!” (242a-b, paraphrased.) Notice that Phaedrus is surprised at this unasked-for event. He says, using a Greek idiom, that “this is good news” (ou polemon ge angelleis). That’s just the beginning of the intrigue. For Socrates’s announcement of the new discourse that Phaedrus is extorting from him precedes his declaration of another motivation for it. Socrates now declares that his daimonion prevented him from going away in order to correct his sin against the god of love. A sin against Eros? Socrates has now given Phaedrus one too many justifications for the palinode to come. We know the one justification is suspect, why should the other be legitimate? Phaedrus’s interest in more talk might have been enough of a “sign” for Socrates to conclude that he now has his attention.6 Of course, that does not explain Socrates’s confession and need to atone. How are we to take Socrates’s guilt over a sin (the critique of love) that we observed him commit with malice aforethought? We observed him cleverly preserve the impious topic in his first speech. No daimonion troubled him then! Now Socrates has a scapegoat for his sin, too. At the same time that he beats his breast, he moans how it was all Phaedrus’s fault (the move we saw him prepare earlier). “That was a dreadful speech you made me give, Phaedrus! That first speech was your speech. You spoke 6. Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 311, n. 65. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 29 it through my mouth, as you bewitched me!” (242e.) More Socrates theatre. Where Phaedrus had wanted to deliver Lysias’s speech as if it were his own, now he is made the speaker behind Socrates’s speech! Again Plato piles up the ironies; for Socrates’s first speech was Phaedrus’s in the sense that it was perfectly adapted to the younger man’s frame of mind. But why does Socrates assign it to his friend as a sort of accusation? Is he mimicking the dishonest recriminations found in the unsatisfying love that that speech just described? Socrates knows how to make Phaedrus’s identification with the boldest orator work to his advantage. Phaedrus is now both implicated in and fascinated by Socrates’s dramatic religious turn. But what is his conversion driving at? Surely Plato intends that we the readers see through Socrates’s ruse of repentance. I count six references to sin when he describes the crime of his first speech. These, however, fall into two distinct classes: a rhetorical error on the one hand, and an offense to the god Eros on the other. He will correct his rhetorical error by recanting the speech, as he admits to having “sinned with respect to mythology” (243a), i.e., speech about the god. But though he dwells on the personal offense to Eros (242c, d, e), he never exactly acknowledges committing it. So to repeat: why the theological melodrama? Why does Socrates put on a redemption play starring himself, a play within the play – let us call it “Appeasing the God Eros” – to discredit the first speech and distract us from the contrivance that makes him responsible for it? Why sever his first speech from the palinode in such an artificial way? As mentioned earlier, Socrates hints in the conversation following the oratory that his two speeches are linked in his mind (262d, 263d, 265c, 266a). These hints come purposely too late. From the point of view of Phaedrus, and of most readers,7 the two speeches are to appear incompatible. One speech argued that eros is harmful to both the lover and the beloved, and the other showed that eros is the greatest of good things. This is how Phaedrus describes them in retrospect, likening Socrates to a sophist 7. Cf. Scully, Plato’s Phaedrus, 95. �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW who has demonstrated contradictory theses (263c). From a philosophical point of view, however, the contradiction represented by the two speeches may lie deeper. It may lie at the heart of erotic existence, in every soul’s conflict with itself, which comes to light especially in the passion for youths. Such conflict can be finally resolved only by philosophy in its direct confrontation with eros. Remember, part of the fascination of Lysias’s speech was its hypocritical motive: the experienced adult might dissemble his own love and thus intensify a youth’s devotion to him. It is as if in every lover the non-lover is always lurking and in desire a desire for something beyond itself. When Socrates thus gives his “Lysian” (first) speech, he exploits the conflict hidden in sexual pederasty. He plays up the potential repulsiveness of the sexual lover in order to elicit not the youth’s preference for the non-lover (that was Lysias’s strategy) but his mistrust of sexual advances from older men altogether. But further, he plays up the adult lover’s alienation from his own passion too. In Lysias’s speech the inevitable decline in the lover’s interest was merely incidental, an eventual disappointment to the boy. Socrates makes a long excursus on the lover’s discomfort, describing his emotional turn away from his beloved when, sooner or later, the lover finds himself a “different person” (241b). Beyond warning the boys against licentious lovers, Socrates is reminding the amorous men of their own internal division. The argument of his first speech, its critique of the pursuit of bodies, thus prepares for the vision to come in the palinode. Ordinarily, lovers ascribe their eventual turn against their love to the inadequacy of a particular partner. Socrates is showing that the inadequacy inheres in the desire for what only apparently extinguishes it. The dissatisfactions of boy loving, when it is reduced to a merely sexual condition, point to a realization that this passion is groping beyond sexual pleasure, groping for something ungraspable in the experience of beauty. So my explanation of Socrates’s theatrical conversion is that it prepares Phaedrus for a possible spiritual revolution in terms that he can comprehend now – the terms of pious reform. Socrates’s first speech and his dramatic repulsion from bad love �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 31 actually represent an essential phase in erotic self-knowledge. That is why he only pretends to reject it. This love’s moral “badness” is not the problem. The real problem with the sexual conduct of pederasty is that it constitutes a human aspiration unfulfilled (cf. 250e-251a). Similarly, if we only heard the edifying palinode, we might entertain a moral opinion about the goodness of its object, the “spiritual” lovers that who shun mutual sexual use. But only when the perspectives of both speeches are held together, like two horses in a double harness, held together under the rule of mind, can there be erotic self-knowledge. Only when the psychic energy of repulsion from the “bad” carries one toward the “good” love does the lover come to know his soul’s order as a whole, that is, attain the inner certainty of its comingto-be in freedom. This psychic self-generation is advanced, according to the last pages of the dialogue, when the lover-turnedphilosopher learns the practice of “writing on his soul” (276a, 278a). But Phaedrus is in no position to understand this mystery, how the good might be the beneficiary of the bad. The transformation of the negative into the positive eros – of the Lysian will-topower into the Socratic power of self-motion (245c) – is an interior development incomprehensible to the novice. Socrates can denounce his first speech as expressing “nothing sound or true” (mēden hugies legonte mēde alēthes, 242e); but even that judgment is grounded in experience beyond Phaedrus’s ken. For the time being, Socrates has to appeal to Phaedrus’s passions and imagination to advance his learning in erotics to the next stage. Socrates receives rhetorical assistance from the imagery of theology. If Love is a god, he says, then he cannot be evil. But that is what his first speech and Lysias’s supposed (242d-e). Is the god to authorize the un-health and un-truth of common lust? No, the god should serve to overcome this error of the mind and ailment of the body. The first two speeches took no account of how the lover’s banal thinking was determining his erotic experience. Such discourses are really only good to impress “manikins” – undeveloped and thoughtless people, anthrōpiskoi (243a). Thus, while the Lysian speeches tell us something about the dark side �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of eros, which Socrates manages by the reins of awareness, he knows that most people never attain the defining experience of love, where care for the genuinely beautiful reigns in the soul. If we are not to remain undeveloped people (anthrōpiskoi), education has to make the difference. Recall the case of Stesichorus, who slandered Helen, attributing responsibility for the Trojan War to her rather than to men’s self-deception. He was “inspired by the Muses” (243a). That is, he was educated 8 so that even blinded he could see that recanting would retrieve his sight. Socrates follows suit with a recantation for the sake of Phaedrus’s instruction. Earlier in the dialogue Socrates admitted the dividedness of his own soul. He wondered about whether he was “a monster more complicated and more furious than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler creature, to whom a divine lot is given as our share in nature” (230a). Notice that he did not refer to two lots or two fates, between which a soul might choose. Rather he called only the gentle and simple condition of the soul a destiny, moira. It is ours, potentially, as “our share in nature (phusei metechon).” Ultimately, the Socratic type of lover does not choose the good over the evil in his soul as an act of will. Neither is dialectics, the examination of the truth about souls in general, effective on its own, not as a first approach. (This is symbolically reserved for the last part of the Phaedrus.) It is rather a matter of this lover’s being educated into his contemplative part in the whole, which means engaging his radical desire, his desire of body and soul as a unity. The passion for youths is an unruly, even mad expression of mind in an animal that seeks a free relationship with the beautiful. The inner principle of this freedom and unity is typically submerged in a confusion of feelings. Socrates’s initial definition of love in fact described the youth-lover’s typical, if unwitting, mistake. “When passion without reason . . . is driven toward the pleasure of beauty, and further, when it is violently moved by kindred desires toward the beauty of the body . . . , this is called love” (italics added.). Only an education “inspired by the Muses” (243a) might 8. The Greek term here, mousikos, designates anyone cultured or educated. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 33 reverse the effects of this error and liberate the passion for beauty as such from the instinct for sexual pleasure. The art of love in the palinode can be understood as the method of this reversal. Phaedrus’s sentimental education will have to liberate his desire from an aestheticism that enflames his fantasies. Only a poetry or rhetoric directed to self-knowledge will serve this end. Unlike Socrates, Phaedrus cannot rationally manage the tension between a tyrannical and a liberating eros; at this point he is barely acquainted with the power of his own mind. His imagination must first be set upon the path to his mind’s realization. This is the reason for Socrates’s pious performance. He must first free Phaedrus’s erotic excess from the irrational sexual plane, where it will never be satisfied, by enlisting his belief in a higher life yet unknown to him and by associating his eros with some kind of divine goodness. “My first speech,” Socrates declares, “was foolish and somewhat impious. What could be more dreadful than that? . . . Do you not believe that Love is the son of Aphrodite and is a god? . . . If Love is, as indeed he is, a god or something divine, he can be nothing evil. . . . I will try to atone by recantation.” (242d-e, 243b; italics added.) Socrates would also avoid the fate of being blinded by the god Eros, who punishes those who speak ill of him (243b). Phaedrus might take this threat of divine retribution at face value, but surely Socrates interprets the oracle in a non-physical way: whoever thinks the god simply evil forfeits their capacity for higher sight (cf. 257a). But the god has positive sanctions too. By imagining the god’s benevolence Phaedrus might imagine himself as a finer lover, happier in love. If any man of noble and gentle character,9 one who was himself in love with another of the same sort . . . had happened to hear us saying that lovers take up violent enmity because of small matters and are jealously disposed and harmful to the beloved, don’t you think he would imagine he was listening to people brought up 9. Like Socrates, for example? Notice the kinship of this expression to that in his earlier puzzle about what kind of creature he was (230a). �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW among low sailors, who had never seen a generous love? Would he not refuse utterly to assent to our censure of the god Love? (243cC-d; italics added.) Socrates lets Phaedrus draw his own conclusion. He declines to specify which way the causal influence might go, between showing respect for the god and finding a satisfying relationship. Perhaps it goes both ways: pursuing a noble love may reinforce belief in the philanthropy of Eros and vice versa. In any case, the lover of youth will have to make an uncommon effort to partake in this heavenward dialectic. The god’s help is essential. The god, of course, is the sublime but still latent power in Phaedrus’s own psyche. The soul of the lover of youths does not acquire its higher faculties of perception and guidance without first participating imaginatively in their development. Participation, metechō, is the word Socrates uses for realizing one’s true nature, becoming part of the whole (230a). If the passion for youths is not educated in a way that carries it “up” toward being as a whole,10 then it is deprived of its raison d’être – the teleological or vital significance that enables such a lover to come into his own. Socrates knows the instinctual (emphytos, 237d) force of the drive for pleasure, the impulse that threatens to overwhelm what’s best in a person’s mind. In behalf of Phaedrus’s development he discourages squandering this force in routines of compulsive gratification by revealing its propulsive potential. To picture the pederast according to his commonplace appearance (as in the first speeches), to reduce him to the vulgar images of a licentious animal: that would be the “sin against mythology” (243a). As philosopher and teacher, as rhetorician and true poet, indeed as the lead and “leader of souls” in his own psychagogic play (261a, 271d), Socrates tips the balance in favor of his pupil’s highest possibilities. The new mythos, the palinode preparatory for philosophy, attempts a revolution in Phaedrus’s sensibility. It attempts to initiate 10. Thus the “proof” mounted in the palinode that true love-madness is divine must be grounded in a myth about soul and self-motion in the cosmos at large (245c). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL 35 him, first imaginatively, into a liberating experience of love. Should this effort meet with success, should Phaedrus take up the practice of philosophic pederasty, he may someday find himself questioning the myth that commends the god Eros without qualification. Yet even if he comes to regard the god as less gracious than he once imagined, he will look back upon the erotic path to self-knowledge as a substantiated good. �36 In the Heaven of Knowing: Dante’s Paradiso Peter Kalkavage “For we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2 The focus of my talk this evening is the Paradiso, the culminating and most beautiful part of Dante’s Comedy. The Paradiso has much to tell us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect, the nature of true freedom, the flourishing of community, the role of love in education, and the profound connection that the good and the true have to beauty. The Comedy is one of the greatest works on education. It is the story of Dante’s awakening to the highest and deepest things. The story begins in a dark wood and ends with a vision of God. Dante makes a journey to the three regions of the spiritual world: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each region is defined in terms of the intellect, the part of us that most reveals what it means to be made in God’s image. Hell is the place of those “who have lost the good of intellect” (Inf. 3.18).1 They have distorted God’s image beyond repair. Purgatory is the mountain “where reason searches us” (Purg. 3.3). It is the place where repentant souls – through purifying torment, reflection, and prayer – undo the distortions of sin. In Paradise souls rejoice in the intellectual vision of God. They see with their most God-like part the Original whose image they are. Dante’s poem has special relevance for those who have devoted their lives to teaching. Throughout the poem Dante stresses the importance of teachers and guides. Indeed, the Comedy may Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was first delivered as the O’Donovan Humanities Lecture at Oakcrest School in McClean, Virginia on 25 April 2014. 1. All translations of the Comedy are from the edition by John D. Sinclair (Oxford, 1939). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 37 be regarded as an extended song of gratitude on Dante’s part – a tribute to all his guides and to guidance itself as the work of grace. The poem invites us to commemorate those who have played a guiding role in our own lives: our teachers, friends, and family members, and in addition the authors, poets, philosophers, founders, and heroes who hold a special place in our hearts and nourish us with their wisdom, their beauty, and their example. Dante gives these personal guides theological meaning. As St. Augustine knew better than anyone, grace – the central theme of his Confessions – does not work in a merely general way. It works at particular times in particular ways through particular people and events. This is the miraculous particularity that Dante too confesses. When we first meet the pilgrim Dante, he is lost in a dark wood. This no doubt refers to the turbulent period in Dante’s life shortly before his exile from his native Florence. But it refers more deeply to his having fallen away from Beatrice, whom he meets again at the top of Mount Purgatory and who becomes his guide through Paradise. Beatrice was Dante’s childhood beloved and personal angel, his link to God. In his first great work, the New Life, Dante recalls how he fell in love with Beatrice when she was nine and he was almost ten. After Beatrice died, Dante came to lose sight of everything she represented. He allowed his love for her to be eclipsed by other, lesser loves. Beatrice is the central figure of the Comedy. She is both a real person and a symbol. She is the beautiful appearance of the Good and the True, and the embodiment of God’s grace. As symbol, she embodies the City of God or the community of the blessed, the providential plan of world-history, the perfection of poetry and rhetoric (beautiful speech that moves the soul from darkness to light), theological wisdom, especially as we find it in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and intellectual perfection as the vision of God. All this is what the pilgrim Dante has lost sight of by the time we see him at the beginning of the Comedy. Heaven responds to Dante’s dark wood. Moved by compassion for the lost poet, Mary turns to Lucy, the figure of Lux, Light. Lucy in turn implores Beatrice to take pity on her former lover �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and save him from his impending death. Beatrice responds. She descends into Hell – into Limbo, the place of virtuous pagans – to plead with Vergil, the poet of the Aeneid, to serve as Dante’s teacher and guide (Inf. 2.58 ff.). Thanks to this chain of feminine mediators, grace reaches down to Hell itself in order to turn the pilgrim back to the “straight way,” as Dante calls it, the way of Beatrice. The journey begins. We follow Dante as he descends into Hell, climbs Mount Purgatory, and ascends through the heavenly spheres. And yet the poem is more than the story of an individual’s redemption. Dante is saved from his personal dark wood. But he also rises to become the author of the Comedy, which he boldly calls “the sacred poem” (Par. 23.62, 25.1). He is commissioned by Heaven to reveal the whole of Time and Eternity. Hence the note of Roman triumph that resounds throughout the poem, especially in its third and most glorious part. Under the guidance of Vergil and Beatrice, both vehicles of grace, Dante himself becomes a vehicle, a means of transport for humanity as a whole. In being saved as a man, he finds his true vocation as a poet. He becomes – Dante, Poet of the Kingdom. The hero, or rather heroine, of my talk is the first soul Dante meets on his entrance into Paradise. It is the soul of Piccarda Donati, whose family Dante knew very well. One of her brothers, Forese Donati, appears in the Comedy—among the gluttons in Puragtory (23). Piccarda had taken vows as a Poor Clare but was forced by her brother, Corso, to leave the convent and enter into a marriage that would advance her family’s political prospects. She died soon after the wedding. For her broken vows she is relegated to the least degree of Heaven, symbolized, as we shall see, by the Moon. As we inquire into Piccarda and her heavenly rank, we must bear in mind that she is as much a part of Paradise as any other soul there. When Dante meets Forese in Purgatory and asks him where Piccarda is, the brother responds with glowing words fit for a goddess: “My sister, of whom I know not if she was more fair or good, already triumphs in high Olympus, rejoicing in her crown” (Purg. 24.13-15). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 39 I have chosen to focus on Piccarda for several reasons. One is that she is Dante’s first example of a soul in glory and therefore functions as the herald of Heaven. Another is that from the wisdom of her relatively low condition she introduces us to the fact of levels in Paradise. This is a stumbling block for readers who believe that here in the fullness of bliss we should be beyond all levels and that God’s grace should shine upon all in equal measure. What would it mean, after all, for souls in Paradise to experience more or less of perfect happiness or, to use one of Dante’s invented words, for some souls to be more “imparadised” than others? Finally, I have chosen Piccarda because I stand in her debt and am fond of her. For many years she has been one of the most helpful guides in my effort to understand the Paradiso. She will give us an opportunity to address several key questions. Why does Paradise have levels? Why does Piccarda merit the lowest degree of bliss? And what does this level of Paradise reveal about the condition of the blessed and the community they form? Let us begin at the beginning, with the opening lines of the Paradiso. They are appropriately grand and set the tone for everything that follows: The glory of Him who moves all things penetrates the universe and shines in one part more and in another less. I was in the heaven that most receives His light and I saw things which he that descends from it has not the knowledge or the power to tell again; for our intellect, drawing near to its desire, sinks so deep that memory cannot follow. Nevertheless, so much of the holy kingdom as I was able to treasure in my mind shall now be matter of my song (1.1-12). The opening image is that of God as the prime mover of the universe, an idea Dante gets from Aristotle. God’s glory, symbolized by light, permeates the whole though not in equal measure. Glory shines forth as hierarchy, an order of higher and lower. This is the first indication in the Paradiso that Heaven, like Hell and Purgatory, has levels. Hierarchy has a basis in the New Testament. In a passage perfectly suited to Dante’s fusion of Christian teaching and pagan �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cosmology, St. Paul writes in reference to our resurrected bodies: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:41). Aquinas cites this very passage to support the view that among the blessed, who see the essence of God, “one sees more perfectly than another” (Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 12, art. 6). Jesus too signals the presence of heavenly degrees when he tells the disciples: “Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4). To follow the Paradiso we must know a little about Dante’s scheme of the visible universe. For Dante, the world is not an infinite expanse but an ordered whole in the shape of a sphere – what the ancient Greeks called a kosmos or adornment. Dante follows the Ptolemaic astronomy of his day. For Ptolemy, the Earth sits motionless at the center of a rotating celestial sphere that makes a complete turn on its axis every twenty-four hours. The Moon, Sun, and planets move in their respective orbits in the opposite direction at much lesser speeds. The Moon is the lowest sphere because it is closest to Earth. Beyond it are Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in orbits of increasing circumference. Next there is the sphere of the Fixed Stars, and finally the outer shell of the visible whole. This is the so-called Crystalline, the first bodily sphere to be touched and moved by God’s love. Beyond it is the Empyrean or true Heaven. This is the home of spirits, the non-extended “place” of God, the angels, and all the blessed. It is the ultimate point to which Dante ascends and the heaven that most receives God’s light (28.40-45). Dante aligns these nine levels of the visible heavens with the nine grades of bliss contained in the Empyrean. As we discover along with Dante, the souls among the blessed appear in the visible bodies suited to their rank within the invisible Heaven. The souls do not live there, as Beatrice hastens to point out, but rather condescend for Dante’s sake and accommodate themselves to his as yet imperfect faculties (4.37-60). As Dante rises from sphere to sphere, Beatrice reveals herself with increasing intensity; she becomes more and more resplendent, that is, more and more who �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 41 she really is. With every step upward Dante too is changed: he comes to shed his human imperfections, as his mind is increasingly imparadised. He approaches the divine and comes to be divine himself, as all souls do who love God with all their might. Dante invents a word to capture his transition from earthly to heavenly experience: trasumanar, to pass beyond the human (1.70). This passing beyond the human is what we witness, and are invited to share in through imagination, as we read the Paradiso. Having sketched the astronomical image of Paradise, I now proceed to “who goes where,” which spiritual ranks appear at which corporeal levels. Throughout the Comedy, Dante may be said to spiritualize place. Place functions as an index and sign of what a thing is. Where a soul is, is the sign of what it is, the sign of that soul’s condition or quality. Dante’s spiritualization of place fits with how we speak. “I’m in a good place right now,” we sometimes say, or “I just don’t know where he is these days,” meaning “I don’t know what condition his mind or his soul is in.” As Dante rises from sphere to sphere, he comes to realize more clearly why Heaven is a hierarchy, why it is a kingdom and not a commune. The first three spheres – the Moon, Mercury, and Venus – form a group. They represent three forms of qualified blessedness. The Moon is the image of faithfulness marred by inconstancy, Mercury of service marred by ambition, and Venus of love marred by wantonness. How Heaven, the place of perfection, can have any imperfection at all is a problem we shall return to later. The next four spheres represent the four cardinal virtues: the Sun stands for Wisdom, Mars for Courage, Jupiter for Justice, and Saturn for Temperance. The Sun divides the lower from the upper spheres. It is the home, in image form, of theologians, prominent among whom is Aquinas. Mars is the realm of the warrior saints who fought on behalf of their faith, especially in the Crusades. Dante calls this level “higher blessedness” (14.84) because the warrior saint sacrifices his very life and blood. Here Dante meets his ancestor, Cacciaguida, who tells Dante of his coming exile from his beloved Florence. Jupiter is the imagerealm of just rulers. It contains, among other souls, that of King �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW David, whose sins of adultery and murder have not apparently kept him from occupying this exalted place. Saturn is the realm of contemplatives and mystics. They appear momentarily in this outermost planet in sign of their “cold” distance from all earthly attachment and their burning desire to focus their minds exclusively on God. The sphere of the fixed stars comes next. Here Dante experiences a ravishing image of the Church Triumphant. He sees Mary, the Archangel Gabriel, and the glorified person of Christ. He also undergoes an examination of his faith by St. Peter, his hope by St. James, and his love by St. John. In the next higher sphere, the Crystalline, Dante sees the angels arranged in a hierarchy consisting of nine levels – three sets of three, in imitation of the Trinity. Finally, Dante rises to the Empyrean. Here he sees the company of the blessed gathered into one glorious image – the Celestial Rose. Ultimately, he sees God as the unity of the human and the divine. Order is everywhere in the Comedy. It is the permeation of the universe by divine intelligence and love. It is why the poem is a comedy. In the tragic view of life, we are not placed in the world but “thrown.” There is no order, no divine guidance, no proper place of things, no hope. There is only happening, suffering, and death. Dante’s poem seeks to defeat this tragic view by fiercely championing world-order grounded in divine goodness and wisdom. His term for this order is monarchia – monarchy or rule of the One. Order is precise. It must be so in order to be order. This precision is a source of joy. World-order, for Dante, is like a beautiful piece of music, a work by Palestrina or Bach, in which everything has been so perfectly adjusted that it is impossible to change a single note without ruining the whole. The comic victory over the tragic view of life – the triumph, one might say, of music – is signaled in all sorts of ways as we reach higher regions of Paradise. At one point the universe itself appears to smile (27.4-5). Dante’s faith in world-order is not blind to the disasters that would tempt anyone to doubt the workings of divine providence. At crucial moments in his ascent, Dante hears from heavenly souls how the realms of Church and State have gone horribly astray. He hears from St. Peter, for example, how the Church on �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 43 earth suffers under a corrupt Pope, Boniface VIII, who meddled in the politics of Florence to the neglect of his spiritual obligations. In the face of many discouragements, notably his own exile, Dante continues to hope for a deliverer, a guide who will bring the Kingdom on Earth into greater alignment with the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us now return to the opening cantos and Dante’s entrance into Paradise. Dante is disoriented in the extreme as he leaves the earth (the top of Mount Purgatory, to be exact) and flies off into the sky with Beatrice. His confusion is understandable since everything is now inverted. Effort is now non-effort, natural tendency to go down has become natural tendency to go up, and opaque body has become diaphanous. Another reason for Dante’s confusion is that the Moon, Sun, and planets are not solid earthlike masses but a refined, heavenly matter that is receptive rather than resistant. Dante does not set foot on the Moon but rather enters its permeable substance. The Moon, like all the other spheres, receives and incorporates Dante. This is a playful imitation of the joyous receptivity of Heaven to newcomers. Dante marvels at his extraordinary entrance into the Moon, which he calls l’etterna margarita, “the eternal pearl” (2.34). His wonder at the interpenetration of substance with substance fills him with the desire to see “how our nature was joined to God.” His desire will be gratified at the end of the poem. Vergil is Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, Beatrice through Heaven. How, then, does Beatrice guide? Clearly she guides, as Vergil did, by her enlightened speech. But she also guides because Dante is in love with her. She guides by her adorable aspect. This aspect has its focal point in Beatrice’s eyes. Throughout the Paradiso Dante lays special emphasis on the eyes of Beatrice. Her eyes are an image of the intellect in its highest capacity. They represent insight or the immediate apprehension of truth. This is the intuitive knowledge that angels have. We are not told what the eyes physically look like – their color, shape, and so forth. What is important is that they are firmly fixed, like the eye of an eagle, on God and on that point of the highest Heaven from which Beatrice has descended. Her gaze leads her �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW lover not by a return gaze but by directing his gaze upward and beyond Beatrice herself. The ray of his vision must coalesce with hers. As Beatrice at one point tells Dante: “Not only in my eyes is Paradise” (18.21). The eyes of Beatrice are a corrective to the potentially obsessive character of romantic love. Such love can lead its devotees to seek Heaven in themselves, to make a heaven of their private passion. The sad fruit of this kind of love is evident in the second circle of Hell, the circle of lust, where the adulterous lovers Paolo and Francesca are whipped around in an eternal storm. The eyes of Beatrice lead Dante away from this fate. They give his mind its proper focus and open him up to the whole of things and to the good of that whole. The eyes of Beatrice are the image of love as education. The image teaches us that to be “in love” is to be aroused by the presence of God in another human being, and that the whole point of love is to see more clearly the source and principle that is the cause of that love. As we come to discover, Piccarda dwells in the least degree of Heaven for her broken religious vows. The Moon fits this lowest degree because it is the heavenly body with the slowest speed and smallest orbit. Moreover, the Moon is not pure light but has dark spots or blemishes – a feature well suited to faithfulness marred by inconstancy. When Dante first enters the Moon, he is perplexed at the faces that meet his gaze. They appear so pure and ghostly that “a pearl on a white brow does not come less quickly to our eyes” (3.14-15). Dante mistakenly thinks that these are images or mere reflections and turns to see who is casting them. Beatrice smiles at his “childish thought” and tells him: “these are real beings that thou seest, assigned here for failure in their vows” (29-30). Eager to speak with Dante, the souls long to share their personal stories, condition, and knowledge of Paradise. Dante sees this eagerness and is aroused by it. He is bursting to know the identity of the soul that appears “most desirous of speech” and addresses her in the most gracious terms: “O spirit made for bliss, who in the beams of eternal life knowest the sweetness which, not tasted, never is conceived, it will be a kindness to me if thou satisfy me with thy name and with your lot” (37-41) – where “your” refers to all who occupy this level. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 45 Piccarda, “with smiling eyes,” tells Dante that in the world she was “a virgin sister” and that if he searched his memory he would remember who she was. She then takes up the second part of his question: Our affections, which are kindled only in the pleasure of the Holy Spirit, rejoice in being conformed to His order, and this lot which seems so low is given us because our vows were neglected and in some part void (52-7). The language of being conformed to an order fits Piccarda’s vocation as a nun. But it also points out the larger theme of human affetti, which have been altered in this conformity and in the ascent to Paradise. So long as we are in mortal bodies and in a mortal condition, there is a tension between our will and God’s. In Paradise this tension is gone, not because souls no longer have a will of their own but because their will is perfectly attuned to the will of God. Conformity here is not submission to a tyrant or a matter of mere duty. It is more like the sympathetic vibration between two plucked strings, or better, like letting God lead while one is dancing with him. Conformity in Heaven is the joyous yielding of one’s will to the Being who wills only what is good and who, to continue my comic simile, knows how to dance with impeccable grace. In this joyous conformity, the will finds its freedom of movement. It learns at last how to be eternally unerring and never trip over its own feet. Dante is at first unable to identify Piccarda because she is suffused by divine light and no longer resembles her former self. This too has a more general meaning. Dante is learning by direct experience that Paradise does not preserve us just as we are, or rather were. On the contrary, to be imparadised is to be transfigured. Heaven preserves but at the same time heightens our personality. In Heaven Piccarda is most herself, and one must learn to see her as she really is. Dante then poses a question most of us would no doubt ask if we were in his place: “But tell me, do you who are happy here desire a higher place, that you may see more and become more dear?” (64-6.) The question is a logical one. If a soul loves God, �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW shouldn’t that soul desire to see God and be loved in return as much as possible? But the question also betrays Dante’s all-toohuman perspective and comes close to being an implied criticism of God’s order. If Piccarda and the other souls in this region did in fact desire more, they would be unhappy, and Paradise would be Heaven for some but not for others. Souls lower down in the hierarchy might even envy the souls in higher ranks who see more and are closer to God. If that were the case, Paradise would be like a corrupt city or nation, where those who have less honor and privilege resent and hate those who deservedly have more, and where the lust for an equally high place regardless of merit displaces the love of justice and the common good. Here we touch on one of the main functions of Dante’s Paradise for us who still live on earth. Paradise is the place of individuals who had faith in Christ and are purged of sin. But it is also the model of an ideal city, a community that has been purged of covetousness, envy, partisan strife, and the indiscriminate desire for more. As Dante rises through the heavenly ranks, he experiences that ideal of perfected fellowship so dismally absent in his native Italy and in the world at large. Later in his journey, he remarks, not without a touch of bitterness, that he has come “to the divine from the human, to the eternal from time, and from Florence to a people sane and just” (31.37-9). In response to Dante’s question about the desire for more, Piccarda and the other souls “smiled a little.” The phrase “a little,” un po, highlights Dante’s concision, humor, and lightness of touch. It points not so much to the degree of the smile as to its affect. The little smile is a knowing, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. Piccarda and company must surely find Dante’s question so unthreatening as to be amusing. They smile no doubt at his touching innocence when it comes to the heavenly things they know so well. Piccarda answers the question “with such gladness that she seemed to burn in the first fire of love.” Dante’s question, in other words, gives her an occasion to recollect the earthly beginning of her eternal bliss, the moment she fell in love with God. Piccarda’s answer is one of the most beautiful moments in the Comedy. I shall cite it in full: �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 47 Brother, the power of charity quiets our will and makes us will only what we have and thirst for nothing else. Did we desire to be more exalted, our desire would be in discord with His will who appoints us here, which thou wilt see cannot hold in these circles if to be in charity is here necesse [necessary] and if thou consider well its nature. Nay, it is the very quality of this blessed state that we keep ourselves within the divine will, so that our wills are themselves made one; therefore our rank from height to height through this kingdom is pleasing to the whole kingdom, as to our King who wills us to His will. And in His will is our peace. It is that sea to which all things move, both what it creates and what nature makes (70-87). The opening “Frate,” “Brother,” is a gesture both affectionate and gracious. It makes Dante one of the blessed, at least for the moment. Piccarda’s great theme is will, as we hear in her litany of will-related words. The repetition is like a musical refrain that runs through her speech. Charity, she tells Dante, “quiets” the will of all here by resolving the human dissonance between wanting and having. It is the power (virtù) that by conforming all wills to the will of the one God also unites them with one another. Piccarda here articulates the very basis of order as monarchia, where all created wills are united by a common desire and love of the whole. Dante invents a word to describe this harmonization of souls: invoglia, “in-wills.” The King “in-wills us to His will.” The neologism fits what Piccarda is trying to convey to Dante – that the mixed or tainted submission to God’s will that these souls experienced in their earthly lives is now gone. Past weakness has been remedied by an infusion of divine power that purges the will of all wavering. Piccarda’s reflection on how charity produces a One-in-Many leads her to the most fondly remembered sentence in the whole Comedy: “In His will is our peace.” It is a variation on what Augustine wrote at the beginning of his Confessions: “Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” Piccarda’s speech combines ardor and intellectual clarity, heat and light. Piccarda stresses, somewhat comically, the rational aspect of her answer to Dante by using the scholastic Latin term �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW necesse, which means logically necessary. Beatrice too often assumes this professorial tone with Dante, when for example she gives a scientific explanation for the dark spots on the Moon (2.64 ff.). The marriage of ardor and clarity is characteristic of the souls in Paradise. Without clarity, ardor would be mere feeling with no anchor in the truth. It would be blind, or at least confused, with respect to the intellectual vision that gives the soul its reason for being on fire. Without ardor, clarity would be joyless – mind without heart. It would also falsify the truth that is seen by the mind, since what is seen is in its nature something meant to arouse love. Clarity without ardor would be like getting the point of a really good joke but not finding it funny. Piccarda is suffused with heavenly light, the light of knowledge. We must observe that the knowledge she possesses is not confined to her level but extends to all of Paradise. This is made evident when she says that the hierarchical scheme of Heaven “is pleasing to the whole kingdom.” Piccarda speaks on behalf of the entire heavenly community, which is made one and harmonious by the will of the one God. Some souls may be limited in their degree of bliss, but they all have access to God, one another, and the whole of Paradise. Souls at every level, even the lowest, enjoy the unity and happiness of the entire kingdom. They are not spatially confined to their own levels but spiritually connected to all of them. God wills each soul into its proper place, and each rejoices in being where it is because it sees that where it is is pleasing to the whole community and to God. This knowledge sweetened by charity lifts the burden of selfish desire and makes the soul free to love the good of another and of the whole as one’s own good. Piccarda not only rejoices to be where she is; she also rejoices that souls higher up are where they are. For this reason she is not almost but fully imparadised. Dante gets the point. “It was clear to me then,” he says, “that everywhere in heaven is Paradise, although the grace of the Supreme Good does not rain there in one measure” (88-90). Satisfied by one food, as Dante puts it, he is hungry for another. He has already been told that this level is reserved for those who were inconstant in their vows and now wants to know how this applies �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 49 to Piccarda. She replies with a reference to St. Clare, founder of the Franciscan order that Piccarda had entered: Perfect life and high desert . . . place in a higher heaven a lady by whose rule in your world below they take the robe and veil, so that till death they may wake and sleep with that Bridegroom who accepts every vow that charity conforms to His pleasure. To follow her I fled, a young girl, from the world and wrapped me in her habit and promised myself to the way of her order. Then men more used to evil than to good snatched me away from the sweet cloister. God knows what my life was then (97-108). The reference to Christ as Bridegroom makes Piccarda’s story all the more poignant. She had every intention of leaving the world for the sake of “waking” and “sleeping” with Christ but was forced to break her vow and enter into an ordinary worldly marriage. Piccarda discretely covers over the details of her subsequent misery and early death. As if to draw Dante’s attention back to the high note of eternal bliss she points to “this other splendor that appears to thee on my right and is kindled with all the light of our sphere” (3.109-111). It is the imparadised soul of “the great Constance,” mother of Frederick II – the last head of the Holy Roman Empire who is punished in Hell for his promulgation of the heretical view that the souls dies with the body (Inferno 10). Like Piccarda, Constance was taken from the convent against her will, although “she was never loosed from the veil on the heart” – a fact engraved, as it were, in her very name. With this deference to the glory of another, a gesture repeated throughout Paradise, Piccarda vanishes while singing the Ave Maria. She is said to sink rather than ascend, “like a weight through deep water.” She returns to the source of her joy and her being. The striking image reminds us that Heaven is a depth as well as a height, and that souls here are not so much soberly placed as passionately immersed. They are eternally drunk on the wine of their happiness. Dante eventually loses sight of Piccarda and turns his gaze back to Beatrice, “the mark of its greater desire” (126). He is baffled by the story he has just heard, and so are we. If Piccarda was �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW forced to leave the convent, how can she be held responsible for her broken vow? How can she justly appear, in Dante’s poetic analogy, at the level of the Moon? Beatrice gives Dante a complex, scholastic explanation that has to do with the nature of the will. According to Beatrice, Piccarda went with the flow of forceful circumstance. Her will, though not sinful, seconded the violence that was being done against her will. She did not freely will to leave the convent after having taken a vow. But she did nothing to oppose the violence against her good will. She remained passive. Beatrice takes a tough stance on this point and argues that Piccarda and those like her “might have fled back to the holy place” (4.81): If their will had been unbroken, like that which kept Lawrence on the grid and made Mucius stern to his own hand, then, as soon as they were free, it would have driven them back on the path from which they had been dragged; but will so firm is rare indeed (4.82-7). Lawrence suffered on behalf of the Christian Church and Mucius for the sake of pagan Rome. Lawrence famously mocked his tormentors (“Turn me over, I’m done on this side!”), and Mucius, in defiance, thrust his own right hand into the fire that his enemies had prepared for him. As Beatrice poetically observes, an unwavering will is itself like fire, which, no matter how much a strong wind may wrench this way and that, always affirms its natural tendency to go up toward the heavens. That is what those who succumbed to external force failed to do: they failed to fight the buffeting winds of life with the heavenly fire that was their faith. It is not sinful under these circumstances to fail in one’s vows. It is, however, a lack of spiritual strength, a weakness of will. Weakness of will in the Paradiso is related to the broader theme of spiritual capacity. Souls were not made equal with respect to any of their capacities. No one human being excels at all things. Excellence itself in any one thing varies among its possessors in both degree and kind. Among the greatest composers, for example, one stands out for his beautiful counterpoint, the musical interweaving of individual vocal lines, another for his divinely inspired melodies. Creation is fine-tuned: “star differs �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 51 from star in glory.” To insist on egalitarian leveling is to wish that Creation be undone. Deficiency in the lowest three degrees of Paradise is therefore different from the deficiency caused by sin. Sin is a distortion of our nature, whereas grades in Heaven manifest nature, that is, the specific nature of each individual among the blessed. Piccarda had only so much lungpower. She could take in only so much of the Holy Spirit – God’s spiritus or breath. So it is with each of us. If you offered Piccarda the chance to be higher up, she would be the first to tell you that this would destroy rather than increase her happiness. In Heaven she has perfect self-knowledge. Her very humility is a form of knowledge. She does not merely believe that she is limited but rather knows and celebrates her limit. She knows, furthermore, that this limit is bound up with the person God made Piccarda to be. If there were no limits, there would be no individual natures, no personality. To want Piccarda to want more is to wish that she did not exist. The limits of spiritual lungpower lead us to Beatrice’s disquisition on vows. Her main point is that taking vows is perilous. The danger is rooted in our tendency to overestimate what we are capable of. We tend, in the words of Jesus, not to count the cost before building the tower. Another danger is that of unforeseen consequences. In the heat of the moment we vow to do something and learn only later that to be true to this vow results in great evil. Beatrice cites as examples Jephtha and Agamemnon (5.65-72). In the Book of Judges Jephtha vowed to sacrifice to the Lord the first person that walked through his doors. This person turned out to be his daughter. Agamemnon was true to his vow to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that the Greek ships could sail against Troy. Piccarda is imperfect in her faith because she was passive and inconsistent. Jephtha shows the opposite problem, that of being stubbornly faithful to a foolish vow. According to Beatrice, he “ought rather to have said ‘I did ill’ than, keeping faith, to do worse” (5.67-68). The problem of vows is rooted in the nature of free will. To take a vow is freely to sacrifice one’s free will, which Beatrice calls “the greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the most conformable to His goodness and the one He accounts the most precious . . . with which the creatures with intelligence, and only these, were and are endowed” (5.19-24). Once a vow is made, this greatest of gifts is given away and cannot be taken back. Beatrice’s lesson is clear: “Let not mortals take vows lightly” (64). The lesson is aimed especially at those of Christian faith: “Be graver, Christians, in your undertakings. Be not like feathers in every wind, and think not that every water will wash you clean” (73-75). Having learned from Piccarda that Paradise is the perfected community of wills under a good King, Dante moves up to the next two levels. Here he meets more souls who occupy the lower triad of Heaven. At the level of service marred by ambition – symbolized by the planet Mercury – he meets Justinian, the Roman emperor who codified Roman law and made it simpler and more unified. It is something of a shock to move from the gentle unassuming Piccarda to this exalted world-historical figure, although the soul of Constance serves as a sort of transition and a reminder of the realm of political history. Justinian recapitulates the wisdom of Piccarda regarding the whole in which all souls rejoice. He uses a musical image to convey why Heaven needs souls of every level and every kind: “Diverse voices make sweet music” (6.124). The line itself is music: Diverse voci fanno dolci note, literally “Diverse voices make sweet notes.” At the next higher level, that of love marred by wantonness, Dante meets various souls, among them Folco, the famous Provençal troubadour and poet who later in life became a Cistercian monk, and Rahab, the harlot in the Book of Joshua who concealed and gave aid to the two men Joshua had sent into Jericho as spies. Folco’s enraptured soul is described as “a fine ruby on which the sun is striking” (9.69), and Rahab’s as “a sunbeam in clear water” (114). The wantonness to which these souls yielded in life is of course no longer present in Paradise. But surely we are meant to imagine that something of their former temperament remains. This temperament adds a certain intensity of feeling, an ardor, which, though certainly different in character from that of Piccarda, is equally necessary to the ensemble of diverse voices in �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 53 Paradise. Heaven welcomes the hot-blooded, just as it shuns the lukewarm. Earlier I observed that the three spiritual regions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are defined with respect to the intellect. I also emphasized in my discussion of Piccarda that her being in accord with God’s will and her contentment with her “place” in Paradise are firmly grounded in her intellectual vision of the whole and her clear self-knowledge. The eyes of Beatrice, the image of love as education, further support the primacy of intellect in the Paradiso and in the entire Comedy. As Dante moves higher up the heavenly hierarchy and closer to God, the role of intellect and vision becomes increasingly intense. It is especially prominent when Dante enters the Crystalline and sees the hierarchy of angels. It is fitting that he begins this canto on angelic intelligence by calling Beatrice, his personal angel, “she who imparadises my mind” (28.1). Later in the canto Beatrice utters one of the central teachings of the whole poem: And thou must know that all have delight in the measure of the depth to which their sight penetrates the truth in which every intellect finds rest; from which it may be seen that the state of blessedness rests on the act of vision, not on that of love, which follows after, and the measure of their vision is merit, which grace begets and right will (109-113). The immediate context has to do with the angels, who are identified with their keenness of intellectual vision, but the teaching applies to all the blessed. The “truth in which every intellect finds rest” is God himself as the First Truth, and it is our highest end to know this Truth. Beatrice emphasizes that love follows rather than leads. The reason is that love is both aroused and directed by the thing seen, the Beloved. If love were primary, it would be cut off from the truth. It would degenerate into mere feeling and cease to be educative. The primacy of intellect came home to Dante in the moment when, a mere boy, he fell in love with a girl on the streets of Florence. He loved her because he caught sight �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of her and was struck by the light that shone in her person. Even then, as Dante reports in the New Life, Beatrice was “the Lady of my mind” (2). The Comedy ends with Dante’s vision of God, the source of all Light. As he ascends to the Empyrean, Dante leaves behind the astronomical image of Heaven and sees Heaven anew in a River of Light and the Celestial Rose. Dante’s salvation began with a chain of heavenly women who interceded for him. The links in this chain now appear in reverse order. Beatrice returns to her heavenly seat and to her true self. And though she is at this point far beyond Dante’s mortal gaze, her image reaches her lover with undiminished clarity (31.70-8). Now under the guidance of St. Bernard, who replaces Beatrice as Dante’s guide, Dante sees Lucy, “who sent thy Lady when thou didst bend thy brow downward to destruction” (32.137-8). Then he sees Mary, the ray of whose eyes leads him to the threshold of his final vision. Bernard of Clairvaux was the great medieval saint known for his devotion to Mary. His presence serves to enhance rather than qualify the distinctly feminine operation of grace. Bernard prays fervently to Mary that Dante be allowed to see God: “I, who never burned for my own vision more than do I for his, offer to thee all my prayers.” He adds: “This too I pray of thee, Queen, who canst what thou wilt, that thou keep his affections pure after so great a vision” (33.28-36). Bernard’s reference to affetti recalls Piccarda’s use of the word in answer to Dante’s question about contentment with one’s heavenly lot. The twofold aspect of Bernard’s prayer is worth noting. Bernard prays that Dante be granted the highest bliss, the vision of God. This vision is “the end of all desires” (46). But Bernard also acknowledges that Dante will not be out of danger when he returns to his mortal life. He must remain true to the unity of which Mary is the figure, the unity of clear vision and purity of heart, which is the precondition for the vision of God (Matthew 5:8). Dante sees the effect of Bernard’s prayer in Mary’s eyes, which are “beloved and reverenced by God” (40). Her eyes, like those of Beatrice before her, provide the ray that will direct the eye of Dante’s mind to the ultimate vision. As the eyes of Mary �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 55 turn to God, Dante’s eyes follow. The poet is now lifted into the region where sight outstrips speech. Nevertheless he soldiers on, praying that the power of his tongue “may leave but a gleam of thy glory to the people yet to come” (71-2). The final moments of the Comedy are rich in images, as Dante describes the transformation of his sight and his very being – the final stage of his “passing beyond the human.” He sees “three circles of three colors,” a geometric symbol of the Trinity (115 ff.). Each circle, each divine Person, reflects the others, “as rainbow by rainbow.” Dante focuses on the circle that appears to be “painted with our likeness.” He is drawn to the second Person of the Trinity, to the human face of God. He strains to see more clearly how this human aspect is united to the divine and compares himself to a geometer who is trying with all his might to square the circle. This famous problem, which has haunted mankind for ages, is that of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle. It is in effect the problem of grasping the unity of the straight and the curved – two opposed geometric natures that defy unification. Squaring the circle is more than a geometric problem. It is the symbol and summation of all intellectual desire. According to Aristotle, all human beings by nature desire to know. This is true for each individual. But as Dante affirms in his Monarchia, it is also true of the human species, which in the course of history seeks the full realization of its intellectual potential (1.3). In comparing himself to one who wants to square the circle, Dante personifies the whole human race in its relentless desire to know – ultimately to know and experience the nature of God. In the end Dante’s longing to know is satisfied, but not through his own efforts. His wings “were not sufficient for that.” Grace intervenes, this time violently, as Dante’s mind is struck (percossa), as if by a lightning bolt: “Here power failed the high phantasy, but now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (142-5). With these lines the Paradiso, and with it the “sacred poem” as a whole, reaches its end. �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Dante’s vision of God is a flash of insight that cannot be put into words. But there is something the poet can tell us. He can report that he reached his longed-for end, and that the fruit of his vision was a desire and will that were conformed to the graceful movements of Love. These movements find their image in the visible heavens, whose quick circular motion resembles rest. Through the conformity of desire and will, Dante experiences first-hand the truth of what someone told him when he first entered Paradise: “In His will is our peace.” �57 Knowing and Ground: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Matthew Linck For this is action, this not being sure, this careless Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow, Making ready to forget, and always coming back To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago. － John Ashbery, from “Soonest Mended” Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a difficult book. Sometimes this seems true in the way that we might say that someone is a difficult person – unaccommodating, needlessly obscure. Many aspects of Hegel’s book give the appearance of this kind of difficulty – the unusual structure, the strangeness of the method, the alien vocabulary, and the sheer density of the writing. While I do not think reading the Phenomenology can simply be made easy, I do think that one can make sense of some of these difficulties. In what follows I will endeavor to show that the structure, method and principal vocabulary of the book all spring from a single aim, namely, to understand what it means for us to claim to know something. As the title of my lecture suggests, this effort will concern itself principally with the grounds of knowing as such. For Hegel, there is no claim to knowing that does not, at least implicitly, have certain grounds in view. While it is my goal to give a synoptic view of the Phenomenology, both in terms of its structure and the nature of its parts, it turns out that doing so from the front of the book to the back is hard to do in a short space. Instead, we will orient ourselves from somewhere in the middle, specifically, the section from the chapter on Spirit called “Absolute Freedom and Terror.” Why I have chosen this as the vantage point to look out over the Phenomenology as a whole can only become clear as we move through the lecture. But a few questions could be raised already. These Matthew Linck is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW questions will serve as the guiding threads for what follows. The questions are: (1) Why is there an analysis concerning the French Revolution and Terror in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at all? (2) Why is this analysis placed at the end of the second of three main sections in a chapter called Spirit? (3) Why is the chapter on Spirit preceded by chapters on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason and followed by chapters on Religion and Absolute Knowing? These questions might be generalized in the following way: why does the Phenomenology contain the kind of content that it does; why does the book have the structure it has; how do the content and structure go together? By answering these questions, I hope to provide a sense of the whole of the Phenomenology and how it attempts to fulfill its principal goal as an account of knowing. But before attending to these questions more needs to be said about what this goal is. The principal goal of the Phenomenology of Spirit as an inquiry about knowing is to find the grounds that will grant truth to the certainty of our claims of knowing. This goal takes its starting point from what seems to be a rather ordinary human experience. Claiming to know something is always accompanied by a conviction of certainty about what we are claiming. For if not, we would not call it knowing. But being certain and having good grounds for our certainty are two different matters. Hegel’s project is to see which claims of certainty are in fact well grounded. As an inquiry into knowing, the aim of the Phenomenology is a traditional one; Hegel’s book stands in a long line of philosophical accounts of knowledge. We can obtain a better initial understanding of the aim of the book by contrasting it with two other texts about knowledge: Plato’s Theaetetus and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I will briefly consider some questions and conclusions from these texts and compare them to Hegel’s. In the Theaetetus, Socrates and Theaetetus endeavor to answer the question “What is knowledge?” The way in which they do this is to propose various answers to the question and then scrutinize those answers. In the course of the dialogue, Theaetetus ventures a few definitions of knowledge and then he and Socrates think through the implications and coherence of these definitions. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 59 Two aspects of their conversation are worth noting for our purposes. The first is that, while it is not articulated as such, the investigation carried out by Theaetetus and Socrates cannot help but ask about the grounds of knowing in asking what knowledge is. For instance, in testing the idea that knowledge is perception, perception is tested as a sufficient ground for knowing. In this way, their search has something in common with the Phenomenology. However, I want to suggest that the way the principal questions are articulated makes a difference. By asking what the sufficient grounds for knowing are rather than asking what knowledge is, Hegel is able to frame a different method for asking about knowledge. This is related to the other notable feature of Socrates’ conversation with Theaetetus. At a certain point in the dialogue, Theaetetus remarks upon a troubling feature of the discussion. In the course of testing the various possible answers to what knowledge is, he and Socrates have attested to knowing certain things along the way. In the midst of their inquiry about the very thing knowledge is, they have availed themselves of claims of knowing. It seems to Theaetetus that something is out of place here, but he cannot see how to set it right, for how might one investigate the what-it-is of something in conversation without laying down some things as known along the way? This problem indicates that there is something uniquely difficult in the inquiry into what knowledge is. The method of Hegel’s book is meant to address this difficulty. Kant attempts to answer fundamental questions about knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason, and he, too, provides answers to what knowledge is and what the grounds of knowing are. But here again the specific articulation of the principal question is different. Kant’s question is neither that of the Theaetetus nor that of the Phenomenology, but is “What can I know?” Kant’s main goal is to trace out the proper limits of human knowledge. The method here is not the dialogical testing of answers, but an inquiry into the conditions of the possibility of experience. Kant creates a new form of philosophical inquiry with his notion of the transcendental, and through this inquiry he claims to find grounds for limiting our knowledge to knowledge of appear- �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ances. Hence, Kant, too, discerns the proper grounds of knowing, but not directly. His concern with grounds is subordinated to the critical task of tracing boundaries. One way in which the Kantian project might be seen as insufficient with respect to the investigation of grounds is the bundle of problems concerning the thingin-itself. In a fundamental but unknowable way, the thing-in-itself lays at the ground of what is known in experience. Putting these considerations about the Theaetetus and the Critique of Pure Reason together we can see something important about Hegel’s book. By focusing directly on the grounds of knowing Hegel is able to avoid the problem of making knowledge claims in advance of answering the question about its grounds, and he is also able to avoid having to construct a complex apparatus as Kant has done. How does he avoid these things? The answer to this question tells us something about why the book is called a phenomenology. For instead of trying directly to frame and test answers about the grounds of knowing, Hegel displays for us a gallery of various knowledge claims and the (often implicit) grounds that underlie those claims. Hegel’s wager is this: such claims have been made, and hence have made their appearance in the world; our work is to discern the internal structure of these claims. We do not have to venture answers to the question about the grounds of knowing but only observe and think about the answers that have already been given. In this way, Hegel proposes to discern the ultimate grounds of knowing without making an argument in the typical sense. The Phenomenology is not a book that argues on the basis of principles, transcendental or otherwise; instead, it is a book that orchestrates a certain kind of experience. The success of the book hinges on whether we are able to undergo the experience Hegel intends. We will return later to these issues. Let us now begin to consider the first question from earlier: Why does Hegel write about the French Revolution at the close of the middle section of the chapter on Spirit? The smaller section we will take up is called “Absolute Freedom and Terror,” and it comes at the end of a larger section called “Spirit alienated from itself: [or] culture.” The larger section presents views onto the late Roman Empire, the courtly world of the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 61 French monarchies, and the Enlightenment as a struggle with religious faith. “Absolute Freedom and Terror” is the last of these views onto a historical scene and the form of thought which it embodies. In one sense, this section of the book can be read as a description of a historical event. We read here about the political assertion of the people and their insistence upon recognition as equals. We also read about the political vacuum created by the Revolution and its inability to establish a stable locus of authority, a failure which leads to the actions of the Terror. But there is nothing essentially important about this section of the text as a description of factual events. The focus of Hegel’s writing here is not on a historical narrative but rather on the cognitive and normative aspects of these events. The most compact way of expressing what Hegel has in view is to say that he is displaying a particular shape of Spirit. This phrasing, however, is not helpful for us since it is only by understanding more about the Phenomenology itself that we can understand what “shape” and “Spirit” mean here. “Shape of Spirit” is a more particular version of the phrase “shape of consciousness.” The majority of the text of the Phenomenology of Spirit is devoted to laying bare the structure of these shapes of consciousness. The smallest subsections of the book each contain such a presentation. A very general way of characterizing a shape of consciousness is to say that it is a way of thinking. If we connect this to what was said earlier about the aim of Hegel’s book, we can add to this and say that a shape of consciousness is a way of thinking that is committed to certain grounds to justify its knowledge claims. Still speaking generally, we could say that as one reads the Phenomenology one encounters a series of paired commitments: on the one hand each shape of consciousness attests to knowing something, and on the other hand it is, at least implicitly, committed to certain reasons for claiming to know that thing. The first shape of consciousness encountered in the Phenomenology of Spirit is called Sense-Certainty. Why is this shape called Sense-Certainty and why does it fall under the heading of Consciousness? Consciousness as used here has a particular �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW meaning for Hegel. He means by it any mode of cognition which is fully directed at an object other than itself. To be conscious on these terms is to have some kind regard for things “out there” while not at the same time regarding one’s own activity of thinking. Furthermore, since Hegel thinks such regard is never a passive awareness but always entails the formation of judgments, consciousness is always in the business of claiming to know that there are things out there. Indeed, all knowing for Consciousness just is knowledge of what is out there. Sense-Certainty claims to know something because there are things present to it, right here, right now. Knowing is not complicated for Sense-Certainty: look around, it says, if nothing else you know that what’s here right now is here right now. SenseCertainty sees every moment of its life in this way, and thinks that the apparent richness of its sensory experience is made possible by the great variety of the things present to it. No one lives a life of Sense-Certainty exclusively. But it is an intelligible, maybe even common, ground upon which to plant one’s feet when saying, “I know this because …” It is common, perhaps, because what it appeals to is common, the sense that the spatial and temporal arrangement of objects in the world is the touchstone for what is true. Is it true that it is raining? Look outside and live the life of Sense-Certainty. If this is the case, then what is wrong with such a stance for justifying knowledge claims? Here we encounter a powerful force at work in Hegel’s book, one which perhaps looks strange at first. This force is language and the implicit demand that each shape of consciousness articulate from its own standpoint why it is justified in claiming to know something. Sense-Certainty will fail this test. Sense-Certainty is certain of what is present in the here and now. It might even feel that the immediate sensuous richness of the present world is the fullest kind of experience possible. Hegel thinks otherwise, and he thinks so because SenseCertainty is limited to saying, “This, here, now.” And this restriction on the vocabulary available to Sense-Certainty seems appropriate since it is because of the thises here and now that Sense-Certainty thinks it can know. It should not have to say �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 63 more. The ground of its knowing is out there. It is not what it says that makes the things known. There is a mismatch between what Sense-Certainty intends to say about its experience and what it is able to say about it. Sense-Certainty thinks it can account for a particular experience by saying “This here now”; but what it says is true of any experience and hence cannot be an account of the grounds of what is known in this one. Absolute Freedom is in some respects just like Sense-Certainty. It is a particular shape of consciousness with its unique claim of knowing and the text devoted to it is meant to both trace the contours of this way of thinking as well as expose the contradictions inherent in it. The initial knowledge claim made by Absolute Freedom is that the will of every particular self-conscious agent is identical with the universal will of all like-minded self-conscious agents. That is to say, the cognitive stance of universal human freedom is one in which all particular members of the political community see the truth of their own selves through the mutual recognition of the equality of all. Furthermore, this cognitive stance is not principally a theoretical view of politics but is a practical stance; willing is a form of cognition. This moment is a high-point of sorts in the Phenomenology and seeing why will get us some way toward grasping the Phenomenology as a whole. The reason this is a high-point is because consciousness has, after many other attempts, found a shape in which it has achieved a genuine identity between the particular and the universal, and does so self-consciously, that is, it knows it has achieved this, and, furthermore, it does so in a way where its communal life is an essential component of this achievement. Taking these three features in turn we can get a view of what falls between Sense-Certainty and Absolute Freedom and Terror in the Phenomenology. We saw already that the relationship between the particular and the universal was what undid the knowledge claims made by Sense-Certainty. Sense-Certainty wanted to point to the vast array of particulars in the world as the solid ground upon which it would make its knowledge claims. But it was unable in speech to place those particulars under universal categories without ef- �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW facing their particularity. And in so doing Sense-Certainty erased the very thing that was meant to serve as the index of truth for its claims. This announces a general problem encountered by the shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit: the challenge of universalizing particulars without having the particulars dissolve into the universal. One principal lesson of the sections on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason is that most particulars simply cannot withstand the dissolving force of the universal. Any attempt to assert such particulars as themselves the ground of knowing leads to contradictions and hence to failure. What kinds of particulars are these and why do they fail to hold together when brought together with the universal? There are three basic types of such particulars: external things, self-conscious things, and rational individuals. These types of particulars coincide with the sections on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason. We noted when looking at Sense-Certainty that it based its knowledge claims on the fact that there are things “out there.” This continues with the other shapes of Consciousness: Perception and Understanding. Both of these shapes fall under the heading of Consciousness because they too point to something “out there” to justify their claims of knowing. Perception points to the properties possessed by ordinary objects and Understanding points to forces underlying physical phenomena. We cannot retrace here the increasingly intricate contours of these shapes of consciousness, but might dwell briefly with Understanding to see what we learn about Consciousness as a whole. It might strike your ear already as odd to speak of forces as things that are simply out there in the external world. Rather than being simply out there, forces are posited by us as being out there, and then we go about testing whether the forces as posited match up with the measurable features of observable phenomena. So while it is important in this process of thought and experiment to maintain that there is really something out there – that the forces are not just fictions we have invented – their being out there is not a simple, immediate presence but is mediated by our own mindful activity. In a rather elaborate teasing out of the various �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 65 aspects of this mindful relationship to the external world, Hegel shows how Understanding cannot account for its claims about force on its own terms. Consciousness is committed to the grounds of knowing being completely independent of its own activity. It turns out that this is not the case – the grounds of knowing are not simply out there in the world. Understanding pushes this demand so far that eventually the situation inverts itself and, as Hegel says at the end of “Force and the Understanding,” when Consciousness finally tears away the veil separating appearances from essence, it sees only itself. The next main section of the book explores the position opposite to Consciousness, namely, Self-Consciousness. Self-Consciousness is opposite in that its basic stance is that it itself is the whole and sufficient ground of truth. Self-Consciousness is desirous, and what Self-Consciousness desires is to affirm that it is independent of the things around it. Only through affirming its total independence can Self-Consciousness make good on its assertion that it is the sole and sufficient ground of knowing. Each shape of Self-Consciousness fails to be the sole ground of its own certainty, and we the readers see again and again that Self-Consciousness is dependent on its interactions with the external world to affirm itself. As with Consciousness, we come to see that SelfConsciousness cannot account for itself on its own terms. We the readers come to see that only Consciousness and Self-Consciousness together make a whole. To be self-conscious a thing must be engaged with a world outside of itself; and to be conscious of an outside world is to be a thing whose own activity is involved in the conscious presence of that world. Hence there is both identity and difference between the moments of Consciousness and Self-Consciousness. So, it turns out that neither external objects nor self-conscious beings are things that have a universally abiding character. That is, whatever standing they have in the world is shown to be partial and dependent. But since there does seem to be some abiding character to the whole movement of Consciousness and SelfConsciousness taken together, perhaps this whole movement is the universal ground we have been searching for. This brings us �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to the third type of particular, the rational individual. What does Hegel mean by a rational individual? Each shape of consciousness explored in the chapter on Reason shares a basic stance, one which implicitly takes into itself what the reader comes to understand about Consciousness and Self-Consciousness, namely that there is an identity between the self and its world. The shapes of Reason have, Hegel says, an instinct for affirming this identity through some kind of engagement with the world. These modes of engagement range from observationbased science to the making and testing of laws. And while there is a gradual emergence of self-awareness on the part of the rational individual in the progression of these shapes, a common feature throughout is the implicit assertion that the rational individual is able, on its own, to carry through the explicit revelation of the identity of self and world. In what strikes me as the most despairing stretch of the book, Reason is seen to fail repeatedly in this project. While Reason is successful in finding reasonableness in many features of the world, some of its own making, it is never quite able to achieve a complete identity between itself as rational and the world as a whole. The complete rationality of the world turns out to be an ever-vanishing fantasy for the rational individual. In a moment we will see the meaning of this as it pertains to particulars and universals. But first let’s note that we are now in a position to understand why there is a chapter called “Spirit” in the Phenomenology and why Absolute Freedom and Terror is located in this chapter. In one respect we can see that if there are no other shapes of consciousness, then the project of finding adequate grounds for our knowledge must be a failure since none of the shapes observed thus far have been up to the challenge. Hegel’s implicit assertion is that there are more shapes of consciousness and that their general character is different from those of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason. The shapes of Spirit are those that address the principal failings of Reason. A few remarks about the final shapes of Reason will help make sense of what emerges at the beginning of the chapter on Spirit. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 67 After failing to directly observe the reasonableness of the world in nature or the human mind and body, Reason attempts to make its own activity in the world the source of rationality in the world. In various ways, these shapes of Reason find that the presence of other rational individuals in the world gets in the way of their own projects of establishing a reasonable world. Each of these failures in some way gets parsed out as a failure to reconcile particularity and universality. The final two shapes of Reason turn to law as a possible means for establishing a rational world. It turns out, however, that while Reason can make rational laws and test the rationality of laws, it cannot through these endeavors establish a definitive set of laws that adequately ground and guide the particular actions of individuals. That is, the need of individuals to act cannot be sufficiently determined by any set of rational ordinances. Nevertheless, we do act and we do so aware that we are subjected to norms of some kind or another. An initial stab at defining what Hegel means by Spirit might be just this, that rational human life always finds itself within some set of shared, communal norms and that these norms provide both the structure and coherence of the community and the principal self-understanding of the members of the community. In this sense, the realm of Spirit is prior to that of Reason. Or, as Hegel puts it, Spirit is the substantial ground that is the real being of human consciousness. The modes of cognition that fall under the headings of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason are abstractions from this ground. I take this to be the most important claim of Hegel’s book. The first shape of Spirit that Hegel presents he calls the “Ethical World,” a vision of the Greek polis seen through the lens of Sophocles’ Antigone. This vision of the polis depicts a community in which each member has a place and a communal role, and these places and roles are essentially and immediately identified with certain normative injunctions. The two fundamental axes around which the city and its members are organized are the human and divine laws and the corresponding domains of the �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW state and the family. As Hegel sees it, the characters in Sophocles’ play exemplify this immediate identity with the norms that define their places and roles, Antigone most of all. The Antigone we see portrayed in the Phenomenology has no reflective distance on her role as sister and keeper of the unwritten laws. It is simply who she is. The immediacy that marks Antigone’s ethical stance does not prevent her from being a conscious, self-conscious, and rational individual; but those modes are not the definitive ones in her case. In this way we can see how the shapes of Spirit follow upon those of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason in the dialectical unfolding of the book, even if they possess this other kind of priority. Antigone exemplifies the fact that there are shapes of consciousness that do not attempt to ground ethical life in the rational capacities of the individual, but simply live primarily from within some set of ethical norms. As is always the case in the Phenomenology, however, the immediacy of Antigone’s selfhood shows itself as unstable, contradictory, and unsustainable. Indeed, I think the force of Hegel’s presentation is that the apparent repose of the polis as presented in the first section on the Ethical World is a fiction. The truth of the beautiful distribution of norms between the gods and man, and between the home and state, is that it cannot but result in a conflict that tears the city apart. This is unavoidable because of action. The initial static view of the city shows everyone parceled out into their respective domains. But as essentially normative domains, the individuals that fall within them must be agents. Ethical life is a life of actions, not of contemplation. The problem is that as soon as one acts in Antigone’s city, one must transgress the boundaries that were supposed to define and confine one’s actions. Antigone’s burial of her brother is at once an upholding of the divine law and a transgression of the human law. Likewise, her action, which finds its justification in the duty to family, is a violation of a state decree. The instability of this first shape of ethical life announces the singular challenge for Consciousness in the realm of Spirit: Consciousness must inhabit a way of life in which the normative structure of self and community can sustain both simultaneously. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 69 We will have to forgo looking at any of the shapes of Spirit which fall between Ethical Action and Absolute Freedom, but it should be roughly apparent how the stance of Absolute Freedom addresses this challenge. The ethical stance taken by the revolutionary consciousness of Absolute Freedom is one that immediately identifies its own will with the will of all. The division of the spiritual world into particular and partial domains has been obliterated and replaced with one in which the selfhood of all individuals is to be realized in the common project of a universal will. We are almost ready to see the dark side of the this shape of Spirit, but let’s pause to pull together some threads of what we have seen so far. The twin goals of grounding knowledge and reconciling the universal and the particular, and the failures of the attempts at reconciliation, have been present in all of the shapes of consciousness we have considered. For Sense-Certainty, the possibility of knowing is grounded in the immediate presence of an external world, but Sense-Certainty fails to find universals that allow for the preservation of particulars. The shapes of Self-Consciousness all posit the self as the universal ground of knowledge but are not able to recognize the role of external particularity in its own self-regard. The rational individual at the end of the chapter on Reason sees its own rational capacities as sufficient grounds for determining the normative structure of communal life, but produces nothing but empty tautologies or equally rational but contradictory laws. The individuals who populate the Ethical World know what their duties are, their selves are grounded in an immediate identification with these duties, and in this way their particularity is identical to a universal; but the need to act on those duties brings them into conflict with the dutiful actions of others and thus the identity of particular and universal is only partial. We might now want to consider what it means that these individual, largely self-contained shapes of consciousness make up some kind of whole, come in a particular order, and are grouped under different headings. In one sense, the phenomenological observer adds nothing to the progression of shapes of conscious- �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ness. The internal shifting, unrest, and development within each shape always results in a form of consciousness that is in itself what the next shape of consciousness is for itself. In this way, there are no gaps between the various shapes of consciousness. However, each new shape of consciousness takes itself to be immediately what it is. It has no knowledge of being related to prior shapes. We might say that each new shape is a new start. But this means that the phenomenologist is not just an observer, but also an arranger. The putting-in-order of the shapes is done by the philosopher and is not the work of natural consciousness. Hence part of our work as readers is to discern not only that the shapes come in this order, but also to decide whether we agree that they are properly ordered. This returns us to the first moment, however. Deciding whether the shapes are properly ordered amounts to deciding whether there are any gaps between the shapes. These considerations are true not only with respect to the individual shapes of consciousness, but also to the various kinds that they fall under: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, and so on. Finally it is time to see what comes after Absolute Freedom. What comes right on the heels of Absolute Freedom is Terror. I would be tempted to say that the “and” in “Absolute Freedom and Terror” should be read as an “is.” Absolute Freedom is Terror. I believe Hegel offers here, in his typically obscure fashion, both a historical/political interpretation and a cognitive/ philosophical one. The historical interpretation, in short, is that the project of instituting universal human freedom and equality cannot be achieved simply at the level of the universal will. That is, if one makes the universal will of the people the immediate ground upon which political freedom rests one must regard all institutional and procedural aspects of governance as inessential and distortive. The reality is that institutions and procedures must be in place for actual governance, but when viewed from the perspective of Absolute Freedom they cannot but take on the look of something sinister, retrograde, and evil. The terminus of this suspicion, the very logic of the Revolution, Hegel suggests, is the pure negating force of the Terror. Only through the continual erasure of partial and contingent �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 71 actions and positions can the purity of Absolute Freedom be maintained. But since the shapes of Spirit are not just collective frames of mind but always also those of individuals, the Terror lurking in Absolute Freedom can be viewed at the level of the individual mind as well. Hegel here seems to suggest that for the individual Absolute Freedom is terrifying because, for the first time in the Phenomenology, consciousness has taken on a shape that sees itself explicitly and exclusively as a space of pure negativity. To be absolutely free is to be determined by nothing outside of oneself. And while this independence of determination was true of the shapes of Self-Consciousness, only Absolute Freedom sees itself in the world, with others, in this way. Absolute Freedom sees itself as radically self-determining without seeing itself as independent. The implicit political injunction of these considerations is that the spiritual community must move past revolution and stake out some determining and limiting boundaries that will make actual and sustainable the universal freedom aimed at in the Revolution. Hegel, however, does not pursue the political side of the story within the Phenomenology. The fittingness of what comes in the final section of Spirit is, nevertheless, explicable within the framework of what I have sketched out so far. If the dead end reached both by the revolutionary community and the cognitive shape of Absolute Freedom is that self-determination is without content, then somehow self-determination must be shown to implicitly contain within itself some kind of determinate content. From this perspective it makes sense that the final section of Spirit begins with a shape of consciousness that resembles Kant’s moral subject. The positioning of this shape after Absolute Freedom and Terror suggests that the key to overcoming the terrifying negativity of Absolute Freedom (or autonomy) is to see that this freedom is also, at the same time, subjection to a law. If revolutionary consciousness is the first to posit its own freedom with others as the essential content of itself, then the Kantian moral subject carries out the recognition that that freedom is identical to a certain self-legislation. We can perhaps �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW make sense of the retreat from the political realm inasmuch as the moral subject need go no further than himself to find the contours of this self-legislation. The advance from Absolute Freedom is clear: the pure negativity of that freedom finds a determining limitation in itself. The universal moral law is identical with who I essentially am. The remainder of the chapter on Spirit plays out in the usual way. The identity of the self and the moral law is too immediate, and once again the need to act in the world is the grit that irritates what at first appears to be a beautiful achievement: the universal self within each of us providing the determining ground for all human action. In Hegel’s hands, the moral subject is exposed as finite, partial, and always acting on insufficient grounds. To be a genuine member of a human community, and hence to be a genuine self, one must risk the inevitable transgression of action. One must act from within oneself without having all the information one needs and without knowing all of the ramifications of one’s action. More crucially, one must act in one’s own interest. Action is irredeemably selfish. The final pages of the chapter on Spirit are meant to address this bind that we find ourselves in. Hegel suggests that only through the mutual recognition of this bind, of our finitude, and of the inevitably transgressive character of human action can we finally plant our feet in the world and orient our minds in such a way that we can both be certain of what we know and also be justified of this certainty. For only here is the particular both reconciled with and preserved within the universal. The universal recognition of the necessary partiality of human existence makes possible the free flourishing of human action and also makes possible genuine and sustainable human community. This is the I that is We and the We that is I that was announced in the chapter on Self-Consciousness. We might also see that the distinction between thought and action, mind and world, is overcome here. Both are only moments of a fluid whole. No moment of the field of human action – whether the deed itself, the conviction of duty that accompanies the deed, the determination of means to fulfill our ends, or the judgment of either our own actions or those of others in their par- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINCK 73 ticularity – what Hegel calls “evil” – none of these has ultimacy. Only the whole movement is truly actual. I think this is what Hegel must mean when he says that “The deed is not imperishable; it is taken back by Spirit into itself, and the aspect of individuality present in it . . . straightaway vanishes (§669).” To borrow a phrase from the American philosopher Wilfred Sellars, we might say that the ultimate ground of our knowledge is just the “space of reasons” itself. There are no criteria for knowledge – moral or otherwise – outside of the space in which we hold each other and ourselves to account. But this also means that this is a ground that is self-grounding. Only we ourselves can constitute this ground by making fully actual the space of reasons. Hence, the final moments of the chapter on Spirit cannot be construed as something that has simply come to pass. Rather, the mutual confession of finitude is the self-given ground of the ongoing, living present, a present for which we are perpetually and inescapably responsible. Only in this sense is Spirit Absolute. The main goal of the Phenomenology as an account of knowing has thus almost been achieved with the appearance of forgiveness and reconciliation. But only almost. The agents of mutual recognition that end the chapter on Spirit do what they do knowingly, but they do not know the philosophical significance of their mutual regard. Only we see it, and complete comprehension of its significance requires two more steps. The first is taken in the chapter on Religion. Two aspects of the role of the chapter on Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit seem clear to me. First, Hegel seems to suggest that the shapes of Spirit as ways of being in the world are always supplemented by a common and shared discourse. The highest level of this shared discourse, and one that is crucial in knitting the community together, is the way in which the community talks about the highest things, or what is absolute. The religion chapter provides a taxonomy of the historical variants on such discourses regarding the absolute. Secondly, we phenomenologists need to trace the logical ordering of these ways of understanding the absolute so as to see that the terminus of that logical sequence coincides with the relationship of self and other at the end of Spirit. Only by tracing this out and �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW seeing this coincidence are we positioned to take the stance of Absolute Knowing. What then is this grand-sounding thing called Absolute Knowing? I think it can best be captured in past participle constructions. Absolute Knowing is having traversed and despaired of the knowledge claims of all of the shapes of consciousness; it is having worked up to a comprehension of the proper fit between these shapes and the way in which they make a whole; it is having come to recognize that only such a traversal and comprehension is adequate to the philosophical question about what the grounds of our knowing are. There is no Absolute Knowing outside of the experience of struggling to and achieving an adequate vision of the book as a whole. If there is a present tense formulation of Absolute Knowing it seems that is must be progressive. We must hold the movement of despair of the book in mind in order to enjoy the satisfaction of the redemption of that despair. But this means that there is no thing called the Absolute that we can walk away from the book with. The Absolute is not a thing at all but a way of knowing and this way of knowing just is the full experience of reading the Phenomenology of Spirit. �POEMS | ZUCKERMAN 75 Tercet Elliott Zuckerman No one is going anywhere, this is a pure farewell. The men are due to return within the hour, expecting never to be surprised. Sooner or later the women will surprise themselves. That is why this ghostly embarcation this hush and stir of zephyrs repudiates all kinship with the enthralled Addios sung with a catch in the throat by ardent diva and exalted tenor. Nor is this death-in-love for this is not the sound of real water. No drowning in these undulating waves no more than in the regular ebbing of a Hiroshige print. The rare rococo masters knew that fare thee well are words and music of arrival. Elliott Zuckerman is tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �76 Liberalism and Tragedy A Review of Jonathan N. Badger’s Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy: Cities and Transcendence. New York: Routledge, 2013. 252 pages, $140; paper, $42.95. Paul Ludwig Jonathan Badger’s Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy begins a dialogue between Greek tragedy and modern political thought. Sophocles best diagnosed a predicament that continues to haunt us today: human nature has two drives, one that aims at bodily security and another that aims at transcendence. The two are forever in tension. Tragic protagonists often attempt to realize one of the two aims, to the detriment of the other. For example, Creon in the Antigone attempts to base politics on one of the two drives, bodily security. Badger finds comparably one-sided attempts in the history of political thought. Christian medieval thought attempted to create a politics of transcendence. Francis Bacon’s modern project based its new politics on bodily security. Both were attempts to move beyond, and thus to deny, tragedy. A truly tragic consciousness lives with the tension rather than trying to negate one of the poles. In a surprise, John Locke emerges as the hero of the book for inaugurating liberalism, a politics that holds these two drives in tension, and thus qualifies as tragic politics in the best sense. Tragedy begins with an insight into the transitory nature of all things, including politics and human relations. Time and change rule all (8). Unpredictably and unaccountably, everything dissolves (cf. Ajax 646-92). Two opposed responses to this tragic insight attempt to fix or remedy the situation. One response is the drive for transcendence. A hero looks beyond the living world to a world of divine beauty. The other response is the drive for bodily security. Statesmen, especially, use institutions and laws to Paul Ludwig is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �REVIEW | LUDWIG 77 ensure safety and survival, hoping to shield us from death and decay. Since perfect justice is one vision of transcendent beauty, heroes are on a collision course with existing political institutions. Security entails stability, which is threatened by heroic visions. This conception of tragedy draws on and subsumes parts of Aristotle’s, Hegel’s, and Nietzsche’s understandings, among others. Hegel’s clash of right actions, for example, fits together with the tragic insight that the two drives are equally right (and wrong). Hegel would like to see the two theses sublate into a higher synthesis. But such a solution, insofar as it disarms the tragic tension, denies that our predicament is really tragic. According to Badger, Aristotle’s Poetics places mimesis at the heart of ethical action. To act ethically is to play a role—an interpretation that sounds surprisingly postmodern. Philosophy itself emerges from creating narratives, poetry (26-31). The poeticizing capacity of soul renders our experiences to us as a world of wholes. In place of the usual “purgation of pity and fear” as a translation of Aristotle’s account of the effect of tragedy, Badger makes a case for “purification of ruth and horror.” Whereas pity has been overtaken by democratization, “pure ruth should hold us spellbound, transfixed in utter sorrow on behalf of another” (28). Whereas fear is overly broad, dread unspecific, and terror too urgent, horror best captures the threat of destroying the story of one’s life, not merely ending one’s life. “[O]ne’s life work is destroyed or useless.” Rather than getting rid of these passions because they cloud thought, catharsis purifies them into versions serviceable for learning and understanding. The meaning of this purification seems to slide from purified passions to pure exemplars of the characters who feel them, like Antigone and Creon—incarnations of the drives for transcendence and security, respectively (30-31). The understandings of tragedy proposed by the major thinkers fit together only uneasily, as Badger is quick to point out. Solon’s homely wisdom of the Greeks seems to agree with Nietzsche’s. To “show how much better it is for a human being to die than to live” (Herodotus 1) sounds a lot like “best . . . not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon” (Birth of Tragedy 17-18, 31). And yet, the Solon story emphasizes �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW successes and failures at the end of life: the sons who hitched themselves to their mother’s cart and Croesus’s ruin. Going out on top or at one’s peak (perhaps even hastening the end to coincide with the peak) is different from finding individuation itself to be an illusion, as Nietzsche does. To have a peak, it is necessary to be an individual, and Herodotus does not say that the sons’ triumph was illusory; he surely knew of despots more fortunate than Croesus. The still greater distance between Nietzsche and Aristotle does not render the comparison useless; the two are “compatible” (34; cf. 37-38, Hegel “entirely compatible”), if we abstract sufficiently. Nietzsche gives us a “vocabulary” for talking about tragedy, though he and Aristotle are using “different terms.” “Antigone and Creon are in a ‘Hegelian’ collision over how to respond to the ‘Nietszchean’ insight” (38). But again, if individuation is an illusion, then the Ajax’s “all things change” is necessarily a consequence. But if “all things change,” that does not necessarily mean individuation is an illusion. At any rate, there is an assumption here that would have to be made evident— namely, that only eternal things really exist. Does Philoctetes really turn to savagery because the “falseness of the Apollonian (rational, expedient) community is intolerable” (35)? Crucial to interpreting both the Philoctetes and the Ajax is the ambiguous role (or roles) of Odysseus. For Badger, Odysseus is the Lockean before Locke, the one man at Troy who can fully appreciate the tragic insight (into the mutability of all things) without succumbing to either of the two drives—security or transcendence—that attempt to solve it. Instead, Odysseus is strong and humane enough to hold the two drives in tension. Contrary to appearances, Odysseus’s role is civic-minded, even self-sacrificing, in the two plays. Friendship is the theme of the Philoctetes, and Odysseus is instrumental in drawing the exiled hero into a friendship with young Neoptolemus, a friendship based on their shared heroic morality. Only their newfound friendship can bring Philoctetes back to Troy to save the Greek cause. Friendship is the middle term between the community and the individual; friendship moderates heroic individualism and provides a reason to help the community. Odysseus orchestrates this friendship, in �REVIEW | LUDWIG 79 part by presenting himself as worse than he is, in order to provide an unheroic contrast (cf. Philoctetes 64-67). “A foiled and hapless Odysseus in ignoble flight . . . is a queer image. It is not consistent with the Homeric presentation or with Sophocles’ presentation of him in the Ajax” (118). Hence the interpretation that Odysseus probably expected or counted on Neoptolemus’s rebellion against his plan (120). This is a parting of the ways for interpreters: few classicists would assume that Odysseus is consistently the same character in two plays not performed together, nor that Sophocles felt bound to make either Odysseus consistent with Homer’s. For instance, Sophocles’s Odysseus would have been more likely to kill the suitors and serving maids out of cold expedience rather than suffering the anger and resentment that Homer’s undergoes. Badger’s Sophocles by contrast provides in each play a further meditation on the Homeric protagonist. In part, the heroic friendship could only be manipulated into existence because it is not fully rational (117). Reason and experience do not naturally reveal this “whole” that binds the heroes to the community; to see it requires a divine perspective or poeticizing. This perspective is provided by the deus ex machina—the voice or appearance of Heracles at the end. Badger flirts with but ultimately does not embrace the thesis that Heracles is Odysseus in disguise (because the same actor probably played both roles) or that Heracles is in some other way a final, fiendishly clever piece of the plan Odysseus was hatching all along. More telling than being chased off-stage is the scene that reverses Odysseus’s and Neoptolemus’s tutor-student relationship. When the young man is about to return the bow, Odysseus threatens that the whole host of Greeks, and himself among them, will stop Neoptolemus. But this claim is laughable since the Greeks are far away, and the restitution of the bow is imminent. A spokesman for an army is not the same as an army. Where are his divisions? In brushing the suggestion aside, Neoptolemus says: “You were born wise, but what you’re saying is not wise” (1244). When Odysseus retorts that neither Neoptolemus’s speech nor his deeds are wise, the issue come to a head. Neoptolemus addresses it forthrightly: “No, but if my [speeches and �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW deeds] are just, they are better than wise” (1246). The hero chooses justice over wisdom, heart over mind. He does so selfconsciously. When Odysseus threatens him with retribution from the Greek host, Neoptolemus moves to a further claim. With justice on his side, he has nothing to fear from Odysseus (1251). A just man has nothing to fear. For once, Odysseus resorts to force, beginning to draw his sword—but he puts it back with farcical speed when Neoptolemus begins to respond in kind. Neoptolemus now delivers the cutting line that reverses their earlier tutorial relationship. “You have done the prudent thing. And if you remain thoughtful this way in the future, perhaps you will keep out of trouble” (1259-60). He is now speaking like an older man admonishing a younger. Odysseus’s wisdom now looks like immaturity, while Neoptolemus’s justice has conferred upon him a certain augustness ordinarily reserved for age. If real (as opposed to feigned) friendship was part of Odysseus’ plan, he apparently failed to anticipate that friendship could draw the pair away from the community. Philoctetes originally persuades Neoptolemus that the two of them should retire into private life; he is willing to live with his wound if it spites the Atreidai, preferring to harm his enemies rather than help himself (cf. 139197). A cure, a new life, the highest fame: his new friend is a crutch that enables him to avoid all of these goods. Similarly, Neoptolemus is willing to give up his glorious future in order to remain true to a friend. Back home, Neoptolemus will take care of Philoctetes and his wound, looking out for him especially during his seizures. Philoctetes and his invincible bow will prevent reprisals against the disgraced young man and his land (1404-7). It is important to note that friendship is now standing in the way of either friend’s achieving his highest good. All they have is each other. Intriguingly, the same friendship that contributes to this vicious spiral downwards into privacy also contributes—after a boost from the gods—to a virtuous spiral upwards. Badger is eloquent on the excellence of friendship and its political use: friendship “has a portion of the intimacy and warmth of family without the concomitant murkiness and stultification, and it can partake of worldly action and incentive without the crassness and imper- �REVIEW | LUDWIG 81 sonality of the larger, public community” (116). It is their friendship which decisively draws the two heroes back to the community where their ambitions may be fulfilled. But the divine intervention does not change the truth about friendship as revealed in the play up to that point. Friendship can be an aid to public endeavor, but it can also be a hindrance. Perhaps generally, or more commonly, it is a hindrance. The play shows that true friendships have a privatizing propensity as well as a public, civic propensity. One might be tempted go further: the potentially civic character of the heroes’ friendship is due more to the ground of their friendship—admiration of heroic virtue—than to the friendship itself. Only in the larger society can heroic virtue receive the honors it is due. One can imagine other grounds of friendship (and other virtues) in which the privatizing propensity predominates. Can the privatized friendship of today contribute to liberal societies? The reading of the Ajax delves deeper into Odysseus’s ambiguity, and the reading of the Antigone shows the polarization he avoids. By permitting the burial of the disgraced hero Ajax, Odysseus in a sense corrects Creon’s refusal to permit Antigone to bury her traitorous brother. Odysseus pities his enemy’s insanity because Odysseus sees in Ajax both “himself and the rest of us” (64, on lines 122-26 of Ajax). Odysseus responds to the tragic insight that all things are mutable in a way that neither remedies the fact nor simply resigns itself to it. Instead, he finds a way the community might abide within the tension (65). Friendship and civic piety are his ways of abiding: he uses his friendship with Agamemnon to secure burial and to incorporate the dead hero (and his drive for transcendence) into the community. Odysseus consistently claims to act not altruistically but for himself (Ajax 123-24, 1363-67). Badger believes that he overcomes his natural self, substituting for it a universal self. “Odysseus’s ‘self’ is an expanded self: the individual and the community are inside Odysseus” (68). Self-interest and civic responsibility merge. Odysseus is conscious of tragedy, and his action points toward a political order that could also be conscious of tragedy—a worldly life that could nevertheless hold in mind the excellence of the �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW hero, whose unrestrained activity would threaten to overturn that order. He beautifies the city by cultifying the hero (69). One wonders if anything similar to a hero cult, in which transcendence can be both recognized and tamed, exists in liberal society. Antigone is heroic because she desires an other-worldly beauty, a desire that can achieve its aim only in Hades (73). Only in the underworld can she achieve her perfect love. Hers is a philia that becomes an eros. This is nicely observed. She seeks to impose her transcendence on the community by burying Polyneices. But the latter hardly seems an imposition: here the modern, civil-disobedience readings would seem in line with Badger’s. In Lockean liberalism, Antigone would of course have been allowed to bury her brother. So is her “imposition” of transcendence dependent on the assumptions of the regime in Sophocles’s Thebes? Badger prefers to see Antigone as a danger analogous to later Christian impositions of transcendent longings. Antigone is like a philosopher in the way she finds meaning by poeticizing: she beautifies the contingent parts around her into wholes, thereby making them meaningful (75). Beauty orders experience. But the philosophical analogy is debatable: philosophers like Epicurus denied the existence of a beautiful cosmos. Would not philosophers want to know the truth about anything “naturally ambiguous and imperfect” (76)? Philosophy relies on poetry only for its first principles (89). But does this ‘first’ mean ‘first’ in the sense of beginnings that govern the conclusions, or ‘first’ in the sense of opinions from which to ascend? Creon, for his part, reduces philia to civic friendship (86; cf. Antigone 18290). His and her mistakes are equal and opposite: “In looking to a poeticized Hades, Antigone fails to see any viable wholeness in bodily life. In seeking bodily security and failing to see the universal power of erōs and chance, Creon fails to imagine the human soul” (93). But this makes the desire for transcendence sound like a mad pursuit we would be better off without—which can hardly be said of the desire for security. On this view, what would be wrong with Creon’s position, other than the fact that he did not provide for anaesthetizing or otherwise dealing with Antigone’s psychological problem? To say the drive or desire for �REVIEW | LUDWIG 83 transcendence is innate is not yet to say that it is a good thing. Until yesterday, it was possible to say that human nature cannot be changed. Badger confronts the problem in a section entitled “Life beyond the Human.” Our striving for medical technology that would ensure immortality (defeating the tragic through fixing the transitory) raises questions such as “What would it mean to be a daughter to a living father forever (a father, moreover, who was in the same stage of life with the daughter?)” (145). He concludes modestly that if Sophocles is correct, the tension between transcendence and material security will never be eliminated from human life (147). But will it never be eliminated because doing so is impossible, or will it never be eliminated from humanity because, when it is eliminated, we will be inhuman, “beyond the human”? The answer seems to be the latter, as the tension now becomes constitutive: “human beings qua human beings are what they are owing to this tension.” The tension is at least required for “soulful life” (195). This opens up the possibility of a post-human future—provided by the technology that flourishes in liberal polities that, as we have seen, were created by Locke. The Christian visions, in which Augustine, Aquinas, and Giles of Rome impose transcendence on politics, are dealt with somewhat scantily. In four paragraphs, Badger treats these authors and others, adducing citations in which some of them subordinate secular power to ecclesiastical power. None of the passages is explicated. Perhaps their imposition of transcendence is simply a well known fact? To place Dante in this company, because he was allegedly Thomas’s student and saw the world as a divine comedy instead of a tragedy (132-33), is a step too far. Dante’s Monarchia, for example, argues against subordinating the secular power to the ecclesiastical. If the book is uninformative about the Christians, it is wonderfully informative about Bacon’s New Atlantis and a selection of Bacon’s essays. Bacon explicitly demotes friendship, which Badger places in the company of transcendence (140). Bacon’s project is ultimately Creonic because it denies the soul in favor of the body, which is no different from other non-human “bodies �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in motion” (143-44). Especially noteworthy are “the more violent instruments that Bacon views as necessary for his humanitarian goal,” including imperialism and militarism backed by technology (141). The persecution of heretics under Church rule is reprised in the rational-authoritarian state, this time as the persecution of all transcendence. “The Tragic Politics of John Locke” serves as a “basis for a rejuvenated discussion of the status and aims of contemporary liberalism” (148). Does John Locke’s liberalism permit enough transcendence to satisfy this polarity of the soul’s craving? As a supreme court justice vacuously but accurately put it, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Doing so is protected, so long as it does not prevent anyone else from doing so, too, and causes no bodily harm to another. (The continuing debate over abortion tests the limits of the latter clause.) Increasingly in our times, one’s view of the universe cannot be protected if it causes anyone mental pain, either. This could seem like no transcendence at all. Badger contributes to contemporary discussions of liberalism by proposing a reason why liberalism should not progress too far from of its Lockean roots. While trying to twist free of the fundamental tension, recent liberalism actually pivots back and forth within a formal arrangement designed to maintain the tension (172). Dissatisfied with this formal arrangement, recent liberalism pushes for “equality as a norm (as opposed to equality as an observation or postulate)” (171-73). Another of its goals, the eradication of suffering, cannot be the highest human good. Striving to eliminate suffering that comes from tyranny is fine, but “to strive to eliminate the suffering that comes from erōs and the gods is a symptom of a lack of understanding” (165, 191). Such goals begin to overwhelm the transcendence side of the polarity in favor of the material security side. In Lockean liberalism, the drive for transcendence is privatized: do it yourself. Freedom of religion contrasts with both Christian imposition and with the institutionalized civil religions of Bacon and Hobbes. Lockean liberalism does not even promise �REVIEW | LUDWIG 85 justice but rather the pursuit of and struggle for justice (157, 160). Badger appears to believe there is something naturally private about transcendence anyway: heroic principles “have their source in merely private relations” (99). The hero (or budding hero) Neoptolemus, for example, has a nature “unalloyed with politics,” and it is this nature that hates the deceit in Odysseus’s plan (105). “Patriotism is an effect of conditioning,” whereas “heroic honor may be natural” (111). This seems odd, because if honor is natural, it comes into its own only in community. Badger relegates saving the Greek “city” besieging Troy to the bodily-security side of the polarity. But surely the Greeks are there for glory, not security. And glory is a transcendent goal, isn’t it? The Greeks could always have given up that goal and sailed away, if they wished to spare their bodies. Perhaps Badger would say glory is possible only, or mainly, for those who “fight in the front ranks” to ensure bodily security for weaker members of a community (Iliad, 12.310-328). Certainly the Trojan War begins due to considerations of honor that are ultimately traceable to household integrity and security. Liberalism offers some real protections for the latter while walking everyone back from, or talking everyone down from, our high dudgeon about the former. Badger wrestles with Locke’s notion of self-ownership, but finds firmer grounding in Locke’s Hobbesian right to life, which he extends to the right to pursue happiness (154). If we cannot do otherwise than strive for life and pursue happiness, then we must have natural rights to do both. The right to practice religion freely follows from the natural right to pursue happiness (155). Hence transcendence is built in. A regime that sets itself against this natural right is irrational and will be unstable. Badger concedes that the liberal regime is morally and spiritually empty— this is its strength. Lockean liberalism must limit itself to the procedural; it can never make a judgment about what is good. When it comes to the most intriguing comparison between Sophocles’s Odysseus and Locke, Badger recurs to his reading of Locke’s transcendent “I” that owns its “me.” The “I” is the same for all men, whereas the “me” is “the contents of consciousness,” the embedded, social, cultural, and bodily self (162, 149- �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 54). Odysseus, too, unites the two drives on the basis of a recognition of a transcendent self—a self that includes all men (162; cf. 182). Sometimes this view of the self seems an ethical direction in which liberalism could go, elsewhere it seems constitutive for liberalism (194, 198). Perhaps the biggest difficulty with this vision of liberalism is that proponents of “transcendence” see it as more than just transcendence. They think their own version not only transcends everyone else’s, but is also true. Does not Locke or Odysseus have to disagree? Could they ever recognize, or could a society built on their assumptions recognize, the one true transcendence when it arrives? Or would it, too, have to join the cacophony of competing visions? The implication that all transcendences are created equal is unsatisfying. Asserting transcendent values is difficult to do in a vacuum. A community is required. The erotic and the divine “are protected and revered to the degree that they do not become public” (167). Could this lockbox not be a kind of slow strangulation, placing the erotic and the religious in the path to eventual extinction? Religion in the United States indeed flourishes compared to the established churches of European nations. But individualism trickles down from the larger society to the smaller communities. One pressing problem is that, increasingly, the larger society believes it has an interest in and a right to impose congruence between itself and each club or bowling league: the Jaycees have to accept women members. Badger gives liberals a reason to think twice about enforcing this congruence, at least through legal channels: many smaller groups within the liberal state have their own views of the transcendent. Even when their views seem ugly, forcing them into congruence effectually reduces Locke to Bacon, or reduces liberal democracy to the rational-authoritarian state. One might add that the new breed of laws that delve too deeply into what people think (thought-crime) are equally illiberal. Making hate a crime, as though it added anything to the murder or harm to body or property intended in its name, interferes with the transcendent side of the polarity. Badger’s fear is that tragedy may go the way of the gargoyle, may be relegated to a status no higher than that of a lawn orna- �REVIEW | LUDWIG 87 ment. To evaluate post-tragic visions that he regards as post-liberal too, Badger closely examines the thought of Karl Jaspers. The loss of tragedy would ultimately be the loss of humanity. In the shorter term, tragedy can help our politics both abroad and domestically. Recognizing the degree to which China or Iran is Creonic or Antigonean might enable us to reject their alternatives with less righteous indignation (195). At home, a similar humanity might inform our visions of our own, and the opposite, political party. Badger says little about the market basis of liberalism, or about the shocking triumph of capitalism over all other economic alternatives. All progressives now espouse market mechanisms even in their recommendations for developing countries. Since Locke’s notion of property is so all-inclusive, one wonders whether the drive for transcendence might not also find expression in some forms of acquisition. Jonathan Badger has opened up a window on Sophocles through which we can see the tragedies as both deep and relevant. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Trentina, Allison Sachs, Joe Cornell, John F. Kalkavage, Peter Linck, Matthew Ludwig, Paul Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 56, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2015. 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ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at http://www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review ��Contents Essays & Lectures World Without Time ..............................................................1 Eva Brann Dwelling in the Land of the Confessions..........................................15 Michael Brogan “In Want of a Wife”—or a Husband—in Pride and Prejudice.........33 Susan Paalman “Please, Don’t Eat the Swans”: My Revolution in Romania............56 Louis Petrich Dante’s Beatrice: Between Idolatry and Iconoclasm........................84 Gabriel Pihas Poem THE EXTINCTION of SPECIES...................................................117 Marlene Benjamin Reviews Education and the Art of Writing Book Review of Christopher Bruell’s Aristotle as Teacher: His Introduction to a Philosophic Science ..............................120 James Carey Book Review of Eva Brann’s Unwilling: An Inquiry into the Rise of the Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It ............................149 Matthew Linck ��ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 1 World Without Time Eva Brann Here is a theory of time. It is neither new to me nor new in the world. I formulated it for publication in 1999* and had it formulated for me, so I could make it my own, sixteen hundred years ago by Augustine in 399 C.E. and some three quarters of a millennium before that by Aristotle, post-335 B.C.E. There is a certain advantage in revisiting old thoughts, although they have become second-nature and have lost the footloose feel of thinking that is yet on the path to discovery: these long-held notions have also sloughed off some of their complexity and are more amenable to summary. The theory is, first, that time is not a being, a thing, or a substance in the world, nor does it operate as a power, a force, or a destiny in our life. It has no external existence, and all speech attributing reality to it is unwittingly metonymic, meaning that the word “time” is used by a sort of obtuse poetry for processes that have better names of their own. The theory has a second element, namely that it would be a better world, and we would be better off, if more people thought that time was unreal and spoke accordingly. Before closing in on the gist of this theory, I want to acknowledge an intelligent resistance that a listener might feel arising within. If you have a notion proposed to you as true and are immediately told that it is also beneficial, shouldn’t you rear up and resist as a matter of principle? Don’t we keep ourselves honest by tinting our glasses grey? Isn’t a truth that comes Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the Symposium on Time held at Belmont University in Nashville, TN on September 23, 2014. *Eva Brann, What Then Is Time? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW embellished with utility very suspect? Of course it is, because it might be nothing but a Pollyannaish optimism, a self-pleasing thoughtless this-is-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds” optimism. What I’ll be proposing has behind it a sense that demands more reflection. I call it “ontological optimism.” Ontology is the account of being. The very notion of Being requires a complement: Appearance. The true Being of which true philosophers strive to give an account comes to our attention as opposed to what only appears or is merely incidental. The two greatest philosophers of classical antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, were ontological optimists. They do not in the least think that everything within this world is always for the best, but they do think that its sources, be they at work from beyond or within, are wonderfully good and therefore attractive to our knowledgehungry souls. I’ve briefly set out a reason for not foreclosing on a proposed truth because it is beneficial to believe it – although in the later history of inquiry into the nature of things there will be those who make pessimism – a sense that things are as bad as possible – the test of truthfulness, because the way things are is in truth ugly. To deal with this split in the human sense of the world requires a lifetime’s conversation. For now, I’ll posit a guarded optimism. There is a second misgiving that a canny listener might have: Does every truth want announcing? Shouldn’t prudent people suppress some parts of what they feel compelled to believe? I’ll give an example with major consequences. Our Declaration of Independence claims that “all men are created equal” in respect to “certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Just read Lincoln’s speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857) for his sense – a true believer’s sense – of the vulnerability of the document’s basic assertions, assumptions that have by now become even more questionable for us. For the Declaration grounds our equality in a common divine Creation, and that is no longer a faith to be taken for granted. Is the questionableness of the ultimate equality of human beings, then, a proper subject for public inquiry? Not on your life – not in principle and surely even less in fact. Some topics have to be left �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 alone if we’re to live together. When you hear some of my claims about time you might wonder if time isn’t such a topic. Of course, I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek, precisely because I think that a public reflection on the reality of time might lead to a revision of some current mantras which seem to me humanly deleterious, whereas the doctrine of equality seems to me humanly beneficial. And also, in all candor, because the kind of ontological reflection I mean to put before you is in fact very unlikely to be of major consequence to the world – though I share with all speakers at academic symposia a secret desire to be dangerous. So I’ll barge on, telling first what time is not, and then what it is insofar as it is anything, and finally why an affirmation of its unreality, of a world without time, is advantageous to life. First, What time is not: Look into the world and try to detect time. Our environment is full of time-telling, but the thing told is never in evidence. David Hume’s consequence-laden observation was that we never actually see a cause, only a constant conjunction of events. So also with time: We never observe it, only changes in space. Time is told either by location in space or by counting in . . . what? Wouldn’t the natural completion of that phrase be “counting in time?” That’s circular, to be sure, though in fundamental thinking circularities are often revealing, because they display ultimate involvements. In this case how we catch something bears on what it is. Second, then, What time is: Basically time-instruments are in the analogue mode. Timaeus, in the Platonic dialogue named after him, says that what we call time is “a certain movable image of eternity . . . an eternal image going according to number” (37d ff.). Time is an “image of,” or is analogous to, eternity because it is everlasting and has neither beginning nor end. It is a mere image because it appears as change, and so it doesn’t achieve the undifferentiated nowness of eternity; it is movable as traversing circular distances. Its generating and telling instruments are the visible heavenly bodies. In other words, the heavens both are and tell the time of the world; they are both cosmic time that goes on forever and a heavenly clock that needs no rewinding. The �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW watches most of us wear on our wrists are in turn made in the heavens’ image; they are analogues of the circular motion of the sun (as it appears to us) or of the earth (as Copernican theory persuades us). Whether the time-piece is cosmic or miniscule, it tells time by an indicator, sometimes a heavenly body, sometimes “a hand” moving over a portion of a circle’s circumference. So even a little ladies’ watch is an analogue of the cosmos. There are also in our day digital time-pieces that involve counting and will open a can of worms. I will speak of them later. One difference between analogue and digital clocks comes across in a preference for the round watchface as expressed by a friend of mine who said: “I want to know what time it is, but I also like to see what time it isn’t.” Analogue watches tell time in terms of the everlasting revolutions of the heavens together with the conventional divisions of the human day. Aristotle picks up on the “going” of the image “according to number” – or so it seems, when we read Book 4 (chaps. 10-14) of his Physics (which contains his account of time) in juxtaposition with the Timaeus. Probably he clued it out himself. In any case, he puts motion together with number to spectacular effect – the first instance I know of in any writing of time being effectively undone as a something. He doesn’t say: “I’m first; this is a conceptual revolution.” He would much rather make his thinking persuasive by presenting it as a tweaking of thoughtful predecessors. Yet, in brief, he has discovered that time is incidental to change. And since he thinks that all change is at bottom locomotion (chap. 7.7), this means that time is attendant on motion from place to place. Moreover, this motion is numerable. For although it is continuous, it is divisible into even measures at any of the points of the trajectory of a mobile object. Every motion, of course, implies a moving object which generates, one might say, a path, whose diagram is an open or closed orbital trajectory. Then time is the counted collection of all the measured linear units: 12 (EST), for example, is the counted number of dial-measures in which the sun reaches high noon, the zenith of its orbit, from a fixed starting point opposite. Or 13 (years) is the number of the sun’s yearly circuits on the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 ecliptic, the day after which a young Jew is said to be a man. For motion to be thus countable, it needs to have a recognizable “before and after”: here before, here now, here thereafter. Thus Aristotle defines time in this way: “Time is the number of motion with respect to before and after.” Here, we might think, Aristotle has gotten himself into deep trouble. “Before and after” are, after all, primarily time-words: past and future divided by a non-time, a span-less, point-like “now.” Thus rewritten, “Time is the number of motion counted according to the progress of time” doesn’t sound very helpful. But Aristotle has a perfect defense: For him every motion that is not violently unnatural is a development of potentiality from implicitness to fulfillment. Therefore every motion – sublunar ones that begin and end and heavenly motions that never cease – every single motion has discernible phases even before time is brought in. So “before and after” can indeed be pre-temporal, as are the implicit stages of a development. But there is a more serious stumbling block, and I will make a gift of my book on time to anyone who removes it for me in Aristotle’s terms. He emphasizes that time is the counted number, not the counting number (4.2). So if I say “twelve o’clock high” I mean the twelve counted path-segments of the sun’s motion, not my counting thereof. But Aristotle is also quite clear about the fact that there can be no counted number without a counting consciousness. (Aristotle, of course, says “soul,” and so should I, though the word is at present proscribed, and “consciousness” is de rigueur, I think principally because it is from Latin and has three syllables and seems less naïve than “soul,” which is from good Old English and has but one.) So the counted motion, which is time, requires a counting soul. Here is the problem: The counting soul does not just beat with a steady pulse: one, one, one. . . . That’s what the digital watch does, thereby electronically causing a prescribed series of numbers to appear on a spatially moving dial. The soul actually recalls the pulses accumulated. Its numbering is ordinal: first, second, third. It saves bygone pulses in their order and projects future ones, and it is present, here now, at each moment of �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW counting. But if it is counted motion that is time, then the counting soul is pre-temporal. What then is the substrate of its serially ordered activity? Aristotle, in making time external and incidental, something that is found in nature only as a mere measure, has also made human counting an enigma. What name shall we give the psychic development that directs ordered, ordinal, counting? One reason why Aristotle has effectively reduced time to nothing in itself is that it is in its conceptual structure dramatically unlike its representational analogue, the linear path, the visualizable trace, of a mobile object. The time-line segment before the now, called “the past,” is gone, erased; the future time path is not yet and invisible; the now is analogous to a point which has, as Euclid says, no parts and “in” which nothing can exist. If you cast yourself into time, you’re done for; there is no time span in which to exist – though plenty of spatial extension in which to move. Here’s an interesting addendum to the Aristotelian difficulty. It is taken up and solved more than two millennia later in his own terms by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1787) – not the enigma of existence, namely, what span time’s “no-longer” and “not-yet” leave for us to be in – but time’s particular relation to counting. Recall that Kant thinks that all our experiences, whatever appears to us in an eventually apprehensible way, already comes directly formatted temporally and spatially. But this forming frame is, so to speak, amorphous and beneath awareness. It needs to be brought together (in Greek, “synthesized”) with thinking, with the understanding. Kant assigns to the imagination the mysterious work of joining intuition and understanding, distinctionless time and a determinating concept. Kant thinks that this latter is the concept of quantity, and that when intuited time is made determinate by quantity, counting is the result. The way I put it to myself is this: Time makes its appearance in consciousness by a kind of pulsing that is a now-counting: now1, now2, now3 . . . , or one, two, three. . . . This analysis seems to me true to experience. Sheer temporal awareness seems to be a kind of pure enumeration of beats – it may actually be our heart-beat felt as a pulse, the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 throbbing of our arteries following the pumping of the heart. What makes a span of time, time lived through, is having laid up that cardinal count in memory, where it becomes ordinal: first beat, second beat, third beat. Thus the mere beating turns into a first, second, third moment of remembered past. So Kant solves the problem by bringing time totally within the consciousness of a “subject,” that is, a thinking I. Time is not soul-numbered motion entering into the world from outside, but number itself arises as a conceptualizing of intuitional time within the subject. But then, so does everything within the reach of our comprehension arise within me, the subject; this elucidation of time is bought at the price of near-total subjectivity. Moreover, the deep origin of time as a form of our sensibility, though in us as subjects, is not for us as knower: The grounds of the possibility of our experiential knowledge are not within our experience. Thus one might say that for Kant, too, aboriginal time is a non-being, not a knowable something – that inferred ghost which he calls a noumenon. Third, What time is insofar as it is anything: So I’ll leap back through the ages to Augustine, who seems to me the greatest phenomenologist of time, that is, the finest observer of the internal experience we have of it, and the first analyst of its elements. That is not just my opinion. The most comprehensive and acute work on time in modernity that I know of, Husserl’s On the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1893-1917), is essentially an acknowledged elaboration of Augustine’s own answer in the Confessions to his famous phrasing of the enigma of time: “What, then, is time? If nobody asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I don’t know” (10.14). Augustine allows that we all know time as an experience, sometimes an acutely and deliciously painful one: Here’s Shakespeare, Augustine’s rival in time-consciousness: Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do till you require. �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu. (Sonnet 57) Who among us has not spent a world-without-end hour sitting by the telephone? Who is not acquainted with the swift “time’s up” of dense experience, short in felt duration, long in remembrance, or the dragging “are we done yet?” of bored disengagement, endless as a happening but miniscule in memory? Or the brute standing still of time in pain? Or the relative pace of experienced time that Rosalind describes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. (3.2, 299-302). That’s the experience described – but now to the experience explained. How does it arise? Here is Augustine’s answer, which I’ll frame as a diagram for you to envision. Imagine a horizontal line of indefinite length. It represents all the world’s simultaneous motions, its goings-on, from the stars’ revolutions to the mosquitos’ dartings. For Augustine, the Christian, the line must have a beginning, Creation, and an end, Judgment Day. In God’s omnisciently comprehensive sight it is all there at once. But human beings experience it as an extension. Imagine a second vertical line, best drawn orthogonal to the world line, and moving along with it. The moving point of crossing is an “origin.” It represents our mind, existing now, in contact with the world and borne along by its motion. So it is not really a mathematical point but a living moment in a moving world. Later writers, beguiled by Aristotle’s analogy of the temporal now to the spatial point of no extent, will see the need to call it the “specious present.” But it is not a specious – that is, pretend – present, at all, but a real psychic event, albeit a mystery. Where then in this diagram is past and future? The vertical line represents, as I said, the mind. And the mind has, as Augustine puts it, distentio – its lengthening, its existence, its longitude, we �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 might say. Diagrammatically, it extends above and below its origin, its moment of existence, its contact with the world. The part of the vertical below the moment of existence in the present world represents a build-up of memory-moments, deeper and deeper in the soul, lower and lower on the upright. Next, all the moments of memory are connectible by parallel oblique lines to the world line that the mind has traversed. If we imagine the forward motion of world and human being progressing toward the right, then the world line to the left of the origin represents motions and events left behind in the past, and each of our true memories down on the “distention” of mind connects to, projects on, a receding point to the left part of the world’s motion line. Of course, scrambled connections (crossed projections) and false memories (wandering projections) can occur. That is how we have a past; the past is a stack of nows now in our distended minds – and all one now in God’s collected mind. Likewise with the future: Think of it as all the plans and expectations, further and further away from the present, rising upward on the upper half of the mind’s line and projectible by parallel-oblique lines onto the future motions of the world. That there is in fact a past, though for us only partially and only indirectly recoverable and real only in memory, is common belief; whether there is in fact a real future and how our plans and expectations bear on it is a great theological problem – in fact, the problem of free will. But this much Augustine shows clearly and, I think, truly. He says that we must speak of “a present of bygones, a present of presences, a presence of future things” (11.2), and continues: “For some such there are in the soul, and I do not see them elsewhere. The present of things gone is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation” (11.20, 28). In my words, time is entirely the effect of memory and expectation. Insofar as time is anything, it is a so-called epiphenomenon, an idle, ineffective affect supervening on the real operations of memory and expectation. But no – “idle” is an inadequate word for our potent sense of �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW time, which is to be understood as our sense of our mind’s longitude, its present lengthening into the before and after of the now of our existence – and of course that fact underwrites, overwrites, potently affects our life. So now I can zero in on a sense of time that seems to me both spurious and deleterious. It is time not as an internal enlargement of existence but as an external being or force. Continuous time, thought of as being in the world, may be conceived as a continuous stream bearing things along, an absolutely primal, equable flow (of what? we may ask) that is unaffected by anything else in the world; this is Newton’s absolute time (Principia [1686], First Scholium). You may even hear it, as Shakespeare (once again) makes Hamlet speak of one who “only got the tune of time,” a hum conveying its “most fond and winnowed opinions” (5.2, 183). You may figure it as a linear, open-ended, unbounded mere going-on, or as a closed, everrepetitive, bounded cycle. In these metaphors, the laws of motion apply indifferently whether time is run forwards or backwards. Or you may imagine the continuous temporal substrate as directed by a forward arrow, a principle of unidirectional change or development that prohibits reversal. This sort of time is not, one might say, “when-neutral”; you might call it change in the abstract, or the substrate of embodied change. In all these forms, some sort of quasi-event or pseudo-motion is imagined as continuous. The other metaphor, the second figurative way of imagining time is, on the other hand, continual: The now, the present, continually divides the stream of time into gone-by and not-yetarrived, into past and future. Thus time breaks into a lost past and a not-yet-gained future around a continually new-event-now. This new-now nullifies the past as living; it leaves the passed-away past, so to speak, set in stone. It is, quixotically, both hard-andfast and intangible: You can’t change it – or so they say. It is indeed, often literally, set in stone; for instance, epigraphy is the discipline of deciphering inscriptions, often found on marbles. Its watchword is saxa loquuntur, “the stones speak.” But does that really mean you can’t change it? �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 For consider that these testimonials are not past, not in the past. They are in the present, and we must make of them what we can – or will. This curious circumstance, that the past is real only in the present, might be thought of as the incarnation of the memory that Augustine calls “the present of things gone.” You can see that a thoughtful consideration of the past opens a can of worms. What is memory, the storage house of time-expired presences? How invulnerable to change is the memorial past? What about that secondary, often public, memory that is built up from present testimonials of past events? What is more changeable than the past – perhaps even transformable into the present? But this can of worms is replaced by a bucket of serpents when it comes to the future. For who would doubt that except for a God-inspired prophet, no one can have the future in mind? The future, by the very meaning we attach to it, cannot provide us with any testimonials; it hasn’t happened. All we have are our hopeful or fearful expectations, dim intimations of blessings or harms to come, and uncertain conjectures, projections of our past experiences embellished with change-vectors, their rates and directions of change, and, above all, an impetenetrability made less or more pliable by our weak or resolute will. The will is the human force whose very name announces future-directedness, by means of which we take hold in our minds of the yet-to-be and try to bring it about in the world to our satisfaction. To be sure, we may make vivid pictures of the future, but closer examinations will show that they are, depending on our mood, imaginary recollections from a golden age, or over-the-top distortions of present trends. But they are not images of originals that reside over there in the future – for there’s no there there. Fourth, and finally: World without time: You can probably tell from my tone, that my desire to cancel time has much to do with the damage that can be done to us by the notion of a real future. Let me now enumerate three elements of a theory that presents time as unreal in the world, as not thing-like, not forcelike – a theory by now surely exposed as part of a program of resistance to certain ways of life. Then I will complete my talk �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW by fleshing out briefly these refusals to cooperate with “time.” So then, my three recalcitrances: (a) to the past as passed away, bygone; (b) to the present as mere passage, transition; (c) to the future as an imperative power. (a) Insofar as the past is the span of time behind us, if time is something real, those spans are really dead, and their relics are mummies, either to be carefully prepared, with ointments of honey or baths of vinegar, to live the museum life of the embalmed departed, or to be discarded upon that notorious rubbish heap of history as no longer “relevant” to our time, the present. Thus, for those of a venerating temperament, the past becomes a silent tomb near which they sit rigidly in worship. For others, whose dispositions long for change, the past is a spent force, a deadweight on their innovative energy. To neither party is the past, if it is anything, the time-proof treasury that houses all our inheritance of thought and imagination, once human memory has reluctantly let go of what is too delicate, or cheerfully chucked out what is too trashy, for prolonged life. But how the past is properly present to us is a tricky and timely subject for another day. So much can be said in a sentence: Unless we want to cut ourselves out of humanity’s will and remove ourselves as beneficiaries of its estate, we had better give up thinking of the past as having a date of expiration. (b) Those who feel the past as a march of obsolescence are in fact consigning their personal present to mere transition. For the life-principle of obsolescence is innovation, and innovation is not the heart-stopping or mind-boggling perpetual newness of an imagination-arousing work or a truth-revealing theory or a potent device. Newness is ever-fresh and invulnerable to obsolescence, because it is not a mere time-marker, a mere date-stamp, on the work of art or on the discovery of an explanation, or on the invention of a contrivance. Newness is rather inherent to these wonders insofar as they break into the ordinary course of ongoing life and enhance or redirect it. Time cannot stale its infinite variety. Innovation, on the other hand, is systematic, intentional novelty, willful newness. In the innovative mindset (this is a derogatory �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 term: fully alive people don’t have mind-sets), small novel differences often trump great solid worth. People succumb to the persuasion that “we live in a time of change,” giving to time an independent power, as if it were an accelerator that puts life in overdrive without the need of my foot on the figurative pedal – a vehicle racing through each present to the next, a car in need of a factory recall. Otherwise put: People accept that they live in “a time of . . .” and that it is prudent to “get with it,” to clue out what this time-tyrant commands and to do it – in our case, to treat each moment of life as just a bridge to the next novelty. But there is no such time-potentate. There are only people willing to go along – not, to be sure, with the non-existent times, but with what each person thinks the others think, or whither his or her option-dissipated likes weakly tend. What a humanly actual present – I am tempted to say, a time-less present – might be, what, in short, it means actually to exist, is, once again, worth a long conversation. (c) So then, finally, the future, the chief and least existent venue of real time. You all know the vocabulary of futurepossessed people. Some say: “The future is here” – really absurd speech; if it’s here it’s too late. They might have meant: Be proactive! Clue out what is coming and preempt or prevent it. The original meaning of “prevent” was “go before,” as in the Psalm 18, in which David is fearfully imagining: “The sorrows of death compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.” He means “came before me, confronted, me” (18, 5). In that sense, the anticipation of the future, in literally “foregoing” it, also “prevents” it; it forecloses the future. Human beings are surely entitled, even required, to prevent the future in the sense that by anticipating their version of it they’ll bring it about or keep it from happening – as long as they understand that they are going towards something, an “it,” that is not there to meet them. How we think about our plans makes a great difference: whether we justify our intentions as accepting, managing, and yes, serving, what is coming at us in the false, even craven, belief that there is a real future; or whether we, believing the Future (capital F) to be a false reification, a confusion between an �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW abstraction and a reality, make ourselves think now, in our present, about what is best and most desirable and also humanly possible – and then do that. And, once again, there is endlessly more to say about the future. But instead of pursuing it, I will end with this observation: Being future-recalcitrant is the very opposite of being reactionary, for the non-existence of the future – or at least our ineradicable ignorance of it – is the very condition of our practical freedom. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 15 Dwelling in the Land of the Confessions Michael Brogan It’s surprising that a lover of wisdom should lavish as much attention on the particulars of his own life as Augustine does in the Confessions. While any number of philosophers before him had sought to live by the maxim inscribed in Apollo’s temple at Delphi—gnōthi seauton, know thyself—none known to me had taken this as a directive to reflect on the contingencies of his own biography, let alone publish his thoughts on such intimate matters as a vexed relationship with his mother, a childish loathing of school, a troubled sexual history, or an enduring tendency to overindulge at the dinner table. In the Phaedo, Plato does have Socrates recount how he lost his youthful enthusiasm for the study of nature (96a-100a), but in their exclusive attention to the evolution of his philosophical orientation, these autobiographical remarks hardly compare with the astonishingly inclusive narrative of a sinner’s wandering path to God that Augustine gives us in the Confessions. Socrates, his account of his “second sailing” notwithstanding, lives out the Delphic command not by brooding over his individual history or unique identity but by enlisting dialogue partners in a collaborative search for the truth of those experiences potentially shared by us all in virtue of our common humanity. To oversimplify a bit, he’s interested not so much in who he is as in what he is, not in this individual man called Socrates but in what it means to be a human being in general. Even more pronounced is the contrast between Augustine and Plotinus, the thinker who perhaps exercised a greater influence on him than any other pagan writer. The Neoplatonist’s disregard for merely individual selfhood is memorably captured in the testimony of his disciple Porphyry, who writes that “Plotinus, Michael Brogan is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was first delivered on November 22, 2013. �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body. So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.”1 No mere quirk of temperament, this reticence is governed by Plotinus’s overriding ambition to identify completely with the incorporeal intellect in its capacity for timeless contemplation of the divine One. It’s this aspiration that motivates his refusal to share even the bare facts surrounding his origins as an embodied self. For all that he owes to the self-effacing Platonic sage, however, Augustine himself has no qualms about directing his gaze and ours to the particular circumstances and events of his unique, unrepeatable, and still-unfolding life. Quite to the contrary, he writes in the confident hope, reiterated at several key points in the Confessions, that by reflecting on that life, seeking out the narrative threads that bind it into a unity, he and his readers might be drawn ever closer to the eternal, divine truth. But how does a lover of wisdom—one, moreover, as indebted to Neoplatonism as Augustine acknowledges himself to be—arrive at a hope like this one? How is it that he comes to see his embodied, time-bound existence as no mere image to be forgotten as quickly as possible in the ascent to its divine original but as something worthy of the most serious and sustained attention? Now, one approach to the question immediately comes to mind. As an orthodox Christian believer, the author of the Confessions fully accepts the doctrine of the Word made flesh. God himself, on this account, took on all the characteristic features of human finitude: he was born of a particular woman at a particular time and place, spoke a particular language, practiced a particular religion, lived in relationship to particular human others—we could extend forever this list of “accidents” that individuate the incarnate beings that we ourselves are and that Christians believe God in Jesus became. While some of these properties and rela1. Porphyry, “On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of His Work,” in Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna (New York: Penguin, 1991), cii. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 17 tionships are undoubtedly less important than others, who are we to scorn the whole lot of them if God himself has deigned to take them on? Who are we to be “ashamed of being in the body” if the Creator of all things, of corporeal substances no less than of the spiritual, saw nothing shameful in becoming incarnate? If the humanity of Jesus Christ, indeed his very flesh and blood, is indispensable to our salvation, shouldn’t we at least have second thoughts about renouncing our own humanity, or attempting to locate it exclusively in a disembodied intellect that manages to shed the burdens of finitude? But of course these are very big “ifs”— too big, I think, for a community like ours whose conversation appeals to no higher authority than natural reason. While Augustine believes he can find in the writings of the Neoplatonists themselves the doctrine of the Word that was with God and that was God, not even he claims to apprehend the incarnation of that Word on any basis other than faith. My ambition tonight is to see how far we can go toward making sense of the intensely personal approach of the Confessions without appealing to postulates drawn from sacred doctrine. While I suspect that Augustine’s unprecedented way of applying the Delphic maxim becomes fully intelligible only against the background of his specifically Christian commitments, we might nevertheless begin to understand the peculiar strategy he employs in the Confessions by considering the deficiencies that come to light there of a philosophy conducted in a wholly impersonal key. However dazzling a glimpse it may afford of the eternal truth, Neoplatonic introspection, we shall see, fails to open out onto what Augustine calls “the way that leads not only to beholding our blessed fatherland but also to dwelling therein” (7.20.26).2 PART I Before examining their limitations, however, I want to begin by briefly considering why the “books of the Platonists” (7.9.13) 2. All Augustine quotations are from The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1960). �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW were attractive to Augustine in the first place. His study of them comes directly on the heels of his disillusionment with the Manicheism he had been espousing for the better part of a decade. Disheartened by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy he has found even among the elite members of that sect, he has also come to reject their sharply dualistic vision of good and evil as coeternal principles locked in cosmic combat. Such a view, he concludes, is irreconcilable with his dawning certainty that God must be beyond all change, corruption, or violation. Nothing can harm a divinity worthy of the name, and this means that God could have no compelling reason to engage in battle with eternal forces of darkness. In fact, such forces are no more than the figments of an overheated mythic imagination: for together with being immutable, God is by nature infinite; it makes no sense, therefore, to posit a reality that would constrain in any way his power to implement his perfectly good will. With his Manichean convictions thus in tatters, Augustine finds himself not so much freed as unmoored, drifting toward a radical skepticism that, for all its philosophical plausibility, can’t possibly quiet the clamor of his restless heart. It is in this state that he becomes newly open to the possibility of reconciling with the Catholic Christianity in which his mother attempted to raise him, an orthodox faith which, largely due to Bishop Ambrose’s brilliant preaching on the allegorical sense of the Old Testament, he has ceased to disdain as the bastion of simple-minded literalism. He realizes, for example, that our being in God’s image need not entail that he be confined to a body like ours, as the Manichees had mocked the Catholics for allegedly believing. At this stage, however, Augustine finds he can do no better than replace such anthropomorphism with a less crude but no less materialist notion of God, now imagined as a subtle body extended throughout infinite space, permeating and exceeding a created world conceived on the analogy of a sponge submerged in a vast sea (7.5.7). To think in this way, he realizes, commits him to the absurd view that an elephant, for example, must contain more of the divine presence than a sparrow, yet he remains frustratingly unable to understand God or anything else in nonmaterial terms. He writes: �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 19 “Whatever was not extended over, or diffused throughout, or compacted into, or projected up to definite measures of space, or did not or could not receive something of this kind, I thought to be completely non-existent” (7.1.2). It’s this crucial error that the books of the Platonists enable him to overcome, not simply by introducing him to an impressive theory of incorporeal being but by showing him a path leading to nothing less than a direct experience of the purely spiritual, first within his own soul and ultimately in the divine being itself. Taught to shun the external and direct his gaze inward, he eventually catches sight of what he calls the “unchangeable light” above the mind. After ascending beyond bodies and the power to perceive them and onto the soul’s rational faculty of judgment, he says that in realizing its own mutability, this reasoning power raised itself up to its own understanding. It removed its thought from the tyranny of habit, and withdrew itself from the throngs of contradictory phantasms. In this way it might find that light by which it was sprinkled, when it cried out, that beyond all doubt the immutable must be preferred to the mutable. Hence it might come to know this immutable being, for unless it could know it in some way, it could no wise have set it with certainty above the mutable. Thus in a flash of its trembling sight it came to that which is. Then indeed I clearly saw your “invisible things, understood by the things which are made” (7.17.23). Many of you will no doubt recognize the final sentence here as a citation from Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1:20). By quoting Scripture, however, Augustine does not mean to imply any essential difference between the experience he is recounting and the one described by Plotinus and his disciples. As in the writings of those philosophers, the inward turn of Confessions 7 corresponds to a movement away from absorbed attention to the particularities of the material world and toward the timeless, intellectual contemplation of the “unchangeable light” at the source of all finite things. That eternal light is one and the same for Plotinus as for Paul, for Augustine as for you or me. If our highest good is indeed to gaze upon it, it’s understandable that a �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW thinker like Plotinus would regard attending to those things that differentiate us individuals, the temporal accidents of birth and biography, as at best a distraction from our true calling. In the famous treatise known as “On Beauty,” Plotinus insists that what we ought to be doing is chipping away like sculptors at everything exterior to the eternal light within us. “Do you see yourself, abiding within yourself, in pure solitude?” he asks. Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor anything external cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space, not confined to any circumscribed form . . . ? Do you see yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself. Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft. You need a guide no longer. Strain and see.3 But what if “straining” isn’t enough? What if “remaining here” proves too difficult? For all the serene confidence that marks Plotinus’s writings, even he and his disciples sometimes seem to acknowledge the impossibility of simply willing the soul to arrive at and persist in its transcendent vision. Porphyry, for instance, claims to have had the experience just once, in his sixtyeighth year,4 and while Plotinus says that for him “it has happened often,”5 he also characterizes it as something that comes “suddenly” (exaiphnēs)6 upon a soul that is all too quickly sent back down into the comparative dullness of mere discursive reason.7 Now, I suppose it’s possible (thought personally I doubt it) that if Augustine had experienced nothing worse than this inevitable slide from nous to dianoia, from pure contemplating to the difficult labor of thinking things through, and if, moreover, he had found some way to reconcile the suddenness of the introspective vision with Plotinus’s confidence in the sufficiency of 3. Enneads 1.6.9, in The Essential Plotinus, trans. Elmer O’Brien (Indianapolis: Hackett , 1964 ), 43-44. 4. Porphyry, “On the Life of Plotinus,” cxxii. 5. Enneads 4.8.1. 6. Enneads 6.7.34. 7. Enneads 4.8.6. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 21 effort (“straining”) to bring it about, he just might have remained content with what the books of the Platonists were able teach him. But as he recounts in such compelling detail in the Confessions, his rapturous and reassuring vision of the unchangeable light is followed almost immediately by a plunge back into currents of temptation that prove to be just as irresistible as they had been before. No transformation of his life ensues, no conversion or reorientation of his misbegotten aims and ambitions follows upon the ecstatic experience that liberates his mind. “I was borne up to you by your beauty,” he confesses, “but soon I was borne down from you by my own weight, and with groaning, I plunged into the midst of lower things” (7.17.23). In other words, the tyranny of habit reasserts itself immediately, and he succumbs to old patterns of feeling and acting despite seeing them more clearly than ever as obstacles in the way of his deepest desire. The good he approves unreservedly in his mind he fails to pursue with an undivided heart; unable to do what he wants, he does the very things he hates. How depressing! Wouldn’t we like to think that even a pale approximation of a vision like the one Augustine reports would have a profound effect on the way we live our lives? Wouldn’t it be easy to love the truth and to do it if we were only certain what the truth was? But this is just the sort of comforting illusion that Augustine indulged in until his ecstatic vision deprived him of what he calls “that former excuse, in which I used to look upon myself as unable to despise the world and to serve you because knowledge of the truth was still uncertain to me” (8.5.11). Now, approaching thirty years of age, he has attained the certainty he’s long been seeking, and yet he discovers that he is just as enthralled to his old, enervating habits as he ever was. Able to see the truth, he still cannot draw near enough to bask in its radiance. If we are at all persuaded of the authenticity of his testimony—influenced, perhaps, by an uncomfortable awareness of our own failures to translate insight into action, to do the truth we know—we have reason to wonder whether any mere vision, however dazzling, can set us on the sure path to the good. Understanding alone is perhaps not enough to overturn long-settled �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW habits of self-indulgence, indolence, and despair, no matter how irrefutable the evidence becomes that these are precisely what keeps us from the happiness we seek. To use one of Augustine’s favorite images, it’s as if we can become enchained to ways of life we know to be toxic to our souls. He writes: For in truth lust is made out of a perverse will, and when lust is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity. By such links, joined one to another, as it were—for this reason I have called it a chain—a harsh bondage held me fast. A new will, which had begun within me, to wish freely to worship you and find joy in you, O God, the sole sure delight, was not yet able to overcome that prior will, grown strong with age (8.5.10). Now, we call “habits” those dispositions to feeling and action that come to be in us as a result of repetition. What we do habitually we do not because nature compels us or reason convinces us but simply because we have done likewise in similar situations time and again in the past. Here’s a trivial example. I’m in the habit of drinking a cup of coffee first thing every morning. I don’t remember making a deliberate choice to start doing this, but if ever I did, it must have been a long time ago: at this point in my life, it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that deliberate choice of any kind becomes possible for me only after I’ve had that first cup. I suppose if I were to summon my inner resources I could manage to break a chain now thousands of links long by choosing to have tea tomorrow instead. After all, it’s not my nature that determines me to drink coffee, as it is, say, the stone’s nature that causes it to fall or the fire’s that makes it rise, but merely my long-settled habit—a practice become second nature, so to speak. But might there be situations in which this is a distinction without any practical difference, occasions when second nature constrains no less than first and habit takes on the character of compulsion? For Augustine there were, and we need not have suffered from any of the conventionally recognized “addictions,” I think, to identify with his experience of habit as an iron chain �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 23 holding him back from goods he has to come to perceive with incontestable clarity. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observes that, unlike those powers that are in us by nature (e.g., sense perception), the potencies for which precede our exercise of them, the virtues of character are like physical or technical abilities in that they come to be in us only after we have been engaged in the activities associated with them (1103a25f). We become capable of courage, for example, only by repeatedly doing courageous things, meaning those things the already courageous person does, just as we become harpists by repeatedly practicing the harp under the tutelage of an accomplished player. As we grow more accustomed to being at work in them, these activities become easier for us, more pleasant, we could even say, more “natural” to us. Unfortunately, though, this is at least as true, and probably more so, of bad actions as it is of good: as Augustine knew all too well, a past defined by repeated indulgence in any kind of excess or deficiency can make a future characterized by strength of will or self-control, let alone full-fledged virtue, appear entirely out of reach. How I conduct myself today seems largely determined by what I did yesterday, even when the memory of this recent past fills me with shame and regret over having acted otherwise than I knew I should. I want to turn now to Augustine’s analysis of time to see what light it might shed on this indebtedness or even enslavement of the present to the past, and also on the shape that a rehabilitated future might ultimately take. My hope is that doing this will bring us a step closer to our goal of understanding the significance of Augustine’s autobiographical turn in the Confessions. PART II Though it would take all night (at least) to do justice to his fascinating and intricate meditation, the basic paradox of time Augustine identifies in Book 11 can be expressed in a few words. It seems, he observes, that the present is the only time that actually exists, since whatever the future is, it is not yet, and the past is no longer. Upon scrutiny, however, the present itself turns out to �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW look like nothing more than an extension-less boundary between those two nonentities, the past and the future. “It flies with such speed from the future into the past,” Augustine says, “that it cannot be extended by even a trifling amount” (11.15.20). Hemmed in as it is on both sides by nonbeing, the reality of the duration-less present itself falls under serious suspicion. Here is Augustine again: [I]f the present were always present, and would not pass into the past, it would no longer be time, but eternity. Therefore, if the present, so as to be time, must be so constituted that it passes into the past, how can we say that it is, since the cause of its being is the fact that it will cease to be? (1.14.17, emphasis added.) Thus it appears that neither the future, nor the past, nor even, now, the present has a sure hold on being: future and past are not, and the present is only in so far as it ceases to be. But Augustine is unwilling to conclude from this that time is mere illusion. Should we decide that it exists only in a secondary or derivative sense—a kind of moving image of eternity, as the Timaeus has it—it nevertheless remains too fundamental to our lived experience, and our ways of talking about that experience, simply to deny its reality altogether. The task is to try to understand what time is, if not in itself then at least as it is for us. What we can say for sure, Augustine thinks, is that the past and future depend for their being on the present; they “do not exist except as present things” (11.18.23), he says. It seems no less true, however, that the present itself cannot be apart from the past and the future, for what else could provide the present the “space” it needs to extend beyond the length-less and breadth-less instant that exists, if it exists at all, only by rushing headlong into non-being? Characteristically, Augustine looks within himself for a way beyond the impasse. It’s there, in the soul or the mind, that future and past things acquire a kind of presence (and therefore being), as correlates of the mind’s acts of expectation and memory, respectively. It’s also there that present things achieve stability by being held in attention, an act of the mind that articulates itself beyond the point-like instant by looking back to a beginning and �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 25 forward to an anticipated end. Whereas on initial reflection time had seemed to vanish into the nothingness of a not-yet-existent future, a no-longer-existent past, and a perpetually self-destructing present, its claim to at least relative being can now be redeemed so long as we’re willing to pay the price of acknowledging its dependence on the mind’s own activity. The three times, Augustine says, “are in the soul . . . the present of things past is in memory; the present of things present is in intuition; the present of things future is in expectation” (11.20.26). Taken as a whole, time can thus be described as a “distention of the mind” (distentio animi) (11.26.33), a stretching or swelling of present consciousness backward into a remembered past and forward into an anticipated future. While it’s certainly possible to distinguish memory, expectation, and intuition or attention as three separate acts of the mind, Augustine’s analysis makes clear that to do this would be to engage in a kind of abstraction. For in our lived experience of things, memory, expectation, and attention form a single, continuous whole. The mind, he says, “looks forward, it considers, it remembers, so the reality to which it looks forward passes through what it considers into what it remembers” (11.28.37). To illustrate this dynamic, he reflects on the experience of reciting a psalm he knows by heart. Once he’s formed the intention to recite and is about to carry it out, the psalm, or rather, his recitation of it, is one of the “things future,” which is to say, it exists for the mind in the mode of expectation. The ray of consciousness is pointed forward, so to speak, casting its light over the whole psalm as something to be brought out into the open as an audible presence. As the recitation proceeds, the stock of expectation decreases in proportion to memory’s increase, until, having reached his proposed end, the speaker falls silent and the psalm in its entirety exists by way of its resonance in the recollecting minds of its hearers. What happens between the beginning and the end of this process, namely, the ongoing transferal of expectation’s funds into the account of memory, corresponds to present time in its more expansive, non-instantaneous conception. The act of the �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW mind responsible for this making present Augustine variously calls “intuition” (contuitus), “attention” (attentio), and “intention” (intentio). Present consciousness, we come to understand, doesn’t just passively register a now that arises only to perish (or, more accurately, arises only by perishing); on the contrary, the attending or, better, the intending mind plays an active part in the unfolding of temporal events, as both Augustine’s heavy reliance on words with tendo—stretch out—at their root, as well as his pregnant choice of the recitation example powerfully suggest. About that recitation, Augustine writes: The life of this action of mine is distended into memory by reason of the part I have spoken and into forethought (expectatio) by reason of the part I am about to speak. But attention (attentio) is actually present and that which was to be is borne along by it so as to become past (11.28.37, emphasis added). It’s worth hearing that again: what was to be is “borne along” by attention into the past. The Latin verb here is traicitur, a passive form of traicio, which could also be rendered as “transports” or “conveys.” It combines the preposition trans—“across” or “along”—with the root verb iacio, meaning “throw,” so we might think of attention as the act of throwing an expected future into a recalled past. The sense of this would be to emphasize how time for Augustine is not merely something that we suffer but is also, perhaps even primarily, something that we ourselves do. It’s hard to know how to say this: the mind constitutes, enacts, unfolds, or perhaps lives time, in the transitive sense of an expression like “living one’s life.” But whatever verb we finally settle on, the crucial thing to grasp is that the soul itself makes an indispensable contribution to the experience or even the very being of time in shouldering an expected future and bearing it along into a recalled past. If the full significance of this activity does not come entirely to light in Augustine’s psalm example, what he says toward the end of Book 11 leaves no doubt about the ultimately moral horizon of his analysis. After describing the temporal process by which the action of reciting the psalm reaches completion, he as- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 27 serts that “[t]he same thing holds for a man’s entire life, the parts of which are all the man’s actions” (11.28.38). (In fact, the scope can be widened even further to take in all of history, the “whole age of the sons of men,” though I’ll keep our focus for now on the life of the individual.) Just as I look ahead in expectation to the psalm I am about to recite, so too do I project a practical or moral future for myself, setting about in the present on the task of converting into a happy memory what is now only an aspiration to act in accordance with my conception of the good. In this way, “that which was to be is borne along” into the past. Of course, there are many ways for our moral intentions to misfire. However completely he comes to rely on God’s grace, Augustine remains sensitive to the constant vigilance, the intense daily effort required of him if he is to fulfill his divinely reordered aims. Readers of Book 10 of the Confessions know that his baptism did not render him immune to the temptation of taking it easy, of allowing himself to be swept up by the rushing current of the merely instantaneous now instead of rising to the challenge of actively living time, that is, of anticipating a virtuous future and then undertaking the arduous task of carrying it through the present and into the past. “I am a burden to myself” (10.28.39), he writes, vividly evoking his sense of this labor, the obligation imposed on us imperfect, temporal creatures not to while away the time but to strive, with God’s help, to close the gap between what we are now and what we are called to be. The difficulty of that task, as our discussion of habit has prepared us to see, seems to be directly proportional to the distance separating what we will to become from what we have already been. In other words, the more radically the future we project for ourselves departs from the past we recall, the harder it is to bear that future successfully into the present. In the hopes of deepening our understanding of this phenomenon, let’s return once more to Augustine’s recitation example. Forming the intention to say the whole psalm from beginning to end involves calling it up to the forefront of his mind from out of what in Book 10 he had called “the great cave of memory” (10.8.13). Only because he has already learned it by heart at some point in �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the past can he now look forward to reciting it in the present. And this suggests, if the example is as paradigmatic of all temporal experience as I believe Augustine means it to be, that anticipation is itself grounded in recollection, in other words, that the projected future “borne along” by a present intention is first assembled by the soul from materials drawn from its past. Augustine makes the point more explicitly in Book 10. Within the memory, he says, I encounter myself and recall myself, and what, and when, and where I did some deed, and how I was affected when I did it. There are all those things which I remember either as experienced by me or as taken on trust from others. From that same abundant stock, also, I combine one and another of the likenesses of things, whether things actually known by experience or those believed in from those I have experienced, with things past, and from them I meditate upon future actions, events, and hopes, and all these again as though they were actually present. “I will do this or that,” I say to myself within that vast recess of my mind, filled with images, so many and so great, and this deed or that then follows (10.8.14, emphasis added). What this passage allows us to see, I think, is that temporal life, or the activity of living time, is marked by a kind of circularity. In proposing a course of action to myself, I cannot but rely upon the “abundant stock” of past experiences, either my own or those attested by others and found credible to the extent that they are consistent with my own. In other words, before the anticipated future can be borne along into the remembered past, the past must first be launched forward into the future as the indispensable material out of which the soul shapes its expectation. Now, this is not to say that in acting in the world we only ever repeat ourselves, or that the wheel of lived time rotates around a fixed point. Augustine mentions here that as he deliberates he “combine[s] . . . the likenesses of things” drawn up from memory, thereby suggesting that the soul enjoys at least some degree of creative freedom in its activity of conceiving for �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 29 itself a future as something other than an exact replica of its past. But it’s still no use pretending that a path of total novelty is ever open to us; the future is inescapably indebted to the past, expectation inevitably takes its stand on the ground of memory. It’s not hard to grasp that this poses a grave threat to the possibility of the deep and abiding transformation the young Augustine came to recognize as his only hope for happiness. For if my memory teems with images of a life fundamentally inimical to the good; if the virtuous examples of others seem too remote from my experience to be plausible or even attractive models for me; and if the claims of the philosophers to offer an escape from time and all its woes have proved too good to be true, then my desire for the happy life, no matter how firmly rooted in a clear vision of its reality and goodness, seems fated to go unfulfilled. In their essentially timeless character, transcendent moments of insight, like those Augustine attains by way of Neoplatonic introspection, are essentially cut off from memory and expectation, mere interruptions of the circuit of lived temporality. As such, they remain no more than isolated points of light, like individual stars in a vast night sky—beautiful, to be sure, but virtually powerless to illuminate the ground beneath our feet as we stumble along in search of the way that leads not only to beholding but to dwelling in the land of our desire (7.20.26; 7.21.27). Augustine opens a window onto the potentially ruinous dependence of expectation on memory in recounting a conversation he had with himself a few years before his final decision to seek baptism. Approaching the age of thirty, he looks back with chagrin at all the time that has passed since his teenage reading of Cicero’s Hortensius first set him on fire with the love of wisdom. The bitter anxieties and disappointments of those dozen years have left him more convinced than ever of the futility of a life given over to worldly ambition. His disillusionment with the rationalist pretensions of the Manichees and his deepening admiration for the philosophically sophisticated preaching of Ambrose have inclined him, as he puts it, to “fix my feet on that step where my parents placed me as a child” (6.11.18). He’s �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW going to do it, he really means it this time, he’s going to put away what he calls his “vain and empty concerns” by committing himself fully once and for all to the Catholic Church. Just not yet. “[T]ime passed,” he says, and still I delayed to be converted to the Lord . . . I loved the happy life, but I feared to find it in your abode, and I fled from it, even as I sought it. I thought that I would be too wretched, if I were kept from a woman’s arms. I did not believe that the cure for this disease lay in your mercy, for I had had no experience with that cure. I believed that continence lay within a man’s own powers, and such powers I was not conscious of within myself (6.11.20). Notice what’s holding him back. Though he has long suspected that the cares imposed by married life are for him incompatible with the spiritual freedom he desperately desires, he also knows himself well enough to realize that he lacks the strength to live without the comforts afforded by sexual intimacy. In the terms of his metaphor, he suffers from a “disease” whose symptoms he knows how to treat but whose cure, he has learned, lies completely outside his own power to effect. Whether or not we think it makes sense to diagnose as an illness his inability to commit to celibacy, with a little imagination most of us will be able relate to Augustine’s predicament here. He knows exactly what it would take for him to be happy, but bitter experience has convinced him that he’s just not up to the task. Nothing he finds in the spacious caverns of his memory allows him to envision for himself a life of genuine health, and without the means to palliate the symptoms of his disease, he fears that taking up residence in “God’s abode” would serve only to increase his misery. Thus he shrinks back from the decisive step, without, however, being able to resign himself to a future as fatalistically determined by the past as his own seems certain to be. Perhaps there is little we can reasonably say about the causes of Augustine’s ultimate escape from this desperate situation, at least if we want to keep open the possibility that it was indeed �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BROGAN 31 God’s grace that finally set him free. I think we can conclude, though, that whatever it was that finally lifted the terrible burden from his soul in that Milan garden, the experience he describes as “a peaceful light streaming into my heart” (8.12.29) would have been every bit as isolated and ineffectual as his Plotinian visions of the eternal truth turned out to be had it not become possible for him to discern the underlying continuity of his past life of unhappy wandering with the baptized future he was finally empowered to project for himself. For as his analysis of time has shown us, to the extent that the present remains divorced from the past that precedes it, it cannot but have the character of the instant that is only by ceasing to be, the point-like now that suddenly—exaiphnēs—emerges out of nothingness only to vanish again just as suddenly. From such an instant, however charged with divine presence it might be, nothing of lasting, practical significance is likely to follow—nothing more consequential, at any rate, than the sort of wistful memory and infinite, impotent yearning that threatened to consume Augustine in the wake of his disappointing experiments in Neoplatonic ascent. In concluding, then, I want to suggest that Augustine’s passionately personal reflection on the events leading up to his final conversion is intended to recall and thereby reinforce the vital links between the future opened up to him on that momentous day in Milan and even the darkest periods of his youthful estrangement from himself and from his God. Though his conversion undoubtedly marks a new beginning, even a kind of rebirth, it succeeds in doing what impersonal introspection had failed to do because Augustine is enabled to see it as the culmination of a process that had begun in him long before. The call he finally answers in deciding to seek baptism is the very same call that had never ceased resounding in his heart, even when he was desperately trying to drown it out in the frantic pursuit of sensual pleasure, emotional and intellectual titillation, and worldly success. In looking back on his past, he comes to see that in the anxiety, disappointment, and doubt that marred his life of secular striving, God himself had been calling him home: �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW You were always present to aid me, merciful in your anger, and charging with the greatest bitterness and disgust all my unlawful pleasures, so that I might seek after pleasure that was free from disgust, to the end that, when I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord, in none but you. For you fashion sorrow into a lesson to us. You smite so that you may heal. You slay us, so that we may not die apart from you (2.2.4). Augustine meditates on his past in the Confessions to learn again this lesson of sorrow, which is also, paradoxically, a lesson of great hope. From out of the caves of his memory he no longer draws up the despair-inducing confirmation of his own weakness that had paralyzed him as a young man, but the liberating assurance that God had always been with him, even in the depths of his sin. Recollections of events in which that divine presence now seems unmistakable nourish his expectations of future assistance, giving him the strength to stand firm against present temptation in the confidence that his conversion will turn out to have been the decisive event of his life, and not a mere prelude to another aborted attempt or humiliating failure to change his ways. But as his unsparing assessment of his present condition vividly demonstrates, he knows that nothing is guaranteed. To be sure, conversion to the truth for him comes as a gift, but that gift—perhaps like all gifts—is profoundly difficult for a creature with a long history of proud self-assertion to receive. Ever present is the temptation to refuse or return it in the fatal conviction, born of pride and despair, that there is no genuine good beyond what we can obtain for ourselves. The books of the Platonists did nothing to disabuse Augustine of this error. “Strain and see,” they told him, at once puffing him up by preaching the sufficiency of effort, and casting him down by showing him no more than the way to behold the blessed country when his heart’s desire was to dwell therein. The way beyond beholding is a way of humility, and Augustine’s searingly honest examination of his life is his attempt to walk it. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 33 “In Want of a Wife”—or a Husband— in Pride and Prejudice Susan Paalman “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (51) This witty opening sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is justly well known. The high minded tone of “a truth universally acknowledged” at the beginning sets up the reader for the prosaic punchline “must be in want of a wife.” The wit lies in the author’s tacit acceptance of the universality of human self interest and the power of that interest to skew what people see to fit their own desires. People take an interest in another person’s fortune, the implication seems to be, and in trying to get a piece of it for themselves, in this case through marriage. But rather than acknowledging openly this universal desire for wealth, the world seems determined to reinterpret its own greed as the fulfilling of the rich man’s need. The single man of fortune thus becomes the putative prey for some unmarried woman and her family under the guise of supplying him with that which he lacks: a wife. The general implications of the opening sentence are made particular in the rest of chapter one, which introduces us to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. The business of Mrs. Bennet’s life, we are told, is to get her five daughters married. (7) She is unrelentingly determined in this goal, in large part, as we later learn, because her daughters will inherit very little from their father, due to an entailed will. As the Bennets discuss Mr. Bingley, newly arrived in the neighborhood and the “single man” in question, it becomes clear that Mrs. Bennet cares little for whether Mr. Bingley feels Susan Paalman is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was first delivered on 17 April 2015. 1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations and page numbers are taken from Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin Books, 1996). �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW he lacks a wife, and cares much about securing him and his fortune for one of her daughters. She is not the only mother to partake in this type of self interested plotting. We are told that she and the other mothers in the neighborhood consider Bingley the “rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” (5) Bingley, single and possessing a fortune, is seen as someone else’s property himself, as the means to the end of worldly prosperity for some daughter or other. Bingley’s money is to be in large part the source of happiness for the prospective wife. Witty as the first sentence of the novel is, there is another way to read it. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (5) If we take this sentence at face value, it says that everyone understands that the single man’s life is incomplete, that once he has met his material needs, he must then be looking to meet some other kind of need, one that can only be filled by a wife. What sort of a need this might be is left unsaid. In fact, from one perspective, the rest of the novel is an exploration of what the individual lacks, and what each character is looking for in a mate. We are offered a parade of couples throughout the novel, each couple having a different basis for formation. They fare better or worse depending on the wisdom and affections of the people involved. Both the witty and the direct reading of the opening sentence fit with the tone of the novel as a whole. On the one hand, Austen relishes exposing the small-minded follies that often underlie our lofty aspirations. The humor and economy of word that begin the novel reappear on every page, often highlighting the ways in which characters deceive themselves or try to pretend they are better than they are. On the other hand, Austen gives us some deeply moving scenes, from Elizabeth’s horrified response to the knowledge that she has misjudged Darcy and Wickham both, to Mr. Bennet’s heartfelt plea to Elizabeth not to repeat his own mistake in marrying without esteem, to Darcy’s pure delight when Elizabeth finally accepts him. The wit and the seriousness succeed one another effortlessly. Perhaps, addressing the question �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 35 of what the individual lacks and what one may desire or need from a marriage requires both attitudes: both the skewering of the conceits and follies of human nature and the sincere acknowledgment of our best instincts and our need for one another. In the main couple of the story, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Bingley’s friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Austen depicts characters who come to know their own weaknesses and find strength through each other. They endure misunderstanding, miscommunication, and doubt, before finally marrying at the end of the novel. We are meant to believe that their marriage will be one of lasting happiness; one in which the needs of each are met, and met well. Furthermore, we are meant to take joy and pleasure in the reading of Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s story. But before examining Elizabeth and Darcy any further, let’s take a quick inventory of some of the other couples in the novel. The Bennets Our first view of marriage comes from the Bennets, parents to Elizabeth Bennet as well as four other girls, including Jane, Elizabeth’s older sister and confidante. The Bennets came to be married, we are told, because of Mr. Bennet’s love of Mrs. Bennet’s beauty. His desire to live in the presence of physical beauty was of the first importance to him, and he made the error as a young man of assuming that her beauty came with a good nature and a good temper. He was sadly mistaken. Once he realized his mistake, “all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown.” (198) He was left in a marriage with a foolish and irritable woman he could not respect, and she was left with a man who does not love her. Unlike many, Mr. Bennet is wise enough to avoid the many vices available to unhappy people, but takes pleasure in his books, in the countryside, and, as depicted in many scenes in the novel, by teasing his wife almost without mercy. The more amusement he derives from her gullibility and lack of understanding, the sillier she gets, until he eventually grows tired of the game and retreats to his study. The reader too is amused by their interactions; Austen writes their dialogue with �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a fine ear for the drily comic. As the novel progresses, though, it becomes clear that there is something perverse about the pleasure Mr. Bennet takes in his wife’s weakness of mind, and something frustrating about Mrs. Bennet’s complete inability to understand him. As a couple, they bring out the worst in each other. Still, they have five daughters whom both seem to care for. The Bennets have at least found themselves in a stable home with a family, something neither could have produced alone. The Collinses The first new marriage in the novel comes after Elizabeth’s closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, becomes engaged to Elizabeth’s cousin, Mr. Collins, within three days of his having proposed marriage to, and been rejected by, Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth’s shock when she learns of Charlotte’s engagement is only exceeded by her dismay at the match. Mr. Collins is a man of the cloth with a vicarage that is supported by a weathy noble woman, Lady Catherine. In some ways, he would be considered a very eligible man. Elizabeth’s rejection of him is based on his character, which is not vicious, but is marked by self serving foolishness. Mr. Collins is “not a sensible man,” (60) we are told, but a “mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self importance and humility.” (61) Austen plays up his character, detailing a number of long, pompous, and silly speeches he makes on various occasions, including during his unsuccessful proposal to Elizabeth. After suffering through and laughing at Mr. Collins and his speeches, the reader is tempted to agree with Elizabeth that for Charlotte to link herself to such a man is disgraceful. Elizabeth is convinced that Charlotte will not be happy in the marriage. (109) Charlotte, though, sees it differently. She desires “only a comfortable home,” (108) she says to Elizabeth. Charlotte is older and less attractive than Elizabeth; her options for a decent life are limited, she believes. Marriage is the “only honorable provision for well educated women of small fortune,” and Charlotte sees it as the “pleasantest preservation from want.” (106) Mr. Collins, as painfully foolish as he is, will give her sustenance and power in the world, as a man of consequence. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 37 For his part, Mr. Collins is responding mostly to duty. As a clergyman with a wealthy and aristocratic patroness, he wishes to set a good example for his flock, as well as find happiness in a mate. His rhapsodes on Lady Catherine’s virtues leave no doubt, though, that his main motive in marrying is to please his patroness. In the Collinses, we have a marriage made on social and worldly grounds: on Charlotte’s side out of her desire for financial independence and on Collins’ out of his duty to his provider. After their marriage, Elizabeth is forced to admit that both husband and wife are tolerably happy. Collins has married “one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had,” (152) she says. Charlotte is intelligent enough to blush at her husband’s foolishness at times, but knows how to manage him. We are told, “[Charlotte’s] home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.” (182) Those are ominous words, perhaps, leading the reader to imagine the time when the charms have worn off and she is left with such a husband. We can only hope Charlotte’s children will favor her more than him, and that she will find whatever companionship she desires with them. The Wickhams The marriage of Mr. George Wickham and Elizabeth’s youngest sister, Miss Lydia Bennet, comes towards the end of the novel, after a great deal of suspense. The two had run off together as an unmarried couple, and taken a lodging together in London. The crisis of the novel comes when their elopement is discovered and the Bennets are left to worry while others search out the couple and persuade them to marry. The persuasion comes in the form of money and a bought commission in the army for Wickham. Later, it is revealed that the bribe was financed by Mr. Darcy, out of several motives, including his own guilt in having covered up Wickham’s nefarious past. It is interesting that nearly everyone involved in the matter assumes, on the one hand, that Wickham and Lydia, once they run off together, must marry; and on the �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW other hand, that the marriage will not be a happy one. It was socially unacceptable for a young woman to engage in sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage, and reprehensible for a young man to seduce such a woman. Once Lydia and Wickham are assumed to have so engaged, the only course that would retain their social standing is marriage. Darcy and Elizabeth, separately, are the only ones to doubt the wisdom of having Lydia and Wickham marry. Darcy, in fact, first tries to persuade Lydia not to marry Wickham, and only works towards their marriage once Lydia convinces him that she will not leave Wickham. (268) Elizabeth, for her part, expresses grave misgivings about the match. It is clear to Elizabeth that a marriage founded upon undisciplined passion will not be a happy one. Later, the narrator confirms her misgivings by noting the disarray with which the Wickhams live their lives and the indifference to each other that soon pervades their marriage. Each of these three marriages was formed with the intention of addressing some kind of human need or desire: The Bennets’ marriage was formed out of the desire for beauty and fulfilled the need to procreate; the Collinses looked for financial stability and social standing and fulfilled social obligations; and the Wickhams married to further Lydia’s desire for importance and to facilitate socially sanctioned sex. With these marriages in mind, let us turn now to the main drama and involving Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Part I: First Encounters and First Impressions Elizabeth and Darcy do not start off as a likely couple. Their first encounter is at a neighborhood ball when Darcy, speaking to his friend Bingley within Elizabeth’s hearing, rejects Elizabeth as a dance partner, with the stinging and memorable line, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” (12) Elizabeth laughs at Darcy to her friends afterwards, repeating the story with gusto and resolving never to dance with him. Over the next few weeks, her umbrage at the insult hardens into a profound dislike based on his proud demeanor. The dislike later turns to something closer to disgust and hatred when she is told, by the charming �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 39 and attractive Mr. Wickham, that Darcy had denied Wickham his rightful inheritance from Darcy’s father, out of the ignoble motive of jealousy. Darcy, after a brief time of studying Elizabeth for the petty exercise of emphasizing her imperfections to his friends, soon begins to find her intriguing. He notices her intelligent expression, graceful and energetic figure, and playful manners. (21-22) Erotic desire has been ignited: he cannot keep his eyes off her without an effort. (63) Darcy is not a man to let his passions run away with him, though. He begins a systematic investigation into Elizabeth’s character that goes on for several weeks. He starts by listening in on her conversations with others and continues with a series of conversations with Elizabeth herself on matters that range from love poetry, to the duties of friendship, to what it means for a woman to be accomplished. Darcy, we are told, “had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.” (46) Nonetheless, Darcy does not entertain seriously the thought of marrying Elizabeth at first, because of her relatively low family connections. In the response of each to the other, we can discover something of their characters. In Elizabeth’s laughter at Darcy’s insult to her, we see the value she places on a person’s character above his worldly status, since she is by no means overawed by Darcy’s wealth and high social standing. We also, though, see her readiness to laugh at the ridiculous in people, a trait she shares with her father and one that leads her to have a sharp tongue and something of a sarcastic wit. In her concern for Wickham’s claims against Darcy, we see her spirited allegiance to justice and kindness. On the other hand, her easy willingness to believe Wickham without evidence comes from her excessive pride in her ability to read people: her initial dislike of Darcy is confirmed by Wickham’s accusations and Elizabeth never really doubts that they are true. We learn later, of course, that Wickham is a liar. In Darcy, we first see his lack of natural amiability. His refusal to dance when attending a ball and his insulting speech about Elizabeth, made to Bingley, but clearly within her hearing and just after he had caught her eye, reveal both a clumsy shyness �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and a prideful disdain for the opinions of others. In his investigation into Elizabeth’s character, though, we see the importance he places on her substance. Her looks attract him only after he notices her intelligence and liveliness. The manner and content of her conversation are what bewitch him. He is very willing to revise his initial disdainful opinion of her upon further observation. We see Darcy’s pride at work also in his refusal to consider the possibility of marrying Elizabeth because of her lack of high social connections. Darcy, as we find out later, was orphaned at the age of twenty three, and left in charge of fulfilling the Darcy family’s duties, which are substantial indeed. He takes pride in his role as the provider of livelihoods, order, and moral example to the people of Derbyshire. Darcy reveals his commitment to his family pride in a conversation with Elizabeth, early in the novel. When she comments, with tongue in cheek, that Darcy must be without any of the usual follies and nonsense that she is used to laughing at in others, Darcy responds: “Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.” [Elizabeth replied,] “Such as vanity and pride.” “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride – where there is real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.” Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile. (50) Darcy, as we see, has “made it the study of [his] life” to eradicate any weakness of character that would make him appear ridiculous in the eyes of others. His statement indicates the seriousness of his commitment to upholding the honor of the family name. It also reveals his focus on maintaining the appearance of strength in the eyes of the world. The difference between avoiding weakness of character for the sake of living a good life and avoiding it in order that one does not appear ridiculous might not sound substantial, but it is this same mistake in understanding that leads Darcy to deny that pride might be a weakness. Darcy, in pursuing strength of character for the sake of his pride, has �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 41 blinded himself to the potential pitfalls of that same pride. In his blindness, he has allowed his pride free rein, so that it has outgrown the bounds of a healthy regard for self and family and become excessive to the point that, as the narrator tells us, he “was continually giving offense,” wherever he appeared. (16) Elizabeth, with her clear sight for the folly of others, immediately sees and smiles at Darcy’s own self deception that has fostered his excessive pride. Later in that same conversation, Darcy confesses that he tends to be resentful of the faults of others, saying, “My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.” Elizabeth agrees, with perhaps too much enthusiasm, that, “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character.” Darcy responds: “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.” “And your defect is a propensity to hate everyone.” “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.” (51) Here we have, in a nutshell, Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s analysis of each others’ faults. Darcy’s self described resentful temper grates against Elizabeth’s amiability. Her severe irritation at his complacency about such a fault comes out in her hyperbole: he has a propensity to hate everyone, she says. Darcy then immediately identifies Elizabeth’s own characteristic fault: that of willfully misunderstanding people. Darcy and Elizabeth both are under the illusion that their understanding and intellect have led them to lives of rationality and virtue. Both are deceiving themselves. Darcy is committed to a path of upholding the family name, but foolishly allows his pride to bloat into a sense of superiority, telling himself that he has it under good “regulation”. Elizabeth sees his mistake clearly, but doesn’t see properly where his pride comes from. She trusts her ability to analyze people too completely, and comes to believe her own hyperbolic statement that Darcy is a hateful man, even while Darcy is falling in love with her. Darcy sees that Elizabeth �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW has misunderstood him, but completely misses the extent of her dislike for him. He seems incapable of seeing the effect his disdainful manners have on others. Their pride and their prejudice deceive both characters into forming partly true, partly false images of the other that are dependent on their partly true, partly false images of their own characters. Neither Elizabeth nor Darcy has the perspective to see clearly the extent of his or her own faults and mistakes in judgment. Because their own faults are so tied to their image of each other, the key to knowledge of their defects of character thus lies in each seeing the truth about the other. But they will never see each other more clearly without a closer acquaintance than has yet been possible. Darcy’s passion for Elizabeth provides the means for mutual revelation when he finally proposes marriage to Elizabeth. Part II: The Proposal By coincidence, on the day Darcy finally proposes, Elizabeth had just learned from Darcy’s cousin that Darcy had been the primary force for separating his friend Mr. Bingley, the single man of good fortune mentioned in the first chapter of the novel, from Elizabeth’s sister Jane, who loves Bingley. Elizabeth, who has been in some anguish over Jane’s loss of her beau, is overcome with anger and distress that Darcy could have had the temerity to separate the couple, and the coldness of heart to brag about it to his cousin. Darcy picks this unhappy moment to visit her and at last tell her plainly what he thinks of her and propose marriage. In the struggle between his commitment to his family pride and his attraction to Elizabeth, attraction has won. Pride has not been completely defeated, though. He proposes with the clear expectation that Elizabeth will accept him, and amid his protestations of love, Darcy explains also his sense of the degradation it would be for him to marry someone with such poor connections as Elizabeth. His sense of his superiority is alive and well. To Darcy’s shock, Elizabeth rejects his proposal. In the following conversation, charged with the barely controlled anger of both parties, Elizabeth articulates her dislike of Darcy. She levels two charges at him, her reasons for rejecting his offer. First, he �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 43 has been the means of separating her beloved sister Jane from the man Jane loves, Mr. Bingley. Second, Elizabeth repeats the story she had heard from Mr. Wickham, that Darcy had mistreated Wickham by withholding from him the legacy of Darcy’s father. Finally, when Darcy continues to press the matter, Elizabeth articulates her feelings, and in doing so, levels her third charge at him: “from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.” (164) Darcy, finally understanding fully her feelings towards him, can only retreat in haste. Elizabeth cannot tolerate the sort of pride that would consider another human being degraded, simply because of that person’s station in life. So far, Elizabeth has heard nothing to change her opinion that Mr. Darcy suffers from this, the “worst kind of pride.” (159) She still believes that she is right in her characterization of him and so is ignorant of her own self deception until Mr. Darcy gives her a letter, the next morning, containing all the things he could not manage to say to Elizabeth in the moment of her rejection of him the day before. It provides a defense against the charges that he improperly separated Jane and Bingley and that he mistreated Wickham. (Darcy makes no mention of the third charge Elizabeth leveled at him, of his chronic disdain for others that laid the groundwork for her dislike of him.) As Elizabeth reads the sordid truth about Wickham’s mistreatment of Darcy and his attempted seduction of Darcy’s sister, she cannot at first believe it. Eventually, after weighing the evidence, she must admit that Wickham has lied to her. “Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror oppressed her,” (173) we are told. The horror must be from learning how easily Wickham manipulated her, as well as how thoroughly she has misjudged Darcy. Her extreme reaction re- �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW veals just how wedded she is to living a virtuous life. “Till this moment I never knew myself,” (176) she cries. Though we don’t hear from the narrator about Darcy’s response to his encounter with Elizabeth and the disastrous proposal, the letter itself gives us a clue. It starts bitterly enough, but once he starts to write of Wickham, the love Darcy’s father had for him, Wickham’s profligacy, and his attempted seduction of Darcy’s sister Georgiana, the writing changes tone to become more confiding and at times almost tender. Darcy has never revealed this story to anyone who was not involved in the mess already. He shows his bedrock trust of Elizabeth’s character in giving her this explosive information, but he also shows his continuing care for her. “Here again I shall give you pain,” he writes, “to what degree only you can tell. But whatever can be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even another motive.” (169) Darcy believes that Wickham has won Elizabeth’s heart, at least to some degree. Aside from any jealousy he may feel, he really does not want her to be taken in by Wickham, as his beloved sister was, almost to her ruin, and as his father was, until the day of his death. Towards the end of the letter, he justifies Elizabeth, writing that as she knew neither he nor Wickham before, and as she has a trusting nature, it is understandable that she would believe Wickham rather than himself. Finally, Darcy ends the letter with what Elizabeth later calls “charity itself” (307): “I will only add, God bless you.” (172) Darcy, less than a day after being humiliated by Elizabeth, is already moving towards forgiveness of her for her unjust accusations. Whether he is moving towards better self-knowledge remains to be seen. For Elizabeth, once she comes to terms with the contents of the letter, she too has changed in her analysis of Darcy. She still does not approve of Darcy; he has not at all answered her third charge of his selfish disdain for others. She thinks that he cannot answer this charge, that his coldness is ingrained in his temperament, and she cannot have any affection for such a man. Still, she can no longer hate him, and can feel the compliment he has given her in his love for her. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 45 Thus, the proposal scene and the letter that follows contain a strange kind of antagonistic intimacy, as both characters reveal themselves to the other and experience the shock of encountering the truth about the other, and thus the truth about their own weaknesses and mistakes. In the context of the spectacular mismatch of their feelings for each other, they are presented with the choice of whether to hold on to their incorrect assumptions or to learn from the encounter. Darcy, does not simply discount Elizabeth’s rejection as a sign of her own smallness of mind (as another character, Mr. Collins, does earlier in the novel, when rejected by Elizabeth). Rather, he accepts it as the result of a rational woman’s account of how his character appears to her. Elizabeth, rather than disbelieve Darcy’s account of the Wickham affair in favor of continuing to believe in her judgment of Wickham and Darcy both, weighs the evidence rationally and comes to decide that Darcy must have told her the truth. Both Elizabeth and Darcy are at root honest people; the truth holds more power for them than their self-regard. Had this been the end of the novel, they would both have been better off in the increase of their own self-knowledge. In other words, the solution to the problem of how to see one’s own faults clearly, while it may require another human being to interact with, does not seem to require marriage to that person. Only, in this case at least, a botched proposal. One can imagine, under other circumstances perhaps, a philosophical friendship developing between Darcy and Elizabeth, in the way Socrates describes to Callicles in the Gorgias. As Socrates says, “the person who intends to put his soul to an adequate test, to see whether it lives rightly or not,” must have “knowledge, good will, and frankness.”2 Socrates expresses the luck he feels in having found an interlocutor in Callicles who exhibits these three qualities, since he, Socrates, thinks Callicles will help him to discover when he has hit upon something true, specifically regarding the best way of life. Though it is not clear from the dialogue whether Callicles does, in fact, 2. Donald J. Zeyl, Gorgias (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987), 58. �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW have these attributes, it makes some sense that a couple who did exhibit knowledge, good will, and frankness towards each other in the pursuit of a better way of life would be in a position to help each other. As we have seen, both Elizabeth and Darcy have shown an interest in living rightly. Both have some knowledge and have proved themselves to be frank with each other. What would remain is for each to develop good will towards the other. Such a friendship could be very productive for them. It would not require marriage, but one could do worse than to marry such a friend. One could argue that the Bennets, Collinses, and Wickhams all made worse choices than this in their own marriages. Elizabeth and Darcy do not go this route, though. In fact, it is not clear at this point in the story whether it would be possible for them to have such a relationship of knowledge, good will, and frankness with each other. In the proposal scene, at least, their frankness was blunt enough to make good will towards each other difficult to maintain. Section III: Pemberly Both Darcy and Elizabeth leave Darcy’s disastrous proposal assuming they will never see each other again. It is not too many weeks later, though, that Elizabeth finds herself vacationing with her aunt and uncle in Derbyshire, and touring Darcy’s estate of Pemberly. As they tour the house, Elizabeth is surprised to hear the housekeeper’s enthusiastic account of Darcy as sweet tempered and generous hearted since childhood. (206) Elizabeth’s firmest opinion of Darcy as cold and disdainful is rocked. “Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw anything of it,” says the servant. “To my fancy, it is only because he doesn’t rattle away like other young men.” (207) Elizabeth finds Mr. Darcy’s portrait in the gallery: “she stood before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself.” (208) This moment is a turning point for Elizabeth, as she puts herself under the regard of the painted Darcy with “earnest contemplation.” As his image on the wall smiles down at her, a smile she remembers its owner to have bestowed on her more than once, the housekeeper tells her the painting was �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 47 done at the time when his father was still alive. Elizabeth thinks more clearly about Darcy’s position as master of Pemberly. Rather than the wealth, beauty, and elegance, she thinks of the people. She realizes how much power Darcy has to give pleasure or pain to the many who are dependent upon him, and therefore how valuable the praise of one of those dependent people is. Elizabeth, with all of her spirited allegiance to justice and kindness, cannot help but admire someone who does so much good for those who depend upon him. The reminder that he was orphaned and given full responsibility of the estate at such a young age, must also give her another way to account for his previous insulting behavior. Rather than a man lacking all feeling for others, he is transformed in her mind into a young man full of feeling, but who has been given all the weight of Pemberly and the responsibilities of the family name to bear. Such a man might well fall into the error of excessive family pride. But such an error can be forgiven, and Elizabeth finally does begin to forgive Darcy his insults to her: “she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.” (208) Further surprises come as Elizabeth and her relatives happen upon Darcy himself, who has returned from town unexpectedly. Darcy now has his chance to respond, in action, to Elizabeth’s third charge against him, the charge that he is full of disdain for others. He responds well, astonishing her again and again with his civil behavior, his kind attention to her aunt and uncle, some of the lowly relatives he spoke so insultingly of in his proposal to her, and most of all, his lack of pretension towards or grievance against her, after her unfair treatment of him and rejection of his offer. Thus begins the renewal of Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s acquaintance, with friendly civility on his side, and astonishment on hers. Each character has transformed in attitude toward the other. Elizabeth’s state of mind is easier to determine, since we have the benefit of her point of view in the narrative. She has gone from hating Darcy towards the beginning of the novel to a cold kind �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of respect since receiving his letter after the proposal. His friendliness towards her at Pemberly leads to something new. “But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill that could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. Gratitude not merely for once having loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.” (220) Elizabeth’s gratitude and esteem are the beginning of affection, as the narrator tells us. (231) This feeling is explicitly distinguished from the captivation she felt for Wickham at the beginning of the novel and is marked both by rational accounts to herself of how well she and Darcy suit each other and by irrational and confused feelings of repentance and jealousy. (259) We are given less information about Darcy’s state of mind at this point. Certainly he has lost his expectation that Elizabeth will return his feelings, and much of the pride that went along with that expectation. Whatever he feels for her at this point, it is no longer opposed to his family pride, but seems to be rooted, as Elizabeth’s feelings for him are, in gratitude. Later in the novel, Darcy exclaims to Elizabeth, “What do I not owe you!” (308) referring to the lesson of humiliation she taught him by rejecting his initial marriage proposal to her. If nothing else, it seems that rather than looking down on Elizabeth and suffering the pain of his attraction to her, as he was at the beginning of the novel, he feels in her debt and is hoping for some return of his affection. This change in perspective must go along with some kind of change in how his desire for her is oriented. Esteem, forgiveness, and gratitude are different qualities than they were starting to possess before their reacquaintance at Pemberly, when their knowledge of virtue and their frankness towards each other led me to speculate about philosophical friendship. At this point in the story, their self knowledge has greatly improved, as has their good will. Their frankness suffers, however: from the time Elizabeth leaves Pemberly after news of Lydia’s scandalous elopement reaches her, until nearly the end of the novel, Elizabeth and Darcy think of each other and wonder about the other’s feel- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 49 ings, but they do not speak more than a few polite superficialities to each other. The transformation that leaves Elizabeth wanting Darcy and leaves Darcy hoping for Elizabeth somehow leaves them unable to speak to each other. Section IV: Beyond Education Let’s go back to Darcy’s comment on temperament from early in the novel. “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.” (51) We see evidence of defects that are not overcome throughout the novel: Mr. Bennet’s lack of moral energy, Mrs. Bennet’s nervousness, Mr. Collins’s servile pomposity, Mr. Wickham’s deceitful smarminess, Lydia Bennet’s imprudence. When Darcy and Elizabeth encountered the truth about their own misjudgments, it looked like an improvement for them. At least two of the characters just mentioned, however, seem to have a good level of self-knowledge. Mr. Bennet comments explicitly and with self conscious irony on his own ability to avoid facing his obligations, for instance, (249) and Mr. Wickham is portrayed as wondering how much Elizabeth has been told of his bad behavior. It looks like self-knowledge may not be sufficient to bring about self-improvement. Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s typical faults, on the other hand, are nowhere to be seen in the latter part of the novel. Elizabeth, who suffered from a too quick judgment of others in the service of her pride and of her enjoyment of laughing at human folly, does attempt to judge whether Darcy still loves her or not after she leaves Pemberly. She cannot believe that Darcy, whatever his feelings, will overcome his scorn of Lydia and his resentment of Wickham enough to engage himself to Elizabeth and join such a family. She cannot quite stop hoping that her judgment is wrong, though, especially once she hears of his involvement in Lydia’s marriage. (271-272) Her relationship (or lack of one) to Darcy has become her focus, rather than her ability to judge people. Her habits of quick decision in the service of her own pride recede in the face of her care for Darcy and her pride in him. (272) �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW It turns out that Elizabeth’s judgment is wrong in this case. Mr. Darcy does overcome his admitted resentful nature to the point that he still wants to marry Elizabeth, though he will become in the process brother-in-law to Wickham, a man he despises. Wickham’s outrageous behavior against Darcy and others is apparently no longer the central focus of Darcy’s attention. Though his opinion of Wickham has not changed, his attention is rather on how to manage Wickham’s vice in a way that will cause the least amount of trouble for Elizabeth and her family. Darcy’s transformation is complete enough that he goes to much trouble, embarrassment, and expense to find Lydia and Wickham after they elope and persuade them to marry. In other words, Elizabeth’s welfare becomes central to Darcy and his personal resentment of Wickham is beside the point. If Darcy is correct, that “not even the best education” can overcome temperamental flaws, then something else is at work in these two characters, something beyond education and more effective than self-knowledge alone. Whatever is at work, it gives them a different perspective on what is important, changing their focus away from their own concerns and towards the welfare of each other. Though it is clear to the reader that both Elizabeth and Darcy are willing to commit to a life together after Elizabeth leaves Pemberly, they are unable or unwilling speak to each other until almost the very end of the novel. It appears that even when each character has identified the person who can help him or her to live a better life they still cannot come together. Their silence towards each other regarding any issue of importance lasts for several weeks, through the drama of Lydia Bennet’s elopement and engagement to Wickham and through several visits Darcy makes to Elizabeth’s house once Lydia and Wickham are safely married and out of town. It is only broken after Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine, interferes by trying to disrupt an engagement that she had mistakenly believed was about to be formed between them. In attempting to forbid the engagement, she unwittingly gives the two reason to hope that marriage might be possible. Once hope is kindled, communication and engagement to marry soon follow. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 51 In one of the conversations they have after they are finally engaged to be married, Elizabeth asks Darcy directly why he did not speak to her when he visited her before their engagement. “Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement,” he says. “But I was embarrassed,” she replies. “And so was I.” (318) At the beginning of the novel, each character suffered from pride to the point that each thought the other was lower in some way: Elizabeth thought Darcy was devoid of proper feeling for his fellow man, and Darcy focused on Elizabeth’s socially lower and often foolish family relations. It is one thing to be playful, angry, or frank with someone who is beneath you in some way, but quite another to speak plainly to one who has humbled you, as each does to the other in the proposal scene and the following letter. The knowledge of their own faults that they gained from their angry interaction during Darcy’s proposal, taught them both that they had misjudged and injured the other. Given the desire each has for the other’s good opinion after their encounter at Pemberly, neither has the courage to risk the other’s scorn by speaking openly of his or her feelings. Only once they have some rational evidence to support their hope for the other’s regard, via Lady Catherine, do they drum up the courage to speak plainly to each other. Once they do reveal their feelings for each other, after Darcy again asks Elizabeth to marry him and she agrees, their conversation takes an interesting turn. Each of them expresses gratitude towards the other, confesses having mistreated the other in some way, and receives forgiveness. Darcy, full of self-recrimination, declares that he cannot think of his behavior in his first proposal to Elizabeth “without abhorrence.” “The recollection of . . . my manners, my expressions during the whole of it is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me.” (306) Elizabeth assures him that she has “long been most heartily ashamed” of her former words to him. Later, it is Elizabeth’s turn to admit guilt. “How you must have hated me after that evening?” (308), that is, after her rejection of his first proposal. The expression is grammatically worded as an exclamation, but ends with a question mark. Elizabeth is both expressing her conviction of Darcy’s �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW justified hatred of her, however short lived, and at the same time is asking him to reassure her, which he does. In this mutual confession and forgiveness, each accepts the other fully and the past is oriented and explained in terms of their present relationship. Once they become engaged to marry, we get a glimpse of how their relationship will continue to strengthen the virtue of each. In their final conversation of the novel, Elizabeth playfully tries to account for why it is that Darcy was ever attracted to her, and has decided that he loved her for her impertinence, her near rudeness, to him in their early acquaintance. She says, “Had you not been really amiable you would have hated me for [my impertinence]; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just.” (317) He made plain to her in his previous discussions with her that his “abhorrence” of his own behavior towards Elizabeth weighs on him. In the turn of one phrase,—“in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself”—Elizabeth has recast Darcy’s pride and disdain as an attempt at camouflage, as if he were too modest to express his true noble and generous self. In contrast with this gentle, playful manner of helping him to reconcile himself to his own past, recall her angry frankness in referring, during his first proposal to her, to his “arrogance, . . . conceit, and . . . selfish disdain.” (164) She and he both know that he was prideful to the point of offense, but now, because of their mutual acceptance, she can use her own playful manner to show him the way to forgive himself, through humor, as she has already forgiven him. Unlike her father, who teases Mrs. Bennet almost without mercy, Elizabeth is using her wit not to undercut Darcy, but to help him let go of his past mistakes. In that same conversation, their talk turns to Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine, who had so steadfastly opposed their marriage. “Shall you ever have the courage to announce to Lady Catherine what is to befall her?” asks Elizabeth. “I am more likely to want time than courage, Elizabeth. But it ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be done directly,” he replies. (318) In this exchange, Darcy gently refuses to laugh either at the prospect of Lady Catherine’s dismay over the news of their �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 53 marriage or at the possibility of him lacking the courage to give her the news. He exhibits the kind of straightforward moral goodness that Elizabeth must have seen so little of in her own parents and he draws her in to help him by asking her to hand him the paper he needs to begin. Elizabeth, so used to being the amused observer of others’ folly is now a partner in the exercise of virtue in the world. This exercise continues after their marriage, when, as we are told, they provide better society for Elizabeth’s sister Kitty, relieve some of the habitual debt that Lydia and Wickham accrue, educate Darcy’s sister in human relationships, and continue the work of improving the lot of those who depend on the residents of Pemberly. (321-323) Like the marriages of the Bennets, Collinses, and Wickhams, Darcy and Elizabeth’s marriage is formed with social and sexual union in mind. Unlike for the other marriages, though, Darcy and Elizabeth do not have a primary motivation, such as social standing or financial stability, for joining with each other. Rather, the Darcys are re-forming themselves to be better human beings through their marriage. The self-knowledge they gained after Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth has been joined by the gratitude and forgiveness felt by each and proclaimed to each other. Within this relationship of acknowledged acceptance and esteem, they are able to give each other a new view of how to live well. What started off bearing some resemblance to a philosophical friendship has turned into something else. As Socrates knew well, for a relationship of knowledge, good will, and frankness to exist, each party must be devoted to finding the truth about the question at hand. As we see depicted in Pride and Prejudice, though, (and as Socrates doubtless also knew well) people are rarely if ever fully devoted to finding out the truth on the question of how to live rightly. Pride, passion, and worldly concerns all get in the way. In the scene just described, in which Elizabeth playfully recasts Darcy’s former disdainful nature and Darcy invites Elizabeth to help him write to Lady Catherine, each provides the perspective that the other needs. Rather than frankly declare what the other ought to be thinking or doing, they demonstrate to each �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW other a different way of looking at themselves and the world, simply by being who they are. At the same time, each tacitly invites the other to join in. In the process, each gains the perspective that will allow their character defects not to disappear, but to recede into the background. The gratitude each feels and the forgiveness each gives make this relationship possible because each values the perspective of the other more than his or her own pride. Austen gives us a picture of what marriage can lead to at its best: a transformation of the self into something more and better than what is possible alone, the result of what “not even the best education” can give. Elizabeth and Darcy have this sort of marriage. The Bennets probably could not have reached this kind of intimacy and mutual acceptance, due to the degree of difference in their temperaments. They might have come closer to it, though, if Mr. Bennet had not given up on the marriage once he realized how mistaken he had been in his evaluation of Mrs. Bennet’s character. The Collinses never desired this kind of relationship: Mr. Collins is too self important to ever admit anyone else fully into his thoughts, and Mrs. Collins, Charlotte, is satisfied with managing him, in return for her social standing as his wife. Their happiness lies in her ability to manage him without rancor, and will last as long as Charlotte can continue to tolerate his foolishness with grace. The Wickhams, with their mutual inability to control their passions, never had a chance at such mutual acceptance, though they were happy for a time with the physical version of intimacy. I began this lecture by quoting the sentence that starts the novel, and considering two interpretations of it: one that rested on the witty acknowledgement of human greed and self deception and one that rested on a straightforward recognition of our need for each other, specifically with respect to marriage. Something like a synthesis of these two attitudes occurs in the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy. Elizabeth, having grown up with Mr. Bennet as her favorite parent, likes to laugh at human weakness, but has had little authoritative example in her life of straightforward moral goodness. Elizabeth benefits from her marriage in having a living example of steadfast and straightforward goodness in her life. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PAALMAN 55 Darcy doesn’t laugh at human folly: he shuns it. This became a problem for him when he himself, because of the folly of his overweening pride, treated the woman he loves with contempt, as he did in his initial proposal to Elizabeth. He cannot forgive himself for this behavior without Elizabeth’s example of teaching him to “be laughed at.” (p. 310) Wit comes in handy when a straightforward understanding of our own failings is overwhelming. Pride and Prejudice is not a pure social critique, nor a romance, nor a morality tale. It has some resemblance to all of these genres, though. As we have seen, wit and playfulness, passion, folly, reason, love of virtue, gratitude and forgiveness are all deftly woven into the story of Elizabeth and Darcy. In the process, we are given a glimpse of how one might transcend the universal faults of self interest, greed, pride, and prejudice, not by banishing or losing them, which is surely impossible, but by allowing them to lose their hold over us through intimacy with another human being who suits us; one we can love, work with, laugh at and laugh with. It is no surprise that such a possibility, presented with Austen’s consummate skill and grace, leaves the reader full of pleasure and joy. �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “Please, Don’t Eat the Swans”: My Revolution in Romania Louis Petrich Even from a simple realistic point of view, the countries we long for occupy a far larger place in our actual life, at any given moment, than the country in which we happen to be. . . . And besides, even from this point of view, of mere quantity, in our lives the days are not all equal. —Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time In late December of 1989, I attended my first Modern Language Conference in Washington, D.C. I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, taking my time trying not to be impertinent in my dissertation on Shakespeare. If I had my doubts of becoming the sort of scholar that the members of the MLA would want to make an English professor, I had even more doubts that life could be any better than I knew it as a student. The authors occupying me in Chicago I thought contained the world. I went to the MLA Conference to meet the guardians of English letters and to settle my doubts about my place in their world one way or another. I spent one free evening not with the literary scholars in the hosting hotel, but with my good friend, Mark, who possessed no knowledge of literature. As a journalist, however, he kept himself well-informed. At that time, the American invasion of Panama and the bloody revolution in Romania kept Mark busily flipping the channels of his television set to catch the latest world events. Meanwhile, during the days, I was performing a similar ritual at the conference, traversing from room to room to hear the latest Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 57 scholarly developments in my field. That evening, to bring our two worlds of interest together, I ventured to compare the overthrow of dictatorships happening before his eyes in Panama and Romania to the overthrow of ethno-phallocentrism taking place before mine in the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Mark shook his head and replied that he much preferred to see images of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife shot to death by firing squad than to hear my reports about the death of the white male author. Then he grew more serious: “Perhaps you should look for your colleagues and career where you won’t have to make things like that up.” Six months later, in June of 1990, I picked up the phone to hear Mark’s voice triumphantly announce, “You have just gotten a Fulbright Scholar Award.” This struck me as very strange, since I had not applied for one. He, however, had just before called the United States Information Agency to ask if any “Fulbrights” were presently available for someone with my credentials. The USIA told him that all positions had been competitively filled months earlier from applications duly submitted a year in advance—except one, which remained defiantly empty: a lectureship in American literature at the Alexandru I. Cuza University in Iasi, Romania, supposed to start that autumn. “But I don’t do American literature,” I protested, “I do Shakespeare. And where on earth is Iasi, anyway? Did you say ‘Romania’”? I shuddered to recall that only a week earlier the Romanian coal miners were reported by the Chicago Tribune to be storming the streets of Bucharest, chasing down students, journalists, opposition figures, and all those whose trimmed beards made them look intellectual, to club them into submission or death. Such images were very dreadful and nauseating to consider that summer as I turned my mind towards Romania and assembled my Fulbright application for quick processing. Quite unprepared for my destiny—for so this turn became—I would have to learn by trial and error whether American literature had any power to free Romanian students from the oppression of having lived their lives pinned under the weight of a rock, mined for that purpose, toppled only yesterday, but still hard and cruel in its slowly disintegrating �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW character. You can be pretty sure, reader, that I am not making these things up, which were quotidian for millions of people (who cares to remember them now?), and which, to all my present days have left a longing and a pattern. I set foot in Romania one night in September 1990, at the Otopeni International Airport in Bucharest, where I was greeted by several fatigued soldiers below our aircraft, their assault rifles pointing hospitably down at the ground. These “most fierce descendants of Rome” (an epithet still to be heard) had one arm free to beg for western cigarettes as they conducted me into the dreary terminal. The first words I spoke in Romania, to the passport control officer, sitting in his compact wooden booth lit by the standard forty watt bulb, were to inform him that I had come to teach American literature at the University of Iasi. I recoiled slightly at my own words, realizing that if he knew I possessed no credentials to teach this subject, he could have me deported as an imposter. But the controller, not understanding a syllable of English, stamped my passport perfunctorily and slid it back to me silently. I had advisedly placed a carton of Kent cigarettes where it would be the first item encountered upon opening each piece of my luggage to the customs inspectors. They played their parts perfectly, and I went on, lightened in load, to award myself to that taxi driver whose face appeared the least unshaven and sooty. He dropped me at the stately residence of the American Cultural Affairs Officer, Agatha Kuperman, an attractive, red-haired woman of Hungarian descent, whom even the Romanians (long hostile to Hungarians) considered highly. She embraced me warmly on the black street, her little white poodle in constant danger of being trodden by my uncertain feet, and then she chided me for paying the driver four dollars: “That’s a week’s salary for most Romanians, my boy.” I slept that night in the spare room of her diplomat’s mansion, listening to the barking of wild dogs that roamed the dark streets of Bucharest. Aggie briefed me the following morning at the consulate section of the U.S. Embassy, whose first floor looked like a nursery. Dozens of Romanian babies were here undergoing the lengthy process of adoption by their would-be American parents. Some, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 59 darker skinned, probable offspring of gypsies (suspected of selling them), and others, physically handicapped or distressed by their own cries, were all on offer to be wrapped in American arms, carried away in love, and saved. Aggie, who had only two minutes to put me on guard against two especial dangers I would face, seized me by the arm to describe how the Chairman of the English Department once grabbed my predecessor to draw his ear close and whisper, “You know I can crush you, Sam, I can destroy you.” He would not have the nerve to manhandle me, she explained, since he could no longer assume the backing of the Securitate (Romanian secret police). More likely, he would now try to engage me to his daughter. “I must warn you, particularly, to stay away from Romanian women.” She sensed my hesitation, and added, “They are all become whores.” Then she let me go, suitably impressed, to Iasi. Horia Holban, an English professor from the Alexandru I. Cuza University, spotted my searching flashlight on the dark platform of the train station on that rainy September evening I arrived in Iasi, a city of 265,000 people within a goodly jogging distance of Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, our better tailored, but still great enemy. Horia had been sent by the Chairman of the English Department to welcome me, just as he had welcomed my Fulbright predecessors since 1970, equipped for this purpose by being one of the ten percent of Romanians who owned a car. His windshield wipers came unhinged as he drove us to my apartment. “How can you see the road through all the murk and rain?” I asked, hoping he would pull over to fix the wipers. “I have driven this way many times before,” he replied. I made a nervous reference to Bernard Shaw, whom I had heard from my informants was his specialty. “Yes, I am the Romanian expert on Shaw,” he stated, as he continued to navigate the darkness. Then he asked me to contribute an article to a literary quarterly he had just founded, called Ethos. “This will help you to get recognition in America,” he said, evidently made aware of my unpublished status by his informants. “Perhaps I can come up with something,” I replied, conscious of the usefulness of his car. As it turned out, his quarterly went defunct after one issue because the price of printing quadrupled. His �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW car, however, he kept on running. My apartment was located on the eighth floor in a block of flats that looked, like every other block, orphaned from the earth. Nothing had changed since Horia escorted the first American lecturer to this apartment twenty years earlier. The elevator still broke down two or three times a week. “Why repair something permanently when you can employ a man full-time to fix it regularly?” he commented, as we climbed eight flights of unlit stairs with luggage. “The people steal the bulbs,” he said, “but you will memorize your steps everywhere, and then you, too, won’t need a flashlight.” My apartment comprised two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bath, and like every apartment in the Workers’ Utopia, a balcony, where the population retired to smoke and dream. “You can see for yourself that every article has been stamped and inventoried by the University,” Horia announced, as he began the tour. The same rusty trash can, missing its lid, stood under the kitchen sink. The same two plates and cracked pot occupied a cabinet, and the same pair of cutlery lay in a drawer, to serve each generation of American lecturer. My bedroom—a room with a double bed—felt forbidden but to drafts. “Most of our lecturers brought along their wives, who helped them to make this more of a home,” he said, “but I can ask the Chairman to provide you an extra blanket.” The water, he explained, as we entered the bathroom, was supposed to appear for a few hours in the mornings and evenings, hot only every other day. “But it may not always make it up to the eighth floor. They give us a bathtub so that we can always have water.” Thus I kept my bathtub filled, with a bucket nearby for flushing the toilet, and I boiled water in pots for transfer to the sink. This gave me the ritual satisfaction of reliving an early triumph of civilization—keeping clean on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. In February, the hot water did not appear for three weeks. When it finally came back, like a shooting star, the people left whatever they were doing to take quick advantage. They seemed to accept chronic deprivations and momentary windfalls as among the mysteries of life, whereas I attributed human pur- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 61 poses to them, and I talked to myself a lot in anger, pacing from room to room, hoping that the listening devices were still in operation for the Securitate to hear my accusations of evil. “A woman named Luminitsa will clean your apartment once a week,” Horia said, “paid by the university, but you can pay her more to do extra chores.” Luminitsa was a sweet and sturdy old woman, who managed to locate an ancient washing machine, missing several pieces, which she employed to make my clothes clean, but increasingly misshapen. She proved especially helpful in obtaining milk, sold to lines of people as the sun rose. (I never could abide the practice of standing in lines as if mortality did not matter, and I would have paid her to stand forever, for me.) In the winter, Luminitsa stood before my open lit oven, preferring to hold, rather than to drink the hot tea I offered her. She happened to be present the morning that the bombing of Iraq began in January of 1991, and she kept making the sign of the cross three times and mumbling prayers as she went about her lifelong, inalienable work. His tour finished, Horia handed me a roll of toilet paper, warning me that I would find this item missing from public places and only sporadically available in the shops. “So carry some around with you, eat lightly, and use the paper sparingly.” With these words and a wan smile to indicate he would have liked to be joking, the Romanian expert on Shaw bid me goodnight. I sat at the table gone crooked on the concrete floor of the living room. I felt alone, ignorant, hungry, cold, and I was beginning to sense across the table the company of failure. I thought about supplicating God, Orthodox fashion, to help me survive in this dark, backstage world deprived of props, but the Romanians had been doing that for years. I felt tired, too, and so I let my body take precedence over the soul’s fears and carry me clothed to bed, where I discovered, to my surprise, that I slid quickly into a good, long sleep. Late next morning, after bread and tea, I took a taxi to the Alexandru I. Cuza University1 to meet with the redoubtable 1. Founded in 1861, the University offered bachelor degrees and doctorates in the natural sciences, mathematics, history, philosophy, geography, economics, law, and philology. The schools of engineering, medicine, �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Chairman of my department. He looked tussled in his grey suit and tie, not formidable, not brutish, as his grey eyes, on the lookout everywhere, probed intermittently into mine. He liked to finish my sentences in perfect British English, as if to show that he knew my thoughts and how to speak them properly. He conducted me to the American reading room, where I would teach five classes a week of American literature, lasting two hours each, to first or second-year students in groups of ten to twelve. I would also supervise the growing collection of books that the Americans and British had donated or loaned to the department over the years. “You must be sure to restrict the use of the reading room to students in our department and the English teachers of Iasi,” he emphasized several times, as if this were the crux of my assignment. A cubicle adjacent to the reading room would become my little office. The Securitate used to keep equipment there to monitor the foreign teachers and students throughout the building. He gave me the key to a locked cabinet, where I would store the precious Norton Anthologies of American Literature, the television and video player, and some British and American movies on video tape. “I keep the majority of video tapes at home,” he explained, “so that you will not be tempted to loan them to people who will copy them illegally to sell.” I was often to discover that Romanian homes secretly contained little pieces of public property that made their possessors feel a little less poor, a little less equal. The Chairman then invited me to his office, where he poured us some plum brandy and began to drink. He had a story to tell me, and it would take some time and some help. He spoke of his imprisonment in the 1950’s for an anti-Soviet remark, and of the Romanian prejudice against him for being half-Hungarian. He overcame these adversities to master the English language by reading Dickens, whose linguistic varieties he knew as an expert, and Conrad, whose sociological studies of character helped him and agronomy had separate locations in the city. 20,000 students were enrolled overall, making Iasi one of the four centers of higher education in Romania, along with Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, and Timisoara. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 63 to achieve his present position. He had a twenty-three year old daughter who studied medicine and loved to speak English. He felt joy when the revolution finally came, freeing him from the harassments of the Securitate and bringing hope to everyone for reconcilement with the West. He wanted me to know that he was a decent man, whose membership in the Romanian Communist Party had been a necessary concession to his persecutors, and whose true self, finding it safe to appear only recently, should be allowed broad margins of deformity. “The worst thing about communism,” he confessed, “is that it brings out the evil in people.” He poured me some more brandy, but it spilled over my full glass, for I had not learned to drink at midday with relish. I knew to be very firm with this man, so I declared my intent to open the American reading room to the public. The Chairman straightened his back, narrowed his grey eyes, and said, “If you do that you will become my enemy. Don’t you know that even the quality of paper in there is enough to make the people steal the books!” “I would prefer not to become your enemy,” I said, “but the books and videos and magazines will be recalled by the American Embassy if you insist.” This was a bluff, but its tone of conviction succeeded, and he changed the subject by extending an invitation to dine with him and his wife and daughter some evening at his home. I accepted the invitation several months later, curious to find out if Aggie was right about him and his engaging daughter. She was, alas, right. Wisely, I was prepared to persuade them that my loneliness was not so dire as they interpreted. The American reading room had the misfortune to overlook an athletic field. The steady thuds of soccer balls and the shouts of all-weathered players made the English of my students sound as timid as the communists might have wished from the mouths of their English enemy. Once in a while, the errant ball came crashing through a window, causing my students, almost all of them women, to duck and scream, though only for a second or two. I insisted that the windows be fixed to keep the temperature of the room above freezing. Nevertheless, during the winter I had to teach in my overcoat to students shivering in theirs. They smiled at my wishful handling of the radiators each morning, like �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a witch doctor trying to summon up a ghost. At various times in the day, a crew of carpenters operated terrifically roaring power saws in their workshop directly beneath us, and the millions of powdery shavings that they generated got sucked up into air ducts that blew them right outside our apt-to-be-broken windows. Our classes then came to a halt, as a kind of reminder to everyone of the rights of real work to fill consciousness with its sound and fury. “All our priorities thus come to dust,” I thought, indulging a poetic melancholy that seemed better than this grim reality. The dimness of light in the reading room, to which I also objected, caused the students to marvel again at my notions of normalcy. “Fluorescent bulbs for the ceilings are not to be found anywhere in the country,” they said, but still I made an official, stamped request. Two weeks later, someone knocked on the reading room door, timidly stuck her head in, and seeing the students beckon, approached my side and silently produced from her apron pocket an incandescent light bulb of the once maximum forty watts. “But this is not the type I ordered!” I exclaimed. The students laughed as the poor woman made her noiseless escape, and I stared at the economical bulb, ever more grateful for those windows that let in the light and all the world outside not made to order by man. It surprised me to learn later that my remark to the cleaning woman was adopted by the students as a new motto. Henceforth, whenever life handed them another revolutionary dose of futility, they would laughingly say, “But this is not the type I ordered.” I counted this my first success as a teacher of American values, or rather, my first achievement in an impossible environment of a common ground of enlightened foolishness. I asked a student named Dana to act as my assistant in managing the reading room. Industrious, trustworthy, and book-loving, Dana put the shelves in order and maintained the old pretense of keeping up-to-date records. She was not good-looking, but I did not want beauty in a woman whose company I hoped would keep me from becoming lonely. To that end she possessed irrepressible good spirits, which had earned her the nicknames of “giggles” and “chatterbox.” She somehow got me to join her in �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 65 frequently singing the refrain from a Bob Marley song: “Woman no cry—everything’s gonna be all right.” Her colleagues generously approved of our unmusical duet, perhaps thinking that a professor from a society one hundred years ahead must know whether everything was going to be all right or not. Dana helped me to decorate the walls of the reading room with black and white photographs of British contributions to civilization and color pictures of American getaways suitable for a travel agency. The impression these created reinforced the common Romanian prejudice that the British have culture while the Americans have fun. The students all acquired a British accent, while convinced that the Americans were the ones who would acquire the world, once the Soviets were finished. Why else did the American flags that we hung on the door of the reading room keep disappearing? At first I thought that the Arab students tore them down in hatred (for this was during the first Gulf War), until several of my students shyly confessed: “We steal them for home display, to feel less lonely under the weight of liberty.” And so I obtained more flags from the U.S. Embassy to present to my thieving learners of the Queen’s English Thus did I learn to permit some ridiculous activities to occur. One man, named Serban, visited the reading room every Thursday to inspect the magazines that the Embassy saw fit to send me: Time, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair. He had a speech impediment and wore thick glasses that made him look oafish, yet he manifested the concentration of a surgeon as he turned the pages from cover to cover, pausing to copy the addresses he found for subscriptions, books, merchandise, and especially Caribbean travel destinations. Some students wanted me to inform Serban that these advertisements were not meant for someone without hard currency and a visa. But it struck me that these students were like this man in being poor and stranded. They, too, visited the American reading room and turned the pages of books not intended for them in order to find some hope and relief from the calamity of their birth. He dreamt alone over glossy and scented photo spreads, and they dreamt with me over the extravagances of poetry and plays. Besides, among the authors we read there �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW were debunkers enough and shipwrecked characters aplenty, but I shall come to our reading of them soon enough. Another frequent visitor to the reading room, Nick, age forty, had somehow earned a black belt in karate in defiance of Ceausescu’s prohibition of the martial arts. He sought books on antiquity. “Your presence here is a sign that Rome has returned to Romania at last, “ he said, “for America is the one country today like Rome, the pacifier and lawgiver of nations.” Nick named his son “Romulus” and chose his middle name to begin with “A,” so that he would identify himself with the founder of Rome and the Egyptian sun god, “RA.” By such means he sought to counteract the degrading forces that enslaved people from an early age by dictating: “You like flowers, don’t you? So dig.” The American reading room, now supplied with posters of art and travel, songs and laughter, fragrant fashion magazines, and impossible dreams, did become an exceptional place. But I did not realize how original my students must have found it until I visited a typical Romanian high school, at the invitation of an English teacher named Nicoleta. Her pupils rose in unison and saluted me in well-rehearsed English when I entered their classroom. Then they sat down on stools beside shared wooden desks whose lowness kept them hunched over all day, while the blank walls made looking to the right or left an impertinence. They questioned me about how I had spent my high school years. “Did you get paid for doing homework?” a boy asked. I paused at his sincerity, then replied that I did expect to get paid “in the long run.” They looked at Nicoleta with satisfaction, as if to say, “We told you so.” “Will jobs be available for us in America?” another boy asked. Again, I paused at this candid disclosure of their everyday despair, before answering that jobs of some kind were usually available, but getting to America would be the difficult part. They nodded their heads knowingly. They asked me for English books, and I invited them to the reading room, where they could borrow some. “Our books are still poisonous,” they said. Nicoleta showed me a textbook of English which included quotations from Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Dickens, Shaw, and other greats, each followed by Ceaus- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 67 escu’s words of interpretation. “Same ink, same font, same paper, and therefore,” she said, grimacing, “same genius.” The frontispiece to the book showed Ceausescu’s smiling portrait and his message to the pupil: To be a patriot means to spare nothing in order to carry out the policy of the Communist Party which fully corresponds to the vital interests of the whole nation. This is amply demonstrated by the economic and social development programme of the Romanian Communist Party, which derives from a philosophy governed by constant concern for the welfare of man. His message went on and on in the same pitch—all lies possessing no interest or meaning whatsoever. A physical education instructor cut short my stupefaction by inviting me to a volleyball exhibition that she had organized on the spur of the moment to honor my presence in the school. (I felt like a rock star or movie actor, fawned upon for deeds of nothing.) She put her best boys on the court, while the rest of the pupils, mostly girls, lined the perimeter of the small gym to watch the match and my reactions to it. The boys pounded the ball so hard that it flew repeatedly into the girls, who had no choice but to duck and scream. I recognized, with a kind of dismay, that my students were once those girls. I clapped anyway and thanked everyone for a fine performance, at which they all cheered and looked elated. As I was about to leave the high school, Nicoleta drew me aside to an empty room where she unburdened her soul of much worry: All my pupils know of life is that it gets worse, and all they have been told of death is that it brings no rewards or punishments. They will not work for future goods, since they believe there are none, or for the sake of work itself, since that would make them the dupes of communism. They want to be happy now, so they dream about going to America, where they believe happiness is possible. But to get to America they must have dollars, and the dollar is worth more than our Romanian lei every day. Where will all this end? Already some of them believe that they can buy their own souls. �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I tried to recall some brave words that might allay her fears, yet I was afraid to sound hypocritical, with a pocket full of dollars, backed by God and the United States, in which to trust. I thought about that Bob Marley song, whose refrain has a distinguished pedigree that includes some lines by a grumpy poet who knew a lot about souls caught between hope and despair. So I recited them to this sorrowing teacher of English, offering no interpretation, just the citation: Sin is Behovely, but All shall be well, and All manner of thing shall be well. —T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets For the present, however, my students had many reasons to duck and scream. They were not the children of glorious Rome, of whose ruins on the Black Sea they boasted, but of Nicolae Ceausescu, communist tyrant from before they were born. They attended thirty-six hours of class per week. (A gap in the schedule would teach them to skip classes and take to the streets, it was feared.) The margins had disappeared from their essays (paper was that precious) as surely as the breadth had gone from their daily lives. Five of them occupied a dormitory room that would have housed one or two in America. They put boards across their laps to serve there as desks. Bread was served them days old. They slept fitfully to the splattering of bottles tossed from dormitory windows by the disdainful foreign students, and to the fugitive laughter of Romanian girls who prostituted themselves to these students to obtain colorful African beads or Arabian scarves. No residence staff stood on call to help them; no professional counselors guided their development; no student organizations received funding to entertain them. Gypsy fortune tellers were always on hand for many dubious purposes, but their layers of colorful dress stank from going unwashed. Students marching for better conditions on the first anniversary of the revolution were jeered by envious workers for their “dissipation” and told to get back to classes. For it was considered a great honor to be accepted to the Alexandru I. Cuza University. Some students had �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 69 taken the entrance exam for English five years in a row before passing. They had worked in factories in the meantime. What could I expect students, suffering these conditions, to achieve intellectually? When I asked them the meaning of a literary passage, a few whispered to each other in Romanian about the meaninglessness of so bare a question (devoid of the familiar theoretical cues that implied the correct theoretical answer), while most stared down in their laps. Who knows what spiritual changes gradually occur from looking down all the time? I encouraged them to leap over themselves in boldness of thought, but they had no practice overcoming themselves, only their conditions. Perhaps I could get them to look up, at least, with the help of America’s most upward-looking authors, the ones who in fact had inspired me to study literature for a living. Ralph Waldo Emerson would provide a logical starting point, I thought, for the reformation of the neck and spinal posture. But when I assigned them their first essay on the question, “Why trust yourself?” I received in writing an apology signed by the whole class: We are frightened because it is the first time when an American teacher hears words spoken by ourselves. This note is a kind of message we want to send to you, because it has been clearly revealed that we have different ideas about literature, America, the world, and life. We should want you to understand our low level of comprehension, concerning various aspects of these things. Please tell us again, if you don’t mind, what you want us to write. I decided at once to read Emerson aloud with them, to manifest the felt meanings of his words, before pressing them again to write what they felt. I modeled his inspiration vocally, and then I let them try to partake similarly of it. I heard in their voices, however, not the tone of empowerment, but alien sounds of discontinuity. These sounds were not, I had to admit, unrelated to Emerson’s style. Contrary to the spirit of this aphoristic sage, I condescended to offer them a similar apology about my own low level of comprehension concerning all aspects of Romanian so- �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ciety, which I found altogether different and a little frightening. Interpreting my apology in material terms, they offered me their assistance in performing the ordinary tasks of life, and I gratefully accepted the offer. Thereafter, I never lacked for help in meeting the necessities of the body. As for the soul, I made them promise never to accept in our classes the old pedagogical procedure, whereby students pretended to learn, professors pretended to teach, and neither side dared to expose the other as a fraud. “We shall dare to be true to each other,” we pledged, “taking that as our way to seek truth.” So once a week, in keeping with the promise, someone in class would summon the courage to ask me, “What do you think of us, honestly, Mr. Petrich?” And I would tell them, whatever struck me most at the time. I, in turn, would ask them what they thought of the American writers I offered them. And they, in turn, told me what struck them most about these writers, America, and me. They told me that Walt Whitman, whom I had hoped would lengthen their spines with a feeling of democratic power more pleasingly articulated than Emerson’s, reminded them of their former communist leaders, who loudly gesticulated on behalf of the people, listing their accomplishments in fields and factories, on and on and on. “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book,” I quoted from Henry Thoreau. “I am one such man,” I professed to them. Perhaps my students, in the aftermath of their revolution and by my example, would find in Walden additional incentives to loosen their ties to collective dejection. But the first chapter, “Economy,” did not overwhelm the Romanians as it once did me. They did not know what to make of an American author who had solved the problem of life by reducing it to its lowest terms and living very simply, like a Spartan. “Isn’t that how we live now, meanly and miserably?” They did, however, find much to admire in a man who lived alone and wrote such things as this: “Society is commonly too cheap. We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.” They expected the chapter called “Brute Neighbors” to develop this favorite, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 71 anti-social theme, but were disappointed to discover that in it Thoreau lauds the heroic self-sacrifices of warring red and black ants. A writer who cultivates poverty and extols the most communistic of animals made them suspicious of his American credentials and economic wisdom. Surely, I thought, Thoreau’s great essay, “Civil Disobedience,” would inspire their esteem for the power of a propertyless individual to take on the slaveholding and war-making collective. But they were not impressed with Thoreau’s leonine showdown with the bullying American state. On the contrary, they were impressed by the limits of the American state in punishing him. For upon his release after one night in jail for not paying his tax, Thoreau went “giddily to pick huckleberries…and then the State was nowhere to be seen.” A student named Alina, with silky blond hair and deep, dark eyes, pointed out that some Romanians had also spent a short time in prison for political reasons, but after their release they developed terminal cancer. I learned later that her brother was among those who thus died, and that only then was the state nowhere to be seen. “We believe they were irradiated there,” she said. “That way Romania kept fewer political prisoners in the eyes of the world.” Alina invited me to her home to meet her father, a poet, and mother, who operated a small bar. Their son also wrote poetry, which apparently had gotten him in trouble with the Party. The father read some of their poetry to me in Romanian and Alina translated, her moist eyes locked to mine for confirmation of her act of translation in me. They carried their heavy burden of love with the intoxicating help of verse and drink. On this occasion, they also had me to help, as I felt my life’s course dip into their well. How many a man, unburdened of years or grief, an easy sleeper, has let himself fall into the watery eyes of disconsolate poetry, there to see and embrace an ancient, bitter truth about life. Tragedy, as I now saw it enacted before me, would have to be given its finest American say to Alina and her colleagues, in keeping of our promise to be true to each other. Among the excerpts from approved American authors that my students had read in high school were bits of dialogue from �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. These excerpts were supposed to demonstrate, of course, the cruelties of capitalism. We read the whole play. The students were surprised to discover that the young Willy Loman could have escaped from his unnatural conditions by following his brother Ben to Alaska in search of diamonds. “People in America move and start over all the time,” I told them. “So why doesn’t Willy Loman move to Alaska and start over?” A serious silence ensued, followed by a few whispers. Then one of my quietest students from across the hated Soviet border, a Bessarabian boy of stout physique, deep intonation, and rudimentary English named Dragos, cited a song then popular in the Soviet Union. I later witnessed the patrons of a Leningrad restaurant dance triumphantly to its refrain: “Don’t be foolish America! Return to us Alaska now!” “Russians believe Alaska belong to them,” said Dragos, “because true Russians never sell Motherland.” He asked his colleagues for help with English, who explained that Alaska cannot be part of the American dream because it is geographically and culturally part of Siberia—rich in oil and minerals, very beautiful, but awfully hard and far away. “That why Stalin put Gulag there,” Dragos added. The better part of the class agreed with him: “Better to die like an American in an automobile [as Willy does] than like a Russian in the Gulag.” “So what claims of truth does tragedy have among a mobile and escapist people?” I asked. “Salesmen and their customers are mobile and escapist by definition.” I had to explain this because they did not know what salesmen and customers were. Shopkeepers in Romania, working for the State, did not care whether they sold anything, and their “customers,” having no choice, had no care over what to buy. True salesmen, I explained, offer their customers a steady supply of newer and finer objects and projects as the means to live always better than before. But death will not find it any more difficult than before to rip from the world people who secure themselves to more and more new things. So true peace and happiness are not to be found in the economic activities of the American nation—at least according to Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill (whose tragedy, The Iceman Cometh, that of a salesman, we also read)—only a kind of continual distraction �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 73 ending in death of the soul and body. “But do they let you do serious work in America, in the midst of all that buying and selling?” asked a handsome student named Constantine. “They hate people with brains or talents here. I don’t know how much longer we can hold out.” He, and others whose ambitions resembled his, had long been smugglers of their own interdicted souls. (The black market, as I came to understand, dealt not in cigarettes primarily.) “If only there were real salesmen in Romania,” said Constantine, “to distract us from wanting to jump off a cliff. For forty years we secretly depended on the West for our vision of the future. And now we are supposed to believe these playwrights that suicide is better than buying and selling?” A student named Olivia, whose candid, harmonious face made me look her way many a time, asked me if I really believed in the truth of tragedy. I evaded the question, not the face, by saying that the text, whether tragic or comic, creates conviction in itself. She had long ceased to believe the rhetoric of a professor, and she knew the power of her face to compel confessions from a man, so she asked me another question: “Why did you come to Romania, or was it just a stroke of bad luck?” My grandparents, I told her and the rest, had come to America from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth-century. They saw the Statue of Liberty upon arrival, whose picture faced us fixedly in the reading room. I did not have to explain why they had left their homelands. But as to why I had come back to live in their country, I said that the people of Bucharest, in the name of liberty, had recently toppled a seventy foot statue of Lenin, who still exists in storage, and I wanted to study him there, in safety, and to learn to blow his mass all to pieces. The students begged me to suspend the lessons of fine American tragedy. While there was still time to learn from each other, they wanted me to show them how ordinary Americans, like my own middle class, mid-western family, experienced the culture of a proud, free country. Movies, television shows, pop music, and grocery store magazines would become, apropos of their request, subject to study and discussion in class. This approach felt like an abomination to a reader of the great books from the Uni- �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW versity of Chicago, but I owed it to them to give the most popular products of American culture a showing and hearing. They were part of the truth. So to this stage of our learning, I let enter our presence, comedy—not of the literary kind. I showed to public audiences in the reading room John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in The Blues Brothers. This movie contains the longest car chases on record through the streets of Chicago and the nine, acne-faced, marching Nazis of the Village of Skokie (where I grew up). The audience enjoyed the leaps of dance and musical soul-power, but wondered aloud whether evil could be laughed and sung away. My first real job, I explained, was with the traffic engineering department of the Village. It was my task to help devise a traffic plan that would allow those Nazis to march on certain public streets, according to their First Amendment right, while minimizing civic disruption and the pain to Skokie’s many Jews and Holocaust survivors. “My own nextdoor neighbor bore a tattoo on his arm from Auschwitz,” I mentioned. “Did you support their right to march?” they asked.2 “Yes,” I answered, simply. We began a discussion about the comedian’s faith in the power of ridicule, for which exposure is required. “These young men were exposed as idiots by their very right to public access, and they quickly disappeared afterward,” I said. “Does that mean that rights and comedy go together?” someone asked. I had not thought about rights in that way before, but with premature enthusiasm, I said, “Yes, they do.” Then I added, more cautiously, “So long as the public audience has the clear-eyed intelligence to recognize the ridiculous and the strong hearts to laugh it all the way to scorn.” I showed the Romanians a “Dirty Harry” detective movie with introductory remarks by a former American cop. He was 2. Romania had been an enthusiastic ally of Hitler, at first. A serious pogrom occurred in Iasi in 1941, without German assistance. The Romanian Communist Party always insisted that the persecutions of the Jews were entirely the responsibility of the previous regime. So my students did not grow up with any kind of Holocaust study beyond the mere blaming of others. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 75 then a Fulbright Scholar doing research on the fifteenth-century Wallachian Prince, Vlad II Dracul, heroic impaler of infidel Turks.3 “Police in America are not like yours in Romania,” he said, “because we go after the bad guys—like Prince Vlad II did.” One woman asked me if I could hear the guns firing away in Chicago. I showed them Dracula in one of the modern film versions, because “this is all most Americans know about Romania.” The women in the audience felt puzzled to find Count Dracula, a vampire, portrayed as preferable to the normal men in the film as a mate. (Their puzzlement was a clue to something that I should have paid more attention to, as we shall see shortly.) The movie Reds made the audience feel uneasy by its soft treatment of Bolshevism. Corinna, one of my most sarcastic students, asked: “So is that what intelligent and hearty Americans in 1920 did with their lives—they ran off to Russia to fight for communism?” Rain Man, however, gave them back the typical Hollywood version of their beloved American dream: sexy women, fast cars, easy money, and to make them feel warm inside, love for autistic savants. The movie Glory, with its stirring depiction of the first black regiment to fight in the American Civil War, made a deep impression on the Romanians. One man thanked me in tears for showing it, saying, “You are a lucky country to win that war. The good side does not have to win, you know.” A doctor in the audience found the movie flawed because the black soldiers were “on the other side already, too much like the white soldiers.” I prodded her to say more on this subject. “The movie assumes what it is supposed to prove, that blacks and whites are equal,” she said. “Maybe they are equal, but I would like more proof.” Others in the audience agreed with her. “600,000 Americans died in the American Civil War over the question of equality,” I replied. “President Lincoln seemed to think that the magnitude of carnage in our great civil war was proof—and penance— enough.” I then summoned the courage to ask them something 3. “Dracul” means “Order of the Dragon.” Vlad II has become known to us as the vampire, “Dracula.” �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that had been nagging me for a long time. “Why do you think that 1200 dead on behalf of your own liberation is too much? Maybe, to prove that you deserve freedom, it is not enough. What does it take for slaves, black or white, to get to the other side?” Someone replied that the death toll would have been higher in Romania had the revolution not been stolen by apparatchiks. “It is a pity,” I said, “that the suspicion that adheres to former slaves requires extreme measures to be overcome.” I marveled that they agreed without reluctance to this terrible conclusion. The selections from current American television that my parents sent me appeared to my students like scenes from a distant galaxy. We watched Oprah Winfrey interview fat people who complained they were victims of size discrimination. My students memorized the patterns in Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair, so they were very discriminating themselves, and having stood for hours in milk and egg lines, they were not sympathetic to “size oppression.” I also showed them Joan Rivers interviewing the fourteen personalities of a schizophrenic, all sitting still in one chair, followed by a man who believed he was a woman but had not yet undergone the operation to make him one. “How do you feel when you look at yourself naked in the mirror?” asked Joan. “Very uneasy and distracted,” said the man. Thus did my students glimpse what ordinary Americans, my own dear family, watched on TV or at the movies to fulfill their comic destinies. Since my students wanted to know all about my native city, which I felt all too eager to show off, I decided to direct them in a comedy by David Mamet, a favorite Chicago playwright, called Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974). I chose this play because, like most people in theatre, I felt tempted to challenge (what I perceived to be) the unsatisfactory status quo in Romanian society. Though Mamet’s play is physically innocent (not even a kiss is exchanged), its language admirably fulfills the promise of the title. I hoped that the racy words, substituting for romantic and sexual action, would retain their original picturesqueness to a Romanian audience and teach them something about the powers of language. I wanted to expand for them the possibilities of their own becoming human under the new dispensation of freedom. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 77 On such grounds as the above, suitably rendered in academic jargon, I defended the merits of the play before my up-to-datemongering colleagues. “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” I said, “is about the construction of society by self-referential language, the gender-determining parameters of language, and the circulation of diverse social energies through language.” Thus I got the better portion of my colleagues to overlook the titular theme of the play, for a while. One morning the Chairman of the English Department interrupted my class, escorted me into the hall (my students left staring), and began to address me. “Louis, our university is a place for free inquiry and discussion, and I would support your efforts to do anything to these purposes, but I read the play and, well, let me say that we expected something more elevating from a person as serious as yourself. I can’t agree that this play is worth doing.” I explained my serious intentions, but he continued to address me thus: “Between men like us bedroom relations are normal to discuss, but you have women to think about and your reputation among the students, who I’m afraid might misconstrue your purposes.” I admitted that this was a concern of mine, but that the nature of theatre is self-exposure and risk, and I promised to conduct myself in a professional manner at all times. Still, he continued: “I expect that sometime in the future this play could be done here successfully, for we are not a puritanical people, but the sexual content is . . . well . . . we’ve only recently had a revolution, and we are not like Americans with sex, we prefer to keep it private.” I said that my purpose was to show people a certain comic face of America, not to recommend imitation. The play discourages that. Nonetheless, he continued: “I will not stand in your way, as you are free to do as you please on your own time, but I expected you to consult with me as Chairman. Students are hesitant to offend you, but my position authorizes me to say that this play is not appropriate for Romania at this time. Have you thought of other worthy options?” I promised that I would distribute a program preparing the audience for the content. Then they would be free not to attend or to leave at any time during the performance—for I was determined to direct the play �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW unless my actors proved unable. With that declaration firmly understood, he left me, and I returned to my anxious students to test whether or not they were ready to undertake Sexual Perversity in Chicago. I asked them first what they thought of the pornographic photos that had begun to appear on the front pages of their daily newspapers. Someone said that as a newly free society, Romania was obliged to include images of naked women in its newspapers. Others joked that this phenomena was not pornography, but a new style of photo-impressionism, since the quality of print was so poor that the female parts could be discerned only with a trained eye. The abolition of human distinctions and standards of taste under communism made me ask them next how the two sexes in Romania managed to pair off. What were the criteria of choice? They assured me that although it was very difficult to conduct a romance without the benefits of leisure and privacy, the job of mating did get done more romantically than not. The ugly uniformity of things made female beauty seem a heroic achievement, all the more alluring and satisfying to possess for oneself alone. Naturally, I asked them what they thought of the condoms appearing for the first time in stores. (Ceausescu had forbidden birth control and abortion, because it was claimed he wanted more workers.) They replied that a free people should have condoms available for purchase, but they did not think that they needed to use them as urgently as the generous donations from the West implied. Unless referring to gypsies, the students saw no reason to join the two concepts, “unwed” and “mother.” Nor did they expect to practice cohabitation before marriage. There was simply no room for shacking up, and there were no Romanian role models to exhibit all the smiling ways to sexual liberation. How, then, would I audition these students to find four who possessed the colorful vocabularies and wild imaginations necessary to impersonate sexually liberated, sophisticated, urban Americans? The Fulbright Scholar who was formerly a cop and becoming an expert on Romania’s infamous impaler, suggested that I show a pornographic film to my potential actors: whoever could provide a voice-over for the action belonged in the play. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 79 My best female candidate, Sandina, who possessed the kind of looks appropriate for motorcycles, dropped into a ten second coma upon reading the title. So I took back the script and handed it to Carmen. Always a game girl in discussion, she read the first three short scenes and stated peremptorily: “There are three scenes I cannot do.” “But there’s no doing involved, just talking,” I replied. “That’s what I meant,” she said. Roxana, whose tall boots and angularity made me offer her the part of a brittle feminist, bravely spit out the scripted words—“premature ejaculation”—as an example of the unspeakable. The play was like a gun filled with blanks to me, but to her the words were real bullets. These women seemed in tacit agreement with Plato’s notion that the consent to hear or say vulgar words creates an aptitude to witness or perform vulgar deeds. I began to feel ashamed to tamper with modesty so deeply felt. I saw that against a background of officially sponsored animality, discrete romantic love seemed the only civilizing agent left in Romania. To abandon it, even in play, was to offer universal sway to barbarism, and these women knew instinctively not to do that. Their innocence appeared a precious achievement in that corrupt and filthy world. But their unequivocal rejection of the play bothered me all the same, for what cannot be said also would not be thought, and this seemed to me a formula for the disappearance of the life of the mind. To be the virtuous allies of intellectual dullness was to put themselves in league with my chief enemies. What finally killed the production was the combination of the modesty of women with the politics of men. Mihai, my irreplaceable lead actor, withdrew from the play because his father, once an important figure in the Party, did not want him acting “decadent.” So I decided to direct the students in scenes from Othello and Romeo and Juliet instead. Shakespeare’s elevated poetry and aspiring thoughts made even the most prurient and immoral sentiments seem highly delectable to the students, the Chairman, my colleagues, and the public. Of all the writers we studied, the students liked Tennessee Williams the best. Like Shakespeare, he is poetic with his perversities. Moreover, they easily recognized in him their own in- �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW herited sense of defeat, along with a perilous attraction to the victors. I gave them a brief account of Williams’s life, which included the fact of his homosexuality. This caught their attention. “We were taught that homosexuals sprung up in the decadent West, like weeds, but that they did not exist in socialist Romania. Of course we don’t believe much of anything we were taught.” They were amazed to read Broadway plays written by Williams forty years earlier that were sympathetic to homosexuality, fetishism, masturbation, and rape, when only a year ago a Romanian author would have been put in prison for writing one such play. We read A Streetcar Named Desire and watched the movie version starring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. Some women let themselves go in appreciation of Brando’s naked, sweaty torso: “Would that someone with arms like his might carry us away, sickness and all, master of this thing called ‘life.’” Most were disgusted by Stanley’s crudeness, for in Romania men still greeted women with a bow and a kiss on the hand. “Why couldn’t Stella have married both a true gentleman and a one-hundred percent American?” they asked. I tried to explain that these were incompatible categories to Williams. He believed in the predestined defeat in America of poetry, refinement, and old world breeding by the forces of prosaic realism, animal strength, and new world technology. On this belief his tragicomic vision depended. Still, some of the women thought they had found their ideal man, a combination of old and new world types, in Jim O’Conner, the Gentleman Caller from The Glass Menagerie. He is the long awaited “something,” says Williams, which defeated people must hope for to go on living. At the same time, and in contrast with his fantastical role, he is “an emissary from the world of reality” who brings news of modernity to Laura Wingfield, crippled and deeply secluded in her past. Let me remind the reader of what happens to Jim and Laura, for as my year in Romania drew to a close, and the students and I drew ever closer to each other, I saw in the relationship of these characters a true image of our own. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 81 Jim approaches Laura carrying a lit candelabrum and wine, superficially romantic but quite unaware of being the “climax of her secret life.” She has always loved her image of him, and now she faces the insupportable reality. Jim wonders what Laura has done over the years, not knowing the depth of forlorn hope that could keep her occupied waiting for him. Her problem, he concludes, is an “inferiority complex,” and to effect her cure he offers himself as a model. This believer in self-improvement, determined to find some way to get everyone looking up and going somewhere up, prepares Laura for the future of capitalist democracy by teaching her to dance. In the process they topple and break her favorite ornament, a unicorn, but for the moment she accepts the loss as a “blessing in disguise,” a sign of her return to normalcy. Then he kisses her on the lips to demonstrate that her attractive powers are real. This startles him. He realizes that to save Laura from her inferiority complex, he would have to husband her away from her present circumstances. (For the paranoia surrounding her nostalgic mother has sealed Laura inside herself.) Luckily, he is already engaged, so he escapes the love he evoked in her and the new life he promised. She gives him the hornless unicorn as a symbolic souvenir. It is the consequence of his clumsy efforts—like those of a tourist—to separate her unique attractions from her hobbling infirmity. Several of my Romanian “Lauras,” after a year of intense conversations about “literature, America, the world, and life,” bravely took to telling me how exceptional a man I was to prefer their imperfect English to the pleading beauty of their perfectly painted eyes. I owed them a return for the love they kept for me all those years, and in final desperation they let me know how much. Christiana, a woman of half-looks and whispers in class, invited me to a student party at her sister’s apartment in May. I attended and danced with her and the other women, felt her cling to me, let myself enjoy their uplifted hearts differently, and smelt the residue of a thousand cigarettes in the proximity of their lips. The next day I discovered in a letter that I was Christiana’s only hope of happiness: I feel more and more that I can’t breathe. Anytime a “decree” can appear in order to destroy, to put off my life. �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Sometimes, when I free myself from this asphyxia, I understand that I have the right to live and to experience the mystery—the first source of superiority—that I can breathe stealthily a kind of hidden air. You breathed that air into me. A bird who flies smack into concrete whenever she tries to rise—that is me, I fear, when you leave. Others are just under vain illusions, for there’s no laughter at the end of our slope, but stupid death, and there’s no triumph and no understanding. All is weird, but also dull and senseless here. It is the season of Goths and lunatics, that’s all. I ask you for help as I shout my love without fear or shame, my soul defeated and caressed. I gave Christiana some of my books when I left for home that summer. She was supposed to become a teacher of English, but I do not know if that came to pass, or if she is doing well, yet. She has preferred only my books to keep the contact, I may suppose. A book, as we all should say of the good ones, is a fine thing to keep in the space between two people who are inclining to be engaged as one. A book makes it possible to cross that space and that time in which two people diverge along their courses of life. I always prefer to keep a good book between us. Stopping in Vienna on my way back to America, I visited the Schönbrunn Palace, once the summer residence of the Hapsburg monarchs. While walking among the splendid gardens and fountains, I encountered a bold sign that read: “Please, Don’t Eat the Swans.” The words were in Romanian. I remembered the previous summer, as I prepared my Fulbright application while reading news reports about the Romanian miners sacking the capital. “Yes,” I thought, “I did have to drag a cane behind me on the streets at night to puzzle the abandoned dogs who were forming packs again, learning to act like wolves.” But that is not the main thing I felt as I beheld those swans and the sign. That year I spent in Iasi felt even then like an oasis in my mind, and I have often gone there since to refresh myself. There, in my mind’s eye, I wonder long at how strangely happy I was to be teaching so awkwardly, freely, bravely even, with the wolves still close at heel and all my familiar props far distant, to students just learning to �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH 83 fly, who let me see into the beauty of their fledgling souls, and who made me see into mine. My old friend, Mark, the newsman to whom, in a way, I owe my oasis, is trying to get me to go abroad again—this time without leaving America—to teach the poor masses by internet technology all at once, filling their empty heads with information, entertaining and useful items, and getting for my pains multitudinous fees. Something in me wants to erect for us a sign. For the sake of the wonder at living human faces, composed of the love of the infinite, the profound, beheld in those faces, I would raise a sign in bold English, the language of America and nearly all the world on the make, to say: “Please, Let Us Not Eat the Swans Again.” �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Dante’s Beatrice: Between Idolatry and Iconoclasm Gabriel Pihas 1. A Response to Two Objections to Beatrice1 Some readers have taken issue with Dante’s bringing together eros and agape in the character of Beatrice. I will try to show how concern about the erotic element in his poetry is connected to other worries about iconoclasm that take shape in the centuries after Dante. I will first outline the connection between these issues, and then try to defend Dante on both points. Famously, the protestant theologian Anders Nygren attacked Medieval Catholicism and formulated a deep separation between eros and Christian love.2 His reservation about eros has to do with its self-interested character. That is, his separation of eros from agape is motivated by a desire to separate our self-love from agape, and our human nature from God’s nature. According to Nygren, the new, unique love that Christ taught had nothing to do with any other love that lets human beings ascend to God; it had nothing to do, for example with Socrates’s eros in the Symposium. For Nygren, the uniqueness of Christianity lies in the insight that we are not justified by the law and deserve nothing for Gabriel Pihas teaches at St. Mary’s College of California. This essay was first given as a lecture at St. John’s College in Annapolis on 2 December 2011. 1. I want to express my gratitude for what this article owes to an NEH study group on agape and philia in which I participated in 2009 at St. John’s College, Annapolis. I am indebted both to the group’s discussions and to the lecture “Agape” that Paul Ludwig delivered at Annapolis after leading that group, on 9 April 2010. 2. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip Watson (London: SPCK, 1953). The word agape is commonly translated as “charity” and I will use the words charity and agape interchangeably. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 85 our own virtue. 3 We are wretched sinners infinitely distant from God, and no effort of our own can explain God’s condescension to us. On our side there is only selfish eros, while agape is an incomprehensible miracle. For Nygren, this unmotivated condescension is the whole of Christian love.4 Some have raised reasonable difficulties with this position. First, its excessive harshness makes election too irrational. It leaves an enormous gap between an unbelievably unmotivated agape and what we clearly and fundamentally are, namely, desiring beings seeking happiness.5 His view makes it difficult to understand the many passages in the bible that seem to suggest our involvement in salvation, like “as many as received him, He gave them power” (John 1:12). And second, equally importantly, one might add that this doctrine leaves us swallowed up by God.6 We clearly lose the dignity of our person at least in this condescension, and perhaps lose our person altogether. I would like to draw a parallel to this separation of our eros and agape in what at first might seem a distant sphere, namely, iconoclasm, or the rejection of sacred art as idolatry. From the idolatry issue arises a second, and related, objection to Beatrice. Let me first explain what iconoclasm is, and then come back to drawing the parallel with eros and agape. Fundamentally, there are two very reasonable theological concerns behind iconoclasm.7 3. Nygren, 67-9. 4. Ibid., 75-6. 5. In “Agape,” Paul Ludwig argued that over-emphasis on the purely miraculous nature of agape is one of the major problems with postLutheran accounts of it. Through a reading of New Testament uses of agape, he argues that Nygren’s claim of a radical divide between classical philosophical strands in medieval caritas and New Testament agape is exaggerated. 6. For some of these objections see D’Arcy, M.C. The Mind and the Heart of Love (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 352-5. 7. There are, of course, also political motivations in iconoclasm. For example, destruction of religious art can express opposition to the political institution of the Church through the objects it claims to safeguard and which are understood to maintain its power and its special �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW First, it implies an intention to protect God from our theoretical misconstruals of his ineffable nature and his unity, and to enhance our inward respect for God by keeping him above anything down here that might represent him. Second, it implies a desire to defend popular religion from superstitious religious practice. Interest in images is often connected to popular belief in magic powers, even those latent in the very materials of the image, the wood, paint, and stone. So there is something very thoughtful and pious in iconoclasm. Also, there are certainly many scriptural authorities for iconoclasm, above all, the second commandment against graven images. But there is often also a risk of incoherence in iconoclasm. It suggests separating religion from any particular religious practice or institution. This is emphatically the case for Christian iconoclasm, which is what I want to focus on in this essay. For Christians, there is more latitude with images than in other forms of monotheism. The Incarnation itself—the idea that God became a particular human being in the womb of a particular human woman, that He suffered and died and is risen—almost naturally suggests making images of God. The continual retelling of Christ’s story in pictures for the illiterate is fundamental to the possibility of transmitting the story. This, in fact, was part of the very earliest Christian defense of images. But there is even more than such practical necessity to recommend images. The theology around the Incarnation suggests a terrestrial reality preserved in transcendence. In the Incarnation God became flesh, visible flesh. We can draw pictures of the God who became flesh even if we can’t draw the invisible God. Part of what is at stake in Christian iconoclastic debates is a concern stature. The holiness of the icon is a kind of symbol for the holiness of the Church itself, hence doubts about the sacred nature of the one takes away political power from the other. This thesis was explored by David Freeberg in Iconoclasts and their Motives (Montclair, N.J.: A. Schram, 1985). Similar claims about the political significance of iconoclasm in ancient Israel were made by Joseph Guttman, “Deuteronomy: Religious Reformation or Iconoclastic Revolution?” in The Image and the Word: Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Scholars Press for the American Academy of Religion, 1977), 5-10. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 87 about representing human nature in the image of God. A picture of Christ presents our humanity to us. It places God’s uncircumscribed nature in the visible, circumscribed human image. Most importantly, the image is essential to Christianity because it is an image in the depths of God himself, since Christ is an image of God the Father. Some Christians, like John of Damascus, who defended art during the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy of the eighth century, saw the artistic image as a sacramentally valuable, low-level emanation from God. He suggested a chain or ladder of images of God. On this ladder of emanations we find, at the top, Christ the image of the Father; then the image of Christ in the Virgin Mary, then in the saints, and then in man, who is made in the image of God. Finally, at the bottom are painted images.8 He argued that we should revere the image of Christ as if it were Christ himself because we mean by the word “image” not the physical materials of which an art object is made, but rather the original that the image depicts and participates in—namely, in this case, Christ’s humanity, something worthy of the highest kind of worship.9 This argument was used many times the Middle Ages, as, for example, by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. Images were an important element in the early Christian debates about Christ’s human nature. With the very first Christians, Christ was only ever represented symbolically (for example, as a fish or a lamb), and never in sculptures, but only in paintings. These early Christians had reservations about images, even though objects like the Eucharist and the relic already suggest 8. John Damascene, Apologia of St. John Damascene Against Those Who Decry Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898). This ladder of images is described at length in the final chapter of the trestise, “How Many Kinds of Images There Are.” 9. John compares the question about the image of God to the ordinary use of images of the king, and to the importance accorded a king’s representatives. The representatives and the images get the same respect the king gets. This argument was frequently reused in later debates to defend the “iconodule,” or anti-iconoclast, position. �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Incarnational alternatives to the magic powers of pagan idols that pave the way for later defenses of Christian art.10 I suggest that the initial reservations about images might derive from a hostile social context, and were not expressions of the mature faith: some of its reservations derived from inherited Jewish practices, some from a desire to distinguish Christianity from the pagan practice surrounding them in Rome. Many reservations about images of Christ derived merely from a need to maintain secrecy so as to avoid persecution.11 Slightly later, when the persecution of Christians was no longer an issue, images of Christ most often appeared in group scenes telling stories from the New Testament for the illiterate. But images of Christ appearing by himself, and not symbolically, begin to become more common after paganism vanished in Rome in the middle of the fifth century. These images were often produced to affirm the doctrinal importance of the Incarnation against other heretical understandings of Christ’s nature. At that time a number of heresies circulated, such as the claim that Christ’s human nature was erased in his divine nature, or the opposed claim that Christ was merely a human instrument of God. According to such views, it would not make any sense to venerate the human image. In contrast, the act of veneration 10. I take this point from Marc Fumaroli, “The Christian Critique of Idolatry” in Idol Anxiety, ed. Josh Ellenbogen and Aaron Tugendhaft, trans. Benjamin Storey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 3241. As he points out, in the Eucharist and the relic we find the real presence, not just reminders of God. These new objects will oppose the pagan demons previously thought to be present within statues and amulets. 11. My suggestion implies that the way the apostles worshipped was not always the best way. The iconoclastic Calvin took offense at such a suggestion (Institutes 1.2.13) . But we see such limitations attributed to the apostles explicitly in the gospels themselves, especially with regard to this issue of seeing the image of the invisible God. For example, when Phillip asks Christ to show him the Father (John 14:8), he is still in the mode of waiting for the fulfillment of the prophets, and unaware of what he has before him. (I owe this point to a private conversation with Marsaura Shukla.) �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 89 of the images of Christ as a man emphasizes that all of his divinity is present along with his visible humanity. Such veneration of images is thus a way of affirming both natures. This non-symbolic human image was thought to be so important that the symbolic presentation of Christ as a lamb was even expressly banned in the 600s, and the representation of Christ as a man became not a possibility but a requirement.12 Opposition to the images was never simply about the limits of art, or even about religious practice. It involved much more fundamental questions about the nature of the divine. Hence iconoclasm in all of its historical appearances always involved opposition not merely to the depiction of Christ, but to the adoration of Mary and the saints, in or out of pictures. Just as Byzantine and Protestant iconoclasts were suspicious of images, they were also suspicious, for similar reasons, of the adoration of the saints and Mary. This broader context of communion with Mary and the saints is, as we shall see, directly relevant to Beatrice. Now I can finally establish the parallel I want to draw with eros and agape. Unease about an image of Christ’s humanity and Christ’s humanity itself is similar to the unease felt by the separators of eros and agape, who don’t want to find self-regard mixed up with agape. The fear of contaminating agape with eros is another form of the fear of contaminating the infinite God with our finite humanity in the images we make. The fear that our own ascent through eros diminishes God’s condescension in agape is similar to the fear that any work of our hands diminishes the honor we give to God. Both fears are understandable, but are generally problematic attempts to eliminate our self-regard in finding our good. Both imply an idea of the supernatural 12. See Edward James Martin, A History of the Iconoclast Controversy (London: Church Historical Society, 1930; reprinted 1978), 20-21. The prohibition on the image of the lamb appears in the Quinsext Council, Canon #82. The claim in that canon is that the human image reminded us better than the lamb image of the “humiliation of the word of God” and “his conversation in the flesh, passion…death…and redemption.” This document is from 692 A.D. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that wholly effaces our human nature. Both can verge on hatred of our humanity. Dante offers an alternative Christian view that does not eliminate self-regard, but attempts to include it, and that does not simply efface our human nature. According to Nygren’s view, Dante is one of the most representative of all offenders in confusing eros and agape.13 For Dante, the ascent of eros can complement the descent of agape. Both movements may even be united in the same soul at the same time, and transformed eros can proportionately reflect agape. So, I will try to show how different Dante’s literary works are from the more modern view in respect to the way he brings eros and agape together. Dante’s writing is also provocative in the context of the idolatry issue. Like the seventh-century prohibition on the merely symbolic images of Christ, his work demands a new level of realism and historical detail. His inclusion of Virgil and the classical world in combination with his rehabilitation of the city of man suggest a new dignity in our humanity, unthinkable in many earlier Christian writers. In fact, one of Dante’s central aims in writing the Commedia is to take temporal power away from the Church and establish the dignity of worldly government. But this political innovation is merely the flip side of Dante’s theological-erotic innovation. The great novelty of Dante’s political doctrines went hand in hand with the novelty of making the beloved lady of courtly love poetry into a figure of religious awe. The beautiful image of Beatrice pointed Dante toward God, both during her life and after her death. Remarkably, her earthly reality is always preserved in her transcen13. For Nygren’s attack on Dante, see Agape and Eros, 616-620. His claim is simply that Dante has too many Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical elements for him to be Christian. Nygren tries to make his argument against Dante merely by identifying such elements in Dante’s thought. Here is not the place to discuss in detail the parts of Nygren’s book unrelated to Dante, but the radical and problematic contention that Christianity cannot involve any such classical philosophical elements is central to his broader argument. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 91 dence, as Christ’s is in the Incarnation.14 This paradox distinguishes Dante’s ideal woman from much more common symbolic or allegorical ideal women. As he himself said, by placing Beatrice in heaven gazing upon God, he praised her in a way that no poet had ever praised any woman.15 In fact, no one had ever done it before because it is a very odd thing to do. With what right could Dante make a beautiful woman a mediatrix to God? Is he worshipping her as an idol? Some have said Yes. In the wake of Reformation, Protestant iconoclasm, and the Index of Forbidden Books, we find a Catholic editor in Italy, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, who worried that Dante’s love was simply theologically offensive. In 1576, about two hundred and fifty years after Dante’s death, in the first printed edition of his early book, the Vita Nuova, the love theology was heavily censored.16 All Dante’s scriptural citations were removed. Passages attributing divine qualities to Beatrice were deleted or cleaned up. For example, where the text said that Beatrice offers him salute (salvation), we find instead the more banal word saluto (salutation). And where Dante says she generates beatitudine (blessedness), we find the word changed to felicitá (happiness). The chapter where she is most explicitly identified with Christ (Chapter 24) was simply deleted. This censorship was founded on the separation between eros and agape. This separation underlies the whole history of the ideal woman in Renaissance literature in this period, from Ariosto’s 14. This well-worn point is familiar to most through Erich Auerbach’s writings on Dante. See Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World, trans.,Ralph Manheim (New York: New York Review of Books, 2007 and Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princton University Press, 2003). The idea originated, for Auerbach and his generation at least, with Hegel. See Auerbach, Mimesis, 191. 15. Dante, Vita Nuova, chap. 42. 16. See Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 20040, 173. �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Angelica, to Cervantes’s Dulcinea, and later to Milton’s Eve. Although some of these authors would not see themselves as fundamentally motivated by theological concerns, nonetheless they were all impressed by the idea that the beloved of the chivalric tradition was idolatrous. Just as the iconoclast reformers sought to destroy the sacred images, so also certain poets and novelists at the same time attacked the chivalric view of love. But they did not limit themselves to this renunciation of erotic idolatry. They attacked the chivalric view of both love and arms, that is, they attacked both the ideal women and the ideals of worldly honor. While we have become used to thinking of such attacks as obvious, Dante opposed them. He affirmed both the transcendence of the ideal woman as well as the integrity of honor and the worldly political order, when part of a Christian life. Hence Dante’s adapatation of literary realism was not a reaction against theology, but an extension of his theological bent. Unlike Dante’s literary realism, the new literary realism that some of these later authors pursued, and which became the foundation for modern realism, was founded on the incompatibility of our terrestrial reality and the manifestation of God.17 These authors begin from the hiddenness of God and of his providence, rather than with the sacramental idea of nature. Hence the theological issues that are involved in my defense of Dante and his challenge to iconoclasm have a relevance that extends to modern literature as well as political and aesthetic theory. I will now present Beatrice as an alternative to this early modern theology. 2. Beatrice as Christ in Vita Nuova In the thirteenth century, poets explored the conflict between 17. The other element that distinguishes the two camps is their differing attitude to pagan poetry. The new realism attempts to end the ancient epic, which it regards as an ongoing tradition, while Dante is attempting to revive an epic tradition that per lunga silenzio parea fioco (from long silence seemed hoarse. (Inferno 1.63.) �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 93 courtly love and religion from a few different angles.18 Guittone d’Arezzo renounced love poetry and became a monk, writing religious poems against the courtly tradition. He stressed the moral opposition between divine love and the poet’s human lust. Two other poets who were extremely close to Dante, Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizelli, although less ascetic and less pious than Guittone, expressed similar concerns. Cavalcanti worried about the excessive focus on one’s own, and on the private possession of the beloved, which were obstacles to the universality of philosophical truth, and to our good according to reason. He thought that being overwhelmed by the passion of love divides the soul and implies forgetting that at which reason aims. Guido Guinizelli’s poetry playfully suggested that the earthly lady who was object of love and praise was more than metaphorically divine, and hence was in sinful competition with God. He saw that the implicit religious elements in the courtly love tradition, and in poetry itself, were clearly idolatrous. But he never took the problem very seriously and never sought a resolution to this problem. In the story of Paolo and Francesca in Inferno 5, Dante gives his own account of Guinizelli’s problem. But long before writing that canto, the young Dante already writes the Vita Nuova, a book dedicated to Guido Cavalcanti that addresses all these various objections. As we will see, the Vita Nuova is a miniature of the major action of the Divine Comedy. Dante’s love for Beatrice in the Vita Nuova is unusual in that it is not at all libidinal. Beatrice’s beauty is inseparably bound up with her moral virtue, and beyond any lust that might make Dante forget about his highest aims. “It happened that her image, which was always with me, gave boldness to Love to rule over [me], but was of such noble virtue that it never let Love rule me without the faithful counsel of reason.”19 18. For a thoughtful account of the tradition of vernacular love poetry and the question of heresy, see Pamela Williams Through Human Love to God (Leicester: Troubadour Publishing, 2007), especially 9-11, and 76-77. 19. Vita Nuova, chapter 2. E avvenga che la sua imagine, la quale continuatamente meco stave, fosse baldanza d’Amore a segnoreggiare me, tuttavia era di sì nobilissima vertù, che nulla volta sofferse che Amore mi reggesse sanza lo fedele consiglio de la ragione. �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW So, contrary to Cavalcanti’s objection, Dante is never blinded or even distracted by physical passion, and never ceases thinking about God when looking on Beatrice. Dante’s experience of eros begins from the already religiously-infused courtly love tradition. It is this tradition that explains part of Dante’s simultaneous interest in Beatrice as a beautiful woman and the non-libidinal character of that interest. From the beginning Beatrice is the courtly domina, his “lady” in the sense of the feminine form of “lord.” But as we will see, Dante goes further. Exactly insofar as her image causes Love to overcome his faculties, he becomes free of libido. Dante addresses Guinizelli’s concerns by taking the religious element in the courtly tradition and radicalizing it in a most daring way.20 Beatrice is introduced as the “glorious lady of my mind” (gloriosa donna de la mia mente) and a young angel. The title of the book, New Life, recalls Paul’s phrase (Romans 6:3-4) about giving up the old life of sin and entering into the new life of grace. His meeting with Beatrice is nothing less than the experience of God’s grace, now in the intimate world of his memory that the book records. Her beauty is miraculous, and is rooted in the Trinity. The Vita Nuova is frequently compared to contemporary accounts of saint’s lives. That is the genre to which it belongs. Beatrice’s appearance on earth is a unique and miraculous event that Dante claims to have witnessed, and he transcribes it from the book of his memory to share with those who never saw her. At the opening of the Vita Nuova, Dante describes his vision of Beatrice as a beatific vision: “As she passed through a street, she turned her eyes to where I stood very fearful, and with her ineffable courtesy, which is today rewarded in eternal life, she greeted me with great virtue, so much that I seemed to see all the limits of blessedness.”21 20. For the uniqueness of Dante’s gesture, see John A. Scott, Understanding Dante (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) 16-17. 21. Vita Nuova, chapter 3. [P]assando per una via, volse li occhi verso quella parte ov’io era molto pauroso, e per la sua ineffabile cortesia, la quale è oggi meritata nel grande secolo, mi salutoe molto virtuosamente, tanto che me parve allora vedere tutti li termini de la beatitudine. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 95 It is difficult to imagine passing a woman in the street and taking it for beatitude. Dante must have seen the inner meaning of her beauty as an effect of the Creator, not merely as the beauty of the creature for its own sake. The beauty appears as an emanation of God much as Neo-Platonic thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus might have suggested. Scholars have focused on a number of more historically proximate potential sources who followed exactly such theological theories about the vision of beauty, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, and Bonaventure.22 Beatrice makes others who see her more like herself, just as in greeting Dante she will transform him into Love itself. Beatrice has this effect on all who are noble enough to be able to see her. This is the most unusual thing about Dante’s love for Beatrice. It is the aspect of courtly love that is most obvious from its name, but least often taken seriously because it is so distant from us: Dante’s love is shared, public erotic love, not private love. Dante is the beloved for all Florentine gentlemen. His act of charity lies in his sharing of Beatrice through his poetry with those non-Florentines, and non-contemporaries, who never saw her when she was alive. Love of Beatrice becomes universal. Dante’s love blends eros and charity. In one passage he focuses on the effect on himself of Beatrice’s greeting in the street. Much of the experience of love in the Vita Nuova is condensed in this rightly famous passage. In this greeting she presumably 22. See Francesco Mazzoni, Il canto XXXI del Purgatorio (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1965). Of course, Aquinas, among many others, also took up the widespread Neoplatonic doctrines that described creatures as preexisting in a higher form in God. Other traditional theological avenues for explaining the role of Beatrice might be analogy (see Warren Ginsberg, Dante’s Aesthetics of Being [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999] 8-13), deificatio (Rosetta Migliorini-Fissi, “La nozione di ‘deificatio’ nel Paradiso.” Letture classensi. 9-10 [1982]: 39-72), or we might simply see her as a special revelation, like the phantasms and sensibles offered to prophets. (See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, q. 12, a.13: “sometimes phantasms in the imagination . . . and sometimes sensible things are divinely formed.”) �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW said salve, which in Italian is the same as the now outmoded English phrase, “save you,” short for “May God save you.” It is a blessing, it “makes blessed,” just as Beatrice’s name means “she who makes blessed.” Here is Dante’s description in Chapter 11 of the Vita Nuova of the effect on himself of this greeting or blessing: Whenever she appeared anywhere, because of the hope of her miraculous greeting [mirabile salute] I had no enemy in the world, instead a flame of charity came to me that made me pardon whoever had offended me. If anyone had asked me anything, my answer would be only, “Love,” with a face dressed in humility. And whenever she was about to greet me, a spirit of love, destroying all the other sensitive spirits, drove out the feeble spirits of vision, telling them “Go and honor your lady,” and it remained in their place. And anyone who wanted to know love could have done so by looking at the trembling of my eyes. And when this most gentle one greeted me with this greeting, not only was Love not a mediator that could obscure from me the overwhelming blessedness, but through an excess of sweetness, he became such that my body which was wholly under Love’s control, moved like an inanimate mass. So that it appears manifestly that in her greeting dwelt my beatitude, which greatly exceeded and surpassed my capacities.23 In this important passage, Beatrice’s beauty promises beatitude for Dante in her miraculous greeting. But the charity he feels is not for her, but for anyone. This is mysterious. In this 23. Vita Nuova, Chapter 11: Dico che quando ella apparia da parte alcuna, per la speranza de la mirabile salute nullo nemico mi rimanea, anzi mi giugnea una fiamma di caritade, la quale mi facea perdonare a chiunque m’avesse offeso; e chi allora m’avesse domandato di cosa alcuna, la mia risponsione sarebbe stata solamente —Amore—, con viso vestito d’umilitade. E quando ella fosse alquanto propinqua al salutare, uno spirito d’amore, distruggendo tutti li altri spririti sensitive, pingea fuori li deboletti spiriti del viso, e dicea loro: “Andate a onorare la donna vostra”; ed elli si rimanea nel luogo loro. E chi avesse voluto �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 97 way Dante makes an implicit distinction between eros for Beatrice and charity for others. The key to the passage is to understand the relation between hope and charity in the first sentence. The promise of the salute (“greeting”/”salvation”) from the beautiful creates a hope that is so strong it generates charity. To understand it we have to think that Beatrice’s greeting, in which she said “be saved,” is so overwhelmingly pleasant that Dante focuses completely on her and forgets himself. The self-forgetting is represented as love destroying and expelling his spirits, here understood as the Galenic spirits that make his body function. The confidence of this hope elicits generosity for others. When his hope is this great, he exists beyond himself and can afford to become all charity and humility. He runs no risk of loss in his charity, because it grows naturally from his desire for his own good. As Aquinas puts it, charity, or love of God for His own sake, is the perfection of the imperfect love that begins in hope for one’s own good.24 This imperfect love that becomes charity we would call eros. We might also make this point theologically rather than psychologically, by recalling Virgil’s comment in Purgatorio that love is a good that one has more of when one shares it (Purgatorio 15.55-7). Dante wishes to give to others, while also getting for himself. Both occur when he is taken over by love, becoming more than himself, even at the level of his eyes and his body. It makes his body and libido wholly inactive, with all his activity focused in the eyes. conoscere Amore, fare lo potea, mirando lo tremare de li occhi miei. E quando questa gentilissima salute salutava, non che Amore fosse tal mezzo che potesse obumbrare a me la intollerabile beatitudine, ma elli quasi per soverchio di dolcezza divenia tale, che lo mio corpo, lo quale era tutto allora sotto lo suo reggimento, molte volte si movea come cosa grave inanimata. Sì che appare manifestamente che ne le sue salute abitava la mia beatitudine, la quale molte volte passava e redundava la mia capacitade. 24. Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II q. 17, a.8: “[Charity] adheres to God for His own sake; . . . he that hopes [on the other hand], intends to obtain possession of something for himself.” �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Note in this passage that he becomes charitable toward others in a way that repeats or extends Beatrice’s charity for him. She blesses him with this greeting not out of eros, but out of charity. In contrast, he erotically and selfishly desires her greeting, while loving others charitably. The charity and the eros operate together in him without conflict. They have different objects. Eros is for something he yearns after and contemplates that is above him. Charity is an effect of his hope for that same object of contemplation, but it is aimed at people at his level or below.25 At this point we have given an incomplete description of Dante’s account of eros and agape. So far we only have the two loves in the same soul, provoked by one object, but aimed at different people. We still have to come to see how the two loves are not merely non-contradictory, but also more closely intertwined. I will complete this articulation of eros and agape at the end of this essay, in connection with Dante’s definition of agape in Paradiso. Dante’s great discovery in the middle of the Vita Nuova, which he arrives at with the help of Guido Gunizelli, is that he must praise Beatrice, not merely describe her effect on him. His poetry must be about her, not about himself. His blessedness is no longer in her greeting as it was in the previous passage. His poetic apprenticeship takes him beyond this. Instead his salvation is now in his own charitable poetry, in praise of his lady. This new direction generates the middle section of the Vita Nuova, which contains many of the greatest poems of the collection. And yet, it is important that Dante himself saw this apparently selfeffacing attitude of praise as actually self-regarding in a positive sense. Dante says elsewhere that praising someone who is far 25. Compare Gregory the Great’s account of Jacob’s ladder in the Pastoral Rule, Book 2, Chapter 5. We both ascend and descend on this ladder, ascending in contemplation, and descending to those we minister to through charity. This division between upward and downward loves is implicit in the Vita Nuova passage, and frames the treatment of the contemplative ladder in Paradiso 21-22. Canto 21 deals with upward movement on the ladder, Canto 22, with downward movement on the ladder. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 99 greater than yourself is always a self-interested act, since praise implies friendship, and friendship implies likeness. Hence to praise the great is to assert that you are like the great in some way. (Convivio 3.1.4) The same goes, he suggests, for friendship with God. After Beatrice dies, years pass, and he begins to forget her for a new noblewoman, whom he identifies in the Convivio as a symbol for philosophy. At the end of the Vita Nuova he repents this philosophical betrayal, and turns again to the memory of Beatrice in the final chapters, rising up to heaven where Beatrice dwells. The sequence in the final few paragraphs of the Vita Nuova about repenting his abandonment of Beatrice, followed by ascent to God—this is a tiny draft to be rewritten and expanded in the Commedia. At the end of the Vita Nuova, Beatrice is described as the object of his soul’s pilgrimage, like the shroud on which Christ left his features, which pilgrims visit in Rome, known as the Veronica or True Icon. Dante suggests that the pilgrimage to Rome and his local pilgrimage to Beatrice are ultimately the same. The famous shroud in Rome has power, but, actually, the local miracle of Beatrice, a woman who is a mirror of God for the Florentines, is just as good as the shroud. “Christ comes alive for Dante in Beatrice.”26 Her image transports him to the good that can fulfill him. As a creature gone to her Creator, her beauty is an exemplar that is more perfect in God, just as the features in the shroud are more perfect in the seemingly absent original face that they let us see. But further, Dante’s poetry itself has the power to make others feel Beatrice’s beauty without ever seeing her. His words are as good as sacred relics, like the shroud with Christ’s features. His poem, like Beatrice, is mediator to God, not a competitor. At the same time, his writings about her are in fact even better than the historical Beatrice and even better than the famous shroud at Rome, in that the writings can be shared with all who read them anywhere and forever. 26. Christopher Ryan, “The Theology of Dante” in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jackoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 146. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 3. Beatrice as Mirror of God in Purgatorio In the Commedia, Dante gives an account of how all of human life should be understood in the light of eternal reality and revelation. How could so much have come out of a vision of Beatrice? Again, why isn’t this idolatry? On a number of occasions, Dante distinguishes what he is doing from idolatry. I will mention only one.27 In Purgatorio 19, Dante has a dream of the Siren, who Virgil will later tell him is the symbol for excessive desire for earthly pleasures: When geomancers see their Fortuna Major rise in the east before dawn, rising by a way that stays dark for little time, a stuttering woman came to me in a dream, crosseyed, and crooked on her feet, with her hands deformed and pallid in color. I gazed at her; and as the sun comforts the cold members that the night weighs down, so my glance made ready her speech, and quickly straightened her, and the distorted face it colored as love would want it. Then with her speaking unshackled, she began to sing, so that with difficulty might I turn my attention away from her. “I am” she sang, “I am the sweet siren that misleads sailors in the middle of the sea, so pleasant is it to hear me! I turned Ulysses, eager for his road, to my song. And whoever gets used to staying with me rarely departs; so completely do I fulfill him!” 28 The time is indicated by reference to a gnostic astrological tradition called geomancy. This practice involved connecting pat27. Other prominent treatments of idolatry in the Commedia are Paolo and Francesca’s idolatry of Amor (Inferno 5), the idolatry of Federick II by the poet Pier delle Vigne (Inferno 13), and the idolatry of the simoniac popes (Inferno 19). Canto 19 in all three canticles is dedicated to the idolatry issue in connection with the Church and the pope. 28. Purgatorio 19.1-24. [Q]uando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna / veggiono in orïente, innanzi all’ alba, / surger per via che poco le sta bruna: / mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, / ne li occhi guercia, e sovra i piè distorta, / con le man monche, e di colore scialba. / Io la mirava; e come ’l sol confortale / fredde membra che la notte aggrava, / così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta / la lingua, e poscia tutta la driz- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 101 terns drawn on the earth to constellations in the heavens. So the setting suggests a kind of superstitious mistaking of earthly and heavenly. At first the siren is ugly and stuttering, but then Dante’s gaze makes her articulate and beautiful. We are invited to hear her initial stuttering in line 19, as well as the balanced fluidity he projects on her by line 21 (Io son . . . io son, dolce serena / che marinari in mezzo mar dismago/ tanto son di piacer’ a sentir piena!). As others have suggested, the power of his gaze to reshape her is an allegory for the power of his imagination to reshape the earthly and make it heavenly, that is, it is an allegory for the act of idol-making.29 The parallel with Inferno 19 suggests that the Siren is another development of the whore with seven heads (lines 108-109), a conflation of images in Revelations that suggests Rome. Here, as in Inferno 19, the idolatry of the pope is of special interest. Later in Purgatorio 19, we encounter a concrete historical example of the damage the allegorical Siren can do in pope Adrian V, who is now purging his own avarice. He tells Dante that he had at first made the earthly political power of Church offices the aim of his ascent (19.103-108). Then, when he rose to its peak and became pope, he finally came to recognize that no earthly position, no ambition, would satisfy him (109-11). zava / in poco d’ora, e lo smarrito volto, / com’ amor vuol, così le colorava. / Poi ch’ell’ avea ’l parlar così disciolto, / cominciava a cantar sì, che con pena / da lei avrei mio intento rivolto. / “Io son”, cantava, “io son dolce serena, / che i marinari in mezzo mar dismago; / tanto son di piacere a sentir piena! / Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago / al canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, / rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago! 29. See Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 140-41. The allegory is a precise response to Virgil’s account of the soul’s perception of and inclination to desirable objects in the previous canto (18. 43ff.). In his account, the imagination takes in outer experience and presents it to us. Our role in the imaginative presentation of objects in the soul is what Dante has allegorized with the Siren in Canto 19. The doctrine on counsel and consent that Dante is following here is that of Summa Theologica I-II, qq. 14-15. Aquinas in turn takes it from Augustine’s account of the imagination in On the Trinity, Books 11-12. �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW His mistaken attempt to ascend to the earthly, as if the earth were above him rather than below, resembles the geomancer’s identification of his earthly image with the heavenly reality at the beginning of the canto. Realizing his error, he quits his post. He is finally saved, though he must spend time in purgatory weeping over his attachment to the earth. With his face and body stuck in earthly mire, he suffers while longing for heaven. Adrian’s tears, which “mature” his soul in preparation for ascent, atone for his fascination with the earth, which prevented him from ascending. His fascination with the earth parallels the hypnosis of the Siren’s song, which paralyzes sailors in the sea. The hymn Adrian sings together with the others in this part of purgatory also expresses this hypnosis as being stuck or adhering, but now with a new sense: Adhaesit pavimento anima mea! I will suggest at the end of this essay that, although Dante’s poetry often brings into relief the transcendent possibilities for terrestrial beauty, Adrian’s tears for heaven and his hatred for the stasis of purely earthly pursuits are intended by Dante as emblems of how we should live on earth. Although in passages like Canto 19 Dante reflects on the dangers of idolatry, in the Purgatorio, rather than backing away from the Vita Nuova, he explicitly reaffirms it. Dante’s encounter with Beatrice at the top of purgatory is a clear parallel with the idolatry of the Siren and raises all of Nygren’s questions about Dante’s mix of eros and agape. The preparation for Beatrice’s arrival is perhaps the most daring of all of Dante’s gestures of praise. When Dante arrives at the Garden of Eden in Purgatorio 28 he sees a variety of mystical symbols paraded before his eyes. Seven candlesticks lead a procession (the seven gifts of the spirit that illuminate human life). Following these are the books of the Old Testament, represented by twenty-four elders. Then comes a Chariot (the Church) pulled by Christ as the Griffin.30 On either 30. I follow the traditional reading of the Griffin, against recent attempts to interpret it otherwise. For such attempts see Peter Armour, “Dante’s Processional Vision” in Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio, A Canto-by-Canto Commentary, ed. Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles Ross. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 336-340. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 103 side of the chariot are virtues represented as nymphs, while behind the chariot are various men representing the books of the New Testament. More concisely then, the procession means that the spirit of God illuminates revelation and the history of scripture, all of which centers on the transcendent moment of Christ’s coming to earth and leading his Church, uniting the books in the epochs before and after him. The whole procession is in the form of a cross, with the two-natured symbol of Christ at the center. This elaborate procession contains a set of images mostly from Revelation, which refers the whole scene to the last judgment. As Charles Singleton emphasized, Dante is witnessing a last judgment. Even fairly uneducated medieval readers would be immediately aware of this.31 Singleton argued that what makes Dante’s procession different from the ordinary medieval understanding of the last judgment is the person who appears in the chariot when the procession stops. Dante introduces this person as Christ, but it will be someone else. One of the representatives of the Old Testament sings the phrase Veni sponsa de Libano (Come, bride of Lebanon), from the Song of Songs, three times. Then everyone in the procession sings in 31. Many medieval churches decorated with exactly such images of the last judgment, would have taught Dante’s ordinary readers about the last judgment in terms of these symbols, and perhaps inspired Dante’s canto. Most iconographically similar of all to Dante’s procession are the mosaics in the churches of Santi Cosma e Damiano and the identical ones in the church of Santa Prassede, both in Rome, where in each case a series of successive arches in the church contain these symbols (the heavenly Jerusalem, the twenty four elders, the seven candlesticks, the evangelists, etc.). To one who traverses the space, even merely with one’s glance, the succession of arches creates the visual effect of a procession in motion towards the end of the church, where Christ appears in the vault descending to the judgment seat. Coincidentally, the mosaics of S. Prassede are of particular relevance for the question of iconoclasm in medieval art. They were done at the end of the 700s by artists fleeing iconoclast persecution in Byzantium and commemorate the relocation of the remains of martyrs and saints from the catacombs. Byzantine iconoclasts were opposed to the devotion to martyrs as well as to images. Like Dante’s Purgatorio, the mosaics stress the value of human beings as mediators. �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW response Benedictus qui venit! (Blessed is He who comes!). In its original context, this phrase “Blessed is He who comes” describes Christ entering Jerusalem. The Old Testament erotic longing for the Bride of Lebanon is now to be satisfied with the phrase announcing Christ from the New Testament. Since his readers know this New Testament verse, and know the iconography of the procession, then it is very clear that these angels are welcoming the returning Christ, who is arriving at his judgment seat so as to decide who can be received into the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God. If we attune ourselves to the force of the scriptural citations as the last century of scholarship has helped us to do, then we recognize that nothing could have prepared a Medieval reader for what happened next. The angels quote a verse from Virgil’s Aeneid, Manibus o date lilia plenis (Give hands full of lilies).32 Anchises voices this phrase at one of the most melancholy moments of Vergil’s poem, “even though it is of no use, let me throw these lilies over the shade of the dead soul.” All this is overturned in Purgatorio 30 when angels shower the chariot with lilies, and in the midst of a delicate rain of flowers, Beatrice appears. Of course Christ, the “He” in “Blessed is He who comes,” it turns out, is a she. Now, including a line from Virgil as a part of the last Judgment is already stretching the bounds of theological propriety, and it embraces the pagan world in a new way. It transforms and completes our worldly dignity and our wholly natural desires rather than effacing them in the moment of revelation. But surprising as it is, this is not the most striking thing about the scene. If we accept the idea that the ancient inability to redeem death has been overcome by Christ’s sacrifice, and that it is natural for Dante to use a bit of pagan poetry to express this thought, then Virgil’s melancholy has itself been uplifted and transformed into a moment of grace. His conversation with Statius about his role in the conversion in Purgatorio 22 might have already prepared us for that. Rather, it is the appearance of Beatrice that makes this passage so complicated. 32. Aeneid 6.883-86; Purgatorio 30.21. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 105 As I said, the procession suggests that the figure who emerges should be Christ coming down to the judgment seat. Dante has done everything to make us think this. And of course, only Christ’s grace could surpass the ancient melancholy and redeem us from death. But in Singleton’s words, we witness here the Advent of Beatrice.33 In Dante’s case, the person who pronounces the decision about whether he is received in the heavenly city is Beatrice. She is at the center of this heavenly procession; she is the representative of the Judge in this personal last judgment. She will make Dante confess his sin, and she will be an instrument of his forgiveness. She appears to him in Christ’s place.34 While Purgatory was structured by three-part examples from an ancient source, from the Old Testament, and from the New Testament, Beatrice’s appearance takes us into a realm beyond the three citations that announce her. She is the revelation at the center of history. The Griffin that pulls the chariot is a symbolic presentation of Christ that leaves Christ a mystery. A similar tactic is found in 33. See Singleton, “The Advent of Beatrice” in Journey to Beatrice. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 72-85. In the preceding couple of pages I have been trying to re-enact Singleton’s understanding of Beatrice as a Christ figure in such a way as to represent the theological boldness of the gesture. 34. There is a traditional model for the procession that Dante may have had in mind. The translator John Sinclair saw Beatrice of the chariot in purgatory as an image of the Eucharist (for which see the commentary accompanying his translation of Purgatorio 30 in Dante: The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio [New York: Oxford University Press, 1939]). In the middle ages, the Eucharist was paraded through the streets in a chariot in the feast of Corpus Christi at Modena, and Dante might be expecting his readers to think of that. If Sinclair was right, the poem can be seen as a public procession of his private vision with a Eucharistic value. The living Beatrice, as I said earlier, was a public love, a miracle for all the Florentines. And the Beatrice of Dante’s writings is less private still. The aim of Dante’s work is to make Beatrice a universal figure available to all his readers. �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW iconoclastic Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in Germany in the 1200s. By making holy people into mythical animals or giving them animal heads, artists avoided giving a false impression with a non-fictional, non-arbitrary representation.35 So the use of the Griffin can be understood as a careful, humble avoidance of idolatry here. But unfortunately Dante doesn’t leave it at that, but looks at the Griffin in Beatrice’s eyes. Again, Christ appears to Dante, comes to life for Dante, in the beautiful eyes of Beatrice. The two natures of the Griffin are mysteriously fused, but in her eyes he sees alternately one or the other. He says: Mille disiri piú che fiamma caldi strinsermi li occhi alli occhi rilucenti, che pur sopra ’l grifone stavan saldi. Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, or con altri, or con altri reggimenti. Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava, quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta, e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava.36 In the soul of Beatrice, Dante can see an image either of Christ’s humanity or of his divinity, but never both at once. Why does Dante see the Griffin through the eyes of a woman at all? We might try to evade the problem—as many critics do—and make Beatrice herself a mere symbol. But our knowledge of the details of Beatrice’s real existence as a contemporary of Dante in the Vita Nuova (for instance, her life and death, her family relations) makes such a reading inadequate. Even when she is dead, 35. See Bezalel Narkiss and Evelyn Cohen, “Illuminated Manuscripts, Hebrew” in Encyclopedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., Vol. 9. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 726-735. 36. Purgatorio 31.124-6, “A thousand desires hotter than flame bound my eyes to the eyes reflecting, that upon the Griffin stayed firm. As in a mirror the sun, not otherwise the double beast within rayed out, now with one now with the other nature. Think, reader, if I marveled when I saw that the thing in itself remained unchanged but in its image changed.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 107 her eyes have the flash that distinguishes living, conscious human beings from dead ones and from statues. In Beatrice the eternal meaning is reflected in the eyes of a contemporary human being. She is not just a beautiful object or a symbol, because she is a subject who loves the Beautiful Itself, just as Dante does. He falls in love with God through his beloved, who is herself in love with God. In fact, he falls in love with her precisely insofar as she is a lover. In being moved by love she reflects the love that moves her. The reflection of Christ in her loving eyes makes others, like Dante, into lovers of Christ. (Compare Plato’s Phaedrus, especially 255c-d, where the beloved is seduced by his own deified reflection in the eyes of the lover.) Beatrice’s role as a lover removes the idolatry from Dante’s love of her. And the reader is supposed to participate in this same reflection between lover and beloved by looking at Dante’s love for Beatrice. To understand why the mirroring of Christ in Beatrice’s eyes is not idolatrous, we must recall the tradition of the speculum Dei, the mirror of God. To see God in a mirror is to see God in an imperfect and limited way, not as he is. The alternation between the two natures of Christ in the appearance of Beatrice emphasizes her limited ability to reflect him. It is all we on earth can do, as the King James translation of St. Paul puts it, to “see through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). This passage from Paul was cited as an explanation for the vision of Christ in Beatrice’s eyes by the earliest commentators.37 This idea had been previously deployed in a number of debates. This phrase “mirror of God” was sometimes applied to the martyrs and saints. Saint Francis, for example, visibly reflected Christ in the stigmata, and mirrored his suffering in the sorrow within his soul as well.38 Beatrice’s soul is in the same category with such saints. Her beauty, but also her charity and her humility, reflects God’s, al37. For example, Dante’s son Pietro Alighieri cites it in his commentary (1359-64) on these lines. 38. See Bonaventure’s “Life of Saint Francis” in Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, the Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 305-306. �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW though she cannot perfectly express the paradox of the two natures. More generally, any reformed soul is a mirror of God, even beyond the way in which any human being is made in God’s image. The importance for Dante’s Commedia of the tradition of the mirror of God cannot be overstated. As the opening tercet of the Paradiso puts it, the entire universe is a mirror reflecting God’s light. La gloria di colui che tutto move per l’universo penetra, e risplende in una parte piú, e meno altrove.39 Moreover, the idea of seeing God through a mirror was part of the defense of art in the early iconoclastic debates.40 As mentioned earlier, those who staked out positions against images implied opposition to the adoration of saints and martyrs as well as the Virgin Mary. The idea of the mirror of God that was used to defend images in the eighth century iconoclastic dispute supplies a traditional account that explains Beatrice’s role as a saint, and clarifies how her beauty points to its own pre-existence in God. And although her reflection of the Divine essence must be qualified, it is nevertheless surpassingly glorious—so much so that Dante cannot end this canto with a description of her unveiled reflection of God, but ends instead with the claim that her image is indescribable (Purgatorio 31.139-145). Beatrice is at the same time both a defense of images, and a limit to images. Something similar to Dante’s treatment of Beatrice can be understood to explain the style of his book as a whole, and it undergirds its literary realism. The eternal meaning of the characters is presented through attention to personal and historical details, especially, but not exclusively, in the presentation of Dante’s contemporaries. Rather than provide sterile lexical or philosophical 39. Paradiso 1.1-3: “The glory of him who moves everything penetrates through all the universe, and reflects in one part more, and less in another.” 40. For the medieval artistic tradition and the speculum Dei, see Emile Male, “One Hundred Years of Iconoclasm” in Early Churches of Rome, trans. David Buxton (London: Ernest Bendt, 1960). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 109 definitions of the sins or virtues of each group of souls, he presents the living stories of souls in their places.41 The concreteness of such stories challenges the reader with the ambiguities of experience, but they are fruitful ambiguities. The stories suggest that readers take what is valid in ordinary experience and purify it, rather than simplifying or disregarding it. We start from where we are, and ascend dialectically, just as Aristotle does in his Ethics, arguing his points starting from common opinions and from experience. 4. Beatrice as Prophet in Paradiso I will now focus on the limits Dante sets to the vision of God he can produce through the image of Beatrice and through his poem. The Paradiso opens with a disclaimer about the limits of Dante’s poetic powers. Dante says that he cannot express or even recall much of what he saw in heaven. He alerts the reader that he must end his journey with a concession to some aspects of the iconoclast’s demands. Although Beatrice’s beauty pre-exists in God, as an individual she is ultimately merely one part of the Incarnate God. Only Christ is perfectly “the image of the unseen God”.42 Similarly, Dante’s poem could never perfectly mirror the Incarnation or the Trinity. The sobering distance between Dante and God in the Paradiso gives the canticle a prophetic character. By 41. It is worth comparing Brunetto Latini’s encyclopedia, the Livres dou tresor, and his poem, the Tesoretto. Both are extremely similar to Dante’s work in that they separate out vices and virtues and define them. Both are works of exile, and both involve narrative accounts of Aristotelian morality and metaphysics. The profound difference is that Brunetto’s works are purely abstract and allegorical. Their narrative form is superfluous. They merely offer a lively version of a bird’s eye view. Nor does Brunetto’s account suffer a genuine transcendent element. The abstract and mundane aspects of Brunetto’s works prompt Dante to relegate Brunetto to the stale and unfruitful atmosphere surrounding the sodomites of Inferno 15. The key to interpreting most of the images in that canto is the biblical injunction not to store up one’s “treasure” on earth, but in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). 42. Colossians 1:15. �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW prophetic I mean looking forward to the fulfillment of justice, and living in anticipation of contact with a God who is not yet fully present on earth—that is to say, living in exile. In order to take on the role of the prophet, Dante must put on a severity that comports very oddly with love poetry. A prophet has to live in the desert with nothing more than hope. As Emmanuel Levinas argued, prophecy does not coincide with feminine gentleness in the Old Testament.43 But in the Commedia Beatrice, a woman, is the source of Dante’s prophecies, beginning in Purgatorio 33 with the chilling condemnation of ecclesiastical corruption in their times. Beatrice is stern and harsh throughout the Paradiso. Such moments suggest that Beatrice is not simply an emblem of gentle, generous beauty. Rather, she is also a figure of anger. She is loved in and for her anger, and her anger is a sign of her love. For Dante at least, she is, paradoxically, both Church Triumphant and Church Militant at the same time. The Paradiso emphasizes the prophetic vein more explicitly than the other cantiche, and presents us with a number of austere figures as role models for human life. So, for example, the paragons of human virtue in Paradiso are monastics like Francis, whose erotic love of poverty is itself a form of vision.44 Others are the ascetic contemplatives Peter Damien, Benedict, and the white-haired Bernard. The non-monastic figures of greatest importance in heaven are either soldiers or kings who sacrificed themselves for heavenly justice. It may be easy to miss it while reading the Paradiso, which is filled with beautiful images of light, refined talk of love, and angelic harmonies, but two of the highest values in heaven are poverty and spiritual war. Though the Paradiso rises through the ethereal reaches of heaven, the Church Militant and the expression of hostility to the earth receive continually greater emphasis. The contemplatives at the 43. See Emmanual Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 30-38. 44. I take this account of Francis from Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision, 240. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 111 very top of Dante’s celestial hierarchy are defined as those who love and minister to their fellow men, and, at the same time, those who least esteemed the earth. From their height they can look down on earth, as Benedict did from the dizzying heights of his monastery atop Monte Cassino. So the starkness of the Paradiso might not seem in accord with the choice of a beautiful woman as a guide. But, mysteriously, Dante sees the erotic attraction to God in Beatrice’s eyes as implying a severe and unbending focus on the ugly and bad in the world, and on the need for correction. As Dante’s vision becomes clearer, he and Beatrice ascend farther and farther above the world, and become angrier and angrier about its corruption. Why should erotic desire be so at one with the austerity and anger of the prophet? Isn’t anger thumos, not eros? The answers to these questions lie in recalling Dante’s situation on earth after Beatrice died. In the Vita Nuova, following Beatrice’s death, Dante initially reacted properly. He began to despise the earthly life because it had lost its salute (chs. 32-34). Beatrice, from heaven, offered him consolation. But a year or so after she died, Dante turned to the Siren. As Beatrice expresses it in her description of this episode in Purgatorio (31.44-54), love should have generated anger against the earthly Siren, against self-induced hypnosis that creates indifference to ascent. Recall the image of Pope Adrian V with his face in the dirt in Purgatorio 19, tearfully longing for what is beyond the earth. Dante, like Adrian, should have recognized all earthly things as lesser pleasures than Beatrice’s grace. He should have risen up to heaven in pursuit of her after her death, when she had become a purer heavenly creature. Like Adrian, Dante must yearn for what has left him in permanent mourning. Unworldliness is the proper way of seeking consolation in the more distant but truly higher good, rather than finding substitutes in the sirens of the here and now. Anger at the corruption of the earth, and even indignant disgust with the earth, becomes then a way of maintaining eros for what is now absent. Eros and thumos work together. They are not two separate parts of the soul, but two aspects of a single activity of the soul. Adrian’s face is pressed into the dirt not only as punish- �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ment, but as therapy. Anger and sorrow imply a love of something toward which earthly things cannot point him. While Beatrice, before her death, was an earthly beauty pointing beyond the earth, after her death she is a creature who has reached her Creator. Although she leaves Dante in mourning, she becomes an even more effective mediatrix for him. Of course, she does not renounce her earlier function as the earthly miracle who greeted him. But in heaven she can complete that work. The other aspect of the role of the prophet that can only with difficulty be connected to love of a woman is its public nature. The prophet is a leader of men and a master of rhetoric, as the Ulysses canto in the Inferno suggests.45 This issue of public prophecy and private love complete the picture of agape and eros in the Paradiso, the true finale of the Vita Nuova. In his meeting with John the Evangelist, Dante presents the paradox of a private love for something public and universal that can help us understand his love for Beatrice as a young man. John, like Beatrice, is a complex case. In his gospel, John’s status as private friend of Christ is contrasted with the universality of Christ’s relation to humanity. His gospel portrays a number of scenes that emphasize how, as a particular human being, even Christ had a special love for certain people, like his mother, and like his close friend John.46 But the gospel writer suggests that this in no way interfered with or reduced Christ’s universal charity. Because of the complexity of this portrayal, a myth arose that John had special immortality and was taken to heaven bodily. In Par45. Inferno 26 is structured around the division between the true and the false prophet. Dante suggests that he mistakes Ulysses for Elijah initially, and verges on becoming a sort of false prophet himself. From Ulysses’s story he must learn Paul’s well-known dictum in Corinthians 13 that the power of prophecy without love is nothing. See Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 66-106. 46. Above all, the comments about John’s special status in relation to Christ, and the play with Peter about philia (personal love) and agape (impersonal love) at the end of the gospel (John 21:15-23) raise questions about the role of the ordinary private individual. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 113 adiso 25, Dante looks for this body and goes blind. In Canto 26, John questions the blind Dante about love, asking him why he loves. Dante replies first with a universal argument. He loves because of the authority of scripture and because of philosophical arguments. But the apostle seems to ask him the same question again: Are there other cords that pull you to God, or other teeth of love that bite you? And Dante replies: Tutti quei morsi che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio, a la mia caritate son concorsi: ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio, la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva, e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io, con la predetta coscenza viva, tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto, e del diritto m’han posto a la riva. Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.47 Immediately after receiving this answer, Dante regains his sight, now made even stronger. Dante has brought the universal love of God (agape) into harmony with his own individual love (eros), transforming his love into the universal one. He is moved by God’s gift of creation as a whole, by God’s gift of salvation, and forgiveness, as well as by the hope that these imply for him. He is erotically concerned with his own good, and with the entire story of his that he presents in the Commedia, as this passage 47. Paradiso 26.55-66, “All those bites that can make the heart turn to God are in concord in my love. That the being of the world, and my being, the death that he underwent so that I might live, and that which every faithful person hopes, as I, together with the aforementioned living knowledge, they have drawn me from the sea of perverse love and has put me on the shore of the right [love]. The leaves with which are leafed all the garden of the eternal Gardener, I love as much as the good given to them by Him.” �114 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW suggests by returning to the beginning, when he was shipwrecked like Ulysses on the shoals of the mar de l’amor torto in Inferno 1, and then bringing us right up to the present, when he finds himself on the shore of right love in purgatory. The reference to leaves is an allusion to a passage in John’s gospel in which Christ describes himself as an eternal vine: Abide in me, and I in you. . . . I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. . . . If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.48 As part of the vine, Dante is now able to love the garden of the whole creation and all the leaves, that is, all creatures to which God has granted the gift of the good. This gift from God is agape. Dante’s individual love is now perfected in becoming agape for the other parts of the vine, and his love is now proportionate to the agape that comes down into all the leaves from God. Dante’s love for himself has now somehow cast a wider net of love around all creatures that partake in God’s grace. He loves all the blessed he will meet in the celestial rose, and all those who are yet to arrive there. Christ’s two commands—love God and love your neihbor as yourself (Mark 12:30-31)—are now one act for Dante, an act that springs from what was initially his selflove. For the source of all other loves is rightly directed self-love, as Dante remarked in the Convivio: lo proprio amore di me medesimo . . . è principio di tutti li altri, sì come vede ciascuno.49 We can now see how the public and universal qualities of Dante’s love in fact have room for his private and erotic love of Beatrice. Note how very similar this passage is to Dante’s description of the effect of Beatrice’s greeting on him in Chapter 11 of the Vita Nuova. In both cases, universal charity comes from hope. Dante 48. John 15.4-7. 49. Convivio 3.5. “[P]roper love of myself . . . is the root of all other loves, as everyone knows”. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | PIHAS 115 is exhilarated by promise of God’s creation and God’s sacrifice, which offers him great expectations. This confident private hope for his own happiness is transformed into charity for all of God’s garden. And the more secure he feels in his expectation of happiness, the more he is able to give of himself. The same is true of Dante’s relation with the beauty of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova. His self-regarding hope for the promise of her greeting brought the flame of charity to him, and he became Love. Her beauty humbled him and effaced his self, even if at the same time, on another level, his self was actively at work achieving the goal of its own self-love. In this humility before the Good, the human soul transcends the merely private. Dante turns to find Beatrice in Paradiso 31, and is surprised to see her replaced by the third and final guide, a white-haired old man. The anti-sensual element is emphatic. St. Bernard might be beautiful, but he could never be called pretty. And yet, Dante emphasizes the continuity: the severity of Beatrice’s prophetic character is succeeded by the austerity of Bernard. Dante will compare his vision of the old monk to the Veronica, the same shroud bearing Christ’s features that he once compared to Beatrice at the end of the Vita Nuova. This reference also recalls the “idolo” of Christ in the eyes of Beatrice from Purgatorio 31, which was discussed earlier. In Dante’s final speech to Beatrice (Paradiso 31.79-90) she has fully transcended herself; she has become a universal figure for the blessed. In the Vita Nuova, he made an attempt to love the innermost meaning of her beauty, that is, the meaning of her beauty in God. This transcendent element in her beauty now reveals itself to be her place in the celestial rose as a mere part of a larger divine order. Her innermost individual meaning becomes transcendent when it is not separate from anything else in God. At the outset of Canto 33, Bernard asks Mary to help Dante see God. He tells her that all those who have been saved throughout history up to the present day, including Beatrice, now pray for Dante. This is universal agape, akin to Dante’s newfound love for all the leaves of the garden—only here it is made explicit that it works in reverse as well. In this moment of communion which seamlessly combines agape and eros, not only does he love the �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW whole garden, but the whole garden loves him in return. Mary, the more traditional universal symbol of love, does not compete with Beatrice as the mirror of God; she is now revealed as the completion of Beatrice, the more perfect mirror. She resembles Christ more than any other. Mary initiated Beatrice’s rescue of Dante in Inferno, and now she finishes her task, turning Dante toward the Original for which she is merely the image. But even this turn to the Original in the final lines of the poem is not the end of these mirrors of God. Christ himself is an image of the Father. And there is a further image of God implicit in the closing lines. Although Dante cannot misurar lo cerchio (“measure the circle,” Paradiso 33.134), he finds himself moved by love sí come rota ch’igualmente é mossa (“like a wheel that is moved in equal measure,” Paradiso 33.144). The attribution of mathematical equality in the motion with the word igualmente implies that his motion does in fact precisely measure the Love that moves him. This equality is the most perfect correspondence of Dante’s desio and velle to God’s self-understanding and self-love. In this sense, Dante himself becomes an image of God.50 50. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica I-I q. 93, a.4) enumerates three forms of the image of God in man: first, that which all have by nature; second, that which the just have by grace; and, third, that which the blessed have by glory, the so-called “image of likeness.” In all three cases, man is in the image of God in that he loves and understands God, imitating the way in which God’s intellectual nature loves and understands itself. But in the third way, in glory, the blessed have the image of God in the highest degree, because they love and understand God more perfectly. Dante’s pair disio and velle achieve this third kind of understanding and love appropriate to those blessed by glory. Thomas’s reference to God’s self-love and understanding are echoed in Paradiso 33.124-126. This suggests that the three circles of the Trinity are circles because they represent the self-relation of God’s intellectual nature. When Dante grasps how the human effigy fits within the circle, he sees how the human soul can come to resemble God’s self-understanding and self-love. �POEM 117 THE EXTINCTION of SPECIES Marlene Benjamin To Din In Memoriam This is no abstract exercise. There will be names and places To tether you, to make you hear and note, To make you listen and mark. So mark this: We live amongst the extinction of species. “Passenger pigeon, great auk, Stellar’s sea cow, Schomburgk’s deer, sea mink, antarctic wolf, Carolina parakeet: all gone.” I learn this from Quammen’s exhilarating book, which is yet depressingly full of incontrovertible facts, Called The Song of The Dodo, a great bird also gone extinct. Quammen was at Oxford with Saul, who was at Brasenose some 15 or so years before you, and who Recently told me that he had long harbored a desire to meet you there for High Table fare, a desire He never satisfied. As for me, My desire to sit at table with you was satisfied over and over again across 43 years, Giving me the singular joy of watching you Grow from a child to the man you became, whose traits and habits Could be traced back to early childish behaviors. At five, you were insistent on being right, but with a sense of humor That made your rightness palatable to those who were faced with Hearing it forcefully directed at their pale and insignificant positions. “What,” you used to say, “is the point of that?” in mock horror at the Emptiness of my claims concocted to counter yours. Marlene Benjamin is Associate Professor Emerita at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. Her book, The Catastrophic Self: Essays in Philosophy, Memoir, and Medical Trauma, will be released in late 2015 or early 2016. �118 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW At six, you kindly said to me, using my own phrasing to illustrate the foolishness Of my arguments, “Now Marlene, we don’t want to hear any more about bloody California.” You knew this would kill me with laughter, and it did. At twenty-five, you gently queried my political explanations to end the conversation by saying “Now that sounds like an extremely intelligent position.” Long pause. “Or does it?” And what, I ask you now, am I to do without your challenges? Without your presence? It is as if an entire species has gone extinct with your death, Leaving a hole in the natural world that cannot be woven closed. There are too many frayed edges. And that is only me. For the damage done to the intimate family is far worse, Far more savage an attack on the fabric of the world. How shall they carry on? Perhaps they have a memory of your last moments to lean on, A way to conjure up the finality of your departure and thus, paradoxically, A way to hold you closer than is given to me. I don’t know; I wasn’t there. But I have this: I have what the camera captured in the photograph On the cover of the Order of Service at your funeral, the picture I have standing on my dresser Facing me each morning, showing you (in Wales, is it?) surrounded by your girls – Lily and Molly and Bea; Smiling at what I believe is Sue behind the camera – or perhaps it is Mag or Jim or Vinny or Simon – All of whom stand, for me, invisibly behind you, all of you together In the shadow of the astonishingly full and lovely life you had, it seemed, so effortlessly, made. Looking at you like this is to repopulate the world, My way to argue against the extinction of species. �POEM | BENJAMIN 119 However tenuous the argument, for a few moments every day, it works – even as I know, And love, that you would challenge my saying so. And knowing this, the hole, For some few tremulous moments – as if the air is being beaten by the concerted breathing Of all the creatures gone from our world – is somewhat, though evanescently, Woven closed. �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Education and the Art of Writing: Christopher Bruell’s Aristotle as Teacher— His Introduction to a Philosophic Science. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2014. 268 pages, $37.50 Book Review by James Carey In Aristotle as Teacher—His Introduction to a Philosophic Science, Christopher Bruell advances an interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics that pays closer attention to the wording of the actual text than does, as far as I know, any other study of that work since the imposing commentaries of the Middle Ages. It is also much the most original interpretation of the Metaphysics that I have ever read. Bruell has written impressive essays on Leo Strauss, and his fine study of Plato’s shorter dialogues, On the Socratic Education, shows the influence of Strauss. So one can call him, with some justification, a Straussian.1 This is not to say that he necessarily agrees with Strauss about everything, only that he takes seriously certain themes that were of great importance to Strauss, such as the rival claims of Greek philosophy and the Bible regarding the possibility of revelation, the root of morality, and, more generally, what constitutes the best human life. Strauss is well known for having called attention to the fact—and it is a fact—that the ancient philosophers, their medieval followers, and even their early modern opponents often wrote in such a way as to disclose their deepest thoughts only to their most careful readers while at the same time presenting on the surface of their texts a teaching that was more in accord with common opinions, especially opinions concerning James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 1. Straussians take the intellectual tradition of the West seriously, read the great books with exemplary care, and think hard about the things that are most worthy of thinking hard about. Those of us who are not Straussians can profit greatly by attending to what they have to say, whether or not we are ultimately persuaded by what they have to say. �REVIEWS | CAREY 121 the sanctity of law and the existence and nature of the divine. Philosophers wrote this way because they could not forget the example of Socrates, who in spite of his civic virtue and the caution with which he conversed was put to death for being a philosopher by the citizens of a regime that was democratic and, by ancient standards, generally liberal and tolerant as well. This art of writing is properly called “exoteric”— not “esoteric”—for the author realized that it would be available to be read by anyone who was able to read, whatever his ability and whatever his degree of sympathy or antipathy toward free inquiry. Though it becomes obvious on close inspection, especially under the guidance of Strauss, that many books of the philosophers have an exoteric character, it is not so obvious that Aristotle’s Metaphysics is one of these books. In fact, it is not so obvious that the Metaphysics is a book at all, not in the way that, say, the Nicomachean Ethics is.2 Bruell is aware that the Metaphysics looks at first glance, and for most readers at last glance as well, like a patchwork; and he does not rule out the possibility that someone other than Aristotle may have been responsible for the final form of the work (30).3 But he takes it as heuristic principle that whoever was responsible for the Metaphysics as it has come down to us from antiquity, whether it was Aristotle himself or one (or more) of his followers, had sound reasons for organizing it as he did, and that we cannot begin to understand the teaching of the book, much less evaluate it, without paying the closest possible attention to the stages in which it is presented. If the Metaphysics looks more like an assemblage of notes for lectures delivered at different times than a through-composed book like Plato’s Laws, Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, or Machiavelli’s Prince,4 that very appearance should be regarded as contributing to the exoteric character of the work. On Bruell’s interpretation, every chapter, and virtually every sentence, of the Metaphysics is in its proper place. Bruell slows the reader of the Metaphysics down, way down, and he requires 2. See W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarion Press, 1970), Vol. 1, xiii-xxxiii. 3. Pagination for citations from Aristotle as Teacher will be given within parentheses. The same practice will be followed for citations from the Metaphysics and other works by Aristotle. When only the Bekker number is given, it should be read as referring to the Metaphysics, except when a different work is specified in the text. 4. See Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, xxviii, on the formulations at 1069b35 and 1070a4. �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the reader to pay the closest possible attention to the exact working of the text. That by itself is one of the many merits of Bruell’s book. The layout of Aristotle as Teacher is unusual. It does not contain chapter headings of the kind that one typically finds in an extended study. Bruell frequently refers to what modern editors of the Greek text of the Metaphysics say about their editorial decisions, and he explains why he is or is not persuaded by them. But aside from these references, and a few references to Thomas Aquinas’s commentary, there is virtually no mention of the secondary literature (see 135). There are no footnotes or endnotes in Aristotle as Teacher. There is no bibliography, there is no index of persons, and there is no index of subjects. In the course of his treatment of the individual chapters of the fourteen books of the Metaphysics, Bruell makes many references to passages from other chapters. These references are always interesting. But the reader longs for an index of Aristotelian passages dealt with in the book, so that he can quickly find out what Bruell says about a given passage, and what he does not say about it. Straussians have occasionally suggested that the Metaphysics is an exoteric work. Those who, like the present reviewer, have found this claim implausible have wondered what in the world an intelligent and thorough interpretation of the Metaphysics as an exoteric book could possibly look like. Bruell’s book, written with a magisterial command of the text, and in lucid and unaffected prose of a high stylistic order, is that interpretation. It behooves anyone who wants to know, or who thinks that he already knows, what Aristotle is doing in the Metaphysics to come to terms with what Bruell has to say about it.5 Before proceeding further, I need to say something about the translation of some key Aristotelian expressions. One of these is ousia, which Bruell translates sometimes as “thing” and “sometimes as “essence,” in keeping with the fact that for Aristotle this word can signify both an ordinary individual and the intelligible character that the individual shares with other individuals like it. For the former signification I prefer “entity,” since this word is broad enough to cover both things and persons, sub-rational animals in between, and gods too if they exist. For the latter signification, and often for the former too, I shall leave ousia untranslated, as Bruell frequently does 5. The reserve with which Bruell communicates his interpretation could lead one to infer that Aristotle as Teacher is itself an exoteric work. This inference would be an error. There is no surface to Aristotle as Teacher. It is all depth. �REVIEWS | CAREY 123 as well.6 Another expression is to ti ēn einai, which Bruell translates as “the what it was to be.” Clearly, this expression names something of capital importance for Aristotle.7 Early in the Metaphysics, in his restatement of the four causes (983a27-32) that were presented in the Physics (194b23-195a3), Aristotle names ousia and to ti ēn einai first. He does not mention eidos here as one of the causes, as he did in the parallel passage in Physics, where it is the second cause mentioned.8 In Book Lambda, the unmoved mover is said to be to ti ēn einai, indeed the “first” ti ēn einai (1074a35-36), but never “form” (eidos), not even “pure form.”9 In what follows I shall also leave this expression untranslated. 6. “Beingness” is not unthinkable as a translation for the second signification of ousia, but it is unthinkable as a translation for the first signification. Aristotle calls such entities as individual men, horses, and plants, ousiai. It makes no sense to speak of these entities as “beingnesses.” 7. Since the imperfect ēn can function as durative, I prefer translating it as “is” rather than “was.” The formulation, “the what it was to be,” has an odd sound to my ears, as though implying “what it was to be, but no longer is,” or “what it was meant to be, but didn’t quite turn out to be.” Since the ti is interrogative, one might translate the expression as “the what is it to be.” But that translation is not entirely satisfactory either. Something of what Aristotle means by the expression can be gathered from the contexts in which he uses it. When he launches his inquiry into to ti ēn einai in Book Zeta, ch. 4, of the Metaphysics he uses the expressions to soi einai, to musikōi einai, to epiphaineiāi einai, to leukōi einai, etc. (See 994b27: to apeirōi einai; and De Anima 429b11 ff: to megathōi einai vs. to megathos, to hydati einai vs. to hydōr, to sarki einai vs. to sarks, to euthei einai vs. to euthy.) These dative of possessors are stronger than genitives and could be translated respectively as “the being proper to you,” “the being proper to musical,” “the being proper to surface,” “the being proper to white,” etc. Such expressions are presented as exemplifications of to ti ēn einai in the sphere of what is sensible. (See also 1029b21: ho logos tou ti ēn einai; and De Anima 429b20.) When Aristotle is not speaking of this or that particular individual, he tends to use the longer expression, to ti ēn einai. In the course of his treatment of sensible ousia, Aristotle often uses to ti ēn einai interchangeably with eidos. But the former is not a synonym for the latter. Furthermore, though in certain contexts Aristotle will speak of hylē as ousia, he never to my knowledge speaks hylē as to ti ēn einai (cf. Metaphysics 1032b14). 8. The presentation of the causes in Book Delta of the Metaphysics (1013b1627) follows the order of the Physics. 9. Eugene Ryan, “Pure Form in Aristotle,” Phronesis, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1973, 209-224. �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Bruell says of the formal cause, or the form, that it is “the perceptible or intelligible character of a being, nothing more” (20). The “nothing more” is intriguing, since Aristotle treats the form not only as what is intelligible about a sensible (or perceptible—aisthētē) entity (ousia) but, along with matter (or material—hylē), as an actual constituent of a sensible, and composite, entity (Physics 193b6). It is not only one of the causes, it is nature (physis) to a higher degree than is matter (ibid., 193b7; 193b19—taking morphē here as equivalent to eidos: 193b3-5). Indeed, it is activity, or being at work (energeia—Metaphysics 1050b2; see 1043a28). If the eidos were not somehow a constituent of an entity, then it is hard to see how it could be the perceptible or intelligible character of that very entity, or of its nature (Physics, 193b7). Bruell is hardly unaware of the passages I have just cited. But he has reasons for not placing as much weight on them as I and others do. One of the pervasive themes of the Metaphysics is the criticism of the “Platonic” account of the eidē as what is intelligible regarding sensible entities and, at the same time, as actual causes of these entities, though separate from them. Bruell detects in the Metaphysics a roughly parallel, but obliquely communicated, criticism of the “Aristotelian” account of eidē as well, and of the “Aristotelian” account of ousia more generally (140). Aristotle’s account is certainly not problem-free, one indication being his employment of the single word eidos to name both a constituent within, hence bound to, a particular sensible entity, and the species to which it and entities closely resembling it belong. Aristotle’s explicit teaching is that the eidos is present in a sensible entity, causing it to be the very being that it is, and yet also apprehensible, through the joint operation of sensation, imagination, and the intellect (nous), and explicable, in terms of genus and specific difference, as the intelligible character of that entity.10 (See De Anima 431a16; 431b3). This is a demanding construal of the eidos indeed. But it is not nonsensical. 10. Bruell writes, “In concluding this portion of the argument [in Book Zeta ch. 4], Aristotle does not speak of the form (eidos) but of species (eidē)” (138). Bruell speaks here as though eidos (singular) does not mean species (singular) and that when Aristotle wishes to speak of species (singular or plural) he uses eidē rather than eidos. But Aristotle will use eidos with speaking of species in the singular. See, for example, Categories 5, 2b7-23, Topics 4, 122b18-123a19. Nor is his usage of eidos (singular) for species (singular) confined to the logical writings. See, for example, Metaphysics 1038a25-26. Consider 1023b2. The hylē of the eidos is intelligible hylē, rather than sensible hylē. It is the genus: 1024b4-10, 1038a3-9, and 1045a33-35. �REVIEWS | CAREY 125 When Bruell comes to Aristotle’s treatment of the Platonic understanding of the forms, he writes, “Not even the considerable latitude that Aristotle avails himself of in speaking of his teacher is sufficient to permit the mention of Plato in connection with an imperfect grasp of the formal cause (compare A 7 988a34-b6)” (29). The passage that Bruell refers to here could seem to undermine the point it is supposed to support. For Aristotle writes there that “concerning to ti ēn einai [which, in the case of sensible entities, Aristotle closely associates with eidos— e.g., Physics194b26; Metaphysics 1032b1-2] and the ousia, no one [so, not even Plato] has clearly introduced (apodedōke) them, though those posting the forms do speak of them.” With his pointed reference to 988a34-b6, Bruell implies that Plato himself, as distinct from his followers, did not intend to introduce the formal cause clearly, inviting us to infer that Plato was as aware as was Aristotle of the problematic character of the formal cause. In his treatment of Book alpha (“little alpha”), Bruell correctly notes that, for Aristotle “truth is being, as knowable” (31). Since “we do not know ‘the true’ without the cause” (993b23-24), Bruell is led to infer, “Truth, then, or nature is being, as caused or in so far as it is caused.” But he immediately expresses a doubt about this inference, and rightly so. For the inference can be sustained only by ruling out the possibility that there could be an instance of truth that is being, not just as caused, but as cause, that is, that there could be a first uncaused cause and a first truth. For unless there is a cause that does not depend on a yet more fundamental cause, and unless there is a truth that does not owe its intelligibility to a yet more manifest truth, then we are caught in an infinite regress, both in causes and in truths, with no cause sufficient of itself, nor any number of causes in the series sufficient taken together, to account for what is caused and no truth evident of itself to ground other truths (994b16-23; see 1005b5-1006a12). But Aristotle says that what is most true (alēthestaton) is the cause of subsequent things’ (tois hysterois) being true (993b26-27).11 He expands his point 11. Thomas Aquinas and others have detected the outline of an argument, from gradations of being, for the existence of God right here in Book alpha (993b23994a2), an argument quite distinct from the argument from motion in Book Lambda. This argument is not fleshed out. But if not only to on, but also ousia as the premier instance of to on, has a pros hen character, which I think is Aristotle’s view (see, for example, 1004a3-5), then the ground has been laid in Book alpha for an argument that there is an ousia that is in the highest degree (malista) and is, moreover, the cause, or at least a cause, of other ousiai. �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW immediately afterwards by saying that the first principles (archai), not just of truths, but of eternal beings (to the extent that they have principles distinct from themselves—he likely has in mind the stars here), are always the most true. Nothing else is the cause of their being. And, he adds, just as each thing has being so it has truth (993b28-34). If Aristotle is serious in making these claims, then he cannot mean that truth is being as caused, period. Being as caused presupposes, in his account, being as uncaused. Aristotle says that it is clear (dēlon) there is some first principle (singular), and he expressly rules out an infinite regression of causes, either in a direct line or in type (994a1-2). Bruell does not deny that there is some first principle or principles, but he asks whether they are knowable (32). Whether or not they are knowable to us, however, they would be knowable by nature if they knew themselves, a possibility that Aristotle has already mentioned (983a6; see also 993b11; 1029b3-5; Posterior Analytics 71b34-35; Physics 1084a19; Nicomachean Ethics 1095b2) and will argue for explicitly in chapter nine of Book Lambda (1074b15-35). Bruell presumably regards these passages as exoteric.12 Aristotle begins chapter 2 of Book alpha by arguing that there can be neither an infinite regress with respect to the hou heneka (the “for the sake of which,” i.e., the final cause) nor with respect to to ti ēn einai. If so, then there must be both a first hou heneka that is not for the sake of anything else (994a8-10; 994b9-16; cf. 1072b1-3) and a first to ti ēn einai that is not bound up with hylē and is not the einai of anything else (1074a35-36), but is non-composite or simple (1072a31-34; 1075a5-10; cf. Physics 266a10-267b20), fully actual and in no sense potential 12. Regarding latter chapters of Book Lambda, Bruell chooses “to depart so far from [Aristotle’s] injunction (L6 1071b3-5) as to refrain from adding to them, elliptical though they are” (251). Apparently, Bruell understands these chapters, and earlier passages in the Metaphysics (e.g., 988b25-26; 1009a3638; 1012b30-31; 1037a10-17; 1037a33-b6; 1040b34-1041a3; 1041a7-9; 1045b23; 1064a33-1064b3: hoper peirasometha deiknunai) that anticipate them by making mention of entities that are immaterial and separate—separate, that is, from the perceptible entities with which we are familiar—to be accommodations to readers who would rather be moved (250) than see the truth for what it is. Prior to the latter chapters of Book Lambda, Aristotle will use locutions such as “immaterial and separate ousiai . . . if they exist.” One can say that Aristotle is hinting in such passages that immaterial ousiai, in fact, do not exist. But one can also say, instead, that he is reluctant to positively affirm the existence of such ousiai prior to advancing a complete argument for their existence, which he does not do until Book Lambda. �REVIEWS | CAREY 127 (1071b13-14, 19-22; 1074a36), necessary (1072b10), necessarily eternal (1071b4), an unmoved mover (1072a25-26: cf. Physics, 260a18-19), and the principle on which heaven and nature depend (1072b13-14). Aristotle argues that there are only four species of cause, and that within none of these species is there procession, or ascent, into infinity. Bruell is struck by the fact that Aristotle says, without elaboration, that even in the case of to ti ēn einai, the formal cause, there cannot be a procession into infinity (33). He speculates that this might be because the other three causes presuppose the formal cause, and that it is only on the basis of this presupposition that each of them, too, must have a first causes—from which we are invited to infer that if there is no first formal cause, then there is no first final, moving, or material cause either. Aristotle’s point, I think, is simpler. He is not committing himself here to the existence of an actual sequence or series of formal causes, but only noting that if one formal cause were the effect of another formal cause, then in this case too there could be no procession into infinity—and, again, he does argue for a first to ti ēn einai later on.13 Bruell writes “[Aristotle] assumes that there is a beginning to the series [that he is considering at present in terms of their downward direction], a first cause, as if the necessity that there be such a beginning had been shown also for causes in this way, as one might have been led to believe that it had been shown for causes coincident with their effects in time” (34). It is not clear that Aristotle is speaking at this point exclusively of causes antecedent in time to their effects, rather than of causes more generally (cf. 994b6-9). He does argue elsewhere that temporally antecedent causes—for example, fathers as causes of sons—can regress backwards in time indefinitely, the world having no beginning in time and the human species being eternal (Physics 206a24-206b27 cf. 258b10; 266a7.). But, as for causes coincident with their effects, Aristotle does not just lead us to believe that they cannot proceed to infinity 13. 1074a36. In Book Zeta, Aristotle will speak of the specific differences that are present in the definitions of various species (eidē) as having a formal character that limits the genus, which is in turn the intelligible material (hylē noetikē) that is also present in the definition (cf. 1023b2; cf. 1036a9-11); see the passages referred to in footnote 10, supra. At the end of his interpretation of Book alpha, ch. 2, Bruell notes that an infinite ascent in formal causes would give rise to a problem for the possibility of science or knowledge (35-36). Such a thing, however, would not be problem for knowledge alone. It would be a problem for being itself: there would be no ousiai that are without qualification (consider 1086b16-19). �128 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in the ascending direction. As Bruell noted earlier, “[Aristotle] explains more generally why there must be a first cause, if there is to be any cause at all” (33). Bruell does not elaborate on this general explanation. He speaks as though he finds it unpersuasive; and he may think that Aristotle found it unpersuasive as well. Aristotle’s explanation or, rather, argument is that there cannot be an actual infinite number of anything (Physics 207b11-12.). Least of all, then, can there be, in a series of causes coincident with a given effect, an infinite number of them efficacious at an instant. For if, per impossible, there were an infinite number of such causes, each the effect of another cause, then there would be no cause, or number of causes, higher up in the series capable of producing any other cause or effect further down in the series. And so, “if there were no first (cause), there would be no cause (properly so called) at all” (994a18-19). One cannot avoid this conclusion by asserting that “the whole infinity of causes” produces the given effect, for an infinity of causes is not a whole. In the case of a series of causes coincident with their effects, then, there simply must be a cause that is not itself an effect within the series. Aristotle’s medieval followers, on both sides of the philosophical-religious divide, held this to be a necessary truth. Bruell seems to think that Aristotle’s shifting between speaking of causes that temporally precede their effects and speaking of causes that are coincident with their effects, and his sometimes treating both together in general statements, are hints that he may not have been altogether serious about his argument for the necessity of a first cause in the case of causes that are coincident with their effects (see 32-36). It would have been helpful if Bruell had spelled out exactly what he thinks Aristotle might have found defective in this argument, which he makes in his own name. Quite a lot turns on it. As for causes that temporally precede their effects, it is here that an infinity of formal causes in particular is ruled out. For though, to return to Aristotle’s example, in natural generation the series of fathers and sons regresses backwards indefinitely into time past, the formal cause, to ti ēn einai, in this case to anthropōi einai, is present throughout the series. If this formal cause itself has a formal cause, which as such would be temporally coincident with it, then the same argument applies: there can be no ascent into infinity. Aristotle announces at the beginning of Book Gamma that there is a science that considers being qua being (to on hēi on). He says that being (to on) is said in many ways, though always in relation to one (pros hen) nature or principle (1003a33-34; 1003b5-6; cf. Categories �REVIEWS | CAREY 129 1a12-15). That one nature or principle is ousia (1003b6-10; cf. 1003b17-19; 1028b2-7). Being, then, is not a universal like horse, in which all the members of the class are equally horses. It is not a genus, and it cannot be divided into subordinate genera (998b22-26; cf. 1070b1). To be subdivided, specific differences would have to be introduced; and yet these differences, too, are, in some sense of that word. Aristotle gives two examples of what he means by the special kind of “universal” that being is. Many things are called “healthy,” but always with reference to health. Bruell sees a problem with this example: though we call lots of things “healthy,” we do not call health “healthy” (65). However, the second example that Aristotle gives is more apt, namely, “the medical” (or “that which is medical”– to iatrikon –1003b12; cf. 1030b2-3.) A medical knife, a medical procedure, a medical building, a medical degree, etc., are all called “medical” with reference to some one instance of medical that is medical in the preeminent sense, and that is the medical art (hē iatrikē). The medical art is rightly called “medical.” In the same way, ousia is rightly called a being (on), and ousiai are rightly called beings (onta).14 Bruell, however, has misgivings about calling Aristotle’s ousiai “beings” (65). For being is always said in relation to some one nature or principle (1003b6; cf. 1028a 14-15), and that turns out to be ousia. But ousia is not itself said in relation to ousia. So it seems that ousia cannot be a being, after all. This, I take it, is the reasoning behind Bruell’s misgivings. Aristotle, however, says at once that ousiai are beings: “Some [things] are called beings because [they are] ousiai,” (1003b6; cf. 1028a 14-15) others because they are qualities of ousia, and so forth. The color of a horse is a quality of an ousia; but the horse itself is an ousia. It is, then, in a quite special sense that a horse is said in relation to ousia: the relation is one of identity, where something that is really one is thought of as two (1018a4-9; cf. 1021b6-8). Aristotle frequently speaks of ousiai as beings later in the Metaphysics (e.g., 1071b5), as he does here, and Bruell of course acknowledges this. But he regards this way of speaking as loose (100; 126), for reasons that become clearer later on (e.g., 230-231; 238). Bruell distinguishes between two models of a philosophical science: “philosophy as originally conceived, on the one hand, and a divine 14. Cf. Physics 192b8-13. Among the onta that Aristotle lists here are animals and plants, which are incontestably ousiai, if not exactly ousiai in the fullest sense of the word. Only the separate ousiai of Book Lambda, chs. 6-10—if they exist—would count for Aristotle as ousiai in the fullest sense of the word, as I shall argue below. �130 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW science (A2 983a4-11), on the other” (38). By the former, Bruell means the various attempts at physics that were advanced by the preSocratics.15 He speaks of a need that Aristotle found himself under to revise these two models. Regarding the model of “a divine science,” Bruell says that Aristotle “cannot point to the needed revisions so visibly and unambiguously as to jeopardize the survival of a ‘metaphysics’ [Bruell reminds us that ‘metaphysics’ is not Aristotle’s term] whose attractiveness offers the broad back on which the skeletal form of a philosophic science might have the prospect of riding into and through ages even less hospitable to philosophy than his own” (39). The task that Bruell sets himself in his interpretation is to bring this skeletal form gradually and cautiously into view, though only for those who have eyes to see. Not all readers of the Metaphysics have eyes to see. But Aristotle, as Bruell interprets him, offers something of value to virtually everyone who reads through it. When Bruell comes to speak about Book Kappa, which makes something of a new beginning in the Metaphysics, he distinguishes between, by my count, four different groups of readers. These readers can be grouped as follows (using numbers in brackets, so as to reserve numbers in parentheses for Bruell’s pagination): [1] In the first place are those who have not been “disappointed in the result, or at the lack of result, of the investigation of ousia in Zeta and Eta, at its failure to reach its announced goal (Z2 1028b27-31, Z17 1041a6-9).” That failure is “redeemed for them” by “the treatment of potentiality and truth in Theta [and/or] of ‘the one’ in Iota” (225). For these, the most careful readers of the Metaphysics, i.e., the readers who are equipped both intellectually and emotionally to apprehend and accept the austere teaching of this work, the inquiry into the science of being qua being is substantively finished, that is, finished to the extent that it can be finished (1028b3), by the end of Book Iota. The express theology of the latter chapters of Book Lambda, in particular, is not for them. However, 15. Aristotle does not make a sharp a distinction between these two endeavors. Cf. infra, footnote 34. Regarding “philosophy as originally conceived,” Bruell refers us to Book Alpha ch. 3-6, 8-9, and to Book alpha ch. 1-2 (38). Book Alpha ch. 3-5, 8 (and 7 too) treat physical theories, though not exclusively. But physical theories per se are not obviously the chief concern of ch. 6 and 9, nor of Book alpha ch. 1, though they return for consideration in ch. 2 of that book. With his references, Bruell suggests that “philosophy as originally conceived,” in distinction from “a divine science,” is physics properly understood, i.e., the study of nature in the deepest sense of the word physis. �REVIEWS | CAREY 131 another group of readers have been disappointed by the failure of the investigation of ousia in Zeta and Eta, and this failure has not been redeemed for them by anything that was said in Books Theta and Iota. Among these are [2] readers for whom Book Kappa, with its repetitions of portions of Books Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon, is able to remind of points already made and thereby to sharpen “their awareness of a problem which they will already have felt and which the sequel will, somehow or other, have to solve” (225).16 Some of these readers are educable, psychologically as well as intellectually, and there is a chance that by the end of Book Kappa, or by the end of the first five chapters of Book Lamba at the latest, they will have come to understand what the first group of readers understood without reading beyond Book Iota. But also among the readers of Kappa are [3] a third group to whom “the cold light of the intervening books [between Books Alpha and Kappa] . . . will have proved no avail” (225). Nothing they will have read prior to Book Lambda will have led them to doubt that a philosophical science is able to demonstrate the existence of separate, incorporeal, eternal ousiai, and they continue to hope that the argument of the Metaphysics will culminate in this demonstration. However, even within this group there are [4] some who are “unable to accept Lambda’s result (its silence [i.e., Book Mu’s silence about Book Lambda’s result] constituting a tacit acknowledgement of their good judgment in that regard)” (254). It is largely, though not exclusively, for this fourth group that Books Mu and Nu are written. For though they were unable to accept Lambda’s result, “they have retained, whether for good reasons or bad, an interest in the ideas and the mathematicals.” The good reasons add up to a genuine theoretical interest in the greater intelligibility of the ideas and the mathematicals in comparison with the sensible, composite individuals with which we are familiar (999b1-4). The bad reasons add up, it is not difficult to surmise, to baseless hopes and a deluded attachment to the idea of eternity (see 264 on “we wish,” and compare De Anima 432b5-6), from which Aristotle has gently tried to pry his most mature readers loose. In either case, Books Mu and Nu will hammer the remaining nails that Aristotle has at his disposal into the coffins of Pythagoreanism and Platonism. As for those readers who were able to accept Book Lambda’s result, if they bother to read Books Mu and Nu at all they will likely regard them only as superfluous and annoying appendices that detract from the comforting theology of Book Lambda. 16. Bruell does not spell out what this problem is here. �132 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW To repeat, this is my count of the different groups of readers that Bruell indicates. If I have enumerated and distinguished them more or less correctly, there is surely overlap, and there may be other groups quite different from these.17 At any event, at this point we have to ask what it is that the first group of readers, the fully adult readers, have come to see by the end of Book Iota at the latest. That is to say, what does Bruell think is the deepest stratum of the teaching in the Metaphysics? It is not easy to be sure about this. If Aristotle expressed his deepest thoughts in the Metaphysics with such circumspection that only a very small number of readers, perhaps no more than a handful of them, have ever read this book adequately, and if they in turn have refrained from writing down exactly what they have discerned in it, then Bruell must realize that Aristotle and his most competent readers had good reasons for their reticence. Times have changed however. The attitude of the public to philosophy today is less likely to be one of suspicion and hatred than of indifference and contempt. Contemporary readers of the Metaphysics underestimate the daring of Aristotle’s thought, and hence fail to learn from it, because they find the express theology of 17. Working with Bruell’s guiding premise that in the Metaphysics Aristotle tailors his teaching to different groups of readers, I venture to suggest a fifth group, distinct from the four noted above. Near the beginning of Book Mu Aristotle says—I quote Bruell’s paraphrase—“‘first’ to be considered are what the others have said about these questions,” i.e., the questions about the possibility of “some ousia that is without motion and everlasting” (254). Bruell emphasizes the word “first” (1076a12) because this passage “conveys the impression or suggestion” that the investigation into this possibility “is about to begin in earnest.” This impression or suggestion would then be an understated repudiation of the results of Book Lambda. The alternative is that Aristotle is only announcing a fresh beginning, of which there have already been several in the Metaphysics: the “first” points to a “second.” That is, Aristotle leads us to think that, after first treating what others have said about separate ousia, he will add something further of his own about it. Whether it would depart significantly from Book Lambda or not, there is no way telling since the Metaphysics does not contain a further account of separate ousia or of anything else after the critical treatment, in Books Mu and Nu, of what others have said. This fifth group of readers, of whom I am one, infers that Aristotle simply never got around to writing the sequel to Books Mu and Nu. To this group Bruell might respond that the absence of the expected sequel should not be explained away so conveniently when it can be interpreted as the tacit response to an expectation deliberately raised at the beginning of Book Mu only to be deflated when the reader in this fifth group turns over the last page of Book Nu and sees nothing there. �REVIEWS | CAREY 133 Book Lambda preposterous. Bruell, for all his caution, discloses what he takes to be the deepest stratum of Aristotle’s teaching in the Metaphysics more candidly than did any previous readers, if there were any, who interpreted the book along the lines that he does. And so, I do not think it inappropriate to attempt to state just what Bruell understands this deepest stratum to be. As far as I can tell, it consists of several interrelated theses, which are not expressed unequivocally but are indicated here and there (again using numbers in brackets). [1]There are no separate ousiai, which is to say, there is no God and there are no gods. [2] The harmoniously ordered cosmos is not eternal. It is a transient phase, destined to pass away eventually. [3] The heavenly bodies are not moved by an unmoved mover (or movers). Their apparent, circular motion is caused by what they are, including especially what they are made of, rather than by any mover apart from them. [4] The articulation of the given world and the distinctions between things is largely the effect of the human intellect, so much so that one is tempted to infer that the human intellect is the deepest root of things. But that inference would be problematic since the human intellect is mortal. It is hardly the deepest root of itself. [5] The deepest root of things is, in fact, matter, not just the “materiality” of the four elements, but something coursing beneath these, eternal, moving, not accessible to perception, and not really accessible to the intellect either. The existence of this ultimate matter can be much more plausibly inferred than can the existence of separate ousiai, but only as a kind of limit case of what the human intellect can infer. We know nothing about it other than that it exists, and that it is some kind of cause. We cannot even be sure that the claims we venture to make about it are governed by the principle of non-contradiction.18 Since this eternal, moving, and imperceptible matter is the deepest root of things, it is the deepest root of the human intellect too. The human intellect is no more than a possibility, so to speak, that was always latent in this matter. [6]. On the 18. Aristotle claims that the so-called principle of non-contradiction is indemonstrable (1006a5-10). It is known, however, as self-evident, and is thereby a first principle (archē) for the demonstration of other things (cf. Posterior Analytics 99b15-100b17). It is the most certain of all principles. It is a principle about which one cannot be mistaken (Metaphysics 1005b8-25), though one individual might not understand the articulation of this principle, while another might feign ignorance about it because it cannot be demonstrated (1011a3-b17) or just prevaricate about it (cf. 1005b 25-26). Bruell is not convinced that Aristotle was as confident of this principle and of its logical equivalent, the principle of excluded middle, as he lets on (67-83; see the full �134 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW other hand, the human intellect, as tossed up by this matter and then impinged upon by it, constitutes, somehow, a world, an ordered whole that is more or less knowable, by physics in particular. Physics, and not metaphysics, is the philosophical science—though only if physics is properly conducted, that is to say, modestly conducted, without any pretense of being able to draw the deepest root of things into the sunlight. The given world is the home of man, and it is the region to which science, including philosophical science, is limited. It is given, not by God or the gods, but by primordial matter acting upon one of its own potentialities. If Bruell’s interpretation is that the Metaphysics is intended to communicate the above theses, or theses resembling them, to its most careful readers, then it must be said at once that this interpretation is, strictly speaking, irrefutable. Any passages in the Metaphysics that can be marshalled as evidence against it can be consistently interpreted by Bruell as exoteric accommodations. And there is no way he can be proven wrong. Still one can raise a few questions about these theses. [1] The thesis that there are no separate ousiai is not argued for, much less demonstrated, by Aristotle or by Bruell. It is what certain passages in the Metaphysics “meant perhaps to suggest” (233). Since there is no way of actually demonstrating that there are no separate ousiai, a less strident version of this thesis would be simply that there is nothing in our experience of, and thoughtful reflection on, the given world that enables us to reasonably infer that separate ousiai exist. This version may be closer to what Bruell discerns in the Metaphysics. [2] The thesis that the harmoniously ordered cosmos is not eternal may be intimated (1074b10-13; see 252, bottom: “many times”), but it is not argued for either. For this thesis to be taken seriously, some kind of account needs to be given of how a well-ordered and, especially, intelligible cosmos could emerge out of chaos by chance, rather than through the agency of something like a divine intellect or a demiurge (994b8-22; 1060a26-27; 1075b24-27). paragraph on 83). One thing is clear, however: if this principle, or one logically equivalent to it, is not self-evidently known, then there can be no demonstration, hence no genuine science (Posterior Analytics 71b20-34; cf. Republic 533b5c6), philosophical or otherwise, of anything in this world, to say nothing of whatever is above or beneath it. (Compare Strauss, “Freud on Moses and Monotheism,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, edited by Kenneth Hart Grene, [Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1997], 285.) And that would count as a point in favor of belief in revelation, which does not need to validate its fundamental claims in the same way that philosophy does. �REVIEWS | CAREY 135 [3] The thesis that the heavenly bodies move themselves and are not moved by anything else is at odds with Aristotle’s theory, even his very definition, of motion (Physics 201a10; a29). It is possible that he did not intend his theory of motion seriously. But there is no alternative theory of motion argued for in the Physics. And, as we shall see shortly, the denial of Aristotle’s theory of motion undercuts a criticism of one of the moral presuppositions of religious belief. [4] The thesis that the human intellect is crucially responsible for the world as we experience it (Anaxagoras’s audacious thought? [26]) cannot be simply dismissed. Among other things, there is textual support for the claim that Aristotle seriously entertained this view.19 But to argue for it, while at the same time arguing for the possibility of science as a communicable endeavor, one has to make a distinction between what is idiosyncratic about this or that human intellect and what is common or pertains to the human intellect as such. Kant and Husserl, in different ways, made this distinction, which is the distinction between empirical and transcendental subjectivity. And it is not unthinkable that this distinction was anticipated in Aristotle’s distinction “in the [human] soul” (en tēi psychēi) between an intellect that “becomes all things,” the potential (or passive) intellect, and an intellect that “makes [!] all things” (De Anima 430a13-16), the active intellect. Though the distinction between active and passive intellect would support this particular thesis, Bruell does not speak to it, whether because he thinks that the active intellect sounds too much like something divine, which Aristotle as a philosopher could not take seriously, or because, if it is not divine, it cannot plausibly be claimed to be deathless and eternal (cf. 250), as Aristotle says it is (De Anima, 430a22-24), or for some other reason, I do not know. [5] The thesis that matter is the deepest root of things is, in my opinion, much the least plausible of these theses, both on the merits and as an interpretation of Aristotle. The most interesting textual support that Bruell adduces for it is a rather obscure sentence near the beginning of Book Lambda (1069a30-36; Bruell, 246). But, however one interprets this sentence, there are problems with claiming that matter is the root of all things. For one cannot make good sense of the claim that the mind is produced by, or is ultimately a property of, matter, given the intentionality peculiar to the former. In fact, it is difficult to rescue the claim that matter is the root of all things from the charge of ultimate 19. See Physics 223a22-27; De Anima 426a20-26; Metaphysics, 1036a1-8. �136 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW self-contradiction.20 And even if one could show that something like Aristotle’s passive intellect can be construed as physically produced by matter, or as a mysterious and superfluous epiphenomenon of matter, or as itself just a complex mass of matter—and I think that one cannot show any of these things—one would be left only with an intellect that (wondrously) corresponds to the things it apprehends. But on that basis one would not be able to make a meaningful distinction between true opinion and knowledge strictly so called. For this distinction one would need, again, to introduce something like the active intellect, something that knows it is knowing. Aristotle presents the intellect—the active and/or divine intellect surely—and matter as radically diverse principles. Neither is reducible to or derivable from the other. One can claim for whatever combination of reasons that the intellect and the truths that it knows are occult properties latent in an aboriginal hylē. This claim is, after all, one of the reigning dogmas of our time. But one cannot make sense of it without transforming hylē from mere materiality (or potentiality—dynamis), as we encounter it in the given world, into an uncaused cause, primordial but also permanently present in its actualizing activity (energeia), and essentially elusive. [6] Bruell aims in Aristotle as Teacher at showing that the pursuit of a science of being qua being in the Metaphysics is as much concerned with the possibility of science or knowledge (epistēmē) as it is with illuminating being. The Metaphysics aims at introducing its readers to a philosophical science, which precisely as philosophic, requires exposing the problematic character of science, which is in fact the problem of philosophy itself, to the extent that philosophy aspires to validate, unequivocally, its claim to be the most choiceworthy way of life for those who have what it takes to live it. That aspiration is obviously compromised if philosophy cannot get at the deepest root of things. For then it cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the deepest root of things is not much more akin to what its greatest rival holds as a matter of faith than anything that natural reason can penetrate to on its own. In that case, “does not science or philosophy come into fatal contradiction with itself?” (28). If philosophy cannot know more about the root of all things than that some such root exists, then it cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this root really is a blind, deaf, and mute necessity rather than the God who dwells in 20. See Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 127-134. �REVIEWS | CAREY 137 a thick cloud and reveals himself out of the freedom of his own inscrutable will, to those of his own choice, at a time and place of his own choosing. We encounter several of the above theses in Kant. For he, too, holds that the human mind, stimulated by something essentially hidden from it, constitutes the world, and that there can be a scientific investigation, a physics, of the world, so constituted, even a metaphysics of nature, but no metaphysics of whatever it is that lies beneath nature and outside the constitutive activity of the human intellect. The conspicuous difference between Kant and Aristotle, as I take Bruell to interpret Aristotle, is that Kant expends enormous effort in arguing for his theses, and he does so openly and directly, for pages on end. Bruell’s Aristotle does not clearly advance arguments for any of the theses suggested above. The arguments may exist, disassembled, their premises partially concealed here and there in the thickets of Books Zeta through Iota. But Bruell has not reassembled them. Or if he has, I have not been able to discern them. Bruell’s Aristotle teaches by and large indirectly, by way of intimations (e.g., 38), divergences from earlier intimations (39), pointers (83), indications (100), thoughts that he allows himself to express only in conditional form (163), suggestions (101), tacit admissions (118), tacitly withdrawn suggestions (125), and silence (128). The preceding paragraph could lead one who knows nothing of Bruell as a thinker and teacher to infer that his interpretation of the Metaphysics is just too idiosyncratic to be worth the effort required to grasp it. That inference would be seriously mistaken. The progressive deepening of one’s understanding that results from following Bruell as he thinks his way slowly, patiently, sentence by sentence and word by word, looking behind and to the side as well as ahead, through the maze that is the Metaphysics is worth incomparably more than the effort it takes to keep up with him. That Aristotle chose to teach indirectly, with a view to the diverse abilities and needs of his readers, cannot be ruled out, if only because we know that he had before him the examples of his teacher and of his teacher’s teacher. And we know how indirectly they taught. Though Bruell speaks of the “attractiveness” of “the broad back on which the skeletal form of a philosophic science might have the prospect of riding,” he does not describe it. For this reason, it is necessary to restate, if only briefly, the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics so that it can be compared with the teaching that Bruell finds indicated beneath the surface. The traditional interpretation takes sev- �138 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW eral forms, and in restating it I can only sketch what I understand to be its most coherent form. Others would surely sketch the traditional interpretation differently than I do. But all variations of the traditional interpretation have more in common with my sketch of it than they do with Bruell’s interpretation. According to the traditional interpretation, the concern of the Metaphysics is being, not the being of any particular entity, but being as such, or being qua being (1003a20). But, as noted earlier, being is not a genus. Ousia is the primary instance of being (1028a 14-15), and it is that in relation to which everything else, such as color, size, position, and so forth is said, in a derivative sense, to be. The inquiry into being qua being is then primarily an inquiry into ousia. There is, however, a range of opinion about what most deserves to be called ousia (1028b8-1029a5). But since virtually everyone agrees that a sensible entity, which Aristotle calls a whole (synolon) of eidos (or morphē) and hylē (1029a5-6) or a composite entity (synthetē ousia—1070a14), is an ousia, and since we cannot at the early stage of our inquiry be sure that there are any ousiai that are separate from sensible ousiai, Aristotle begins with a consideration of sensible ousia, with how it is related to to ti ēn einai and how it is known. Now ousia as the primary instance of being would seem to be being least mixed with non-being.21 So, if there are imperishable ousiai, i.e., ousiai that do not come to be and pass away, they would be ousiai more fully than perishable ousiai are (cf. 1059b12-14; 1060b1-3).22 As imperishable, and hence not bound up with hylē, which is not itself fully intelligible, separate ousiai would also be more intelligible than sensible ousiai, if not initially so to us, still more intelligible by nature, or intrinsically intelligible, or intelligible to themselves. Similarly ousia, as the primary instance of being would seem to be that which is most actual and least potential. So if there are unmoved ousiai, they would be more fully ousiai than are moved ousiai (since what is moved is, to some extent, potential and not entirely actual: Physics 201a11; a30; b33; Metaphysics 1026a15-16 ). Finally, if there are ousiai that are altogether separate from, and in no way depend on, other ousiai, either as features 21. See Plato, Republic 476e7-478e7. 22. Consider the full implication of 1026a27-32. Even if there are separate ousiai, why wouldn’t physics still be the first science, unless sensible ousiai are found wanting in something that should pertain to them as ousiai, namely immobility and imperishability? I read the aporia noted at 1086b16-20 as resolvable through an account of separate ousiai that would recapitulate, in its essentials, the chief claims of Book Lambda, chs. 6-10. �REVIEWS | CAREY 139 of those ousiai or predicated of them, then they are ousiai more fully than dependent ousiai are (1017b23-26; 1029a27-28). In sum, the primary instance of ousia, ousia in the unqualified sense, would be characterized by imperishability, intrinsic intelligibility, complete actuality, and unqualified independence. Among the sensible ousiai that inhabit the sublunar sphere, we find something that, if not actually eternal, is imperishable at least as long as we can attend to it in thought. And this is the form (eidos) of the sensible, perishable, composite entity, to the extent that its form is identical to, or inextricable from, the species (also eidos) to which the perishable, sensible composite “belongs,” as their common name suggests and which is there for thought long after the composite itself perishes. But for Aristotle, unlike the Platonists, the form is not separate, except in logos, from that of which it is the form.23 It does not, so to speak, stand on its own, as does the perishable, sensible, composite entity of which the eidos is predicated. The hylē of the sensible composite does not, as matter, stand on its own either. Matter, taken by itself, is merely potential being (1060a20-21); in this way it exists only in relation to actual being, to something that, as such, is, not potentially but actually. Moreover, matter as such is not knowable (1036a8-9); we can know a perishable, sensible composite only to the extent that we can apprehend its eidos (De Anima 429a27-28; 431b3, 27-432a1), apart from its matter (ibid, 429b22). As potential being, matter can neither actually be nor be knowable or even perceptible (De Anima 424a18-19). The perishable, sensible composite entity, then, has relative to its eidos the advantage of standing on its own, of being an individual and not something that is only as predicated of something else. On the other hand, the eidos has relative to that of which it is the eidos, the advantage of being imperishable to the extent that it continues to be intelligible, as species, after the composite entity perishes. The inquiry into sensible ousiai leads to the problematic result that the features of separability, individuality, and independence, on the one 23. Bruell puts repeated, and wholly justifiable, emphasis on Aristotle’s criticism of the notion of subsistent universals, including any attempt to interpret his own species and genera as subsistent. There is, however, nothing particularly controversial about this. The criticism is recognized in the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics, and generally concurred in as well. It has no adverse bearing at all on—in fact, it reinforces—Aristotle’s account of separate ousiai in Book Lambda. For these ousiai are not universals. (And the Biblical God is not a universal either.) �140 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW hand, and immobility and imperishablility on the other, both of which are characteristic of ousia (see, e.g., 1017b22-28; 1026a10-16), are bifurcated in the sublunar sphere. We cannot find any ousia in this sphere that bears the features of both sets of characteristics, which is to say that nothing here is without qualification. As for the superlunar sphere, the stars are indeed separate individuals (as eidē are not) and they seem to be imperishable too, for they have been up in the heavens, participating in ceaseless circular motion for as long as people have recorded what they have seen in the heavens. But motion, including circular motion, requires a mover distinct from and causative of what is moved. The stars, then, can be inferred to be moved without cessation by something distinct from them, which is itself unmoved (Physics 265a13 ff.; Metaphysics 1072a19-26). In Book Zeta, well in advance of the theology he advances in the second half of Book Lambda, Aristotle makes the following statement. Even if we had never seen the stars, nonetheless, I suppose, there would be eternal ousiai besides those [ousiai] we knew; so that also now [i.e., when we have seen the stars] even if we are not able to know what [these eternal ousiai] are, still it is equally necessary for there to be some [eternal ousiai]” (1040b34-1041a2). I note at once that Aristotle’s statement here is not only elliptical, but guarded as well. He uses oimai (“I suppose”) in the first main clause; and in the second main clause he uses isōs, which I have translated as “equally,” but which one could also translate as “probably” or even “perhaps,” though doing so would produce something of a clash with the word anagkaion (“it is necessary”), with which the second main clause, and the sentence as a whole, concludes. In any case, my point is not that Aristotle is advancing an actual argument here for the existence of separate ousiai, separate from all sensible ousiai, the stars included. His argument in Book Lambda for the existence of separate ousiai is a cosmological one. What Aristotle is advancing in the above quoted passage is, I would say, only an ontological consideration. That is, if ousia is the premier instance of to on, if there are only sensible ousiai, and if no sensible ousia is both imperishable and independent, then there is nothing that is without qualification. And that may well be exactly how it stands with being: “the nothing” is always present with and within it. But Aristotle does not leave it at this Heideggerian conclusion. The inquiry into sensible ousiai has led to the conclusion that if there is anything that is without qualification, then it is both in- �REVIEWS | CAREY 141 dependent and individual, on the one hand, and imperishable on the other. The stars coming closest to fitting the bill, but their movement leads Aristotle to think beyond them to the unmoved source of their movement. The trajectory of the enquiry into being qua being, which begins with an inquiry into sensible ousia, leads to the latter chapters of Book Lambda where Aristotle concludes that there must be an eternal unmoved mover of the fixed stars, a mover that moves by being the object of desire or imitation, a mover that engages in an eternal act of intellection (noēsis). This unmoved mover is that on which, again, he says heaven and nature depend. This mover is responsible for the movement of the sphere of fixed stars. But Aristotle has to invoke a number of other unmoved movers similar to it in order to account for the circular motions of other heavenly bodies. Not only are the unmoved movers intelligent beings, but the heavenly bodies that are moved by them are intelligent as well. They move because the “sight” they have of the unmoved movers gives rise to an eros, to a desire to imitate, to the extent possible for a sensible entity, the changeless activity of the unmoved mover’s self-knowledge.24 This imitation takes the form of perfect circular motion, the motion that is most like immobility: what moves in a perfect circle is always on its way to where it already is. The account of the unmoved mover in Book Lambda, and especially the need to invoke a number of them, along with the necessary presupposition that the heavenly bodies are themselves luminous intelligences, is so foreign to our way of thinking that not only is it hard for us take it seriously, it is also hard for us to believe that Aristotle could have taken it seriously. However, the heavenly bodies, the fixed stars especially so, surely appear to move in circular motion, not just in Aristotle’s time but according to astronomical observations predating those of the Greeks by centuries. Given the astronomical records available to Aristotle, together with his own account of what motion is, the cosmological argument he advances in Book Lambda for separate, imperishable, and individual ousiai, is as reasonable an account as anyone at the time could have come up with to explain the phenomena.25 24. Aristotle is aware that nous was eros were claimed, by Anaxagoras and Empedocles respectively, to be principles of the whole. Such claims did not keep him from grouping them among the physicists as distinct from the mythologists. 25. The problem that Aristotle’s account Lambda gives rise to, and which he does not address, is how there can be a multiplicity of unmoved movers, given �142 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Hoping that the above summary, inadequate in more ways than one, provides something of a depiction of the “broad back” on which “the skeletal form of a philosophic science” has ridden, all but unnoticed, across more than two millennia, I turn to a comparison of the latter with the former. There is a problem with the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics, for there are passages that appear to undercut it. I interpret them, not so much as lapses or “nodding” on Aristotle’s part, but as the raising and re-raising of aporiai that do not get resolved until the latter chapters of Book Lambda, or as provisional formulations, or as formulations that are qualified by the context in which they occur—especially when Aristotle makes certain statements about “all ousiai” in passages where only sensible ousiai are under consideration.26 The difference between what I have called, with some misgivings, the “traditional interpretation” of the Metaphysics and the interpretation—if I have it in focus—that Bruell suggests turns on the question of which is the more plausible. One criterion for the plausibility of an interpretation of an ancient author is whether it does justice to the boldness of the author’s teaching. If we are to evaluate these two interpretations in terms of which one brings the bolder teaching into view, we would do well to attend to the following, insufficiently appreciated passage from Strauss’s lecture, “Progress or Return.” There is a fundamental conflict or disagreement between the Bible and Greek philosophy. This fundamental conflict is blurred to a certain extent by the close similarity in points. There are, for example, certain philosophies which come seemingly close to the biblical teaching—think of philosophic [!] teachings which are monotheistic, which speak of the love of God and man, which even admit prayer, etc. And so the difference becomes sometimes althat they are not differentiated by matter and that they all seem to be engaged in the same intellectual act. 26. The following passages are, in my opinion, problematic for the traditional interpretation, but they are not devastating: 999a4-5; 1030a11-13; 1032a18-19; 1043b21-22; 1059a38-b2; 1060b18-19; 1075a23-24; 1088a29-33. All these passages can be taken as hints by Aristotle (though read as hints, they are not particularly subtle) that there is no separate, individual, imperishable ousia or ti ēn einai. The traditional interpretation has to regard these passages as not intended to be taken without qualification. But there are passages that Bruell, too, has to regard as not intended to be taken without qualification. See, supra, footnote 12. �REVIEWS | CAREY 143 most invisible. But we recognize the difference immediately if we make this observation. For a philosopher or philosophy there can never be an absolute sacredness of a particular or contingent event.27 According to Strauss, the existence of God (or of gods), simply as a first principle, even as an intelligent first principle, of the whole would not by itself be a problem for philosophy. What would be a problem for philosophy is an intelligent first principle that could freely reveal itself, or himself, to man. For revelation, at the initiative of God, in his own good time, to human beings of his own choosing who may not be philosophers, would surely be a particular and contingent event, and an event of absolute sacredness.28 Such a thing would be a problem for philosophy because the full truth about this first principle would not be accessible to man as man. That is, it would not be accessible to reason, since reason can only work with the necessary as distinct from the contingent or accidental.29 And so, Strauss says quite consistently, philosophy must attempt to refute, not the existence of God, but the possibility of revelation.30 Two divergent ways in which philosophy might refute the possibility of revelation suggest themselves here. One way, of course, would be by refuting the existence of God. Strauss thought that every argument purporting to do such a thing either begs the question outright or leads to a dead end. A quite different way would be by arguing for the existence God but, in so doing, demonstrate that, contrary to what believers believe, God is not the kind of being who is able to reveal himself to man. This is the way followed by a kind of rational theology that consists in no small measure of a theological critique of the possibility of revelation. Strauss is well aware of this kind of rational theology.31 In 27. “Progress and Return” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 117. Cf. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1956— translation of the 1930 German original), 149. 28. Creation would be a contingent event also: hence the effort of philosophers to demonstrate, not the non-existence of God, but the eternity of the world. 29. Metaphysics 1027a19-21. Posterior Analytics 73a21. See Bruell, 123-125; 193-195. 30. “Reason and Revelation,” (Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theological Political Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 150, 174. See Bruell, 8-9; 28. 31. See Strauss’s references to “natural theology” in “Reason and Revelation,” 154, and “Progress or Return,” 131. And consider his perhaps surprising state- �144 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW his lecture “Reason and Revelation,” he writes, “Plato’s and Aristotle’s attempts to demonstrate the existence of God far from proving the religious character of their teachings, actually disprove it.”32 To limit ourselves to Aristotle,33 in the first book of the Metaphysics Aristotle describes the science being sought as divine science.34 It would be a divine science on two conditions: if God, most of all, possessed it, and if it were about divine matters (983a5-8). These formulations are, to be sure, conditional, for Aristotle has not yet advanced an argument for the existence of a god, or a separate ousia of any sort, though he does say that God is believed by all (dokei . . . pasin)—when he could easily have said, “believed,” simply, if he had wished to quietly disassociate himself from this belief—to be among the causes and a principle (archē tis). What is most remarkable about this passage, however, is the ment in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, that the “Arab philosophers . . . actually were believers in revelation” (151; cf. 155) in light of the curious expressions, “selective revelation” and “particular revelation,” which he uses shortly afterwards (155; 157). By these latter two expressions, I understand Strauss to mean revelation accomplished through God’s free choice, that is, revelation strictly so called, as distinct from a non-selective and more general “revelation”—though “disclosure” would be a better name for it—accomplished by philosophers, i.e., a “theology” established “on the basis of Aristotelian natural science” and culminating in the setting of “three fundamental theologems beyond all doubt” (149). Spinoza’s Critique of Religion is an early book by Strauss. But The City and Man is not (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964). Note the phrase, “in the ordinary [!] sense of the divine,” in the penultimate sentence of the latter work. 32. “Reason and Revelation,” 146. By “religious” in this sentence I understand Strauss to mean “revealed.” Rational theology is not religion. It does not rely on the claims of revelation, and it may attempt to demonstrate the impossibility of revelation strictly so called —as the demonstrations of the existence of God in Plato, Aristotle, and the great Muslim philosophers, to say nothing of Spinoza, can be interpreted as doing. 33. Though consider Republic 380d1-6; 381c5-9; 383e6. 34. The expression autēs hē ktēsis at 982b29, the beginning of the passage about divine science, refers back to hautē (epistēmē) in the preceding sentence, and thereby further back to the epistēmēn 982b8, including to epistasthai in between at 982b21. And tēn ktēsin autēs at 983a11-12 refers back to tautēs (epistēmēs) in the preceding sentence, the conclusion of the passage about divine science. Book Alpha, ch. 2, could hardly be more explicit in stating that the science we are seeking (982a3; 983a21) is divine science, which in this chapter is identified with wisdom (sophia—982a6-19; cf. 981b25-982a2). Bruell speaks only briefly to this passage. See 10-11, 38. �REVIEWS | CAREY 145 conjunction of these two conditions. Aristotle acknowledges the possibility that someone—a human being, given the context—other than God could come to possess the very knowledge, or science, of divine matters that God himself possesses (983a9-10).35 God, if he exists, does not dwell in a thick cloud that is utterly impenetrable by man; nor is he jealous of man’s attempt to know him. Indeed, Aristotle goes so far to say that it is not possible for God to be jealous (983a2-3). How can Aristotle be so confident on this point, unless he is already looking toward the argument he will make in Book Lambda? For according to that argument God does not think, and perhaps because of his very excellence cannot think, of what is beneath him (1074b18-1075a10). And so he can hardly be jealous of what is going on beneath him, including the speculative activity of philosophers. If God exists, according to what Aristotle says close to the very beginning of the Metaphysics, then he is surely not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he is not one of the gods of Cephalus, Ion, and Euthyphro either. If God cannot even think of man, then he cannot freely reveal himself to this man. Moreover, if as Aristotle argues in Book Lambda, God causes as final cause, as object of desire and imitation, alone, then he is not a free cause.36 Though he is the cause on which nature and the heavens depend, he does not create the world (which is also eternal), freely or otherwise. Whatever access man has to God is through man’s (speculative) initiative alone, not the reverse. Because God does not even think of what is beneath him, not only does he not reveal himself, he does not reward and punish human beings for their moral and immoral choices. And if this were not enough to rule out divine freedom, and thereby the “absolute sacredness of a particular or contingent event,” Aristotle argues that God is simple and not composed, pure actuality devoid of potentiality, and necessary. How then can he freely choose to do anything (cf. 1071b13-22; 1072b7-10)?37 35. Thomas Aquinas, who in his commentaries on Aristotle’s works typically limits himself to stating only what he thinks Aristotle is saying, softens in his own name Aristotle’s suggestion that man can come to possess knowledge of God: this knowledge, he says, is something “borrowed” (mutuatum) from God. (Sententia Metaphysicae, lib. 1 l. 3 n. 13). That is, for Thomas but not for Aristotle, if we can come to know not just that God exists, but something of what he is essentially, in himself and to himself, revelation is needed. Note the distinction between preambles to the articles of faith and the articles of faith themselves in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 2, art. 2, ad 1. 36. Compare Summa Theologiae 1 q. 19, art. 3 ad 5; art. 10, corpus. 37. One of the great tasks that the Christian theologians of the Middle Ages set themselves, arguably their greatest task, was to answer this very question. �146 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW However persuasive or unpersuasive one finds the theology that Aristotle presents in Book Lambda, it is a rational theology that gives every appearance of trying to refute the possibility of revelation, of trying to rule out the “absolute sacredness of a particular or contingent event.” If there is any reason to believe that God exists, then, according to this book, there is every reason to believe that he is incapable of revealing himself. Aristotle’s Metaphysics throws a challenge into the face of revealed religion; and it makes no secret about this. Even the casual reader has to be struck by places where Aristotle dissociates himself from the religious beliefs of the multitude and from the poets who have, after a fashion, educated them. Sometimes he does this implicitly and gently (983b33-984a2; 989a9-12; 1023a19-21; 1091b4-8), but sometimes quite explicitly as well (997b8-12; 1074b3-8), even caustically (983a3-4; 1000a9-19; and, above all, 995a3-8).38 One can object that Aristotle’s argument for the existence of God depends not only on a whole cosmology but also on an account of how motion occurs that modern science does not accept. For Aristotle, something in motion depends on a mover distinct from it, sustaining it in motion for as long as it is in motion (which in the case of the stars is forever), and ultimately on a mover that is not itself in motion. But if, contrary to what Aristotle teaches, a thing in motion can move itself without depending on a mover distinct from it, then it sounds as though something that is potential can actualize itself, or, better, that something that is actual can actualize one or more of its own potentialities, all by itself. If that is so, then the argument against radically free choice is compromised. For radically free choice, whether in the case of God or in the case of man, means self-determination.39 And though the claim that things can move themselves without being moved by another is hardly identical to the claim that a being can freely determine itself to do this rather than that, the former claim is a giant step in the direction 38. The last passage cited is interesting because it does not occur in the middle of the Metaphysics, nor in the middle chapter of the book (alpha) in which it occurs, nor in the middle of that chapter. It is, one might say, “exposed.” The existence and placement of this passage, and of others cited above, could lead one to infer that the Metaphysics was never intended to be a book, i.e., a written work composed for public distribution. If the Metaphysics has an exoteric teaching, it is hardly a teaching designed to throw theological-political persecutors off track. Bruell acknowledges this (253). In his view, Aristotle’s art of writing in this book serves a pedagogical function. 39. Consider 1072a26-30. �REVIEWS | CAREY 147 of the latter. If man can freely determine himself to do this rather than that, then a vital component of the critique of the moral presuppositions of belief in revelation has to be abandoned. Aristotle’s view that whatever is in motion is moved by another, and more generally that whatever is potential can be actualized only by something already actual, precludes, absent significant qualifications, man from acting freely, hence from deserving reward or punishment for his actions, in this world or in another. And to repeat, God, as Aristotle presents him in Book Lambda, neither rewards nor punishes. If, as Bruell suggests, Aristotle does not intend his rational theology seriously, then there is nothing in the Metaphysics that seriously meets the challenge that the possibility of revelation poses to philosophy. If the deep teaching of the Metaphysics is that there is no divine being, it is a teaching that is only intimated. There is no argument advanced by Aristotle, or by Bruell on Aristotle’s behalf, for this teaching such that one can confidently identify its premises and assess its logical cogency. So the question of boldness boils down to which of two interpretations of the Metaphysics causes more problems for the religious believer: (1) an implicit teaching that merely denies, without so much as the appearance of a demonstration, that God exists, or (2) an explicit teaching that attempts to demonstrate that God does exist, but exists in a way that is incompatible with how religion, whether the religion of the Greeks or that of the Bible, understands him to exist. Different readers of the Metaphysics may give different answers to this question. Nothing I have said about the explicit teaching of the Metaphysics simply rules out there being a parallel but only implicit teaching, exactly as Bruell interprets it. But if the explicit teaching is as I have described it, and if the implicit teaching is as I understand Bruell to have interpreted it, then we are left with an oddity. Aristotle would be arguing on the very surface of the book that philosophy in its inquiry into being qua being can win a decisive victory against its perennial rival, revealed religion, while effectively indicating beneath the surface of the book that it cannot do any such thing.40 Would Aristotle not be leaving himself open to the accusation that he is corrupting, not necessarily the young, but any reader of the Metaphysics who naively takes its surface teaching seriously? What does philosophy gain by promising more 40. One would expect the reverse: a surface teaching understating the challenge that philosophy poses to revealed religion, and a deep teaching that does not understate it. �148 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to the uninitiated than it knows it can deliver? Different readers of the Metaphysics may give different answers to these questions too. The incontestable merit of Aristotle as Teacher is that it leads anyone who reads it carefully back to the Metaphysics with an enhanced appreciation of the problems it explores and open to the possibility that Aristotle’s thoughts about these problems and how they might be resolved are much more profound than has hitherto been recognized and stated. Aristotle as Teacher should be read as long as the Metaphysics is read. If I have given excessive weight to the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics in this review, it is not because I find it more congenial to revealed religion than Bruell’s interpretation. The opposite is true: the rational theology expressly advanced by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, and developed further by the great Muslim philosophers of the Middle-Ages, constitutes a formidable challenge to the claims of revelation. If one does not appreciate the magnitude of this challenge, one is unlikely to appreciate the alternative rational theology developed, without appeal to the claims of revelation, by the great Christian theologians of the Middle-Ages when they rose to meet it. �149 Eva Brann, Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of the Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2014, xi + 367 pages. $35.00 Book Review by Matthew Linck “Does it add up? Not on your life.” Thus begins the penultimate section of the concluding chapter of Eva Brann’s book on the will. It is in this chapter that Brann lays out what she calls the “un-willed life.” Brann has her reasons for keeping her picture of the un-willed life reserved for the end of the book. And even though one could skip right to the end, I would like to try to say why that would be a mistake. In other words, I want to say how the book makes a whole. Some questions will then be raised. The book does not, I think, make the kind of whole one might expect. The table of contents is deceptive. Reading the names of the chapters and the section headings, one would think the book to be a study of the will as understood by many great thinkers in the Western tradition. One would also think the book to show the will in a variety of modes, from ego-centered to cosmic in scale, from grand conception to narrow academic topic. One will expect to learn a lot from reading the book. And these things are all true. Brann approaches her subject mostly by careful explication of the texts and arguments of individual thinkers. (A glance at the table of contents will indicate the principal players, although there are many not-to-be-missed mini-essays on will-conceptions by others in the endnotes. These are listed at the front of the book following the table of contents.) Furthermore, these expositions are grouped thematically, although those themes do not always admit of easy summary. And, indeed, one can learn a lot, especially where the subjects are unfamiliar. For me, this was true especially of the sections on Sartre, compatibilism and neuroscience. But one cannot make a whole out of things that do not add up just by putting them between the same covers. The wholeness of Brann’s book comes from two other sources. The first is the rhetorical force of the not-adding-up. This, to me, makes good sense of what might look like a lopsided book: 243 pages on something that turns out not to be Matthew Linck is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �150 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW coherent, 21 pages on the alternative. The power of Brann’s concluding pages comes not so much from an accumulated argument as from the experience of being bandied about by all these competing conceptions of the will. One is made receptive to the hope that there is some way out of this mess. Let me say something about the mess before turning to the second source of wholeness. Since Brann herself supplies summaries of the main conceptions of and approaches to the will at the beginning of her concluding chapter, I think I can be pretty brief. I will give a rundown of some of the book’s main thrusts, indicating some corresponding proper names parenthetically. There was a time in the West when a human being and a human life were understood without recourse to the idea of a will (Socrates, Aristotle). And even for those thinkers where a kind of proto-will can be glimpsed (Lucretius, the Stoics), it does not rise to the level of a fullfledged faculty. This all changes with Augustine. For Augustine, a human life—his life—cannot be made sense of without a faculty of willing. As Brann emphasizes, Augustine’s framing of the will is deeply embedded in his Christianity and the question of sin. Correlatively, since man is made in the image of God, God too must now be understood as having a will. From here we’re off. Chapters III-V offer visions of the will from Scholastics, early-moderns and German Idealists (Thomas, Scotus, Ockham, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Fichte). The range of conceptions run through in these chapters defies summary (but see the block quotation below). The recent queries and debates concerning free will and determinism, whether from philosophers or scientists, are already prefigured in these early chapters. Brann covers these topics in chapters IX-XI. Despite the faint echoes of prior thinking, these chapters seem to me essential since they speak the language of our own everyday thoughts about the will. Even if one has never read a philosophical defense of compatibilism or leafed through the purported findings of neuroscience pertaining to the will, the cast of mind, the questions asked, and the unexamined prejudices are deeply familiar. In between these chapters are Brann’s “linguistic interlude” (chapter VI, a delightful and important aside), conceptions of the will that exceed the individual person (Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche) and what Brann calls the “will’s last ontologies” (Hegel, Bergson, Peirce, Heidegger, Sartre). It is all of this that Brann contends doesn’t add up. The following gives a good sense of the range and likely incompatibility of the notions surveyed. �REVIEWS | LINCK 151 [T]he will can be conceived as having the nature of a passion, a power, a capacity, a faculty, an agency, a decision—or an illusion. It can be conceived as an operation that is an extended process, a final impulse, a long deliberation, or a momentary choice. It can be conceived as having its termination in seamless execution or in aborted realization. It can be conceived in terms of its causality, as rationally connected or radically contingent. It can be conceived as having its finality in an external end or in itself. It can be conceived with respect to its standing as the highest human good in its obedience to duty or as a nugatory epiphenomenon in its subjugation to nature. It can be conceived in scope as a hyper-human force causing universal suffering, as bestowing individual potency, as a general determination overriding individual choice, or as the very principle of individuality. It can be conceived, looking to the soul’s salvation, as vulnerable to perversion and sin or as analogous to binding love. But above all, it can be conceived with regard to human selfhood as being to some degree free from nature’s determinism, as self-activating and deliberately deciding—or as altogether determined by natural law working on conditions fixed from way back. It’s a notional miscellany. (243-4) For every item on the list above, there is a text, an author, a movement, or a research program considered by Brann. So, it is a lot of work to follow her down all of these paths, but one might be ready for something else by the end. Hence the closing pages of the book are fitting given what comes before. There is, though, that other source of wholeness in the book, namely, Brann herself. The mind, voice, and good sense that carry the book along are not incidental to its substance. Issues that might at first seem to be to one side—how to read a book, professionalism versus amateurism, the role of self-examination in sifting philosophical arguments, regard for everyday speech—turn out to be essential. They are essential because they both argue for and exemplify key features of the life Brann advocates at the end of the book. Hence the book does not just argue for this or that, but is an example of the very thing it means to bring forth.1 Let me mention here the special place that 1. Here is an example (the context is Heidegger’s conception[s] of the will and his propensity to rely on neologisms [under the guise of the retrieval of original meanings]): “There is the perfectly sensible Socratic inquiry into the one being, the eidos, intended by words in common use that have multifarious instantia- �152 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Thomas Aquinas holds in Brann’s thinking and in the book. Brann is convinced that Thomas’s account of the will (notwithstanding whether there is a will) is the best we have. Her conviction is grounded largely in believing that Thomas’s account is most in accord with experience. Well, whose experience? Brann is upfront—principally her own experience, but not just. Despite the central place that Brann accords self-examination (and she invites us to do it), she also, carefully, looks for whatever common ground she can obtain. (Nevertheless, the question whether there just are different human types is raised more than once in the book.) So, with a view both introspectively anchored and looking widely, Brann sees in Thomas’s account a picture of human willing that is wide enough in scope (many fail by being too narrow) and rightly ordered (others fail in wrong emphasis). Her reliance on Thomas throughout the book, then, is neither an appeal to authority, nor is it a claim that Thomas simply has the best rational argument. Rather the reliance on Thomas is a shorthand for reliance on her own criteria, themselves not narrowly rational. (This would be the place to mention the centrality of feeling for Brann.) But, one more twist to this: Brann relies on Thomas for having laid out his picture of the will. Brann recognizes in Thomas’s account something she can assent to, but she does not say she could have seen it all without him. Hence she needs the books (and so do we). These remarks about Thomas were meant to make good on the general claim above, that Brann’s own thinking is a source of wholeness in the book, but now with this addition: her manner of thinking is not independent from the sources she is considering. Hence the end of the book is also the heart of the book. My task now is to say what Brann thinks the alternative to willing is and why we should revoke the will’s license. It is important to note that these are not the same thing. Brann could have presented us will an alternative to willing as one possible mode of living among others. Instead, she has endeavored to persuade us that it is better to be un-willing than willing (or worse, willful). So, first the alternative, then the revoking. Brann presents Socrates as a model (not the model, not someone to slavishly imitate) of un-willing. Brann highlights some key features tions in the world—even in our world—for example the virtues and vices. But what does it mean to search arduously for the meaning of a word-conceit used in now-archaic language and then in different significations, words like Galassenheit and Seyn, entirely without use-context, without living exemplars?” (162) Brann, it seems to me, tries to ground her thinking in “living exemplars” wherever possible. �REVIEWS | LINCK 153 of his person. As a man, Socrates obeys above all his inner daimonion which only stops him from doing this or that—he has no principle of willful assertion; he is an “ontological optimist,” that is, he believes (or at least proceeds as if) there is order and intelligibility in the world grounded in the forms; he calls not on courage, but on his goodness, thoughtfulness and justice throughout his life. As a thinker, Socrates is always at the beginning of things and opens his thinking beyond the tight logic of “rationality.” He has a vision of the human soul without will, but one in which desire operates throughout. Socrates is committed, perhaps, to only one maxim, “Virtue is knowledge.” Brann thinks virtue here should be understood “not [as] a good will enclosed in its subjective self-sufficiency,” but as “an on-the-brink power, a readiness to pass to thoughtful doing without intermediate exertion of an executive will.” Finally, she contends that “this unhesitating passage to action . . . comes from . . . doing deep, affirmative thinking.” (All of the above comes from pages 248-51.) With Socrates as a model, we might then ask, as moderns, where our freedom resides. Brann wants to “relocat[e] freedom away from the will” (253), to focus our attention not on “freedom of the will but freedom from the will,” and to suggest that “collectedness,” of a person or a life, is not to be attained by “strenuous inward-drawing,” but by “other means” (255). The key terms of these other means seem to me loving attachment, desire as receptivity, the contemplation of beings, and imaginative living. How a life thus constituted issues in freedom, even Brann is hesitant to say decisively—it remains, in a way, a “mystery” (262). As for why this un-willed life should be preferred to the willful one, is it enough to say that Brann thinks the latter is just plain bad for us? That it diminishes our powers instead of enhancing them? That it distracts us from what is important, truly worthy of desire and interest? That it distorts our vision of the whole of things and leads, at its worst, to genuine horrors? I hope it is not unfair to Brann to leave it at that. The questions I would like to pose to Un-Willing were elicited strongly by the book and, I think, are related. The first is whether instead of endeavoring to revoke the will’s license we should rather think of our task as overcoming the will. The second question is about how we should read. One way to take Brann’s global view is that with Augustine the West goes astray, and that by thinking in terms of a will-faculty our selfunderstanding becomes perverted. Some subtlety is required here, since Brann acknowledges that much of what falls under the name “will” is �154 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW not without sense. There are ways of making sense of all the talk on the will, as Brann attempts to do throughout Un-Willing. Nevertheless, for her these ways are neither necessary nor felicitous. But what if our errancy vis-à-vis the will was in some way necessary? What if we both need the will and need to show its deficiency? Or, in other words, what if Hegel is right? It would be foolhardy to insert here a lengthy discourse on Hegel (although maybe necessary), but I want to try to sketch out the Hegelian picture in which my questions are grounded. While there are metaphysical aspects to my question springing from Hegel’s logical writings2 and questions about the need to revise our understanding of nature occasioned by his Philosophy of Nature,3 it might be enough to limit myself to “spiritual” issues. I could perhaps locate my concerns with respect to Brann’s discussion of the self/subject in chapter of XI of Un-Willing. Brann seems to me correct to suggest that the ancients did not have a notion of self and that their understanding of soul is not simply its equivalent. She is also correct, I think, that questions of will and agency go hand in hand with questions of selfhood. But if this is the case, then it would seem to follow that Brann might want to jettison talk of the self with that of the will. It does not seem to me altogether that she does. Maybe there is room to insert a wedge here. The Hegelian account, I believe, holds that the 2. For instance, there seem to me to be far-reaching implications of Hegel’s treating of being in the way he does. Much of this could be spun out from the fact that a doctrine of being is included in a Logic, and one particularly pertinent feature of that doctrine (under the heading of Essence) is that being exhausts itself in appearances. The “ontological optimism” that Brann attributes to Socrates by means of the forms seems off the table for Hegel. This metaphysical point is, I think, of direct consequence for Hegel’s approach to human action. 3. At least two prominent elements of Brann’s account are ripe for consideration via Hegel’s understanding of nature. The first would be the cogency of the debates surrounding determinism and free will. Speaking for myself, the implicit metaphysics which grounds the mechanical view of nature is long overdue for a systematic and thorough demolishing. To continue engaging such debates on those terms is to throw good effort after bad. Whether a new metaphysics of nature will get a hearing is hard to say. The second issue would be that of feeling. This feature of the human soul is important for Brann, and it is for Hegel, too. But I think one would have to take up Hegel’s account of animal feeling in the Philosophy of Nature, especially as the mark of inwardness and proto-subjectivity, in order to see what might be radical in his understanding of human feeling. �REVIEWS | LINCK 155 notion of self must be developed (and, perhaps, purified) because the telos of human history is freedom and freedom is centered on how things count or don’t count, are justified or not justified, for me. Here a whole can of worms is opened, not the least of which would be Hegel’s contention that Christianity is—was—necessary for us. At the very least we might see that the infinite relationship of the individual to the divine is a “picture-thought” of the modern subject’s relationship to absolute spirit. Talk of a will would be one feature of this necessary passage through Christianity. But the real burden of the Hegelian account falls on its insistence that the realization of human flourishing is a historical achievement. It is in working out this claim that an account of overcoming the will would be located. One version of such an overcoming can be found, I think, in the closing section of the fifth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, for there we are given a picture of human action in which willful self-assertion must be replaced by action grounded in mutual confession and forgiveness.4 But, of course, for Hegel replacement will not mean simply canceling; the passage through willfulness must in some way remain at work in its overcoming. None of this can count as an argument against Brann, but only as an indication of the space in which to pursue a certain kind of question.5 Another way to ask this question would be to query whether Brann is right that Socrates’s thoughts “could be anyone’s thoughts, anytime” (248). I suppose, in a way, I am raising the old question about 4. A perspicacious reading of these paragraphs can be found in J. M. Bernstein, “Confession and forgiveness: Hegel’s poetics of action” in Beyond Representation: Philosophy and Poetic Imagination, ed. Richard Thomas Eldridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 34-65. 5. One full-fledged example of the kind of argument I have in mind can be found in Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Hegel’s treatment of nature cuts deeply into many aspects of debates about the will, but one place to look is Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). There is some direct overlap between Un-Willing and Kenneth R. Westphal, “Autonomy, Freedom & Embodiment: Hegel’s Critique of Contemporary Biologism,” Hegel Bulletin 35 (2014): 56-83. An attempt to make good on Hegel’s account of freedom in terms of the condition of modern institutions is undertaken in Alex Honneth, Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). A more Kantian flavored approach to these questions can be found in Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Indentity, and Integrity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.) �156 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ancients and moderns, whether there is a genuine quarrel and, if so, with whom to side. Also at issue here would be whether Brann has done justice to Hegel—can have done so—by analyzing his treatments of willing in isolation. The question is not whether Brann interprets her chosen texts correctly; the question is whether such interpretations can be adequate if done (too much) in isolation from Hegel’s thinking more broadly. This, as always, is a particularly vexed issue in dealing with Hegel, but I wonder if Brann’s other readings don’t suffer similarly. For instance, is it so clear that Thomas’s Aritotelianism can be easily separated from its Christianizing (47)? I also wonder if Brann’s treatment of the major thinkers in her book is not too much one-at-a-time. After the strenuous effort of her surveying of so many conceptions of the will, Brann concludes that it does not add up. Is this way of asking the question too static? What if instead of asking if it adds up we were to see what these thinkers have to say to each other? In some cases, such engagement is explicit: Kant dwells with Rousseau in the development of his moral theory; Hegel has an eye on Kant at every turn in working out his own positions. But even where this is not so explicit, we can attempt to construct for ourselves an imagined conversation between thinkers. I think, though, that this act of the imagination cannot be just a comparing of arguments; we must, again, endeavor to take up as much of a thinker’s thought as possible. On the one hand, this would require us to keep in mind how a thinker sees, in some fundamental way, how things hang together; on the other hand, it would ask us to keep an eye—if I can put it this way— on the style of thinking involved. The figure I most worry is slighted along these lines in Un-Willing is Kant. My reservations are not about any particular assertions that Brann makes about Kant’s thinking (she is illuminating here as well), but about the spirit of the engagement. Here perhaps my own prejudices and inclinations are at work, but it seems to me that both in spite of and because of his excesses, Kant allows me to see something that I would not have otherwise, that there is some element of human willing and action that is excavated through his stark formulations. But not simply. That is, I cannot just pluck out some insight from Kant to be combined with insights from other thinkers. Somehow, I have to let Kant’s vision of things as a whole set to work my own thinking. And then by putting Kant into conversation with others, letting them, through my thinking, contend with each other, I can think things I would not have otherwise. �REVIEWS | LINCK 157 I fear that the structure and tone of Brann’s book could too quickly invite us to be over and done with a figure like Kant.6 Even as these questions were triggered by Brann’s book, and even as I cultivated them, the book itself made me suspicious of them. Is the Hegelian undertaking too sophisticated, too theoretical, too systembound, and, most of all, too remote from the immediacy of lived experience? Is the question of historicism itself too bound up with the will? Is there a too-generous way of reading philosophical texts, a way that slips into indulgence? At its best, Brann’s book shows us what it is like to be comfortable dwelling at the beginnings of things, locating our concerns and principles nearby and within ourselves. 6. When consulting an essay on Kant that Brann’s book called to mind I found there, and in two companion essays, these formulations: “Kant’s greatness, like that of other great philosophers, lies in the simplicity of the fundamental innovations on which his systematic edifice rests. . . The unavoidable dogmatism hidden behind the Kantian concept of ‘freedom’ (i.e., ‘will’ or ‘pure practical reason’) that has been pointed out so frequently, is irrelevant once we address the problem of the modus operandi of the Kantian innovation.” “The greatness of Kant’s practical philosophy is based on the fact that it is developed within the framework of a critique of reason and that it is closely interwoven with his theoretical philosophy, his philosophy of religion, and his philosophy of history. In contrast, most contemporary ethical thought consists of ungrounded assertions, unprincipled casuistry and reflections lacking any organic unity with the rest of our knowledge.” “Kant’s texts are not historical artifacts, but still-contemporary deeds, erga: our age is, philosophically, the energeia of Kant’s texts.” These quotations are from, respectively, Agnes Heller, “Freedom and Happiness in Kant’s Political Philosophy,” Vittorio Hösle, “The Greatness and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy,” David R. Lachterman, “Kant: The Faculty of Desire,” all found in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13.2 (1990). I offer these quotations only as examples of the cast of mind I have in view. � 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/. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2015 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Trentina, Allison Sachs, Joe Brogan, Michael Paalman, Susan R. Petrich, Louis Pihas, Garbriel Benjamin, Marlene Carey, James Linck, Matthew Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 57, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2015. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_57_No_1_Fall_2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8a409955c95209375730c3dd543a116b.pdf ea9f6a72204e6f24a5905b8d58c4c6b8 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 57.2 (Spring 2016) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Allison Tretina The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401-1687. ©2016 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at http://www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review ��Contents Essays & Lectures Res tene, verba sequentur ........................................................1 Eva Brann WHERE, Then, Is Time?...................................................................12 Eva Brann Music and the Idea of a World ..........................................................25 Peter Kalkavage On Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra ..............................................47 Arian Koochesfahani Which Sciences Does the Political Science Direct and Use and How Does It Do So? .........................................70 Edward M. Macierowski Ass, You Like It? Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Political Philosophy ......................79 Nalin Ranasinghe ��ESSAYS & LECTURES 1 Res tene, verba sequentur* A Reflection on Three Questions Concerning the Re-telling of Sacred Stories and of Myths (An Academically Disreputable Inquiry) Eva Brann For John Roth Questions: I. Are there canonical sources—gold-standards—for myths, and how would we recognize them? II. Should our re-visioning of sacred persons and mythical people stay true to the standard version? III. Should there be myth-dilations? Brusque answers: I. Yes, the two Bibles for sacred stories, and Homer, mainly, for pagan myth. II. Yes, at least as far as their vitals, their life-data, the given facts, are concerned. III. Yes, myths demand amplification. I. Gold-standards: Which and Why? 1. The Hebrew Bible (including the Apocrypha) and the Christian Bible palpably differ in authority from, say, gnostic gospels, such as the Gospel of Judas, which is flagrantly fantastic and deliberately contrarian. Since this little essay is mainly about pagan myth, I shall stray into the Bible-related answer to the second question with a testimonial and then have done with the Bible as a canonical source. Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis. *Cato the Elder: “Hold onto things, the words will follow.” Quoted in Jane Hirshfield’s essay “The Question of Originality,” in Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998). �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers (1933-1943) is the most expansive re-telling of the Hebrew Bible I know of, twentysix chapters of Genesis (24-50), roughly thirty-five pages, expanded more than fifty-fold into eighteen-hundred pages. As far as I can tell, this meticulous detailing, this exposé of the human story behind the sacred story and of events not only on the living earth and its terrestrial underworld, but also in a heaven of disaffected angels, does not deviate one jot or tittle from the given Biblical fact, what you might call the life-structure of the twelve brothers and their one father and several mothers, nor are Mann’s thousand-and-one concrete realizations of the laconic original in any way factually incompatible with it. This disciplined faithfulness, I will claim below, imparts to the retelling a pithy vitality that a looser treatment would dissipate. 2. What can I mean by the “vital facts” of a mythical being? Here is an anecdote that intimates what is meant by a fact: Clemenceau, French prime minister from 1917-1920, during a friendly discussion with a representative of the Weimar Republic about what historians might write concerning German guilt for the First World War, said: “This I don’t know. But I know for certain that they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany.” Facts, when ascertainable, are interpretation-proof residues of reality. By “vital” facts I mean biographical data of that sort. Where are the facts of myth to be found? In the canonical account, the gold-standard telling. I will give an example of divergent facts in different texts, which bear on the biographical armature of Helen—the Helen of whom Marlowe asked: “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” Stesichorus, a prolific sixth-century B.C. poet of a wholly lost oeuvre, wrote, conventionally, of a Helen who went to Troy. For this imputation on her respectability, the gods blinded him until he produced a palinode, a counter-song of retraction (retold by Plato in Phaedrus 243), in which she never was in Troy, but was rescued from her abductor Alexander in Egypt by its king. Homer, we may infer, refused this retraction, which would have �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 nullified his Iliad—and remained blind. The counter-canonical tale, in which Troy harbored a phantasm of Helen, is accepted by Herodotus (Persian War, 2.112 ff.). His motive is, I think, to relegate to the status of “mythical” in the derogatory sense this early West-East incursion. It is mere pre-history; history begins with the datable antecedents to the East-West invasion of the Persian War. Euripides later picks up this version in his Helen, a romance. 3. Now why is Homer’s version the standard reference? How can I know that? Well, first he precedes Stesichorus by roughly a century, so the later writer is being reactive, derivative. Second, Homer’s poems were saved, presumably deservedly. These are, however, mere appeals to circumstance. The truly telling argument appeals to Homer’s greatness and the consequent poignant actuality of his people. I aver that books come in an arguable continuum of judgment-categories from really bad, through enjoyably competent, to seriously good. But “great” is a category discontinuous with this spectrum; it breathes in a different ether. The criteria are, in fact, specifiable, although here only in abbreviated fashion: it is sufficient to observe that the band of those who have actually read the books in question tends to come together over their classification. For example, despite Hesiod’s wintry charm, I, at least, have never heard anyone argue that he is seriously comparable to Homer. Why not? What propels Homer, for those who have savored him line by line, into a darling of the gods who blinded him not as a punishment but to make him the fitter a conduit for the Muses’ song—an artful “maker” (Greek: poietēs) of epic poetry, yet not out of matter created by himself, but from fully formed figures imparted to him by the Musical divinities (a distinction elaborated below, in II.3 and 4). Take this very case—Helen. Stesichorus’s Helen is the choice-less victim of an abduction, perhaps a rape. This Helenversion saves her reputation but at the expense of her vitality. Homer’s Helen is in every respect fully actual: She is, before her escapade as she is after her recapture, tired of her limp husband �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Menelaus. She willingly runs off with the pretty-boy Alexander, taking along Spartan treasure and leaving behind her baby-girl. A real abductor would have forced her to bring the child, a valuable house slave, as we learn in the Odyssey (14.447). Helen is indefeasibly seductive—she will make up to Alexander’s brother Hector in Troy and beguile Odysseus’s son Telemachus in Sparta—but she never likes the man she’s with. A funny line in the mostly unfunny Iliad comes after she has watched her present man skedaddle from the single combat with her husband, the contest arranged to end the Trojan war then and there. She has been watching it from Ilium’s topless towers (or rather high walls) and Aphrodite comes to her with an order: “Go to your man, he’s waiting in your bedchamber.” And she says (at some length): “Why don’t you go?” (3.395). This fatally beautiful, flagrantly defective female is unsteady and willful and altogether a presence—the real Helen, a woman who makes choices, bad ones. At home in Sparta she could have bid the charming Trojan prince a suppressedly tearful good-bye. And he would have seen enough to make that devastating choice, the so-called Judgment of Paris, that threw the goddesses into the war-mode. This heedless preference for the mortal Helen over three immortals expressed by Priam’s most light-weight son is, incidentally, alluded to only in one line, late in the Iliad (24.28) and in very vague language not naming Helen; clearly Homer thinks it’s a very subsidiary cause for his war. So Helen’s vitals are not to be tampered with, unless lots of evidence is adduced. —She was in Troy, all right. 4. Some texts are excused from this obligation to preserve factuality. For example, Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), in bulk the post-pagan counterpart to Mann’s post-biblical Joseph, is not to be held to any fact, but can be as factlessly atmospheric as the author likes, because Ulysses is not Odysseus in his own place and time; rather Bloom is the Jewish-Irish reincarnation, the avatar of a remote pagan. Similarly Kazantzakis’s Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), a continuation grafted onto the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, is a deliberate fantasy, a contravention of Homer’s ac- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 count of the hero’s return. In this epic, Odysseus returns for good—a final return confirmed by a last short voyage in which the sailor takes leave of his odysseian travels by going way inland, there to build a sailor’s cenotaph. Kazantzakis’s willful rewriting of the Odyssey, three times the length of the Homeric epic, pays a price: This new, entirely modern—here meaning indeterminately straying—Odysseus and his wildly fantastic pilgrimage are difficult to take in (and I can’t pretend to have gotten far). Moreover, this new Odysseus, who takes off into the wild blue yonder, introduces a duplicity, a rending, into the mythical world: There are now two Odysseuses. This doubling is not the same as two perspectives on one character. For example, we may ask whether Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra commits an assassination or performs an execution and if his Orestes commits a vengeful matricide or performs a divinely-ordered retribution—but only if there is one queen and one son about whom we ask. 5. So Homer is not one of many, an idiosyncratic poetaster and lax researcher who failed to acknowledge alternative versions. His Helen is the Helen, not because, as I shall claim below, he concocted, conflated, composed her cleverly, but because she came to him. One way to put this is that, as he lived, blessedly, with a tradition of tales from which to harvest concretely present detail for his figures as well as hints of immemorial depth, so he was unburdened by the scholar’s notion of “literature,” which replaces the natural coherence of the imaginative world with the learned administration of written texts. His highly formal and consequently very expressive prosody, his clever punning and sparely-expressed psychological complexity, are only embellishments spun out of his artistry. —His people come from elsewhere and they bring their own inimitable souls and their proper eventfulness. He holds on to his people and the words do come: Res tene, verba sequentur. II. Canonical Revisioning: How and Why? 1. From the writer’s perspective, adherence to the prototype is profitable because the unconstrained, uncontained imagination �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW goes flaccid; it becomes tautly concentrated when encased by the cincture of fact. 2. From the story’s perspective, one might well ask “what’s the difference?” as long as the tale is well told. Well, it makes a great difference for the epic world, the world of the imagination, into which the story taps. In bringing an invented alternative, an innovation, into this world, the writer, as I said above, rends it, tears its fabric—for the pagan myths form a coherent universe in their own time and place. Now there will be two homonymous but different beings, both now vagrants in their territory, vying for legitimacy. There seems to me to be an obligation for latter-day writers to integrate their re-telling into its world—or why call your creation “Helen”? Two Helens offend against Ockham’s Razor by needlessly multiplying entities—a mere misdemeanor in the realm of logic but a sort of sin against the land of the imagination. 3. Once the factual frame is subverted, the discipline is gone and mere invention supervenes—that ludicrous human arrogation of divinity called “creativity.” The tale now issues not from the character’s essence but from the writer’s, the faux-creator’s, invention. No longer does this author call on the Muses—“Sing, goddess, the wrath” and “Speak to me, Muse, of the man”— but on his own “creativity,” and all too often that piddling confection, a literary creation, comes forth. Not, however, I hasten to say, inevitably, for human invention and artifice too can produce clever and convincing works. So let me repeat here how a maker-poet differs from a creator-poet. The former applies his well-trained artistry to received material, of which more below (II.4); the latter imitates God by making something out of nothing—in modem parlance, out of his unconscious. 4. Disregard of Homer’s givens is an invitation to what appears to me the most deleterious mode for making fictions: subjectivity. Put positively, the poets that seem to me to make the most vital fictions, beings that have more life and surely greater longevity than real people (or animals: what real dog has lived through the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 millennia that Odysseus’s old Argos has?), are objective reporters. Beings come to them, become manifest, and press to be bodied forth. They appear, to be sure, in the imagination, but they are not made by the imagination. The poet is to be credited for his acute internal vision. It achieves his beings’ thereness: their imaginative concretion and verbal articulation, their human-alltoo-human particularity and definitive description. That Odysseus has a long torso and short legs is well-observed by Homer and his vivid word pictures come from keen looking— the kind of seeing that blindness fosters.* There is a curious notion that poetry is self-expression: Well, lyric poetry perhaps, but surely not epic or epic-derivatives, in which the rare “I” is authorial, or better, reportorial, and not personal. There is a second strange idea that authors’ sufferings bring gravity to their work. Well, if so, probably more for readers who seek in fiction the warm motions of feeling rather than the cool delights of imagination. To me it seems that the maker’s emotional vulnerabilities aren’t in it, at least not as generative principles; sympathy for victimized women, abhorrence for brutal men, these are imported latter-day sensitivities, romantic in mode and contemporary in content; so conceived, figures can’t come into their own. Take, on the other hand, a case of an author clearly in love: Tolstoy with Natasha Rostov, as actual a being, both as an enchanting girl and as a dowdy, demanding mater familias, as ever walked the earth. —Surely, she appeared to him first, and he couldn’t help but love her. I can’t imagine that she was conceived to bolster the self-esteem of young wives thickening around the middle. There is, to be sure, good subjective fiction as well, but its appeal is to readers’ personal sensibilities or their special interest in the author. Such fictions tend to lack that poignant particularity which is the facade assumed by universality in epics and novels. In the course of the fifth century B.C., Odysseus seems to have lost his Homeric standing—his vivid imaginativeness de*So the English Homer in his blindness sees and tells “of things invisible to mortal sight” (Paradise Lost 3.55). �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW graded into self-serving lying, his ingenious versatility into base scheming, his meaning-laden adventures into comic episodes. Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Euripides’s satyr play, The Cyclops, and minor pot-paintings are the evidence. Honest Homer gives some cause for this view, to be sure, but why it took over, I don’t know; perhaps Odysseus was regarded as a naturalized Athenian and so fair game. But the Odysseus, Homer’s Odysseus, who has, as the commander of his homeward-bound fleet, episodes of culpable obliviousness, and, as the returned repossessor of his palace, a moment of murderous rampageousness, is accorded some justification: sheer exhaustion on the seas, and once at home, the discovery that his palace is infested by a hundred-plus uninvited suitors who have eaten out his substance, plotted to murder his son, and all but committed outrage against his wife. The Homeric Odysseus is a dilatory but faithful husband, bound to a wife who is his equal and partner; he is an ever-mindful parent who—as far as I know alone of all the heroes encamped before Troy—regularly refers to himself as a father, “the father of Telemachus” (2.260, 4.354), a usually temperate and self-controlled man, and, above all, a great poet, the poet of his own odyssey. To see him as repulsive is to put in suspension his full, his objective, his primary Homeric being in deference to a preconceived sensibility. 5. What, then, is the function of human imagination in making fictions, and particularly in filling out myths? I think that there are two imaginative functions: one is like a workshop, the other like a reception area.* The workshop is an internal place where human artfulness goes to work on given material to curry and articulate it. The reception area is an internal place just waiting for the Muses to present beings and the actions that spring from their essence—that being a fancy way of saying outright what our con*Kant’s apparently similar “productive” and “reproductive” imagination are toto caelo different, the first being a deep faculty for bringing together sensibility and understanding to make cognitive experience possible, the other being analogous to ordinary memory. See his Critique of Pure Reason, B 181. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 temporaries find insupportably embarrassing: No one, no one whosoever, has a non-evasive answer to the question where these self-sustaining fictional beings come from. This I do know: that their appearance in the imaginative chamber is what makes great fictions objective—given rather than created. And that is precisely why it seems to me pusillanimous to refuse to consider a theological explanation. 6. Another charge against subjectivity in myth-adaptation is that it invites indeterminacy. For while objectivity is apt to let cheerfulness break out, the subjective mode tends to ally itself with the suffering moods. Now objective suffering has some tragic clarity, but subjective suffering tends to willful irresolution. Irresolution, indeterminacy, is the via ignava, the “craven way,” of the intellect; it is the enemy of openness, for it is a powerful pre-entrenchment. The mantra “Life is very messy” shifts responsibility to a non-being, “Life”; in sober fact, it is people who make messes, and people are meant to unmake them. Some tragic dilemmas have no solution, but all human conditions have a resolution: a way we come to deal with them, either by a masterful coping or by a determined resignation or by a decision to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. It seems to me that art, especially narrative art, should not be so unlike human reality as to be terminally indeterminate, when the human life-span is a concatenation of crises-plus-resolutions, and the whole often reveals order in retrospect. So, also, then, should works of art offer not escapism, to be sure, but some sort of sublimation—which is but a sort of condition-transcending conclusiveness. 7. Aristotle says that plot (mythos) is the source, and as it were, the soul of tragedy, because tragedy is primarily an imitation of actions, and therefore only secondarily an imitation of agents (Poetics 1450a40 ff.). In other words, the event structure determines the character. That may be true of tragedies, which are brief cut-outs of extended life, concentrating on an event and its actors. Epics, however (perhaps not the anonymous bardic songs but surely the attributed Homeric poems), which are not under �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the Greek one-day time-limitation customary for tragedy, but are time-extensible ad libitum (Aristotle, Poetics 1449b8-9), may be said to work in reverse: the character extrudes, so to speak, the events. Here the person determines the myth, at least in its detailed realization: Its people act out who they are, and an old story of one of those East-West women-stealings (which for Herodotus are, as I said, the dubious pre-historic antecedents of the Persian War) is turned by the canonically envisioned Helen-character into a willful running-off. For real, round people, in life or fiction, are not mere victims for long—and especially not in fiction, where victim-types tend to make the plot peter out and thus to prevent finalities. After all, waiting to be rescued is no life, and such supine characters have no after-life either. Hence, one might make it a rule of receptive imagining and so of fiction-writing— a first bit of advice to authors-to-be: Before you even begin to write, know what happens after your telling is done. For if you don’t know that, you don’t know the meaning of your story. Real characters must live out the afterlife you’ve made for them, and their fate must backlight your story. 8. Even a great work, like Charlotte Bronte’s best, Villette, is diminished by willful indefiniteness: By the last page we do not know whether Lucy Snowe will receive her intended husband back, saved out of the tempest encountered by his returning ship, or will be left with the cold comfort of being the directress of a well-established girls’ boarding school. There are, to be sure, heavy hints at a shipwreck, but that is because the author, while reluctant to burden her long-suffering heroine with one more final disaster, also wishes to capture for her story the romantic gravity of ultimate misfortune. But it is not done in good faith; Charlotte Bronte must know whether his proper mythos makes the man emerge safely—or drown. Terminal indeterminacy, abandoning the reader in medias res, is not only irritating, it is irrealistic, for in real life M. Paul either walks in the door of that pensionnat in the “clean Faubourg” or he doesn’t. So also one of these options should turn out to be a fact of the Muses’ tale; why, then, muddy the waters �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 with that indecisively raging tempest at sea? Better to build in some clear clues of eventuation; that done, it is, to be sure, a neat trick of the story-telling art to finish before the conclusion, leaving it for imaginative readers and epigonous myth-makers to clue out the fact. III. Should there be myth-dilations? One feature of a solid, well-rounded item of reality is that its substance is attended by millions of strange shadows, or conversely, that it offers indefinitely many perspectives: angular ones, as the observer circumambulates the object, radial ones, as the viewer pans in for close-ups and beyond. Well-actualized beings of the imagination are just the same. The Muse-delivered prototype entrains multitudes of re-tellings; for the captivated imagination there is no end of new views. �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 12 12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW WHERE, Then, Is Time? Eva Brann Let me first explain my odd-sounding title. It is a variation on the most famous question-and-answer about time ever posed. It comes from the eleventh book of Augustine’s Confessions, published about 400 C.E.: This is his question: “What, then, is time?” And this is his preliminary answer: “If nobody asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to him who asks me, I don’t know.” But that’s only the beginning. What follows is, to my mind, the deepest and most persuasive positive solution to the perplexity. I In modern times the most sophisticated and detailed answer is given by Edmund Husserl in his book The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, finished in 1917. It is essentially an elaborated version of Augustine’s solution. Its title tells why I have substituted “where” for “what” in Augustine’s famous question: Time is, in both works, understood primarily as an event within our soul (or, as it is called for the sake of scientific respectability, the psyche). I might say here by way of clarification that “soul” is traditionally used for the power from which emanate all the activities of life, from sense perception through all kinds of thinking to the intuition of supra-sensory being, while “consciousness” applies only to the part of life that is aware or self-aware. Now I hope you’ll forgive me if I do some more name-dropping. It’s for distinguishing a second answer to the question “Where is time,” namely outside, in the world, in nature. Three great names—apparently—stand for this location: Plato, Newton, and Einstein. Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was originally presented at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. on 11 December 2015. �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 13 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 Plato’s dialogue Timaeus (circa 360 B.C.E.) is, into modern times, the classical astronomer’s very own work. The reason is that it provides one set of conditions under which it is plausible to make finite models of the world. That condition is that there be a uni-verse, a well-ordered cosmos consisting of an encompassing starry sphere, an inner array of closed, non-intersecting planetary orbits, including that of the sun, and a stable center for the human observer, the earth. Of this world it is possible to produce a moving mathematical model called an orrery. And the reason we can model the world is that it is itself the incarnation of a timeless ideal model, a mathematical paradigm for an incarnation that is the work of a divine craftsman. Time is built into this cosmic universe by the god, who, upon having “thought of making a certain movable image of eternity,” at once so ordered the heavens that they were “an eternal image going according to number, which we have given the name Time.” In other words, the whole cosmos is a clock, whose starry sphere is a moving dial at night and the tip of whose hand is the planet Sun, marking out the hours of the day by its positions in the sky or by the shadows it causes the style of a sundial to cast. Next, Newton, who states very definitively in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy of 1687, his Principia, that there is an “Absolute, true and mathematical time,” an equable, independent flux, distinct from that relative time which is only the measure of some, presumably reliable, even motion. And finally, in his introduction of special relativity, the 1905 paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein says boldly that for local time, the definition of time can simply be “the position of the small hand of my watch” (I, para 1). In other words, time is what the clock tells. These three understandings of the source of time seem certainly to place it squarely outside of consciousness, into nature, namely as the divinely made heavens themselves, or as a universal stream within them, or as a humanly made artifact, a clock. However, the externality really only works for Einstein, for whom time, local or astronomical, is operationally defined in terms of a theory of measurement based on the postulates of rel- �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 14 14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ativity, a measurement by which astronomically remote clock time can be compared with local time. But even in that case it isn’t clear whether time so defined is established as external or rather abolished altogether, being a mere designation for locations on an analogue dial or a digital register. One more name here, actually the earliest to do away with time: Aristotle, in the fourth book of his Physics (after 335 B.C.E.), defines time as the counted number of a locomotion according to before and after. In other words, time is no visible or sensed something, such as a designated heavenly appearance or a pervasive flux, but just an activity of counting passages. And, as I said, it seems to me that Einstein’s positivist, boldly practical understanding has the same effect: It’s not time but stations of movement, the position of mobiles like clock hands, that is real. So if time is outside, it’s just one unit motion measuring out or counting up another motion. But then again, counting is ultimately a psychic activity; if we didn’t have the experience of counting up moments internally, we couldn’t interpret a digitally displayed aggregate as time that has passed. It’s even worse with Plato’s and Newton’s view of time. Consider this: Some of the greatest works at the beginning of the sciences of nature are theologies. Certainly the Timaeus introduces a divinity, a divine artificer. But above all, so does Newton’s Principia. He devotes its final pages to an exposition of God in Nature which ends with the words: “And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.” In his Optics Newton says, moreover, that these appearances betoken an incorporeal Being “who in infinite Space, as it were in his sensorium, sees the things themselves intimately.” He means that space is that part of God’s soul in which he receives sensory impressions—presumably including primarily the temporal flux, which could, perhaps, be understood as his stream of consciousness. So also does Plato in the Timaeus ultimately put time inside the soul, an encompassing world soul: For his divine craftsman wraps the cosmos with bands of soul-stuff, structured by musical �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 15 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 15 ratios so as to impart rationality and beautifully proportioned motion to the world within. In this strange and wonderful cosmology, the soul is the cincture, the sash of the world’s body. The point I’m making is that if you ask the question: “Is time internal or external?,” there appear to be some great scientists who believe the latter, but if you ask it differently: “Is time in the world or in consciousness, the number of such believers is reduced, because they think that the world itself is comprehended, activated, by a sort of soul. And, as I said, there are those who reduce going time to the counting of passage and told time to the number pointed at on a dial (which is itself a motionless imitation of a celestial circuit) or displayed on a screen (which is a lifeless imitation of a soul seen counting). In effect, they too do away with time as a distinctive “something.” It is nothing but one motion used to measure another. II The questions “What or where is time” now seem to need to become ultimate, to demand: “Is there time at all?” Perhaps a version of more immediate interest to you is: Is the dimension “t” really needed in formulas of physics? I have tried to read books like Julian Barbour’s The End of Time (2000), whose high level arguments for the abolition of time from physics I am not competent to understand. But there is a very elementary consideration along the same lines: Diagrams in elementary kinematics tend to get loci of paths by plotting distance against time, but time itself is represented by distance, the t-axis (Galileo, Two New Sciences, Book IV, Theorem 1). Now most objects we symbolize, we re-present in the dimension in which they actually exist, be they visual, that is spatial, or auditory or tactile. For example, the eight-sided sign that verbally says STOP, or crosses out motion with the cross-symbol X, is itself in the plane dimension of space, and that, in turn, is the dimensionality of the viewing plane of our vision—for the third dimension is an experiential inference from the two-dimensional picture plane onto which sight-lines from the depths of space are projected—ultimately our retina. But when an item is not representable in its own physical dimension (because �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 16 16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW it has none), be it an idea, an angel, or infinity, we are alerted that something about it is not, so to speak, kosher. And all the images of time I know of are indeed either spatial extensions marked by selected now-points or registered counts of sensory pulses from heart beats down to atomic periods. But if that’s the only way to get hold of time, then time has, as I said, been nullified: It’s just a way of measuring something, say, life lived or ground covered, by means of the continuous motion of some uniformly moving mobile or the continual accumulation of some equably occurring events. Are these notions a scientist needs to worry about? Well, no, the realm in which questions of Being or Nonbeing are at home is not a venue for result-oriented research. It’s a place to park questions that need to be bypassed when you have engaging and preoccupying research to do. They’ll keep there for the time when you can’t help yourself because you really want to understand the postulated conditions of science, which cannot themselves be science. The American psychologist William James knew as much about the human soul as about the scientific psyche. I mentioned “Phenomenology” before, when I cited Husserl’s work on internal time. Phenomenology is the careful description of the constitution of consciousness. I believe that James was actually the transatlantic founder of this European movement, because I cannot think of a more acute analysis of our internal life than he presents in his short Psychology of 1892. In the Epilogue to this classic he says plainly and candidly what we all need to hear. He regards himself as a natural scientist and takes that to involve two postulates: 1. Determinism—that all events are rigidly constrained by the laws of nature, and 2. Atomism—that the stuff participating in these events consists of massy elementary particles, which are in force relations to each other. These claims applied to psychology make it a science and the psyche a naturally constrained entity. In effect this means that our physiology determines our psychology. Ethics, James then says, makes a counterclaim: Our wills are free. Scientists do not concern themselves with spontaneity and �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 17 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 17 freedom. Then he goes on: “The forum where they hold [such] discussions is metaphysics. Metaphysics means only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently.” He continues: A specialized scientist’s “purposes fall short of understanding Time itself . . . and as soon as one’s purpose is the attainment of the maximum of insight into the world, the metaphysical puzzles become the most urgent of all.” III So let me launch into one account of time that I find both in accord with experience and elegant in its presentation. It is that of Augustine, with which I began. I am not quite sure if his understanding is metaphysical or theological. I’ve never read a great theologian about whom I was clear whether he was more metaphysician or more believer—probably each for the sake of the other: “I believe so I may understand” says Anselm in his Proslogion of the later eleventh century—and, though he denies it, perhaps the converse is true as well. Allow me to point out that scientists do just the same: They accept postulates on faith so that they may do research, and they do research so that they may find a truth. If it is the case that time never makes its appearance out in the world but only motion is in evidence, then either time is not or it is in the only other venue of which I can think, inside our soul. As one of our seniors (Maxwell Dakin) put it to me when I took him to lunch: “We aren’t in time, but time is in us.” For Augustine time is internal psychologically but also external theologically. When physical time has been shown to lack all physical evidence and therefore to be scientifically void, it might still be theologically real. Augustine’s manuscripts contain no diagrams, as far as I know. Yet his exposition of time seems eminently diagrammable, and that’s how I’ll present it—to be internally imagined rather than externally projected. Inscribe, then, in the mental field of your imagination an upright line. Make it finite in length, for it is to stand for your mortal soul, but also indefinite, for it is to represent that expansible stor- �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 18 18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW age, the part of the soul called the memory, and also those forward-projected images termed expectations. That is to say, points on it are moments of memory, long ago or recent, and also hopes and fears, near or far off. Now set this perpendicular across a horizontal straight line. That line will be quite definitely finite, for it represents the world moving from the week of its creation to the last judgment and the somewhat less well-defined end-time: Solvet saeclum in favilla, “Secular time will dissolve into ashes,” as goes the sacred text, the Requiem. The crossing, it would be the “origin,” the zero point (if we were to think of this picture anachronistically as a diagram of Cartesian x- and y-axes) represents the location where we, our aware soul or consciousness, take place, so to speak, where we are actually present in and to the ongoing world as its participating eye-witnesses. The part of the psychic upright below the world-line represents the past, all the memories left by the passing present that have been pushed down, point by memorypoint, into the deeper past, way back to earliest childhood. The part of the upright above the world-line represents what we might call “future-memory” or expectations, our projection of images, drawn from modified memory, onto the future motions of the world. The closer to the origin, the present, the sooner and more likely are our predictions to come about and the more effective are our anticipatory decisions. So far this is a plane figure, but there is also a line through the origin into the third dimension. Augustine calls this z-axis extensio, which means roughly “outreach.” It represents the access we have to unmoving timeless realms, such as mathematics, eternal verities, and, above all, to the Divinity, whose time is the so-called “standing now” (nunc stans) of theology, within which our moving world is an infinitesimal interlude. “Extension” is thus our stretching toward immortality, and it has no definable extent. The upright soul-axis, on the other hand, he calls “distention.” By the z-axis we reach out beyond ourselves; by the x-axis, our consciousness, we are distended, prolonged, so to speak, within ourselves. Though we live in zero-time, within the present moment, on the cusp of now, we carry above and below this �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 19 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 19 crossing of world and awareness all our past in memory and our future in expectant imagination. Though pointillistic beings in actual world-presence, we are all there simultaneously in temporally ordered memory and expectation. We contain all the time there is for us individually, all our past and all our future, present within us. So I will quote Augustine’s famous formulation of exclusively internal time. He says: Such three [past, present, future] are indeed in our soul and elsewhere I do not see them. The present of what has gone by is memory, the present of what is present, eyewitness, the present of what is future, expectation. (11.20) The future, therefore, is not a long time, for it is not, but the long future is merely a long expectation of the future. Nor is the time past a long time, for it is not, but a long time past is merely a long memory of past time. (11.28) In my youth I was an archaeologist, digging up the past in Greece. You astronomers are, similarly, the archaeologists of the universe, the experts of experts in pastness. Nothing comes to your eyes but what is aeons in the past. How then can Augustine say to us that the past that is not specifically ours as memory has passed away? Well, if I dig up, say, an Attic cooking pot, rough, undecorated, and with a blackened bottom, that pot is not past but present. The same for the stars of which you capture evidence in your observatory. What makes the pot a survival of the past, the kind called “historical evidence,” is what might be called external memory. The fact that the pot is deep beneath the earth’s surface, buried in strata that are analogous to the soul’s memory stratification doesn’t help to make it past; its thereness is still now. But the fact that there are written epics and histories and other transmitted memories of the “glory that was Greece,” together with some common sense which tells me that they too boiled their beans—those circumstances make me infer a past beyond my own birth, a past-pot, so to speak, made 2,500 years before I was born. �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 20 20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I think it must be the same for you: You have ways of calculating the distance of the starry objects you focus on and you know the travelling speed of the signals they emit, and so you calculate your way back into a past that is, in fact, over: That past, however, is now for you or it is not at all. There is an argument that world time must be real because it comes in different configurations: The orbital times of classical Newtonian dynamics are cyclical and reversible. You can run the heavenly clock backwards without damage to the laws of nature. And there is the so-called “arrow of time” for a thermodynamic understanding of the world as progressing, or rather deteriorating, into disorder in the absence of shots of energy. And there is the theological view I just referred to, in which the universe occupies a stretch of time inserted into an atemporal eternity with a dramatic first week and a less clear-cut end. This theological time-line is mirrored in cosmology by the claim that time has a spectacular beginning but a fizzling end, if any. I should add here quickly that I am not pretending to understand these temporal possibilities. I just read about them. But this I do see: All these theories are actually about the measurements of motions and in them time may be a convenient symbolic dimension, but it’s not a substantial being; the present alone, our being there, is real. It is not time that displays diverse qualities but particles of matter that obey different laws of motion. Augustine, it seems to me, saves our sense that we ourselves are temporal in the absence of any evidence that nature, the world of bodies in motion, is so. Let me, finally, speak of a culminating clarification Augustine has accomplished. He has explained why time is naturally thought of as having three phases. The explanation is in terms of three psychic capacities: In our memory we store away in a time-generating order reproducible moments of the world’s motions and events that have come to our attention. Those observations yield a past with a chronological structure. Through sensory awareness we live now, in an actual, if momentary, presence. That is our present, our now. And in our imagination, which is memory in its transfiguring mode, we prefigure, expectantly, in hope, fear, or resignation, things that might come to be. That’s the future. �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 21 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 21 IV Allow me to end with a particular preoccupation of mine. When I say that only the now is real, I may seem to claim that life in the “just now” is the life there is. The Latin word for “just now” is modo, from which comes our word “modernity.” Living in the “just now,” in expectation of the next “just now,” does seem to be a primary feature of modern life with its obsession for the short-term, for speed and novelty. In fact, the adverb “now” is etymologically related to “new” (Indo-European: newo). I’m all for making the most of our moments, but not so much insofar as they confront us with that hard-edged brash factuality, called reality. I have more faith in actuality, which I think of as bringing vibrant significance to our lives. But that’s a long story not for today, so let me dwell instead for a moment on the comparative residual powers of the past and the future. The past has passed away; we say “it was.” But the verb was is a tensed form of is. For my part, I do not believe that anyone can succeed in recalling the past into the present, as a German historian (Leopold von Ranke) famously demanded of history: It should render the past “as it really, effectively had been” (wie es wirklich [or eigenlich] gewesen ist). That is impossible for two reasons: First, because, since a human day has 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes, called “specious presents” by William James (Psychology (1892), Chapter XVII), meaning lived moments, an adequately real history would have to take account of and pass judgement on each of these moments, both psychic and physical, of every dead human being as well as every resultant group activity—which would be a practically infinite task even if the material were actually accessible. And second, it is impossible because I believe that a thoughtful person coming to grips with the past will have to go schizophrenic, that is, “split-minded,” in order to entertain the following, unavoidable dual persuasion: On the one hand, it is simply not determinable that there is a past that has actually happened, because the conduct of human individuals, like the behaviors of electrons, may be terminally uncertain for an observer in a way analogous to the Uncertainty Principle of physics: The historian’s observational perspective �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 22 22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cannot help but suppress one feature of a situation in focusing on another. Or even worse: Perhaps human life is just not ultimately determinable because of our incurable inability to penetrate people’s interior or, yet worse, because human beings are in themselves indeterminable, perhaps more radically than electrons. On the other hand—and here’s what splits the mind—who can avoid believing that there really was one way it had actually been in the past, that some things were the case and others not? Thus when some revisionists were arguing that the Germans had not indisputably initiated the First World War, the French statesman Clemenceau said something to this effect: “At least no one will claim that on the night of August 3, 1914 the Belgians invaded Germany.” So, all that said, whether the established past is always a tiny selection of the real past, or the real past is itself in principle uncertain, either within clear limits or with large latitude, it seems extreme to say that the past is totally not. There is a roughly recoverable past, especially by means of written works. And (I want to say this briefly but emphatically) the depth and coherence of the present depends on being mindful of this past. That too is a subject for a different lecture. So I come to my concluding expression of personal opinion. Just as it seems to me essential to coherent living to ascribe actuality to the past, so it seems to me essential to effective action to deny it to the future: The future is far more not than the past. In fact it is a big Nothing—at least the human future is just a nonbeing. I am an amateur reader of anthropology, and here’s a pertinent anthropological discovery from the Andes.* In most cultures the future is thought of as confronting us, coming toward us, existing ahead of us. In the Andes of South America there is, however, a language, Aymaran, and its speakers for which the future comes up from behind. These people use the Aymaran word for *Rafael Nuñez and Eve Sweetser, “With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time,” Cognitive Science 30 (2006): 1-49. �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 23 ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 23 “back” to refer to future events and gesture behind them to indicate its coming. This way is highly unusual, but to me it makes perfect sense. There is a future that is fixed from the past, that future which is predictable because past events are determinately causative. Thus having a bad drought in the summer just behind you makes a poor harvest in fall to come a practical certainty. Above all, celestial motions, which are fixed by natural law, are highly predictable; thus an Ephemeris gives the coordinates of celestial bodies way into the future. That’s a way of saying that the future is determined from behind us, since prior causes determine posterior effects—certainly in large-scale nature. There’s a huge “but.” Determinists will argue that we human beings are also bits of nature and entirely determined by brain action. If we only knew the brain’s condition in every detail we could entirely predict a human being’s action. Never mind the practical impossibility of complete information; if we are altogether parts of nature, absolute prediction is in logical principle possible, and impracticable only in mere fact. Then there is indeed a future, though not one coming at us but one issuing from our circumstances. But it is possible that we have a capacity for spontaneity of action based on liberty of choice and freedom of decision. If that is the case, then the human aspect of the future is indeed a great big Nothing until we, here and now, decide to give it the shape we choose. It may be that the antecedent causes of choice, which are trains of thought, are even more exigently binding than the laws of nature, but they include an element of weighing and judging that is inviolably ours. If there is this parallel track of free choice, then this is what those future-gurus deserve who undertake to tell us what the future holds and sends at us, “like it or not,” and who advise us to prepare for and accommodate to these futuristic advents, even if we judge them to be bad—on pain of being overrun by them. They deserve to be told that they are trying to invade the realm of our expectations and intending to highjack our imaginations. In other words they are attempting to curtail our freedom, and their bid to have us bow to their inevitabilities should be met with a counter-bid for them to butt �02 Brann, WHERE, Then, Is Time 2016-03-10.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 24 24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW out. For to the question “where is time?” the answer is: For sure not in the future; the human future is nonexistent until we imagine it and act accordingly—and by then it’s already the present. Let me hasten to say as my final point: Our free choice, which is, as I’ve said, sure to be ultimately quite constrained by the demands of truth-seeking thought, has at least an initial moment of spontaneity, when we focus our attention on a subject and commit ourselves to thinking it through—on its terms. This spontaneity, this freedom, seems to me to be anchored in two, somewhat iffy facts. One is the powerful, personal experience of being my-self, my own mistress, unavoidably in charge. The other is the powerful public sense of not belonging entirely to myself but of willingly surrendering part of me to my community—and that this is a particularly telling practice of freedom. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 25 ESSAYS & LECTURES 25 Music and the Idea of a World Peter Kalkavage “Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol This lecture explores the differences between two perspectives on music: one ancient, one modern. The texts I have chosen are Plato’s Timaeus, a dialogue that freshmen will read in seminar toward the end of the year, and Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, a great book not on the program. Each of these works presents an all-embracing account of the world—a cosmology—that highlights the bond between world and music. I hope that my study in contrast will lead us to a deeper understanding of music as it relates to the whole of all things, our human condition and our happiness. I also hope that it will show why music is the most comprehensive of the liberal arts, and why it is the case that to speak about music is to speak about everything. My talk has three parts. In the first, I focus on the central role that music plays in Timaeus’ cosmological optimism. According to Timaeus, the world of Becoming is a beautiful work of art ruled by the supreme goodness of intelligent divinity. In Leibniz’s phrase, it is the best of possible worlds. In the second part, I turn to Schopenhauer’s cosmological pessimism, according to which the world is not the shining forth of intelligent purpose but the work of a blind urge that Schopenhauer calls the will. Music, for Schopenhauer, is the most potent and truthful of the arts because it is a “copy [Abbild] of the will itself.” In the third part of my talk I offer, by way of a coda, some thoughts on music and world in the context of the Bible. Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was first presented in Annapolis on 6 November 2015. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 26 26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Part One. Rootedness and Musicality The Timaeus is Plato’s most overtly musical work. Music is prominent in other dialogues as well, notably in the Republic and Laws, and in the Phaedo, where Socrates calls philosophy “the greatest music” (61A); but it is so much a part of the form and substance of the Timaeus that the dialogue may be said to be all about music. The projected drama of the Timaeus is a performance by three illustrious political men, whose task is to entertain Socrates with a feast of speech: Timaeus of Italy, Hermocrates of Sicily and Critias of Athens. A fourth was supposed to have joined them, but he is a no-show. The men who did show up form a trio of poet-rhetoricians, who have agreed to gratify Socrates’ desire to behold his best city, which he had described on the previous day, engaged in the words and deeds of war (19B-20C). The star of the show is officially Critias, who boasts about how he will harmonize the particulars of Socrates’ city in speech with those of an ancient unsung Athens. This Athens of old, Critias claims, really existed once upon a time and nobly fought against the insolent kings of Atlantis. But Timaeus upstages Critias with his long speech about the cosmos and proves the superior poet. How can one top a magnificent, richly detailed speech about the whole of all things—the cosmology that is the unmatched model for all cosmologies to come? Early in the Timaeus, we hear about the importance of music in human communal life, as Critias recollects what his greatgrandfather and namesake experienced when he was a young boy. This Critias joined other boys in a music contest in which they sang poems recently composed by the lawgiver Solon (21B). The contest was part of the boys’ initiation into their family tribe and took place during a festival in honor of Dionysus, the god of intoxication. It depicts the very moment in which impressionable youths are officially rooted in their tribe, and by extension their city. Through the act of singing, the opinions of Solon take root in these young souls and become authoritative. They become things not merely heard and obeyed but imbibed, incorporated �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 27 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 27 and cherished. A similar ritual enrooting is at work, as we shall see, in the speech of Timaeus. We know from the Republic that music, which for the Greeks includes poetry, is dangerous. Because music has the power to shape the soul for good or ill, to make it orderly or disorderly, an account of the best regime must include a critique of music as one of its prime components. At one point Socrates tells us why: So, Glaucon, . . . isn’t this why nurture in music is most sovereign? Because rhythm and concord most of all sink down into the inmost part of the soul and cling to her most vigorously, bringing gracefulness with them; and they make a man graceful if he’s nurtured correctly, if not, then the opposite (401D5-E1).1 The passage underscores the tremendous power of music and shows why music is crucial to moral-political education. It recalls the final book of Aristotle’s Politics, which treats the musical education of those who are to be free human beings and good citizens. Plato and Aristotle realize that we are on intimate terms with music. The intimacy verges on the supernatural, since music seems to be a kind of magic that causes the listener to be held and spellbound. Music, like Orpheus, enthrals. Aristotle observes at the beginning of his Metaphysics that sight is the privileged sense, the one that we hold most dear and that most reveals the differences of things. Musical hearing can lay claim to another kind of privilege. Music has an intense personal inwardness, an immediate emotional effect and a power to form our character, opinions and way of life. In moving our affections it moves our whole being. This is the ground of the danger that music poses. In music there is no safe distance between perceiver and perceived, as there is in sight. There is also no refuge: we cannot turn away from music as we can from a thing seen, since music is not spatially bounded but sounds everywhere. Moreover, in lis1. I have slightly modified the translation by Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1991). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 28 28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tening to a piece of music, we are not free to survey its parts at will, as we can with an object that is seen, but must wait for a moment to sound.2 The tones come when they want to. And yet, listening to music is more than mere passivity, for it affects us by virtue of its forms and structures. Listening, in other words, is an act, in which we not only feel but also perceive. This is the paradox that is music, which can overwhelm our reason and selfcontrol but always through the order and precision of its tones and rhythms. To borrow terms made famous by Nietzsche, music could not be Dionysian if it were not thoroughly Apollinian, which it must be if it is to be an art at all. As I mentioned earlier, Timaeus’ speech—or, as he famously calls it, his “likely story” (29D)—is an effort to put the world of Becoming in the best possible light. It is a defence of Becoming in response to Socrates’ indictment in the Republic. In that dialogue Socrates tells Glaucon that genuine education turns the soul away from Becoming or flux and toward the changeless realm of Being (7.518C). It leads the potential philosopher out of the cave of opinion and up into the sunlight of truth. The likely story takes us in the opposite direction—from Being down to Becoming. It tells us how a craftsman-god, who is without envy and very ingenious, and who gazed on archetypal Being, brought order to the primordial chaos through a combination of providence and the beautiful structures of mathematics. Timaeus calls his speech both a mythos or story and a logos or account. Socrates calls it a nomos, which in Greek means law and song, as well as custom and convention (29D). The word implies that Timaeus’ cosmology is a form of quasi-political music. This music estab2. For a discussion of the difference between seeing and hearing, see Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966): “For the sensation of hearing to come about the percipient is entirely dependent on something happening outside his control, and in hearing he is exposed to the happening . . . he cannot let his ears wander, as his eyes do, over a field of possible percepts, already present as a material for his attention, and focus them on the object chosen, but he has simply to wait for a sound to strike them: he has no choice in the matter” (139). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 29 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 29 lishes our right relation to the cosmic whole whose offspring we are. It makes us law-abiding citizens of the world—good cosmopolitans. By playfully re-enacting the birth of the cosmos, Timaeus is attempting to persuade his listeners, Socrates in particular, that the world of body and flux, properly understood, is worthy of our serious attention, emulation and praise. All the mathematical constructions and stories are songs that commemorate the Great Founding. By “singing” these songs of law and order, we celebrate our cosmic roots. Moreover, since the world for Timaeus is a god (34B), physics comes on the scene as the truest act of piety. Musical references abound in the likely story. The primordial chaos is said to be unmusical or out of tune (30A), and the movement of the stars resembles a choric dance (40C). The elusive receptacle or matrix—the cosmic “mother” who shakes the four elemental bodies into their proper places when they wander, like wayward children—gives the world a rhythmic sway (52C-53A). The sway is evident in all cyclic movement: our heartbeat, breathing and walking, in the vibrating string and pendulum, swings and cradles, and the undulating surface of the sea. The construction of the regular geometric solids is also music. Here Timaeus ingeniously harmonizes these beautiful sphere-like shapes—tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron and cube—with the observable properties and behaviour of the four elements: fire, air, water and earth (53D-E). The greatest musical moment in the story is the construction of the musical scale out of ratios of whole numbers (35A-36B). It is based on the Pythagorean discovery that the intervals that make up melody—octave, perfect fifth, perfect fourth, etc.—are produced by string-lengths that are in small whole number ratios. Much can be said about the god’s act of scale building, especially in light of the problem it solves, namely, the natural incompatibility of some intervals with others. Here I must rest content with a brief summary. Timaeus’ god builds the world soul out of musical ratios, having first mixed together forms of Being, Same and Other. He then cuts and bends the scale-strip to form the rotation of the celestial sphere and the orbits of the planets (36B). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 30 30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW These periodic movements, which constitute time, are not only the music in the sky but also the reflections of divine thought, whose image we carry around in our sphere-shaped heads. For Timaeus, musicality is the sum of human virtue and the ground of happiness. By musicality I mean the adjustment of all our actions to the regular, periodic movements of the heavens. To be virtuous and happy is to conform to the cosmic law and to move in sync with the music of the whole. It is to live a life that is in every respect well timed, symmetrical and balanced—the life of a star. We achieve balance when, for example, in devoting ourselves to study, we also make sure we get enough rest and physical exercise (88A). The most essential human musicality comes from astronomy. This is not because the beauty of the whole is most apparent in the visible heavens, but because the heavens are the home of thought in its healthiest, most regular form. To think the heavenly motions, to discern the ratios in the sky, is to be one with that condition of intellectual health and consummate musicality enjoyed perpetually by the world soul. I have said that the likely story is a song that celebrates our cosmic roots. But it is also the story of a fall. In the book of Genesis, there is creation and fall; in the Timaeus creation is fall. As I noted earlier, world building starts at the top and goes down— just like a Greek musical scale. It goes from Being to Becoming and from the best things in the world to the worst. The lower, subhuman animals are generated by intellectual devolution. This is the process in which human beings lose their divine intelligence by having lived an acosmic, disorderly life and must reenter Becoming in an animal form suited to their moral and intellectual degradation. The likely story begins with the heavens and ends with shellfish, creatures that contain the souls of humans who in their previous lives exhibited what Timaeus calls a “total lack of musicality” (92B).3 But even these lowest beings enhance the beauty of the whole, since without them the cosmic scale of life would lack its lowest notes and be incomplete. 3. Translations of the Timaeus are from Plato: Timaeus, trans. Peter Kalkavage (Newburyport, MA: Focus Press, 2001). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 31 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 31 According to Timaeus, our souls originated as pure intellects, each living in its own star. In being born, we become profoundly disordered. We leave off being star-lords and become mindless, inarticulate babies, beings incapable of controlling any of their movements. That is why education is necessary—because, as fallen stars, we must recover “the form of [our] first and best condition” (42D). Mathematical astronomy is the most important part of education because it is the means by which we humans, whom Timaeus calls heavenly plants, return to our roots in the sky (90A). It is also the highest form of therapy. By engaging in astronomy, the human intellect, which grew ill at birth, comes to itself and recovers its circular movement, former health and proper functioning as the guide and navigator of daily life. We study astronomy so that by “imitating the utterly unwandering circuits of the god [Cosmos], we might stabilize the wanderstricken circuits in ourselves” (47C). Music that is heard and felt plays a similarly therapeutic role. The gods gave us music “not for the purpose of irrational pleasure…but as an ally to the circuit of the soul within us when it’s become untuned, for the purpose of bringing the soul into arrangement and concord with herself” (47D-E). On this note of music as therapy, I conclude the first part of my talk. I now turn to a very different account of music and world. Part Two. From Divine Circles to the Wheel of Ixion: Music in a World of Woe The first and main volume of The World as Will and Representation is divided into four books.4 Thomas Mann, the greatest admirer of Schopenhauer in the twentieth century, called it “a symphony in four movements.”5 Mann, himself a cosmological pessimist, was keenly sensitive to the role that music plays in the work. In his essay on the philosopher, he observes that Schopen4. The second volume consists of supplements to the four books in Vol. 1. 5. “Schopenhauer,” in Thomas Mann: Essays, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Random House, 1957). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 32 32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW hauer, who was very musical, “celebrates music as no thinker has ever done” by making music metaphysically significant. Mann proceeds to speculate: “Schopenhauer did not love music because he ascribed such a metaphysical significance to her, but rather because he loved her.” For Mann, will rather than intellect is the source of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music, where will signifies everything in us born of passion and feeling. The supremacy of will over intellect is the most important respect in which the world of Schopenhauer differs from the world of Timaeus. As its title indicates, The World as Will and Representation depicts the world as having two distinct sides or aspects. One side, representation, is the topic of Book One. As representation or Vorstellung, the world is everything that is vorgestellt, “placed before” us and made present in the daylight of consciousness. Although a more accurate rendering of the word would be “presentation,” which suggests original coming-to-presence as opposed to derivative imitation, I have chosen to keep the traditional term. Representation is the realm of perceived objects—finite determinate things and all their properties, which appear in space and time and interact according to the principle of sufficient reason, that is, through the relation of cause and effect. Representation is the world as a well-ordered surface. It is what most of us would call the world simply. Schopenhauer turns to the other, inner aspect of the world in Book Two. He uses terms from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: whereas representation is the world as appearance or phenomenon, will is the world as thing-in-itself or noumenon. Will, here, is not a psychic faculty. It is not my will or your will, or God’s will, since for Schopenhauer there is no God. Will is the universal force and infinite striving that underlies all things and rises to self-awareness in man. Schopenhauer calls the will “eternal becoming, endless flux” (164).6 As the world’s “innermost being” and “kernel” (30-31), will is the source of meaning (98-99). Will 6. Numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the edition by E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 33 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 33 reminds us that life is more than the cool perception of objects: it is also feeling and care. Objects of representation are vessels of my care. They are meaningful, important to me in all sorts of ways. This object I desire and strive to possess, that one I avoid. This event I hope for, that one I dread. This human being I love, that one I despise. My body is the embodiment of my care. It is the seemingly concrete reality to which I am intimately joined and which I care about in a thousand ways. My living body reminds me that I am constantly in the condition of seeking to preserve my life and to stave off harm, pain, frustration and death. My being and my life consist in striving to be and to live. I cannot escape striving, not even when I sleep, for it is more obvious in dreams even than in waking life that representations matter to me and are the creatures of my care. Dreams are my hopes, fears, anxieties and desires made into a private movie, often a surreal one. Most of us would say that as a human being with a certain nature I am subject to this care. Schopenhauer is far more radical: for him, I am this care, this infinite striving to be and to live as this individual with this body. Dreams are to desire what the whole phenomenal realm is to the noumenal will. Schopenhauer reminds us repeatedly that what we call life is a dream. The will is not the cause of the world, since causality operates only within the dream world of phenomena or appearances. There is no intelligible principle or intelligent god (as there is for Timaeus) that is responsible for the natural order. Nature is unaccountably there, just as human beings are unaccountably there, “thrown” into existence. The will does not cause nature but rather objectifies itself as nature—just as our care objectifies itself in dreams. Hence the phrase, “the world as will and representation.” The self-objectification of the will is the basis of Schopenhauer’s cosmology. The will objectifies itself in a fourfold way: as inorganic nature, plant life, animal life and human life. Schopenhauer constructs an ingenious isomorphism or analogy between these four grades of nature and the tones that make up the major triad with its octave (153). The work of the will is especially noteworthy in the case of our bodily parts, which are so many ways in which the will objectifies itself: �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 34 34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse; grasping hands and nimble feet correspond to the more indirect strivings of the will which they represent” (108). This striking rendition of the human body is a modern counterpart to Timaeus’ outrageous stories about our bodily parts, which are mythically represented as manifesting, and ministering to, our souls. But whereas Timaeus is tongue-incheek, Schopenhauer is in deadly earnest. The identity of will and meaning shows why music is metaphysically significant. As Schopenhauer writes in another work, music, especially melody, “speaks not of things but simply of weal and woe as being for the will the sole realities.”7 From the standpoint of the will, being is meaning. Music is unique among the arts because it depicts the inner world of care—pure meaning apart from all objectivity. It represents not the rational world soul but the passionate world heart.8 Music, moreover, is not an elitist Pythagorean who speaks only to her learned inner circle but rather the “universal language” that is “instantly understood by everyone,” intuitively and without the aid of concepts (256). In my account of the Timaeus I highlighted the therapeutic function of astronomy and music, both of which minister to fallen man. They are a corrective to the cosmic necessity of our having been born as mortal beings subject to mortal flux and mindless desire (42A ff.). Being born, for Timaeus, is in one sense a gift— the gift of organic life. But it is also, for the reasons I mentioned, our burden and our fate. Being born is a mixed blessing. For Schopenhauer it is an outright curse. To be born is to become an egocentric individual afflicted with insatiable desire, in particular sexual desire. To be is to be subject to “the miserable pressure of the will” (196). The will, as I noted earlier, is infinite striving— 7. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 430. 8. “The heart, that primum mobile of animal life, has quite rightly been chosen as the symbol, indeed the synonym, of the will” (Vol. 2, 237). The atheist Schopenhauer says at one point: “like God, [music] sees only the heart” (Vol. 2, 449). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 35 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 35 striving with no ultimate good or end. Moments of contentment and joy appear, but only as passing tones, ripples in a sea of frustration, ennui and renewed desire. To live is to suffer. Schopenhauer here reveals the hard edge of his pessimism and his “tragic sense of life.”9 He cites approvingly poets like Calderon who define original sin as “the guilt of existence itself,” and who affirm that it would be better never to have been born.10 Schopenhauer’s recurring image of life as suffering is the wheel of Ixion. Ixion was King of the Lapiths. After being shown hospitality by Zeus, he lusted after Hera and tried to seduce her. For this attempted outrage Zeus bound Ixion on a wheel of fire and consigned him to Tartarus. Only once did the wheel of torment stop—when Orpheus descended to the Underworld and charmed its inhabitants with his song.11 This, for Schopenhauer, is the human therapy that all fine art offers, in particular the art of music. Music represents the will as thing-in-itself, meaning apart from all things and pictures, and is for this reason metaphysically significant. But music also gives us momentary relief from the fiery wheel on which we are bound, the wheel of infinite longing. In music, as in all aesthetic contemplation, we are no longer self-interested individuals but “pure, will-less subject[s] of knowing,” subjects who are “lost in the object” (209). In art, as Schopenhauer puts it, “We celebrate the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still” (196). The third part of Schopenhauer’s book is devoted to the arts, which are beyond the principle of sufficient reason. This is evident in music, where tones, though tightly connected, have no causal relation to each other. The opening phrase of Beethoven’s 9. The title of Miguel de Unamuno’s book. 10. Schopenhauer quotes from Calderón’s Life Is a Dream: “For man’s greatest offence is that he has been born” (Vol. 1, 254). This is “the guilt of existence itself”—original sin. Death is, in effect, the correction of an error. Schopenhauer would say to the dying individual: “You are ceasing to be something which you would have done better never to become” (Vol. 2, 501). 11. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.42. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 36 36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Fifth Symphony, for example, does not cause the second.12 Unconcerned with causality and deduction, art is the intuitive apprehension of the Ideas, which Schopenhauer takes from Plato, for the most part from the Timaeus. The Ideas are the eternal archetypes of nature—the four grades of the will’s self-objectification that I mentioned earlier.13 In the human realm they are the universals of experience. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are a distillation of what is eternally true of human life. In the complex ambition of Macbeth, jealousy of Othello and tragic integrity of Cordelia, we behold archetypes of will at its highest grade.14 Art is therapeutic because, as the aesthetic contemplation of universal Ideas, art detaches us from the particular objects of our care. That is why we take pleasure in even the saddest music, which calls upon us us not to weep but to listen. Art, however, is not an enduring release from Ixion’s wheel and offers only “occasional consolation” (267). The fourth part of Schopenhauer’s book takes us from artist to saint, who alone is truly happy—if one can call resignation happiness. The saint has neutralized the will to be and to live through the knowledge that objects of care are nothing but illusion (451). He needs no artworks. This neutralization of the will makes the saint good. In the obliteration of his ego, he is released from his private suffer12. Schopenhauer makes this point in The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, trans. E. F. J. Payne (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974), 127: “In just the same way, the succession of sounds in a piece of music is determined objectively, not subjectively by me the listener; but who will say that the musical notes follow one another according to the law of cause and effect?” 13. It is important to note how the Ideas for Schopenhauer differ from how Plato describes them. For Schopenhauer, the Ideas cannot be genuine beings, for that would undermine the ultimacy of the irrational will. They are simply eternal modes or ways in which the will objectifies itself. The Ideas are more like adverbs than nouns. 14. These archetypes recall Vico’s “imaginative universals.” See The New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). See Paragraphs 381 and 460. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 37 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 37 ings and free to take compassion on the suffering of other human beings and even on that of animals (372). I now turn to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music, which appears in Volume One of his book and again in Volume Two. These chapters contain the most fascinating discussions of music one will ever read. They are an attempt to identify music as a source of truth, indeed the deepest truth: “The composer reveals the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake” (260). Schopenhauer illustrates his general ideas with many references to specific musical phenomena. I shall address only a few of them. I begin with music as imitation. According to Plato and Aristotle, music, in its tones and rhythms, imitates the dispositions and passions of the soul. As Aristotle observes in the Politics, melodies and rhythms are “likenesses of the true natures of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and moderation and all the opposites of these and the other states of character” (1340a20).15 Aristotle is referring to the Greek musical modes—Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, etc., which achieve their different effects through a different placement of half steps in their scales. The Dorian mode, Aristotle says, gives the soul “a moderate and settled condition,” whereas the Phrygian “inspires.” A difference in mode can be heard in our familiar opposition of “bright” major and “dark” minor. This huge musical difference hinges on no more than whether there is a whole step or a half between the second and third degrees of the scale. It is gratifying to hear Schopenhauer, a philosopher, respond to this fact with fitting amazement (261). What Timaeus and Schopenhauer add to the imitative relation between music and soul is the connection between music and world. We are responsive to music because the so-called external world has an interior, as do we, and is always already 15. Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Press, 2012), 250. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 38 38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW music-imbued. For Timaeus, music in the form of the diatonic pattern—the recurring order of whole and half steps—is woven into the fabric of the cosmic soul, of which our souls partake. That is why we respond to the diatonic modes. We look with longing at the stars because that is where our souls come from, and we take delight in identifying Same and Other in the things of the world because our souls are made of Same and Other. So too, we welcome music into our souls because we detect in it the inflections of our psychic modalities—our various soul possibilities. Where there is music and listener, music calls to music. It is a case of sympathetic vibration grounded in the nature of the ensouled cosmos. Schopenhauer differs from Timaeus in his understanding of interiority. He rejects the soul as a principle of being on the grounds that it makes real what is in fact illusory, namely, our individuality.16 The principle of individuation in general, like the principle of sufficient reason, applies only to the world of phenomena, which Schopenhauer regularly calls the “veil of Maya” or illusion. In listening to music, we suspend our individuality and are in touch with will as process rather than with a stable mode of soul and character. From a musical standpoint, Schopenhauer differs from Timaeus by going beyond the Pythagorean idea of interval as sensed ratio and treats music as the embodiment of tension or force. This modern concept of force, also known as conatus or endeavour, is prominent in the physics of Newton and Leibniz and was introduced into natural science by Hobbes, who, like Schopenhauer, rejects a highest good and depicts desire as an infinite striving “that ceaseth only in death.”17 Dissonance in music is a kind of tension or force. As the vector-like impulse to move in a definite direction, it is the analogue of desire.18 The suspen16. “[S]oul signifies an individual unity of consciousness which obviously does not belong to that inner being. . . . The word should never be applied except in a metaphorical sense” (Vol. 2, 349). 17. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 11.1. 18. “Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 39 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 39 sion is a good example of how dissonance works in music. In a suspension, two lines or voices start out in consonance but then produce dissonance when one of the voices moves while the other holds its note. A resolution of the dissonance then follows. Schopenhauer writes: “[Suspension] is a dissonance delaying the final consonance that is with certainty awaited; in this way the longing for it is strengthened, and its appearance affords greater satisfaction. This is clearly an analogue of the satisfaction of the will which is enhanced through delay.”19 The word “analogue” is important here. The suspension is not the image or likeness of a specific desire that is eventually gratified but rather a tonal event that communicates, in a purely musical way, a universal truth about the will. When Schopenhauer says that music is the universal language, he is not being poetic. He means that although tones are not words, they function intuitively in the same way that words function conceptually— not as likenesses of the things they signify but as symbols, bearers of universal meaning. In the case of music, this meaning is perceived and felt rather than inferred. Listening to music is nonverbal symbol-recognition. Music as force flourishes in the tradition of modern tonal harmony. This long and glorious tradition reaches from Bach and Handel, through Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, up to Brahms and Wagner, and continues in our own century. Tonal music, as opposed to the mode-inspired music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, exhibits the directed tension I mentioned earlier. There of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will” (Vol. 1, 111). 19. Vol. 2, 455-6. An even better instance of the connection between dissonance and will is the appoggiatura or leaning tone. This unprepared dissonance on a strong beat delays a tone of the melody and intensifies expectation. It is the perfect musical imitation of longing. A fitting example occurs in Tamino’s love song in the Magic Flute. Tamino gazes on a picture of Pamina and falls in love with her. By singing in response to a picture, he moves from the world as representation to the world as will. His repeated leaning tones on the words “I feel it,” “ich fühl es,” embody the universal truth of erotic love. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 40 40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is a play of forces—tonal dynamism. Needless to say, such music is friendly to the language of will, for will is tension, and force is will that has not yet attained self-consciousness. The musicologist Heinrich Schenker applied this very term to music: Tonwille, the will of the tones. In tonal harmony tension is not confined to isolated events, like the suspension, but pervades the whole of a musical piece and constitutes its unity. The term “tonal” refers to the rule of a single tone, the tonic or keynote, to which all the other tones in a tonal work point or, as some theorists prefer to say, the centrality of the tonic triad, the I-chord. These tensions—Victor Zuckerkandl calls them dynamic qualities—compose the major scale and cause it to sound like a journey with clearly defined stages and a predetermined end: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.20 Tension is especially urgent in degree 7, which strives toward 8, as desire craves its satisfaction. Degree 4 tends, less urgently, down to 3. Together, degrees 4 and 7 produce the dissonant interval of the tritone. This is the best example of directed tension in music, since the tritone, when combined with degree 5 in the bass, makes up the dominant seventh chord, which points to the tonic triad and so fixes the music in a key. Thanks to their dynamic relations, which operate at many levels, tones and the triads they form generate musical wholes through the artful prolongation and eventual resolution of their will-like tension. I cannot leave the topic of musical tension, and of tone as the symbol of desire, without citing Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. In this work we hear extreme chromaticism, constant unresolved cadences and the deceptive shifting of tonal centers. These phenomena form the tonal analogue of eros as infinite longing. As others have noted, the work pushes tonal harmony and musical tension to the absolute limit by extending the striving of tones over the course of several hours. The historical connection between Wagner’s musical drama and Schopenhauer’s book, although fascinating, is beyond the scope of this lecture. Here I simply observe that the opening phrase of the Prelude, with its 20. The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 18-28. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 41 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 41 famous “Tristan chord” resolving to a dominant-seventh chord, is perhaps the most powerful evocation of tension-as-desire in all of music. Wagner’s phrase sets up a cadence that is not completed until the very end of the work, when the crashing waves of the orchestra overwhelm the transfigured Isolde before settling into the blissful, post-climactic froth of B major. For Schopenhauer, this immense prolongation of musical tension is the noumenal interior of the lovers’ prolonged phenomenal eroticism. More cautiously stated, it is the analogical, symbolic representation of that interior. The universal, undying truth of the story is not in the death-bound characters but in the tones. The central teaching of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music is that music is “a copy [Abbild] of the will itself,” not of the Ideas of the will, as in tragedy (257). To be sure, all the arts objectify the will, but the non-musical arts do so “only indirectly.” They present universality through the medium of things, whether the Parthenon or the complex individuality of Cordelia. Music, by contrast, makes no such appeal and represents, imitates, the world’s pure subjectivity. It does so through tones all by themselves. We must bear in mind when reading Schopenhauer that by music he means “the sacred, mysterious, profound language of tones.”21 This signals the primacy of what Wagner called “absolute music” and we now call instrumental music.22 Music as the language of tones, captures, for Schopenhauer, the Absolute through non-visual representations. It is the will “speaking to us” through the medium of composers, who are the will’s symbolists, somnambulists and high priests.23 Because tones are meaningful all by themselves, Schopenhauer can make the astonishing claim that music, in passing over the Ideas and everything phenomenal, 21. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, 432. 22. See Wagner on Music and Drama, ed. Albert Goldman and Emil Sprinchorn (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 171. 23. For a critique of the thinker’s claim that “through him speaks the essence of things itself,” see the chapter entitled “Heidegger and Theology” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, in which Jonas connects Heidegger with Gnosticism and finds in Schopenhauer’s theory of music �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 42 42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “to a certain extent, could still exist even if there were no world at all” (257). The reason is that music, in negating the world as thing, contains that world from the perspective of its deepest interior, its immortal heart. Schopenhauer states this with maximum concision in the other work to which I referred earlier: “Music is the melody to which the world is the text.”24 In other words, tones all by themselves represent the indwelling, immortal spirit of the world. If we imagined the phenomenal world as a staged opera or a movie, then the orchestral parts and score would stand to it as inner to outer, essence to appearance, truth to seeming. As I observed in the case of Wagner’s Tristan, the real drama, the world in its truth, would be taking place not in what we see but in what we hear. It would be a drama of tones. But although music transcends the world as thing, it also has a profound connection with that world—again, by analogy. Schopenhauer is fascinated by this analogism and speaks like an Archimedes who has just made remarkable discoveries and cries “Eureka! I have found it!” As I mentioned earlier, the major triad with its octave captures in symbolic form the four natural grades of the will’s self-objectification and is a mirror of the Whole. The ground bass mirrors inorganic nature. Each note of this bass functions as the fundamental to the overtones that faintly sound above it (258). This mirrors what happens in nature as a whole, where higher grades of being develop out of the lowest, and where organic nature constantly depends on the inorganic, as the upper partials depend on their fundamental. The tones between the bass notes and the melody that floats above are the musical analogue of plant and animal. These tones form the harmonic organism that binds lower bass and higher melody. They mirror the way that the sole philosophic precedent for Heidegger’s claim that poets and philosophers embody “the voice of Being” (257). Jonas comments: “Schopenhauer’s fantasy [unlike Heidegger’s] was innocent, for music is nonresponsible and cannot suffer from the misconception of a duty it does not have” (258). There is good reason to think that music is not as “innocent” or “nonresponsible” as Jonas thinks. 24. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, 430. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 43 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 43 plant and animal life mediate between the inorganic realm and our higher, human nature. This analogy exists within the scale itself, where the hierarchy of tones mirrors “the whole gradation of the Ideas in which the will objectifies itself” (258). To hear an ascending scale is, in a sense, to hear the entire cosmos. Even the inevitable impurity of intervals that exists in all tuning or temperament is an analogue of phenomenal nature. An interval that is slightly “off,” say an equal-tempered major third, mirrors natural idiosyncrasy—“the departure of the individual from the type of the species” (258-9). The incompatibility of some intervals with others, the very problem that makes temperament necessary, is also an aspect of the will: it is the musical analogue of the will’s “inner contradiction,” which is the whole concern of tragedy (266). Even death finds its way into the world of tones. Death occurs, says Schopenhauer, in modulation, where a change of key “entirely abolishes the connection with what went before” (261). Finally, there is melody as the musical analogue of phenomenal man: “in the melody, in the high singing, principal voice, leading the whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the uninterrupted significant connexion of one thought from beginning to end, and expressing a whole, I recognize the highest grade of the will’s objectification, the intellectual life and endeavour of man” (259). Melody, the ultimate mythos and symbol of human life, “relates the story of the intellectually enlightened will, the copy or impression whereof in actual life is the series of its deeds.” But melody, for Schopenhauer, “says more” because it goes beyond outward deeds and events. It also “relates the most secret history [my emphasis] of the intellectually enlightened will, portrays every agitation, every effort, every movement of the will, everything which the faculty of reason summarizes under the wide and negative concept of feeling, and which cannot be further taken up into the abstractions of reason” (259). To sum up, there is nothing in the natural world, or in the inner and outer life of man, that does not find its counterpart in the all-embracing realm of tones. Music as symbol is the whole of all things. It is the world. That is why, as Schopenhauer says, “we could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will” (262-3). �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 44 44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Coda. Another World of Longing I end my musical-cosmological reflection with a piece of music that depicts the world as a certain kind of music, polyphony. It is Palestrina’s motet, Sicut cervus. Beloved by St. John’s students, the piece is a musical setting of the opening of Psalm 42 in the Vulgate: Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus (“As the hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God”). The motet is a good example of what Nietzsche called Palestrina’s “ineffably sublime sacred music.”25 Every musical composition is both a world unto itself and an image of the world. This is the central proposition of my lecture. The world of Sicut cervus is that of the Bible and the biblical God. Creation, here, is good. It produces beings, not images of intelligible originals or illusory phantasms. The world is not confined to head and heart, to our subjectivity, but is “out there” and solidly real. The God of the Bible is not a craftsman who leaves the world after having made it, or an indifferent prime mover, but the God of promise and history—the God who makes covenants with his people. He is someone to whom one can pray. Salvation comes not from dialectic, or astronomy, or art, or the death of care based on the gnosis of cosmic nothingness, but from faith in God. Although the words of the motet express longing, the tones do not represent longing as stress and strain. The music is a continually graceful gesture that transmutes the pain of longing into a serene order of voices—voices that seem always to know their place. Sicut cervus is composed in two senses of the word: it is well constructed, and it has an unperturbed disposition. During the piece, motion goes on and time passes, but the overall “feel” seems beyond time and change, like a musical emanation of the nunc stans or eternal Now. It is as if grace were already present, and the singers were experiencing, in the very midst of their yearning, prospective joy in the object for which they yearn. 25. The Birth of Tragedy, 19. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 45 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 45 Aquinas cites three criteria of beauty: unity, wholeness and radiance or claritas.26 Sicut cervus has these in abundance, especially radiance. The music seems to be suffused with warm light. It is full of feeling but also sounds intelligent, lucid and self-possessed. The movement is a continuous flow, in imitation of the waters for which the hart thirsts. The tones move, it seems, not because they have to but because they want to, not out of compulsion but out of freedom. The sound is a spontaneous unfolding, as if the four vocal parts are miraculously improvising their lines as they go along, only gradually discovering the perfectly coordinated whole they are in the process of forming. Dissonances occur to enhance consonance and beget motion, but they are not prominent, and the piece as a whole could not be described as a play of forces. Sicut cervus is music without will. This brings me to the most important respect in which Palestrina’s motet is the image of a world. Sicut cervus is polyphony that lacks (because it does not need) the tonal-harmonic principles at work in the polyphony of Bach. Vertical relations are for the most part the result of simultaneous horizontal relations. The four voices that compose the piece enter one at a time in points of imitation. The voice that follows seems to be inspired to enter by the one that leads. The parts move in obedience to the rules of good voice leading but do more than exhibit formal correctness. They seem to delight in each other’s company and to be naturally social. At times, they even graciously step aside for each other, as if rejoicing in the being and individuality of other lines. Sicut cervus, in its non-urgent flow, is a musical community that captures the sound of friendship. And just as friends engage in all sorts of play, the vocal lines play off one another, often exhibiting contrary motion—simultaneous movement in opposite directions. Thanks to this friendly contrariety, which keeps the parts audibly distinct, the voices celebrate, contrary to what 26. Summa Theologica I, Q. 39, a 8. For an excellent discussion of the three formal criteria of beauty, see Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Gredin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 64 ff. �03 Kalkavage, Music and the FINAL 2016-04-05 .qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 46 46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Schopenhauer asserts, the reality and truth of the principle of individuation, as they conspire to form a perfect, natural sounding republic of tones. The voices of Sicut cervus, in this respect, may be said to enact the contrapuntal play that we find among souls in Dante’s Paradiso. With this non-tragic image of the world, my study in contrast, with its Biblical coda, reaches its end. These two great books, Plato’s Timaeus and Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation, differ greatly in how they view being, becoming and the human condition. But they also go together because, more than other great discussions of music with which I am familiar, they invite us to consider that music is more important than even music lovers might think—that music is, to quote Mann, metaphysically significant and captures the whole of all things, not in concept but in image and feeling. Are the cosmologies of Timaeus and Schopenhauer, separately or together, an adequate account of music? I think they are not. There are limits to the hyper-rational Pythagorean approach to music, just as there are limits to Schopenhauer’s Romantic conception of music as representing feeling and irrational will. Both accounts are nevertheless inspired efforts that hit upon certain undeniable truths. My closing note is inspired by the philosopher Schopenhauer’s personal love of music, which I share. Music, even the saddest music in the world—music that is worlds apart from Sicut cervus and may even be the sound of despair and crushing grief—is dear to us and makes us happy, if only for a while. Maybe this is because music, as a living presence that comes to us, offers itself to us, assures us that we are not alone: that there is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and may even teach us to know them better. Thanks to music, we experience what it means to be connected to the whole of all things, even when that whole seems tragic; what it means to have a soul and not just a mind; to have depth, and not mere rightness, of feeling and being; and, above all, what it means to be open to ourselves and our world through listening. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 47 ESSAYS & LECTURES 47 On Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra Arian Koochesfahani Introduction Descartes described his mathematical physics as a “practical” philosophy by which human beings could “make ourselves like masters and possessors of nature.”1 Today this feature of mathematical physics is almost uncontroverted and is usually the first line of defense against skeptics.2 The proximity to truth of a physical theory is often considered directly proportional to its utility. Jacob Klein (1899-1978) separated the utility claims and truth claims of physics, arguing that since not all of the mathematical equations used in modern physics can be translated into natural language, physics is deficient in meaning and is “not so much the understanding of nature as the art of mastering nature.”3 It is in his book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra4 (GMT) that Klein grounds the strongest version of this claim: the “‘exact’ [mathematical] nature [sought by mathematical physics] Arian Koochesfahani is a graduate of James Madison College, Michigan State University. 1. Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Richard Kennington (Indianapolis: Focus Publishing, 2007), 49. 2. By “skeptics” I mean nihilists, historicists, philosophical skeptics, the “it’s just a theory” people—anyone who argues that modern physics does not uncover significant truths about nature. 3. Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 60. 4. Trans. Eva Brann (Boston: MIT Press, 1968), henceforth abbreviated GMT. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 48 48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is not something that is concealed behind the appearances, but is rather a symbolic disguise concealing the original ‘evidence’ and the original experience of things.”5 In GMT there are three levels of argument at work. On the surface, Klein makes the mathematical side of physics appear strange and new by contrasting the unity of mathematics and ontology in Greek philosophy with the universal, tool-like character of symbolic mathematics.6 In the middle layer, Klein argues that this difference is characterized by the transformation of the Greek notion of arithmos into the modern concept of number, a transformation with profound implications for all modern physical concepts (gravitation, energy, etc.).7 Finally, there is Klein’s philosophical thesis: symbolic mathematics is symbolic in that it takes numbers to be mental operations, i.e., numbers are understood either as concepts or are defined in terms of the mathematical operations the mind performs. As a result, symbolic mathematics legitimizes physical quantities that are intuitively 5. Klein, Lectures and Essays, 84. For Klein, what are disguised by mathematical physics are the implications of the meanings that are given in natural language and that arise from the sensible world, i.e., the material of Greek philosophy (GMT, 118-120). 6. GMT, 4. 7. Ibid., 117-121. Klein suggests that mathematical physics identifies nature with a mathematical representation of nature. I believe this is correct as a description of many of the practitioners of mathematical physics, but incorrect as a description of the theories themselves. Consider magnetism. Magnetic action-at-a-distance has been eliminated in practice, i.e., in the discourse of scientists, by filling space with “fields” which, as mathematical objects, don’t actually constitute an explanation of the phenomenon. The replacement of magnetic actionat-a-distance with magnetic fields bearing magnetic force is an example of identifying the presented (magnetic action-at-a-distance) with the represented (fields, mathematical objects). But this is just how magnetism is thought about. It is not a logical consequence of anything in mathematical physics. However, this statement has to be qualified because what is and is not a consequence of a physical theory can be difficult to determine. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 49 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 49 impossible.8 The challenge to physics is the claim that such quantities are mere constructions of the intellect. These constructions may help us understand how things happen (“the structure of the world”), but they don’t tell us what nature is.9 In what follows, I try to reconstruct Klein’s argument about mathematics to put into context his suggestion that symbolic mathematics makes certain equations in modern physics absurd,10 before discussing the entire argument in the conclusion. Klein’s argument in GMT is that modern mathematics is no longer an ontological science of quantity but an epistemological science of order. To grasp this, we need to understand that, for the Greeks, mathematics—or at least arithmetic—springs from a reflection, buttressed by a few basic preconceptions, on the experience of counting. Arithmos and Arithmetic Two distinctions are fundamental to the Greek mathematical tradition.11 First is the philosophical distinction between being and 8. See Joseph K. Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature,” at the Providence College Digital Commons, 2008 (http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context =philosophy_fac). 9. Ibid., 185. However, if general relativity tells us that shape is relative to velocity, isn’t this a case of scientific progress refining our intuitions about the properties of physical things and thereby refining our intuitions about nature? Assume that velocity does affect shape. Our ability or inability to see velocity affecting shape is irrelevant to the discovery of this truth. We should no longer think of shape as a monadic property, and this constitutes a refinement of intuition. As Jodi Azzouni puts it, “we didn’t see that coming.” See Jodi Azzouni, “Can science change our notion of existence?,” in ProtoSociology 28 (2011): 206 (pdf version, http://www.protosociology.de/Download/Azzouni-Existence.pdf, 5). 10. I simplify certain aspects of Klein’s argument for the sake of clarity. In cases where different interpretations are possible, I pick the one I find most provocative. 11. GMT, 10. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 50 50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW becoming. Since what can be known can be passed on essentially unchanged, knowledge, for the Greeks, is knowledge of what is. Greek mathematics is in this respect the paradigmatic Greek science. In fact, the Greek word mathesis means what is knowable and teachable in general. Hence, for the Greeks, mathematics is especially oriented towards being. The second distinction is made within mathematics, and is the distinction between multitude and magnitude, or between discrete and continuous quantity. To the study of the first corresponds arithmetic and logistic, while to the second corresponds geometry. The difference between arithmetic and logistic is central to Klein’s argument inasmuch as logistic, which occupies shifting territory in Greek mathematics, has been perfected by modern mathematics. To appreciate the difference between arithmetic and logistic, it is necessary, before even defining these sciences, to understand how the Greeks understood “number” (arithmos). The notion of arithmos emerges from the experience of counting.12 When we count, we always have a multiplicity of things before us. When faced with a single thing, we do not count it. If we say that it is “one,” we are speaking about its unity or we are asserting that it exists. One is not many. Therefore, “one” is not an arithmos. The first arithmos is “two.”13 Further, when we count, not only do we always count definite things, but we always count things of the same kind. When we count apples and bananas, we count fruit, and when we count in addition the plates on the table, we count objects. Thus, the definition of an arithmos: a definite count of definite things. In the case of ten sheep and ten apples, the counts are equal, but the arithmos in each case, the decad, is different. This is why the Greeks use funny terms like “sheep-number” and “bowl-number.”14 Every arithmos is a “counting number,” not a “counted number.” If I ask how many of something there is and the answer is “two,” this is just 12. Ibid., 46. 13. Ibid., 49. 14. Ibid., 12. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 51 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 51 an abbreviation of “two of the thing in question.” Therefore, arithmoi are expressed in sentences, not by symbols, and they are not definable by the ways they can be produced by operations, algebraic or otherwise. One might object that we can speak of “two” without reference to any kind of thing. The Greek response is that such talk tacitly refers to imperceptible entities: pure units. This claim is based on an answer to the question of what it is that is the same for everything that can be counted, a question that the Greeks take as auxiliary to the question of what it is about every countable thing that makes it countable. The latter question is the focus of arithmetic. On their way to answering this question, the Greeks take their cue from the fact that we count in terms of kinds, and they conclude that to be countable means (1) to be uniform with respect to other countable things and (2) to be delimited, to possess a clear determination.15 After all, uniformity and delimitation are properties of kinds. The countable as such is therefore externally discrete and, as a determined whole, internally indivisible. In other words, to be countable as such is to be a “one” among homogeneous “ones.” These “ones” are therefore “noetic beings” (pure units) accessible to thought alone. The purely “intellectual” quality of the pure units explains how we can speak of “two” without referring to two things in the sensible world. This line of argument also shows, incidentally, that the “one” is the arche or source of arithmos, since without the “one” there could be no arithmos; a fact accorded ontological significance by Plato.16 But here, in the context of arithmoi, the “one” is always among other “ones,” and as the paradigmatic expression of multiplicity, these “ones” constitute an infinite field.17 Arithmetic, then, is the attempt to comprehend all these “ones” and, in so doing, to explain the possibility of counting. It will become pertinent later that the specifically Platonist arithmetician tries 15. Ibid., 53. 16. Ibid., 49. 17. Ibid., 51. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 52 52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to determine how an arithmos, which is many things, can at the same time be one, namely, this particular arithmos.18 This is a version of the general question about the existence of noetic arithmoi, since in this context “being one,” “having unity,” and “existing” are all equivalent. In any case, all arithmeticians rely on classification to comprehend the arithmoi. The idea is to organize arithmoi by recognizing a consistent distribution of well-defined properties, each property being called an arithmetic eidos.19 The Platonist is again an exception, in that the Platonist does not conceive of eidē as properties so much as actual “entities” which allow each arithmos to be “one,” to have “unity,” or to exist.20 While it turns out that both Plato and Aristotle criticize this way of accounting for the existence of arithmoi as either incomplete (Plato) or incorrect (Aristotle), it is nonetheless true that classifying arithmoi is the main occupation of arithmeticians, their focus being on the truths, directly ontological or not, about these mathematical objects.21 18. Ibid., 49. 19. Ibid., 57. This is in part because through the use of a gnomon we can see that certain groups of arithmoi share similar “shapes.” A gnomon is a configuration of points which, after being fitted around a single point (the “one”), can be continually expanded to produce a figure always similar in appearance. For example, starting from the one, three points form a square, an addition of five points forms a larger square, and so on for every odd number. Following the Pythagorean heritage, each eidos is rooted in a genus, e.g., the “limited” or “unlimited,” and this rooting anchors them in ultimate principles. The most comprehensive eidē are the “odd” and the “even.” The “odd” captures all those arithmoi which cannot be divided without a remainder, while the “even” captures all those that can be so divided. The “odd” links back to the “same” and thus to the “limited” because only discrete quantities cannot be divided without remainder. Because continuous quantity can be divided without remainder, the “even” links back to the “other” and thus to the “unlimited.” 20. Since there are more eidē than the “odd” and the “even,” each arithmos is constituted by its own network of eidetic-memberships (e.g., five is prime, while nine is composite as an “odd-times-odd”). 21. Ibid., 79, 102. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 53 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 53 Logistic and Greek Ontology Logistic, in contrast to arithmetic, is concerned neither with counting nor (derivatively) with adding or subtracting, but with multiplying and dividing.22 Arithmetic and logistic work together: arithmetic classifies arithmoi and accounts for their existence while logistic determines the relations that hold between arithmoi of pure units. If arithmetic is concerned with the eidos or “form” of arithmoi, then logistic is concerned with their hyle or “material”—the units themselves.23 Consider multiplication: if I have two pure units and am told to multiply this arithmos by two pure units, I simply add together as many of the former as there are units of the latter. Of course, whenever the multiplier is two units, the operation is called doubling. Logistic is thus the study of the relations or ratios that necessarily hold between arithmoi depending on which eidē the arithmoi belong to.24 It is especially important to think of logistic not as studying the relations between eidē of arithmoi. It is always the arithmoi, not the eidē, that are the objects of investigation. After all, you can’t multiply eidē. How the eidē are understood has an important impact on logistic. Platonism makes logistic impossible. According to Plato, the noetic arithmoi are given existence by the arithmetic eidē because these eidē are organized by the Ideai (the Ideas in the “theory of Ideas”).25 For Klein, Plato conceives of the Ideai as being to the eidē just as the noetic arithmoi are to the pure units.26 This 22. Ibid., 19. 23. Ibid., 16. 24. Ibid., 24. 25. Ibid., 70. 26. Ibid., 89. For Plato, it is evident that in the phrase “each is one but both are two,” the word “two” expresses a unity that belongs to each only in their togetherness, by virtue of a special koinon or commonality between them that gives rise to a koinōnia, a communion. Thus, in The Sophist, three possibilities for the “ontological methexis” problem arise: “(1) There is no koinōnia [of the eidē] at all. (2) All the eidē are mutually related. (3) There is partial koinōnia, in the sense that some eidē can ‘mix’ with each other but others not.” The first two possibilities are �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 54 54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is convenient for Plato because by conceiving of the Ideai as quasi-arithmetic structures, he can solve the ontological problem of the participation of the species (eidē) in their genus (Idea) and the mathematical-ontological problem of the existence of the arithmoi. The argument is this: the arithmetic “two” exists because it is an image of the foundational, absolutely separate eidetic two, the two, which is the Idea of Being, which holds together the eidē “rest” and “change.”27 Platonism makes logistic literally unthinkable, which leaves the third. The third indicates the arithmetic character of the Ideai in that it implies that the eidē constitute communities or “arithmoi” of “unique eidetic ‘units’,” which, on account of their uniqueness, cannot be counted, but exist in their togetherness. 27. Ibid., 82-3, 87-8, 95-6, 98, 235. To elaborate: assume rest and change to be, as it were, the fundamental elements, and assume of rest and change that each is and both are. We do not address in both some “third thing,” because Being is to be understood as an arithmetic koinon. But how can each be? If Being belonged to any one of the two, then only that one would “be.” On the other hand, if both “were” simultaneously, then rest and change, which are not combinable, would be combinable. Plato resolves the dilemma like this: just as Being, as an “arithmetic” structure, is other than rest and change, so too “are” rest and change, which cannot be without each other, only because they are other than each other. Since Being is therefore other than both (although not both together), while each must be other in order to be at all, this means that Being is always also Non-Being, namely, Other. And this in turn means two things. First, that the conjunction of the “opposites” rest and change is in fact only the “‘co-existence’ of elements other in kind,” so that oppositions are only “appearances” (96). Second, that we may “rightly speak of all things whatsoever as ‘non-beings,’ and conversely, because things partake of being, as ‘being’ and ‘beings’” (96). But this means at the same time that otherness is, in accordance with the first point, recognized as the bond between every Idea and its eidē, and thus as the source of all articulation. The ordinary way of speaking, on the other hand, in accordance with the second point, ceases to make sense. We can say with equal correctness that a horse is an animal and not an animal. Thus, the answer to the principal question in the Sophist—how images, which somehow both are and are not what they represent, are �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 55 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 55 impossible because the pure unit is regarded as not only indivisible but as fundamentally separate from the sensible world, just as the “one” which is the archē of arithmoi is regarded as an image of the “One” of which there can be no Idea and which is altogether beyond being.28 Since a unit that is indivisible and selfsubsisting can’t have fractional parts (not to be confused with fractions, which dispense with units), the Platonist denies the existence of what makes possible the precise calculation already familiar to the Greeks. Platonism and logistic are thus incompatible. This inability (in principle) of Platonists to theorize calculation is a potential reductio of Platonism. Aristotle’s philosophy, on the other hand, is more robust. According to Aristotle, arithmoi receive their existence from the existence of the kind of counted thing.29 This is first of all because the pure units are what is common to every kind of thing, that is, they have the properties common to all kinds. Because the noetic arithmoi are given existence not by their eidē but by their units, which exist even less concretely than natural kinds, it follows that all the noetic arithmoi exist in the same, highly general way—a far cry from the fundamental differentiation of noetic arithmoi that results from the Platonic position that the noetic arithmoi get their existence from different eidē. Aristotle’s position implies that the arithmetic eidē, rather than being the sources of existence for arithmoi, are merely qualities of them.30 possible—is that being itself has a “‘mirror-like nature’” (82). On the one hand, the uncountable ordering of being through the Ideai depends on the archē of otherness, the indeterminate dyad. As the twofold in general, it is the expression of all possible being and non-being, and the source of imageability. This imageability stretches from the sensible things to the eidē (which they image) and likewise from the arithmoi to the Ideai. In the human realm, this imageability is expressed in speech about being, because speech is considered the “image” of thought. On the other hand, the archē of being (and therefore of thought), the “One Itself,” is simply beyond being (98). 28. Ibid., 98, 100. 29. Ibid., 106. 30. Ibid., 110. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 56 56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW This “demotion” of the eidē goes hand in hand with how Aristotle authorizes fractional parts of noetic units. For Aristotle, fractional parts are actually whole units with respect to a new measure.31 In other words, the indivisibility of a unit is just a property of the unit insofar as the unit is a measure. Why are all units measures? Because noetic units are a product of abstraction, the selective disregard of a thing’s visible properties.32 Rather than thinking that the sensible things qua countable presuppose the noetic units, we are to think that the noetic units presuppose the sensible things. In every case, noetic units depend for their existence on sensible or imaginary objects, making every arithmos a “multitude measured by a unit.”33 In practice, this means that if we split a unit in half, each “half” is now a whole, because the original unit, say, one apple, has given way to a new unit, the “half-apple.” It is a simple matter of determining the unit measure, though this does not mean that we give existence to the noetic units or that we can can pick units of measure with total freedom. The appropriate measures are always limited by what it is we want to measure, and the noetic units are always there for us in the first place. Abstraction is just how we access them. This intertwining of the sensible and noetic neatly blocks the one-many problem that vexes the Platonist. Because noetic units are always abstracted and never counted, the one-many problem does not arise. The point with respect to the fractional part of the unit is just this: since the noetic unit is always abstracted, it can be “divided” because its division is simply equivalent to the assumption (via abstraction) of a new unit of measure. Note that this does not abolish the distinction between continuous and discrete quantity, inasmuch as we cannot measure a line by both a unit and infinitely decreasing fractional parts of that unit simultaneously. Aristotle’s position begins to blend arithmetic and logistic: it explains the existence of noetic units in a way that explains the 31. Ibid., 109. 32. Ibid., 104. 33. Ibid., 109. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 57 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 57 possibility of precise calculation. Because the existence of arithmoi is not always “on loan,” as it were, from the eidē, Aristotle can hold, with reference to Plato, that the “real” eidē of arithmoi are nothing other than their “multitude” or “quantity” as such.34 The triad is “once three” independently of whether its “material” is noetic or sensible. Aristotle thus identifies that aspect of “number” to be treated by logistic as the very being of “number.” This is important because the shift from Greek to modern (highly logistical) mathematics involves (1) substituting the concept of number for the existence of number and (2) treating the two as equivalent. However, the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle on the “nature of number” takes place within a fundamental agreement that mathematics is an ontological science of quantity, that “numbers” are always of units, and that “numbers” of pure units do not exist in the mind alone.35 This is why the Greeks did not develop symbolic formulae. As the next two sections show, what made possible such a revolution is the notion that numbers are concepts. Viète’s Reinterpretation of Aristotelian Logistic: Calculating with Concepts Klein brings out the implication of Aristotle’s approach: “The transformation of the ontological conception of mathematika which leads by way of Eudoxus to the Aristotelian doctrine,” results in “the reversal of the ‘Pythagorean’ thesis that the mensurability of things is grounded in their numerability.” It is “now numerability [that] is, conversely, understood as a—not even always complete—expression of mensurability.”36 Especially relevant is that Euclid not only takes up logistical matters under the 34. Ibid., 110. 35. Ibid., 179-180. The general theory of proportions is to Aristotle’s ontology roughly as arithmoi are to Plato’s. Aristotle considers it to be (1) methodologically akin to the study of being qua being, and (2) part of that study itself. 36. Ibid., 240. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 58 58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW name of arithmetic (causing henceforth the constant confusion of the two) but also has logistic appear as a “special case” of the general theory of proportions.37 This makes arithmetic (read “logistic”) seem subordinate to geometry, and it is from this perspective that François Viète introduced symbols into mathematics through his reinterpretation Diophantus’s Arithmetica, the authoritative Aristotelian logistic. Diophantus, following Aristotle, understands eidē as qualities of noetic arithmoi.38 His calculations make use of eidē because the solutions are supposed to exhibit relations that necessarily hold between noetic arithmoi of certain eidē. The point is to show that if the same calculation is performed with arithmoi of such and such eidē, the resulting arithmos will always have certain qualities. This is why, in the course of his calculative procedures, Diophantus introduces signs that serve both as abbreviations for eidē and as stand-ins for a single arithmos belonging to each eidē.39 Recall that eidē can’t be multiplied (or manipulated in any other way). For the Greeks, only arithmoi, definite counts of definite things, can be “operated” on. Diophantus’s letter-signs are therefore “mere word abbreviations” for “some one arithmos belonging to this eidos.” They are not variables. Does this mean that the mathematician has to perform an infinite amount of calculations to complete one proof? No: the generality and therefore the theoretical character of Diophantian logistic is based on the fact that a given procedure of calculation works for all cases of the same type.40 Whether Diophantus proves this is open to question since Klein does not say, but it seems clear that if no such proof appears in the Arithmetica, then Diophantian logistic is open to attack—and this would include Viète’s transformation of Diophantus’s letter-signs into objects of calculation.41 37. Ibid., 44. 38. Ibid., 143. 39. Ibid., 145. 40. Ibid., 132. 41. Ibid., 148. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 59 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 59 In light of Euclid’s blending of logistic and geometry, Viète takes logistical analysis and synthesis as parallel to geometric analysis and synthesis, believing that true analysis (algebra) must “exhibit” magnitudes in figure or number because it is about “numbers” with a “direct geometric interpretation.”42 The point for our purposes is that Viète therefore (1) regards as superfluous the final computation and exhibition of a particular arithmos, and (2) considers multitudes to have the same determinacy possessed by the magnitudes put to work in geometric proofs, so that the determinacy of any multitude lies merely in the proportion that it makes with other multitudes.43 Aiming to realize Euclid’s general theory of proportions as a theory of equations, Viète understands every proportion to be the construction of an equation and every equation, once transformed, to be the solution of a proportion, thereby permitting an “arbitrary” amount of determinate solutions “on the basis of numbers assumed at will.”44 Hence, to realize the general theory of proportions as a theory of equations is in fact to transform the former—whose generality lies specifically in demonstrating truths that hold for all instances of a mathematical form—into an art of calculation which, tellingly, Viète calls the “logistic of species.”45 First, about the “logistical” aspect: Viète stresses the law of homogeneity, a law which ensures, in contexts where magnitudes are represented by multitudes, that the mathematician compares only homogenous magnitudes—in other words, that one employs the same units of measurement for each magnitude involved in a calculation.46 We may not take the length of a line and add or subtract it from the 42. Ibid., 157, 164. See Burt C. Hopkins, The Origin of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), 273-275, 520, for a discussion of how Viète blends these two modes of analysis and synthesis. 43. Ibid., 165. 44. Ibid., 163. 45. Ibid., 184. 46. Ibid., 172. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:32 AM Page 60 60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW area of a plane. In this, Viète follows the Greek logistical tradition. But he departs from this tradition by removing the distinction between theorems and problems. As Hopkins paraphrases Klein, “[Viète] understands theorems to be problems whose solution is not so much the truths themselves about mathematical objects but the ‘art of finding or the finding of finding’ of the general solution to all mathematical problems.”47 As for the “species” aspect of the “logistic of species,” the species are what make possible the general solutions. Having transformed the general theory of proportions into a theory of equations, complete with the equality sign and syntactical rules that allow mathematical operations to be symbolized, Viète requires a general object to operate on, an object defined by quantitativeness as such.48 For this purpose, he appropriates the Diophantian eidē and reads them as “variables.”49 Their determinacy, which makes them operable, comes automatically from their being set up in an equation. Once in an equation, a letter sign becomes interpreted not as a quantity but as quantity-in-general. What distinguishes a symbol (in Klein’s sense) from a Diophantian letter-abbreviation is that it signifies the concept of quantity. Viète’s “species” can in this respect be understood as a generalization of the “true” arithmetic eidē of Aristotle (not to be confused with the eidē that feature in Diophantus’s logistic as mere properties of arithmoi). Recall that for Aristotle the triad itself constitutes an eidos. Viète not only replaces this eidetic triad with the concept of threeness, inseparable from the symbol 3 (or any stipulated mark), but replaces the eidē of arithmoi in general with the concept of the quantity, inseparable from the symbol A (or any stipulated mark). Viète’s innovation, and the essence of symbolic mathematics, is to allow 47. Hopkins, Symbolic Mathematics, 496. 48. GMT, 166. 49. For the sake of brevity, I omit Klein’s interpretation of the role played by the law of homogeneity in Viète’s appropriation of the eidē. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 61 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 61 calculation with concepts.50 Is it nonsense to add the concept of twoness to the concept of twoness? No: the problem is linguistic. The concept of twoness is equivalent to two-in-general. To add two-in-general to two-ingeneral is simply to disregard the units involved. The difference between three-in-general (the moderns) and the triad (Aristotle) is that the latter cannot exist without units of some sort. If we have three apples, then we have one triad. If we then apply abstraction to get noetic units, then we have two triads. There is no triad-in-itself. Moreover, there is no Greek equivalent for quantity-in-general. For the Greeks, “quantity-in-general” refers to every instance of quantity at the same time, not to something that can be individually picked out by the mind as being any quantity whose units we have disregarded. With the idea of quantity-ingeneral, the moderns cause something like a paradigm shift in mathematics without justifying it philosophically. For Klein, the one who produces the closest thing to a justification is Descartes. Mental Operations as Symbols Descartes explains that the concept of quantity is indeed suited to be the subject of calculative operations.51 In the first place, a concept does not have the permanence of a being. It exists only insofar as it is “present to the intellect,” and it is present only insofar as the intellect is “turned towards itself.” In other words, a concept exists only so long as the mental act of conception is maintained. The concept of quantity, in particular, arises when the intellect takes the idea of number (which, residing in the imagination, always goes together with enumerated units) and separates (“abstracts”) from it the character of being a number (i.e., a quantity). The intellect thus obtains for itself the concept of quantity.52 However, a paradox arises. On the one hand, because of its dependence on the imagination, the concept of quantity can’t absolutely ex50. GMT, 175. 51. Ibid., 207. 52. Ibid., 201. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 62 62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW clude the original beings “imaged” in the imagination. On the other hand, as a concept, its content can’t include any determinate beings. Therefore, to acquire the content of the concept of quantity, the intellect returns to the imagination and produces for itself the “indeterminate content,” the countable or measurable in general, in the form of an arbitrary image having figure (in this case, a letter-sign).53 The idea is that any image of a shape or a figure can in principle be equated with any amount of an appropriate measuring unit. This same mental operation applies to the “idea” (in the imagination) of twoness, threeness, and so on. This means that when we deal with a variable in an equation, we present to ourselves our own mental act of conceiving of quantity-in-general.54 We don’t err in identifying the object of representation (the content of the concept of quantity) with the means of its representation (the arbitrary image), because in this case the two really are identical.55 The identity of an arbitrary image and the content of the concept of quantity is the paradigmatic symbol in Klein’s sense. For Klein, this amounts to a new “possibility” of “understanding,” according to which symbols are the key to knowledge of the world.56 Klein’s point is that Descartes gives an account of the sort of abstraction by which we disregard the units of a quantity as well as the determinacy of any quantity, similar to the way in which Aristotle explains our access to pure units. One interpretation is that Descartes builds on Aristotle’s philosophy, since his “symbol-generating abstraction” depends on the prior activation of Aristotelian ab53. Ibid., 205. 54. Cf. Hopkins, Symbolic Mathematics, 521. 55. GMT, 123. 56. Ibid., 200, 210. To make this mode of cognition work, Descartes characterizes the intellect not exactly by incorporeality but by an unrelatedness to corporeality. Descartes’s dualism is in this sense strictly logical rather than ontological. The surprise is that this dualism makes the mind a necessary condition for the substance of the world. Descartes relates the corporeal directly to the imagination through the senses. But for Descartes, corporeal things are the only things in the world, and the �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 63 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 63 straction (interpreted in a certain way) to get “ideas” of arithmoi into the imagination.57 The first abstraction provides “numbers” of pure units, the second provides “pure numbers” and “pure number in general.” However, Descartes ascribes an epistemological “independence” to algebra that was achieved by John Wallis, who can be interpreted as taking a fully “operational” view of numbers.58 Wallis drops Descartes’s notion that algebra exhibits the order of the world (see footnote 56), but he spontaneously fulfills Viète’s requirement of homogeneity by conceiving the homogeneity of numbers to be given by their symbolic character.59 For Wallis, numbers are homogeneous because they are dimensionless, and they are dimensionless because treating numbers strictly in terms of the “numerical genus” is identical to conceiving them symbolically.60 This allows Wallis to equate “numbers” with “indices imagination, which is corporeal, receives its impressions of things without error. Therefore, since the imagination deals most easily and simply with extended things, the essence of corporeality is extendedness (the concept of extension), which is therefore the substance of the world. But the content of the concept of extension is the measurable in general, the same as the content of the concept of quantity. Therefore, the substance of the world is the concept of quantity. Descartes concludes that correct algebraic equations exhibit the order of the world. 57. Ibid., 202. 58. It was the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620) who carried out the “complete and effective assimilation of the ‘numerical’ and the ‘geometric’ realm” under the concept of quantity by assimilating “the concept of ‘number’ to operations on ‘numbers’ already long established” (GMT, 197, 293). Stevin thus “no longer deals with numbers of units which are determinate in each case but with the unlimited possibility of combining ciphers” according to definite rules, thereby allowing irrationals, negatives, and—crucially for the “continuity” of number understood as a complete numerical correspondence to measurable magnitudes—fractions to become “numbers” (193). 59. GMT, 218. 60. Ibid., 217. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 64 64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of ratios.”61 “2” thus becomes equivalent to “2/1.” Moreover, because Wallis says that a ratio—which is dimensionless because it tells us how many times one magnitude is contained in another—results from the division of one magnitude by another, his implicit understanding of symbolic numbers is that they, in addition to the symbols for operations, image the mental operations of calculation. It it true that we have to distinguish mental operations such as Descartes describes—concept-producing operations we aren’t aware of—from mental operations such as division or squaring—straightforward operations we are aware of. But “numbers” are in both cases understood as embodying mental activity. Because equating indices of ratios with number implies that “number” has no connection to a particular multitude, Wallis, with his “symbolic” reinterpretation of Euclidean ratio (radicalizing the “parallelization of ‘arithmetical’ with ‘geometrical’ procedure” initiated by Viète), detaches algebra from any real objects.62 This makes the number symbols themselves the “beings” that correspond to knowledge , so that “the content of reasoning [i.e., mathematical propositions and inferences] . . . ipso facto engender[s] its form [i.e., symbols], the latter doing nothing more than formulating the very movement achieved by the mind” in its ordered progression from quantities that are known to those that are desired.63 It is in this sense that symbolic mathematics is an epistemological science of order and arrangement. Each symbol signifies a mental operation (whether of calculation or conceptualization) and symbolic (unit-less) numbers are substituted for the “definite counts of definite things” familiar to the Greeks. Hence, to define numbers, such as imaginary numbers, solely in terms of opera61. Ibid., 223. 62. Ibid., 212. 63. Quotation from Étienne Gilson in David Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1989), 182. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 65 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 65 tions and the equality sign is just an extension of the “definition” of numbers as mental operations.64 What prevents symbolic mathematics from becoming arbitrary is its rootedness in the concept of quantity, a concept grounded in turn in the idea of arithmoi. Symbolic mathematics can therefore be seen as a system with a hard core (involving conceptualized quantities) expanded upon by postulations. Conclusion Is mathematical physics vitiated if symbolic numbers embody mental operations? As Cosgrove shows with reference to the theory of special relativity, Klein’s work suggests an affirmative argument.65 In special relativity, time- and distance-measurements are relative to a frame of reference described by a coordinate system. All coordinate systems are defined by four variables: three for the dimensions of space, one for time. However, where space is represented directly as x, y, z, time is represented indirectly as 66 67 √(-1)·ct. This way, every variable has units of distance, and since (√(-1)·ct)2 = -c2 t2, it follows by substitution that s2 = dx2 + dy2 + dz2 - c2dt2 is formally equivalent to s2 = x1 + x2 + x3 + x4. This allows for an elegant mathematical characterization of the theory, which flows from the fact that there are equations (the Lorentz transformations) which take us from two mathematically described positions in one frame of reference to those same meas64. The imaginary “unit” (i) is that number which, when multiplied by itself, gives negative one: i2 = -1. It is also stipulated that it is equal only to the positive square-root. 65. Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature,” 14-16. Cosgrove advances an argument on Klein’s behalf, since Klein does not fill the gap between his work on mathematics and his suggestions that mathematical physics identifies nature with mathematical representations. 66. c is the constant velocity of light in a vacuum, t is an interval of time. 67. Given that the velocity of an object multiplied by an interval of time gives the distance traversed. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 66 66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW urements in another frame of reference that is in uniform motion relative to the first. From these equations it follows that all frames of reference share the property s2 = dx2 + dy2 + dz2 - c2dt2.68 Each value of s2 is called a space-time interval.69 Restricting consideration to one spatial dimension, and replacing, as Cosgrove does, c2 (a constant) with 1, the equation reduces to s2 = dx2 - dt2.70 If we now regard the space-time interval as a physical quantity given in units of space-time, then dx2 - dt2 is an intuitively absurd subtraction of units of time from units of distance that yields units of space-time. We perform the subtraction only by operating on symbolic numbers. Thus, our path from measurements in the sensuous world to space-time passes through a mathematical symbolism that filters out our intuitions inexplicably. In this way, we cover nature with a symbolic disguise, namely, space-time. The main problem with this argument is that it begs the question. It assumes that the space-time interval is a physical quantity and argues for the shattering of our intuitions. But it is not a logical consequence of the theory that the space-time interval is a physical quantity. The physical significance of the space-time interval does not require the latter to be an “absolute” quantity representing the “real world” of space-time. We can simply regard space-time interval as a quantity whose value implies certain facts about any two events being related to one another across all frames of reference. That is, we can characterize the correlation between equations and experiments 68. x2 is in units of distance, c2 (as the constant velocity of light) in units of velocity, and t2 in units of time. d tells us that we are dealing with the difference between two coordinate values. 69. That the space-time interval is invariant with respect to all frames of reference is the mathematical certification of special relativity, inasmuch as it preserves the universality of the laws of nature. 70. Cosgrove gives s2 = t2 - x2, but the difference is immaterial since in either case the value of s2 is invariant between frames of reference. I will object to Cosgrove’s substitution of 1 for c2 shortly. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 67 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 67 in terms of a network of inferences. For example, if dt2 is greater than dx2, making s2 negative71 (this is termed a “timelike” interval), then there is no frame of reference in which the two events being related to one another occur simultaneously. From this inference-oriented perspective, to posit an “absolute world” of space-time is an act of philosophical interpretation.72 As regards Cosgrove’s substitution of 1 for c2, this step, while mathematically permissible, is required only by his assumption that the space-time interval is a physical quantity.73 However, that the space-time interval be given in units of distance, not units of space-time, is the desired result of representing the time coordinate indirectly as the variable √(-1)·ct. Though we might want to know where we can find the distance s2, this distance is nowhere because it cannot be measured. It can only be calculated. But this is no problem. From the claim that some quantity is in units of distance it does not follow that this quantity can be measured. A quantity can be imaginary—it can be a mathematical artifact— without voiding any of the reasoning that leads to or away from it. This is why the space-time interval can be imaginary and still have physical significance. From its value, we can draw conclusions about any two events being related to one another across all frames of reference. The space-time interval is meaningful and intuition-preserving within the total context of the theory of special relativity. It is only when it is interpreted as a physical quantity that it covers over the sensible world like a symbolic disguise. No experiment can prove the existence of space-time, with reference to the special theory of relativity. Therefore, assuming similar arguments can be made for similar “concepts,” I don’t think that Klein is correct to suggest that 71. For why this is unproblematic, see Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature,” fn. 43. 72. The interdependence of space and time, and even the mathematical symmetry of the two, is not equivalent to the existence of a single physical medium. 73. As Cosgrove argues: “Clearly the quantity c2t2 - x2 cannot itself be a space-time interval since it has units of distance” (15). �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 68 68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW modern physics is vitiated by mathematical symbolism—that it substitutes a symbolic nature for nature itself. This is because the character of symbolic mathematics as a reasoning tool is the heart of symbolic mathematics. One could take the foundation laid by Klein and argue that it is because symbolic mathematics allows us to exhibit our own mental activity that the mathematical part of physics can’t be responsible for generating a symbolic nature. It only allows us to make that mistake. Of course, the example of the space-time interval certainly supports Klein’s view that the goal of modern physics is to identify immutable relationships (“laws of nature” representing the “structure of the world”)74 that hold between things insofar as the properties of the latter can be measured. At least, reformations of our basic concepts, including space and time, do not seem forthcoming.75 This frees us to philosophize in the Greek mode, drawing out the implications of the meanings given in natural language, so long as we take into account the achievements of mathematical physics and science in general.76 On the other hand, the intimate connection that Klein draws between the Greeks and the theoretical character of algebra is suspect. It is not clear that symbolic mathematics is logically dependent on Greek mathematics, because Klein does not discuss any theories about mathematics other than those of the Greeks and that of Descartes. He pulls off his argument by assuming that showing how modern mathematics came to be is equivalent to revealing its theoretical underpinnings. Though Klein refers at least once to his work as “historical” in the ordinary sense, he is concerned to reveal a “special kind of conceptualization,” namely, “symbol-generating abstraction,” that is necessary for symbolic mathematics.77 Thus, Klein concludes by asserting that 74. GMT, 184-185. 75. See Azzouni, “Can science change our notion of existence?” 76. The reason to prefer a proposition that issues from a theory over a proposition that issues from intuition is that to discount the former is to discount the theory. So, it can be reasonable to doubt one’s intuitions. 77. GMT, 4, 147. �04 Koochesfahani, Klein 2016-04-04 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 69 ESSAYS & LECTURES | KOOCHESFAHANI 69 Wallis’s conception of arithmetic (which we may identify with symbolic mathematics) “can be understood only in terms of a symbolic reinterpretation of the ancient ‘numbered assemblage,’ of the arithmos.”78 I think it is fair to say that this has not been demonstrated. 78. Ibid., 223. �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 70 70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Which Sciences Does the Political Science Direct and Use and How Does It Do So? Edward M. Macierowski Core texts are at the heart of any educational tradition. Since they are so close to heart, they deserve reading and rereading, and sometimes in rereading we discover key forks in the road, decisive moves that lead us to think along certain lines rather than along others. A recent translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics highlights one of these forks in the road and leads us to reexamine the question about what Aristotle calls the “architectonic” role of political science, its role as master-builder over the other sciences. In this paper I propose to do four things: (1) to call attention to a seemingly trivial editorial choice made by Ingram Bywater in his influential edition of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Ethics; (2) to show that this editorial choice has no basis in the manuscript tradition and is therefore misguided; (3) to show what is at stake for political practice; and (4) to show in what ways political science directs and uses the other sciences and in which ways it does not. 1. Noticing the problem One of the great merits of a recent translation of Aristotle’s Ethics is that it meticulously adheres to Ingram Bywater’s 1894 Greek critical edition in the Oxford Classical Texts. Let me first quote from this translation Book I, chapter 2, and then from a note that calls attention to a thought-provoking oddity. Here is Aristotle: If, therefore, there is some end of our actions that we wish for on account of itself, the rest being things we Edward M. Macierowski is Professor of Philosophy at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. This paper was first delivered at the twenty-first annual conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses held in Plymouth, Massachusetts on 10 April 2015. �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 71 ESSAYS & LECTURES | MACIEROWSKI 71 wish for on account of this end, and if we do not choose all things on account of something else—for in this way the process will go on infinitely such that the longing involved is empty and pointless—clearly this would be the good, that is, the best. And with a view to our life, then, is not the knowledge of this good of great weight, and would we not, like archers in possession of a target, better hit on what is needed? If this is so, then one must try to grasp, in outline at least, whatever it is and to which of the sciences or capacities it belongs. But it might be held to belong to the most authoritative and architectonic one, and such appears to be the political art. For it ordains what sciences must be in cities and what kinds each person must learn and up to what point. We also see that even the most honored capacities—for example, generalship, household management, rhetoric—fall under the political art. Because it makes use of the remaining [here note 10 calls attention to the elimination of a word] sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good. For even if this is the same thing for an individual and a city, to secure and preserve the good of the city appears to be something greater and more complete: the good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine (1094a18-b11).1 Let us now read their useful note 10: The MSS add at this point the word practical (or sciences “related to action”: praktikais), but Bywater, followed by Stewart and Burnet, deletes it.2 Let us now attend to the key sentence once again, with and without Bywater’s deletion. First with the deletion: 1. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 2-3. 2. Ibid., 3. �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 72 72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Because it makes use of the remaining sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good. In this version, political science seems to “make use of the remaining sciences” without any restriction. Now let us see what the text sounds like without Bywater’s deletion: Because it makes use of the remaining practical sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good.3 Our first question is this: To what did “the manuscripts add” the restrictive word “practical”? Our second question is: From what did Bywater delete the word “practical”? These questions bring us to the next stage of our argument. 2. Evaluation of Bywater’s Deletion It is easier to answer the second question than the first: Bywater deleted the restrictive adjective praktikais from the universal testimony of the Greek manuscript tradition. The only possible answer to the first question is that the manuscripts all and each added something to what Aristotle had said. But apart from the manuscripts themselves, how would one know what Aristotle said or thought? At any event, Bywater reports no variant in the Greek manuscript tradition. The medieval Latin 3. “Because it makes use of the remaining practical sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good” (1094b4-7; italics mine): chrōmenēs de tautēs tais loipais [praktikais] tōn epistēmōn, eti de nomothetousēs ti dei prattein kai tinōn apechesthai, to tautēs telos periechoi an ta tōn allōn, hōste tout’ an eiē t’anthrōpinon agathon. Burnet reports no variant manuscript readings and simply asserts of the bracketed word “seclusi”—“I have set it aside.” �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 73 ESSAYS & LECTURES | MACIEROWSKI 73 translation must be based upon a Greek manuscript of the same manuscript tradition; for it also keeps the restrictive adjective “practical.”4 Even the medieval Arabic manuscript tradition reports the same reading.5 In short, Bywater flies in the face of the universal testimony of all the surviving manuscript evidence. A scholar of Bywater’s stature must have had some reason. Can we find it? It should be noted that a year after his Greek edition of the Ethics he did provide a justification for his departure from the manuscript tradition. Here is what he says about the passage in question: I, 2, 1094b4 chrōmenēs de tautēs tais loipais [praktikais] tōn epistēmōn. loipais, though recognized indirectly by Aspasius (p. 6, 3-5), is represented in his paraphrase by praktikais (hyparchei de tēi politikēi kai to chrēsthai tais praktikais tōn epistēmōn, p. 6, 11). From this I infer that praktikais is really a gloss, which in the inferior MSS. has found a place in the text along with the genuine word loipais, and which in Kb, as sometimes happens in this MS. (v. supra p. 19), has dispossessed it. In a context like the present the limitation involved in praktikais is inappropriate; for if politikē is the one supreme art, all other arts must come under it, not the practical arts merely. The qualification was no doubt suggested by what is said later on at the end of Bk. VI. (1145a 6), 4. The medieval Latin translation of this passage from the Ethics (found in the Leonine critical edition of Aquinas’s Sententia Libri Ethicorum, [Rome: Leonine Commision, 1969] T. 47, 7) obviously depends upon a Greek manuscript with the same reading: “Utente autem hac reliquis practicis disciplinarum, amplius autem legem ponente quid oportet operari et a quibus abstinere, huius finis complectitur utique eos qui aliarum, quapropter hic utique erit humanum bonum” (italics mine). 5. The Arabic Version of the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Anna A. Akasoy and Alexander Fidora, trans. Douglas M. Dunlop (Boston: Brill, 2005), 114.7 “Since this art employs the practical sciences . . . ”; 115.7, line 8: “fa-idh kānat hādhihi-ṣinā‘a tasta‘milu-l-‘ulūm al-‘amaliyya . . . ” (italics mine). �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 74 74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW but that point is not yet of any importance for the argument; and it would have required a much more distinct statement, if Aristotle had meant to insist upon it at this early state in his discussion.6 Here Bywater prefers the authority of the second century commentator Aspasius to that of the universal manuscript tradition, but attempts to eliminate the praktikais reported by Aspasius himself. On the other hand, Bywater himself admits two circumstances, which limit and impair to some extent the value of the evidence in his Commentary. (1) We must remember, in the first place, that the Commentary, as we now have it, from MSS. of very late date, has suffered sadly in the process of transmission to us. . . . (2) In the second place, the Commentary is really more of the nature of a paraphrase, with quotations from the original interspersed or incidentally worked into the text. Hence it is that in his restatements of Aristotle Aspasius often allows himself a pretty free hand; he substitutes, for instance, his own connecting particles; he inserts what he thinks conducive to clearness, and ignores what he deems trivial or unimportant for the general meaning.7 The key to Bywater’s justification for preferring his inference from the spongy evidence of Aspasius against the universal manuscript tradition is therefore this doctrinal claim: “if politikē is the one supreme art, all other arts must come under it, not the practical arts merely.” Does Aristotle hold that “politikē is the one supreme art” without qualification? 6. Ingram Bywater, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1973), 22-23. 7. Bywater, Contributions, 1-3. For a recent survey of the scholarship on the role of Aspasius in transmitting the text, see the introduction by Joaquín E. Meabe to Aristóteles, Ética a Nicómaco (Buenos Aires: Las Cuarenta, 2014), 1-24. The introduction is available on-line: https:// www.academia.edu/7973667/Ética_a_Nicómaco �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 75 ESSAYS & LECTURES | MACIEROWSKI 75 3. So what? Why is it practically important to keep the restriction in place? Aristotle was a thoughtful and careful writer. Thoughtful and careful writers do not use words without purpose. Aristotle elsewhere distinguishes three kinds of thought: “If all thought is either practical or productive or theoretical, physics must be a theoretical science.”8 The productive sciences are concerned with making something; e.g., a carpenter produces a cabinet, which is able to stand on its own as a separate product once it is finished. The practical sciences are concerned with doing something; e.g. a singer acts only so long as she is singing: the song, the singing, and the singer are actually inseparable. The theoretical9 sciences involve the attitude of an on-looker; e.g., the spectator at a football game does not change anything in the game merely by watching it. If there are any theoretical sciences, that is, ways of knowing things that trace them back to unchangeable first principles whose truth is self-contained, 8. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1025b25, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908). Against the background of Mill’s utilitarianism and Marx’s obsession with practice (e.g., the conclusion of the eleven theses on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engle, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur [New York: International Publishers, 1947], 123), it is not surprising that theoretical philosophy in the nineteenth century might get out of focus. The polemic against theoretical philosophy was more obvious even earlier in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part IV (1651): “Of the Kingdome of Darknesse.” 9. It is important not to misunderstand what Aristotle is getting at here. Today, the words “speculative” or “theoretical” connote some idle, ungrounded, tentative attitude that may not even have anything to do with the truth. For Aristotle, by way of contrast, theoretical sciences aim to take in the truth of things as they are. Indeed, Aristotle argues that there are three main theoretical sciences: a study of changeable beings, which he calls physics or natural science; a study of beings dependent upon matter for their existence but not for their intelligibility, which he calls mathematics; and a study of being precisely as such which he calls sometimes “wisdom,” �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 76 76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW then there might be a possible tension between a political leader who wants everything to be under his control and a philosopher who recognizes that some things cannot be otherwise than as they are. Aristotle, however, respects the authority of the political leadership, focusing attention on “the most honored capacities”; note, however, that theoretical philosophy is not on the list. Aristotle’s three examples are all practical disciplines: “generalship, household management, rhetoric.” 4. Conclusion: in what ways political science directs the other sciences and in which ways it uses them. By way of conclusion, I should like to call attention to a recently published translation of Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on this passage, wherein he finds “two characteristics of an architectonic science”: (a) “that it dictates what is to be done by the art or science subject to it,” e.g. horsemanship orders the activity of bridle-making and (b) that the architectonic science uses the sciences subject to it “for its own ends.”10 If one blurs the distinction between “practical sciences” and “sciences” without qualification, as Bywater’s deletion does, the speculative sciences become entirely invisible, and so does Aristotle’s point. Let’s focus on (a)—how politics dictates what is to be done. Now the first of these is applicable to politics or political science both in regard to the speculative and in regard to the practical sciences, in different ways, however. Political science dictates to a practical science both consometimes “first philosophy,” and sometimes “theology.” Aristotle makes no explicit mention of any “theoretical” sciences in this passage, but, granting that the universal testimony of the manuscript tradition is right, this should indicate to careful readers who know something about philosophy, that there might be something somehow over the horizon of political thinking. Only in the last book of the Ethics does he point to a distinction between two types of happiness: that of the citizen and that of the philosopher. 10. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 274. �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 77 ESSAYS & LECTURES | MACIEROWSKI 77 cerning its use—whether or not it should operate—and concerning the specification of its act. It dictates to the smith not only that he use his art but also that he use it in such a fashion as to make knives of a particular kind. Both are ordered the end of human living.11 Given that there are also theoretical sciences to take into account, we can now appreciate the contrast: But political science dictates to a speculative science only concerning its use and not concerning the specification of its work. Political science orders that some teach or learn geometry; and actions of this kind, in so far as they are voluntary, belong to the matter of ethics and can be ordered to the goal of human living. But the political ruler does not dictate to geometry what conclusions it should draw about a triangle, for this is not subject to the human will nor can it be ordered to human living, but it depends on the very nature (ratio) of things.12 As to the second point (b), “the use of subordinate sciences belongs to political science only in reference to the practical sciences.” In modern terms, even a Stalin cannot make two plus two equal to anything but four, though he might be able to intimidate people into saying otherwise. “Hence,” Aristotle adds, “we see that the most highly esteemed, that is, the noblest, skills or operative arts fall under political science, namely, strategy, domestic economy, and rhetoric, which political science uses for its own end, that is for the common good of the city.”13 Aquinas then notes the distinction between political science, which “is most important, not simply, but in the genus of the practical sciences” which treats the ultimate end of human life, but leaves room for the study of the “ultimate end of the whole universe . . . which is the most important without qualification.”14 11. Ibid., 274. Italics mine. 12. Ibid., 274. Italics mine. 13. Ibid., 275. 14. Ibid., 275. �05 Macierowski, Political Science 2016-04-06 FINAL.qxp_Macierowski, Political Science 5/5/16 11:33 AM Page 78 78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Against the background of the fuller range of Aristotle’s properly philosophical thought, we can see in what sense Bywater’s position is right and in what way it needs to be qualified. “The qualification,” he said, “was no doubt suggested by what is said later on at the end of Bk. VI (1145a 6).”15 What is that? And yet prudence does not exercise authoritative control over wisdom or the better part [of the soul, just as the art of medicine does not do so over health either, for it does not make use of health but rather sees how it comes into being; it is for the sake of health, then, that medicine issues commands, but it does not issue them to health. Furthermore, it would be just as if someone should assert that the political art rules over the gods because it issues commands about all things in the city.16 If Aristotle’s principal audience for his ethical lectures should be gentlemen rather than philosophers, the reason “that point is not yet of any importance for the argument” might well be that gentlemen would not even think of disagreeing. Perhaps, as Bywater says, “it would have required a much more distinct statement, if Aristotle had meant to insist upon it at this early state in his discussion.” But is there any dispute between a philosopher who might claim to prove the existence of unchangeable beings and gentlemen who would surely not contest the immutability of the gods of the city? Aristotle does not trouble perfect gentlemen with the fine points of theoretical philosophy, but he counts on them to recognize that certain opinions held by gentlemen offer a bulwark against tyranny. As for Aquinas, his proximate audience would likely not be gentlemen, even if they were scholars. Aquinas does, at any event, show why the restrictive adjective “practical” is not superfluous. 15. Bywater, Contributions, 23. 16. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, 134. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 79 ESSAYS & LECTURES 79 Ass, You Like It? Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Political Philosophy Nalin Ranasinghe William Shakespeare’s early comedies are marked by the pervasive presence of twins. Remarkably, this theme extends even to the level of the plays themselves: comedies and tragedies with striking similarities appear on stage at about the same time. While each play in such a dyad conforms to the requirements of its respective genre, the presence of a doppelgänger creates irony, and raises questions about the comic or tragic conclusions reached in each play. One such pair is Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both were written and performed in the mid-1590s, and both raise very similar questions about love, marriage and politics while yet describing exactly opposite—and thus perfectly complementary—dramatic trajectories. In Romeo and Juliet we see a potential comic resolution to a political impasse turn tragic through a malefic combination of religious meddling and starcrossed accident. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on the other hand, presents an inherently tragic situation that slips into a conventional comic conclusion. Its characters are not weighed down by determinate causality and intractable philosophical struggles with their own natures; the whole play seems to share Puck’s airy comment on human affairs: “Lord, what fools these mortals be” (III.ii.115). The attitude of the fairies is broadly benevolent; they revel in what’s comic and contingent in human matters, advancing rather than hindering the interests of mortals. Despite much misunderstanding and maladroit manipulation, the actions of the Nalin Ranasinghe is Professor of Philosophy at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachesetts. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 80 80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW play’s characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are hardly fatalistic. For the most part, humans entangle themselves in homespun webs of false necessity. They are foolish, but not wicked. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, which shows the disaster that can arise from imposing social, political, and clerical structures on human life, A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a self-portrait of Shakespeare, a man as playful as Puck and as wise as Bottom, as he attempts to reconcile the divine and the human in our nature, and tries to repair the rupture between reason and religion. In repudiating the reductive cruelty of Old Comedy, and rehabilitating, in the spirit of Erasmus, the gentler magic of a Menander or Plautus, Shakespeare offers a truly Christian alternative both to the austere anti-theatrical hellfire of Knox and to the corrupt ritualism of the Old Church. The new and overzealous religious piety of Shakespeare’s time banished all playhouses from London and re-situated them on the other side of the river. Similarly, the young lovers Hermia and Lysander escape the harsh laws of the city by taking refuge in the dark woods of the imagination. I argue that A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes the case for ending the ancient feud between philosophy and poetry, which in Shakespeare’s day had become a conflict between rational but politicized religionists and pagan pastoral poets. A Midsummer Night’s Dream signals its comic intent by rewriting the myth of Theseus and Hippolyta. Anyone conversant with the Greek tales would know that on the eve of Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta an Amazon invasion of Attica took the bride’s life—a conclusion as contrary to the sunny ending of Shakespeare’s play as any that could be dreamed. It seems, then, that because of the events Shakespeare relates, the tragic outcomes of the myth were averted. Hippolyta did not die in battle against her own people; Theseus did not take another wife, Phaedra; and Hippolytus, the son of Theseus and Hippolyta, did not die misjudged by his father because of his haughty insensitivity to his stepmother’s passion for him. Shakespeare’s alternative mythology transmutes tragedy into comedy. But Shakespeare does not leave the tragic behind entirely. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 81 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 81 We are reminded of darker forces at the very start of the play. Theseus, in ordering Philostrate to encourage exuberance in the kingdom, makes a reference to sorrow by way of contrast: “Go, Philostrate, / Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; / Turn melancholy forth to funerals; / The pale companion is not for our pomp” (I.1.11-15).1 Almost immediately, an old man bearing his father’s name, Egeus, appears with a complaint against his disobedient daughter Hermia. The original Egeus, Theseus’s father, threw himself into the ocean when he failed to see the victorious signal flag that Theseus forgot to fly over the ship returning him to Athens from his mission to defeat the Minotaur in Crete. The Aegean Sea remains an enduring monument to Egeus’s precipitous despair. Shakespeare’s Egeus is similarly hasty in despairing over his child. Hermia has fallen madly in love with Lysander rejecting her father’s wish that she marry the almost identical Demetrius. For his part, Demetrius has recently turned his affections to Hermia, despite having previously wooed and won the love of Helena, who had once been Hermia’s closest friend. Shakespeare paints the two pairs of lovers as being almost indistinguishable in character from each other.2 Angry Egeus demands that the full weight of the patriarchal Athenian law be applied against his disobedient daughter. If Hermia persists in denying her father’s legal right to overrule her affections, she must choose between execution and perpetual confinement in a nunnery (I.i.69-73). Although Theseus is sympathetic toward Hermia, he claims to be powerless under the law he must uphold; he gives her the same four days to make her 1. Citations from A Midsummer Night’s Dream are keyed to The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean Howard, and Katharine Maus, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). 2. My reading of the play has been greatly influenced by Rene Girard’s “Love by Another’s Eye: Mimetic Punning in A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in his book A Theatre of Envy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 72-79. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 82 82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW choice that stand between him and his approaching nuptials. (I.i.83ff.) According to Duke Theseus, Hermia should view her father as a god. She is but wax, subject to his formative power, to be defaced or reshaped in any way he chooses (I.i.47-51). It is also clear that Egeus is willful; even though there is no real difference between the two men vying for his child’s hand, his own freedom of choice is all that really matters. In other words, to Egeus reason means nothing more than his authority to rule arbitrarily over the desires of those under his power. His law is not just; it is merely the tyranny of age over youth. It is no wonder that Hermia and Lysander try to flee from it. Yet when we follow the lovers to overhear their conference, we rapidly lose our respect for them as well. It is as everything they know about love came from a poor staging of Romeo and Juliet—a play, I think, which Shakespeare spent much of his career trying to atone for. In choosing Juliet’s adolescent passion over Egeus’s self-centered authority, the lovers find themselves hooked on the other horn of the dilemma. Pure passion is as mad as puritanical rationality. Furthermore, since A Midsummer Night’s Dream actually contains a poor performance of a crude version of Romeo and Juliet, we see our lovers obliviously mocking a play that accurately reflects their own follies and vices. To their elders, they are victims of Eros, tortured on the rack of passion. Lysander and Hermia are quite certain that “the course of true love never did run smooth” (I.i.134). To them this means that the intensity of their mad passion is reinforced by the conventional love-perils they must overcome—and they are unaware of the fact that having love-perils is itself a convention. But this surely amounts to choosing “love through another’s eyes,” (I.i.140) the very command Hermia rejects when told her eyes must see with her father’s judgment. Further confirmation of the self-conscious madness induced by this kind of love is given by Helena, who tells Demetrius of the lovers’ plan to flee Athens, thus jeopardizing her chance to be rid of her rival merely because she expects to be thanked by him for this favor. Helena is all too aware of the fickle nature of love, which “looks not with the eyes but with the �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 83 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 83 mind” (I.ii.234), but she is no less prone to be ruled by a force that elevates “to form and dignity . . . things base and vile” (I.ii.232). Her judgment is ruled by forces to which she submits, even as she laments their tyranny. We are again reminded of her namesake, Helen of Troy, and her excuse “a god made me do it.”3 This divinization of love—both affirmed and denied in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the extent that it reveals love to be random and supernaturally potent—seems to distinguish between two distinct ways of being influenced by love: we can fall under the spell of an imaginary love we create for ourselves, or we can actually succumb to the real thing. Although A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to warn that the effects of imaginary love are as short-lived as they are rare, we will shortly receive an account of the transcendent origins of this sickness. This disease is so potent that just the desire for it can lead to follies that lack all the divine power and inspiration imparted by true love. Meanwhile, in accordance with Theseus’s demand for merriment, a troupe of lowly but loyal Athenian artisans are preparing to stage a play. Although these men are far lower on the social scale than the lovers, their affairs, and the account of imagination that attends them, are of particular interest because Shakespeare himself did not belong to the nobility, while he is almost universally considered one of the world’s greatest poets. Like the demideity Eros, whom Diotima describes in Plato’s Symposium as the offspring of Need and Plenty,4 Shakespeare is a unique combination of low status and high imagination. Despite being out in “the wind and the rain” like Touchstone at the play’s end, Shakespeare nevertheless had the honor of being summoned to entertain the highest nobility. One could say that Titania is the alter-ego of Queen Elizabeth. Thus, despite the ridicule they suffer, the players called “rude mechanicals”—and Bottom in particular—will teach us how to laugh at them; this will prepare us for the self-knowledge that will have us laughing at ourselves together with Puck. The deep 3. Homer. Iliad, 6.349. 4. Plato, Symposium, 203b-d. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 84 84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW self-knowledge that is to be imparted here is comic rather than condemnatory: the doctrine of original sin and limited redemption is replaced by the doctrine that men are fools with immortal yearnings that make us both sublime and ridiculous. Shakespeare’s theater takes the place of the church and its rituals, just as Athenian theater sought simultaneously to worship, to edify, and to entertain. As in the Christian liturgy, the Theater of Dionysus—a god-man who was torn apart and consumed by his devotees—brought grace and desire into close contact. In theater, the performance is not marred by the personal imperfections of the individual performers, just as in the Mass the sacrifice of the Eucharist is not tainted by any sins that may attach to the priest performing the service. Indeed, the theater constitutes a polite but decidedly pagan challenge to the church’s claim to be the sole pathway to God. Shakespeare’s comic theater does not insult divinity, and thus it avoids both hubris and original sin. On the contrary, it takes the ancient Greek view of the sacredness of theater and joins to it the Christian humanistic belief in the ultimate goodness of both creation and its God. Now the rude mechanicals are anxious not to offend the nobles in the audience; for this reason they try to explain away any troubling aspects of their performance. This concern is essentially political. Theater has always been a vehicle for breaking through class constraints, and an indirect organ of social criticism, as the ruling classes have always been well aware. Recall Elizabeth I’s alarm at recognizing herself in Richard II: she is supposed to have said, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?”5 Shakespeare too is aware of the political implications of his art. By calling his play a “Dream” and presenting it as fantasy, he makes it easy for his audience to escape the strictures of society. This in turn allows them eventually, like the young lovers in the play, to be delivered from the shackles of self-ignorance that are tightened by society’s prohibitions—as illustrated by the Myth of the Cave in Plato’s Republic. 5. See Jason Scott-Warren, Was Elizabeth I Richard II?: The Authenticity of Lambarde’s “Conversation,” Review of English Studies 64: (2012), 208-230. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 85 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 85 Bottom the weaver stands out from all the other players. His profession suggests that Shakespeare intends him to be a parody of Plato’s statesman, who weaves together all the different constituencies of a city. He resembles the kind of poet most feared by the guardians of the Republic in his zany desire to play every role and steal every scene.6 His wild malapropisms suggest that he cares little for the nature of things, and that nothing is stable in his whirligig view of reality. For Bottom, at bottom, all things are one. This would be worrying enough to the forces of order, but what is worse is his earnest desire to “play” the tyrant (I.ii.2122, 33). Fortunately, no one has to take Bottom seriously. Although his boundless energy, incorrigible ingenuity, and good humor might have stood him in good stead at a higher station in life, Bottom’s Christian name, Nick, indicates his actual condition: he is “nicked,” or safely penned within the confines of social reality. The play now turns to the fairies in the depths of the forest. We meet Puck (an emancipated version of Prospero’s indentured spirit Ariel in The Tempest), who is the chief factotum of Oberon, King of Fairies. If Bottom is the hidden solid base of our play, Puck is its grand unifying principle; his task is “to jest to Oberon and make him smile” (II.i.44). This sprite seems to delight in jolting all things out of their accustomed positions and thereby causing their true natures to be revealed. Nature, after all, involves continual growth and self-revelation: as Heidegger pointed out, in Greek the term for nature, phusis, essentially means “growth.”7 The nature of a city too must involve growth, repeated overturning of established categories, and continual revelation of its character. The static order of a city is only its body; a city only becomes a polis by striving toward the beautiful and the just,8 and it often needs the aid of guiding daimon to do so. In fifthcentury Athens, Socrates played this role through his persistent 6. Plato, Republic, 398a. 7. Heidegger, Pathmarks, trans. William McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 189. 8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 86 86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW practice of public dialectic. In the Athens of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck plays this role through his persistently playful upending of public norms. The continual reconsideration of settled categories shows that the telos of the city, its true end and purpose, cannot be sustained by economic and social stability and self-sufficiency. Such as structure results in a stifling hegemony like that of Egeus, in which the old use the law to punish the sexual desires of the young in order to advance their own vices, which are directed more at gaining and preserving power than at fertile productivity.9 Puck reports a quarrel between Oberon, his master, and Titania, the queen of the fairies. It seems that they have fallen out over a changeling boy on whom they both have claims. While the queen loves him for the sake of her dear friend, his dead mother, with whom she spent many a pleasant hour, Oberon seems to want him for reasons that have more to do with jealousy than genuine affection. It seems that the mimetic impulse to desire another’s possession simply because the other takes delight in it extends far beyond the human realm. But we also see the contrast between this kind of jealous desire, which can only express itself through contending over things inconsequential in themselves, and true friendship. When we recall how the longstanding friendship between Hermia and Helena was swiftly ended by the introduction of mimetic romantic desire, we wonder how and from source wanton fancy, a sort of love in idleness, gains the tragic desire to uproot itself from what is natural and orderly. Mimetic desires must reflect, however deceptively, some transcendent reality that the natural order can only understand in terms of transgression and outrage. Otherwise, we cannot explain how the imagination effortlessly overturns the natural order, strikes out after goals that cannot be grasped by the likes of old Egeus, and threatens to turn us all into lunatics, star-crossed lovers, and bad poets. Small wonder that the outraged rulers of a city choose to fight this force using every means in their power. 9. See Montaigne, “On Repenting” in Essays, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1958), 610-620. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 87 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 87 Some explanation of the origin of these desires is provided when Oberon and Titania make their entrance accompanied by their entourages. While they bicker we learn that both Theseus and Hippolyta owe much to the fairy queen and king: although their beneficiaries are oblivious to this, Oberon and Titania have provided these lucky mortals whom they love with supernatural assistance in their heroic exploits. It is striking that the benevolence of the fairy rulers is bestowed upon Theseus and Hippolyta on the basis of erotic attraction. Even for fairies, love seems to defy all the conventions of marital fidelity. Although they know how to use love’s power far more efficiently than humans, the fairies are clearly not immune to the madness of love. This is why their quarrel over the changeling boy has produced terrible consequences in the physical world. Nature’s order has been terribly disrupted: the harvests have been ruined; the seasons do not change on time; indeed, all the limits of nature have been transgressed. Titania admits that she and Oberon are the progenitors of this mad chaos. Their erotic desires are not fulfilled by sexual union, but rather by infusing those they love with their power. The rhythm and order of the cosmos, and of all the creatures in it, seem to be kept through their meeting and dancing, which their quarrel has prevented. After Hippolyta’s angry departure, Oberon schemes to torment her for this “injury” to his pride. Now Puck is told to employ magic against Titania; he must use the juice of a flower, once touched by one of Cupid’s arrows, to make her fall madly in love with the next living creature she sees (II.i.172). Insofar as A Midsummer Night’s Dream analogizes the politics of its time, neither Cupid’s arrow nor Puck’s flower-juice hit the mark. The intended victim, the Queen of England, seems to have been immune to love’s otherwise irresistible power. Elizabeth was about sixty years old when the play was first produced, and by that time, it appears, she understood the reality of love, and was not to be ruled by its false signifiers. While Shakespeare may tread, however lightly, on dangerous political ground, he does not seem to be in open conflict with the unstated doctrines of love that we have managed to derive from �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 88 88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the play. We distinguished earlier between the real madness of love and merely falling victim to the concept of love. Now let us remember Plato’s Phaedrus, from which the language of lunatic, lover, and poet is derived, and recall Socrates’ famous palinode in defense of truly divine love.10 Like Elizabeth, Socrates— whose only claimed area of expertize was in matters of love— was immune to the blandishments of false love: he was more than able to resist the sexual attraction of the all-but-irresistible Alcibiades.11 These examples of being able to separate true love from false love show that love is not in itself madness. Nevertheless, it is also the basis of the various forms of lunacy come over us because of our craving for love, a craving that is often just as blind as it is selfish. We must distinguish between beholding the genuine object of love, falling into the genuine madness of love, and embracing the base imitation of this genuine madness—recall Plato’s condemnatory suspicions in the Republic of imitations twice and thrice removed from the truth.12 Moreover, in the Phaedrus Plato describes even the god of Olympus as being only a bit better than humans at pursuing true hyper-Uranian beauty.13 Although Oberon and Titania are not comparable to the Olympian gods, they are still located on much higher rungs on the ladder of love than humans. If Plato is to be believed, the fairies can confer the benefits of love on those below them, while they themselves also remain subject to the power of love. Returning now to the play’s action: Oberon, hiding in the forest, observes Demetrius and Helena. Plato’s image of the magnetic chain of attraction from the Ion is the key to their behavior.14 Demetrius searches wildly for Hermia, despite being well aware of the repugnance she feels for him; Helena meanwhile com10. Plato, Phaedrus, 244a ff. 11. Plato, Symposium, 219 b-d. 12. Plato, Republic, 602b-c. 13. Plato, Phaedrus, 247a-c. 14. Plato, Ion, 533d-536d. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 89 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 89 plains quite explicitly about the magnetic attraction that her sometime lover still exerts on her. She is well aware of, but unaffected by, his repeated claims to be sickened by the sight of her. Demetrius is disgusted Helena’s masochistic appeal, “The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: / Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, / neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, / unworthy as I am, to follow you” (II.i.204-5). But this reaction, she says, only increases her desire for him. Oberon watches them leave, the maid in hot pursuit of the man, and he feels sympathy for hapless Helena. He instructs Puck, who has just returned with the magic juice, to apply some of it to the eyes of the man in Athenian garb so that he will return the affections the young woman he has just spurned. While Puck is occupied in this task, Oberon will treat sleeping Titania’s eyes in the same way. While the fairy king’s intentions toward his own queen are clearly mischievous, he sincerely wishes to help poor spurned Helena win back her beloved. Unfortunately, or perhaps serendipitously, Puck sprinkles the flower-juice on Lysander as he sleeps some distance away from Hermia following a minor disagreement over whether or not it would be correct for them to lie in repose beside each other. Then, as luck would have it, Helena comes by, still chasing Demetrius. She awakens Lysander only to see him fall madly in love with her. Helena, in a self-pitying mood after her encounter with Demetrius, believes that Lysander is playing a cruel trick on her. She cannot understand how else he would now speak so dismissively of his beloved Hermia, while lavishing the most fulsome praise on herself. Helena then flees, hotly pursued by the newly ardent Lysander. Meanwhile Hermia, waking up from a nightmare to find herself alone in the dark forest, panics. Certain that Lysander would never have abandoned her, she is convinced that something quite terrible has happened to him. By this time, however, her categorical certainty about Lysander has been undermined, for the audience at least, both by the implicit sexual overture he made to her and by the subliminal message in her dream of a serpent stealing away with her heart. Hermia takes this a warning that Helena will betray her, as indeed she has (though not in relation to Lysander). �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 90 90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Here we begin to note that the course of their love will be compromised equally by their own characters and by the impediments others will throw in their paths. Whatever their fate will be at the play’s end, their mimetically idealized expectations of each other will have been modified by these magically induced events. The four lovers, trapped between the stifling laws of the city and the mad passions released in the forest, are consumed in pairs, just as Theseus’s Minotaur devours the pairs of young people in Crete. As the second act ends, attention is drawn to Titania, who slumbers in her bower. She too will soon awaken to find herself drawn to a most unexpected erotic object. When the third act begins we are again reminded by the mechanicals’ elaborate precautions to avoid giving offense, that Shakespeare too is conveying weighty and sensitive matters in an allegorical fashion. Bottom begins the rehearsal by declaring that some things in their comedy “will never please” (III.i.9). He believes that gentle ladies in the audience will never bear the sight of Pyramus killing himself. But, rather than leaving the killing offstage as the Greeks would, Bottom proposes writing a prologue that would dispel all fear by revealing not only that Pyramus is not really killed, but also that Pyramus is actually Bottom the Weaver. Further, since the sight of a lion would occasion even greater fear, the lion should name himself and wear a mask exposing half the actor’s face. As a final absurd precaution, this fearful lion should expressly entreat the audience not to show fear or even tremble as he comes before them; for that, he should tell the onlookers, would be the pity of his life. The players then address several ridiculous technical problems, with Bottom once again taking the lead. They consider how to represent the moonlit night when Pyramus and Thisbe meet, and decide it would be best for one to enter with a bush of thorns and a lantern, saying “that he comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine” (III.i.51-53). Next, since the lovers speak through a wall, Bottom proposes that another dress in materials “that signify wall” and use his fingers to make a hairy, chalky cranny through which Pyramus and Thisbe speak words of love to each other (III.i.57-60). �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 91 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 91 While it is very clear that Shakespeare intends Bottom’s audience to find these primitive representations hilarious, and in the last instance even obscene, he fully expects, on the contrary, that most of those in his own audience will be oblivious to his taking similar—if markedly less absurd—precautions to obviate offense and fear. He takes these measures in order to prevent his audience from suspecting that they are being deceived. Just as Helena should not have been convinced that Lysander and Demetrius were mocking her intentionally, although they themselves in their separate delusions were quite sincere, Shakespeare has to do all he can to prevent his audience from indulging in the paranoid suspicion the playwright, or even the whole world, is deliberately engaged in a conspiracy against them—as tempting as such a conclusion may seem to their solipsistic egos. Shakespeare takes great pains to reveal the extent to which coincidences, accidents, and errors pervade the human world. Gods and fairies seldom act with perfect foresight; more often, they are scrambling to repair the damage done by blind chance, mortal mistakes, and even their own well-intended plans. The climax of A Midsummer Night’s Dream arrives when Puck decides to place an ass’s head on Bottom. As a result of this strange transformation the other players run away in terror and the unsuspecting weaver is left alone with Titania. This fulfills Oberon’s desire that his queen should fall madly in love with a “vile thing” (II.ii.40) when she awakens to see Bottom with her anointed eyes. Oberon’s aim is to embarrass Titania in order to make her more willing to surrender to him her former favorite, the little changeling boy. Yet, once again, while carrying out the king’s instructions to the letter, Puck has somehow added an element of inspired randomness that produces unexpected results. The “translated” Bottom somehow does not believe himself to be changed in the least respect. His essential nature unchanged by Puck’s trick, Bottom retains his characteristic aplomb and does not give any credence to the fearful observations of Snout and Quince that he is “changed” and “translated” (III.i.102-105). He denies these allegations and refuses to be made an ass of, telling Snout that he sees an ass’s head of his own—that is, Bot- �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 92 92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tom sees that all other men are asses. His use of the word “ass” in addressing both Snout and Quince also suggests that he does not see himself in this light. Bottom believes that they are knavishly trying to frighten him. He refuses to be frightened. Is he more or less the ass for this? When Bottom begins to sing in order to show his fellow players that he is not afraid, he awakens Titania. Professing to be as enchanted by Bottom’s singing as by his shape, the queen goes on to declare that she has fallen in love with him at first sight. He responds by telling her that, while she has little reason to feel this way about him, he sees that “reason and love keep little company nowadays” (III.i.126-29). Bottom finds it a pity that some honest folk cannot reconcile them, self-consciously owning that he can “gleek” (III.i.129), or jest knowingly, on occasion; he is perhaps laying claim to being that rare philosophical poet, one capable of addressing the desires rationally. The enamored Titania then tells the asinine sage that he is as wise as he is beautiful—a claim that cannot be faulted. Bottom modestly denies both claims, adding that he would be quite satisfied with sufficient wit to find his way out of the forest. Just like the lovers, Bottom understands that he is trapped in a maze, but he is unable to see that he now resembles the original bull-headed denizen of the Cretan labyrinth. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a retelling, and perhaps a rectification, of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Bottom is as strange a hybrid beast as the man with the head of a bull that Theseus slew in Minos’s labyrinth. Because he is a weaver, however, he is tied to the ball of string that Ariadne gave to Theseus in order to help him escape from the maze. His double nature is sewn together when Titania falls in love with him, and she too expresses a double nature: she is both Ariadne, who provides Bottom with the way out of his predicament, and Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos who falls in love with the bull of Poseidon. How will Shakespeare’s Duke Theseus overcome the monster Bottom in a manner that is consistent with comedy? Will he retain the moral ambiguity of the original Theseus, who cleverly outwitted the Minotaur to save his Athenian comrades but also �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 93 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 93 betrayed his promise to marry Ariadne, leaving her behind on an isolated island where she finally is rescued by the god Dionysus? Will Duke Theseus act in a similar way toward Bottom? And will Dionysus, god of the theater, rescue him? While the love-stuck Titania is plying the amazed Bottom with gifts, even promising to purge Bottom of his “mortal grossness” and place at his disposal attendant fairies who will fetch him “jewels from the deep” (III.i.139-142), the four young lovers are rushing headlong into their own labyrinth—the labyrinth of undifferentiated confusion into which they have been led by their impulsive passions. At the beginning Helena and Hermia were best friends (III.ii.199-220). This relationship mirrors the pure friendship enjoyed by Titania and the changeling boy’s mother. Duke Theseus’s appropriation of the changeling reminds us that the original Theseus violently snatched Hippolyta from her Amazon kingdom. This is why the Amazon invasion of Athens, which, as mentioned earlier, does not occur in A Midsummer Nights Dream, becomes a significant non-event. Instead of an angry female reaction to male violence, the play substitutes the quarrel between Hermia and Helena that erupts towards the end of Act III, scene ii. Their forthcoming marriages alienate them from each other. Their female sisterhood is fractured by the approaching demands of sexuality and childrearing. The breast takes precedence over the heart. Moreover, friendship, the candid sharing of souls, is about to be replaced by the demands of economic necessity and patriarchal power. (Patriarchal tyranny over womens’ lives is represented, as suggested earlier, in the figure of Egeus. Recall Lysander’s angry jab at Demtrius: “You have her father love, Demetrius; / Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him” [I.i.9394]. Lysander is unacceptable to Egeus precisely because he has wooed Hermia directly, rather than submitting to Egeus’s patriarchal rule over his daughter’s life.) While it is certain that Demetrius becomes interested in Hermia after successfully wooing Helena, it is not clear whether this occurred before or after Lysander gained Hermia’s love. In either case, the bond between the two women had been broken. As �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 94 94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Hermia and Helena progress from childhood friendship to adolescent romance to parentally approved marriage, they move away from genuine friendship toward the social roles that stifle self-realization. Perhaps this move toward conventional roles could also explain Demetrius’s attraction to Hermia. If his conventional relationship with the beautiful but rather passive Helena became dissatisfying, he would naturally seek the wonderful qualities that his fiancée praised so highly in her friend. (To paraphrase the song from Two Gentlemen of Verona, “Who is Hermia? what is she, / that Helen so commends her?”) By contrast, Lysander’s romance with Hermia, by virtue of being disapproved by her father, may not yet have been soured by familiarity or proximity. Short, dark, and thus less attractive by normal standards of beauty, Hermia certainly seems to possess more spirit than the somewhat masochistic Helena. Yet she will be shocked to discover that Lysander’s attraction to her, despite his apologies when she refuses to let him sleep beside her, is ultimately sexual in nature. He is not seeking a friend in marriage, but a sexual partner. This natural urge toward marriage turns out to be even less fulfilling than the conventional one to Hermia, and perhaps to anyone who has shared true friendship with another soul. It is all too easy to see how Lysander, after being spurned by Hermia, finds the more physically endowed Helena to be more attractive. On the other hand, Demetrius, whose sole reason for being drawn to Hermia has been mimetic, loses interest in her the moment he finds that Lysander is now drawn to Helena. This fact makes her rise in stature in his eyes. Demetrius makes the mistake Socrates points out in the Euthyphro: to him, Helena is not loved because she is inherently desirable; she is loved because another person loves her.15 Whatever inherently desirable qualities Hermia may possess, they become invisible to Demetrius when he sees that Helena is loved by Lysander. 15. Plato, Euthyphro, 10a-11b. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 95 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 95 Though Hermia may be a far better object of mimetic desire, once Oberon anoints Demetrius with the magic juice, he only has eyes for Helena. When Puck brings Helena to meet the now enchanted Demetrius, he is delighted to find that she has Lysander in tow. As Demetrius sleeps, Helena bitterly denounces Lysander for his treachery. By using the very oaths he swore before Hermia to now pledge his love to her, he is only proving that he is just as false now as he was then. Things only get worse when Demetrius wakes up. When he too professes his undying love, Helena smells a rat. She believes mistakenly that both Lysander and Demetrius are playing a cruel joke on her (note how this runs parallel to Bottom’s belief that the other players were trying to trick him!). She is rightly convinced, however, that the feelings they profess are not genuine. Their praise is for an idea rather than a real person; they are not talking about her at all. Being the masochist she is, Helena would rather be hated honestly than endure this kind of rhetoric. She is also convinced that all this is part of their rivalry for Hermia’s hand. While both Lysander and Demetrius deny this charge, Hermia reappears, and Helena tells the two men that they now have a chance to prove their claim before Hermia in person. (Quite unlike Bottom, Helena has real difficulty accepting any good fortune.) With Hermia’s return matters reach a climax. First Lysander brutally tells her that Helena’s beauty took him from her side, and then Helena herself accuses a stunned Hermia of being a part of a cruel conspiracy. Sadly recalling the blissful childhood years they spent together as the closest of friends, growing together “with two seeming bodies but one heart” (III.ii.215)—a state not unlike that of Aristophanes’s circle-men of Plato’s Symposium— Hermia accuses of Helena of betraying not just herself, but all women. The distinction between true friendship and mimetic love is now perfectly clear: in fact, A Midsummer Night’s Dream does not depict one instance of true reciprocated love. Hermia’s amazement at Lysander’s betrayal is redoubled when she finds that Demetrius, whom she has just roundly abused for pursuing her, has now returned his affections to her antipodes—the despicable Helena. Her world has been inverted. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 96 96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Even after Hermia states her astonishment at these accusations—“I am amazèd at your passionate words” (III.ii.221—another reference to a maze—Helena reiterates her charge of conspiracy, drops a dark hint about death, and tries to leave. When Lysander attempts to prevent her departure, calling her “my love, my life, my soul,” (III.ii.247), Demetrius claims to love her more and challenges him to a duel. Hermia then seeks to prevent Lysander from pursuing Helena, only to hear Lysander call her an “Ethiope” and a “tawny Tartar” for her darker complexion, and a “serpent” whom he will shake off as she clings to him (III.ii.257-264). Worse, when Demetrius charges him with not being really in love with Helena, Lysander haughtily responds that he will not kill such a worthless thing as Hermia just to prove his feelings towards Helena. Nothing in her past life has prepared Hermia for this. Asking him what can harm her more than hate, she asks “Am I not Hermia, are you not Lysander?” Yet her words “I am as fair as I was erstwhile” (II.ii.274-275) do not recognize that beauty resides in the eye and not in the object itself. This is why she, formerly thought fair, is now but a dark tawny “Ethiope.” When Hermia goes on to accuse Helena of having literally seduced Lysander, maybe recalling too late his wish to sleep with her, Helena then calls her a “puppet” (III.ii.289). Although Helena means “deceptive,” outraged Hermia takes this as a reference to her height. Dubbing poor Helena a “painted maypole,” (II.ii.297) Hermia claims she is yet tall enough to scratch her eyes out. Helena then says that she will take her folly back to Athens. Her only fault, in her eyes, was to betray the lovers’ plan to Demetrius whom she still loves despite his offenses. When she declares her fear of Hermia (“She was a vixen when she went to school / And though she be but little, she is fierce [III.ii.325-326]) both young men prepare to come to blows over who will defend her. Now Oberon and Puck decide to step in. Puck denies that he is to blame for the pandemonium but admits to being gladdened by the “jangling” (III.ii.354). Oberon instructs him to separate the two angry young men from each other by imitating their voices in turn until they fall asleep, exhausted by chasing after �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 97 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 97 illusions. Puck must then crush an antidote to the “love in idleness” in Lysander’s eyes, restoring his normal way of seeing things. Oberon claims that this will take away “all error” (III.ii.369) from his sight, and he declares that when the lovers awaken, they will believe that everything they have seen and done was nothing but a dream. He is sure that once back in Athens they will be reunited “with league whose date till death shall never end” (III.ii.374). While Puck attends to that, Oberon will wheedle the changeling away from Titania before undoing the spell on her and restoring peace to all things. At this point, Puck urges Oberon to hurry before the daybreak, as ghosts flee from the first rays of the sun. But Oberon corrects him, saying that “we are spirits of another sort” (III.ii.389), who need not fear the glorious day. It is as though Puck represents something older and a shade darker; more mischievous than Ariel, he is also a pagan force of chaos and disruption. There is a bit of Mephistopheles in Puck; he inadvertently serves the ends of goodness, despite seeking to fool, trip and disrupt.16 While this residual pagan element seems to interfere with and interrupt both the perfection of God’s creation and the order of the city, there is a vital sense in which Puckishness saves what is joyful and spontaneous, and thus truly human, from the rules, rites, and routines of preachers, prudes, and prigs. Although he acted at Oberon’s bidding, Puck can take pride in his masterpiece of confusion—the translated Bottom is Puck’s finest creation. While the lovers sleep in the woods, Act IV finds Titania, in her own words, “doting” on Bottom while her four attendant fairies cater to his every whim. After he has been fed, scratched and serenaded, Titania sends her fairies away and Bottom falls asleep in her arms. Shakespeare—at least as tactful in his consideration of his audience’s sensibilities as is Bottom of his audience—presents no overt signs of a sexual encounter between Bottom and Titania. But the connection to the myth of the 16. “Part of the power / That constantly wants evil and constantly does good.” Goethe, Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy, trans. Margaret Kirby (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2015), 1335-36. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 98 98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Minotaur dispels the possibility that their union is purely platonic. According to the original story, Pasiphaë’s mad desire for the bull of Poseidon prompted her to have Daedalus build her a portable wooden cow, within which she could position herself in order to copulate with the bull. Oberon and Puck arrive to find Bottom cradled in Titania’s arms, and Oberon feels pity for her. After securing custody of the changeling boy, he no longer feels the need to continue the farce. He drops the juice on Titania’s eyes to remove the magic, then he orders Puck to remove the ass’s head so Bottom may return to Athens and “think no more of this night’s accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream” (IV.i.66). Titania wakes and tells Oberon of a most strange vision: “Methought I was enamored of an ass,” though once awake she exclaims, “mine eyes do loath his visage now!” (IV.i.73,76). While Bottom sleeps on, his head removed, the king and queen dance and are reconciled. They will now bless the union of Theseus and Hippolyta. It is a fair inference that, had this interlude in the woods with Bottom not taken place, the royal pair would not have been reconciled, the marriage would not have been graced by their presence, and the bloody Amazon invasion, symbol of sexual strife, would have come to pass. Meanwhile, Theseus and Hippolyta, while hunting in the forest, find all four lovers asleep. When Egeus finds out that Lysander and Hermia were fleeing Athens in defiance of his will, he asks Theseus to punish them, looking to Demetrius for support. Yet Demetrius confesses that his desire for Hermia has “melted as the snow” (IV.i.163). Recalling this passion as he would a sickness, he barely remembers or feels it now. Helena is again the sole object of his love. This frees Theseus to decree that the two couples shall be married along with him that very day. This should be welcome news, yet the lovers are still in shock. When the four lovers are alone, they canvass one another’s memories and find, as Hermia puts it, that “everything seems double” (IV.i.187). In other words, no identity is as stable as it was a night ago when she was Hermia and he Lysander. Likewise, Helena reflects that she has “found Demetrius like a jewel, mine own and not mine own” (IV.i.188). We all have deeper iden- �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 99 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 99 tities that cannot be owned even by ourselves, let alone by others. While Lysander, who was twice enchanted, has very little to say, it seems to Demetrius that they are still asleep and yet dreaming. As he observed earlier, things once indubitably certain now seem distant and mutable “Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds” (IV.i.185). All that they are certain of is Theseus’s order that they follow him to the temple. To Demetrius, only this proves that they are awake. In essence, it is by the temple, the cave, and the city—for all three are equivalent—that the uncertainties of the nightmare in the forest are safely secured. This is why they meekly return to the cave, despite knowing full well that they shadows they behold there have unsuspected depths. The four of them will no doubt fashion an agreeable account of what happened to them in due time. And then there’s Bottom. He was never truly lost in the bottomless ambiguity of the enchanted wood because he’s his own bottom. The “bottom” is the piece of wood around which a skein of thread is wound, so that Bottom is connected, as we said, to Ariadne’s thread. Bottom is able to exit from his enchanted confusion because of his ability to thread his way through many different roles. Though comically ignorant, he is nonetheless self-possessed, ingenious, and imaginative, and these qualities lead him through his labyrinthine trials successfully, even as he playfully mangles all the roles he steps into. After meeting Titania—an experience more supernatural than anything the lovers undergo—Bottom is indeed purged of his “mortal grossness,” as Titania promised. And yet he has enough “bottom” to take up all the jewels that Titania’s fairies bring him from the depths of the ocean. Bottom’s appearance is deceptive, even to the spirits. Puck ridiculed Bottom’s wit. Oberon confidently expected that the ass-headed monster would forget everything about his wild night in the woods. But they both seriously underestimated the worth of humble weaver. A man who is stable and “bottomed,” or self-contained, who can assume the humiliating mask of ass’s head to hide his gravity, is not to be scorned if he is a master of the royal art of weaving—that is, of statesmanship. Only such �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 100 100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a person can guide us safely through the dark woods of imagination and the subterranean cave of opinion. It is unclear whether Theseus, when he discovers the four young lovers, ignores Bottom or whether Bottom is invisible to him. In any case, Bottom’s experiences from that night in the woods far surpass the lovers’ experiences. The lovers have only encountered Hegel’s “bad infinite”—the anarchic possibilities that haunt the soul on a dark night—but Bottom has seen things sublime and trans-rational. Since he was never enchanted—it was Titania who was magically induced to fall in love with him—he does not need to be disenchanted; Oberon simply orders Puck to “take off this head” (IV.i.77). Despite being discovered in the queen’s arms, Bottom escapes punishment by being taken for an ass. What would Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII have made of this lèse majesté? When Bottom awakens from his fairy-induced slumber, he at first believes that no time has elapsed at all and that he is still awaiting his cue in the play. Then he realizes that something has happened to him: “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream” (IV.i.199-202). Bottom sees that he lacks the categories to describe his experience. Instead, dipping into the stores of his memory, he produces a garbled version of 1 Corinthians 2:9 to describe the inability to describe his dream: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man / hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his / tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what /my dream was” (IV.i.21114). Shakespeare prudently stops Bottom from continuing on to the next verse of the scripture, which details the blessings God has prepared for us—that would be a blasphemous comparison between Titania’s bounty and God’s. Instead, Bottom will “get Peter Quince to write a / ballet [ballad] of this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s / Dream, because it hath no bottom.” (IV.i.21416). And he will sing it after Thisbe dies, presumably because his vision provides intimations of a glorious afterlife. Perhaps his mystical vision will be the metaphysical basis of any future comedies Bottom himself may create. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 101 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 101 Act V begins with Theseus and Titania discussing the four young lovers’ account of their recollections from the preceding night. The act is strikingly undramatic: nothing significant happens. So deliberately flat an ending seems to demand that we shift from action to interpretation. Our focus goes from Helen to Hermes, from the enchantments of love to questions of hermeneutics. It is amusing to see two well-known figures from mythology arguing over how much credence should be given to “antique stories” and “fairy toys” (V.i.3)—especially when Theseus uses images from Socrates’s palinode in Plato’s Phaedrus, where the philosopher defends divine madness and poetic inspiration. As if to drive this point home, Theseus speaks of how “The poet’s eye in full frenzy rolling, / doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven” (V.i.12-13). This image derives from Plato’s Symposium, in which Socrates recounts what Diotima told him about Eros, the child of Need and Plenty.17 In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the child of need and plenty would correspond to any offspring of the union between Bottom and Titania, who would represent a weaving together of the human and divine realms. Since the matter of Theseus’s argument only serves to unweave its content, Shakespeare urges us to agree with Hippolyta when she points out that the harmony of the four tales “More witnesseth than fancy’s images / And grows to something of great constancy [consistency]” (V.i.25-26): the stories are not merely the fanciful products of over-heated imaginations. While Theseus denounces the tendency of humans to exaggerate— “How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” (V.i.22), this only makes it harder for us to accept his own heroic, but no doubt exaggerated, deeds. It seems as if he kills monsters by denying that they exist. This daylight dilution of night’s truths, anticipating the Enlightenment’s tendency to disparage everything that cannot be measured, strengthens the very irrationality it tries to contain. Theseus’s hyper-rationality may well have caused the threat of the Amazon invasion, which happily has been averted. Largely 17. Plato, Symposium, 202e-203a. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:36 AM Page 102 102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW thanks to Bottom’s intervention, nothing happens. As W. H. Auden put it, “Poetry makes nothing happen.”18 The curse of reification has been lifted from nature. When Theseus is asked to choose among several alternative forms of entertainment to fill the three hours before supper and bed, it is clear that his strong preference is for comedy—and the more banal the better—over epic, tragedy or lyric. This is quite consistent with the tendency to reduce a bear to a bush, or turn the Minotaur into an amazed ass. The first three choices offered by the master of revels are (1) the battle with the Centaurs, (2) the murder of Orpheus by the Bacchae, and (3) a lament over the decline of learning by the nine muses. Theseus rejects the first two: he has told Hippolyta about the one and already seen the other. When the third choice is thought too satirical for the day, all that remains is our “tedious brief scene” Pyramus and Thisbe, of “very tragical mirth” (V.i.56-57). So the Duke chooses it, albeit over the strong objections of Philostrate. The strange combination of comedy and tragedy that is contained in the promise of “tragical mirth” probably has more to do with Theseus’s aristocratic predilection of finding amusement in unintended buffoonery than with Socrates’s assertion in the Symposium that the art of making tragedies is also the art of making comedies.19 Even after being informed that the play both “tedious and brief” (V.i.58), and only comic in that it is likely to be poorly performed, Theseus is determined to favor the rude mechanicals with his patronage. Hippolyta expressed a reluctance to see the simple-minded players embarrassed undertaking a task that is beyond their capacities, but Theseus replies that the audience ought not to incline toward harsh criticism: “Our sport shall be to take what they mistake: / And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect / Takes it in might, not merit” (V.i.90, 92). But the intent to judge the players by their “might”—by their widow’s mite, 18. W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B Yeats” in Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson, (New York: Vintage, 1989), 80. 19. Plato, Symposium, 223d. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:37 AM Page 103 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 103 one might say—fails, even though Theseus claims that he has the power to see beyond appearances: Where I have come, great clerks have purposèd To greet me with premeditated welcomes, Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practiced accent in their fears, And in conclusion dumbly have broke off, Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, Out of this silence yet I picked a welcome, And in the modesty of fearful duty I read as much as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence. Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity. (V.i.87-99) But this self-estimate is not accurate: the play is so bad that it cannot help but elicit derisive comments even from Theseus. He cannot get beyond reductive charity. Though he wishes to make the meaningless speech of the rough artisans orderly, he lacks the imagination to see that Bottom at least is pointing towards something that far exceeds the capacities of his station in the shadow world of the cave. To Theseus, art is a diversion from reality, filled with impractical ideals and impossible dreams, that must be tolerated by a kind of benign neglect—which is precisely the attitude that Theseus bestows on the mechanical. Since the Duke does not allow Bottom speak his epilogue, Shakespeare’s audiences must imagine it for themselves. The contours of this epilogue are clear enough: first, it must conclude the mechanicals’ rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe; second, it must explain A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and third, it must also explain Bottom’s mystical vision. This is why Bottom wants to place it after Thisbe’s death: it has to reveal what lies beyond death, what sustains life, and what justifies love. Bottom’s epilogue is the “bottom line” to be extracted form his near-death experience with Titania. There are clear parallels between Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania. This is why the four roles are almost always �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:37 AM Page 104 104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW played by the same pair of actors. The male power of reason imperiously believes that it can censor, control, and shape the thoughts of the disordered female soul. But through his mystical vision, Bottom has been initiated into a suprarational wisdom by Titania. Can this wisdom be stolen from him as easily as Oberon tricked Titania or Theseus raped Hippolyta? A Midsummer Night’s Dream trusts the power of drama to resurrect visions long forgotten by seers and heroes. “The best are but shadows and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them” (V.i.208-209). It must be the audience’s imagination, not the actor’s, that redeems the poet in the cave. Every time A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed, it becomes the vehicle, being ridden by an ass, through which salvation may enter the world. Theseus cannot see that art bestows deeper meaning on human life than order. The wall dividing Pyramus and Thisbe represents the strife between reason and desire, between philosophy and poetry, city and theatre, law and will, civilized religion and pagan nature. The role of Lion, who threatens to destroy Pyramus and Thisbe, was one of those coveted by Bottom; it too stands for the Minotaur, the monster that devours young lovers in the dark labyrinth of desire that is nature. Yet it is the translated Bottom who finds that Titania, the feminine principle at the heart of nature, is far from monstrous. It takes imagination and charity, qualities Bottom possesses in abundance, to reconcile principles that seem to be separate and opposed. But this is precisely why Theseus, acting in the name of the male principle that dominates the city, must overcome overcome the horned beast by denial, standing on his claim to have slain the Minotaur. The truth revealed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to be this: Men like Lysander and Demetrius become horned monsters when they are trapped in the labyrinthine coils of desires they cannot own or even recognize. Their paramount ambition is to possess the women they love and maintain their amour propre; that is to say, they only want to know other souls as objects, without genuinely trying to behold them as independent selves. But to burn with unloving passion avails us nothing. To quote St. Paul, though in a slightly different sense than he intended it, “Though I give my �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:37 AM Page 105 ESSAYS & LECTURES | RANASINGHE 105 body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”20 Despite his ignorance, Bottom, having been opened up to the grace of Nature by Titania, sees much further than the lovers. By comparison, they wear the heads of asses. True beholding of another self creates a loving obligation to protect and nurture the inner life of the other’s soul. One sees into that soul, as it were, through the eyes of a god. One the one hand, a love like this is infinitely preferable to the sort of “love” that motivates Egeus’s feudal claims over his daughter Hermia, who is for him “but as a form in wax, / By him imprinted and within his power / to leave the figure or disfigure it” (I.i.49-51). On the other hand, because of the godlike glance into the other’s soul, a Christian audience may well be inclined to regard it as blasphemous. Other elements of Bottom’s epilogue would have to clarify the various ways in which love can go wrong. One way is that lustful or selfish love, in seeking spiritual support for its desires, falls into despair when the poetry it gets hold of is bad. Another way is that abstract reason, in seeking to domesticate the untamed aspects of eros, falls into nihilism. To avoid these and similar errors, the passions must be educated by poetry—not manipulated, as Oberon does, or rejected, as Theseus does. It is true that wellcrafted laws can mitigate or even remove the possessiveness inherent in some kinds of selfish love (such as the property rights Egeus claims over Hermia). Indeed, such laws can help to ensure equality and even aid in the perennial human struggle to climb out of the cave. But neither law nor logos is easily taught to lovers. It would be better, if fate allows, to attend to our own soul’s need for love before being gripped by the passions. Our own soul’s unique charity for itself is to become equal to itself, to see itself clearly and love itself for what it truly is. This is the preparation that makes us capable of dealing with our passions competently. And the test of success in this preparation is to return to the cave—as Bottom returned to Theseus’s court after his mystical vision, or as Socrates willingly entered the courtroom to deliver his apology—bringing love, disorder, erotically charged 20. 1 Corinthians 13:3. �06 Ranasinghe, MND 2016-04-17 FINAL.qxp_Brann, Res Tene 5/5/16 11:37 AM Page 106 106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW chaos, and “mirthful tragedy” to our fellow humans rather than submitting to the reductive comedy of life constrained by generic rationality. To draw an example from another magical play: It is surely thus, after consolidating his mystical wisdom, that Prospero returns to Milan as its Duke after the events of The Tempest. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is as anarchic a carnival, we must imagine, as Bottom’s mystical vision must have been. Its mad antics and category-crossing magic represent the way of wonder, an approach to a wisdom that cannot be contained within the rational confines of the logos. This wisdom, the wisdom of the spirit, comforts and inspires us when we reach the limits of the logos. Spirit works in the spectral forests encircling the sublime, in the element of amazed ignorance; wonder is its vehicle, enlivening us much more vitally than anything or anyone we may try to possess. Its counterpart, logos, works with abstract categories, trying to convince us that the divine is not deeply irrational, nor jealous, nor unjust; but its reassuring arguments fail to convince, because they fly in the face of human experience. Spirit, on the contrary, addresses the passions, the absurdities, the savageries, and the secrets of the individual soul—its struggles have more in common with Dostoevsky’s novels than with Hegel’s System. Each individual soul’s passage through the dark woods of imagination is different, and all are dialectical in the sense that the traveler learns as much from error as from truth. Similarly, love’s benefits come from giving, forgiving, losing, and laughing: these acts strengthen and liberate the soul, whereas their contraries— taking, accusing, winning, and excessive seriousness—weaken and strangle it. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a feast for the soul, and we leave it with richer eyes, emptier hands, and longer ears. Only a beautiful ass can save us. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2016 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Trentina, Allison Sachs, Joe Kalkavage, Peter Koochesfahani, Arian Macierowski, Edward M. Ranasinghe, Nalin Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 57, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2016. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_57_No_2_Spring_2016 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8d4d445baa1d8b0b09cefdb9a3230c83.pdf c95bb7193af0bf4486e98723c89b52a4 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 52, number 1 (Fall 2010) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Barbara McClay The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Krause, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to the The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2010 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available on-line at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 3 Contents Essay Jacob Klein’s Two Prescient Discoveries..............................5 Eva Brann “YOU ARE THAT!”: The Upanishads Read Through Western Eyes.......................................................................21 Robert Druecker Principles of Motion and the Motion of Principles: Hegel’s Inverted World........................................................71 Peter Kalkavage The Work of Education........................................................99 Jon Lenkowski Falstaff and Cleopatra........................................................109 Elliot Zuckerman Review Portraits of the Impassioned Concept: A Review of Peter Kalkavage’s The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit......................................123 Eva Brann �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 5 JACOB KLEIN’S TWO PRESCIENT DISCOVERIES Eva Brann Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of St. John’s College in 1957 when I came as a young tutor. He died in 1978, still teaching. In those twenty-one years during which I knew him, he was above all a teacher—mine and everybody’s. His spirit informed the college. While dean, he was a fierce defender of his conception of this remarkable community of learning. This passion had generous parameters, from a smiling leniency toward spirited highjinks to a meticulous enforcement of rules meant to inculcate intellectual virtue. As a tutor, he shaped the place through lectures that the whole college attended and discussed, through classroom teaching that elicited from students more than they thought was in them, but above all through conversation that was direct and playful, serious and teasing, earthily Russian and cunningly cosmopolitan. We all thought that he had some secret wisdom that he dispensed sparingly out of pedagogical benevolence; yet he would sometimes tell us things in a plain and simple way that struck home as if we had always known them. I, at least, always had the sense of hearing delightful novelties that somehow I’d known all along. He also had an aversion to discipleship and a predilection for wicked American kids. And he could be infuriating whenever someone tried to extract definitive doctrines from him. His reluctance to pontificate was in part indolence (we sometimes called him “Jasha the Pasha”)—an indolence dignified by his aversion to philosophy carried on as an organized business—and in part pedagogical reservation—a conviction that to retail one’s thought-products to students was to prevent inquiry. This aversion to professing authority is, to my mind, his most persuasive and felicitous legacy Keynote Address at the Conference on Jacob Klein, held at Seattle University on May 27-29, 2010. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to the college, and the reason we still call ourselves tutors— guardians of learning—rather than professors—professionals of knowledge. Nonetheless, there were doctrines and they were published. He had set himself against academic publication, so much so that I had to translate Jasha’s youthful book on the origin of algebra in secret—though when confronted with the fait accompli he capitulated quite eagerly. This book is now the subject of Burt Hopkins’s acute and careful analysis, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (to be published in 2011). Today I would like to present two of his chief discoveries from a perspective of peculiar fascination to me—from the standpoint of the contemporary significance and the astounding prescience, and hence longevity, of his insights. Now I grew up intellectually within a perspective enforced by our program of studies and reinforced by Jasha’s views (forgive the informality; it was universal in his circle), which were rooted in certain continental philosophers, of whom Husserl was the most honorable. The guiding notion of this perspective was that modernity is best apprehended as being in a ruptured continuum with Greek antiquity—a continuum insofar as the terms persist, ruptured insofar as they take on new meanings and missions. That perspective makes those who hold it avid participants in the present—critically and appreciatively avid. I will state immediately and straightforwardly the issues of our present-day lives to which Jasha’s insights speak. First, they speak to the ever-expanding role of image-viewing and virtual experience in our lives. Here the questions are: What degree of “reality” is ascribable to images? What does life among these semi-beings do to us? Do we lose substance as they lose their ground? Do originals retain their primary or even a residual function in the virtual world? Second, Jasha’s insights speak to the burgeoning brain science that tends to ascribe an ultimately physical being to human nature. Here the questions are approachable in terms of “emergence.” Granted that brain and mind are intimately linked, what is the manner in which the latter EVA BRANN 7 emerges from, or projects into, the former? How might an entity emerge, be it from above or below, that is radically different from its constituents? These are questions about consciousness (what we are aware of) and about self-consciousness (who we are) that should be of great concern to us, because they dominate public life quite unreflectively. To put this in a form that is not currently fashionable: Do we have souls? Klein’s two insights, then, are both interpretations of Platonic writings and are set out in A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (1965) and Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934). The latter is a learned book written by a private European scholar for academic readers, the former is a very accessible work written by an American teacher for lovers of Socrates. Of both these insights Burt Hopkins has produced detailed analyses, which have added a new edge to doctrines I’ve lived with familiarly for half a century. I will, however, feel free here to supplement, embroider and question Jacob Klein’s interpretation of Plato and Burt Hopkins’s reading of Klein as I go. I’ll do it implicitly, so you shouldn’t trust this account for faithfulness to the letter, though I hope you may trust it for faithfulness to the spirit. You’ll see, I think, what I mean when I speak of the immediacy and naturalness of Klein’s interpretation: His readings sit well. The first insight, then, begins with an understanding of the lowest segment of the so-called Divided Line in Plato’s Republic, that mathematical image (picture it as vertical) of the ascent to Being and the learning associated with that ascent. In this lowest segment are located the deficient beings called reflections, shadows, and images, and a type of apprehension associated with them called eikasia in Greek and usually rendered as “conjecture.” Klein’s interpretation starts with a new translation of this noun: “image-recognition.” The nature of these lowest beings—they are revealed as basic rather than base—is set out in Plato’s Sophist. Consequently, the Republic and the Sophist between them lay the foundations of the Platonic world. The second discovery involves a complex of notions from which I’ll extract one main element: the analysis of what it means �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to be a number, and what makes possible this kind of being— which, as it turns out, makes possible all Being. Again, the principal texts are the Sophist and the Republic, supplemented by Aristotle’s critical account of Plato’s doctrine. To anticipate the perplexity that is also the doctrine: Take any number—say two. It is constituted of two units. Each is one, but both together are two. How can it be that two emerges from elements that are each precisely not two? I might remark in passing that Socrates thinks that one mark of readiness for philosophical engagement is a fascination with this perplexity. And from my experience with students, I know that Socrates was correct. So now, after these broad previews, some nitty-gritty. Socrates begins by dividing the whole line mentioned above in some arbitrary ratio, and then he divides the two subsections in that same ratio. So if the whole line is, say, sixteen units, and the ratio is, say, triple; then one segment is twelve units, the other four. Then subdivide the twelve-unit segment similarly into nine and three units, and the four-unit segment into three and one. There are now four segments, two by two in the same ratio with each other and with the first division of the whole. Whether you want to make the top or the bottom segment the longest depends on whether you assign more length to the greater fullness of Being or to the larger profusion of items. It can also be shown that in all divisions of this sort—called “extreme-and-mean ratio”— the middle segments will be equal. Socrates will make the iconic most of this mathematical fact. Now the subsections make a four-term proportion called an analogia in Greek—a:b::b:c—and they mirror, as I said, the division of the whole line. You can read the line up or down. Down is the cascade of Being, which loses plenitude as it falls from true originals to mere images. Up is the ascent of learning, ending in the direct intellectual vision of the prime originals, the eide, the “invisible looks” in Klein’s language, usually called the “forms.” Beyond all Being there is the notorious Good, the unifying power above all the graduated beings, the principle of wholeness, which I’ll leave out here. At the bottom is the aforementioned “image-recognition.” Now just as each of the object- EVA BRANN 9 realms assigned to the upper sections is causally responsible for the ones below, so, inversely, in learning, each stage, each capacity, is needed for the learner to rise. None are left behind; all remain necessary. And so the bottom, the first capacity, is also the most pervasive. Children recognize images early on. Look at a picture book with a two-year-old: “Kitty,” he’ll say, pointing. “Careful, it’ll scratch.” “No, it won’t,” he’ll say, looking at you as if you were really naïve. That’s image-recognition, the human capability for recognizing likeness as belonging to a deficient order: a cat incapable of scratching. It is as fundamental for Socrates as it is low on the scale of cognitive modes, because imaging is the most readily imaginable, the least technically ticklish way of representing the activity by which the realm of intelligible Being produces and rules the world of sensory appearances. Each step downward in the scale of being is a move from original to image; each step upward in the scale of learning involves recognizing that something lower is an image of something higher. Just to complete the sketch of the Divided Line, here are the stages of knowledge and their objects in brief. Above images, there are the apparently solid objects of nature and artifice. The acquaintance with these is called “trust,” pistis. It is the implicit, unreflective belief we have in the dependable support of the ground we tread on and the chair we sit in—the faith that our world is not “the baseless fabric of a vision” that melts into thin air. This whole complex of dimensionally defective images and taken-on-faith solidity of our phenomenal world is itself an image of the upper two parts of the line. The third part, equal in length to the second from the bottom, contains all the rational objects that look, on the way up, like abstractions from the sensory world—mathematical models and logical patterns. To these we apply our understanding, a capacity called in Greek “thinkingthrough,” dianoia. They are then revealed to be the originals of the sensory world, the intelligible patterns that impart to the sensory world such shapeliness and intelligibility as it has. Thus they make natural science possible; for they are the rational �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW counterparts of the sensory world. Finally, there is the realm of direct knowledge. As happens so often in the dialogues, the contents of these upper reaches are named in inverse relation to the contents of the lower ones: “invisible looks” (since eidos is from the vid-verb, the verb for seeing), and they are reached by a capacity for direct insight (which Aristotle will in fact analogize to sensing)—noesis. Above and beyond them all is the very Idea itself, the idea of all ideas—the Good, which produces, nourishes, and unifies all beings, and grounds all human learning. Implicit in this ladder of Being is the answer to the question that matters most: What is an image, such that we can know it as an image? The answer is given in the Sophist, whose main character is, in his general person, an image incarnate—the mere image of a truly truth-seeking human being. Socrates poses the opening question of the Sophist, but he sits silently by as a Stranger from Italian Elea, a follower of Parmenides, finds a solution. I’ll venture a guess why he falls silent. In the Sophist appears a serious ontological teaching, and ontological doctrine is not Socrates’ way: He is the man of the tentative try, of hypotheses. I’ll even venture a—perhaps perverse—appreciation of this mode: His stubborn hypotheticalness, his unwillingness to assert knowledge, is the complement of his unshakable faith in a search for firm truth, carried on in full awareness of human finitude. What then is the Parmenidean solution? I call it Parmenidean although the Stranger, the intellectual child of Parmenides, calls himself a parricide, since he is about to deny a crucial Parmenidean teaching: that Nonbeing is not, is neither sayable nor thinkable. For he will in fact affirm a yet deeper teaching of his philosophical father: that what counts is being thinkable and sayable. The Elean Stranger will show how Nonbeing can be thinkable and how speech is in fact impossible without it—as was indeed implicit in Parmenides’ very denial. It is thinkable as Otherness. To say that something is not is usually to say that it is not this but that, that it is other than something perspectivally prior. (I say “usually,” because there “is” also something called “utter non-being,” which is indeed, EVA BRANN 11 though superficially utterable, insuperably unthinkable.) Relational, comparative Nonbeing, however, is one of the great ruling principles of ontology. It is totally pervasive, since whatever is a being is other than other beings. It is the source of diversity in the world and of negation in speech. Has the Stranger really done in his philosophical progenitor? No, as I intimated. He has actually saved Parmenides from himself; for he has shown that Nonbeing is, is Being in another mode. Being is still all there is. There is no parricide. Moreover, this Other, a piece of apparently high and dry ontology, turns out to give life to the realm of ideas and to the world of human beings: it informs the one with a diversity of beings and articulates the other with the oppositions of speech. Why was this modification necessary in the search for the Sophist? Because a Sophist is indeed a faker, himself an image of a truth-seeker and a producer of images of what is genuine. Otherness, the great genus of “The Other,” is the condition of possibility for images, since it has three tremendous powers. First, it makes possible that a thing not be what it is. And that is just what characterizes an image: “It’s a kitty,” the child says, pointing. But not really; it doesn’t scratch. Or people bring out photographs in order to be in the presence of an absent one, but they are not real enough to assuage longing. Hence an image is understood first, and most ontologically speaking, as not being what it is, but also, second, as being less than the original it represents; for it represents that original in a deficient likeness. Here a second capacity of the Other shows up: it creates a defective, derivative Otherness. And third, it makes negative knowledge and denying speech possible: we can think and say, “The image is— in some specifiable way—like its original; but likeness is not identity.” The sentence “An image is not the original” displays Otherness as negation, articulated as Nonbeing. The ability to utter—and mean—that sentence is specifically human. Its loss would be, I think, a serious declension of our humanity. Therefore this complex of consideration, illuminated by Klein in his book on the Meno, seems to me crucial for navigating our imageflooded world with full awareness. �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW More particularly, the ability to distinguish image from original is crucial today because the shaping of our American lives, which is more and more a matter of declining options and refusing temptations, is much in need of suggestive approaches for coping with images. What are the truths and falsehoods of images in general? What consequently are the effects of discretionary image-viewing on our consciousness? Do all images in fact have originals, or is it images “all the way down”? And if there are always originals, how can we find our way back to them? What is real within our world, what is genuine beyond it? I’ll assert simply that without occasional reflection on such an eminently current issue our lives tend toward passing by rather than being lived. “The unexamined life is unlivable (abiotos),” Socrates says in the Apology (38a)—and so a life without reflection on its central issues is thus, in effect, unlived. I’ll now go on to Klein’s second interpretive discovery, a much more technical, but equally future-fraught, construal. A preoccupation of Socrates—it might be puzzling to readers who haven’t yet seen the implications—is often expressed by him in this way: “Each is one, but both are two.” To be gripped by this odd perplexity is, as I said, a beginning of philosophizing. The oddity comes out most starkly when we think of countingnumbers, the natural cardinal numbers. Take the first number, two. (For the ancients, one is not a number; it is the constituent unit of which a number is made.) Each of its units is one and nothing more. Yet this unit and another together make up the number two. Neither is what both together are. This ought to be strange to us, because we are used to the elements of a natural collection having each the quality that characterizes the whole: The doggy species subsumes dogs. Whether we think of dogginess either as an abstracted generalization or as a qualitybestowing form, each member has the characteristic that names the kind. Clearly, numbers are assemblages that work differently from other classes. Numbers have a uniquely characteristic, a socalled “arithmological” structure. The recognition of the significance of this situation and its peculiar appearance among the great forms, particularly in respect to Being, is Klein’s achievement. EVA BRANN 13 Let me begin by briefly reviewing the kinds of numbers Klein takes into account. He observes—a previously ignored fact—that the first meaning of the Greek word that we translate as number, arithmos, is that of a counted assemblage of concrete things. Any counted collection—a flock of sheep, a string of horses, a herd of cattle—does not have, but is an arithmos. If we think as Greeks (and we may, with a little effort), we count ordinally, because we must keep items in order: first, second, third (and then go on cardinally four, five, six, for verbal convenience). But when we have counted up the whole, we allow it to become a heapnumber—a distinct, discriminated group. It is a counted collection that has lost its memory. An arithmos is such a sensory number. It is, for example, a sheep-number, and its units are sheep-monads. To me it seems undecidable whether such a concrete number has an arithmological structure, since in it the sheep are both sheepish and mere units; as a flock we discriminate them, as units we count them. Next come the mathematical numbers made up of pure monads, units that have no quality besides being unities. A mathematical number is defined by Euclid thus: “An arithmos is a multitude composed of monads,” where a monad is a pure unit. This type of number has an arithmological structure with a vengeance, and you can see why: a pure unit has no characteristics besides unitariness. It’s neither apples nor oranges, which is precisely why you can count fruit or anything at all with it. Being thus devoid of qualities, it has mere collectibility, but it has no other contribution to make to the assemblage. Being two is not in the nature of a monad as a monad, though adding up to two is. “Two” appears to emerge from these associable units. If you think this is unintelligible, so does Socrates. It will get worse. The difficulty is implicitly acknowledged in the modern definition of number. It begins with arithmos-like concrete assemblages. If their elements, treated now as mere units, can be put into one-to-one correspondence, the collections are said to be equivalent. The collection or set of all equivalent sets is their number. This definition evades the questions, What number is it? and Does the set of sets arise from the units of the concrete �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW collection, or does it bestow on them the numerosity? Therein lies an implicit recognition of Socrates’ problem. It gets worse, for now a third type of number appears. Klein knows of it from Aristotle’s critical report in the Metaphysics, where there is mention of “form-numbers,” arithmoi eidetikoi. The highest genera in the Platonic structure of forms are organized in such numberlike assemblages. These are, unlike the indefinitely many mathematical numbers, limited in multitude. (There may have been ten, the so-called root-numbers of the Pythagoreans.) Now the super-genera in the Sophist are Same and Other. The highest after these is Being, which consists of Motion (kinesis) and Standstill (stasis). (This last is often translated as “Rest,” but that inaccurately implies a cessation from, or deprivation of, motion, though the two genera are coequal.) Notice, incidentally, that the three kinds of numbers run in tandem with the three rising upper segments of the Divided Line—concrete numbers with the sensory world, pure units with the mathematical domain, form-numbers with the eidetic realm. Each of these forms acts like a monad in an arithmetic collection. However—and this is Aristotle’s most pertinent criticism—these high forms are not neutral units. They are each very much what they are in themselves, indefeasibly self-same and other than all others. They are, as he says: asymbletoi, “incomparable,” literally “not throwable together.” Thus, unlike pure, neutral mathematical numbers, they cannot be reckoned with across their own genus, and so, a fortiori, it would be seen that their association within their genus is unintelligible. For how can Motion and Standstill be together as the genus of Being if they have nothing in common and so cannot be rationally added up? Klein claims that Aristotle’s cavil is in fact Plato’s point. The forms are associated in what is the very paradigm of an arithmological structure: what each is not, that they are together. It is because they have a number structure in which unique eide associate in a finite number of finite assemblages that innumerable sensory items can collect into concrete countable heaps organizable into finite classification. Furthermore, it is in EVA BRANN 15 imitation of these eidetic numbers that we have the indefinitely many mathematical numbers uniting as many pure units as you please—though we are left to work out the manner of this descent. For my part, I cannot claim to have done it. I have mentioned before what is certainly the foremost stumbling block for most people in accepting the forms as causes of worldly being and becoming. The perplexity is usually put as “the participation problem”: how do appearances “participate” in the forms? These are infelicitous terms, because they imply the least satisfactory answer—that dogs somehow take a part in, or appropriate a part of the form, a non-solution scotched in Socrates’ very early attempt in the dialogue Parmenides at articulating his great discovery of the forms. “Imaging” might be a more felicitous term, since it is at least less awkward to the intellectual imagination than is “partaking.” But let me stick here with the familiar term, and follow Klein in pointing out that the participation problem has two levels. On the lower level, the question is how the phenomenal world participates in the forms. On the higher level, it is how the forms associate with, participate in, each other. For unless they do form assemblages, genera and their constituent eide, the sensory world, even granted that it does somehow receive its being and structure from these, can have no learnable organization. Crudely put: we can classify the world’s beings, natural and artificial, in terms of hierarchies of kinds, such as the genera, subgenera, species, and subspecies of biology, only because their causative principles have a prior, paradigmatic structure of associations and subordinations. On this hypothesis, even only artificially distinguished heaps can be counted up by reason of the arithmological character of eidetic groupings. The eidetic numbers are thus intended to be a Platonic solution to the upper-level participation problem. It is, so to speak, a highly formal solution. For while the type of association is named—the arithmoi eidetikoi with their arithmological structure—the cause of any particular association is not given. There is no substantive answer to the question, Just what in a form makes it associate numerologically with a specific other? �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW There should be no such answer, because the eidetic monads are, after all, incomposable. Motion and Standstill have in themselves nothing in common. Moreover, why are they the sole constituents of Being? And yet, there must be an answer since they are in fact composed. As Klein keeps pointing out, in the upper reaches the logos, rational speech, fails. One way it fails is that to reach the number two, for instance, we count off one, one, two; that is, three items—yet there are not three, but only two. For Two, be it mathematical or eidetic, is not over and beyond the two units; it is just those two together. How two items can become one our reason cannot quite articulate. Nor can it say what makes either an eidetic monad, which is a qualitative plenum, or the mathematical unit, which is a qualitative void, associate with others in “families,” (that thought-provoking classificatory term from biology) or in “numbers” (those colorless collections that yet have highly specific characteristics). Now we come to Klein’s novel construal of just this eidetic number Two, which occurs in the Sophist, although it is not explicitly named there. Being is a great eidetic genus. It is composed of Standstill and Motion. Neither of these can have any part in the other; it is just as unthinkable for Standstill to be involved in Motion as for Motion to be involved in Standstill. Yet there is nothing in the world that is not both together. Our world is one of dynamic stability or stable dynamism, in place and in time. The duo responsible for this condition in the realm of forms is called Being. Being is not a third beside or above Motion or Standstill but just the togetherness of these subgenera. Being is only as both of these together, and neither of them can be except as part of a pair. As an unpaired monad, neither is; both are as a couple: Being is the eidetic Two. And once more, it is this arithmological structure that descends to, makes possible, and is mirrored in, the mathematical number structure of any mathematical two—on the one hand. On the other hand, it makes the phenomenal world appear as I have just described it: at once stable and moving, variable and organizable. On the way up, it might look as if the eidetic numbers are an erroneous levering-up of a mathematical notion; on the way down, they appear as the not EVA BRANN 17 quite humanly comprehensible, but necessary, hypothesis for an articulable world, a countable and classifiable world. And again, seen from above, Being must—somehow—bring about its own division; but seen from below, Being emerges from its constituents. And just as the modern definition of number in terms of equivalent sets leaves unarticulated the question of whether the number set is the ground of or the consequence of the equivalent sets, so too in Klein’s exposition of the first eidetic number, Two, it is left unsaid whether the genus determines its eidetic monads, or the reverse, or neither. It is left, as textbooks say, as an exercise for the reader—a hard one. I might, before I end, even venture a still formal but somewhat more specific answer to the associability question. In the upper ontological reaches, at least, what might be called extreme Otherness—by which I mean either contrary (that is, qualitative) or contradictory (that is, logical) opposition—seems to be the principle grounding togetherness. Motion and Standstill are as opposite as can be, and for that reason yoked in Being; so are Same and Other. I will not pretend to have worked through the hierarchy of these five greatest genera. Nonetheless I have a suspicion that Same and Other, the most comprehensive genera, are not only intimately related to each other as mutually defining, but may ultimately have to be apprehended together as prior to and thus beyond Being, as a first self-alienation of the One, the principle of comprehension itself. As such, they might even be termed the negative Two, but that’s too far-out. In any case, these Plotinian evolutions are beyond my brief for today. I refer to Plotinus at all only because his One is in fact articulable only negatively and, is self-diremptive. Now the strange structure of number, in which indiscernibly different but non-identical elements like pure monads, mere units, can be together what they are not individually, is only a case, though the most stripped-down, clarified case, of what is nowadays called “emergence.” Recall that emergence is the eventuation of a novel whole from elements that seem to have nothing in common with it. Examples range from trivial to lifechanging. Socrates himself points out that the letters sigma and �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 18 omega are individually different from the initial syllable of his own name, “So,” and that this is one new idea composed of two elements (Theaetetus 203c). Two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen combine to form water, whose liquidity emerges as an unforeseeable quality. Individuals form communities that evince a might beyond the additive powers of their citizens. The emergent entity is other than rather than additional to, novel to rather than inferrable from, its elements. In the reverse case, sometimes called projection, the elements falling out from a totality are qualitatively quite different from it. This case might be called inverse emergence; an example might be the relation of Platonic forms to their participant particulars. The most significant problem of emergence is also the most contemporary one. Since it seems indisputable that specific brain lesions lead to specific psychic disabilities, it is claimed by scientists who don’t want simply to identify mind with brain that the soul is brain-emergent. Does that make it a mere epiphenomenon? A miracle? “Emergence” names the event as a bottom-up process. But could it be a top-down happening, could the soul shape, or participate in shaping, its physical substructure? These are the recognizable old questions of “one-and-many”: one over, or in, or out of, many? I want to make a claim that in this company especially should garner some sympathy: when deep human matters are at issue, it helps a lot to have delved into some ontology; the inquiry into Being may not affect our lives materially, yet it illuminates our daily lives more directly than does research providing factual information or theory producing instrumental constructs. This is the hypothesis under which Jacob Klein’s opening up of two Platonic preoccupations, images and numbers, is of current consequence. Herein lies the prescience, the foresightedness of his Platonic discoveries. Addendum I have omitted here, as too complex for brief exposition, a third, more directly global interpretation of the modern condition, EVA BRANN 19 which is central to Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. It is an understanding of the basic rupture between antiquity and modernity, of the great revolution of the West, as brought about by, or at least paradigmatically displayed in, the introduction of algebra. Algebra works with quantities abstracted from concrete collections (such as were betokened by the Greek arithmoi), with “general,” essentially symbolical “numbers,” such as the variables x, y, z or the constants a, b, c. These letters are symbols of a peculiar sort: they represent neither a concrete thing nor a determinate concept, but rather present themselves as the object of a calculation—a mere object, an indeterminate entity. Klein saw algebraic problem-solving procedures, so effective precisely because so contentlessly formal, as emblematic of a modern rage for that second-order, deliberately denatured thinking which dominates as much of our lives as is method-ridden. The human consequences of this symbolic conceptuality are great. �20 21 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “YOU ARE THAT!” The Upanishads Read Through Western Eyes1 Robert Druecker Introduction The original title of this essay—“You Are That!”—was a quotation, from the Chāndogya Upanishad, of an exclamation made several times by a man named Uddālaka to his son Śvetaketu. The “That” refers to a realm or state of being, known as “Brahman.” One who experiences it is called a “knower of Brahman” (brahmavid). Uddālaka was a knower of Brahman, speaking to his son out of his direct experience. The classical Upanishads are expressions of, and invitations to, this direct experiencing. Understanding them, therefore, is a matter of understanding what that experiencing is like, not a matter of believing or knowing some truths about the world. Thus, elucidating the meaning of this title will convey a sense of the experience of Brahman, which is what the Upanishads as a whole are about. But, of course, their ultimate aim is not simply to produce understanding in this sense, but rather to bring about the direct experiencing of the Brahman-realm. Even Śaṅkara, the most highly esteemed expositor of the Upanishads, a man noted for his theoretical acumen, considered direct experience as surpassing all understanding. He is said to have regarded theoretical reflection as one hundred times more efficacious than oral instruction, meditation as one hundred thousand times more efficacious than theoretical reflection, and direct experience of the Brahman-realm as defying all comparison. The revised title of the essay is: “‘You Are That!’: The Upanishads Read Through Western Eyes.” In making this change, Robert Drueker is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I have followed Aristotle’s recommendation to begin with the things best known to us, where “us,” in this case, refers to the St. John’s community. Thus, Part One will give a sense of what the Brahman-realm is like by elaborating on an analogous experience in Homer and Aristotle. Part Two will elucidate the experiencing of Brahman in a more direct way. Finally, many of the writings in the Upanishads are dialogues involving a knower of Brahman. Yājñavalkya is the central figure in the conversations in the oldest Upanishad. In working on the lecture, I imagined him, a knower of Brahman, as my interlocutor. Throughout the essay, I will allow the voice of Yājñavalkya to provide his understanding of analogues between the Brahmanrealm and the worlds of Homer and Aristotle. Part One: Νοεĩν and Ittisāl (Conjunction) A. Homer Homer frequently refers to human beings or gods waking up to, or realizing (νοεĩν), the full significance of a situation. Sometimes, on the other hand, what they realize is their ability to wake up to the full meaning of a situation (νόος in some uses).2 The verb in the aorist expresses an individual’s sudden flash of insight. For instance, Hektor, resisting his parents’ entreaties, holds his position, as he watches Achilleus coming toward him. He is pondering what might happen should he retreat or should he offer to return Helen; but then Achilleus closes upon him: “And trembling took hold of Hektor when the realization suddenly struck him (ἐνόησεν) [what single combat against Achilleus really meant], and he could no longer stand his ground there, but…fled, frightened.” (II, 22.136-37).3 The use of the progressive aspect, however, conveys the process of fitting pieces together gradually to form a wholly new picture, as when Theoklymenos tells the suitors that the realization is dawning upon him (νοέω) that there is an evil on the way that they will not be able to avoid (O, 20.367-70). Because of the intensity of the character’s involvement in the situation, the experienced shift in significance is often accompanied by strong emotion, as is the case with Hektor. When the DRUECKER 23 insight concerns an individual object instead of a situation, the realization is always accompanied by such emotion; it is as if the shift in the meaning of the situation were compressed into a single thing or person. So, For example, Menelaos, having caught sight of Paris, leaps down from his chariot. Then, Homer tells us, “when [Paris] realized the full significance of Menelaus standing there among the champions, the heart was shaken within him” (I, 3.29-31). The full significance here is that Menelaus is drawing near Paris, seething with an overwhelming desire to kill him. “Realization of significance” has a variety of meanings that spread over a directional arc.4 A character begins in a situation in which he has already seemingly recognized (γιγνώσκειν) the surrounding things or people as definite individuals that are familiar. Then, once awakened to their real significance, he or she experiences a corresponding emotional impact; a way of dealing with the newly perceived situation comes to light and the will to do so arises. Thus, the present naturally extends itself into the future. When the primary meaning is at either end of this arc, the other parts of the arc are co-present. Thus, when the emphasis is on present clarity of mind, the future is nonetheless kept in view. (For instance, when Kirke tells Odysseus that no magic can work on his ability always to realize what is the real meaning of the situation in which he finds himself, she also has in mind the insightful character of his future aims, plans, and actions [O, 10.329].) And, on the other hand, when the emphasis in on future action, clear vision in the present is also involved. (For instance, when, according to Achilleus, Peleus vowed to the river Spercheus that Achilleus would sacrifice to him upon the latter’s return home, this wish [νόον] was not a representation of a vague future, but rather a distinct depiction of the wished-for future action and of the detailed steps leading to it [I, 23.144-49].) The realization of significance may or may not be prepared by a thought process. But when it is, the realization is distinct from the preceding reasoning, in the same way as “seeing” one of Euclid’s proofs is different from figuring out how it is justified in terms of previous propositions. For Yājñavalkya, realizing Brahman can also be characterized as including an emotional �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW response—joy (ānanda)—and a way of acting—calm responsiveness to the whole situation. The realization may penetrate to great depth and extend far in space and time, like that of Theoklymenonos mentioned earlier or like that of Athena when she speaks to Achilleus as he is drawing his sword to kill Agamemnon. The more intense the situation and the deeper and broader the realization, the more likely it is that the characters are raised above their ordinary abilities, so that they are able to see almost all the implications and consequences of the situation with unusual clarity and to act with extraordinary foresight. This experience of being raised above the ordinary is a divine manifestation.5 Homer most often mentions Athena and Apollo in such moments. For instance, Odysseus’s sudden realization of the true meaning of return—the moment when he recognized the right time to reveal himself to Telemachos—occurs in the presence of Athena (O, 16.155ff.). And Hektor’s sudden waking up to danger when he was about to oppose Achilleus is Apollo’s manifesting himself (I, 20.375ff.). These two examples point to the difference between the two gods. Athena remains untroubled and serene in the midst of action, while she discerns at every juncture what the situation requires, plans the deed with precision, and readies herself to bring it about energetically. Apollo, on the other hand, is associated with a cognitive attitude of stately objectivity, wideranging gaze, distance and freedom, clarity and good form. He is the god of the saving or preserving awareness (σωφροσύνη) expressed in the Delphic dictum, “Know thyself,” meaning “Realize what human beings really are, that is, how great a distance separates them from the omnitemporal gods” (HG, 21617, 215, 52, 57, 59, 78-79, 66). Yājñavalkya would remark that such traits as serenity in the midst of action, the freedom of a ranging gaze, and saving, or preserving, awareness pertain to the Brahman-realm as well. In a manifestation of Athena or Apollo, the god is revealed as the very essence of the realization. That is, the realization’s ultimate meaning is that it is a ray of the divine, illumining human life. Homer realizes that the complete lucidity in which we DRUECKER 25 sometimes act is a connection with something superior to us, even though we think of it as a quality of our own minds. In decisive moments, what a warrior realizes is both himself and the deity together (HG, 7, 247, 174, 184-85). Yājñavalkya would comment here that in the Upanishads, this non-separateness of the human and divine is known as “non-duality” (advaita; BU, IV.3,32): “Whoever meditates on a divinity that is other (anyām) [than himself], thinking, ‘This [god] is one (anyah), I am another (anyah),’ does not know [‘I am Brahman’]” (BU, I.4.10). Homer’s recognition of moments in which the divine and the human are non-dual is sharply opposed to a view that would see Athena and Apollo as external causes of the events he is narrating (HG, 213). Somewhat similarly, according to Yājñavalkya, we are invited to awaken to Brahman not as an external cause, but rather as what is most profound in our experience.6 When the god is present in moments of non-duality, the warrior’s ego and personality recede into the background (HG, 241f.). That sort of impersonality, which also characterizes the moment when we experience the truth of a Euclidean proposition, is inherent in the Brahman-realm, according to Yājñavalkya. The divine coming-to-presence has been said to occur at “the critical moment when human powers suddenly converge, as if charged by electric contact, on some insight, some resolution, some deed.”7 Lightning comes forth from the clouds to strike buildings or trees that have risen from the earth; so, too, the divine suddenly emerges from the background to shock an individual only when that individual has gone forth from himself toward the background. Yājñavalkya could note that the instant of recognition of the Brahman realm is also compared to “a sudden flash of lightning” (BU, II.3.6; cf. KeU, IV.4). Moreover, he would think that moving toward the background might be, in some way, analogous to a “moving-towards” Brahman—something like the movement involved either in practicing meditation or in coming to wonder, “Who am I?” While in the examples given so far the divine manifestation has come in an awakening to significance or in an elaborating of a plan, this should not lead us to think the divine is encountered �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW merely by turning inward. The appearance of the goddess is not, for instance, Achilleus’s pondering whether to kill Agamemnon or to check his anger (I, 1.193), but rather the resolution of his introspection in a flash of certitude (HG, 174, 48). Yājñavalkya would agree that introspection neither characterizes the Brahman-realm nor is a means thereto. However, there is, he would add, a different sort of inward turn that can facilitate its realization. There are many instances in which a god is present at a moment when none of the characters is aware of it. But sometimes a warrior, when awakening to the full significance of his situation, may realize that his very awakening is itself the manifestation of a god. An interesting example occurs when Poseidon appears to the Aiantes in the likeness of Kalkas. At first neither brother is aware of the presence of a god; but, after Poseidon departs like a hawk, Aias son of Oïleus realizes that some god, whom he does not recognize, has addressed them, while Telemonian Aias notices only his own increased strength and energy (I, 13.43-80). On other occasions the human being recognizes the god by name—sometimes only after the encounter, but sometimes already at its inception (HG, 207-08). A god may be especially close to a particular individual in that the human being regularly displays the qualities of the particular god, as Athena acknowledges Odysseus does (O, 13.330-32; HG, 192-95). There is even one person who seems to be fully awake to divine presence—Homer himself, who sees events through and through even when the participants see only the surface. And often when the participants sense only that a divine hand is touching them the poet is able to name the god concerned and knows the secret of his purpose (HG, 195-96). According to Yājñavalkya, there is just as much idiosyncratic variety in realizing Brahman as there is in recognizing the presence of a god in moments of waking up to meaning: different individuals respond differently, both in frequency and in degree, to such events. Up to this point in our consideration of Homer we have DRUECKER 27 emphasized cognition. This is appropriate because cognition in a broad sense is the way in which we come to realize Brahman. However, this focus on cognition gives a distorted picture of the world as Homer depicts it. For there are many gods—Ares, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Hera, and others—who manifest themselves in the world in addition to Athena and Apollo, who are especially associated with realizing significance. Moreover, the appearance of a deity often involves an inner phenomenon other than awakening, as when Hektor’s body is “packed full of force and fighting strength” (I, ,17.211-12) or when Athena puts “courage into the heart” of Nausikaa (O, 6.140). Yājñavalkya could point out that these phenomena of enlivening, energizing, and strengthening were included, along with realization, in what the Upanishads call the “Inner Controller” (antaryāmin; BU, III.7.1).8 He might also remark that Homer did not think of nonduality as limited to cognition, because he recognized that these phenomena, too, were divine manifestations. In addition to a character’s “waking up” to the presence of a god, a deity often manifests itself by affecting a character from outside. Most notably, Patroklos’s aristeia was put to an end by Apollo, who “stood behind him, and struck his back and his broad shoulders with a flat stroke of the hand so that his eyes spun” (I, 16.791-92). Yājñavalkya would point out that events like this might be echoes of Brahman as “pouring forth,” or “emitting,” all things. (MuU, I.1.7.) He would add that, just as Homer recognizes the one Apollo both in his striking of Patroklos and in Hektor’s realization mentioned earlier, so too the Upanishads express the realization that the inner controlling and the outer emitting are one when it states: “This Self is…Brahman” (BU, II.5.19). B. Aristotle and Averroes For help in thinking through the experiences highlighted by Homer, we turn to Aristotle. In moments of realization, we are in a state of what he called “being-at-work,”—what I will call “activity.” Activity is “complete over any time whatever”; it is not a temporal phenomenon. By contrast, a motion “is in time and directed at some end…and is complete when it brings about that �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW at which it aims” (NE, 1174a15-21). For example, whereas the activity of dancing is “all there” at each moment, the motion of learning to dance is complete only when you’ve actually become a dancer. Homer’s gods Athena and Apollo are manifested in activities of ours that would be “choiceworthy in themselves” (NE, 1144a1) even if they didn’t effect anything in addition. The active state of our ability to awaken to significance is what is best and most powerful in us and is “either divine itself or the most divine of the things in us.” When it is directed toward the most divine, timeless things, it is a pure beholding (NE, 1177a13-21). One living in this state of activity would be living a life that “is divine as compared with a human life.” Hence, Aristotle said, “one ought to immortalize” (NE, 1177b25-34); that is, one ought to be as much as possible in this best state of activity—the activity of Homer’s Athena and Apollo, or of Aristotle’s impersonal divinity. When we are in that state, we are in the same state over a limited extent of time as is the divine over the whole of time.9 Moreover, “each person would even seem to be this [best state of activity]” (NE, 1178a1). “[A]nd so the person who loves and gratifies this is most a lover of self” (NE, 1168b33). Yājñavalkya could comment that the Brahman-realm, too, has the characteristics of being an atemporal phenomenon, of being a sort of pure beholding, and of being our true self. Moreover, it, too, is impersonal, not divided up into essentially different Athena-moments and Apollo-moments. Finally, knowers of Brahman, living the life of their true self, are leading a life that transcends the human. Consequently, since most of us live in ignorance of Brahman, most of us are not living the life of our true self. Aristotle seems to agree formally with this conclusion: it is, after all, an implication of Apollo’s injunction “Know thyself.” It might be objected, however, that Aristotle’s characterization of the true self as divine contradicts Apollo’s insistence on separating the human from the divine. Yājñavalkya would reply that when a similar objection is voiced in his tradition, the response is that the contradiction is only apparent. Someone who DRUECKER 29 took the “You” in “You are That!” to refer to his ordinary sense of self, would be engaging in self-inflation. Students are encouraged to ponder “Who am I?” as a practice, in order to shift them from the ordinary to the true sense of self. So, Yājñavalkya and Aristotle could both take “Know thyself” in a double sense: “With respect to your ordinary sense of self, think mortal thoughts, but recognize that the true you is divine activity.” In On the Soul Aristotle began to sketch what might be entailed in realizing his analogue to “You are That!”—namely, the immortalizing involvement in the best activity. One of Aristotle’s foremost interpreters, Averroes, has developed Aristotle’s blackand-white sketch into a detailed, full-color portrait that bears a striking resemblance to the Upanishadic picture. To that portrait we now turn.10 The customary name in philosophical texts for Aristotle’s best state of activity is “intellection.” Following Aristotle’s lead, Averroes begins his account of intellection with what is clearer to us, and he ends it with what is clearer by nature. There are three main figures in his initial portrait—the “material intellect,” the “disposed intellect,” and the “agent intellect.” Averroes compares intellection, as Aristotle does, to a craft in which some material, like clay, receives a form—say, that of a bowl (OS, 430a10-14). When I acquire a simple intelligible, such as, ‘straight line,’ it is received as form by the material intellect—which, not being corporeal, is material only in the sense that it serves as materialfor. My disposed intellect,11 now having the acquired intelligible as an active disposition (ἕξις), is in what Aristotle calls a first state of maintaining itself (έχειν) in (ἔν) its completed condition (τέλος), with respect to this intelligible. Henceforth we shall say, somewhat inaccurately, that the mind in this state is “in first actuality.” By analogy, we could say that Suzanne Farrell, the accomplished dancer, is “in first actuality” when not dancing (since she maintains all the dispositions of a dancer), but is “in second actuality” when dancing (since she then makes use of those dispositions.) Similarly, when I am not contemplating the intelligible ‘straight line,’ my intellect is “in first actuality” (since I have the disposition necessary to contemplate it if I so choose), �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW but when I am contemplating it, perhaps in the course of a demonstration, my intellect is “in second actuality” (since I am then making use of the disposition). According to Aristotle, “the soul never engages in intellection without an appearance” (431a24), which Averroes takes to mean imaginative appearance.12 Thus, when I am led up to (ἐπάγεσθαι) a particularly suggestive instance, say a good image of a straight line, that image specifies that the material intellect will receive the intelligible ‘straight line.’ Averroes said that the material intellect, as so determined by my imagination,13 is “conjoined” with it and that my disposed intellect is precisely this conjunction of the material intellect with my imagination. One of the unusual features of Averroes’ interpretation is that according to him, there is only one material intellect. My disposed intellect and your disposed intellect are the results of its conjunctions with the different images in our respective imaginations; we actualize it differently. In this way the one material intellect is said to be incidentally many. (Zedler 1951, 175.) Moreover, since my imagination is corporeal, the intelligibles of mundane things in me, and, consequently, my disposed intellect itself, are generable and corruptible.14 Yājñavalkya might also say that the one Brahman is incidentally many individual selves (jīvātman). Now, before the intelligible ‘“straight line’” can be received by the material intellect, the irrelevant portions of the image in which it is “embodied” must be taken away (ἀφαιρεῖσθαι). This abstraction brings it into the state of actual intelligibility. To elucidate this act of abstraction, Averroes referred to another of Aristotle’s comparisons: The passage from potential to actual intelligibility is like a color’s transition from potential visibility to actual visibility when the lights in a room are turned on. The “light” that illumines the darkness of the image, producing the abstraction of the latent intelligible, is the agent intellect. This picture of the agent intellect as shining from the outside onto a potential intelligible embedded in an image is, however, only the way it first appears to us. Averroes said that if we consider its role in the intellectual insights we have when we draw conclusions from the intelligibles that we have acquired—for DRUECKER 31 example, the insight that one and only one straight line may be drawn between two points—we come to a deeper view. In reality, the agent intellect is related to the intelligibles of my disposed intellect as form to material. It is as though the agent intellect were a light full of Color itself. What really happens when it shines on an image is that the image’s conjunction with Color itself draws out of the latter a particular color, one that had been potentially within Color itself. Then that particular color is received by the material intellect. Even in my acts of intellecting simple intelligibles in the world, the agent intellect is incidentally in partial conjunction with my imagination.15 Since I am, then, intellecting it to some degree, it must be at work as the form of my disposed intellect. For Averroes, this understanding means that the agent intellect itself is the source of the intelligibility of the corporeal world. For since the image arises on the basis of sense perception of things in the world, the potential intelligibles in my imagination are due to the potential intelligibles in the things in the world. Consequently, Averroes takes the agent intellect to be Aristotle’s unmoved mover from the Metaphysics (1072b18-30; 1075a5-11). Hence, there is only one agent intellect; and it is its very activity of unchanging, eternal self-intellection. Correlatively, the potential intelligibles of things in the world are their actualities, their being-at-work maintaining themselves in their respective states of completeness. Their intelligibility depends entirely upon the agent intellect in the following way: for each of them its state of completeness is the closest state to the agent intellect’s self-intellection that its materials are capable of attaining.16 The agent intellect’s responsibility for all intelligible being makes it analogous to the one source of all existence in Yājñavalkya’s tradition. But how can the self-directed intellection of the agent intellect be responsible for our intellection of the intelligibles in things outside of itself in the world, when it and the object of its intellection are absolutely one? Reflexively turned toward itself, it is not aware of the multiplicity of the potential intelligibles of mundane things as such. Yet it nevertheless does comprehend �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW them, somewhat in the way that the craft of pottery-making comprehends the forms of all the bowls for which it could be responsible. But to be actively responsible for the intellection of this intelligible on this occasion, the agent intellect must also be “turned outwards,” as it were, away from itself, in order to shine on the appearances of mundane things in the imaginations of individual human beings. When it is turned outward but still not illuminating any appearance, the agent intellect seems to be lacking any intelligible. And yet as an image arises, the agent intellect will bring one of the intelligibles into focus. Thus, surprisingly, the agentintellect-as-turned-outward is pure potentiality, pure material-for; it is the material intellect. In order to appear as such, that is, as empty of intelligibles of mundane things, it must become “temporarily ignorant of itself” (Blaustein 1984, 214-15). This self-forgetfulness is concretely realized by its conjunction with our imaginations. By virtue of that conjunction, the agent intellect becomes “ignorant” of being the self-intellecting source of all intelligibility; it appears, instead, in each of us in a double form—first, as our partially actualized receptivity for intelligibles (our disposed intellect) and, second, as light eliciting those intelligibles by abstraction from our images. The agent intellect’s ignorance of itself seems to be in remarkable agreement with the role of ignorance in the Upanishads: according to Yājñavalkya a knower of Brahman “knows knowledge and ignorance, both of them, together” (IU, 11). For Brahman, too, turns outward, so that ignorance, that is, awareness of multiplicity, is one of its aspects (Aurobindo 1996, 61-62 and 94). But Brahman is both knowledge and ignorance; the two are inseparable (Aurobindo 1996, 58 and 72). From the perspective of an individual human being, as I learn more, the agent intellect becomes the form of my disposed intellect to an ever greater degree. In this way my three principal differences from it will decrease. First, in acquiring more intelligibles, my disposed intellect becomes less and less a partial view of the agent intellect. Second, in advancing to intelligibles that are less and less referred to the corporeal world, my disposed intellect DRUECKER 33 becomes purer.17 Third, in embracing ever more encompassing intelligibles, it approaches the agent intellect’s unitary vision. Ultimately, while still “in this life” (Ivry 1966, 83), I may arrive at the point where I have acquired all the intelligibles.18 Then I will have achieved a state of complete conjunction19 with the agent intellect. My disposed intellect will have lost all traces of individuality,20 which are what make it my disposed intellect; it will have perished as such. All of me that is not intellect is “cut off” from my intellect, which is identical with the agent intellect (Blaustein 1984, 272). In this sense the state of complete conjunction has been said to involve an “existential break” from the world.21 Once again Yājñavalkya would recognize in this existential break an analogue, at a deep experiential level, to a prominent feature of the realization of Brahman. In complete conjunction, I experience myself permanently (Ivry 1996, 83) as shining forth intelligibility, but this “myself” is not the self I used to think I was, for the conjunction removes that which had prevented me from recognizing that the agent intellect is my form.22 Averroes says that at this point the agent intellect, united with us as our form, functions as our sole operative principle.23 We might wonder what life in this state of conjunction would be like. One suggestion is that I might experience it as “a wakeful loss of rationality,” a loss of consciousness of my humanity (Blaustein 1984, 272). I would not be engaged in thinking things out; I would not be conscious of myself as an individual, as a member of the human species. Alternatively, guided by his own experience, Yājñavalkya would propose that perhaps I might be aware of myself (what Aristotle in the Ethics pointed to as my true self) engaged in selfintellection, while simultaneously being aware of experiencing my ordinary self involved in its everyday activities against this backdrop. Yājñavalkya would offer two possibilities, the second of which would not be analogous to his own experience. First, in each instance of intellection, I could perhaps experience the agent intellect as transitioning from unitary self-intellection to the offering of an aspect of itself to my imagination. Second, analogous to the end of the path outlined in the Yoga-Sutras (that �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is, kaivalya),24 it could be that when I am engaged in self-intellection I ignore the particulars of the world and desist from everyday activities, and so, ultimately, wither away and die.25 Part Two: Cit (Pure Awareness) To begin our consideration of pure awareness, let us return to Aristotle. In the Nichomachean Ethics he writes: [O]ne who is seeing is aware (αỉσθάνεται) that he is seeing, and one who is hearing [is aware] that he is hearing,…[and, in general,] whenever we are perceiving [we are aware] that we are perceiving and whenever we are engaged in intellection (νοῶμεν) [we are aware] that we are engaged in intellection (1170a29-31).26 To what aspect of experience is Aristotle pointing here? Many believe this passage means that perceptual consciousness is accompanied by a reflection on, or a thought about, that consciousness.27 For example, I know that I’m looking at you seated there before me. However, such reflection seems to occur only intermittently. Hence, an alternative interpretation has been proposed,28 according to which perceptual consciousness is always “selfaware”—that is, aware (of) itself,29 but not conscious of itself—although, at any given time, we may notice selfawareness to a greater or lesser degree. Yājñavalkya would emphasize that only diligent practice could enable me to recognize the difference between reflective consciousness and selfawareness in my own experience. To clarify the difference between selfawareness and reflective consciousness, we shall draw upon some descriptions of experience by the philosopher J.-P. Sartre.30 Consciousness is necessarily always aware (of) itself, but precisely as being conscious of an object beyond itself. “[T]his awareness (of) consciousness…is not positional; that is, consciousness is not for itself its own object. Its object is outside of it by nature…. We shall call such a consciousness ‘consciousness of the first degree’” (S, 23-24). In this essay, “consciousness” will always DRUECKER 35 mean positional consciousness, consciousness of an object. As an example of first degree consciousness, let us take my perceptual consciousness-of-a-coffee-cup-on-a-table—say, in the mode of staring-at.31 In this experience, the perceptual consciousness is not an object for itself, whereas the coffee-cupon-a-table is an object for it. But in each such act of consciousness, there lives an attentive presence by virtue of which the consciousness is aware (of) itself. When, as is usually the case, the attentive presence goes unnoticed, we experience only a dim awareness (of) consciousness. Yājñavalkya could point out that in his tradition this awareness is called the “witness” (sākshī; ŚU, VI.12-14) and the self-aware quality of consciousness is called “self-luminousness” (svajyotir). He might add that this is what he was referring to when he said, “You cannot see the seer of seeing; you cannot hear the hearer of hearing; you cannot think of the thinker of thinking; you cannot perceive the perceiver of perceiving” (BU, III.4.2); and when he said, “It is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unperceived perceiver. Other than this there is no seer…hearer…perceiver” (BU, 7.23). Sartre would seem to agree with him that this awareness cannot be the object of consciousness: this sphere “is a sphere of absolute existence, that is, of pure spontaneities, which are never objects” (S, 77). As opposed to this selfaware, first-degree consciousness-ofobjects, which makes up most of our waking lives, there arises from time to time “a consciousness directed onto [the firstdegree] consciousness, [that is,] a consciousness which takes [the first-degree] consciousness as its object.” Sartre calls it a “seconddegree” or “reflecting consciousness.” Whereas in the previous case there was no duality at all to synthesize, here “we are in the presence of a synthesis of two consciousnesses, of which one is consciousness of the other.” When I think, “Staring at this coffee cup on the table is wasting time,” this act of reflective consciousness involves a synthesis of the thinking consciousness and the reflected-upon consciousness-of-the-coffee-cup. Moreover, just like first-degree consciousness, second-degree consciousness—my thinking, in this instance—is self-aware (S, �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 28-29). When the thinking consciousness posits the previously unreflected-upon staring consciousness as its object, it is not its own staring that it is positing. What the reflecting consciousness states about the staring consciousness does not concern itself; it concerns the staring consciousness, which the reflecting consciousness reflects upon. Hence, what reflecting consciousness is turns out to be selfaware consciousness of another, prior, selfaware consciousness, which, in turn, is consciousness of an object that is not a consciousness. Reflecting consciousness really does re-flect; that is, it bends backward to look at an earlier moment of consciousness. The fact that it is not its own staring that the thinking consciousness posits in reflecting on the staring consciousness raises the question whether the I that seems to be thinking “is that of the consciousness reflected upon” and not, in fact, an I supposed to be “common to the two superimposed consciousnesses.” Indeed, one suspects that the reason why every reflection possesses a sense of self is that the reflective act itself gives birth to the sense of self in the consciousness that is reflected upon (S, 28-29).32 Sartre offers an example in order to test this hypothesis: I was absorbed just now in my reading. I am going to seek to recall the circumstances of my reading…. Thus I am going to revive…also a certain thickness of un-reflected-upon consciousness, since the objects were able to be perceived only by that consciousness and remain relative to it. That consciousness must not be posited as the object of my reflection; on the contrary, I must direct my attention onto the revived objects, but without losing sight of the un-reflectedupon consciousness, while maintaining a sort of complicity with it and making an inventory of its content in a non-positional way. The result is not in doubt. While I was reading, there was consciousness of the book, of the heroes of the novel, but the I was not inhabiting that consciousness (S, 30; italics in the DRUECKER 37 last sentence added). Here Sartre reawakens the original self-aware consciousness and dwells in the awareness. That awareness is also a precondition for reflection. Should he reflect, upon being absorbed in his readings, “I was absorbed in my reading,” then, instead of dwelling in the awarenesscomponent of the original consciousness, he would, as it were, transform it into an act of consciousness, the object of which is the original consciousness, (of) which the awareness was aware. There certainly is an I present to that second-order consciousness.33 So, we may call it “self-consciousness.” Based on this I of reflection, Sartre shows how I construct a unified sense of self in three stages: first, as a unity of states, like my hatred of Peter; then as a unity of actions, like my playing a piano sonata; and finally as a unity of qualities, like my spitefulness. For instance, let us suppose a first-order consciousness of disgust and anger, present together with the perception of Peter. If the self-consciousness reflected only on what was appearing in the first-order consciousness, it would be thinking, “I feel disgusted with Peter.” But instead, the angry disgust at Peter appears as a profile, or perspectival view, of the disposition “hatred of Peter,” just as a house will show itself to me in different profiles depending upon where I am standing. The hatred appears to be showing a “side” of itself through the momentary experience of angry disgust. To the self-consciousness, the angry disgust appears to be emanating from the hatred. On a later occasion, perhaps, the hatred will appear upon reflection as an actualization of a quality of spitefulness, which is in me (S, 4546, 51, 53). But in neither case does the self-consciousness realize that the hatred or the spitefulness is arising in the moment of reflection; rather it supposes that the state or the quality was already there in the first-order consciousness.34 This process resulting in a sense of self leads me to say things like “my consciousness,” when in fact “[t]he I is not the owner of consciousness; it is the object of consciousness” (S, 77). Yājñavalkya could report that a process of construction of the �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sense of self (aham-kāra) also figures prominently in the Upanishadic tradition. It leads to the arising of many fears and desires, which, in turn, function as barriers to the realization of Brahman by keeping us “glued” to objects. I note that there is a remarkable agreement here with Sartre, who wrote: “But perhaps the essential role [of the sense of self] is to mask to consciousness its own spontaneity…. Hence, everything happens as if consciousness…were hypnotizing itself over that sense of self, which it constituted” (S, 81-82). Usually we do not notice the awareness-aspect of consciousness because we are so taken up with what is appearing to consciousness. Yet, on occasion, awareness may stand out in our experience. For instance: Some people are engaged in a heated discussion at an outdoor café, when a nearby car suddenly backfires. Several of the participants may be so caught up in the conversation that they don’t even notice the loud sound; others may be startled and shift their attention to the street; someone who was anchored in awareness, however, would notice, but not be jarred by, the sound. Another example: On a good day the football quarterback Joe Montana, at the top of his game, would experience a pass play as follows.35 He was conscious of the linemen rushing at him, of his receivers running downfield, and so on. But instead of looking with hurried, anxious glances, he experienced an awareness spread over the whole unfolding scene. All the players seemed to be moving in slow motion, and everything appeared with great clarity and distinctness. He was keenly aware of his own body, the motions of his limbs and an overall sense of relaxation, as his arm drew back and the ball headed toward the receiver.36 Taken by itself this example may mislead us into thinking that awareness is dependent on the attainment of a certain level of skill, in this case, that of an MVP quarterback. But the previous example and the following one make it clear that this is not the case. A third illustration: Some automobile drivers experience freeway traffic as follows: “First, one driver cuts me off; then a slowpoke is holding me up. My consciousness narrows to focus on the offending driver; and, irritated, I react by honking or DRUECKER 39 suddenly changing lanes.” Another driver may perceive the same cars on the beltway as if they were moving in a force field. She experiences that field as calling forth the alterations in her driving required in order to maintain a smooth flow of traffic. A fourth instance: “Surgeons say that during a difficult operation they have the sensation that the entire operating team is a single organism, moved by the same purpose; they describe it as a “ballet” in which the individual is subordinated to the group performance” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 65). A fifth example: The following story shows a transition out of awareness into self-consciousness: Suppose a woman is engaged in sewing something. A friend enters the room and begins speaking to her. As long as she listens to her friend and sews in [awareness], she has no trouble doing both. But if she gives her attention to her friend’s words and a thought arises in her mind as she thinks about what to reply, her hands stop sewing; if she turns her attention to her sewing and thinks about that, she fails to catch everything her friend is saying, and the conversation does not proceed smoothly. In either case….she has transformed [awareness] into thought. As her thoughts fix on one thing, they’re blank to all others, depriving the mind of its freedom.37 This example enables us to avoid the misconception that awareness is incompatible with words. For it was a shift in the way in which she attended to speech, or to her sewing, that led to the woman’s loss of the ability to attend to both simultaneously. A sixth and final case, as described by Merleau-Ponty (1945): Being most of the time in the consciousness-mode, we live in a world that “only stirs up second-hand thoughts in us.” Our mind is taken up with “thoughts, already formulated and already expressed, which we can recall silently to ourselves and by which we give ourselves the illusion of an interior life. But this supposed silence is in reality full of words rattling around.” However, occasionally we may “rediscover primordial silence, underneath �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the words’ rattling around.” Then we pass from the mode of consciousness-of-objects to dwell in awareness. We experience “a certain emptiness,” “a certain lack which seeks to fill itself,” to be transformed into speech (213-14). Then there can emerge “an authentic word, one which formulates something for the first time”—such as “that of the child who is pronouncing her first word, of the lover who is discovering his feeling” (207-08), or of “the writer who is saying and thinking something for the first time” (214). In the mode of awareness, we can live through a sort of original emergence. Words usually serve to keep our thoughts moving within already formulated articulations. They could be said to function like “preciptitates” (Niederschläge)38 of previous “chemical reactions,” brought about by our own words or those of others. However, when awareness becomes prominent, it acts as a catalyst, which facilitates a fresh chemical reaction. All the above examples manifest an awake, keen involvement in experience together with an absence of the sense of self and of self-focused emotions and motivations from the foreground. And each of them brings to the foreground a different property of awareness: the first, “unstuckness” to objects; the second, spaciousness, not merely in the spatial and the temporal senses; the third, responsiveness to dynamic qualities of the surrounding field; the fourth, organic connectedness with whom or what39 is in the field; the fifth, motion away from the directing I; and the sixth, a sense of emptiness out of which newness arises spontaneously. We might say that a good seminar could give evidence of some of these signs of increased awareness. If, over time, the participants have developed seminar skills analogous to the skills developed by the members of a surgical team, the seminar might be experienced as a sort of ballet. Along with the development of those skills, some of the members may have cultivated their awareness to some degree, paralleling the range of levels of awareness in the operating team. That cultivation may enable them to experience “a certain emptiness,” from which an “authentic word” may emerge with greater frequency. Such characteristics of awareness as those listed above have DRUECKER 41 led people in certain pursuits, such as martial arts, to cultivate it, so that it will remain reliably in the foreground. In developing a painterly vision,40 for instance, one must learn to forget what things are, in order to see how they are actually appearing to the eye—which means, how they are coming into being before our eyes. As Merleau-Ponty says of Cézanne: “It is the mountain that he interrogates with his gaze. What exactly does he ask of it? To unveil the means, visible and not otherwise, by which it is making itself a mountain before our eyes.”41 We might expand on this account in the following way. As a potential painter’s awareness becomes more prominent, she no longer sees things as already “finished off,” but, instead, as having a potential for greater “aliveness.” It is as if they were calling to her to join in their emergence. Then she may heed the appeal and begin to paint. Now it is this particular piece of fruit before her that she captures “coming into being before her eyes” in such a way that it can do so later before our eyes.42 Another example of the cultivation of awareness is found in psychoanalysis. In his recommendations on the proper attitude to be adopted by the analyst, Freud counsels a state of mind possessing, first, an absence of reasoning or deliberate attempts to select, concentrate or understand; and [second,] even, equal and impartial attention to all that occurs within the field of awareness…. This technique, says Freud…“consists simply in not directing one’s notice to anything in particular and in maintaining the same ‘evenly suspended attention’…in the face of all that one hears” (Epstein 1904, 194).43 That is, the analyst deliberately withdraws from consciousnessof-objects and dwells in the awareness component of consciousness. This open attentional attitude is to be distinguished, on the one hand, from a merely passive attention, in which the mind wanders freely from object to object, and, on the other, from a focal attentional attitude, searching for a particular meaning (Epstein 1904, 195). Partly because evenly suspended �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW attention was criticized as unattainable,44 Freud’s prescriptions to practice it did not become integrated into psychoanalytic training programs. However, Wilfred Bion, perhaps the most thoughtful psychoanalyst of the latter part of the twentieth century, forcefully advocated this practice in the following terms: [T]he capacity to forget, the ability to eschew desire and understanding, must be regarded as essential discipline for the psycho-analyst. Failure to practise this discipline will lead to a steady deterioration in the powers of observation whose maintenance is essential. The vigilant submission to such discipline will by degrees strengthen the analyst’s mental powers just in proportion as lapses in this discipline will debilitate them…. To attain to the state of mind essential for the practice of psycho-analysis I avoid any exercise of memory…. When I am tempted to remember the events of any particular session I resist the temptation…. If I find that some half-memory is beginning to obtrude I resist its recall…. A similar procedure is followed with regard to desires: I avoid entertaining desires and attempt to dismiss them from my mind. For example…it interferes with analytic work to permit desires for the patient’s cure, or well-being, or future to enter the mind. Such desires…lead to progressive deterioration of [the analyst’s] intuition…. [There is an aspect of ultimate reality] that is currently presenting the unknown and unknowable [in the consulting room]. This is the ‘dark spot’ that must be illuminated by ‘blindness’ [that is, ignorance]. Memory and desire are ‘illuminations’ that destroy the value of the analyst’s capacity for observation as a leakage of light into a camera might destroy the value of the film being exposed (Bion [1970] 1983, 51-52, DRUECKER 43 55-56, 69). The effect of failing to observe this discipline is to interpret what the patient says in terms of what the analyst wishes or already “knows,” thus closing her off from what may be emerging for the first time in the current hour. Bion’s psychoanalytic state of mind may be comparable to Socratic ignorance. Both represent an opening up of the self in conversation, for the sake of noticing emergent possibilities that would otherwise remain unthought. Another area in which a practice has been advocated for the enhancement of awareness is philosophy. In the early twentieth century, Edmund Husserl proposed pursuing wisdom by following a path that he called “phenomenology.” By this he meant an account of the things appearing to you precisely in the way in which they actually appear. Philosophy students sometimes think that studying phenomenology entails mainly reading books. However, learning to see the things appearing to you precisely in the way in which they actually appear takes practice. Martin Heidegger, Husserl’s best known student, had great difficulty at the beginning of his study of phenomenology. It concerned the simple question how thinking’s manner of procedure which called itself “phenomenology” was to be carried out…. My perplexity decreased slowly…only after I met Husserl personally in his workshop…. Husserl’s teaching took place in a step-by-step training in phenomenological “seeing” which at the same time demanded that one relinquish the untested use of philosophical knowledge…. I myself practiced phenomenological seeing, teaching and learning in Husserl’s proximity after 1919.45 The phenomenological seeing that one would practice is founded on an act called “the phenomenological reduction.” While the reduction was instituted in the service of phenomenological philosophy, Husserl was aware of a powerful transformative effect it could have upon the person practicing it: �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Perhaps it will even turn out that the total phenomenological attitude, and the [reduction] belonging to it, essentially has, first of all, the vocation of effecting a complete personal transformation, which would, in the first place, be comparable to a religious conversion, but which beyond that contains within itself the significance of being the greatest existential transformation to which humanity as humanity is called.46 Yājñavalkya would note at this point that the designation “greatest existential transformation”—like the earlier “existential break” associated with conjunction in Averroes—also fits with the experience of “waking up to” (pratibodham) Brahman (KeU, II.4). In characterizing the phenomenological reduction, I shall borrow the descriptions of the Husserl’s closest collaborator in his later years, Eugen Fink, because they are vivid and strongly suggestive of awakening to Brahman.47 The phenomenological reduction is a two-part act (F, 41). Husserl called the first component of that act a “disconnection” (Ausschaltung) or an epoché (ἐποχή)—a suspension of the “natural attitude,” the attitude in which we take things for granted, or as a matter of course (als selbstverständlich). Disconnection means that you deliberately abstain from all beliefs; you inhibit your customary acceptance of what “counts” (das Geltende) for you (F, 39-40). In Sartre’s terms, you cease living in acts of positional consciousness. While remaining disconnected, as we observed Sartre doing, you turn your attention from the objects of consciousness to the awareness ingredient in consciousness-of-objects. You are not caught up with objects, but are attentively “spread” over the whole of consciousness-of-objects, without positing that whole as an object. And you alter your mode of attention from an active searching-for to a receptive letting-things-come. You are learning to do something involuntary, like preparing to receive “the visitation of sleep,” which comes as the god Dionysus visits his followers, when they no longer are distinct from the role they are playing.48 You are not gradually acquiring things in the way the DRUECKER 45 disposed intellect acquires intelligibles. The disconnection includes the “nullification” of the sense of yourself as an empirical human being—it “un-humanizes” (entmenschlicht) you inasmuch as it “lays bare the…onlooker in himself” that is “already at work” in you, into which you now “fade away” (F, 40). In the terminology of this essay, you disidentify with your sense of self, and you pass into awareness instead of remaining in consciousness. Yājñavalkya might remark that the realization of Brahman involves a similar correlation between the deconstruction of the sense of self (nir-aham-kāra) and a fading away into the “witness,” which, as we have seen, was already at work. You are now in a position to notice precisely what appears to you in just the way in which it appears. As with Freud’s evenly suspended attention, all the phenomena are treated equally; none is assumed in advance to have priority over the others. As in the case of painterly vision, you are not imposing your knowledge on your experiencing; you are operating “prior” to your identification of things or events. Your going backwards involves a sort of reversal of the outward-turning action of the agent intellect. For the agent intellect elicited intelligibles from their latent state in the appearances, whereas the disconnection goes back behind those intelligibles, which, due to language, are already at work in our ordinary experience of the appearances. In its open attentiveness, the disconnection has an “empty” relationship to experience, perhaps somewhat like the agent intellect in its “empty” state as material intellect. The second component of the phenomenological reduction, the reducing proper, is a leading-back.49 In the reducing, “while explicitly inquiring backwards behind the acceptednesses…with respect to your belonging to the world,” you “blast open (sprengen),” through transcendental insight, the “captivation and captivity (Befangenheit)” caused by those world-acceptednesses. You experience this as a “breakthrough” (Durchbruch; FK, 348). As a result, you discover for the first time that a primordial conviction (Husserl calls this an Urdoxa) has been underlying all of your experiences—an unformulated, implicit acceptance of the �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW world and of yourself as belonging to it (F, 40-41). Here ‘world’ refers, not to the collection of all things, but to what is originally given as a universal background, in the way a horizon is given for vision. While you may have occasionally experienced a breakdown of particular beliefs in the past, that did not shake your implicit acceptance of the horizon. You are now sharing in the onlooker’s awareness of the world, which is the “universally flowing and continuing [world-] apperception,” the “underground” (Untergrund) out of which every act of consciousness springs up. In this sense, phenomenology is said to make the ultimate ground of the world available to an experience (FK, 349, 352, 340),50 one in which we experience “how…the world is coming about for us” (Husserl 1962, 147.29-32). Yājñavalkya might accept the notion that painterly vision, evenly suspended attention, and the phenomenological reduction are at least partial Brahman-experiences, ones that go beyond the spontaneously arising Brahman-moments on the football field or on the highway. However, he would point out two differences. First, they are cultivated in the service of other ends—painting, healing patients, or pursuing wisdom—whereas realization of Brahman is the supreme end (BU, IV.3.22), pursued for its own sake. Second, in the other contexts awareness is to be actualized only on particular occasions—before the canvas, in the consulting room, or in the phenomenological “workshop”—whereas one remains continually in the Brahman-realm. According to Husserl, in going about the course of ordinary life, the phenomenologist has the epoché as “an active-dispositional51 attitude to which we resolve ourselves once and for all” and which “can be actualized again and again” (Husserl 1962, 153.36-37 and 140.19-20), like the dancer’s repeated re-actualizing of the dancing that she has as a first actuality. This raises the question whether the knower of Brahman could be said to be Brahman in this dispositional sense. In the Upanishadic tradition you may engage in a meditative practice, in which you could pass through several stages. At the beginning you deliberately concentrate and turn your DRUECKER 47 consciousness inward, while endeavoring to dwell more and more in awareness (Sekida 1985, 62 and 93).52 You need to keep reminding yourself to notice the awareness, which is always there. Initially you cannot accomplish this while you are doing something else, because a thing or event always captures your attention. After a while you will be able to maintain this centering of yourself in awareness. While your mind gradually has become dominated by awareness, you still occasionally experience moments of conscious reflection on the immediately preceding moment of awareness (Sekida 1985, 93).53 You are now “allowing the mind to fluctuate.” The following analogy may convey some sense of this experience.54 Suppose a neighbor were to ask you to look after her children. When the children come, you could take one of three different courses of action: first, you could abandon responsibility by telling them that they can do whatever they want as long as they don’t bother you; or, second, you could try to control them by telling them what to do and what not to do; or, third, you could allow the children to play. This “allowing” is not active, since you do not interfere. It is not passive, since you are present with the children…in a total way. It is like a cat sitting at a mouse hole. It appears to be asleep, but let the mouse show but a whisker and the cat will pounce. It is only by allowing that one truly understands what allowing means. “Allowing” brings awareness to the fore in a way that pushing away and controlling do not.55 You are aware of movements from focused to unfocused consciousness, of shifts from perceptual to thinking consciousness, of fluctuations from consciousness-of to empty awareness, and so forth, as well as of the reversals of all these. “Allowing is…so to say, what fluctuating awareness is ‘made of.’” Eventually no reflection is experienced any more; this total wakefulness completely purifies one of the “sleepiness” which is what the “habit” of consciousness really is (Sekida 1985, 62 and �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 94).56 To be aware you don’t have to be conscious of something; nor do you need to be someone, much less someone special (Low 1993, 40). Positional consciousness-of-objects, which was first for us, here shows itself to be in fact a derivative of non-positional awareness, which is what is first in itself. Initially, consciousness seemed to have the component of awareness; but now we may say that awareness sometimes manifests itself partially in the form of consciousness-of-objects, while in itself it is pure awareness (cit). Again, this is quite analogous to what Averroes said of the agent intellect. In itself it is pure, having no reference to the world; but, through its outward turn, it conjoins itself with our imaginations, resulting in the emergence from it of particular intelligibles. Upon emerging from this absolute silence, you may be so forcefully struck by something in the world that you consciously recognize that you are just pure awareness (Sekida 1985, 95). You momentarily become conscious of this “objectless being present with the children in a total way” as yourself. You are now conscious of having arrived in the Brahman-realm.57 Yājñavalkya might note that this recognition is what is expressed in the words: “I am Brahman!” (BU, I.4.10), adding that this experiencing of pure awareness is what he was referring to when he said: Though then he does not see [any thing], yet he does not see while seeing. There is no cutting off of the seeing of the seer…. But there is no second (dvitīyam), no other (anyad), separate from him, that he could see…. When there is some other (anyad), then one can see…the other (BU, IV.3.23 and 31). According to this account, pure awareness seems to be empty. Yājñavalkya could respond that, while it is empty of objects, it is full in the sense that it is an experiencing of the moment-tomoment “going forth of things in different directions” (vyuccaranti), like “sparks from a fire” (BU, II.1.20). Alternatively, it is an experiencing of the whole’s springing forth (sambhavati), which is like a spider emitting (srjate) a thread of its web, or like plants springing up from the earth (MuU, I.1.7). It DRUECKER 49 is as if in pure awareness we had “gone backward” to a point just “before” things, self, and world emerge. This brings to mind a passage in Sartre: “Thus, each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation ex nihilo...[—]this inexhaustible creation of existence of which we are not the creators” (S, 79). Yājñavalkya’s characterization of the fullness of pure awareness is conveyed by the traditional name for the Brahmanrealm, saccidānanda. The three parts of the one word express the oneness of pure existence (sat), pure awareness (cit), and pure joy (ānanda). Since there is no “of,” as in “consciousness-of,” awareness is pure sat rather than a consciousness of it. Fink seems to be giving voice to the same experience when he refers to the unique identity of the onlooker and the universally flowing worldapperception: as “there is…no other (anyad), separate from him, that he could see,” so there are no objects to separate the onlooker from the flowing world-apperception (FK, 355). This oneness of existence and awareness appears in the Thomistic branch of the Aristotelian tradition as follows: Each of us exists by virtue of a separate act of “is-ing” (esse), which is something other than our essence, our humanity. A human being is, not by virtue of being human, but by participation in, or reception of, is-ing from, absolute Is-ing, just as a piece of wood that is afire is so by participation in Fire (ST, Q.3, A.4r). Absolute Is-ing is like the Sun, and a human being is like some part of the air. Each individual instantiation of the intelligible human essence remains illuminated, that is, continues is-ing, only as long as absolute Is-ing is shining on it (ST, Q.8, A.1r). That is why Thomas says that what we call “creation” is, in fact, an ongoing “flowing out, arising, springing out (emanatio)” (ST, Q.44, A.1r) from absolute Is-ing. This much of Thomas’s view can help us to understand how the Upanishadic experience of cit is an experience of sat. Jacques Maritain (1956) applied Thomas’s understanding of the distinction between esse and essence to interpret the experience of the knower of Brahman in the following way.58 In reflecting consciousness we experience our soul in its acts. What we experience in reflection is not our intelligible essence but �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW rather our self as “prisoner of the mobility, of the multiplicity, of the fugitive luxuriance of the phenomena and the operations which emerge in us from the night of the unconscious—prisoner of the apparent self” (145-46). But, as we have seen, the cultivation of awareness, as distinct from consciousness or reflecting consciousness, enables those on the path toward realizing Brahman to pass out of ordinary self-conscious experience and into “an exceptional and privileged experience, emptying into the abyss of subjectivity…to escape from the apparent self, in order to reach the absolute Self” (146). These practitioners “strip themselves of every image, of every particular representation, and of every distinct operation to such a degree that…they reach not the essence of their soul but its existence, substantial esse itself” (148) “by an…annihilating connaturality” (146), in the absolute silence of total wakefulness. [F]rom the fact that existence is…limited only by the essence that receives it…one can understand that this negative experience, in reaching the substantial esse of the soul, reaches, at once, both this existence proper to the soul and existing in its metaphysical profusion and the sources of existing, according as the existence of the soul…is something that is emanating and is pervaded by an inflow from which it holds everything…. It is the sources of being in his soul that the human being reaches in this way (153-54). Thus, through practice in experiencing pure awareness (cit), the knower of Brahman has come to experience himself as the inflow of is-ing flowing out from absolute Is-ing (sat). One might say that the transition from experiencing myself as the witness to recognizing pure awareness is like going from having my finger on the pulsing of the world to recognizing my finger as the pulsing of the world. Maritain’s interpretation clearly distinguishes the Sun of Averroes’ outward-turned self-intellection of intelligible essences from the Sun of outflowing self-aware existence. DRUECKER 51 Now we are in a position to say that when Śvetaketu realizes “You are That,” he is experiencing himself as the outflow of sat and he is recognizing, as his true self, pure awareness (of) the continual emanation of sparks that are “on the way” to becoming things—and that this recognizing is that very outflow. Moreover, in this recognition Śvetaketu is what is recognized: “One who knows the supreme Brahman becomes that very Brahman” (MuU, III.2.9; cf. BU, IV.4.13) and “becomes this All” (BU, I.4.10). Just as we wondered earlier what the daily experience of the state of complete conjunction would be like, so now the analogous question arises with respect to the Brahman-realm. In the discussion of the phenomenological reduction, I raised the possibility that we could acquire pure awareness as a first actuality, in the sense of an active disposition. The knower of Brahman would then alternate between pure awareness and consciousness-of, in the way that I can “turn on” or “turn off” my contemplation of the Pythagorean Theorem as I wish. This suggestion would parallel Aristotle’s experience that we are, for intermittent periods of time, in the same state as the divine itself is over the whole of time. The difference would be that instead of turning from one mode of consciousness (say, perceiving or thinking) to another (intellecting), the knower of Brahman alternates at will between two different ways of total experiencing— between consciousness and pure awareness. It would be somewhat analogous to looking at the well-known ambiguous figure of the duck-rabbit, and seeing it now as a duck, now as a rabbit. We learn from Yājñavalkya that living in the Brahman-realm is, instead, like a hypothetical double seeing of both the duck and the rabbit at once, rather than like a seeing of them in alternation (Carter 1997, 54).59 The knower of Brahman is engaged with “consciousness-of” while simultaneously remaining in the realm of pure awareness. The following analogy, in which the author (Sharma) quotes Ramana Maharshi, conveys something of this: The ordinary person only sees the reflection in the mirror but the realized person sees the reflection as �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW well as the mirror. “For instance you see a reflection in the mirror and the mirror. You know the mirror to be the reality and the picture in it a mere reflection. Is it necessary that to see the mirror we should cease to see the reflection in it?” Similarly, the realized one continues to experience the world in his realized state. Thus the realized person appreciates “the distinctions” of sound, taste, form, smell etc. “But he always perceives and experiences the one reality in all of them.”60 Brahman-knowers experience the everyday world in the mirror of purified awareness, and this makes possible their keen yet calm involvement in that world. In the analogy we could take “seeing the reflection” to stand for consciousness of the world, and “seeing the mirror,” for pure awareness. When I see the mirror along with the reflections, the latter are not being viewed “from outside,” as they are in the mode of consciousness, but rather as emerging out of awareness. One might also apply the analogy to the self by saying that knowers of Brahman experience their ordinary selves, too, as being virtual images cast by the mirror. The mirror analogy may be applied to the modes of experiencing other than those encountered specifically in meditative practice. Consciousness-of-objects in any manner—perceiving, sensing, emoting, evaluating, thinking, and so on—and selfconsciousness, too, are like a vision of things in the virtual space of the mirror. There are two fundamentally different modes of consciousness-of-objects, depending upon whether the object in question is an object in the true sense. When it maintains itself throughout a succession of acts of consciousness, it is an object in the etymological sense, namely something set or put (jectum) before or over against (ob) the act of consciousness. This settingover-against is what is meant by “subject-object duality.” Such an object shall be referred to henceforth as an ‘Object.’ It has an identity, to which we may return again and again. The following example illustrates the different layers that may arise in perceptual consciousness-of-Objects. It begins with DRUECKER 53 the emergence of an implicit Object from the background, continues with a prepredicative explicating of it, and then undergoes various layers of predicative development. The following illustration may help to explain this: While I am engaged in seminar, someone’s coffee cup may emerge from the margins of my consciousness and may attract my attention and become an explicit object of consciousness. My attention may travel from its color to a figure on the side, and then to its overall shape, and so on.61 Then my interest may awaken sufficiently so that I think, “The cup has a circular figure on the side.” This shift represents a transition from the cup’s just previously having become implicitly determined as having a circle on its side to its being grasped in an active identification as determined by the circle on its side.62 Then I may think, “The fact that the cup has that circular figure on its side is puzzling. I wonder what it stands for.” My thought may subsequently be led to such Objects as “the circular,” “shape in general,” and “property.”63 “Prior” to such perceptual consciousness of Objects and its developments, there is a sensory consciousness of objects that has been vividly described by Erwin Straus (1956). We sense objects in the same way in which we respond to the dynamic quality of a tone, which is “a state of unrest, a tension, an urge, almost a will to move on, as if a force were acting on the tone and pulling it in a certain direction” (Zuckerkandl 1959, 19). We are in a symbiotic relation (Straus 1956, 200) with the “tones,” to which we respond with incipient movements as we do to dance music (239). This pre-linguistic, flowing realm is the ground from which Objects emerge (204). We live simultaneously in the Objective and the sensory and may experience the tension between them, as the latter resists being fit into the former. Some people may be especially attracted to the loss of their stance over-against Objects, to the dispersion of their self-consciousness, and to the blurring of the distinctness within the Objective realm (284 and 275). Precisely because of its lack of subject-Object duality and self-consciousness, sensory consciousness is occasionally mistaken for awareness by beginners. It is, however, just another way of viewing the reflections in the virtual space produced by �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the mirror. All of the above are distinctions that can be seen clearly in the vision of that virtual space. In addition to seeing these distinctions, the knower of Brahman sees the virtual space and its reflections as emanating from the mirror. This second sort of seeing is pure awareness. While awareness is never totally absent from our experience, we notice it to varying degrees. Usually, the degree to which we notice it is very minimal—as when we seem to be, in Sartre’s words, “hypnotized” by what we are conscious of. This is our “default” mode of experiencing. When we are reading, thinking, conversing in seminar, dancing, gazing at a sunset, or “even stretching out a hand to open the door,” we are absorbed in that moment’s action (Sekida 1985, 91). When we are self-conscious, we are also absorbed in the selfconsciousness. In absorption, awareness seems to have gotten lost; but it has only receded into the deep background. In some special moments, which have been called moments of “flow” (Csikszentmilalyi 1990), awareness becomes prominent in an incidental way: A rock climber explains how it feels when he is scaling a mountain: “You are so involved in what you are doing [that] you aren’t thinking of yourself as separate from the immediate activity” (53). The absence of the self from consciousness does not mean that a person in flow has given up the control of his psychic energy, or that she is unaware of what happens in her body or in her mind…. A good runner is usually aware of every relevant muscle in his body, of the rhythm of his breathing, as well as of the performance of his competitors within the overall strategies of the race (64). We do not deliberately pursue such moments; they just happen. The flow experience may be spontaneous, as in the earlier examples of the driver and of the woman sewing; or it may be skill-related, as in the examples of Joe Montana, the surgeon, and DRUECKER 55 the rock climber. In the case of skill-related flow experiences, one might say that the body’s usual resistance to intended action is overcome by practice. As a result, consciousness as “overagainst” the body disappears, allowing awareness to become prominent. We move out of flow when the “over-againstness” arises again as the “I” becomes active either in reaction (“Wow! This is so exciting!”) or in action (“If I bear down, I can keep this going”). As we saw in relation to painting, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology, prominence of awareness may be deliberately cultivated in order to be able to engage in some pursuit. Here awareness is practiced, so that the practitioner comes to experience the witness as a disposition. Once the practitioner comes to possess the witness as a first actuality, he or she can then activate it when engaging in the activity for the sake of which it was developed. Finally, in the double seeing of the knower of Brahman, pure mirror-awareness is permanently prominent as a second actuality; and there is a “loose,” “unstuck,” clear consciousness-of-objects as well. This is said to be the state of one “freed while alive” (jīvanmukta; cf. BU, IV.4.7). In virtue of the oneness of sat and cit, this double seeing is one with the out-flowing of existence. Thus, freedom manifests itself on the one hand inasmuch as one’s awareness is active or creative in respect to the world, and on the other hand inasmuch as one’s action is responsive or receptive with respect to the world—a reversal of the usual receptivity of consciousness and activity of action (Yuasa 1987, 68). In the realm of action, this freedom is freedom to respond without a “hitch” to the [field of dynamic qualities] in the field of experience, which are analogous to the directional arc involved in realizing the full significance of a situation mentioned in Part One. These field [tensions] include what Yājñavalkya takes Aristotle to be referring to when he speaks of feeling feelings or performing actions as required (δεῖ)—in the required cases, with respect to the required people, in the required way, and for the required reasons (NE, 1106b1727). �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Another way of putting this is to say that the freedom of the knower of Brahman manifests itself in the ability to be able to move freely through the world with grace and effortlessness, which [preserves thoughful awareness] (σοφροσύνη):65 For σοφροσύνη is precisely the virtue of general and unself-conscious self-possession, of universal grace and effortless command neither specified by particular action, which would transform it from σοφροσύνη to some particular virtue, nor checked by any opacity, which would translate it into a mode of self-control. What could work better for its model than a pure objectless knowledge? Knowers of Brahman have no inner barriers that can impede the spontaneous emergence of whatever is called for by the current moment. In conclusion, we note certain formal parallels between the role of Brahman in the Upanishads and that of the agent intellect according to Averroes. First, each is the source—Brahman, the source of all existence; the agent intellect, the source of all being, that is, of all intelligibility. Second, both are “self-luminous” and are responsible for “seeing” in some sense. Third, the non-dual relation between the individual self and Brahman is like that between the disposed intellect and the agent intellect. Fourth, a “self-forgetting” “outward turn” occurs in the case of each of them. Fifth, both the experience of Brahman and the experience of intellection could be said to involve a breaking-free from my ordinary captivation by the images on the walls of a cave-like dwelling; both involve engaging in practice; and both ultimately arrive at an existential breakthrough to “immortalizing.” In that breakthrough, in both cases, I deconstruct my ordinary sense of self and discover my true self as being both non-private (that is, not mine alone) and non-dual with respect to the true self of others. There are fundamental differences, however, in other respects. In the case of intellection, one escapes the captivity of DRUECKER 57 opinions and of the perceptual world by becoming free for intelligibles through the gradual purification of theoretical study; in the case of realizing Brahman, one escapes the captivity of the mundane way of experiencing objects, regardless of whether they appear in sensory, perceptual, or intellectual consciousness, by a sudden shift from involvement in consciousness (whether firstdegree or reflective) to pure awareness—a shift that may be experienced by the practice of cultivating awareness. Moreover, the one, impersonal, non-dual, true self of us all, in which we share in our immortalizing, is understood by Averroes to be the self-intellection of the agent intellect; Yājñavalkya, on the other hand, understands it to be pure awareness. And finally, in intellection, the material intellect realizes conjunction with the agent intellect, which is the source of all intelligibility in the world; in experiencing Brahman, however, pure [selfawareness] realizes that it is non-dual with respect to the emergence of existence in its entirety, encompassing both the sensory and the intelligible realms. Jacob Klein makes the following comment on Aristotle: the receptive aspect of “νοεῖν…is the state of wakefulness, a state of preparedness and alertness…. Νοῦς…when it is…one with the νοητά….[—o]nly then can be said to be wakefulness ‘at work’” (Klein 1964, 65). Looking back at the beginning of this essay, Yājñavalkya might wonder how Homer’s realization of the full significance of a situation,66 Aristotle’s reception of an intelligible, and Averroes’ complete conjunction with the agent intellect’s self-intellection would compare, in regard to their degrees of wakefulness, with dwelling in pure awareness. He might think that the major difference between the Upanishads and our three Western thinkers is that in the former the state of empty receptivity is supreme—that is, even more wakeful than “wakefulness at work.” But, alternately, it might be that Averroes’ account of complete conjunction is a satisfactory partial depiction of Brahman. If we focus on the emerging revelation that occurs in the empty, receptive intellect’s becoming one with a “profile” of the full, unitary agent intellect, we may be considering one face of Brahman, as it were, namely, the intel- �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW lectual one. Perhaps Klein was directing our attention to the wakefulness of the experiential living-through of such a moment, a wakefulness that, however, is not limited to the intellectual sphere. Let us allow Yājñavalkya the last word: “What you may be overlooking is that the empty, receptive material intellect is an appearance of the outward turning of the full source of determinacy, the agent intellect, whereas, in the case of Brahman, the full and determinate is an appearance of the outward turning of the empty.” 1 This essay is a revision of two NEH-supported lectures given at St. John’s College, Annaopolis, on February 15 and 19, 2008 and dedicated to the memory of Ralph Swentzell, who did so much to further the study of Eastern Classics at St. John’s College. DRUECKER 59 meditate on them as [being] simply the Self (BU, I.4.7). 9 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1075a7-11: “So, the condition the human intellect... is in at some period of time...is the condition the intellection that intellects itself is in over the whole of time.” Cf.: “For the gods, the whole of life is blessed, and for human beings it is so to the extent that there is in it some likeness to such a state of activity” (NE, 1178b25-26). 10 I am indebted to my colleague, Michael Blaustein, for a very fruitful recent conversation about Averroes. This section is based upon the works of Altmann, Black, Blaustein, Hyman, Ivry, Leaman, and Zedler listed in the bibliography. Leaman and Zedler have been particularly helpful for the early part, but I have taken most of it from Black. In the later part I have relied heavily on Blaustein’s working out of the details of the relation between agent and material intellects and have made significant use of Altmann and Ivry, especially the latter’s thoughts about conjunction while we are still alive. However, responsibility for any errors that there may be in the interpretation of Averroes is mine alone. 2 This and the following few paragraphs are based on K. von Fritz, “ΝΟΟΣ and ΝΟΕΙΝ in the Homeric Poems,” Classical Philology 38 (1943), 79-93. ‘aql bi al-malaka, which means intellect in natural disposition, aptitude, faculty; intellectus in habitu. 3 12 Also: “the intellective [part of the soul] intellects the [intelligible] looks in appearances” (De anima 431b2). I accept Nussbaum’s (1978) suggestion about the meaning of φαντσία. It is based on such passages as the following 428a1, 7, 14ff., & and 29ff., as well as; 428b30ff.), wherein in which the link between φαντσία and φαίνεσθαι seems compelling. The translations from Homer are based upon those listed in the bibliography. 4 This “directional arc” is analogous, at a higher level, to Merleau-Ponty’s arc intentionnel on the level of sensing (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 158). 5 The following few paragraphs are based on W. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954). 6 Since this essay is intended to be an introduction to a way of experiencing, it will not go very far into the many conceptual distinctions that have come to be seen as part of the Upanishadic teaching. For instance, there is no discussion of the distinction between nirguṇa and saguṇa Brahman. While it is true that such distinctions do reflect distinctions in experience, the reader who is being introduced to the way of experiencing in question is not likely to have encountered them. 7 This quotation and the situation described in the following sentence derive from HG, 6, 210, 195. 8 The Inner Controller is depicted mythologically as follows: He entered in here right to the tips of the nails, as a razor slips into a razor-case…. When he breathes he is called ‘breath’; when he speaks, ‘speech’; when he sees, ‘eye’; when he hears, ‘ear’; when he thinks, ‘mind.’ They are just the names of his actions. Whoever meditates on any one of these does not know [the Self], for [the Self] is not completely active in any one of them. One should 11 13 In fact, for Averroes, the imagination or, more properly, the cogitative power—which, together with the imagination and memory, prepares what is given in sensation, so that, when illumined by the agent intellect, the intelligible look can appear through and in-form the material intellect—is a fourth intellect, the passible intellect (LC, 449.174, and cfp. 409.640). “The cogitative power has the following functions: it can make an absent object appear as though present; it can compare and distinguish the re-presented objects with each other; it can judge whether a given re-presented object bears a relation to a directly presented sense intention” (Zedler 1954, 441). 14 Yet because the human species is eternal, the succession of human souls in which intellection of intelligibles of mundane things occurs ensures the continuity of intellection in the material intellect and the omnitemporality of the intelligible looks of mundane things as such. Through the repeated presentation of potential intelligibles in imaginative appearances, this succession “provides a replica in time and in matter of the eternal” intellection of the agent intellect (Zedler 1951, 173). It is possible that the belief that souls migrate into different bodies in succession is a reflection in the form of popular myth of the truth of the omnitemporal unity of the material intellect in the �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 60 multiplicity of disposed intellects (Altmann 1965, 82). 15 The agent intellect in this incidental connection would be what Aristotle referred to as the intellect that enters “from outside the door”: “It remains then that intellect alone enters additionally into [the seed of a human being] from outside the door (θύραθεν) and that it alone is divine, for corporeal being-atwork has nothing in common with its being-at-work” (De generatione et corruptione 736b27). Cf.: But the intellect seems to come to be in [us] while being an independent thing, and not to be destroyed…. [I]ntellecting or contemplating wastes away because something else in us is destroyed, but it is itself unaffected (without attributes). But thinking things through and loving or hating are affections (attributes) not of the intellect but of that which has intellect, insofar as it has it. For this reason, when the latter is destroyed, the intellect neither remembers nor loves, for these acts did not belong to it but to the composite being which has perished; the intellect is perhaps something more divine and is unaffected (OS, 408b18ff.). What Averroes actually says is that the incidental connection constitutes a “disposition” (isti‘dād, which means readiness, willingness, preparedness, inclination, tendency, disposition, propensity; dispositio) of the agent intellect, but one located within human souls. It is a disposition to receive the intelligible looks of mundane things. Thus, the material intellect is in reality the agent-intellect-as-having-such-a-disposition-in-human-beings. 16 Based on Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b12: “[I]t is beautiful and in that way a source.” 17 When my disposed intellect is actively engaged in intellecting an intelligible look, it is also intellecting itself, since, as Aristotle points out, the intellect is one with what it intellects, in that the second actuality of both is identical, as lumber’s being built is one with the activity of building. In contemplating itself as informed by the intelligible look, my intellect is also directed toward the image, which specifies the particular look that is to be received, in the same way in which, when we look at a painting, we are directed toward the scene that we see in it. However, since the mundane thing toward which the intellect is directed via the image is not pure intelligibility, the disposed intellect’s selfintellection is not pure self-intellection; its act of intellection is not absolutely one with its object of intellection. In this way it differs from the self-intellection of the agent intellect; for the object of the agent intellect’s intellection does not point beyond itself. 18 What had been my intellect would now be either fully (Blaustein 1984, 272 and 283) or partly assimilated to the agent intellect. That is, either “I” would DRUECKER 61 be engaged in intellection of everything intelligible or, having abandoned all the contingent aspects of my intellection, I would be focusing solely on its formal aspects, which are supplied by the agent intellect, so that I would be participating in an aspect of the formal governing source of the whole (Leaman 1998, 101-03). 19 Ittisāl =connectedness, unitedness, union; juncture, conjunction, link; connection; contact (from wasala = to connect, join, unite, combine, link, attach). Continuatio = a following of one thing after another, an unbroken series, a connection, continuation, succession (from continuare = to join together in uninterrupted succession, to make continuous). Wasala may be a reformulation of Aristotle’s θίξις. Altmann (1965, 83) says that this notion reflects Plotinus’s συνάπτειν (= [1] [transitive] to join together; [2] [intransitive] to border on, lie next to; combine, be connected with). Consider: “[W]e lift ourselves up by the part [of the soul] which is not submerged in the body and by this conjoin at our own centres to something like the Centre of all things…. [W]e must suppose that [our souls conjoin] by other powers, in the way in which that which is engaged in intellection naturally conjoins with that which is being thoroughly intellected and that that which is engaged in intellection…conjoins with what is akin to it with nothing to keep them apart” (Plotinus, VI.9.8.19-30). Altmann (1965, 83n.) also mentions that Plotinus refers to his experience of union as a contact (ἁφή). However, in Averroes, “conjunction” (ittisāl) is to be distinguished from “union” (ittihād); the latter signifies oneness, singleness, unity; concord, unison, unanimity; combination; amalgamation, merger, fusion; union, (from wahada = [1] to be alone, unique; [2] to make into one, unite, unify; to connect, unite, bring together, amalgamate, merge). In Greek the corresponding word is ἕνωσις = combination into one, union. 20 In its perfected state, as engaged in intellection of the agent intellect, the disposed intellect is called the intellectus adeptus (Hyman n.d., 188), “intellect that has reached to or attained or obtained.” 21 Altmann 1965, 74, characterizing the position of Averroes’ teacher. 22 Blaustein 1984, 284. Cf. also: “[T]he material intellect’s awareness of itself even when it is not thinking of any intelligible form…is itself a kind of actuality, however empty. Averroes claims that this kind of self-awareness is in fact the obverse of the [agent] intellect’s fully conscious awareness of itself; the material intellect’s awareness of its own potentiality is a dim awareness of its actuality as the [agent] intellect.” (Ibid.) 23 It is interesting to note that with respect to conjunction, the agent intellect exercises all four kinds of responsibility that Aristotle describes in the Physics. It is responsible for my attainment of conjunction in functioning as my end (τέλος). Moreover, it is responsible for the motion of learning, by which I approach conjunction; for my learning is really its producing intelligibles in �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW me by revealing itself to me as the form of my disposed intellect (Blaustein 1984, 276-77). Since the agent intellect is what I am increasingly intellecting and, thus, coming to be, it is also responsible for conjunction in the manner of a form. Finally, it is also responsible as material, since the material intellect is ultimately identical with it. The same could be said of Brahman, with the key difference that its responsibility is not limited to the realm of intelligibility. 24 Patañjali 1989, IV.34; see also Feuerstein’s comment in Patañjali 1989, 145. Kaivalya is “the aloneness” of seeing. 25 As far as Averroes’ own position with respect to individual immortality goes, there are two interesting possibilities. He may have thought that the only immortality was the impersonal immortality of the state of conjunction and that philosophers were orienting their lives accordingly; the belief in personal immortality on the part of ordinary people would then be the closest approximation to truth of which they were capable. On the other hand, he may have held that, while only a few intellects may attain conjunction, all souls are immortal (Zedler 1954, 451-52). There is a somewhat similar divergence in the Upanishadic tradition between Śankara’s position that the individual self is in a sense unreal and Rāmānuja’s view that individual selves, while not independent, are real. 26 Cf. the following passages: “Since [in all cases of seeing and hearing] we are aware (αỉσθανόμεθα) that we are seeing and hearing, it must either be by sight that we are aware [for example] that we are seeing or by some other [sense]” (OS, 425b11-12). “To each sense there belongs something special and something common. For example, what is special to sight is to see, [what is special] to hearing is to hear, and similarly with the rest. But there is also a certain common power that goes along with all of them, by which one is also aware that one is seeing and hearing (for it is not, after all, by sight that one is seeing that one is seeing).” (De somno et vigilia, 455a12-5.) 27 We may speak of self-consciousness in the sense as consciousness of myself only “after” the construction of the sense of self, which is discussed in the text below. 28 By Kosman (1975), who also made reference to Sartre’s La Transcendence de l’Ego. In planning the lectures, I had intended to use Sartre to introduce the notion of selfawareness (see footnote 29) as an alternative to anything in Aristotle. However, Kosman’s article, which I discovered while writing the lectures, made it possible to cite Aristotle himself in order to introduce this notion. 29 I write “selfawareness” and “awareness (of) itself” to suggest that the relationship between awareness and what it is aware (of) is not the same as that between consciousness and the object of consciousness. I am following Sartre’s practice in L’être et le néant (pp. 18-20), where he writes conscience (de) soi to refer to what I am calling “selfawareness” or “awareness (of) DRUECKER 63 itself.” 30 In La Transcendance de l’Ego, from which the quotations are taken, Sartre uses only one word, conscience, which I have rendered as “consciousness” when it is positional and as “awareness” when it is non-positional. Moreover, he does not here write conscience (de), as he did later (see footnote 28). 31 What is said will apply as well to consciousness that is imagining, remembering, judging, thinking, intellecting, feeling, or evaluating. 32 See footnote 34. 33 The last two sentences represent my understanding of Gurwitsch 1985, 5, second paragraph. 34 Gurwitsch (1941) pointed out that this account of the arising of the sense of self is incompatible with the fact that reflection can accomplish no more than to render explicit the content of the reflected-upon consciousness (332-33). He later (1985) offered a corrected account of the construction of the psychical empirical sense of self (15ff.). It is based on the recognition that both states and qualities “designate psychic constants, i.e., regularities of experience…rather than mental facts which themselves fall under direct experience” (15), as they do in Sartre. 35 I remember many years ago reading an article by him in The Washington Post, in which he described his experience in something like these terms. 36 These characteristics are similar to those in the example of the violinist in Csikszentmihalyi 1990: “A violinist must be extremely aware of every movement of her fingers, as well as of the sound entering her ears, and of the total form of the piece she is playing, both analytically, note by note, and holistically, in terms of its overall design” (64). 37 Bankei 2000, 58. I have substituted “awareness” first for “the Unborn” and then for “it,” referring to her Buddha-mind. 38 This word is used passim in Husserl 1964. 39 It need not be living beings with respect to which we experience the connection: “The [mountain] climber, focusing all her attention on the small irregularities of the rock wall that will have to support her weight safely, speaks of the sense of kinship that develops between fingers and rock.” “This feeling is not just a fancy of the imagination, but is based on a concrete experience of close interaction with some Other.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 64) 40 A popular book on learning to draw tells us of a subjective state that artists speak of, which is characterized by “a sense of close ‘connection’ with the work, a sense of timelessness, difficulty in using words…a lack of anxiety, a sense of close attention to shapes and spaces and forms that remain nameless.” It is important for the artist to experience the shift from the ordinary state to �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW this one. The student is encouraged to set up the proper “conditions for this mental shift” and to become “able to recognize and foster this state (Edwards 1979, 46). These characteristics correspond quite well with the qualities of a consciousness in which awareness is in the foreground. 41 Merleau-Ponty 1961, 166, translation modified. 42 The articulation in this paragraph emerged in a conversation with Nina Haigney, just a few minutes before I delivered this lecture. It was an example of the sort of thing it attempts to articulate—a conversation, with awareness to some degree in the foreground, allowing for the experience of “a certain emptiness,” followed by the emergence, in two people, of an “authentic word”—or a least a relatively authentic one. 43 The quotation from Freud is from “Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis” (1912). 44 By Theodore Reik in 1948; see Epstein 1904, 199-201. 45 M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, quoted in Ihde 1977, 15; italics added and translation corrected at one point. 46 Husserl 1962, 140.27-33; to maintain consistency of terminology, I substituted “reduction” for “epoché.” 47 Husserl himself conveys the same view in different language (Husserl 1962, Sections 37-42). 48 Merleau-Ponty 1945, 191, where, however, the expression is not being used to characterize the phenomenological reduction. 49 The distinction between disconnection and reducing proper parallels that in the Buddhist tradition between mindfulness (sati) and seeing distinctly in detail (vi-paśyana). 50 Cf. “And so also must the gaze made free by the epoché be…an experiencing gaze” (Husserl 1962, 156.13-15). 51 I take habituell to correspond to an adjectival form of ἓξις. 52 This stage in the yogic tradition involves eight members, the last three of which are concentration, meditation, and in-stance (samādhi), which is opposed both to ex-stasy and to our ordinary counter-stance vis-à-vis objects (Patañjali 1989, II.29). 53 Cf. Patañjali 1989, I.42 and 44: coincidence with reflection (savicārā samāpattih). 54 The quotations in the remainder of this paragraph are taken from Low 1993, 149-50; italics added. 55 When allowing the children to play, you are not caught up in their playing; DRUECKER 65 so, you have a kind of distance from it. Yet you are “with” them, accompanying them. Thus, your distance is of a different kind than the distance that occurs in objectification, where the ob-ject stands over against you (discussed in the text below). Moreover, while it might seem as though the objective, perceptual world were free of captivation, when compared to the dynamic, sensory realm (discussed in the text below), one can see that the former is, in fact, grounded in the primordial doxa of the latter. 56 The role that this experience of pure awareness plays in the Upanishadic tradition parallels that of the “aloneness of seeing” (drśeh kaivalyam; Patañjali 1989, II.25) in the yogic tradition (Patañjali 1989, III.50; IV.26 and 34). 57 This account of realization of Brahman is based on zen sources. However, as Shear (1983 and 1990) points out, this experience of awake, pure selfawareness lacks any empirical qualities or content. As a result, differing references to it as the Brahman-realm or Buddha-nature are not pointing to qualitative differences in the experience (Shear 1983, 57-59; 1990, 392). [Note added in revising the lecture: I now think it would be better to say that the zen account is an interpretation of the realization of Brahman.] 58 The page numbers given in this paragraph refer to Maritain 1956. 59 Sekida 1985, 91-97, also depicts the corresponding state in the zen tradition in this way. Carter proposes the comparison with binocular vision. It is interesting that Bion also uses this analogy (Grinberg, Sor, and Tabak di Bianchedi 1993, 35-36). 60 Sharma 1993, 43; first two sets of italics added. The quotation is from Ramana Maharshi as reported in D. Goodman, ed., The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (NY: Arkana, 1985), 42 and 41. 61 Cf. the description in Husserl 1964, 124-25. 62 Cf. the description in Husserl 1964, 206-08. 63 Cf. the descriptions in Husserl 1964, §§58-61, 80-82, 86-87 and in Husserl 1950, §10. 64 The page references in the remainder of this paragraph are from Straus 1956. 65 I believe that Kleist (1964) had the same phenomenon in view when he reported Herr C.’s words after two anecdotes, one about a graceful dancer who lost his grace when self-consciousness arose and the other about a bear, who effortlessly parried every thrust of Herr C.’s rapier with a graceful swipe of his paw: [I]n the same degree as, in the organic world, reflection becomes more obscure and weaker, grace emerges there ever more radiant and supreme.—Yet just as…the image in a concave mirror, after �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 66 withdrawing to infinity, suddenly comes right in front of us again, so when consciousness has, as it were, passed through an infinite, grace will again put in an appearance. Hence, it appears most purely in the human bodily structure that has either no selfconsciousness or an infinite self-consciousness (Kleist 1964, 67). That is, in our terms, grace emerges in the realm of animal, sensory consciousness, a realm that we can experience, but not enter completely (Straus 1956, 284). And it emerges again in the realm of pure [selfawareness], in which we are no longer caught up in first- or second-degree consciousness. 66 Another question to pursue might be whether Homer’s realization of full significance became narrower and more limited in passing over into intellection. DRUECKER 67 containing Ia, QQ.2-11. TU Taittitrīya Upanishad BIBLIOGRAPHY Altmann, A., “Ibn Bājja on Man’s Ultimate Felicity,” Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, I (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965). Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, tr. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002). _____, On Sophistical Refutations, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away, tr. E. Forster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). _____, On the Soul, tr. J. Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2001). _____, Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study, tr. and ed. J. Sachs (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). ABREVIATIONS _____, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tr. J. Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999). BU Brihadāranyaka Upanishad CU Chāndogya Upanishad Arnheim, R., Art and Visual Expression: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, second edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). F Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method. FK “Die Phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der Gegenwärtigen Kritik.” HG Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion. I Homer, Iliad IU Īśā Upanishad KeU Kena Upanishad Black, D., “Conjunction and the Identity of Knower and Known in Averroes,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1999), 159-84. LC Averroes, Long Commentary = Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima Blaustein, M., Averroes on the Imagination and the Intellect (University Microfilms, 1984). MuU Mundaka Upanishad NE Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; translation altered in some places. Carter, R., The Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitarō, second edition (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1997). O Homer, Odyssey OS Aristotle, On the Soul; translation altered in some places. S Sartre, J.-P., La Transcendance de l’Ego: Esquisse d’une description phénoménologique. ST St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Latin text, Volume II, Aurobindo, Sri, The Upanishads: Texts, Translations and Commentaries, Part One (Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press, 1996). Averroes, Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima, ed. F. Crawford (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). Bankei, The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei, tr. N. Waddell (New York: South Point Press, 2000). Bion, W., Attention and Interpretation (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1970/1983). Csikszentmihalyi, M., Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1990). Edwards, B., Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1979). Epstein, M., “On the Neglect of Evenly Suspended Attention,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 16 (1904), 193-205. �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW DRUECKER Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, tr., R. Bruzina (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). Kleist, H. von, “Über das Marionettentheater,” in Prosastücke (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun., 1964), 58-67. _____, “Die Phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der Gegenwärtigen Kritik,” Kant-Studien 38 (1933), 319-83. Kosman, L., “Perceiving that We Perceive: On the Soul III, 2,” The Philosophical Review 84, No. 4. (Oct., 1975), pp. 499-519. Grinberg, L., Sor D., and Tabak di Bianchedi, E., New Introduction to the Work of Bion, third editon (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1993). 69 Leaman, O., Averroes and His Philosophy (Surrey: Curzon, 1998). Gurwitsch, A., Marginal Consciousness (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985). _____, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1964). _____, “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1 (1941), 325-38. Gurwitsch, A. and Schütz, A., Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed. R. Grathoff and tr. J Evans (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1989). Homer, The Iliad, 2 vols., tr. A. Murray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925). _____, The Iliad of Homer, tr. R. Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1951). _____, The Odyssey, tr. A. Cook (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974). _____, The Odyssey of Homer, tr. R. Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row Publisher, 1967). Husserl, E., Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. W. Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962). _____, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Claussen Verlag, 1964). _____, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie I (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950). Hyman, A., “Aristotle’s Theory of the Intellect and Its Interpretation by Averroes” in Studies in Aristotle, ed. D. O’Meara (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, n.d.), 161-91. Ihde, D., Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977). Ivry, A., “Averroes on Intellection and Conjunction,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 86 (1966), 76-85. Klein, J., “Aristotle, An Introduction,” in Ancients and Moderns, ed., J. Cropsey (NY: Basic Books, 1964). Low, A., The Butterfly’s Dream: In Search of the Roots of Zen (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1993). Maritain, J., Quatre essais sur l’esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Paris: Alsatia, 1956). Merleau-Ponty, M., “Eye and Mind” (1961), tr. C. Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, ed. J. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964). _____, Phénoménolgie de la perception (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945). Moore, G. E., “The Refutation of Idealism,” in Philosophical Studies (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1965). Nussbaum, M., “The Role of Phantasia in Aristotle’s Explanation of Action” in her Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954). Patañjali, The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali, tr. G. Feuerstein (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1989) Plotinus, Enneads, Volumes III, V, VI, and VII, tr. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967-88). Sartre, J.-P., L’être et le néant (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1943). _____, La Transcendance de l’Ego: Esquisse d’une description phénoménologique (Paris: Vrin, 1966). [Originally published 1936.] Schütz, A., “Scheler’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2 (1942), 323-47. Sekida, K., Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy, ed. A. Grimstone (NY: Weatherhill, 1985). Sharma, A., The Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, (1993). Shear, J., “Mystical Experience, Hermeneutics, and Rationality,” International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990), 391-401. _____, “The Experience of Pure Consciousness: A New Perspective for Theories of Self,” Metaphilosophy 14 (1983), 53-62. �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Snell, B., “Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der Vorplatonischen Philosophie,” Philologische Untersuchungen 29 (1924/1976). Straus, E., Phenomenological Psychology, tr. in part, E. Eng (NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1966). _____, Vom Sinn der Sinne (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1956). St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Latin text, Volume II, containing Ia, QQ.2-11, T. McDermott, O.P., ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964). The Principal Upanishads, ed. and tr. S. Radhakrishnan (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers India, 1994). The Upanishads, tr. V. Roebuck (New York: Penguin Books, 2003). Ueda, S., “Pure Experience, Self-awareness, Basho,” Études phénoménologiques 18 (1993), 63-86. Upanishads, tr. P. Olivelle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). von Fritz, K., “ΝΟΟΣ and ΝΟΕΙΝ in the Homeric Poems,” Classical Philology 38 (1943), 79-93. Yuasa, Y., The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, tr. N. Shigenori and T. Kasulis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987). Zedler, B., Introduction to Aquinas’s On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1968). _____, “Averroes and Immortality,” New Scholasticism 28 (1954), 436-53. _____, “Averroes on the Possible Intellect,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 25 (1951), 164-78. Zuckerkandl, V., The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959). 71 Principles of Motion and the Motion of Principles: 1 Hegel’s Inverted World Peter Kalkavage Oh, judge for yourselves: I have been concealing it all the time, but now I will tell you the whole truth. The fact is, I…corrupted them all! —Dostoevsky, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”2 In the Phenomenology of Spirit, late in Hegel’s chapter on force and understanding, a baffling figure comes before us. It is the famous “inverted world.” This figure completes the dialectic of understanding. As a result of the inverted world, consciousness— the sole but protean hero of Hegel’s philosophic epic—undergoes a conversion: it ceases to put truth in objects or things and instead places it in the thinking subject. My plan is to take us through Hegel’s chapter on understanding with the following questions in mind: Why, for Hegel, is understanding logically unstable? Why is force its proper object? What is the inverted world, and how does it come about? What does it show us about the nature of thinking, and the nature of nature? Finally, how does the inverted world bring about the great turn in the Phenomenology from knowledge as the consciousness of things to knowledge as grounded in self-consciousness? Understanding, Verstand, has a range of meanings in Hegel. It refers most generally to our capacity for making distinctions, our power of analysis. In his Encyclopedia, Hegel indicates the function and limit of understanding as follows: “Thinking as understanding stops short at the fixed determinacy and its distinctness vis-à-vis other determinacies.”3 In other words, understanding establishes fixed boundaries and stable identities. Fond of schematizing, it regards mathematics as the model of Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW what it means to know. In the Phenomenology, the archetype of Verstand is the “new science” inaugurated by Galileo and Descartes and brought to its peak in the force-theories of Newton and Leibniz. The chapter “Force and Understanding” presents a critical reflection on this science. Hegel studied the physics of his day extensively and acknowledged its impressive achievements. But it does not for him embody absolute truth; it is not science at its highest, most complete stage. Hegel’s exposé in the Phenomenology reveals why this is the case, why the supposedly stable principles of modern physics are ultimately unstable. Hegel’s chapter is difficult even by Phenomenology standards. To guide us through its twists and turns, I have divided my presentation into six parts. The first three deal respectively with Force, Law, and Explanation. These are related as follows. There are forces at work in nature that operate according to immutable laws (for example, the law of universal gravitation). The scientist explains nature by showing how a given phenomenon (say, a body in free fall) is an instance of a force grounded in one of these laws. Hegel’s account preserves this familiar interweaving of force, law, and explanation but at the same time places it in the context of a dialectical unfolding. Hegel’s logic, unlike ordinary logic, proceeds genetically, like life. Concepts, stages, moments, categories, whatever we wish to call them, do not merely succeed each other, or relate to each other in the manner of different aspects, but emerge out of the evolutionary process that is thought. In the chapter before us, force gives birth to law, and together these give birth to explanation, which eventually gives birth to self-consciousness. This amazing process as a whole, this labor, defines understanding. I. Force The Phenomenology is the journey of consciousness to absolute knowing, or what Hegel calls Science. We come upon understanding at a pivotal moment in this journey: at the transition from the sensuous to the intelligible. The previous shapes of consciousness are sense-certainty and perception. Like all the KALKAVAGE 73 shapes in Hegel’s book, they embody certainty—a claim to know absolutely or unconditionally. Sense-certainty places its absolute trust in the sensuous particular, the whatever-it-is that is here and now; perception trusts the thing and its properties. Both shapes of knowing, together with their corresponding objects, prove to be self-contradictory: they negate themselves. Force is the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of thinghood. It is an example of what Hegel calls determinate negation. This is negation that preserves and lifts up what is negated [79, 113].* Force is the proper object of understanding because it resolves the dissonance that defines the thing of perception. The thing is a One and a Many: this one thing and its many properties. To save this opposition from being contradictory, perception posits another: the thing is independent or for itself and dependent or for another, that is, related to other things. In the dialectic of perception, these opposed aspects become identical: the thing is shown to be independent insofar as it is dependent, and dependent insofar as it is independent [128]. It makes no sense, then, to regard the thing as absolutely real: a thing is what it is, not through itself alone but only in relation to what it is not, namely, other things. How this ideality of thinghood comes about does not concern us here. The relevant point is that force solves the problem at hand, the problem of substance and relation. Things as things dissolve in their essential relation to other things: they lose their substance. Force, by contrast, is substance that is relation. It is the higher category of substantial relation, the unity of being-for-self and being-for-another, of independence and dependence.4 Let us look more carefully at what this means. Force, our new object, is not something seen or heard or felt but only thought. It is the purely intelligible inner core of perceptible things. Force is not property but act, the act of selfexpression.5 In the force-world, a thing does not, strictly speaking, have a property but rather emanates what we call a property from an intense invisible center.6 By analogy with * Numbers in square brackets refer to paragraph numbers in Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW language, force, in Hegel’s terminology, is the utterance or Aüßerung of an inner point. Hardness, for example, is not a quiescent attribute lodged in the thing but an act by which the thing asserts itself or “makes its point.”7 Moreover, to act is to act upon another thing. Action implies interaction. This is how force makes it possible for individual things to be what they are through their relation to other things: their being-for-self is a being-foranother, and their being-for-another a being-for-self. Force, Hegel tells us, is a movement [136]. This is not movement in space but dialectical movement—conceptual instability or transition. Consider a metal sphere. Its hardness is one of the properties by which the sphere, at the level of perception, defined itself as an independent thing. Hardness is now to be regarded as emergent from an intensive center, a center of force. Force is the transition of a given content—in this case, hardness—from inner to outer. As Hegel stresses in an earlier version of his system, force is not cause as opposed to effect but rather the identity of cause and effect.8 The intensive center of force does not produce something other than itself but exactly itself.9 It is a self-realizing potential. It is like an inward thought that finds faithful expression in outward speech. Dialectical movement comes into play when we attempt to spell out precisely what is happening in the transition from inner to outer. What we find is that the act of self-expression involves negation. The hardness of the sphere, as an emergent property or effect, must come out of hiding, be released from mere implicitness or potency; but if it were simply released, set free, it would not be the hardness of the sphere, the expressive manifestation sprung from the intensive center of force. And so, we must conclude that as a property is affirmed or posited, it must at the same time be negated as something independent or on its own. As the property is emitted, it must remain the property of the thing, the expression of the center of force. Hegel uses the terms force proper and force expressed to distinguish the two moments involved in the action of force. Force proper refers to the intensive center (force as cause), force expressed to force as KALKAVAGE 75 “there” in the perceptible world (force as effect). These moments, Hegel says, are self-canceling [135]. Force proper must negate its inwardness in order to be external or manifest, and, as we saw earlier, force expressed must negate its outwardness in order to be the expression of force proper. This self-cancellation on the part of both moments of force is what it means to say that force is a movement. We phenomenological observers see this dialectical truth in the movement of force, but understanding does not. It clings to the safety of stable distinctions and assumes that the movement from inner to outer occurs simply, that is, without any negation or self-otherness. Force can do what thinghood cannot: it is a deeper, more potent category. Why, then, does it self-destruct? To answer this question, we turn to the phenomenon of interaction, the realworld event in which force meets force. As we proceed, we must bear in mind that understanding claims not merely that there are forces at work in the world, but that force is the absolute truth of things—their abiding substance. Hegel will show, to our amazement, that “the realization of force is at the same time the loss of reality” [141]. Like the thing, force will fail to be substantial. The self-annihilation of force results from what Hegel calls the “play” of two forces: active and reactive. This play is implicit in Newton’s Third Law: “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.” Force is spontaneous and impulsive but not self-inciting. It must be inspired by the presence of another force in order to express itself [137]. Hegel here borrows terms that Leibniz uses in his analysis of collision. One force solicits, the other is solicited: one is active, the other passive or re-active.10 This is like the human situation in which I voice my opinion, translate my inner thought into outer speech, thereby inciting you to respond with a verbal expression of your thought and opinion. Perhaps the forcefulness of my expression prompts you to an equally forceful counter-expression—an equal and opposite reaction. �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The play that is essential to force can be maintained as logically stable only if the difference between active and passive force, soliciting and solicited, remains clear and distinct. We must be able to say: “This force is active, that one passive.” Hegel proceeds to show that this is not the case. The two opposed determinations of force—soliciting and solicited, active and passive— become identical, or pass into each other. Once this happens, force as the solid substance of things vanishes. It loses its status as a self-subsisting entity and becomes merely ideal, what Hegel calls a moment.11 To see how this evaporation of force as substance comes about, imagine banging your fist against a wall. When you hit the wall, the wall hits back: it re-acts. At first, it seems that your fist is active and soliciting, the wall passive and solicited. But you could not hit the wall unless, at the moment of impact, the wall acted on you and solicited the hardness of your fist. This hardness is just as much solicited by that of the wall as the hardness of the wall is by that of your fist. Fist and wall have exchanged determinations, like actors who reverse their roles in mid-scene, and it is impossible to call one of them only active and the other only reactive. Each is both. Soliciting is a being solicited, and being solicited is a soliciting. Let us recapitulate the story of force. Force starts out as a mere concept in the mind of a subject who claims to know absolute truth: it is in itself or implicit, a theoretical good intention. Then it is put to work as the substance of things: it becomes for itself or actual. But in the act of making itself real, it becomes evanescent and unreal: the distinction on which its reliability as substance rests becomes a play or interchange of nowfluid determinations. As force leaves the stage of the solidly real, it assumes a new role. It reverts to being inward or conceptual, retreats from the world and goes back inside the thinking subject. We may imagine this as the act in which understanding experiences the dissolution of force, internalizes what it has experienced, and then comes up with a revised perspective. As Hegel observes, force does not return to its original ideality but KALKAVAGE 77 advances to a new state [141]. Force falls but does not simply fall. Paradoxically, it falls up. In negating itself, it becomes a new and improved universal, a new object that stands over and against the thinking subject. This higher object, which force has generated, is the deeper inner of things. II. Law The dialectic of law will lead us to the inverted world. Law, our newly postulated absolute, will prove unstable. It will fall. This fall is more dramatic than anything we have witnessed so far in the Phenomenology. It is the collapse of the very citadel of objective truth, truth that is grounded in objects. In the fall of force and the rise of law, consciousness experiences a new relation to its object. Hegel calls it a mediated relation. Understanding now “looks through [the] mediating play of forces into the true background of things” [143].12 In other words, understanding sees rest within motion, sameness within difference, form within flux. Law is the eternally abiding, purely intelligible “look” or ἰδέα of the always-changing world. Verstand at this point is even more recognizable as the modern scientific understanding, which seeks laws of nature so that it may gaze upon change under the aspect of eternity. Our new object, law, is the imperturbable base and depth of the world. World, here, refers to the unstable play of forces, the role-reversal of our soliciting and solicited “actors.” This play is appearance, as opposed to law, which constitutes the world’s essence. In its perpetual self-otherness, appearance recalls the elusive “matrix” of Plato’s Timaeus, where the powers of body— earth, air, water, and fire—constantly turn into each other, play the game of self-cancellation (49B-C). Law is different from the objects we have seen so far: the sensuous This, the thing of perception, and force as individual substance. It is a world unto itself, separate from but also governing and shining through the world of appearance. Law opens up a supersensible world set over and against the sensible world. Hegel calls it an “abiding Beyond above the vanishing present”—a Jenseits or Over There, as opposed to the Diesseits or Over Here [144]. Unlike the �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW turbulent realm of sense, this Other World is “restful” [157]. It is the heaven of scientific theory. This two-world thesis will be the death of understanding. As Hegel will show, the waywardness of appearance, the to and fro of change, invades theoretical heaven: the Beyond will collapse into the very realm from which it was to be strictly distinguished. It will become an aspect of appearance. The certainty of understanding is that there are two worlds: the truth will be that there is only one. Intelligibility is not separate from change, like a law or a platonic Form, but is change—change as dialectical logic or what Hegel calls the Concept. The clue, then, to the discovery of concrete truth is not in some other world but in this one, not in motionless being but in unstable becoming, where opposed determinations flow into each other. This inverts our normal perspective on things, governed as that perspective is by the sober teachings of Verstand. As we think our way through the inverted world, we are inverted. The conclusions I have sketched are already present in what Hegel says just before his analysis of law. He reflects on the nature of appearance, in effect telling us where the dialectic of understanding will end up. Understanding mis-understands appearance and the intelligible essence that supposedly governs it in another world. From the perspective of understanding, law is an eternal thing-like object that grounds and “saves” the appearances. But this object, the supersensible Beyond, has in fact been generated by appearance [147]. Appearance is the dialectical father, law the offspring. What understanding calls law or essence is in fact, Hegel says, appearance as appearance. To grasp the meaning of this utterance, we must observe that appearance is not sensuous presence: it is neither the This of sense-certainty nor the thing of perception. Appearance is process and play, flash and shining forth. It is not presence but fleeting presence—presence that constantly cancels itself to become absence.13 It is becoming as the unity of coming-to-be and passing away. In his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel defines time as “that being which, inasmuch as it is, is not, and inasmuch as it is KALKAVAGE 79 not, is; it is intuited becoming.”14 Time is appearance in its most rudimentary form. It is the same process of self-negation that we saw in the Now of sense-certainty. When the Now negated itself to become the next Now, it gave birth to universality as the Now of Nows, say, an hour of minutes [107]. Appearance, through its self-negation, also begets a universal, as we have seen. This is law. Appearance, like time, is a process of self-transcendence, self-beyonding. The understanding erroneously treats this selfbeyonding, which it has glimpsed in the self-contradictory play of force, as a Beyond that is objectively there. It reifies process. But essence, here identical with the supersensible, is the intelligible truth of appearance, the truth that the play of force has itself generated and brought to light. As Hegel puts it, “the supersensible is…appearance as appearance” [147]. The meaning of this pivotal sentence, to which I alluded earlier, is that essence and appearance, inner and outer, are identical. As one commentator puts it: “The essence of essence is to manifest itself; manifestation is the manifestation of essence.”15 Appearance, in other words, is not a low but a high category. It is the self-otherness of essence, the instability of sensuous things that has come out into the open as their higher and deeper truth. In this revelation appearance proves to be not something in need of being “saved.” Hegel’s critique of the supersensible Beyond recalls Plato’s Forms and the problem of separateness. This problem is highlighted in the dialogue Parmenides, where the old Eleatic stings young Socrates with the absurdities of his two-world theory. How is it that a Form, a separate entity off in its own world, is nevertheless manifested in its sensuous instances? Why are we able to see the original in the image? Law is like a platonic Form in that it is eternally self-same and purely intelligible. But it is unlike a Form in being a universal that governs movements, events. Law is the eternal self-sameness of perpetual selfdifference. Consider Galileo’s law of free fall. Expressed as an equation, this is the familiar s = 1/2 gt2, where s is the distance a body traverses as it falls, g the gravitational constant, and t the �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW time during which the falling takes place. For our purposes, however, the more revealing form is s ∝ t2: distance varies as the square of the time. This expresses a constant difference or otherness, as opposed to a mere identity. It helps us see what Hegel means when he says that law is “universal difference” and “the simple in the play of force” [148]. Things as such don’t come into the picture. As far as Galileo’s law is concerned, it makes no difference whether the falling object is a cow or a cannonball.16 What matters is the motion, the event. Galileo’s law is the simple universal in this event. It is the perfectly general, purely intelligible form of falling. Let us now turn to the dialectic of law. Understanding has, we recall, a mediated relation to its supersensible realm of law. It looks through the medium of becoming, as through a veil, to glimpse being and truth in the unchanging forms of change. It imagines that it will in this way take hold of absolute knowing. Problems will emerge when understanding tries to explain how its universal laws fit the actual determinate content of appearances. Up to this point, law is only a good idea. This idea must now prove itself in the act of governing. Law must become actually true or what Hegel calls for itself. To uncover the actuality of law, we turn once more to Galileo, this time to his experiments with the motion of a ball rolling down an inclined plane. Assume that we have found the law that governs this movement and have expressed it mathematically. We say: “This is true; it is the law.” But it isn’t absolutely true. Air resistance, surface friction, and the phenomenon of rolling as opposed to sliding all come into play to qualify the law. In order for a law to be true, it must, as Hegel puts it, “fill out the world of appearance” [150]. This can happen only if there are many laws that apply to a given case. Here we have a sign of trouble to come. Law, by definition, is sheer universality; its glory is to be above cases and particulars. But the events to which law must apply if it is to be actual truth involve cases and particulars: phenomena have a determinate content that must somehow be subsumed under law. The world is not movement in general but this KALKAVAGE 81 movement in these circumstances. The problem can be stated as follows: law, though stable, is general or empty, while appearances, though shifty, are full and differentiated. To overcome this asymmetry, to unite the universal and the particular, law must be on more intimate terms with the phenomenal world if it is to be the truth of that world. A single law, as we have seen, is not enough to “fill out” the appearances. We need many laws to prevent law from being an empty inner. These must be organized into one law that unifies them—a mega-law. Hegel here refers to Newton’s inverse square law of attraction, which unifies the laws of planetary motion and those of ordinary mechanics. But this mega-law is, alas, the victim of its triumph over specificity. By transcending the difference among the many different laws, it becomes utterly abstract. Hegel calls it “the Concept of law itself,”17 that is, lawfulness as opposed to a law [150]. But then, what to do about all the different ways in which lawfulness manifests itself in nature? To address this problem, understanding interprets lawfulness, the pure form of law, as the “inner necessity” of all the different laws [151]. This inner necessity results in a new, more abstract version of force—force as such [152]. Earlier, force was differentiated as active and passive; law was the simple universal. Now force is the simple or undifferentiated, and law is the source of difference [152]. Gravity, for instance, is just plain gravity, a simple force of nature, whereas the law by which a body falls involves difference as distance traversed and time squared. So too, electricity is just plain electricity, whereas the law of electricity expresses the difference between positive and negative. The assumption at work here is that law will express the necessary action of simple forces. Hegel shows that this assumption is false. Force and law are in fact “indifferent” to each other, that is, fundamentally unrelated [152]. Electricity indeed manifests itself as positive and negative, but not because of any inherent necessity. The law does not express causal connection but rather what Hume called “constant conjunction.”18 It does not reveal the origin of difference, but simply states difference as a �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW fact. It sidesteps the primordial act by which electrical force as such divides into its two opposite forms. The result, Hegel says, is that “necessity here is only an empty word” [152].19 Indifference shows up in yet another way for the scientific understanding. The very elements that the law combines in its formulas lack necessary connection with each other. Galileo’s law of free fall, for instance, expresses a constant conjunction of distance and time. But it sheds no light on why these should be connected at all, let alone connected in this particular way. There is nothing in the concept of distance traversed that necessarily implies the concept of time squared, and nothing in time squared that implies distance traversed. As mathematical variables, s and t are logically indifferent to each other. They are quantitatively conjoined in a ratio but not conceptually united in a λόγος.20 The necessity that understanding craves, we must note, would be achieved if in its world-view there were a place for inner difference, that is, the immanent self-differentiation of the absolutely simple. That would account for why electrical force necessarily, out of its own nature, divides itself into positive and negative. Law, in that case, would be the Concept or dialectical truth. But understanding is no dialectician. It likes its identities neat and its distinctions restful. And so, to prevent simple force from becoming (in its view) compromised, understanding takes difference into itself [154]. Necessity now acquires a new meaning. It ceases to be causality in the phenomena and becomes instead the necessity at work in the human subject’s act of theorizing. III. Explanation We are on the threshold of the inverted world, which is a second supersensible world [157]. Understanding will reach this extreme point of its effort once it is revealed that explanation is nothing more than the propounding of tautologies—differences that make no difference. Explanation, here, is not scientific account-giving in general but rather a species of bad argument that regularly occurs in physical science. It is the act in which understanding propounds a law that supposedly governs an appearance but ends KALKAVAGE 83 up being identical to the appearance. In explanation, ground and grounded become the same. We saw earlier that force is the absolutely simple (electricity), whereas the law of force expresses a difference (positive and negative). Understanding uses explanation to bridge the gap between force and law, simplicity and difference. But its effort is sophistical: it distinguishes force and law, and then “condenses the law into force as the essence of the law” [154]. Hegel uses lightning to illustrate his point. Lightning occurs: it is a phenomenon. Indeed, as a flashing forth, lightning functions as the symbol for appearance as such. Understanding explains lightning by enunciating a law that supposedly expresses how the force of electricity works. Force is assumed to be simple, but the process of explaining involves positive and negative. The explanation purports to the necessary ground of the phenomenon. But in fact, it just repeats what happened at the surface of the phenomenon. It says: “There was a strong electrical discharge because of positive and negative electricity.” This simply says all over again what lightning as a phenomenon is. It is not something new and different, but same: a tautology. Understanding posits differences and then, once these differences disappear in the phenomenon (in this case, once the electrical discharge subsides), allows the differences to sink back into an undifferentiated simple force—mere electricity. A distinction is made only to be withdrawn.21 In other words, the distinction is merely an artifact and formality of the process of explanation.22 Explanation, for Hegel, borders on the absurd, or at least the comic. Why does electricity divide into positive and negative? Because that is its law. And why is that its law? Because electricity divides into positive and negative. When we ask understanding why something is the case, it pretends to show us some underlying ground but in fact only repeats the appearance that prompted our question in the first place. This sleight of hand is not confined to physics. Why are human beings the way they are? Because of their genes. What are genes? That which makes us who we are. Or, to shift to the world of Molière: Why does opium �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW induce sleep? Because it has a “dormitive virtue.” These are all tautologies masquerading as etiologies, accounts of cause. In the earlier version of his system, Hegel summed it up nicely. All explanation, he says, ultimately reduces to the deflating admission: “That is just how it is.”23 We might be tempted to accuse Hegel of oversimplifying explanation in order to make his case. But Hegel is right. We are surrounded by explanations that purport to reveal a law, a necessary ground, for how the world works—or how the mind works, or how language and culture develop—which, when examined more closely, prove to be nothing more than tautologies. I point this out to remind us that, in reading those parts of the Phenomenology that are critical of theory-building, we must allow our scientific, as well as our pre-scientific or natural, perspective to be inverted. Hegel, we must note, inverts what we ordinarily mean by tautology. Tautology, for him, is not a static A=A, but rather the dialectical movement in which a difference is posited and immediately canceled [155]. This recalls the play of force, in which active and passive were posited as different and then became identical. The movement of tautology is a turning point in the dialectic of understanding. It is the point at which the shiftiness of appearance “has penetrated into the supersensible world itself” [155]. In the platonic analogy, motion becomes part of the once restful realm of the Forms. IV. The Inverted World Who among us has not wondered: What if the world as it is, is the exact opposite of the world as it appears? What if what we call real is really nothing but a dream, and dream reality? What if good people are in themselves bad, and bad people good? What if, in obedience to some perverse cosmic law, being reverses seeming, inner reverses outer? To pose such questions is to set foot on the terrain of Hegel’s inverted world. The dialectic of understanding is a series of postulated objective inners. The first was force. When force as the substance of things vanished, a new inner appeared: the restful realm of law. KALKAVAGE 85 But law led to the sleight-of-hand called explanation, where differences make no difference. This movement of tautology generates another inner: the inverted world, which is the inner truth of the first supersensible world [157].24 Hegel has taken us on one long journey into the interior of appearance. But the inverted world brings us full circle, confirming the truth of La Rochefoucauld’s maxim: “Extremes touch.” The inverted world will obliterate the Beyond. It will collapse the distinction between essence and appearance, and make appearance the standard to which law must conform.25 Inversion is our new principle, according to which, “what is self-same repels itself from itself” and “the not self-same is selfattractive” [156]. Hegel’s language of repulsion-from-self and attraction-to-other recalls the magnet, which soon emerges as the paradigm of inversion. The first thing Hegel tells us about the inverted world is that it completes the inner world opened up by understanding [157]. We saw earlier that law failed to “fill out” the world of appearance: it lacked a principle of change or alteration. As an inverted world, the supersensible realm acquires this principle. It becomes an exact replica of the world we actually live in. This is the irony of the inverted world. Strange seeming at first, this world in fact restores what is familiar to us and what had been lost in the abstractions of understanding. It lets our world be as fluid, playful, and self-contradictory as it seems. This is our perspective, not that of understanding, which clings to its abstractions and continues to think in terms of a supersensible Beyond, where every restless appearance finds its restful double. The inverted world is what the world is implicitly or inwardly, what it is in itself. Hegel offers a broad range of examples. The first ones he cites are suited to the theoretical bent of understanding. Like, under the law of the first supersensible world, becomes unlike under that of the second, inverted world; black in the first is transposed to white in the second; the north pole of a magnet in the first world is south in the second; the oxygen pole of the voltaic pile becomes the hydrogen pole, and �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the hydrogen the oxygen [158]. But then Hegel goes beyond theory. Revenge on an enemy in this world turns into selfdestruction in the other; crime in the first turns into punishment; guilt into pardon; disgrace into honor.26 It would be highly instructive to think through all of Hegel’s examples of inversion. Let us focus on one: the magnet. This remarkable object will help us make the transition from inversion as understanding represents it to the philosophic Concept of inversion. From the perspective of understanding, the poles of a magnet are inverted in the sense that each pole has reference to a separately existing and opposite in-itself. This in-itself—the home or, in Gilbert’s phrase, the “true location”27 of the magnet’s poles—is the Earth, the Ur-magnet that orients our mini-magnets. It seems strange to regard the Earth as a Beyond, but this view makes sense if Earth is the Earth of scientific theory. That the Earth is a body in no way detracts from its theoretical function as the locus of magnetic essence divorced from the things whose essence it is. In our current usage, which was also prevalent in Hegel’s day, the north pole of a magnet is called north because it points to the magnetic north pole of the Earth. But as Hegel argues in his Philosophy of Nature, it is more accurate to call it “south,” since, by the law of magnetism, it must point to its opposite.28 With this in mind, we can say that each pole of our mini-magnet points to, and is defined by, the opposite pole of the Earth-magnet. North “here” has its inner truth in South “there,” and South “here” has its truth in North “there.” Hegel calls this approach “superficial” [159]—superficial because non-dialectical. Through its ingenious idea of inversion, understanding, to its credit, hits upon a great principle of nature: polar complementarity.29 But it fails to grasp the true meaning of this principle; its two-world thinking gets in the way. In truth, a magnet’s inversion is not to be found anywhere but in itself. The magnet is self-inverting, which is to say that it contains negativity within itself, or is self-other. How do we know? Because any attempt to isolate a pole fails. If we chop off one of the poles, it KALKAVAGE 87 simply reappears in the now-smaller magnet. “Pole” is not a material chunk of a body but one term of an opposition. In the Phaedo, Socrates tells an Aesop-like fable about how god, seeing that Pleasure and Pain were always quarreling, tied their heads together, so that where the one was the other was bound to follow (60B). The same moral can be inferred from the magnet, where each “head” always entails its opposite. The magnet illustrates what is true in all cases of inversion. In its true meaning, the inverted world is not a Beyond but rather the intelligible form of the actual world. Inversion in this sense undoes the superstition of understanding, according to which things exist in one world but have their intelligible essence in another: “antitheses of inner and outer, of appearance and the supersensible, as of two different kinds of actuality, we no longer find here” [159].30 Magnetic north, as I indicated earlier, is not south somewhere else but right here: “the north pole which is the in-itself of the south pole is the north pole actually present in the same magnet.” Similarly, in the moral sphere, crime calls down on itself the law’s judgment and correction, invokes its nemesis as its fulfillment, not in some other world, but right here. Crime and punishment are the inseparable poles of the moral magnet—a fact well known to Dostoevsky. Moral self-inversion is at work even when we don’t get caught. Having done something wrong, we suffer the torments of conscience and punish ourselves: we strain to negate our negation. Let us sum up what we have seen so far. Understanding embraces the principle of inversion as the true inner meaning of its supersensible law. According to this principle, a given determination finds its truth in its opposite: it is the law of all determinations to be transposed into their opposites, to move. But understanding regards this shift in a static way, as mere reference to another object-like world, another substance or medium. We see what it does not: that inversion defines appearance as such. It is the essence of all determinations in the realm of appearance to be self-inverting, to summon their opposites in a new version of the play of force. �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The precise meaning of the inverted world, and the corresponding critique of the supersensible Beyond, lead us to the metaphysical primacy of motion. Understanding treats motion or change as though it needed to be saved by transcendent principles and mathematical formulas, as though rest alone were intelligible. But motion, as the inverted world has revealed, is the intelligible as such, the Concept as the unity in which opposites flow into each other. In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel makes this point with respect to our friend, the magnet: “For the magnet exhibits in simple, naïve fashion the nature of the Concept, and the Concept moreover in its developed form as syllogism.”31 He adds in a note: “If anyone thinks that thought is not present in nature, he can be shown it here in magnetism.”32 Magnetism, as opposed to the thing we call a magnet, is a movement of poles toward and into each other. It is the logically structured fluency of opposite determinations present in a simple object. To think the inverted world, then, is “to think pure change or think the antithesis within the antithesis itself, or contradiction” [160]. The inverted world, our second supersensible world, is not alongside the first, but has in fact “overarched the other world and has it within it…; it is itself and its opposite in one unity” [160]. The inverted world, rightly understood, generates what Hegel calls “inner difference.” This act of immanent self-differentiation is the genuine necessity that was lacking in understanding’s effort to connect force and law.33 The simple force of electricity divides itself into positive and negative because, as a simple force, it is inwardly tense, polarized with respect to itself [161]. Difference isn’t something tacked on as an explanatory construct but is inherent in unity. To be one is to be self-divided, to contain rather than exclude opposition. In revisiting electrical force, Hegel applies the wisdom of the magnet: positive and negative electricity “animate each other into activity, and their being is rather to posit themselves as not-being and to cancel themselves in the unity” [161]. This is our familiar play of force, which, having been constrained by static principles and mathematical formalism, now rises up against understanding to proclaim: “I, in KALKAVAGE 89 my instability, was the truth all along! I, pure change, am the essence of law!” V. Infinity—And Beyond Hegel gives inner difference an evocative name: infinity [161]. Infinity, here, is not indefinite ongoing-ness, which Hegel calls “bad infinity” [238]. It is neither the potential infinite of Aristotle nor those limitless mute spaces that terrified Pascal. It is rather the logical process by which opposites flow into each other. Infinity is transition as such. It is the self-negation of a finite determinateness. The magnet, with its inseparable poles, is the sensuous symbol of infinity in this sense of the term. Infinity sums up the dialectical movement we have already seen in tautology. It is the “absolute unrest of pure selfmovement, in which whatever is determined in one way or another…is rather the opposite of this determinateness” [163]. This flow of opposites into each other inverts the perspective of understanding, which is infatuated with rest and wants to keep its terms clear and distinct. Hegel makes the striking claim that infinity “has been from the start the soul of all that has gone before.” It is the energy of self-negation that was implicit in all the finite shapes of consciousness that have appeared so far—and will continue to appear. When one of these finite shapes selfdestructs, refutes itself, it is experiencing the infinity, the selfopposition, that it holds within. In suffering contradiction, it is getting in touch, so to speak, with its inner magnet. Hegel identifies infinity with what he calls “the absolute Concept” [162]. Infinity and Concept both embody the self-differentiation of the self-identical, which for Hegel is truth. This selfdifferentiation appears in its purest form in Hegel’s Logic. Here in the Phenomenology, Hegel calls infinity as Concept “the simple essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood” [162]. Infinity, he says, “pulsates within itself but does not move, inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest.” It is Hegel’s version of the Logos of Heraclitus—the Fire that enlivens, pervades, consumes, and unifies all things. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Life, soul, blood. These words suggest that the force-world we are now transcending, the world that seemed so eventful and alive, was not really alive at all. To be sure, there was motion, but not life—vis viva, but not organic being.34 Understanding is prejudiced on behalf of physics. This is no doubt largely because the phenomena of physics, unlike those of biology, are readily reducible to the homogeneity of mathematical formalism, that is, equations. Life is the scandal of Verstand because the determinations of life are fluidly interconnected and defy rigid boundaries. To appreciate this fact, we have only to think of how animal organisms, in their embryonic development, exhibit spontaneous self-differentiation, develop their different organs and systems, wondrously, from within. Infinity, which has been generated by the inverted world, brings us to self-consciousness. This step had already been taken in the phenomenon of explanation, our internal movement of differentiating what is simple or self-same [163]. Explaining things, Hegel observes in passing, is fun—a holiday of the mind. The reason, he says, is that in the act of explaining why the world does what it does consciousness enjoys conversation with itself, Selbstgespräch [163]. To explain is ultimately to enjoy the play of our own inner movement, our self-consciousness. Inversion, inner difference, infinity, explanation all converge in self-consciousness, which now officially comes on the scene in the Phenomenology. The truth of the magnet was the repulsion of the self-same and the attraction of the self-different. This truth is now fully revealed as the self. To be self-conscious, to be aware of myself as myself, is to be tautologous in Hegel’s sense of the word. It is my act of generating inner difference that is immediately canceled or negated. Hegel describes self-consciousness as follows: I distinguish myself from myself, and in doing so I am directly aware that what is distinguished from myself is not different [from me]. I, the self-same being, repel myself from myself; but what is posited as distinct from KALKAVAGE 91 me, or as unlike me, is immediately, in being so distinguished, not a distinction for me [164]. Hegel compares this movement of self-identity with the axial rotation of a sphere [169]. As the sphere turns, it continually generates different positions in space and continually cancels them. It is constantly returning out of the self-otherness that it constantly begets. Every move “away” is a move “toward” and back home. Hegel stresses that self-consciousness was behind the drama of consciousness all along. It was the energy of self-divisiveness that was the living soul of sense-certainty, perception, and understanding. Now it is revealed that, just as infinity is the true inner of all objects, self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness. In other words, external things are and are true only insofar as they are and are true for a thinking subject or self. “True” means “true for me.” VI. From the Play of Force to the Drama of Man How does Hegel get from the paradoxes of physics to the fight for recognition with which the drama of self-consciousness begins? This will be my closing question. I begin by observing that force is already on the verge of selfconsciousness. Once physics takes force as its central concern, once it identifies force with nature itself—as happens most dramatically in the physics of Boscovich—it invites a connection between the spontaneity of inanimate bodies and the inner state of human beings.35 Nature and human nature find their common source, their essence, in impulsiveness, or what Hobbes was the first to call conatus, striving. Force, seen in this light, is protowill.36 If we keep in mind this connection between force and will, it becomes less surprising that Hegel’s chapter on understanding begins with force and ends with self-consciousness, which, for Hegel, is our impulse or drive to self-affirmation. As I suggested earlier, the dialectic of understanding generates life as well as self-consciousness. Life and selfconsciousness come on the scene together. Both exhibit infinity as �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the process of self-differentiation. But for the self at this nascent stage of its development, the mingling of life and selfconsciousness poses a problem. On the one hand, the self is aware of itself as being beyond body and finitude. To be an inwardly turned being is, in a sense, to experience myself as the absolute, a god. But I am also immersed in organic life, the necessary condition for self-awareness: I am aware of myself only because I am alive, rooted in this living body, which is the immediate object of my desire, care, and anxiety. And so the self is burdened with a double being. It is both a transcendent or pure self, the self in its glory, and an empirical self caught up in the mortifying contingencies of the flesh. This incarnation of inwardness, this unhappy unity of the divine and the mortal, is the contradiction that self-consciousness must somehow resolve, the riddle of its existence. In the fight for recognition the self seeks to transcend its animality or life. “Self-consciousness,” Hegel says, “is in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it is so for another; that is, it is only as a being that is recognized” [178]. Recognition, here, is not blank awareness but honor. In winning the recognition of another, I confirm the absoluteness that I experience within. This recognition is my self-recognition, my certainty of myself as absolute, made concrete, out there, really existent. I use this other individual to accomplish my goal, which is to achieve selfcertainty through the negation of my self-otherness. But this other, who is also at my stage of raw self-consciousness, wants to use me for the same reason. And so there is a fight for recognition. In this fight I seek to negate the presumed absoluteness of this other individual who confronts me. I also risk my life. I do so in order to show myself and my alter ego that I am more than an animal. I show that I am a pure self, a self that is worthy of being recognized as absolute. The two individual selves are thus bound together in what Hegel calls a “double movement” [182]. It is double because two selves are involved and because the negation each performs on itself it also performs on the other, which is itself. This reciprocal KALKAVAGE 93 action recapitulates the dialectic of force, in which the opposed determinations of active and passive, soliciting and solicited, came to be lodged in each of the separate forces: “In this movement [of selves] we see repeated the process which presented itself as the play of forces, but repeated now in consciousness. What in that process was for us, is true here of the extremes themselves” [184]. In other words, self-consciousness, as a collision of interacting selves, is force made self-conscious. In the Phenomenology Hegel mounts a critique of force. But the poverty of force is also its potency, its impulse to develop into self-consciousness, and, after many inversions, into the mutual recognition that is spirit. Spirit, for Hegel, is the spirit of the Greek polis, the spirit of the Roman Empire, the spirit of the French monarchy, and the spirit of the German Reformation. This last, which posits the absolute testimony of the heart, sets the stage for Kant’s moral world-view, conscience, and the beautiful soul. Each of these worlds is an attempt on the part of selfhood to incarnate itself so that it may know itself as the shared truth of a concrete community of selves. This communal selfhood Hegel calls the “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’”[177]. What, then, is the dialectic of force in Hegel’s Phenomenology? It is the Prelude to the Great Fugue of conceptualized history, which begins with the fight for recognition and ends in absolute knowing. Endnotes 1 A lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis on 15 October 2010. The first version of the lecture was given at the Spinoza Society in Washington, DC on 8 March 2010. 2 Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and Other Stories (West Valley City, Utah: Waking Lion Press, 2006), 16. 3 The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 125. Hegel extols understanding in the Preface of the Phenomenology, where he calls the analytic “force” of Verstand “the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power” [32]. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 94 KALKAVAGE What pure labor of fine flashes consumes Many a diamond with imperceptible foam, And what peace seems there to be conceived! When over the abyss a sun reposes, Pure works of an eternal cause, Time scintillates and the Dream is to know. 4 Hegel identifies force with relation, Verhältnis, in the so-called Jena Logic (The Jena System, 1804-1805: Logic and Metaphysics, trans. John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni [Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986], 47). 5 Leibniz is the father of this idea: “Substance is a being capable of action” (Principles of Nature and Grace, G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, trans. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989], 207). 6 A thing’s property, for Hegel, is a universal, but one that is bedingt: conditioned or be-thinged. Force, by contrast, is unbedingt—an unconditioned or unbe-thinged universal [132]. In other words, force is purely thinkable. It is not, like color, qualified and limited by a material medium. 7 See Newton’s Principia, Definition 3, where body or mass is identified with the force of resistance or vis inertiae. 8 See Jena Logic, 54. 9 “Force thus expresses relationship itself and the necessity to be within itself even in its being-outside itself, or to be self-equal” (Jena Logic, 56). 10 “A Specimen of Dynamics” in Leibnitz, Principles of Nature and Grace, 121. 11 In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel at one point offers what is perhaps his most deeply revealing critique of force. This is in the context of his argument that Kepler’s account of planetary motion is philosophically superior to that of Newton (Philosophy of Nature, Part Two of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970], 65-83). He remarks: “Seldom has fame been more unjustly transferred from a first discoverer to another person.” (Ibid., 66.) Hegel’s detailed critique elaborates the three aspects of scientific theorizing that we see in the Phenomenology: force, law, and explanation. 12 Italics Hegel’s. Throughout his analysis of force and law, Hegel refers to the syllogism. The middle term of the syllogism mediates between the two extremes, not as a distinct and static tertium quid, but as the dialectical identity of the extremes. For a fuller account of the syllogism, see Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1976), 664 ff.). 13 In his poem “The Cemetery by the Sea,” Paul Valèry precisely captures appearance as the dazzling unity of shining forth and evanescence: Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume Maint diamant d’imperceptible écume, Et quelle paix semble se concevoir! Quand sur l’abîme un soleil se repose, Ouvrages purs d’une éternelle cause, Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir. 95 14 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 34. 15 Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 125. 16 Throughout this part of his discussion, Hegel’s word for “thing” is Sache, not Ding—that is, a generalized “matter at hand” or πρᾶγμα, as opposed to the thing of perception. 17 Miller’s English translation reads “the Notion of law itself.” In all citations from Miller the word Notion is changed to Concept wherever it appears. 18 Hegel cites his agreement with Hume on this point in the Jena Logic, 52-53. 19 The pseudo-necessity of scientific theory re-appears at the level of observational reason. For example, so-called “psychological necessity” (the supposed necessity of psychological laws) proves to be “an empty phrase” [307]. 20 Λόγος means both ratio and account. In the Philosophy of Nature, 59, Hegel gives a genuinely conceptual λόγος of Galileo’s law of free fall. 21 More examples occur in the Jena Logic, 51. Why is the soil wet? Because it rained. What is rain? Falling moisture. Which is to say that the soil is wet because of wetness. In his Science of Logic, 458-466, Hegel identifies explanation with the sophistical “arguing from grounds.” 22 Berkeley had made a similar claim: “Force, gravity, attraction and terms of this sort are useful for reasonings and reckonings about motion and bodies in motion, but not for understanding the simple nature of motion itself or for indicating so many distinct qualities” (De motu, 17, trans. A. A. Luce in Berkeley’s Philosophical Writings [New York: Collier Books, 1965], 255). 23 24 Jena Logic, 61. Donald Verene suggests that Hegel’s phrase was inspired by a play of that name by Ludwig Tieck (Hegel’s Recollection: A Study of Images in the Phenomenology of Spirit [Albany: SUNY Press, 1985], 39). The inverted world is, in German, die verkehrte Welt. Verkehrt means either upside down, or twisted and perverse. Hegel uses the term with the latter meaning in a section entitled “The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit” [377]. Scholars disagree as to whether, in the context of the inverted world, verkehrt means perverse as well as upside down. Gadamer makes an interesting case for the �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW double meaning (Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P. Christopher Smith [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976], 35-53). 25 This fits the analysis of the inverted world in the Science of Logic, 509: “In point of fact, it is just in this opposition of the two worlds that their difference has vanished, and what was supposed to be the world in and for itself is itself the world of Appearance.” Hegel adds (510): “the world of Appearance is thus in its own self the law which is identical with itself.” 26 An otherworldly inversion occurs in Sophocles’ Antigone. When Creon accuses Antigone of having bestowed equal honor on both her brothers, even though one was the enemy of his city and the other its defender, Antigone responds (l. 521): “Who knows if down there this is holy?” 27 William Gilbert, De Magnete, trans. P. Fleury Mottelay (New York: Dover, 1958), 26. 28 Philosophy of Nature, Addition, 166. Hegel here follows Gilbert, De Magnete, 27. 29 “There has been a lot of talk in physics about polarity. This concept is a great advance in the metaphysics of the science; for the concept of polarity is simply nothing else but the specific relation of necessity between two different terms which are one, in that when one is given, the other is also given. But this polarity is restricted to the opposition” (Philosophy of Nature, 19). 30 The first supersensible world was a theory of transposed essence, the second that of transposed reversed essence. The transposition of essence is the theoretical analogue of what Hegel calls self-estrangement (Selbstentfremdung). In the realm of pure theory, things have their essence in another world. In the more advanced, praxis-oriented stages of spirit, man’s essence, the meaning of his life, will be outside of and beyond his actually present world: “In the Phenomenology, Hegel repeatedly discusses the duality he wishes to surmount, a dualism which expresses the torment of spirit obliged to live in one world and to think in the other” (Hypollite, Genesis and Structure, 382). 31 Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 163. 32 Ibid., 165. 33 Inner difference first appeared when force split into two interacting forces [138]. 34 The closest we got to life was with magnetism, which Gilbert regarded as a kind of soul: “Wherefore, not without reason, Thales, as Aristotle reports in his book De Anima, declares the loadstone to be animate, a part of the animate mother earth and her beloved offspring” (Gilbert, De Magnete, 312). Hegel, in a similar vein, praises magnetism in the Preface: “Even when the specific determinateness—say one like Magnetism, for example—is in itself concrete or real, the Understanding degrades it into something lifeless, merely predi- KALKAVAGE 97 cating it of another existent thing [the Earth], rather than cognizing it as the immanent life of the thing, or cognizing its naïve and unique way of generating and expressing itself in that thing” [53]. 35 In order to save continuity in nature, specifically in the phenomenon of collision, Roger Boscovich argued that the repulsive force mutually exerted by two colliding bodies is exerted before the actual collision. All action is action at a distance, and there is never any actual contact between two bodies. Max Jammer puts it succinctly: for Boscovich, “‘force’ is consequently more fundamental than ‘matter’” (Concepts of Force: A Study in the Foundations of Dynamics [New York: Dover, 1957], 178). 36 Schopenhauer goes even further by simply identifying force and will: “Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to be conceived as will” (The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, trans. E. F. Payne [New York: Dover, 1969], 111). �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW LENKOWSKI 99 The Work of Education Jon Lenkowski Good morning to you, ladies and gentlemen, students, colleagues, distinguished guests, family and friends; and, most particularly, to the current graduates who will receive master’s degrees today. While it is customary at commencements to be congratulatory and encouraging, I’m not going to do that, at least not primarily. Rather, I’m going to try to address the following two connected questions: What exactly have you been doing here? and What have you learned? The first of these two questions goes to the peculiar nature of the work we have tried to get you to do here; the second looks easier, but may also require further consideration. Having spent a certain time with us, these seem to be the very same questions you have to be asking yourselves; and they are not very easy questions to answer. I’m going to go over some old ground and I want to assure you that, while I’m enjoying myself, I promise not to keep you very long. To say that you have spent a certain number of semesters here and read a certain list of deep and important books, and have had conversations about them, is not really to say enough, because it does not capture the essence of the specific work you have been doing. It is true that we read a lot of books. But we view this not really as an end, but as a beginning, since we hope and expect that you will return to these same books, and others like them, again and again throughout your lives. And therefore what you have been doing here must be properly called a commencement—that is, only the beginning of an activity that will just continue in you as an essential and constant part of your lives. But this can happen only insofar as the books that we have read here together have already gotten a sort of permanent hold on you. Thus our hopes Commencement address to the Graduate Institute of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, 14 August 2009. Jon Lenkowski is a tutor at St. John’s College. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW for your future are inextricably linked to what we assume has already taken root in you here. Let’s try to think through the implications of this. First of all, it would have to mean that you have not kept the books at arm’s length, but have allowed them to enter into you in deep and essential ways. In other words: that you have made the books your own. This looks different from something like memorization—say of songs or even certain verses of poetry— which is also a sort of internalization. Memorization might look like making something my own, but really I’ve only made it always readily available to myself. I can now repeat the song anytime the mood strikes me—but it is still kept at a distance and is in no way active in me. On the contrary, it is our great hope that what you have read, studied and discussed here will stay with you in an active way; will continue to reverberate and resonate in you; will remain active in the sense that these matters will forever make demands on you, will continue to inform and remain central to your lives and to whatever you think and feel as human beings. This also distinguishes what we have you do here from merely technical and professional studies. It is true that these also make demands on us, but only in our capacity as professionals of one sort or another, not as human beings as such. So while they may be active in us in our professional work, they are compartmentalized and only kept off to the side, without touching us as human beings, without being allowed to become, or without being thought of as, central to our lives. Our hope here, on the contrary, is that what we have you study will make deeper and more thoroughgoing demands on you, simply as human beings and as citizens. Thus to say that you make the books your own is to say that you carry your education inside yourselves, where you continue to let it work on you. This is then what we expect you to have been doing here: making the books your own, or—what is the same thing—bringing your education within yourselves. To see how completely appropriate this way of speaking is to what we do here in particular, you have only to consider what you have studied: the philosophy, politics, language and literature, history, LENKOWSKI 101 mathematics, and science you have studied here are not simply making claims in the abstract, are not merely certain subjectmatters over there, alien to me. Rather, we make the book our own. We enter the book and make ourselves part of the book’s world. Or, maybe better: we allow the book to enter us; we internalize the book and let it inform and illuminate the ways we look at ourselves. Whether a political teaching centers on Athens in the fifth century BC or on Florence in the sixteenth century, it is always—immediately and directly—drawing my attention to my own political situation. Whether it is Plato’s version, or Freud’s version, of the tripartite soul, my attention is drawn—immediately and directly—to the phenomena of my own inner life. If this were not the case these books could at most be only of antiquarian interest. These books are always making such demands upon us, saying things about us, demanding that we turn toward ourselves—so that to read the books thoughtfully and intelligently is always to be turning toward ourselves. This turning toward oneself has two aspects. First there is the question of the unity or unification of the various things we study. And here I would remind you that both our undergraduate program and our graduate program, despite the variety of subject matter in both, claim to be unified programs. So where is the unity to be found? This question is addressed vividly in Book VII of Plato’s Republic at 537b-c, where Socrates says: And the various studies acquired without any particular order by the children in their education must be integrated into a synopsis, [or seeing-together,] which reveals the kinship of these studies with one another and with the nature of what is.1 This seeing-together (σύνοψις in Greek) is directed first of all to the integration of what are there called gymnastic and musical education, but then subsequently also to what is called the higher musical education, or what we might call the liberal arts. It is the “seeing-together that reveals the unity of these studies.” Only in turning inward, toward ourselves as the locus of these various �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW studies can we achieve this synopsis or seeing-together, for it is in me, in my “seeing them together,” that these various studies find their unity, gather and integrate themselves and do their work. And this leads me to the second aspect of this turning inward toward oneself: as the books become your own and enter into your souls, they continue to work upon you and upon your view of all things, including your view of yourselves. This does not mean that what we read is simply believed or swallowed whole or uncritically. It’s more that claims and counter-claims—or even nuance and counter-nuance—vie with one another; that what were fixed, and maybe dearly-held, views get unsettled and become questionable. This is the work done by the books and by our conversations about them. And all of this is going on in us. Thus our attention is quite naturally, even effortlessly, drawn inward. But we are not mere observers here; rather we become active participants in this, our own inner drama. A certain activity or work on our part seems to kick in almost automatically. Or it could be said that the work that the books do elicits, and is completed by, a certain corresponding work on our part. But though this might initially arise automatically, a certain effort seems required to sustain it and make it work for us. This sustained effort at turning inward, turning toward yourselves, is the peculiar and proper work we have been intent on getting you to do. The tasks of reading the assignments and participating in class, while necessary and important, are really only a first step, preparatory to this more essential activity. We might name this activity rumination, or simply thinking, and it consists in carrying on a conversation within one’s own self, as the ideas take hold and confront one another. In Book I, Chapter 2 of the Politics (1253a8 ff.) Aristotle talks about the importance of language for man, the political animal: Now it is evident that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animal. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal that has speech. And whereas LENKOWSKI 103 mere voice is only an indication of pleasure and pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature reaches as far as the sensing of pleasure and pain, and the communication of these to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to articulate what is advantageous and what is disadvantageous, and therefore similarly what is just and what is unjust. And it belongs to man that he alone among the animals has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense constitutes a household and a city.2 Language is different from mere vocal sound and thus sharply distinguishes human beings even from other social animals. What is so important about the power of speech, according to Aristotle, is that it is language that allows us to consider matters of justice and injustice, good and evil, and—we would add—other matters of the same order. We must note here that, while it is speech that clearly distinguishes man from other animals, Aristotle himself is more interested in the specifically human activity that speech alone makes possible for us. It is this activity of thinking and considering that really makes us human; it is this that is the specifically proper activity of human being as such. And this has been our principal aim in your time here with us that, along with internalizing the books, and carrying your education within yourselves, you have accustomed yourselves to this turn inward, this rumination, this conversation with yourselves, as the proper and essential work, or being-at-work (ενέργεια in Greek) of human being as such—and to such an extent that this activity becomes simply a part of your lives. This is the principal aim of the education we offer you, and may well be the essential and intrinsic goal of education as such. To help me make the case for this last claim, let me return briefly to Book VII of Plato’s Republic. I will read from 518b6d7, abbreviating the passage slightly. Socrates says: �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW [T]herefore education is not what the professions of certain men assert it to be. They assert that they put into the soul knowledge that isn’t in it, as though they were putting sight into blind eyes.... But the present argument indicates that this power is already in the soul of each and that, just as an eye is not able to turn from darkness to the light without the whole body turning, so also the instrument with which each learns must, together with the whole soul, be turned around from becoming, until it is able to look at what is.... And therefore there would be an art of this turning around, concerned with the way in which this power can most easily and efficiently be turned around: not an art of producing sight in it, but rather, this art takes as given that sight is there, but not rightly turned, nor looking at what it ought to look at.3 So: education is not a matter of taking knowledge that is already in the teacher’s soul, and then transposing it to the soul of the learner. Rather it is a sort of turning of the power of seeing that is already in the learner’s soul, in the right direction—a turning brought about by a certain art (τέχνη) called the art of turning around (περιαγωγή, μεταστροφή). Book VII begins with an image of our education—that is, our rise from ignorance to knowledge—depicted as the gradual ascent of released prisoners from within a dark cave up to the light of day. At each stage the released prisoner is torn away from what he had been looking at, and what he had implicitly trusted as real, to now confront something entirely new which conflicts with what he had previously seen. This confrontation compels him to turn inward—that is, to weigh the one against the other, and also against all of the other views he had once held at stages already passed through, each one of which had also made truth-claims and had at one time been simply and implicitly trusted and believed in. He is now forced to “see all of these together” (συνορᾶν, the infinitive of συνοράω—that is, σύνοψις, synopsis) LENKOWSKI 105 and carry on a conversation with himself, in which each of these has its say. The description of the release from shackles and of the violent turning around of these prisoners at the beginning of the Cave passage might suggest the necessity of some external agent (a Socrates, for instance), but even the simplest reflection on the passage quickly gets one to see that this process can occur entirely within a single soul—in other words, through a conversation with oneself. Such an inner dialogue, in which one “talks right through something” is in Greek called διαλεκτική, dialectic, from the verb διαλέγειν, where λέγειν means “to speak” or “to talk,” and the prepositional prefix διά means “right through.” So someone who finds himself in the same situation as this released prisoner would have to effortfully “talk right through” this panoply of claims and counterclaims upon him that he now finds in his soul. This is captured nicely in the middle voice of the verb, where διαλέγεσθαι often has the sense of talking with oneself. A bit further on in Book VII, at 532b4-5, the release from bonds and the turningaround connected with it are identified with dialectic. This, then, is the picture of education given in the Republic. It is supposed to culminate in light, or in genuine knowledge. But whether this culmination is ultimately a real resolution, and whether all of the antagonisms in the soul between claims and counterclaims are ever really left behind, seems difficult to assess, especially since what the Republic claims to be the ultimate moment of this journey upward—namely, the Good or the Idea of the Good—is explicitly said to be beyond being (Book VI, 509b). But however this turns out, we in the meantime accomplish something of enormous significance: First: This turn inward, turn toward the self, where the synopsis or seeing-together occurs, could be called, or likened to, a kind of conversion, since we have been turned around and turned inward toward ourselves. Second: Furthermore, and as a consequence of this, whatever progress we make here toward knowledge seems at the same time to also be a progress toward self-knowledge. So here knowledge and self-knowledge seem to come together or coincide. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 106 Τhird: If we persist in this turn inward and allow it to develop into a full-blown conversation with oneself, we are making actual within ourselves the proper and essential work (ἔργον)or being-atwork (ἐνέργεια) of human being as such. Fourth and finally: This dialectical movement of the soul within itself, which is the essential work and the very heart of the education we have tried to provide for you here, is at once the inner essence of education as such. Postscript The inward turn talked about here might invite comparison with the concept of Er-innern, Er-innerung in Hegel (cf. Phänomenologie des Geistes, VIII: Das Absolute Wissen, the very last paragraph), and importantly revived by Gadamer (cf. Wahrheit und Methode, Erster Teil, Sec. II, 2, d, penultimate paragraph), as well as the concept of Er-eignen, Er-eignis in Heidegger (cf. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), passim). In ordinary German, the verb erinnern normally means “to remind,” and with sich in the reflexive form “to remember,” though Hegel and Gadamer take the word more literally to mean something like “to interiorize”—an easy enough connection via the adverb inne (English “within”) in the verb root. The verb ereignen normally means “to happen” and the noun Ereignis means “an event.” The standard etymology (cf. Der Grosse Duden, Bd. 7: Etymologie) traces ereignen, through a shift in the root, to the archaic eräugnen, carrying the sense of showing (itself) before the eyes (Augen in German). The connection between this and “to happen” seems clear enough. But Heidegger, true to his fierce independence, takes the verb in an entirely different direction, linking ereignen through the root directly with the adjective eigen (English “own” or “one’s own”)—a connection that Duden explicitly warns against. Heidegger’s insistence on linking ereignen to eigen, together with the particular stress he puts on the motive power of the prefix er-, leads him to take er-eignen to mean something like “on the way to appropriating,” or “on the way to ownness.” (The current LENKOWSKI 107 standard way of rendering this in English is “en-owning,” which, while neither German nor English, tries to capture both the sense and flavor of Heidegger’s usage.) Of course, there is an agenda behind this reading. And yet it seems too simpleminded to dismiss Heidegger’s interpretation as just bad philology. Should not the presumption at least be that he has seen into something hidden and essential which has allowed him to look beyond the everyday and obvious? Notes 1 The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 216. Translation slightly altered and emphases added by the author. 2 Translation 3 by the author. The Republic of Plato, 197. Emphases added. �108 109 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Falstaff and Cleopatra Elliott Zuckerman I Falstaff and Cleopatra do not look alike. We all have a mental picture of Falstaff, and most of us think we can visualize Cleopatra. Yet it is surprising how few words in their plays are devoted to their physical descriptions. Falstaff comes upon us unannounced in the second scene of Henry the Fourth Part One. At the same moment we move suddenly from formal verse into prose. If we envision as a whole the four plays of Shakespeare’s mature history cycle—Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth Part One and Part Two, and Henry the Fifth—then it is in that scene that Falstaff begins his domination and transformation of the two middle plays. After the regular verse that we have heard so far, both Falstaff and the prose come as something new. They announce that the messy world of London lowlife will be exposed to us, inserted below the arena of dynastic rivalry and war. To put it impressionistically into color and sound, it is as though the greenish white and the glitter of Richard the Second have been replaced by the rich browns of smelly taverns and Spanish sherry, later to be succeeded by the golden brass of Henry the Fifth. At the end of two full acts all we are actually told about Falstaff’s looks is that he is old and that he is fat. We also learn that he has wit, but wit, so far as I know, is not limited to a physical type. As it happens, all three of these definitive words— fat, old, and wit—are used by Prince Hal in the opening phrase of their first exchange. But it is Falstaff’s habitual drink that Hal calls old, and it is his wit itself that he calls fat: Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack…1 A lecture delivered on 2 April 2010 at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Elliot Zuckerman is a tutor emeritus. �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Later on, Falstaff will famously tell us that he is not only witty in himself but the source of wit in other men. But here the Prince is not referring to the expanse of Falstaff’s humor or the infectiousness of his intellect. In his banter Hal is calling his companion thick-witted, the opposite of what we might call a “rapier” wit. Yet isn’t it remarkable that in his opening words Hal uses the three words—four, if we add sack—that signify what may be most important in Falstaff’s being? Fat, Wit, Old, Sack— it is one of those marvelous details in Shakespeare about which we wonder whether he placed them there strategically in premeditated design, or whether they simply turned up, self-generated by genius. As for Cleopatra, all hints about her looks are eclipsed by something said about her that beggars all description. It may be the greatest compliment ever paid anyone: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies.2 Perhaps such hyperbole is necessary not only because she tempts one of the greatest Roman heroes to betrayal, emasculinity, and death, but also because—in the company of Juliet and Cressida, Rosalind and Viola, Imogen and Isabella—she is played by a boy. I think she is the only heroine who explicitly refers to that convention, when, near the end, she evades the captivity in which, as she says, some squeaking actor will “boy” her greatness. (Among her countless talents, Cleopatra is good at transforming nouns into verbs.) Cleopatra is not only associated with crocodiles and snakes, but she is expanded into a personification of Egypt and the Nile. We see her playing the capricious monarch and the jealous rival. My favorite among her various guises is in her scene as music lover. She calls for music by echoing the opening line that this audience ought to know well: ZUCKERMAN 111 Give me some music, moody food Of those that trade in love. [Music is called for. After a performance of whatever length, she interrupts:] Let it alone, let’s to billiards. 4 By replacing music with billiards, Cleopatra demonstrates her infinite variety. In an instructive anthology of French prose, designed for use in the language tutorial of the college, there are samples of the short character sketches of La Bruyère. Each paragraph is a list of personal and sartorial characteristics, and ends with a declaration of what the person is: il est riche, il est pauvre. Such generic tags cannot be attached to the great people in Shakespeare. There is only one Hamlet, one Rosalind, one Lady Macbeth—only one Falstaff and only one Cleopatra. Why, then, did I put those two together in the title of this lecture, and why have at least some of you already guessed why they deserve to be paired? Whether for good or for ill, the Fat Wit and the Serpent of the Nile, each in his or her respective world, represent a counterpoise and a threat to what is going on politically. The History Tetralogy has the bones of a Morality Play. In the line of legitimacy, Prince Hal lies between Richard the Second, who was legitimate but weak, and the Henry the Fifth that Hal is to become, who will legitimize the crown his father wears uneasily. Meanwhile there is a gamut of Honor, ranging from Falstaff, for whom it is a mere word, to Hotspur, for whom it is everything. Hotspur, by the way, is the only rival to Falstaff in liveliness and language. In Part Two the underlying schematism is further personalized by the introduction of the Lord Chief Justice, representing the moral order for which the future king must eventually reject Falstaff. Falstaff is also the Prince’s surrogate father—a role that is memorialized in a long and separate scene. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 112 Richard II { Falstaff Henry IV HAL Hotspur Lord Chief Justice Henry V Prince Hal is at the center of four triads, which at their most neutral should give him—and us—the wherewithal for a proper political and moral choice. The trouble is that Shakespeare in his fecundity has endowed Falstaff with so much being that the scales are, so to speak, outweighed. Falstaff cannot be a measurable factor within the world when he is already a world in himself. As he tells the Prince in the peroration of a play within the play: …banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins—but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.5 The Prince answers truthfully but mysteriously in a tone the actor must think up for himself: “I do, I will.” Cleopatra, too, despite her pairing with Antony, also has her separable world. This is paradoxically most evident in the manner of her death, which is sharply divided from the death of Antony. ZUCKERMAN 113 All the other Shakespearean tragic heroes die at the end of their plays, but after the succession of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, it is in Act Four that Mark Antony has his prolonged suicide in the presence of Eros. The playwright needs an entire act for something new: the exotic and polysemous apotheosis of Cleopatra. That redemption looks forward, I think, to the final plays, often called Romances, that follow, in which old dissensions are harmonized, lost children are found, and statues come to life. When Cleopatra embraces the asps she is showing the tragic hero how such things ought to be done. All the boyishness is gone in this triumph of the woman. And it is accomplished amidst verbal music that rivals the sensuality of that other triumphal woman, Isolde, who, twenty minutes after the suicide of her lover, achieves her first and final sexual climax. Most of the Romans can’t understand Cleopatra, and are persistently fascinated with her and with Egypt. Even Antony has what she calls “Roman thoughts,” but unfortunately not often enough. The most extremely Roman of them all—I refer to Octavius Caesar, who is an undisguised boy marching in from the arena of Coriolanus—seems to be unable to recognize her attractiveness. That is, anyway, how I interpret his entry, near the end of the play, into her room in Alexandria. “Which is the Queen of Egypt?” he asks.7 He was only the adoptive son of Julius. I mention Julius because I want to tell a brief anecdote about what happened some years ago in a Graduate Institute preceptorial. At the end of the first act we came to Cleopatra’s famous reference to her youth: My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood...8 I asked what she could have meant, and an elderly man in the class observed that she was referring to a Caesar salad. I thought the interpretation was entirely Shakespearean. This addition to all the other meanings of the salad metaphor would have seemed to him apt and irresistible. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 114 II Cleopatra’s arrival on the barge at Cydnus is a celebrated passage of English verse. It is also a powerful example of how Shakespeare can transform his sources. In this case the source is the good prose of North’s translation of Plutarch. The speaker is Enobarbus, who earlier spoke the lines describing Cleopatra in general. He has one of the most privileged roles in Shakespeare. The transformation from good prose to great verse, and then from great verse to great poetry, is worth a lecture of its own. It is certainly worth a Tutorial of its own. Here I can only point to a detail or two that have been added to the description. They have been italicized in the example: The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. ***** Antony, Enthron’d i’ the market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature.8 I have italicized the places where the winds, the water, and the air itself are in love. Cleopatra has seduced Nature itself. And as I transcribed these passages I felt obliged to insert a plea for the restoration of this play—I am tempted to say this poem—to a more secure place in the program. Not only should it be a seminar reading, but it contains a detail that entitles it to be the very last reading of the senior year. For—as my colleague Mr. Kutler likes to point out—somewhere in its text it contains the word UNSEM- ZUCKERMAN 115 INARED. The word unseminared—which refers to the deprivation of something even more important than the Seminar—is used only once in Shakespeare’s works. There are many thousands of such words. When they occur in Ancient Greek we may assume that other instances haven’t survived. In Shakespeare they tell us that his genius had at its disposal a language that was rich in transitional flux. It could be said that Elizabethan and Jacobean English displayed a variety that rivaled Cleopatra’s; or that, like Falstaff, the language was fat and witty in itself. When talking about iambic pentameter, or blank verse, I like to show its remarkable range by quoting pairs of lines that as neighbors highlight the immense contrasts possible in both the language and what had become its characteristic dramatic medium. Some of you already know the following lines as my favorite example, from Hamlet’s dying injunction to Horatio: Absent thee from felicity awhile And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story.9 The first line is Latinate and quick-syllabled, leaving unrealized two or three of the metrical stresses. The second is Anglo-Saxon and monosyllabic, realizes extrametrical stresses, and even provides clusters of consonants—“this harsh world”—that slow the line down further, and that are unimaginable in, say, Italian verse. Here is another such line, from Macbeth: The multitudinous seas incarnadine Making the green one red.10 Each of the two lines could belong to a different language. (If, by the way, you don’t see that all but the last of these lines are legitimate and unarguable lines of iambic pentameter, please ask me to show you—at the risk that I’ll actually do so!) Such extravagance is in sharp contrast with the economy of the other great modern dramatist we study here. According to one set of tallies, Shakespeare’s lexicon is almost ten times that of the �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sparse and highly selective lexicon of Racine. (As the students know, most of Racine’s vocabulary compensates for its brevity by being untranslatable!) The difference is of course reflected in the difference of the action. In answer to the on-stage horrors of Shakespeare—even Sophocles would not have allowed the audience to witness the gouging-out of eyes—the typical action of the Racinian queen is to go off into the wings and then return, having slightly changed her mind. The so-called unities of time and place are usually ignored in Shakespeare, no more blatantly than in Antony and Cleopatra, where Act Four has as many as fifteen scenes. Those scene-numberings are, by the way, entirely editorial. It is a delightful fact that in the First Folio, our only original text, the heading of the play is Act One, Scene One—and then there are no further act and scene divisions. Perhaps a careless omission, but it is nicer to think that the first editors realized that this play ought to flow on unimpeded, like the river Nile—or like the overflowing dotage of Antony, which is mentioned in the opening lines. There is something about the richness of Shakespeare’s language that is not always approved: his propensity for punning. One of the great classical critics of Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, played right into my hands when he wrote about it. “The quibble,” he said—in his day a pun was called a quibble—“is the fatal Cleopatra for which Shakespeare lost the world.”11 Just as for Antony the world was well lost, so Shakespeare’s attraction to wordplay is happily inseparable from his love of the word. Tonight there is no time to discuss the wonders of Shakespeare’s quibbling, for, as you’ll hear, there is a rarer and more hidden aspect of his wordplay to which I shall devote a few minutes. But recently I have been reading learned discussion of the pun—there are such things—and have been confirmed in something I have always suspected: that an investigation of the pun must lead to a discussions of language itself. But even when you hear an everyday pun, let it be enough to remember Shakespeare’s predilection when you automatically groan. If the groan is simply to let the punster know that you “got it,” a smile of appreciation is a better indication. But if it is a groan of ZUCKERMAN 117 reproach, the practice of our greatest poet requires that you at least take the time to decide whether the pun is a good one. But more broadly you might remember that there are petrified puns at the roots of our words—a Platonic dialogue is devoted to quibbling etymologies, strongly countering the now popular notion that the form of words is merely conventional. Punning is related to rhyming and to metaphor. Bear in mind the dangerous double-meanings of the Delphic oracles, where the wrong choice of interpretation might mean one’s death. Remember that it was with a quibble that Odysseus escaped from the Cyclops. Much of the sense of music depends upon the ambiguities of what can fairly be called tonal punning, for every modulation pivots on a pun. And above all consider what you are doing when you dream. The other aspect of wordplay I just referred to is the Anagram, and it is the occasion for my second anecdote. The anagram got me into trouble in my early years of teaching at St. John’s. In a language tutorial we were reading one of the sonnets, which I present here. I’ll read the whole sonnet, but I’m afraid that I shall talk about only line eleven, which I have italicized: SONNET 64 When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age, When sometime lofty towers I see down razed, And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store, When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay, Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate: That time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose. �118 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW There can be little doubt that the poet is asking us to hear the connection between RUIN and RUMINATE, and I think he is also asking us to see the connection in the printed text. We did so in that class, long ago, noticing that when we removed RUIN from RUMINATE we were left with a bereft MATE. We didn’t stop there, but went on to look for more anagrams. We found TIME, which is the theme of the sonnet, and words related to that theme, such as MINUTE, MATURE, and REMAIN. Someone happily discovered NATURE. There are more, but I’ll let you find them for yourselves. At a dinner-party that evening, I boasted of what we had discovered in class. I was overheard by one of the elderly members of the faculty, who later took me aside and told me that at St. John’s College we don’t do such things. Perhaps he thought I also counted up the letters in all my texts, in order to discover what was at the dead middle. It is now fashionable to include anagrams among the treasures one seeks in the sonnets. I know of recent major studies that do so. When the poem is printed out and non-dramatic, there is an invitation for anagram hunting. But what about the plays, which were presented without a text to follow, to an audience not all of whom could read? Are we to find literal wordplay in the spoken text? For a test case, I seek the help of Iago. In most of the action of Othello, we watch with fascination and dread the virtuoso performance wherein Iago, malignantly and I think motivelessly, brings to destruction a great hero and his innocent wife. He does so by means of a handkerchief. His performance begins with what is almost a whisper: “Ha,” he says, “I like not that.”12 What am I to make of the fact that HA—that H and A—are the first two letters of HANDKERCHIEF? What are you to make of it? Did Shakespeare make anything of it? Did Shakespeare even notice it? Does his intent matter, despite the warnings that there is something called the Intentional Fallacy? Isn’t the richness and variety of the play enough, without the need to pile up superfluities? 119 ZUCKERMAN I think similar questions must be asked about any such discovery, particularly when its attraction feels irresistible. Their discovery is only a preliminary to the criticism of the poem. Criticism begins with the attempt to decide whether what is discovered is properly there.13 III One reason why Shakespeare the Poet and Shakespeare the Dramatist vie for supreme beauty is that the poetry spreads itself—leaks out, so to speak—into the action. I am referring to what, for want of a better name, I call Enacted Metaphors. The poetic trope is staged for us. Cleopatra, on the upper level of the storied stage, has the wounded Antony reeled up to her, and she observes that fishing is a great sport. The blind Duke of Gloucester thinks he is jumping off a cliff, but only falls from one step of the stage to another. In a speech filled with other sublimely monosyllabic lines, Othello extinguishes a lamp while on his way to smother Desdemona: Put out the light, and then put out the light.14 Whole scenes can be large figures of speech. The unweeded garden of England, with a gardener named Adam. The Forest of Arden, which always has Another Part. Lady Macbeth twisting her spotted hands while wandering in disturbed sleep. Falstaff stages his own resurrection. True to his denigration of Honor, he plays dead in battle. When he gets up, he has the chance to celebrate his ebullience in more than speech. Then, to make the act entirely outrageous, he carries off the body of Hotspur, dead from Honor, in order to claim the victory as his own. When Falstaff was lying in pretended death, we heard an impromptu eulogy from Prince Henry, which is in great contrast to the repudiation of Falstaff at the end of the play. Falstaff’s pretended death is comic; his true death is pathetic, and it comes when he is still alive. Cleopatra also keeps dying, and her deaths and recoveries bring on the death of Antony and his brief resurrection. Her final death, carefully staged, is, in the largest sense of the word, comic. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 120 About Falstaff’s actual death, there is an aspect I have never seen mentioned in the books I have read. In two significant ways the very end of his life parallels the death of Socrates. As you know, when Socrates is about to die he refers to a debt he owes to the demigod Asclepius—who, as I interpret it, cured him of Becoming. Falstaff, right after his rejection, refers to the money he owes Justice Shallow. More important, both Socrates and Falstaff die from the bottom up. The effect of the hemlock starts at the feet. And in her description of Falstaff’s death, Mistress Quickly notices that the final coldness began at his feet. I asserted earlier that one of the duties of criticism was to try to judge whether an anagram, say, was admissible. A similar attempt at discernment should be brought to bear on the significance of such classical parallels. The most magnificent of all the staged metaphors must be the death of Cleopatra. She herself stages it. She nurses the asps, like the mother of death. She readies herself to meet Antony again, and her ladies follow her, to assist in the seduction: The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, Which hurts, and is desir’d.15 But this operatic love-death is not that of the singing divas. They depend upon the easier effects of passionate music. Cleopatra’s is the triumph of clarity and wit. Epilogue In the Folio version of King Lear, shortly after the five Nevers that hammer out the culminating despair of the negative action, the King, with the dead Cordelia in his arms, imagines that his daughter is about to speak. As a staged metaphor, it might remind us of Cordelia’s initial refusal, five acts earlier, to speak more than a single repeated negative. At the end of the play she is saying nothing. At the beginning she had uttered the word Nothing, and with that word she seems to have released the army of uncanny evil manned by her sisters and their allies. Cordelia, who seems to be Grace itself, and who takes upon herself a redeeming forgiveness, must be eliminated from the ZUCKERMAN 121 world. Nothing could be more perverse than the eighteenthcentury happy ending, in which she survives and is married off to Edgar. This is not only absurd; it is, in another sense, not absurd enough. From the point of view of stagecraft, it is easy enough to save Cordelia. Shakespeare makes that obvious, so that we see that the killing of Cordelia is of the utmost importance. While we are all reasonably hopeful that there is still time to save her, he has Edmund delay until it is too late the casual word that would have meant rescue. It is being asserted, I think, that in order to eliminate the extreme evil, the extreme good must also go. At the end of this tragedy, and I think most of the others, the world must be deprived of both Grace and Evil, leaving us with the merely good and the merely bad. I’ll go one rash step further and draw an analogy with my chief subject. Both Falstaff and Cleopatra reveal a seductive amorality that also, like Grace and Evil, must be purged. England and Rome are left with the ordinary, the political, the moral, and the livable. 1 Henry IV, Part I, I.1.4. 2 Antony and Cleopatra, II.2.278-81. 3 Ibid., V.2.262 4 Ibid., II.51-4 5 Henry IV, Part I, II.4.457-63. 6 Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.135. 7 Ibid., I.5.86-7 8 Ibid., II.2.230-58 9 Hamlet, V.2, 361-63 10 Macbeth, II.2, 77-8 11 Samuel Johnson, A Preface to Shakespeare, §44 12 Othello, III.3.37 13 I once gave a lecture on the opening note of “Dove sono,” the great C-major aria of the Countess in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It was only while �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 123 speaking the lecture that I realized that the first syllable of the Italian text, DO, was also the DO of the C-major scale. PORTRAITS OF THE IMPASSIONED CONCEPT Peter Kalkavage, The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. 122 14 Othello, V.2.7. 15 Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.343-44. Paul Dry books, xvi + 537 pages, $35. Book Review by Eva Brann Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is an enthralling “picture gallery” (447)* of the successive incarnations in which human consciousness appears in the world; it is also a repellant trudge through the abstract dialectic by which its concept develops. I would claim that until you’ve undergone the complementary experiences of delighting in the imaginative recognition of the various “pictures” and of suffering the pains of thinking through the logic, you haven’t quite lived—if living means having plumbed the possibilities of passionately driven thought in search of self-awareness. Like all great classics of philosophy, the Phenomenology is written for all of us, the amateurs of thinking no less than the professional philosophers (451), provided we have this single qualification—that we are Hegel’s contemporaries in the sense of living with him at the end of time, when consciousness has come to full self-realization as spirit. More mundanely put, the Phenomenology presupposes only “some familiarity with the history of philosophy” (xii), and that can be supplied by any of the good commentaries available. Nonetheless, the book is a nest of labyrinths at whose every turn we readers meet, in Peter Kalkavage’s words, a monstrous Minotaur, a “Demon of Difficulty” (xi). To overcome each new Minotaur we need help of a more global sort than even the best of * Page numbers in parentheses refer to The Logic of Desire. �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries can provide. This is exactly what Kalkavage gives us in The Logic of Desire. It is a full-scale narrative, a readable yet faithful retelling of Hegel’s story. It has several serious predecessors (which are given full credit in a brief analytic biography), but is in a class of its own for its engaging, distinctly American-flavored accessibility, its downamong-the-readers and do-it-yourself egalitarianism. Indeed, an early reader of the book wrote to me to praise it as “a popularization of the right kind, explicating the thinking of Hegel in its own terms, while constantly watching the mind of the potential reader to see whether that mind is taking it in.” The Logic of Desire intends to lead us “into the thick of Hegel’s arguments” (xii), not from a commentator’s outside view but from the position of a reader venturing into the labyrinth. That is, of course, what an “introduction” should do – bring us into a text. The Logic of Desire is, so to speak, a friendly doppelgänger of the Phenomenology that steadily accompanies it (being as long as the text) without ever eclipsing it. Kalkavage presents Hegel’s book as one of a quartet of great books on education, together with Plato’s Republic, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Rousseau’s Émile. All four of these works present the drama of the soul’s development and liberation, as Hegel puts it, from consciousness’s “immediacy” (its unreflectively natural familiarity with its world) to its “mediated” (that is, conceptualized) appropriation of that world as fully selfconscious spirit. The Phenomenology is the story of the epochs in the education of spirit, the life changes self-generated by its “passionate self-assertion,” its spirited longing, its desire, to come into its own. This eventful journey of consciousness’s becoming spirit is a tragic drama, because the spirit-to-be “cannot become wise without making a fool of itself. An extremist at heart, spirit, our human essence, is fated…to learn through suffering” (2). The journey that consciousness drives itself through is a logical one – hence the title The Logic of Desire. This logic is new upon the scene of rationality. Hegelian dialectic is a living, developmental logic. It is not the work of individual human understanding passing judgment on this or that EVA BRANN 125 by reference to a fixed set of categories, but rather the work of Thought itself—“the Concept” in Hegel’s language. This energetic Concept drives itself in a violent, dialectical (that is, self-antithetical) motion from continuously new “self-positings” through inevitable “self-otherings” to ever current and ever collapsing self-reconciliations, until an ultimate consummation of mutual absorption by self and other is reached. In the hackneyed and unhelpful language of some Hegel-explications, this rising and plunging onward motion of the spirit is referred to as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but Kalkavage does not use this terminology in his inside chronicle of spirit’s way. He finds fresh language for every “moment,” every station of consciouness’s via dolorosa. In the self-motion of dialectical logic, two elements are compounded: desirous striving and spirited assertion. Here one of the accepted translations of the German Geist as “Spirit” (the other is “Mind”) proves serendipitous, for it alludes to “spiritedness,” that proud self-assertion and other-negation which the Greeks called thymos. The desire that drives the dialectic is thus shown to be a powerfully negative and destructive force, and it reincarnates itself in a succession of figures—that portrait gallery of impassioned concepts by which spirit drives itself to cancel, keep and raise (the three main meanings of the well known Hegelian verb aufheben) all significant oppositions. The paradigm of all these oppositions is that of subject and object, self and other. The Logic of Desire presents an exemplary attitude for a reader to adopt toward a book. To use a fancy term, it embodies a “hermeneutic,” a principle of interpretation. The most respectful such hermeneutic rule I know is the so-called “principle of charity”: give the text a chance to make maximum sense. Kalkavage outdoes this principle by embracing a “principle of appreciation”: savor and learn from the text to the utmost of your ability. The principle of appreciation is to the principle of charity as awed generosity is to squint-eyed tolerance—a way of treating a book with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Thus it is not until the last pages, in the epilogue, that we �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW learn that Kalkavage could not possibly be a whole-hearted Hegelian, that the book that has captivated him has not captured him. The main sticking-point is that very condition mentioned above, that coloring of spirit’s eros, of its desire to know itself, by thymos—spirit’s aggression toward its other. “Desire here is not other-affirming but self-affirming and other-negating” (454). Thus, if Hegel succeeds, he will—and this is in fact his aim— have killed philosophy, the love of wisdom, not only by the combative self-positing of consciousness (which is discordant with the open inquisitiveness of philosophy), but also by the claim that the curriculum of self-development can be completed; for, once Absolute Science, the knowledge that has absorbed all its conditions, has been attained, philosophy is superseded. Kalkavage’s approach is therefore a welcome counterweight to a mode that is all too prevalent in contemporary philosophy: to allot living space only to those problems and solutions currently within the consensual range of the philosophical profession. The Logic of Desire teaches the lesson of non-credulous admiration. Does it follow from this way of reading that Kalkavage’s Hegel must be either left-leaning or right-leaning? Hegel students on the left—notably Marx—interpreted his work as atheistic because God becomes man and is his congregation, while on the right this entry of God into his people was thought to preserve some transcendence. Kalkavage says that “what Hegel no doubt intended is that each is absorbed into the other. God must be humanized in order to be self-conscious, and man divinized in order to enjoy absolute self-knowledge” (509, n. 2). This view, certainly supported by the text itself, compounds right and left Hegelianism. The Phenomenology is neither a theology nor an anthropology but a theoanthropology. There remains, however, the question of Hegel’s politics. In some final advice to the now-engaged reader about which book to tackle next, Kalkavage recommends Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right as “the most deeply philosophic political work of modernity, which contains his most powerful critique of modern liberalism” (452). But since the liberalism Hegel was critiquing has much in common with contemporary conservatism, EVA BRANN 127 here too, the right-left question has no bold solution. Hegel’s conservatism is too sui generis to fall neatly under any predetermined rubric. And yet, perhaps we can find a pidgeon-hole for him. There is among Hegel’s epochal portraits a figure called “the beautiful soul.” It is described by Kalkavage as being afflicted with “spiritual narcissism,” as being “miserable in principle” (345, 348); it is too pure to be practical, and is, on top of that, a harshly unforgiving judge of those who are doers. Kalkavage points out that Hegel himself is, in turn, a particularly harsh judge of this beautiful soul (507, n. 28; 509, n. 48). In this portrait, Hegel paints a wickedly true-to-type likeness of a liberal intellectual—thereby revealing himself to be the “right” Hegel after all. I might add here that Kalkavage recommends, as another next reading after the Phenomenology, The Science of Logic. It postdates the Phenomenology by five years, and yet it is an everfascinating question whether the former comes “before” or “after” the latter. For the Logic (or its shorter, more accessible version, often called the “Lesser Logic”) is in fact God’s pretemporal life-plan for the spirit in the world—that is, its purely logical unfolding told through the abstractly dialectical moments of the Concept. When this ideal plan, this Concept, enters time, it takes on appearances. Hence “phenomenology” is the account of the phenomena, the appearances of the Concept in a dialectal sequence of forms. In Kalkavage’s more accurate and eloquent rendering: “[P]henomenology, as the prelude to science, is spirit’s rational communion with itself in its manifold appearances in history” (108). Then the question for us readers might well be: Does Hegel know the Concept through its appearances or the converse? Does experience of the appearances precede the logic that makes it rational, or is the dialectic plan prior to any comprehension of the shapes that invest it (516, n.10)? Kalkavage opts, I think, for the first case, and that decision puts the Phenomenology first in Hegel’s system and first for us readers. Kalkavage has, as I said, done an end-run around the leftright controversy. And yet, as he leads us to listen to Hegel’s language, to savor his symbolism, to follow his figures, we come �128 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to see Hegel as an uncircumventably religion-bound writer. If the structure of the Phenomenology is dialectical, its pathos is religious. The above-mentioned “beautiful soul” is one of a myriad of examples. When, as its dialectic demands, this judgmental, holier-than-thou bystander is finally reconciled with the doer (the Phenomenology is a roman à clef that names no names, to which Kalkavage often supplies the key; in this case, the man of action is Napoleon) they come together in mutual forgiveness “Spirituality no longer consists in life-denying judgmental inwardness, and the world is no longer God-forsaken and vain” (357). Kalkavage’s rendering captures the spiritual aspect of the event. But more—he catches and conveys at once the pervasive Christianity and the self-willed heresies of Hegel’s book. For example, the religious drama of the Phenomenology culminates not in the Resurrection of Easter Sunday, but in the Passion of Good Friday. It is this “speculative Good Friday” that images the conceptual ultimate reconciliation of man with God, the revelation that God needs man in order to be fully God. The Passion of Jesus (who is never named) already contains, has conceptually collected and recollected within itself, the resurrection of the spirit, which is not a separate ascent but just “man in history” (449-50). For it is in history that man and God are united, and this union culminates in the infinite sadness of God’s death which is also the first moment when spirit knows itself as spirit. Philosophy must “go down” in order genuinely to “go up” into the eternal Now of Absolute Science. (This moment of consummation is far more complex, of course, than my account of it.) Kalkavage accompanies his presentation of this bold tampering with the climactic events in the calendar of the church year by a remarkable list entitled “Hegel’s Heresies” (398). This list on the one hand leaves me convinced that Hegel was indeed the ultimate heretic; on the other, however, I remain mindful of the fact that “heresy” (Greek for “choice” [hairesis]) is, after all, a version of faith—though perhaps a willfully original one. Indeed, the Phenomenology exhales such awe before the events of EVA BRANN 129 God’s appearance on earth that it is palpable even to a nonChristian. The Phenomenology is complex beyond summary but without loose ends, and labyrinthine but without cul-de-sacs. The complexities and abrupt corners, the startling turns and sudden familiarities, the space-inversions and time-loops that mark the Concept’s path are lovingly—and clearly—traced out in The Logic of Desire. Near the center of the book an “Interlude” is devoted to schematizing these movements and their achieved moments, without letting us forget that conceptual thinking is essentially unpicturable and that the Phenomenology speaks with a forked tongue. The phenomenal picture gallery is an aid to be continually subverted; its visualizable images are countermanded by its sightless logic. For images are “out there,” since they are objects, and thinking is within us, since we are subjects. To keep the reader on the conceptual track, Kalkavage continually recapitulates—as Hegel does, but often very abstrusely—the purely logical progress. But Kalkavage also asks the question of questions about this text: “What, possibly, is lost in the move from picture to Concept?” (518, n. 30.) He has, in fact, given an answer, intimated above. What is lost is the element of positive love animating philosophy when it welcomes some sort of vision. This autobiography of the spirit is, then, the recollection of its continually morphing recognition of itself both in and as the world, of the moments of reconciliation between self and other, of the mutual “mediation,” the bridging of the gap, between subject and object. As in any autobiography, time is essential, and indeed the latter is spirit’s ultimate definition: time is spirit’s intuition of itself, meaning that its self-othering and self-finding, its projection of itself into an object and its consequent seeing itself in that object, is the motion, the dialectical flux of appearances, that we call time. But this time is not necessarily chronological. The time-loops mentioned above testify that spirit’s phenomenal progress is not a mathematical continuum, a succession of linear befores and afters. For example, Newton’s force of attraction, which holds together the world filled by bodies, appears chronologically much later than God’s power which unifies the creation �130 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW inhabited by souls. Yet Hegel regards the latter as more conceptually complex, more replete with dialectical reconciliations, and so, as Kalkavage points out, it appears later in Hegel’s account (77). The grades of spirit’s self-education are not always consecutively numbered. Consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, are the beings whose experiences, whose successive times, are recollected in the Phenomenology. By whom? Who is the true teller of the tale? All the Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, are familiar with this enigma of authorship, which no amount of textual analysis can solve. For suppose that numerous hands are discerned—the question remains, Who guided the hands? Just two centuries ago, in 1807—Kalkavage’s book celebrates this bicentennial—Hegel, a professor of philosophy at Jena, published his book. And yet, scandalous as it may seem, it is not he but the spirit that guided his hand, the hand of one who knows “conceptually grasped history,” who recalls the Golgotha where spirit completed its suffering and became absolute—that is to say, fully itself and self-sufficient. “[T]he Phenomenology, strictly speaking, is the work of spirit rather than the work of Hegel” (267; 494, n. 12). The willingness to utter such words is testimony to a readiness to take this terrific book and its demands seriously; it is what gives The Logic of Desire its own intensity. Who or what, then, constitutes this gallery of impersonal persons, from consciousness to spirit, that exhibits the unnamed but identifiable human shapes of history? Logically, as concepts in thought, they are the immature moments of the pure Concept; temporally, as individuals on earth, they represent Everyman (521, n. 71), the various human embodiments of the appearing Concept that we readers, participating in Hegel’s “inwardizing” (the literal translation of the German word for recollection, Erinnerung) can still find within ourselves. For the spirit’s autobiography is also ours, and we now recognize the struggles which, though opaque to our predecessors, have brought us to our common modern humanity, to the community that has grasped its history conceptually (449). EVA BRANN 131 This consummation of Hegel is, I think, as dubious as it is high-toned, but on the way there are many moments of wonderful down-to-earth plausibility, and The Logic of Desire reports them with down-home humor. I don’t know where else Hegel would find himself so appreciatively joshed, in accordance with the Socratic wisdom that playfulness can levitate dead earnestness into live seriousness. (I should point out, though, that there is also weighty evidence that Hegel himself has a sense of humor.) An example of Kalkavage’s wise levity is a section called “Artful Dodgers” that recounts a moment in the life of consciousness—a moment in my history, recapitulable within me—when I no longer find myself in external works and objects but shift suddenly to being immersed in “the heart of the matter” (die Sache selbst). That shift, however, lands me, by a convoluted evolution, in a drama of deceit that leads to an inevitable downfall by selfnegation. For this project, to dwell with the true matter, is my cause, and to my fellow workers it connotes a loss of the objectivity they were led to expect of me. Say—this is Kalkavage’s example—I was a molecular biologist trying to discover the gene for self-consciousness. Having become engaged with the matter itself as it matters to me, I become irritated by other researchers taking up my interest; my scientific “objectivity” shows its limits. Since I can’t reappropriate my matter, I take my cunningly noble revenge by interesting myself in theirs: I write a best-seller called Genes Are Us (222). Thus I take part in a “pathology of appropriation”; for in praising the work of other laboratories I praise my own. I am the Great-Souled Biologist. Whoever has some small familiarity with modern institutional research will laugh out loud at these insights into the mutual invasion of different scientists’ “techno-space” (221). Yet who would have thought of this psychological episode as being a way-station to the reconciliation of subject and object? But so it is, for what consciousness learns at this moment is that “subjective me-ness and objective this-ness are both essential to the matter itself” (223). Finally, for all the human intensity of The Logic of Desire, it is a narrative kept as free as possible of personal opinion. Such �132 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW obiter dicta are relegated to the endnotes, which consequently abound in concise illuminations and suggestive queries. Here is Kalkavage on the beautiful soul: “Sensitive types are often merciless judges” (508, n. 39). And a few notes later, he asks a question incited by Hegel’s harsh condemnation of this same beautiful soul and other condemned types hanging in his picture gallery: How do such judgments fit into his scheme of mutual forgiveness and the ultimate reconciliation of oppositions? “[W]e wonder about the connection of reason and judgment in philosophy. Is the philosopher allowed to condemn, or does genuine rationality preclude all condemnation?” (509, n.48.) This is a version of the unabashedly strange question—asked of us not as an academic exercise but as a living perplexity— whether Hegel the philosophy professor and Hegel the spirit’s secretary quite coincide. It is also an example of the engaging directness with which Peter Kalkavage leads us into one of the wonders of the West. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2010 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott McClay, Barbara Sachs, Joe Druecker, Robert Kalkavage, Peter Lenkowski, Jon Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 52, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2010. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_52_No_1_Fall_2010 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/54baa02add32b2db9862251c5a6a702f.pdf 4b60716e2fc2ebee5e546c6a043baf29 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 52, number 2 (Spring 2011) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Barbara McClay The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2011 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. �Contents Essays Reading Landscapes: Maternal Love in Classical Tamil Poetry ....................................................1 Anne David The Tocquevillean Moment ................................................19 Wilfred M. McClay On Seeing Aspects ..............................................................45 John Verdi Reflections Full Fathom Five: A Tutor’s Sea Change ...........................73 Louis Petrich Reviews John Verdi’s Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on Aspects ........83 Eva Brann Paolo Palmieri’s A History of Galileo’s Inclined Plane Experiment and its Philosophical Implications............91 Curtis Wilson �1 ESSAYS READING LANDSCAPES: MATERNAL LOVE IN CLASSICAL TAMIL POETRY Anne David Pu!an"#$!u 2781 The old woman’s shoulders were dry, unfleshed, with outstanding veins; her low belly was like a lotus pad. When people said her son had taken fright, had turned his back on battle and died, she raged and shouted, “If he really broke down in the thick of battle, I’ll slash these breasts that gave him suck,” and went there, sword in hand. Turning over body after fallen body, she rummaged through the blood-red field till she found her son, quartered, in pieces, and she rejoiced more than on the day she gave him birth. This poem was composed nearly two millennia ago in Tamil Nadu, South India. It belongs to a corpus of more than Anne David is an alumna of St. John’s College and the University of Chicago, and is currently a research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, where she works on South Asian Languages. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW two thousand exquisite, tightly constructed lyric verses written in the Tamil language. Tamil is one of the two classical languages of India; the other is Sanskrit. Along with Greek and just a handful of other languages, Tamil has among the longest continually attested written traditions in the world, one that began around the second century before the Common Era, when literature flowered in South India in the form of these lyric poems of love and war. They are called the Cankam2 poems, from the belief that they were composed at a legendary center of art and learning, a Cankam, that was patronized by the south Indian kings. What we now call the Cankam period of classical Tamil extended until about the fifth century CE. We have well over two thousand of these poems, ranging in length from three lines to about eight hundred, probably only a fraction of what was actually composed. They were preserved on palm leaf manuscripts, which are susceptible to humidity, fire, and insects; and because of their largely secular and often erotic content, they have also been subject to human negligence and even malice. We also have a contemporaneous grammar, the Tolk"ppiyam, which describes both the language of the poems and the elaborate semiotic and aesthetic system on which their descriptions draw. There were about four hundred poets, of whom some two dozen were women; though still small, this proportion is unusually high among classical corpora.3 The poem above depicts a mother’s elation when she learns her role in society has been fulfilled because her son has died with honor in battle. Her triumph is underscored by the stunning image of her standing in a blood-soaked field of bodies. Vivid portraits of battlefields are common among the Cankam poems, where setting is integral, and they are often depicted through metaphors of other landscapes: agrarian, desert, sea. ESSAYS | DAVID 3 Classical Tamil poetry has two genres. Poems of romance and eros are classified as akam, meaning ‘inside, interior’, while poems on all other subjects are called pu!am, meaning ‘outside, exterior’. Akam poems address our inner life, the life of heart and home. Pu!am poems address all aspects of public life: they praise kings, recount battles, sing of famine and death, lament the dire poverty of poets. Manifest in the Cankam works is a tension between these two worlds—public and private, political and domestic. We gain insight into both kinds of poem, their language of landscape, and the tension between them, when we examine the one female character who, in Martha Selby’s words, “may cross the membranous boundary between akam and pu!am,”4 who alone has been given a voice in both genres—the Mother. We see the mother as a powerful voice in both the akam and pu!am poems, facing two kinds of maternal loss: that of her daughter to a young man and that of her son to the warpath. While prominent in the akam poems, the mother is a rarer character in the pu!am world; nevertheless, she is fiercely present in a small pu!am sub-genre on mothers and warrior sons. The civilization that produced this exquisite lyric poetry of love, war, and kingship was suffused with savagery. At the turn of the first millennium of the Common Era, South India was dominated by three great dynasties reigning over many smaller leaders—a world of kings and chieftains who patronized the arts and waged brutal wars against each other. Poetry served as a vehicle of patriotic persuasion. Through the voices of the pu!am poets, the ancient Tamilians glorified courage and ferocity. They regarded death in battle as a moral obligation, and as the greatest of honors. One pu!am poem, spoken by a mother, is a lyrical list of �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW societal duties: her duty is to bear sons, the father’s duty is to make them noble, the blacksmith’s to furnish them with arms, the king’s to exemplify good conduct—and the son’s duty is to make war.5 In other verses we hear how the bodies of stillborn sons and the elderly male dead were slashed with swords so that they too might carry the honor of battle-wounds into the afterlife. One poem describes a frenzied hero on the battlefield thus: “Like an elephant in chains, he is hindered only by the guts that are entangling his feet.”6 Still other poems describe a post-victory ritual in which the conquerors build a hearth of severed heads, then boil the remains of the vanquished dead. And there are poems like the one above whose common theme is the prideful, bloody-minded mother of a slain warrior. But the pu!am anthologies also include poems celebrating life, poems about hospitality, drunkenness, the joy of fatherhood. So we see in this literature a society struggling with this universal human dilemma: how do we live well and raise happy families in a world filled with peril? And in these poems, no figure embodies the conflict between a desire for domestic tranquility and an ethic that glorifies slaughter more than that of the king. Kings are central to the pu!am poems. They are vital to the world they rule. One poem says, “Rice is not the life of this world nor is water the life! / The king is the life of this world!”7 A king was expected to be brave and ferocious against the enemy, but kind and magnanimous to his people. George Hart has talked about the Tamil king as the mediator of sacred power: the modern Tamil word for temple, k%yil, is etymologically ‘place of the king’, and the indigenous Tamil word for ‘god’, i!aivan (literally, ‘he who is highest’) originally referred to the king.8 The king’s ESSAYS | DAVID 5 power extended both to taking and giving life; his control over the sacred depended on his ruling justly.9 Likewise, the fertility of his land and the well-being of his people depended on his maintaining that connection to the sacred. So these violent warrior kings are also praised as loving, nurturing givers of life: the king is called the life-breath of the kingdom;10 other poems liken him to the sun. And he is explicitly compared to a mother: an adoring subject is drawn to the powerful king “like a child that runs to suck his mother’s flawless breast.”11 The two landscapes of his kingdom—martial and agrarian—often merge into one, as fields of battle are likened to fields of harvest. The poems startle with metaphors of soldiers tilling the earth with their spears and piling up haystacks of corpses, or of an elephant’s head rolling along the soil “like a plow.”12 Even the warrior with enemy guts entangling his feet is compared in the next line to a mother cow defending her calf, as he fights for his comrade. The family is in some ways a mirror of the kingdom. Like kings, women were also regarded as vessels of sacred power, power that was no longer benevolent if they cast off their chastity and domestic virtue within marriage, just as royal sacred power was harmed by kingly vice.13 And just as a virtuous king brought prosperity to his people, a virtuous wife brought fortune and fertility to her family. Where a superior king is compared to the sun, a wife who has produced a male child is said to “light up the house” like a lamp.14 The family appears most frequently in the akam poems, which are love poems composed under the guidelines of an intricate and highly structured rhetorical system. The poet always speaks in the persona of one of the characters in a generic love story: a young woman or her lover, her friend or his friends; her mother or nurse; occasional passersby; or, �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in the poems that take place after marriage, the husband’s mistress. Each poem depicts one of five stages of love, as well as certain moods, emotions, and situations that are characteristic of those stages. No one is ever named in the akam poems; the characters are all types, abstractions of the sort of people commonly caught up in any tale of young, romantic love. (Pu!am poems always identify kings and eminent personages by name; for that reason they are more useful for dating the poems.) The hero and heroine are known simply as the talaivan and talaivi, the ‘main man’ and ‘main woman’. This anonymity emphasizes the universality of the events and emotions depicted in the poems. Each poem is a single soliloquy, spoken to one of the other characters or sometimes to the world at large—never to us. We, the audience, are always in the role of eavesdropper. The focus is usually on the woman’s experience of love; the most frequent speakers are the heroine and her girlfriend confidante. Common themes are her grief, anxiety, suffering, and most of all her helplessness in the absence of her lover. The poems make it clear, however, that her helplessness arises from societal constraints; hers is not an emotional or physical helplessness. She has to stay put most of the time: we see her confined by village gossip, parental control, and later, motherhood. Paradoxically, it is these akam poems that are most imbued with representations of the objects of the outer world. Highly stylized rules associate the exterior landscape with the interior landscape of human passion. Such associations transform the different Tamilnad landscapes—desert and seascape, wilderness and paddy, mountain and plains—into an entire poetic language, where all the plants, animals, and human beings not only connote, but often denote the emo- ESSAYS | DAVID 7 tions and situations that engulf their two young lovers. Here’s an example: Ku!untokai 35615 A man who wears a hero’s anklet keeps her safe as she hurries through scant, dry lands where the shade shrinks and dies. At the bank of a scorched pool, she sips at muddy, steaming water. Where does she find the strength, this girl, soft as a sprout, with her tiny, curving bracelets? She had refused even to touch milk, mixed with fine puffed rice in a bowl clad in blushing gold that I’d held out for her, saying that it was too much. There are three important elements in this lyric vocabulary. The first is landscape, of which there are five types. This poem’s landscape is p"lai, the wasteland, which conveys a theme of hardship and separation. The second key element is the native constituents of that landscape: flora, fauna, local people, and gods. These two elements—the landscape and its denizens—constitute the setting and evoke the third element, the mood or situation. So when a love poem mentions stagnant water, midday heat, lizards, cactus, or bandits, the experienced reader recognizes the desert wasteland, and knows that the situation here is elopement—two young lovers are enduring danger and deprivation for the sake of being together. The speaker is the young heroine’s mother or wetnurse. There are several of these desert elopement poems in which the mother reminisces about feeding milk to the daughter now lost to her. Typically she contrasts the girl’s youth and delicacy with the hardships she is surely suffering in the �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 8 barren waste where the couple has fled. In all five akam settings, the mother of the young lovesick heroine worries for her daughter’s safety, happiness, and reputation: Ainku!un$!u 37916 United with the man with the gleaming white spear, is going through the forests where herds of bull elephants roam on dew-covered slopes sweeter to her than the pleasure of a good marriage in the company of her dearest friends, I wonder? The forests, elephants, and dew-covered slopes tell us that this poem’s landscape is kurinji, the cool, wild hillcountry, the setting for premarital love and secret midnight trysts. These kurinji poems, of course, tend to be the most sexual of the poems, although the eroticism is implied through proxies; for instance, her lover’s gleaming spear. The roaming herds of bull elephants also suggest uncontrolled male lust; the mother is implying a contrast between what her daughter has chosen and a “good marriage,” approved by those who truly care for her. (Most comparisons in Cankam poetry are by implication. Subtlety is the norm.) In the pu!am poems, we see the mother of a young warrior grumbling about her loss of control over him: Pu!a#"n$!u 8617 You stand against the pillar of my hut and ask: Where is your son? 9 ESSAYS | DAVID I don’t really know. This womb was once a lair for that tiger. You can see him now only on battlefields. But more often she has lost him utterly, in poems exhorting mothers to proper pride and joy at his brave death. The message: it was her duty to produce him and her culminating duty to give him up to war. But these are highly sophisticated poems, and as the exterior and interior landscapes of human life speak to each other in them, there are sometimes signs of ambivalence towards the desirability of death on the battlefield. Earlier I alluded to a pu!am poem that lists people’s duties—the mother bears sons, the father teaches them nobility, and so on—ending with the son’s duty to make war. That poem is more complicated, however, than I suggested. Whereas everyone else gets one duty and one line of verse, the son’s battle-duties are several and take up two lines: the mother enjoins him to wage war with his shining sword, kill enemy elephants, and come back home, not seek death in the field. In a similar vein, a mother defiantly rejoices at the safe return of her son as she recounts the warriors’ ritual drink before battle: Pu!a#"n$!u 28618 Like white goats, the young men surrounded him and a cup was passed above the heads of many to my son and yet it did not lead to his being laid out on a legless bed and covered with a pure white cloth. And in another poem, we see a mother beholding her badly wounded son, who has been laid out on his shield. As �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 10 he denies that he can feel the arrow in his flesh, she remembers his childish fear when she had once scolded him for not drinking his milk. These lines directly recall the bereft mother of the akam poems who compares her daughter’s stoicism in the desert with her childish distaste for milk. This allusion in the mouth of the mother bending over her wounded son suggests that she is not proud, but grieving and bewildered. A marvelous intersection of interior and exterior landscapes occurs in the following pu!am poem about a slain warrior’s garland: Pu!a#"n$!u 27819 The chaste trees, dark-clustered, blend with the land that knows no dryness; the colors on the leaves mob the eyes. We’ve seen those leaves on jeweled women, on their mounds of love. Now the chaste wreath lies slashed on the ground, so changed, so mixed with blood, the vulture snatches it with its beak, thinking it raw meat. We see this too just because a young man in love with war wore it for glory. So a warrior has been killed—killed so brutally that the wreath he wore on his head looks to a vulture like bloody flesh. This powerful poem uses the image of leaves in several ways to blend akam and pu!am themes. First, the poet invokes the landscape of akam poems by reminding us that nocci leaves, used here as battle attire, also cover young ESSAYS | DAVID 11 women’s sexual parts. Those leaf garments were believed to protect chastity,20 and elsewhere in the poems, the image of destroyed garlands and other plants can signify that a sexual act has taken place.21 We have a similar metaphor in English: the blood on the leaves suggests here the deflowering of a virgin, reminding us of the akam mother’s worries for her daughter’s virtue. Further, the leaves of the nocci tree are a common motif in akam poems, where the mother of the lovesick heroine remembers her little girl in happier times, playing by a nocci tree. So again a pu!am poem about a wounded young warrior invokes an akam poem about a nostalgic mother grieving for her lovelorn daughter. This is how the Cankam poems speak to one another. To an audience steeped in this imagery, the mixing of akam and pu!am through the juxtaposition of a bloody battle wreath with images of happy little girls and chaste, bejeweled young maidens would be both obvious and jarring. All these poems gainsay the poems that glorify combat, extol ferocious kings, and speak of inflicting sham warwounds on males who die in peacetime. Moreover, they challenge the implicit injunctions on mothers to desire and celebrate the death of their sons in battle. With this in mind, let us look at one last poem: Pu!a#"n$!u 29522 There, in the very middle of battle-camps that heaved like the seas, pointing at the enemy the tongues of lances, new-forged and whetted, urging soldiers forward with himself at the head in a skirmish of arrow and spear, �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cleaving through an oncoming wave of foes, forcing a clearing, he had fallen in that space between armies, his body hacked in pieces: when she saw him there in all his greatness, mother’s milk flowed again in the withered breasts of this mother for her warrior son who had no thought of retreat. This poem is by Auvaiy!r, one of the two most famous of the Cankam poets, and one of the few women among them. Auvaiy!r also wrote the poem of the mother rejoicing that her son has not come back on a cloth-covered bier, so we have some idea where her sympathies lie. On the surface, this poem seems yet another portrait of the proud mother of a dead war hero. If we examine this joy more closely, however, we will find that the poem suggests a different theme. Let us look first at the prosody. This poem is full of the sound of grief. Tamil poetry uses internal rhyme: in the transcription of the poem provided in the appendix, you can see that the poet has a quadruple internal rhyme in lines four, five, and six, and further, that the vowel sound in that rhyme—/ai/—is frequent throughout the poem. (An unscientific sur-vey of a few nearby poems of similar length shows that the sound /ai/ occurs about 30 percent more often in this poem.) You can also see that its long-voweled counterpart /!i/, a much rarer sound in Tamil, occurs three times, and the long vowel /!/ seven times—also higher counts in comparison with other poems. A common Tamil ESSAYS | DAVID 13 interjection for grief and pain, still used today, is the word aiy%, which contains /ai/. Even cross-linguistically, these three sounds, /ai/, /!i/, and /!/ are onomatopoeic sounds of wailing.23 Now let’s turn to the poem’s diction. The other poems depicting proud mothers of dead sons all use the word ci!uva# for ‘son’. Outside of those poems, this word is a relatively uncommon locution for a ‘boy-child’; its literal meaning is ‘little one (male)’. It is otherwise used sentimentally to refer to actual little boys. So the battle-death poems are actually describing a mother’s joy at seeing her “little one’s” body scattered all over the battlefield. Here sentimentality has turned maudlin. Auvaiy!r has taken care to avoid this tone by pointedly not using the word in her poem. I say “pointedly” because first, everyone else uses it, and second, because it would have been more metrically suited to the line. Her choice of vi&alai ‘youth’ over ci!uva# ‘little boy’ means that the final syllable must be long by position rather than by nature, because in Tamil prosody, /ai/ is considered short. Let us look next at the imagery. The poem begins with the word ‘sea’ (ka&al) and ends with the word ‘mother’ (t"y). The oncoming armies are twice likened to the rising, heaving ocean, while the mother’s breasts are initially described as v"&u ‘withered’—a word associated with the desert. But then her breasts begin to spring or flow, and after that, to gush or surge, like the wide, swelling, deep sea. The word used to describe her son’s body, citai ‘scattered’, refers elsewhere in the poems to sand on a beach. So the mother starts out like a desert and then, as the poem culminates, she becomes like the ocean, which reclaims scattered sand as it surges forth. Linking an ordinary human being with vast and powerful landscapes such as the desert and the sea is almost �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW unheard of in the language of these poems. People are frequently compared to things in the landscape, especially animals: young men are often likened to tigers or elephants, young women to does, flowers, or ripe fruit. But integral parts of the landscape are reserved for the king, who is compared, for example, to the sun. We are reminded again that both the king and the virtuous mother are vessels of sacred power. Her flowing milk is a further reminder of this, because mother’s milk has sacred powers; indeed, husbands are portrayed as fearful of being touched by it. So this breastfeeding imagery itself, rather than conveying the standard image of a joyful, patriotic mother, supports an interpretation of this poem as iconoclastic. For if the conventional reading is the only one, then this female poet is taking liberties with the biology of maternal love. The old mother’s breasts spurting forth milk at the sight of her dead son portrays the let-down reflex that all nursing mothers know. It is triggered inexorably in mothers by their baby’s cry, and powerful sense-memories of it linger years after weaning. The image is first of all an allusion to other Cankam portraits of grieving mothers nostalgic for the longgone days of milk-fed little ones. This mother is neither pleased nor proud her son has died. Furthermore, any mother knows that the maternal let-down reflex is not accompanied by joy or pride, but by anxiety for the baby, together with an intense desire to soothe the infant, and to banish its hunger, sadness, fear, or pain. As her grief cries out in the sounds of the poem, this mother’s despair amplifies her sacred powers in response to a futile wish to succor her lost son. The raging mother of our first poem is certainly not a weak or passive figure as she echoes her son’s war deeds, rampaging through corpses on the battlefield, sword in hand. But in her violent mania and ultimate joy, she is complying ESSAYS | DAVID 15 with society’s expectations. In contrast, all the authorial choices of this last poem—weaving the sounds of grief throughout the verse, rejecting histrionic clichés, attributing uncharacteristic primal powers to the mother—suggest that it is a subversive rejoinder to Pu!an"#$!u 278 and the other poems that share its bellicose theme. While a sanguinary attitude towards maternal loss prevails in the pu!am genre, the mother’s anguished voice in this poem and a handful of others offers a compelling counterweight to the glorification of war those poems celebrate. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 16 ESSAYS | DAVID 17 NOTES APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTION OF Pu!a"#n$!u 295 1 Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 182. Pronounced sung-gum. Sometimes transliterated as Sangam. 3 Dr. Stephanie Nelson, private communication. 4 Selby 2000, 101. 5 Pura 312. 6 Pura 275; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999. 7 Pura 186; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999. 8 Hart 1975, 13. 9 Hart 1975, 15. 10 Pura 186. 11 Pura 379, Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999. 12 Hart 1975, 32; Hart and Heifetz 1999, xix; Pura 19, 342. 13 Hart 1975, 93ff. 2 ka"al SEA ki#ar-nt-a$$a vent-u BE.HOT-CVB t("u CROWD ka""%r v!y EDGE ukai-ttu DRIVE-CVB varu-pa"ai COME-ARMY i"ai.p-pa"ai MIDDLE-ARMY n!ppa& MILITARY CAMP RISE-PTCP-LIKE MIDDLE va"i-tt-a v'l SHARPEN-PST-PTCP e)u RISE tar-%u GIVE-CVB p()n-tu PASS.THROUGH-CVB a)uva-ttu DEEP.SEA-OBL ci*appu"ai.y-!#an SUPERIORITY-POSSESSOR talaippeyar-i SPEAR APPROACH-CVB tura-ntu DRIVE-CVB e*-i SHOOT-CVB v!yppa"-a FIND.A.WAY-INF citai-ntu BE.SCATTERED-CVB m!&pu GLORY ka&-"u SEE-CVB DESTROY-CVB v'*!k-iya BE.SEPARATED-PTCP aru#-i REJOICE-CVB mulai %*-i BREAST FLOW-CVB cura-nt-a$a WITHERED oo"-! p%"kai vi"alai t!y-kk-'. STRENGTH YOUTH LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 3PL: CVB: DAT: EMPH: INF: OBL: NEG: PST: PTCP: third person plural converb dative emphatic infinitive oblique negative past tense participle BATTLE vila+k-i v!"u FLEE-NEG ñ!"pi$ GUSH-PST-3PL MOTHER-DAT-EMPH 14 15 Pu!a 314; Aink 405. Translation in Selby 2000, 194-5. 16 Translation in Selby 2000, 193. 17 Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 184. 18 Translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999, 168. 19 Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 186. 20 Hart 1975, 93. 21 Hart 1975, 172. 22 Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 183. 23 These three sounds are highlighted by red type in the transcription of the poem. REFERENCES Hart, George. (1975). The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and their Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hart, George and Heifetz, Hank. (1999). The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom. (Translation) New York: Columbia University Press. Ku!untokai. (1983). A classical poetry anthology edited with commentary by U.Ve. C!minataiar. A&&!malainakar: A&&!malai-pPalkalai-k-Kalakam. [In Tamil]. Lehmann, Thomas. (1994). Grammatik des Alttamil. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Lehmann, Thomas and Thomas Malten. (1992). A Word Index of Old Tamil Ca(kam Literature. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Mahadevan, Iravatham. (2003). Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. (= Harvard Oriental Series 62) Chennai: Cre-A and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University. Pu!a#"n$!u, Vol. I (1962) and Vol. II (1964). A classical poetry anthology edited with commentary by Auvai Cu. Turaic!mi-p Pillai. Fourth ed. Chennai: South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society. Rajam, V.S. (1992). A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Ramanujan, A.K. (1985). Poems of Love and War: From the Eight Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil [translation with commentary]. New York: Columbia University Press. Selby, Martha Ann. (2000). Grow Long Blessed Night: Love Poems from Classical India. (Translation) New York: Oxford University Press. Selby, Martha Ann. (2003). Circle of Six Seasons: A Selection from Old Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit Poetry. (Translation) India: Penguin. Shanmugam Pillai, M. and David E. Ludden. (1976). Ku!untokai: An Anthology of Classical Tamil Love Poetry. (Translation) Madurai: Koodal Publishers. Tamil Lexicon. (1982). Madras: University of Madras. 6 vols. Zvelebil, Kamil. (1973). The Smile of Murugan on Tamil Literature of South India. Leiden: Brill. ESSAYS 19 THE TOCQUEVILLEAN MOMENT Wilfred McClay I am delighted and honored to be back at St. John’s again, and to have the privilege of addressing this community of which I feel so enduringly a part, a community built around a great shared enterprise: the serious reading and re-reading of old books. Returning to the College is always a pleasure because it is a return to my intellectual and moral roots, and to the themes that have preoccupied me ever since I graduated. Few things are more renewing, more rejuvenating. I find that the word “rejuvenating” is particularly apropos, provided that you understand what I mean by it. I am not using it as one does when talking about taking a pleasant stroll down memory lane, waxing sentimental about the past. I am using it in its original etymological sense of “being made young again.” Returning to the College can be rejuvenating in that sense because of something that you tend not to realize when you are a student here (although you might catch a glimpse of it), but that becomes much clearer with the passage of time. As you get older, you come to see that the deep appeal of old books is not only that they are wiser than us, but also that they are younger than us. Let me explain this seeming paradox. The word “archaic” is generally used as a pejorative meaning “out-of-date” or “obsolete.” But as every Johnnie knows, the word comes from the Greek arch', which refers not only to the antiquity of things A lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland on 12 November 2010. Mr. McClay is an alumnus of St. John’s and Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of Excellence in the Humanities. �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW but also to their foundational character. An arch' is a deep spring from which all else emanates. The truest form of “archeology” would not be merely a search for what is older, but a search for what is primary, for what is closest to the origins, for what undergirds and sustains us, even if sometimes it is buried or otherwise hidden from our sight. Hence at St. John’s “the shock of the new” has never been the specialty of the house. After all, the shock of the new can be had any hour of the day, and indeed can hardly even be avoided in today’s world. In fact, expressing one’s admiration for the shock of the new has become so routine that it has acquired the aspect of a solemn bourgeois obligation. I have even read letters of recommendation from staid dissertation advisors who praise their doctoral students for having written “highly transgressive” doctoral dissertations. I am not sure what that means. But I am confident that it is not really very shocking. Instead, what you seek and savor here at St. John’s is the shock of the old, that electric and uncanny sense of communion, across space and time, with countless others who have shared our human condition. And that can be very shocking indeed, because it is so often a strange and unpredictable encounter, an interplay between what is familiar and what is unfamiliar. Let me give an example of what I mean. In the 1930s, journalist Rebecca West and her husband described their encounter with remote Yugoslav tribesmen who still sang and recited oral epics in the Homeric fashion. These bards recounted actions that “must have been made a million million million times since the world began,” but in each new telling seemed “absolutely fresh.” Thus, when one reads in the Iliad of a man drawing a bow or raising a sword, “it is,” West wrote, “as if the dew of the world’s morning lay undisturbed on what he did.”1 An “archaic” book, such as the ones upon ESSAYS | McCLAY 21 which you lavish your attention here, draws its abundant life from its greater closeness to the origins of things. I deviated somewhat from the true path by becoming a historian—but not really very much. I never aspired to be a prodigal son. Indeed, from the very beginning I appreciated the fact that my tutelage at St. John’s would keep me safe from the worst temptation of my field, which is to reduce ideas, writers, and artists—and more or less everything else worthwhile—to being nothing more than a product of their context. In that sense, I remember a moment in my graduate-school days at Johns Hopkins in which it became clear to me that I would always be different from my historian peers in firmly rejecting such reductionism. It was a seminar on a paper dealing with the art and life of El Greco, and I was stopped short by a casual, slightly apologetic comment from the distinguished paper giver: “Of course, the point of studying El Greco so closely is for the insight it affords into the Toledo in which he lived.” I realized in a flash that, of course, he was entirely wrong. In fact, he had it precisely backwards. So far as I was concerned, the point of studying Toledo was the insight it gave one into the life, and ultimately the work, of El Greco. Having come so firmly to that conviction, I have stuck to it ever since. And the firmness of that conviction is something I almost certainly owe to St. John’s. The study of history, for me, should always strive not to reduce ideas but to dramatize them, to put them up on the stage of life and put them into motion, to make vivid the ways that certain extraordinary individuals have wrestled with the conditions of their existence and have attempted to order them and make sense of them— with a view to how we might do the same. I have tried to follow that pattern in these remarks on the great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville. His work can certainly be read profitably without very much reference to �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 22 the particulars of his life. But the work takes on even greater importance, I believe, when understood dramatically, as an instance of precisely the sort of wrestling that I have just described. My title, “The Tocquevellean Moment,” refers to a moment that he both described and experienced. It is the moment of profound social transition, in which entire ways of life are in the process of being transformed inexorably, but in which also the precise manner, character, and extent of the transformation are yet to be determined. In what follows, therefore, it will be both useful and valuable for me to mingle historical and biographical elements with my discussion of Tocqueville’s ideas.2 ***** Tocqueville (1805-1859) was one of the most eminent European social and political thinkers of the nineteenth century, and is still regarded today as an incomparable analyst of the prospects and pitfalls of modern democracy. He was the child of an aristocratic French family, some of whose members had suffered death or devastation as a result of the French Revolution. Consequently, he was haunted all his life by the fear of revolutionary anarchy, and by the specter of ideological tyranny that such a sweeping social revolution leaves in its wake. But such fears never led him to advocate the wholesale restoration of the pre-revolutionary French social order. He was an aristocrat at heart, but he was never a reactionary. Instead, those fears led him to look closely at the change that was coming, in hope of finding a way to direct it toward a more felicitous end. A concern with the characteristics of modern democracy is the guiding preoccupation of his Democracy in America (1835-40), the work for which he is best known among American readers.3 It was, of course, the product of a visit. ESSAYS | McCLAY 23 Tocqueville was only twenty-six years old when, accompanied by his friend and sidekick Gustave de Beaumont, he came to America in 1831.4 He was ostensibly being sent here on official business for the French government, to study the American prison system. But that was a ruse and a pretext. In reality, he came to America intent upon “examining, in detail and as scientifically as possible, all the mechanisms of the vast American society which everyone talks of and no one knows.”5 Tocqueville was extraordinary in the extent of his ambitions, as in everything else, and it is clear that he always intended to write a large and groundbreaking book about America, which he hoped would make his reputation and launch a successful political career. After touring the country for nine months, he returned home with a bushel of notes and a head full of ideas. The resulting book, Democracy in America, which would be published in two successive volumes in 1835 and 1840, turned out to be perhaps the richest and most enduring study of American society and culture ever written. If one were permitted to read only one book on the subject, Democracy in America would almost certainly be one’s best choice, even more than a century and a half after its initial publication. In this book, Tocqueville envisioned the United States as a nation moving in the vanguard of history, a young and vigorous country endowed with an extraordinary degree of social equality among its inhabitants, and without any feudal or aristocratic background to overcome. In America, he believed, one could see embodied, in exemplary or heightened form, the condition toward which all the rest of the world, including France, was tending. In America, which was the only example the world then afforded of a large republic, one could gaze upon “the image of democracy itself, of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions.” And having so gazed, one could perhaps take away lessons �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that would allow leaders to deal more intelligently and effectively with the democratic changes coming to Europe.6 He was firmly convinced that the movement toward greater social equality represented an inescapable feature of the modern age, a hard fact to which all future social or political analysis must accommodate itself. There would be no going back. Indeed, one could say that the one great idea in Tocqueville’s writing was this huge sprawling historical spectacle, the gradual but inexorable leveling of human society on a universal scale, a movement that he identified with the will of God, so pervasive and so unstoppable did it seem to be. Even those who try to impede it or reverse it end up contributing to it all the more. Listen to his description: Everywhere the various incidents in the lives of peoples are seen to turn to the profit of democracy; all men have aided it by their efforts: those who had in view cooperating for its success and those who did not dream of serving it; those who fought for it and even those who declared themselves its enemies; all have been driven pell-mell on the same track, and all have worked in common, some despite themselves, others without knowing it, as blind instruments in the hand of God. The gradual development of equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it has the principal characteristics of one: it is universal, it is enduring, each day it escapes human power; all events, like all men, serve its development.7 The entire book, he confessed, was written “under the pressure of a sort of religious terror in the author’s soul, produced by the sight of this irresistible revolution. . . . To wish to stop democracy would then appear to be to struggle against God himself.”8 ***** ESSAYS | McCLAY 25 Aristocracy’s day was done, then, however lamentable that fact might seem to those who shared Tocqueville’s background. He accepted equality as a modern condition, even if he never warmly embraced it. For although Tocqueville was a keen analyst of democracy’s unlovely or dangerous features, he insisted that the most effective response to them was not sullen withdrawal, but the development of a “new political science,” designed not to reverse democracy’s progress, for that would be futile, but instead to refine democracy’s crudities and counter its pathologies.9 The book, then, was no mere work of travel literature, and in fact, the narrative elements of the book are probably its least interesting parts. Instead, Tocqueville was sketching out a philosophical framework for the understanding of democracy, and for that reason, arguably deserves to be considered alongside such political philosophers and theorists as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Marx. It would be a stretch, I believe, to call him a philosopher himself, since he was neither systematic nor comprehensive, and left largely unexamined many of the traditional objects of philosophical inquiry. In fact, the book’s relatively casual style of organization is part of its appeal for many present-day readers; you can pick it up almost anywhere, and profitably read a short chapter in complete isolation from the book as a whole. But one should not be misled by that casualness. Tocqueville was interested in far more than the relatively narrow subject of American democracy in its political forms. He argued that a democratic regime would manifest its effects in every facet of human life: not merely in procedural and institutional ways, but also in family life, in literature, in philosophy, in manners, in language, in marriage, in mores, in male-female relations, in ambition, in friendship, in love, and in attitudes toward war and peace. It was not just the outward forms of democracy that concerned him. He �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW was an especially acute analyst of democracy’s innermost effects, finely attuned to the ways in which a society’s political arrangements are not matters that merely skate on the surface of life, but are in fact influences that reach deep down into the very souls of its inhabitants. He accomplished this analysis, mostly in the book’s second volume, by contrasting the different forms assumed by each of these phenomena in aristocratic societies and in democratic societies. Those two terms, “aristocratic” and “democratic,” represented for him what are sometimes called “ideal types” because, although they are generalizing abstractions that rarely occur in anything approaching their pure state, their sharpness and coherence make them highly effective as analytical tools. For Tocqueville, an aristocratic society was one governed by a small, privileged class, a society that insisted on the necessity of social hierarchy grounded in the authority of tradition; a society in which one’s status was ascriptive, assigned at birth, retained for life, and bound up in the identity and place of one’s family; a society in which families are permanent fixtures in the social firmament; a society in which there was a permanent diversity of types and classes of persons. In the ideal democratic society, however, matters are quite different. There one finds a general “spirit” of equality; the people are sovereign and the right to vote is widely extended; hierarchies are disestablished and any legal status or privilege extended to the well-born few is abolished; rights are universal, or tending toward universality, as is literacy and access to education; families are comparatively weak and mutable, even ephemeral; there is a constant pressure toward the dispersion of inherited wealth, aided by laws that break up large estates and large fortunes; and there is a resulting tendency toward social and economic leveling, 27 ESSAYS | McCLAY together with a fading of class distinctions—all leading to universal sameness and homogeneity. Although the two volumes of the Democracy differed in significant ways, taken together they presented a coherent and memorable image of a distinctively democratic American social and individual character. Tocqueville’s America was a strikingly middle-class society: feverishly commercial and acquisitive, obsessively practical-minded, jealously egalitarian, and restlessly mobile—a constant beehive of activity. Tocqueville saw many things to admire in this energetic, bumptious democracy, but also much to fear. Chief among the dangers was its pronounced tendency toward individualism. Tocqueville saw in America the peril that citizens might elect to withdraw from involvement in the larger public life, and regard themselves as autonomous and isolated actors, with no higher goal than the pursuit of their own material well-being. He acknowledged that in a modern commercial democracy, this was a particularly strong possibility, since self-interest would inevitably come to be accepted as the chief engine of all human striving. But where then would the generous and selfless civic virtues needed for sustaining a decent society come from? How could the individualistic Americans of the 1830s prevent self-interest from overwhelming all considerations of the public good, and undermining the sources of social cohesion? ***** Before trying to answer that question, it will be helpful to flesh out more fully Tocqueville’s understanding of individualism. It differed in subtle ways from what generally goes by that name. It was closer to what today might be called privatism, a complete withdrawal from public life and society at large in favor of almost exclusive involvement �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW with a small personal circle of family and friends. As such, it was quite distinct from the age-old vice of egoism or selfishness. It was not merely a prevalent emotion or passion, but a settled, more or less consciously held attitude in the moral outlook of Americans. In aristocratic societies, things were different. Families remained in place for centuries. Every man remembered his ancestors and anticipated his descendants, and strove to do his duty to both. Paternal authority was formidable. And yet such families were not private enclaves set apart from a larger public world, but crucial and visible elements in the makeup of society as a whole. The different classes of society were distinct and immobile, and citizens occupied a fixed position in the social pecking order, with tight bonds to those in their same social niche. So enmeshed was the individual person in this comprehensive social order that it was literally nonsensical to imagine him or her apart from it—as implausible as swimming in the air, or breathing beneath the waves. In democratic societies, however, where the principle of equality dictated a more generalized and fluid sense of connection, such duties and fixities were lost. Tocqueville describes this new condition hauntingly in one of the most unforgettable passages in the Democracy, conjuring the specter of an individualism carried to its barren logical limit: In democratic peoples, new families constantly issue from nothing, others constantly fall into it, and all those who stay on change face; the fabric of time is torn at every moment and the trace of generations is effaced. You easily forget those who have preceded you, and you have no idea of those who will follow you. Only those nearest have interest. . . . Aristocracy had made of all citizens a long chain that went from the peasant up to the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each 29 ESSAYS | McCLAY link apart. . . . As conditions are equalized, one finds a great number of individuals who . . . owe nothing to anyone, they expect so to speak nothing from anyone, they are in the habit of always considering themselves in isolation, and they willingly fancy that their whole destiny is in their hand. Thus not only does democracy make each man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants from him and separates him from his contemporaries; it constantly leads him back toward himself alone and threatens finally to confine him wholly in the solitude of his own heart.10 One should add, too, that the prospect of this atomized condition, in which families, neighborhoods, communities, and all other forms of intermediate human association are rendered weak and listless, leads Tocqueville to express, at the book’s conclusion, a fear of democratic despotism, an all-embracing “soft” tyranny which relies upon dissolving the bonds among its members, and their consequent inability to act together as citizens, to smooth the way toward a massive bureaucratic state that would rule over every feature of their lives.11 ***** So we return to the question that we left dangling a moment ago. How does a democratic society, in which all the formerly reliable defenses against anarchy and anomie have been lost or removed, still find a way to order itself, and produce the kind of virtuous behavior and commitment to the common good that is required for it to be cohesive, successful, and free? Or to phrase the question in a slightly different way: Can a society in the grip of a massive and inexorable change nevertheless find ways to import into the new order some of those things that were most estimable in �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the old, while leaving behind the elements that were either pernicious or inadequate? Does great historical change require that the slate be wiped entirely clean? Or is there a way that the best of the past can be carried over into the present and future? This is, it seems to me, a question of the first importance to those of us who believe so fervently in the importance of reading old books. And it is also a question that provides the optimal opportunity to explain more fully what I mean by “the Tocquevillean moment.” It is the moment when an old order becomes conscious of the imperative to give way to a new one—and the particular dilemma that this change presents to thoughtful individuals, like Tocqueville, who seem destined to ride the crest of a monumental transformation knowing full well both what is passing and what is to come. The Tocquevillean moment makes two contradictory demands: first, that it is essential to accept the inevitability of sweeping changes, however difficult that acceptance may be; and second, that it is equally essential to find ways of incorporating into the emerging new order that which was wisest and best in the passing order, no matter how much the new order may resist. This way of looking at things makes several important assumptions. It assumes the fact of contingency, and the possibility of free and meaningful choices. Tocqueville was emphatically opposed to any and all forms of determinism, partly because they sapped the will and extinguished the spirit of liberty, and partly because they simply failed the test of truth. All is not foreordained, and there are clearly better and worse ways of managing the transition to democracy. The outcome depends upon the ways in which change is directed, and that in turn depends upon the prudential judgment of wise and skilled leaders. ESSAYS | McCLAY 31 Let me make what I am saying clearer by offering another example of what I am calling “the Tocquevillean moment” taken from outside Tocqueville’s work and his immediate context. A similar moment of profound political and social transition is described with great vividness in Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard.12 The book relates the story of a proud Sicilian prince, Don Fabrizio, who is thoroughly steeped in a venerable and traditional social order at whose apex he stands, but who must nevertheless find a dignified way to accept and yield to the winds of change. When the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian national unification, intrudes upon his island world, he is surprised to discover that his well-born, talented, and ambitious young nephew Tancredi has decided to sign on with the revolutionaries, who have set their sights on the overthrow of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its replacement by the Kingdom of Italy. Why, the Prince wonders, would a young nobleman like Tancredi desert his king and stoop to make common cause with a ruffian like Garibaldi and his mob of redshirts? But Tancredi is moved by more than a young man’s hotblooded desire to be in on the Big Event. He also has a persuasive explanation for his choice. Change was inevitable. But without the participation of the older elite classes, the nationalist movement could well be taken over or supplanted by something immensely more destructive, a radical republicanism that would sweep away every vestige of the life that the Prince had known. “If we want things to stay as they are,” said Tancredi, “things will have to change. D’you understand?”13 And yes, the Prince did come to understand, and the book is about his gradual and methodical accommodation to the new order, albeit one laced with intense melancholy and regret, and occasional doses of cynicism. That process of �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW accommodation culminates in his embrace of a marriage between Tancredi and the beautiful daughter of Don Calogero, a man of lowly birth, who had made himself into a wealthy landowner and influential businessman, and who was a strong supporter of the nationalists. Don Calogero perfectly embodies the emerging democratic order in all its callowness and vulgarity. The very idea of linking his family to Don Calogero’s was a change that the Prince’s ancestors would never willingly have contemplated, and it was certainly a change that the proud Prince would rather not have had to make. But he recognized that there was much good that could be salvaged in some areas, if only he were willing to make a strategic retreat in others. Such a union would allow him to retain his social authority and the prestige of his house, and along with it the commitment to refinement and culture that were the distinguishing mark of his class, since Don Calogero and his offspring would now have an equal stake in the perpetuation of these things. Some things changed, precisely so that other things could stay the same. This story neatly encapsulates what is meant by “the Tocquevillean moment.” It involves discerning those cases in which change is inevitable and accepting that inevitability, while also recognizing the possibility of carrying over what is essential or desirable—just as Aeneas fled from his ravaged Troy with his household gods and with his father Anchises on his shoulders, carrying the most precious relics of the past with him as he struggled toward the founding of something new and unprecedented.14 It involves recognizing that the change can occur in many ways and understanding that, within certain limits, many things are possible. There is no one way for history to flow. So much is contingent and uncertain. So much is up to us. ESSAYS | McCLAY 33 Many of Tocqueville’s contemporary readers failed to see this aspect of his work. In particular, the reception of the second volume of the Democracy was a tremendous disappointment to Tocqueville. Reviewer after reviewer criticized the book, or praised it only blandly. Evidently its ambitiousness, its scope, and its abstractness put them off. Only John Stuart Mill, whom Tocqueville had come to know during a visit to England, seemed to grasp the book’s intentions. His long and careful review of the book brought forth a grateful letter from Tocqueville, one that showed how deeply the book’s poor reception had stung and frustrated him.15 Another letter Tocqueville wrote to an uncomprehending French reviewer is worth quoting at length, because it offers a remarkably clear explication of Tocqueville’s goals and beliefs, and tells us much about the dilemmas that an intelligent and high-minded political Frenchman faced in his time. We do not know for certain whether this letter was ever received, or even sent. But it is as clear a statement as Tocqueville ever provided of precisely what he was up to with the Democracy: I cannot help expressing to you the painful impression [your review] has made on me. It does not do justice to the most important point, the principal idea, the governing thought of the work. . . . I had become aware that, in our time, the new social state that had produced and is still producing very great benefits was, however, giving birth to a number of quite dangerous tendencies. These seeds, if left to grow unchecked, would produce, it seemed to me, a steady lowering of the intellectual level of society with no conceivable limit, and this would bring in its train the mores of materialism and, finally, universal slavery. I thought I saw that mankind was moving in this direction, and I viewed the prospect with terror. It was essen- �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tial, I thought, for all men of good will to join in exerting the strongest possible pressure in the opposite direction. To my knowledge, few of the friends of the Revolution of 1789 dared point out these very frightening tendencies. . . . Those who saw them and were not afraid to speak of them, being the sort of men who condemned in one fell swoop the entire democratic social state and all its elements, were more likely to irritate people than guide them. The intellectual world was thus divided into blind friends and furious detractors of democracy. My aim in writing [my] book was to point out these dreadful downward paths opening under the feet of our contemporaries, not to prove that they must be thrown back into an aristocratic state of society . . . but to make these tendencies feared by painting them in vivid colors, and thus to secure the effort of mind and will which alone can combat them—to teach democracy to know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain itself.16 It would be hard to imagine a fuller expression of what I am calling the Tocquevillean moment, the moment when social change arrives at a crossroads, and awaits further direction. Two things are particularly worth noting. First, Tocqueville’s words make clear how uncomfortable he felt having to choose between the hard-right monarchism of his aristocratic friends and the hard-left republicanism of his democratic ones; neither of these options, he believed, offered hope for the preservation of liberty—and the preservation of liberty was, for Tocqueville, the highest and most fundamental of political goods. Second, the letter gives the lie to those critics who attribute to Tocqueville a fatalistic view of democracy as inevitable decline, a view reflective of his ingrained elitism. It simply wasn’t so. For one thing, Tocqueville had the asceticism that most great thinkers ESSAYS | McCLAY 35 share, the ability to think against his own sentiments in the pursuit of the truth. But more importantly, he always wrote with the idea of contingency, and of the freedom of man’s will, firmly in mind. The Tocquevillean moment is a moment of decision—a decision conditioned and structured and hedged about by large social changes, but a consequential decision nonetheless. In this respect, Tocqueville’s view was dramatically different from that of his younger contemporary Marx, for whom the relationship between large structures and individual action was hopelessly muddled. Tocqueville was an ardent foe of any and all determinisms, and he would never have countenanced the view that his writings discredited democracy in toto. Indeed, a fundamentally Christian view of man’s freedom was at the heart of Tocqueville’s vision. As he wrote at the very end of the second volume of the Democracy: I am not unaware that several of my contemporaries have thought that peoples are never masters of themselves here below, and that they necessarily obey I do not know which insurmountable and unintelligent force born of previous events, the race, the soil, or the climate. Those are false and cowardly doctrines that can never produce any but weak men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or perfectly slave. It traces, it is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too with peoples. Nations of our day cannot have it that conditions within them are not equal; but it depends on them whether equality leads them to servitude or freedom, to enlightenment or barbarism, to prosperity or misery.17 �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 36 The Tocquevillean moment calls forth all the capacities we possess for coming to terms, not only as individuals but also as citizens and societies, with that fatal circle. ***** Now we can give a fuller answer to our long-dangling question: How did Tocqueville believe that the Americans of his day had managed to counter the dangerous aspects of democracy and create a relatively free and vibrant society? He identified a number of factors. First, he gave credit to the pervasive influence of religion in American life, noting to his astonishment the numerous ways in which American religion supported democratic values and free institutions. Such a development seemed particularly surprising, coming as it did at the very time when educated Europeans were abandoning religious faith and practice, in the mistaken belief that the “spirit of liberty” was incompatible with the authoritarian “spirit of religion.” Tocqueville’s visit to America convinced him that the opposite was true. In America, religious beliefs and institutions restrained selfassertion in ways that made the exercise of freedom more stable and more effective. Although religion took no direct or official role in governance, it was, he declared, “the first of [Americans’] political institutions,” for all Americans regarded it as indispensable to the maintenance of republican government.18 Tocqueville was always deeply concerned about materialism, connecting acquisitive materialism—the unrestrained desire to possess more and more things—with philosophical materialism—the belief that the soul is perishable and only matter truly exists. As a social philosopher committed both to the power of free will and to the ideal of self-rule, Tocqueville found the deterministic implications of philosophical materialism intolerable, and condemned it force- ESSAYS | McCLAY 37 fully as a “dangerous malady of the human mind.”19 Fortunately, he believed, the Americans had so far proven resistant to its temptations. But without the countervailing force of religion, and in particular, without a belief in the moral responsibility of an immortal soul, democratic institutions could easily be overwhelmed by their own tendency to beget an uncontrolled passion for physical gratifications. And there were other factors that he believed countervailed against democracy’s dangers. Tocqueville applauded Americans for their talent in forming voluntary associations, and for their federal institutions, both of which tended to disperse pow er and encourage the involvement of citizens in the activity of governing themselves—and both very much in contrast to the centralizing tendencies of French politics. “Local freedoms,” he wrote, “which make many citizens put value on the affection of their neighbors and those close to them, therefore constantly bring men closer to one another, despite the instincts that separate them, and force them to aid each other.”20 As this description implies, such a scheme did not depend upon selflessness. Indeed, the axiomatic principle that made effective political and social association in America possible, he believed, was the principle of self-interest rightly understood or well understood (l’intérêt bien entendu). To ask an American to do virtuous things for virtue’s sake was quite possibly to waste one’s breath. But the same request would readily be granted if the prospect of some personal benefit could be shown to flow from it. The challenge of moral philosophy in such an environment, then, was demonstrating repeatedly the ways in which “private interest and public interest meet and amalgamate,” and how one’s devotion to the general good would therefore also promote his or her personal advantage. Belief in that conjunction— belief that one could do well by doing good—was exactly �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW what Tocqueville meant by the “right understanding” of self-interest.21 The prevalence of this belief could be seen in the characteristic forms of moral discourse Tocqueville encountered in America. In the United States, he wrote, “it is almost never said that virtue is beautiful. They maintain that it is useful and they prove it every day.” They do not care about virtue for its own sake, but are completely convinced that it is in the interest of every man to be virtuous.22 Tocqueville was quite willing to accept this deal in much the same spirit that the Prince accepted Don Calogero. After all, the Tocquevillean moment involves making a calculation, whereby the transition into the new democratic order could be effected with the least possible loss of what was precious and estimable in the old ways. “I shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest well understood seems to me of all philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of the men in our time,” because self-interest was destined to “become more than ever the principal if not the unique motive of men’s actions.”23 Hence, it was imperative to educate citizens to understand this. “Enlighten them, therefore,” wrote Tocqueville, “at any price; for the century of blind devotions and instinctive virtues is already fleeing far from us, and I see the time approaching when freedom, public peace, and social order itself will not be able to do without enlightenment.”24 Lamentable as the loss of these older virtues seemed to be, their loss was not the end of the story for Tocqueville. The American example made him hopeful that there might be ways for the principle of self-interest to be so channeled, hedged about, habituated, and clothed as to produce public order and public good, even in the absence of older and more venerable motives. 39 ESSAYS | McCLAY ***** “Enlighten them, therefore, at any price.” Éclairez-les donc à tout prix. Or, as the older Phillips Bradley translation expressed it, “Educate them, then.” This exhortation brings us full circle, back to where I began in reflecting on what is being done here and now at this particular college. For whatever else we may believe about the applicability of Tocqueville’s ideas to the present day, and there is a lot of room for debate there, we can be in no doubt that he was right in his emphasis upon education. But not just any kind of education. He is talking about liberal education, in the strictest sense of the term, meaning an education that is designed to make men and women capable of the exercise of liberty, and of doing so within the context of the particular society in which they find themselves. Such an education is likely to require a serious and sustained encounter with old books. Modern Americans are likely to assume that the value of such an education is mainly contemplative. And I say this without any hint of disparagement. Many of us believe that an education aimed at contemplative truth is a very high and worthwhile endeavor. I don’t think I need to make that case here at St. John’s. But I do want to argue that such an education also commends itself on very practical grounds, for reasons that seem to me quite thoroughly Tocquevillean. For, to borrow from the very words Tocqueville used in his letter to his French critic, liberal education is the kind of education that seeks to teach democracy to know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain itself. Such an education can help equip us to negotiate, with both intelligence and wisdom, the multitude of Tocquevillean dilemmas that are presented to us by our times—changes that are too formi- �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW dable to be resisted entirely, but at the same time too fluid for us to refuse the challenge of influencing their direction. This only serves to underscore the profound importance of that process I described at the beginning, the process whereby we pass on to the present and to the future the most worthy and enduring elements of human ages that have passed or are passing away. This is why the theory of strict historicism is so wrongheaded and impoverishing, because it denies us that very benefit by demanding that everything be perpetually bound to its immediate context—as if every cargo had to remain forever in the hold of the ship that transported it, and as if no child could ever make his parent’s legacy into something of his own. When, for example, we accord Plato’s Republic our high respect as a great text warranting a lifetime of study, this does not imply that we approve or ignore the many defects, cruelties, and inequities of the Athenian society in which it was produced—let alone that we prefer such a society to our own democracy. We do not study the Republic merely for what it tells us about Plato’s Athens. We study the Republic partly, and far more importantly, because its criticisms of democracy remain enduringly valid and troubling—and because in reading it, we are teaching our democracy to know itself better, thereby contributing to its ennoblement. It is neither elitist nor ahistorical for us to seek to perpetuate, not a way of life that is past or passing, but the things in it that remain estimable and enduringly valuable. There is much reason for hope, then, in this vision of things. And yet, to be faithful to Tocqueville, I have to end on a somewhat more somber note. Tocqueville was himself prone to melancholy, and worried that the task of democracy’s ennoblement would prove too difficult, too exacting, and too exhausting to perform. There is always in his work the sense of an uphill challenge, with the issue very much in ESSAYS | McCLAY 41 doubt. And it does not take much imagination to find, in his description to his French critic of the “downward paths opening under the feet of our contemporaries,” a description that applies very much to our own democracy today. But what remains still, both in Tocqueville and in the present day, is the imperative of freedom. Remember his words at the end of the Democracy: “[Providence] traces, it is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too with peoples.”25 It is hard at any given time to know where our containing circle is drawn, and we are just as likely to err in presuming to cross over the line as we are in shying away from it out of timidity and fear. Yet Tocqueville clearly thought the danger of the latter outweighed that of the former, and that we have far more power to shape our lives and our destinies than we allow ourselves to believe. That is why the Tocquevillean moment is, at bottom, an occasion for the exercise of the profoundest human freedom. It is not an unlimited freedom, of course. But what could such a thing mean? What, after all, is a radically unconditioned state, other than a state of utter randomness and inconsequentiality? “To live without let or hindrance would be life indeed,” observed George Santayana, “Yet there is a snare in this vital anarchy. It is like the liberty to sign cheques without possessing a bank account. You may write them for any amount; but it is only when a precise deposit limits your liberty that you may write them to any purpose.”26 No, the difficult and complex freedom of the Tocquevillean moment is precisely the sort of freedom for which we humans were made, and it provides the opportunity for our finest qualities to flourish. The fatal circle is also the ground of our freedom, the horizon that gives focus and purposefulness to our efforts. History may delimit our choices, but �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW it does not dictate what we should do with what is set before us. For that, Tocqueville asserted, we must look to ourselves. It is bracing but encouraging counsel. NOTES 1 Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia, 2 vols. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 1044. 2 The reader who is interested in knowing more about Tocqueville’s life and times can consult two excellent English-language biographies: André Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, translated by Lydia Davis with Robert Hemenway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988); and Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). 3 De la Démocratie en Amérique is the book’s French title, a title that conveys far better than its English translation the fact that Tocqueville’s greater interest was in “democracy” rather than in “America.” I have used the scrupulously literal and reliable recent translation by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), and all quotations and page numbers refer to that text. I confess to retaining a fondness for the often more graceful (if less accurate) translation by Phillips Bradley, based on the Henry Reeve text as revised by Francis Bowen, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1945 and still widely available, which was generally considered the standard English translation until being supplanted by the appearance of the Mansfield/Winthrop edition. There are other worthy English translations in circulation, including a most welcome bilingual, French-English, historical-critical edition edited by Eduardo Nolla, translated by the distinguished Tocqueville scholar James T. Schleifer, and published in four volumes in 2010 by Liberty Fund. 4 On Tocqueville’s journey, see George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938). 5 Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, Paris, February 21, 1831, cited in James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, second edition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 3. Schleifer’s book is a meticulous and fascinating account of the book’s composition. 6 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 13. ESSAYS | McCLAY 7 43 Ibid., 6. Ibid., 6-7. 9 Ibid., 7. Here I acceded only reluctantly to the Mansfield/Winthrop translation of une science politique nouvelle as “a new political science,” which is literally accurate but seems to me to run the considerable risk of being conflated with the use of the term “political science” as the name for a particular academic discipline that did not exist in Tocqueville’s time. The Bradley/Reeve/Bowen translation, “a new science of politics,” is less literal but seems less liable to that confusion. 10 Ibid., 483-4. 11 Ibid., 661-73. 12 Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, translated by Archibald Colquhoun (New York: Pantheon, 1960); originally published as Il Gattopardo (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1958). 13 Ibid., 40. 14 Cf. Aeneid, Book 2, 624-804. 15 Mill’s review, which appeared in October 1840 edition of the Edinburgh Review, is described in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, 274-5. 16 This unpublished letter written by Tocqueville to Sylvestre de Sacy is in the Tocqueville family archives but has been translated and quoted at length in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, 272-3. Brogan also refers to this same item, characterizing it as a “blistering letter” which “it is to be hoped that he sent,” given the fact that “here, in a couple of sentences, he expresses the central concern which drove his investigations . . . and explains why posterity has argued over them ever since.” See Brogan, Tocqueville, 368-9. 17 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 675-6. 18 Ibid., 280. 19 Ibid., 519. 20 Ibid., 487. 21 Ibid., 500-503. 22 Ibid., 501. 23 Ibid., 503. 24 Ibid. 25 See note 17. 26 George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), 241. 8 �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ESSAYS 45 ON SEEING ASPECTS John Verdi Introduction If philosophy, which seeks to encompass all of being in thought, has a question as its source and its guiding principle, that question might be, What is there? To this question we can give a disarmingly simple and obviously true answer: What is there? Everything. There are particles and waves, brains and consciousness, nations and peoples, Hamlet and Hamlet, and on and on. There is . . . everything. The “everything” answer—which in the end may show itself to be the only true universal answer available to us—delegates to various disciplines and modes of thinking the task of determining what there is, each in its own way. The physicist, the psychologist, the historian, the poet: each receives his share, with perhaps nothing left over for the philosopher. Somewhat like Meno’s paradoxical question to Socrates about the futility of seeking either what one does or what one does not know, the “everything” answer tries to silence philosophy at it source. But we philosophers retain the belief, perhaps even the conviction, that in spite of everything the effort to comprehend the unity of things is still worthwhile. Philosophy’s subject matter is precisely not one thing among many others, but rather the interrelatedness of all that is. We philosophers believe that the fundamental questions—beginning with the question, What is there?—can continually bring into light the inexhaustible being of things and can place us, as thinkers, squarely in its presence. The essence of these questions is to open up possibilities and to keep them open. This is John Verdi is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay was first presented as a lecure on 28 October 2005. �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW why there is philosophy in life. In this essay I would like to show, in a very preliminary way, how the concept of aspects, and especially our experience of seeing aspects, can help us think about being, and about the meaning of philosophy’s opening question, What is there? We can turn to Aristotle for an entry into the idea of aspects. In On Memory and Recollection, he raises a question about what goes on when we remember something. For Aristotle all perception involves an image of some kind, present right now, in the soul. He call such an image a phantasma. The question of how the past can be present is the problem of memory. Aristotle writes: [I]t is clear that one must conceive the sort of thing that comes about in the soul as a result of sense perception . . . as something like a picture (z%graph'ma), the active holding of which we assert to be memory. . . . But if what goes on in the case of memory is of this sort, does one remember this experience or the one from which it came about? For if it is this one, we would not remember any of the things that are absent, but if it is the earlier one, how, while perceiving this later one, do we remember the absent thing that we are not perceiving (450a25-31, 450b13-16). So if what I have now is a present image, a phantasma, how is it that this image can be of the past? To overcome this impasse Aristotle distinguishes phantasmata from eikones, that is, images from representations or likenesses. (We see this also in Plato’s Sophist [240b12c2], and passim throughout the Republic.) He says: For example, the picture drawn on a tablet is both a picture (z%on) and a likeness (eik%n), and one and the same thing is both of these, although what it is to be these two things is not the same, and it is possible to behold it both as a picture and as a likeness; so too one ought to conceive of the image that is in us as being ESSAYS | VERDI 47 itself something in its own right, and as being of something else (450b21-26). We can say that the memory image I have of something I experienced in the past can display at least two aspects, depending on whether we see it simply as a phantasma, that is, as an image fully present in its own right at this moment, or as an eikon, a reminder or pointer to something else—something that may in fact no longer even exist. One reason, then, for investigating the seeing of aspects is that we might come to understand how it is possible for something absent to be represented by something present. Put in broader terms, how can one thing stand for another and be its representative? In the broadest terms, we might ask how anything comes to have meaning at all. I have had another, more personal, reason for getting involved with aspects. Some years ago I had occasion to read and discuss Augustine’s Confessions both in one class during the summer and in another class the following fall. I was profoundly moved by these encounters with Augustine, who at the time he was writing would have been about the same age I was while reading. I felt certain that if I were to read the book yet again soon after I would begin to see things in the world—things I hadn’t seen before or had stopped seeing long ago. I felt sure I would experience some sort of change, both in what I would see and in the way I would see it. Whether it was from prudence or cowardice— I still don’t know—I did not pick up the Confessions again until years later. But my near encounter with conversion left me wondering what conversion is and how it comes about. I’ve come to suspect that conversion, whether religious or otherwise, sudden or gradual, toward or away from, has the power to change what one sees in the world—perhaps even to change one’s answer to the question, What is there? Whether I come to see the world as “charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins says, or I say along with Words- �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 48 worth that “the things which I have seen I now can see no more,” in either case, my world becomes different. This essay is in three parts. In the first part, I will look at some pictures and discuss some of the apparently simple phenomena associated with aspect-seeing. In the second part, I will present the beginnings of an account of aspects and their significance to the question of what there is. In the last part, I will examine a painting by Caravaggio, The Calling of St. Matthew. There is also one joke in the essay. 49 ESSAYS | VERDI This is the duck-rabbit. Figure 3 Part One: Ducks and Rabbits This is a duck. We can see the duck-rabbit either as a duck or as a rabbit. When we see it as one or the other we are seeing one or the other of its aspects. When we see it first as a duck and then as a rabbit, we experience a change of aspect. It is also possible that a person might never see anything but a rabbit in the picture. That person could be said to be seeing the rabbit aspect continuously (PI, 194). Here is another example of aspect-seeing and change of aspect. Figure 1 This is a rabbit. Figure 2 Figure 4 Figure 4 is called the Necker cube. Look at it for a moment. Do you notice a change in the cube while you are looking? Most people will see the cube jump, seeming for a while to have its front side pointing down to the right, and then for a while to have its front side pointing up to the left. If you’re still not seeing this change of aspect, you might be helped by Figure 5, in which the two ways of seeing the cube are emphasized by dots. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 50 Figure 5 First imagine the black dot as closer to you than the white dot. Then reverse this relationship and try to imagine the white dot as closer. Now look one more time at the original cube. Even with the assistance of the dots, there may still be some people who do not see the cube jump between aspects. Consider next Figure 6. How many cubes are there? The correct answers are six or seven, depending on which aspect one sees while counting—six if the black squares seem to be on the tops of the cubes, seven if they seem to be on the bottoms. Those who can count only six or only seven may be helped by the additional drawings in Figure 7. Figure 7 Figure 6 The paradoxical quality of these examples lies in the awareness that what is seen has not changed at all, and nevertheless what is seen is quite different. In what does this difference consist? If I asked you to draw what you saw in both instances, and you were to represent both by exact copies—and wouldn’t those be good representations?—no change would appear, because the copies would be congruent (PI, 196). If I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, I might ESSAYS | VERDI 51 point to other pictures of ducks, and say that I’m now seeing something like that. This, however, is not a description of what I see, but rather an expression of it. These simple examples raise once again the question, What is there? What is seen are contraries: rabbits that are not rabbits, corners both closer and not closer, cubes both six and seven. These apparent contradictions can lead us into a dialectical inquiry. In Book XII of the Metaphysics Aristotle suggests that dialectic begins not from what there is, but from contrary assumptions about what there is (1078 b25). The object of our concern itself opens a road of inquiry for us, and coaxes us along the path (984a17-20). If the difference between what is seen before the change of aspect and what is seen after it did not lie in some sense in the object I was looking at, we might be tempted to think that our eyes and heads are responsible, that something has changed in us. While the new aspect seems to appear suddenly out there, we nonetheless feel that we must have had something to do with it. The image on my retina, the way my eyes follow the figure, the organization of impulses in my brain: any one of these might be the source of the change of aspect. But the fact remains that what I see is still out there. Seeing an aspect is not like having a hallucination, because it is a true seeing of something that is, even if we can’t all see it simultaneously, and even if some of us may never see some aspects of things. Furthermore, I am not aware of what is going on in my eyes and brain while aspects change. So, while these physiological events may be causally related to my experience, they necessarily fail to get at what I mean by change of aspect and what I mean by seeing aspects. Neither a physiological account of aspect-seeing, if one could be provided, nor any other causal account can satisfy us any more that Socrates was satisfied by the causal accounts of Anaxagoras. In the Phaedo, Socrates tells his friends that Anaxagoras at first seemed to say that “Mind puts the world in order and is responsible for all this” (97c), but in the end he assigns only physical causality to things. Socrates says �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that Anaxagoras was like someone who gives an account based on the relationship of bones and sinews to explain why Socrates is sitting in prison awaiting death, rather than providing the account that Socrates himself finds most convincing: “Since the Athenians judged it better to condemn me, so I for my part have judged it better to sit here and stay put and endure whatever penalty they order” (98de). The physical account fails to answer the question of what Socrates’ time in jail means, just as a physiological account would fail to tell us what our seeing of aspects might mean. Consider now what happens when I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that the face has not changed, and yet I see it differently. I have noticed an aspect of the face (PI, 193). The aspect is not a part of the face as is the nose, nor a part as is its color or shape. And yet I see the resemblance of this face to another; I do not infer it or reason it through. I am struck by a similarity I had not before noticed, as if the being of the resemblance asserts itself, and I cannot help but see it. What is it suddenly to notice what has been there all the time? Or has it really been there all along? Perhaps it has come into being, or perhaps I have been thrust into its presence. Or consider the case of meeting someone I have not seen for years; I see him clearly but fail to recognize him. Suddenly I know him, and I see the old face in the altered one. I believe I would paint a different portrait of him, if I could paint, now that I have seen the old in the new. Is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking, or an amalgam of the two? (PI, 197.) Seeing an aspect or change of aspect is not like seeing an optical illusion. Optical illusions, such as those shown in Figure 8 through Figure 10 appear to be what they are not. In the case of the two diagonal lines of Figure 8, ab and bc, it appears that ab is greater than bc, but in fact they are of equal length, as a measurement would show us. In the illu- 53 ESSAYS | VERDI Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 sion of Figure 9, all the vertical lines are parallel to one another, as are all the horizontal lines, which we could determine by placing a straightedge against them, or looking at them close up. And in the illusion of Figure 10, the squares labeled A and B are actually the same shade of gray. Some kind of light meter might help to show this, even though we cannot see it. Many optical illusions are understood when we learn something about how the eyes and brain work. An optical illusion is a kind of trick that can be of value in understanding how we see, in the causal, physiological sense. The questions raised by illusions are limited, and their answers tend to bring an end to wonder. Aspect-seeing is of interest precisely because it is a kind of seeing whose concept is not explicated through physiology, not because we don’t yet know enough about the eyes and brain, but because it is not a concept whose place in our thinking can be made any clearer through such an approach. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 54 ESSAYS | VERDI 55 Figure 11 In the image of Figure 11, those who do not see a change in aspect will be helped by something I am about to say. This picture is of interest because it demonstrates that speech can encourage a shift in aspect that might not otherwise occur. If speech can play a role in aspect-seeing, and if what someone says can affect what we see, then there might be some connection between speaking and seeing. Figure 11 represents the letter E. Now here is a more complex image. To most people, the image in Figure 12 seems to lack any unity. That may be because it is upside down. If we turn it right side up as in Figure 13, some people will see something they did not see before. Most of the rest will be helped by a verbal description to see something like a late medieval representation of Jesus. Figure 12 Figure 13 The upper margin of the picture cuts the brow, so the top of the head is not shown. The point of the jaw, clean-shaven and brightly illuminated, is just above the geometric center of the picture. A white mantel covers the right shoulder. The upper sleeve is exposed as the rather black area at the lower left. Do you see it now? Some people never see it, but for those who do, dark marks have become human eyes, and blobs of black and white have become an expressive human face. How did that happen and why might it be important? Part Two: The Being of Aspects The distinctive mode of being characteristic of aspects is in question here, and in particular we are now asking the question, What is there? The pictures we have examined so far have engaged us in a form of dialectic and have brought us to some kind of impasse. It is the peculiar characteristic of our relationship to pictures that we see into them the very objects they depict. We regard the picture, the drawing, or the photograph as we regard the object itself, and so in a sense we see what is there and what is not there simultaneously, in much the same way as, in Aristotle’s account of memory, we recall things by considering a present image as �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW pointing to the past. In a picture we see lines, shapes, paints, colors; but we also see ducks and rabbits. If we had in front of us the original of this portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals, we would be able to see brush strokes and paint thicknesses. But our description of this canvas as a portrait of Descartes will include elements that do not belong to a description of the picture as a purely physical object. Descartes’s eyes look out at us; we can study the expression on his face and wonder what it reveals about Figure 14 him. In this paint-covered canvas we see a human being. (It is perhaps not surprising to learn, then, that in Greek, the same word, z%on, does double duty for both “living thing” and “picture.”) The reason that we hang pictures on our walls at all, I think, is because we can see into a picture the very thing of which it is a picture. We also hang snippets of text (PI, 205). There is, of course, also a sense in which Descartes is not really there in the picture. The dual nature of aspects—that what we see both is and is not there—allows the picture to make a demand on us and to ask us the question, What is there? Our seeing itself is made questionable. By raising the question of being, the aspects of the picture also raise the question of truth. What is true about a picture? The kinship between pictures and aspects may be put this way: An aspect of something—that is, what I can see it as—is what it can be a picture of, or more generally, what it can stand for or represent: the image I now see can represent, or be seen as, an image of the past; the triangle I draw on the chalkboard can represent the triangle of the proposition I am demonstrating. I see the duck-rabbit as a duck 57 ESSAYS | VERDI when it is placed in a field of pictures of ducks. It can be a picture of a duck. In a field of pictures of rabbits, I see it as a rabbit. It can be a picture of a rabbit. You could imagine the image in Figure 15 appearing in several places in a book. Figure 15 In the text surrounding the different appearances of the figure, a different object could be under discussion in each case: here a glass solid, there an inverted open box, there a wire frame, there three boards forming a solid angle. We see the illustration now as one object, now as another (PI, 193). What we seem to be doing in these various cases is both seeing and thinking—seeing because I have an illustration in front of me, thinking because I am guided by the description to see it as one thing or another. It may take something like imagination or a conscious act of interpretation to see the drawing as now this, now that. When, by contrast, I view the portrait of Descartes or see the duck-rabbit in a field of duck pictures, I needn’t consciously engage the imagination. And yet I am still inclined to say that imagination—or is it thought?—suffuses itself throughout my seeing in all these instances. When aspect-seeing does not involve the sort of interpretation necessary to see the schematic solid as many different objects, it is more like ordinary seeing in this way: when I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, my seeing is immediate and non-inferential—though it is still full of mind in some way. In seeing the duck, I do not draw a conclusion from a line of reasoning, such as “This must be a duck because all the others are ducks.” It could be said that mind �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW reaches through the world of my knowledge and experience to give shape to my sight. This is not to say that aspectseeing is two things, thinking and seeing, any more than playing a piece of music with expression involves both the playing and the expression. Rather, our seeing is one form that thought takes in our lives, and it is only in a world of thought that there can be aspects (RPP I, 1029). We have thinking eyes and we see thinkingly. In De Anima, Aristotle shows that all aesthesis, all perception, tends towards a universal, even if every sense has its own specific field, so that what is immediately given is not universal. The fact is that we see particulars in relation to something universal. We see not merely a white patch, but a man. Merleau-Ponty, in his book The Phenomenology of Perception, restates Aristotle’s position, giving it a linguistic turn. He says that “language intervenes at every stage of recognition by providing possible meanings for what is in fact seen, and recognition advances along with linguistic connections” (131). In this sense, seeing can be a direct and immediate grasp of the meanings of things. Can there then be a connection between a pathology of mind and a pathology of seeing? What would it be like to be aspect-blind? What would the world of the aspect-blind person be like? The eyesight of such a person would not be defective in any ordinary sense, but he would be unable to see a picture jump from one aspect to another. He would not, for example, see the Necker cube switch from first pointing down to then pointing up, though he might be able to reason that the existence of two aspects is a possibility. Furthermore, he might be blind to the expression on a face. He might not see the picture face of Descartes as proud or pious or cheerful, though he might be able to learn to deduce from its features that it expressed these characteristics. In general, his attitude toward pictures would be quite different from that of a person who is able to see aspects (RPP II, 49). It might be like the attitude most of us have toward a blue- ESSAYS | VERDI 59 print: it needs to be figured out. He would not see motion in the picture of a runner, though he would know that the picture was meant to represent motion. Aspect-blindness would be akin to lacking a musical ear. Oliver Sacks, in the title case study of his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, describes a distinguished professor of music, Dr. P., who gradually loses the ability to recognize faces and even quite ordinary objects. On first meeting him, Sacks doesn’t understand why he has been referred for treatment, because he seems normal. Sacks then opens for him a copy of National Geographic and asks him to describe some of the pictures in it. Sacks writes: His responses here were very curious. His eyes would dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny features, individual features. . . . A striking brightness, a color, a shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment— but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole. . . . He never entered into relation with the picture as a whole—never faced, so to speak, its physiognomy. He had no sense whatever of a landscape or scene (10-11). While he could recognize abstract shapes, such as the five regular solids, he could identify a face only if he could find in it some distinctive feature, from which he could draw the conclusion that this must be so-and-so’s face. Nor could he any longer identify the expressions on faces. He could see the features, but could not see the face. As Sacks writes: It wasn’t merely that he displayed the same indifference to the visual world as a computer but . . . he construed the world as a computer construes it, by means of key features and schematic relationships. The scheme might be identified . . . without the reality being grasped at all (15). There is also the case of young man named Schneider, who suffered a brain injury during World War I. He was studied by the psychologists Kurt Goldstein and Adhemar �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Gelb. In most respects Schneider appeared to be quite normal, with undiminished language ability, intact intelligence, and adequate visual acuity. But Goldstein and Gelb discovered that Schneider was unable to identify certain words and objects when they were exposed briefly on a special viewing apparatus called a tachistoscope, a device that displays images for a specified length of time. If letters or pictures were shown him with their contours obscured or their interiors marked by cross-hatching, he was unable to recognize them. Even the difference between straightness and curvature escaped him. The doctors eventually learned that he could read words and recognize objects and pictures only through a series of slight head and hand movements, which could be frustrated if several lines led away from a single point. Away from the laboratory and out in the real world, Schneider managed to find his way around only by using cues to deduce what things were. He was able to distinguish a tree from its shadow because the shadow was darker. He could distinguish men from vehicles because men were narrow and tall, whereas vehicles were long and wide. Merleau-Ponty says that he had lost “the symbolic function” (123). For him the world no longer had any physiognomy, no characteristic look or feel. Schneider had also lost the ability to see things as representations, and consequently could no longer wonder, for wonder is possible only when we can see in something both that it is and that it is not. He could himself no longer recognize the power of images to express meaning and to point beyond themselves. MerleauPonty remarks that “it was through his sight that mind in him was impaired” (126). It seemed that mind no longer informed his eyes. The best his eyes could do was to send information about what was in front of him to his mind, which would then reason about what there was. In a sense, his eyes could no longer see. ESSAYS | VERDI 61 These pathological cases suggest that there exists a deep connection between aspect-seeing and meaning. The human world—our world—is full of meanings. Pictures, words, objects point away from themselves and towards other things through an endless web of connections. Meaning arises and spreads out through our recognition of the fundamental interconnectedness of things, the unity of being. In this regard, aspects are themselves meanings, and as such they belong, I would suggest, to human experience. Neither beasts nor gods see aspects, at least not as fully as we do. Animals for the most part appear to be unable to see something as something else. A dog might mistake a stick for a bone, but it cannot see the stick as a bone. The Homeric gods seem to live in a world almost devoid of representations except for language. They do not create representative works of art for themselves, though Hephaistos does make a shield for Achilles (Homer, Iliad, 18: 478-608). Do they delight in poetry or music? Do they find meanings in the objects of the world? Perhaps they simply see what truly is and stand in no need of the suggestiveness of art. All this is merely to say, in slightly different words, what Diotima says in the Symposium: The gods do not philosophize (204a1). The condition of aspect-blindness also suggests a connection between aspects in general and what we might call “experiencing the meaning of a word” (PI, 214). What would you be missing if you never could experience the meaning of a word—if, for instance, you could not feel that a word loses its meaning and becomes mere sound when it is repeated ten times over? A word has a familiar physiognomy; it arouses a feeling that it is an actual likeness of its meaning. We manifest these feelings by the way we choose and value words and by the care we take to find the “right” word. The meanings of words are like the aspects of visual representations: a sentence can resemble a painting in words; an individual word in a sentence can resemble a picture (PI, 215). �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW As an example, consider the two ideas “fat” and “thin.” Would you be inclined to say that Friday was thin and Thursday fat, or the reverse? Which one feels right to you? Here “fat” and “thin” are not metaphors. Someone who does not understand what is being asked here would be at a loss— but not because he did not understand the primary meanings of the four words. In fact, it is just because he does understand these meanings that the question might seem like nonsense to him. These people exhibit a kind of meaningblindness, or perhaps meaning-myopia, as most of us do to some degree. For these people, “finding the right word” often involves thinking things through, figuring them out, rather than listening for the right fit. They might have a hard time appreciating poetry and certain kinds of humor, especially puns. This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw, showing a man in a business suit with a briefcase, standing in his kitchen presumably after a long day at the office (or in the classroom), with something like a scowl on his face. His wife cheerfully asks: “Did you have a nice day, dear?” To this he responds: “Of course I did. You told me to, didn’t you?” The humor turns in part on our grasping at once the dual aspects of the expression “Have a nice day,” usually meant as a hortatory subjunctive, but grammatically equivalent to an imperative. (But I know it’s impolite to explain jokes.) Part Three: The Calling of St. Matthew Seeing different aspects and experiencing multiple meanings play important roles in our understanding and appreciation of visual art, music, and literature, especially poetry. Consider the representation of King William in Figure 16 and imagine that we have the actual painting in front of us. We can see this image in at least three ways. That is, we can see at least three of its aspects. First, we can see it as a 63 ESSAYS | VERDI Figure 16 physical object. It is a canvas nearly eight feet high and five feet long, surrounded by a frame of wood, rather heavy, covered with paint of different colors and thicknesses, applied probably by different brushes with different strokes by Sir Godfrey Kneller sometime in the late seventeenth century. Second, we can see it as what we might call a geometrical object. We can focus on its composition, on how the shapes and colors blend or contrast, on which lines point in which directions, and on how our eyes are guided through the picture by its geometrical and optical qualities. Finally, we can view it as a portrait of King William III. We can study his facial expression and his posture. We can notice his eyes looking down at us, and his left hand encircling the handle of his sword while it gently holds his cloak. We see his power; perhaps we can see his justice. Our seeing of the painting as King William is continuous. We don’t see it now as King William, now as paint on canvas, though one might make an effort to do so. But no effort is needed to see it as a representation of a living human being. �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Figure 17 shows another painting, The Calling of St. Matthew by Caravaggio. It was painted around 1600 and hangs in a small corner chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Figure 17 It is about eleven feet on each side. On the other two walls of the sanctuary hang two other depictions by Caravaggio from the life of St. Matthew. It is impossible to view this painting head-on without entering the sanctuary, so most people see it at an angle from the left, as shown in Figure 18. As we know from Scripture, the painting is a representation of a conversion, that is, a turning. Levi (the pre-conversion name of Matthew) becomes Matthew—and the world ESSAYS | VERDI 65 changes for him. He sees what he had not seen before. Caravaggio’s painting attempts to reveal this moment of conversion, or what we might call a sudden change in aspect. We can examine the painting under three or four aspects. In its aspect as a physical object, the painting is a large square. Caravaggio has applied the paint thinly to the canvas, using only a small number of colors. A very close inspection would reveal brush strokes that to the trained eye could indicate the size of the brushes Caravaggio used, and perhaps even the haste or care with which the paints were applied. When we consider the geometrical aspect of the painting, we see Figure 18 that it is divided into two parts. The standing figures on the right form a vertical rectangle; those gathered around the table on the left, a horizontal block or triangle. The two groups are separated by a void that is bridged by a pointing hand. There is a grid pattern of verticals and horizontals that serve to knit the picture together: the window, the table, the finger of the bearded man sitting at the table, a stool, a line running up the wall in the upper left. The contrast of light and shadow serves to guide our eye across the painting from right to left. When we turn out attention to the content aspect of the painting, we notice that the setting seems ordinary, unremarkable. Perhaps it is a room in a tavern or, if the scene is outdoors, a courtyard. And yet, even if we did not see it hanging in the chapel, we might see at once that it is a religious painting. The languid, pointing hand of Jesus commands assent in a way that might exceed mere human authority. The light streaming in from the right over the head �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of Jesus draws our attention to his face and hand. There is also an urgency and a dignity about the painting that suggests there is other work to be done than counting money. Some people might come to see this as a religious painting only with help from cues—for example, the halo over the head of Jesus. Others will recognize this aspect right away. It is perhaps only or largely through created images and words that the divine becomes picturable, and so enters the world. Religious paintings, therefore, play a special role in revealing the power of pictures in general to disclose what there is. The bearded tax-gatherer, Levi, is seated at a table in the center of a corolla consisting of himself and four others, perhaps his assistants. Coins litter the table, and the hunched-over figure on the left appears to be counting some of them. The group is lighted by a source at the upper right. Jesus, his eyes veiled in shadow, with a halo hinting at his divinity, enters alongside Peter. A gesture of his right hand summons Levi, who is surprised by the intrusion of these bare-footed men, and perhaps dazzled by the sudden light from a just-opened door. Levi draws back and gestures toward himself, as if to ask, “Who, me?” while his right hand remains pressed onto some coins. The two figures to the left are so concerned with counting money that they are oblivious to the arrival of Christ, and so symbolically deprive themselves of the opportunity he offers for salvation. The two boys in the center do respond, the younger one drawing back as if to seek Levi’s protection, the older, with his sword hung conspicuously, leaning forward somewhat menacingly towards Peter, who seems to freeze him in place with a finger. For the moment captured in the picture, no one does anything. In another second, Matthew will rise up and follow Jesus and his world will be forever different. The painting captures the very moment of Matthew’s turning. This brief account of the painting is much like what you would find in many art books, and has been an accepted version for many years. It is both revealing and compelling. ESSAYS | VERDI 67 But we know that there a fourth aspect to this painting, along with its being a physical object, a geometrical object, and a representational object. The painting is itself derived from a representation in words, a Gospel story. Here are the accounts of Matthew’s calling from his Gospel, and also from the Gospels of Mark and Luke. First Matthew: As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him (Matt. 9:9). Mark writes: And as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him (Mark 2:14). And Luke: After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi, sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he left everything, and rose and followed him (Luke 5:27-28). The accounts are bare and simple, merely hints of what might have taken place. What strikes us, however, is what the stories do not say. No account suggests that Matthew hesitated or questioned before leaving his collection table when summoned by Jesus. Of course, Caravaggio’s understanding of the story may be that it is fully human to doubt and question and ask, so that, despite the Gospel narrative, the bearded man sitting at the table, whose finger points questioningly, almost unbelievingly, is very likely Matthew. But if this is not the case, if his own finger is not pointing at himself, who is Matthew? Jesus does not seem to think that he’ll need to stay long to answer questions, because his foot, seen in the lower right, is already turned to leave. Is it clear at whom Jesus is looking and pointing? If we follow the arc of his finger, is it not met by the body of the hunched-over �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW young man, whose back curves up and whose head leans towards Jesus? His eyes are the only ones of the five at the table that are not illuminated by the bright light from the right. We are drawn toward both pairs of shadowed eyes— the young man’s and those of Jesus—not because they are focal points of lines of light, or because they are centrally placed. They are human eyes in shadow and they beckon us because we want to know who they belong to and what they imply. If the young man is Matthew—and I offer this with many reservations—then the painting depicts a turning or conversion without hesitation, without questioning, without delaying at Kierkegaard’s stage of infinite resignation before arriving at faith (Fear and Trembling, 46)—an unexpected and undeserved grace. It is a conversion that Matthew experiences as a sudden change of aspect, for which no preparation was required, or even possible. We take interest in works of art such as Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew in part because they seem to affirm their own being, even while they exist as representations. They compel us to wonder about how true they might be. But because the unity of a work of art is never completely and simply given, that is, because it requires our seeing and talking to bring it continuously into being, it questions us and engages us in dialectic, much as great books can do. As we talk about—and with—a work of art, it may reveal to us its aspects, which can be thought of as its possible unities, and therefore its possible modes of being as an object and as a representation. In music we also recognize the importance of aspecthearing in the instructions given on how to listen or how to play. Not merely “louder,” “softer,” “faster,” “slower,” but, as Wagner does in Tristan und Isolde, “ever more animated,” or “with elevation,” or “with enthusiasm.” Tchaikovsky asks the pianist to play the opening theme of his first piano concerto with “much majesty.” Instructions like these must make sense; they must click in some way. When I am ESSAYS | VERDI 69 told to hear these measures as an opening theme, how am I to obey this order? I might be able to be taught exactly why this other theme is a variation on the opening, but unless I hear it as one, I will remain deaf to some aspect of the music. Instructions like: “Think of it as a march, then you will play it right,” or “You must hear this section as a response to that one,” or “Hear this as in the Phrygian mode, then you will get the ending”—these ways of guiding are common and useful and not metaphorical. They can bring us to hear aspects and not merely to reason our way to them. As for poetry, I feel I have little insight. We might perhaps improve our reading of poetry by paying more attention to the experience of a word’s meaning. The tempo, too, at which one reads a poem seems to be as important as it is in music, and may be analogous to the distance at which one views a painting. There may be a reading speed at which a poem is most at home, most itself. I don’t know how one comes to hear what this tempo would be, or how exactly the tempo affects the life of the poem, but I am pretty sure that some people possess this sense as much as others possess a sense for the right tempo of a piece of music. Perhaps studying music helps one’s reading of poetry. I think also that someone who knows the meter of a poem hears it differently, and would read it differently, from someone who does not know the meter. If we think of the poem as a living thing, we’ll understand that hearing its integrity requires that we attend to the aspects of both meter and tempo. The ability to experience the meanings of words plays a critical role in appreciating metaphors and similes. There are what may be called “secondary” senses of words, which can be used and understood only if the primary meaning of a word is already understood. If I say, “For me the vowel ‘a’ is red,” I do not mean “red” in a metaphorical sense, because I could not express what I want to say in any other way than by means of the idea “red” (PI, 216). A secondary sense is something like an aspect, and those who are deaf or insen- �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sitive to secondary meanings will be less able to get into a poem and feel their way around in it. They might of course still learn to analyze, how to recognize to some degree what the poem is saying and how, but they won’t be able to hear the poem in the same way as those to whom secondary meanings are alive. “Sorrow is like a leaden gray sky” is either heard and acknowledged or else analyzed into submission. A poem can awaken a secret life in ordinary words that seem used up, exhausted of meaning. Since we find much of our experience to be equally ordinary and unremarkable, a poem can help us see new aspects of our experiences, by calling into question our usual ways of describing them. Let me close with the suggestion that coming to see new aspects—and thus perhaps to answer the question What is there? differently—is a central part of one’s experience while a student at St. John’s, and can remain so throughout life. Conversations can provide occasions for changes of aspect in both our seeing and our thinking, as long as we keep in mind that not every question requires an answer. In seminar we all make the effort to understand why others say what they say. We also ought to try our best to see what they see. Questions are often requests that we look at things differently, and that we try to find the maximum amount of common ground with others. And finally, I must return again to that writer I cannot escape. When St. Augustine, in tears and almost in despair, hears the voice of a child while he sits in the garden, he takes the voice as a command from God to open the first book he comes across and to begin reading. He hears the voice as a command and he obeys it. When he later leaves the garden, the world he enters is completely different for him, and yet nothing in it has changed. We can imagine that he hears the voice the way he does because he has received grace. Perhaps such graces grace our own lives too, and— who knows?—perhaps we can come to see the duck-rabbit as a paradigm for the miracle. ESSAYS | VERDI 71 REFERENCES PI PP RPPI RPPII Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2002). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Howard Gardner, The Shattered Mind (New York: Vintage, 1976). Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Edna H. Hong and Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1962). Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW REFLECTIONS 73 FULL FATHOM FIVE: A TUTOR’S SEA CHANGE Louis Petrich I send my hearty greetings to the community of St. John’s College from the Caribbean island of Bonaire (part of the Netherlands Antilles, 50 miles north of Venezuela), where, after seven years as a tutor, I am privileged to be spending my first sabbatical. There is no place I prefer to St. John’s for finding my satisfaction in this life. I don’t need to specify its forms—you know them. But you must also know what one American writer said after he found his calling and happiness at a pond outside Concord, Massachusetts: “Thank Heaven, here is not all the world.” I am exploring and learning the ways of another world—the underwater world. I wish I could show this world to you. Maybe then it would not seem puzzling that I would choose to dive these warm coral reefs for a whole year rather than immerse myself in all those good, non-Program books I have collected over the years, but never have time to read at the College. I could show you some photos that I have taken of the marine life in the southern Caribbean, including one of a unicorn filefish (Aluterus monoceros), which is almost as rare here as a unicorn. But I don’t think you would be that impressed. Rareness by itself does not signify beauty, or even inspire wonder. So let me instead try to put into words an impression of what my island life is like. It is strange for me to make this effort, since one of the pleasures I take in diving everyday—often twice, and usually with my wife or eleven-year old son as a partner—is not having to talk much about it. We have gained that pleasure with experience. During the dive, we may point at special things or exchange a few hand signals, and in an emergency we can bang on our tank and hope for immediate attention. But otherwise, Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. He sent this open letter to the college community from his sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year. �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW diving delights me as a speechless activity of beholding the myriad forms of life and their busy behaviors. To call them “fantastical” is no exaggeration. Were it not for the limited supply of air and the loss of body heat over time, I am not sure that my activity of beholding would come to an end. The bulk of these lines were written during an extended interval on the surface, which is necessary to allow the nitrogen absorbed under pressure to escape from my blood and tissues before I can safely return to the deep, where I would otherwise linger and marvel as if present at the fifth day of Creation—and that day were enough. On the surface, Bonaire is not sublime. It is a small and simple island, about five miles wide and twenty-four miles long, shaped like a crescent, and home to about fifteen thousand people—Antilleans, Dutch, and foreign residents like me. There are no traffic lights on the island, no stop signs, no buses, no horns blowing except to say “hello,” no theaters or cinemas, no long stretches of white sandy beaches packed with oily sunbathers (the beaches are rocky), no hotel or restaurant chains, no malls— nothing, really, worth shopping for (the island produces only salt)—and no fall, winter, or spring. There is always a breeze to satisfy the windsurfers and kitesurfers and to make the hot sun feel dry and light. Parrots squawk and some fifty other species of birds sing at dawn to wake us up. Iguanas warm themselves on the rocks, while wild donkeys and goats go marauding through the dusty yards and fields, where our bare feet have acquired calluses. Our hair has grown longer and lighter-colored, toughened by the salt of the turquoise sea, which is never far from view. Pink flamingos by the hundreds paint themselves on inner landscapes, wherever the water pools. The capital of the island, Kralendijk, can be traversed in about five minutes—a fact that has led many a cruise ship passenger to wander off in conspicuous confusion, looking for things that Bonaire simply does not have. We point them back toward their ships and their buffets. What Bonaire does have, most emphatically, is the freest and easiest diving in the entire world, on healthy coral reefs that can be reached from shore after a five- to ten-minute snorkel from almost any point on the island. The surrounding sea, down to 250 feet, is REFLECTIONS | PETRICH 75 a protected national park. Fishing is forbidden. Divers must pay a park entrance fee and pass a buoyancy control test before being permitted to dive. No gloves allowed. The reefs and animals may not be handled, but they may be watched very closely, at any hour of the day or night, according to one’s interest and pleasure. The biologists I have met all testify that there is no place on earth where a person can have such unmediated access to abundant animal life as one finds on Bonaire. Perhaps, they tell me, the species count in tropical jungles is similar, but the jungles do not offer free and easy access. In just the first minute of a descent to forty feet, I have learned to identify thirty species on average (and that’s just the fish)—one species every two seconds. My son Louie can do better, since his vision is still acute at all distances. If we were to include the coral and the other invertebrates and the aquatic plants, the species count would double. This abundance of life satisfies a passion that is not only taxonomical. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts (Psalm 104: 24-25). Bonaire’s “things creeping innumerable” are mostly small (under a foot in length) or medium-sized (up to three or four feet). Yes, there are leviathans out there: the whale shark (up to fiftyfive feet), the great hammerhead shark (twenty feet), and the goliath grouper (eight feet), but these creatures are very rarely sighted on Bonaire’s reefs. (Once I did encounter a goliath grouper, also known as a “jewfish.” At first I thought he was a big boulder. He was sleeping on the bottom at 106 feet and barely budged when I poked him in the side. If he had felt that his meal were being threatened, he might have charged me like a bull. Some scripture commentators say it was a goliath grouper that swallowed Jonah. I cannot dismiss the claim.) So I dive with a magnifying glass in hand, very slowly, becoming one with the seeing of my eyes. Ideally, a gentle current carries me, and my muscles do no work except to turn my head, point my glass, and breathe. I feel no gravity so long as I remain neutrally buoyant, a state I maintain by proper breathing, as fish do by adjusting the �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW volume of their air bladders. To be free of gravity several hours a day, every day, has become for me almost a need. I think this is one reason I see quite a few obese scuba divers. They have discovered the only earthly dispensation from having to carry their bodily burden. I wonder, when I observe my large fellow humans, why the first forms of life to emerge from the sea would have given up their freedom to be oppressed by weight. When my air is running low and I make my exit to shore, the first several steps on the sloping rocky coast under the renewed pull of gravity are very difficult to take. I have to concentrate on how to walk; otherwise, I would tumble, and the surf would dash me on the rocks. This has happened more than once. This forgetting how to walk, especially with all that extra scuba gear to carry on my back, poses the most likely peril of daily multi-diving. Yet the physical pleasure of freedom in diving is only secondary. The primary pleasure lies in learning to recognize all those “somethings” in the water as the very things that are imitated and described in my field books. The impression of random motion by innumerable, nameless forms of life begins to make sense as I learn to see the fish “perform their parts” time and again. My eyes, instead of darting around to be entertained by colorful shapes in motion, come to rest on the actions of one fish, or on the distinct parts of a fish, until the essential aspects, which are often inconspicuous, acquire meaning. A tiny line under the gills, a pinhead spot next to the eye, the height of the dorsal fin, or some other precise marking, contour, or motion—which the fish somehow read reliably—can mark the difference between two species. As I become more acclimated to their element, as my body’s vibrations become unobtrusive to their senses, the fish let me get closer. Slowly they reveal more of their forms and purposes, and if they could talk, I almost believe they would tell me their names. Then, perhaps, I could do without the imitations. Until then, let us imagine a six-foot long, green moray eel, thick as a young pine tree. Its jaws, lined with razor-sharp teeth, keep opening and closing—an ominous sight even to those who know that by this action the moray moves water through its gills REFLECTIONS | PETRICH 77 to breathe. This is not a threatening gesture, the books say. (Why can’t it be both threatening and respiratory?) I approach very slowly, head-on, to stare into its face. If you touch its tail, the moray, feeling “mugged,” may turn round, bite, and not let go until its teeth have ripped off whatever they have seized. Approached from the front, however, they hold steady and breathe ominously, not recognizing me as either prey or predator. But if the moray sees his green reflection in my camera apparatus, he may poke his snout into the housing. In this way, while he gets acquainted with a puzzling stranger, I get an extraordinary photo. I have also seen one divemaster scratch a green moray under the gills; the moray appeared to enjoy this, as if he were being cleaned by a little sharknose goby. I save my scratching for creatures who breathe with their mouths shut. Who would have thought that if you scratch a hawksbill turtle vigorously on its shell—especially on the underside—he will spin round and round, driven wild with the pleasure of it? I have done this only a few times. The turtle conservationists of the island (who tag, track, and protect the endangered sea turtles) patrol assiduously for trespassers on the turtle breeding grounds, for turtle chasers, and for turtle ticklers. Not all turtles are brave enough to defy this mafia and submit to the tickling, and only a few divers even know about this secret pleasure. The Caribbean reef octopus is said to be a “curious” animal; some even pronounce him “intelligent.” Not because he changes his colors, instantly and dramatically, to camouflage himself against any background or to intimidate his opponents. Many reef fish and creatures change their colors as admirably as he does. (How do they change so expertly, I wonder? And do any of them have a “true” color?) The reef octopus appears curious and keen because you can see him take various objects with one or more of his eight arms, bring them under his head, and, after a period of scrutiny, either discard them or carry them back to his den, where he breaks mollusks open to eat. Reaching out to take various things in hand (or in arm) for further investigation and possible eating looks a lot like what the more intelligent animals do. I put my metal tank banger within reach of the octopus, to see �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW if he will take it under his head to test its nature. He grabs it with three arms and starts to glide off toward the protection of a crevice. I want that tank banger back. It’s mine. I kick hard to chase the octopus, while reaching out with one arm, hoping he’ll drop the banger. He turns entirely white, blows himself up to twice his former size, and extends his eight arms in a circle around his body, hovering above the banger. I keep at a respectful distance and estimate my chance of winning a tug of war with this inky octopus over a fourteen dollar tank banger. That is what intelligent animals do. I decide to let him keep it. I said earlier that diving is primarily a visual, not a tactile experience. But now I find it necessary to say this differently. When I take my four-year old daughter, Abigail, down to fifteen feet on my spare regulator hose, and we swim around the bottom together for forty-five minutes, she wants to touch everything she sees. I have to teach her what to avoid by holding her back with my hands. She learns the hard way, too. Once, having picked up a pink, fuzzy, caterpillar-like thing, she signaled me urgently to surface. “My fingers are burning, daddy,” she cried. “When will they stop?” “In a short while,” I replied. “You picked up a fireworm.” She sometimes surprises the flounders—overconfident in their camouflage—with a poke from her finger: “They’re slimy, daddy, and their eyes are funny.” (She likes to talk about all her doings.) She tirelessly turns over rocks to uncover urchins and sea stars; and she enjoys picking up sand to drop on the heads of parrotfish as they busily scrape up algae. “They drop sand on us when they poop, so it’s only fair,” she says. All her instinctive touching of things is how we get to know those things better: we have learned by the reactions of sea creatures to our touch how stunningly changeable they are, and how thoroughly they associate being touched—being known—with being eaten. Most predators on the reef swallow their prey whole (sharks and barracudas being two notable exceptions). But if a piscivore happens to take a fish in the wrong position for swift swallowing, it will pitilessly bash on the rocks whatever protrudes from its mouth, until it can safely let go to swallow its prey again—whole. It has to perform the bashing very quickly, because the other REFLECTIONS | PETRICH 79 predators will notice the commotion and try to seize the halfswallowed prey from its mouth, devouring whatever pieces they can. Feeding happens so quickly that one seldom sees it performed at all. The reef may thus give an impression of a peaceful commingling of hundreds of species, who are content, for the most part, to observe one another. But the reason that the little fish live among the corals is to hide, and the reason that the bigger fish cruise the corals is to hunt the littler ones—and hide from even bigger ones. If the corals do not tell the whole story, they tell at least the deadly part of it that Darwin says is difficult but necessary for us to bear in mind constantly if we are to understand “the face of nature.” I like the reefs no less for their quiet pitilessness, and in fact I like them all the more for bringing into focus the ultimate concerns of the poetry that I could have been studying on this sabbatical: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by! —W.B. Yeats Yet it is not always easy to pass by these scenes coldly while riding the warm currents of the Caribbean. On moonless nighttime dives, it is pitch black in all directions, save where my divelight is pointed—at the red squirrel fish and cardinal fish, the most common night-hunters. I love their vibrant red colors and black eyes—overly large in order to admit the scant rays of stars that barely penetrate the deep. Suddenly, a six-foot-long silvery tarpon swoops across my right shoulder, brushing his caudal fin against me. Then there is another one, shooting forward from directly below my chest, with a sharksucker attached to his side. They are using my light to hunt. They have used me thus hundreds of times, but my heart still quickens when hungry creatures as big as I swim past me, abruptly and intimately, from out of the darkness. I join the party of the hunter, coldly shining my light on the sleepy ocean surgeonfish �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (whom I don’t much care for), and I watch the tarpons try to swallow them up before they slip away into the recesses of the coral. The tarpons’ mouths open widely, creating an audible suction that draws their prey from a foot away into their maws, quicker than I can see. A jolt of satisfaction passes when they catch their prey—or rather, when we catch our prey. Questions arising from my partisan participation in this sea hunt intrude on my breathing and my buoyancy. When the jaws of death open wide for me, will I slip away into a dark, secret place for all time? Or will a light be held to mark my drawing into that sudden, irresistible openness? The night-prowling tarpons always make a big impression on divers, but they are nothing compared to the little longfin damselfish, three inches in length, that spend their lives (up to ten years) aggressively guarding a patch of algae the size of a doormat. If I get within a few feet, they’ll charge directly into my mask or nip at my hands. It feels like a little pinch. You can see them routinely drive away fish ten times their size, because no one likes being nipped at incessantly; and besides, there is always some place else to go on the reefs for food or shelter. If the damselfish were as large as the fish they attack, the reefs would not be swimmable. I thank the Creator for making the most aggressive animal in the Caribbean so small. One of the highlights of my diving sabbatical occurred during the two coral spawning periods, a week after the full moons of September and October. The reefs became cloudy with gametes, released in unison at night by hosts of invertebrates. The touchme-not sponges emitted their seed like smoke from chimneys. The always-recumbent tiger tail sea cucumbers stood up vertically and spewed forth stuff that looked like breath in cold air. The star corals released their little balls of DNA nonstop, like bubbles from a carbonated beverage. This sea of fecundity staggered the senses. It went on for three successive nights, while most of the fish that would have eaten the gametes slept. I felt awe to see how these creatures beat the bad odds of the ocean by means of a coordinated, all-out emptying of themselves, twice a year. REFLECTIONS | PETRICH 81 Fish are spawning all the time, though it takes patient observation to notice it. In the late afternoons, you may spy peacock flounders gliding three feet off the bottom like Frisbees, risking their lives to signal a readiness to mate. When the male and female Frisbee-flounders come together like two hands in prayer, they shoot up toward the surface and release their gametes near the top of the water column, where the gametes’ predators are least abundant. Then they separate and return at once to the bottom, making themselves indistinguishable from the sand or rocks. Those four seconds of jetting upward look so unlike the behavior of flounders that I wonder if this joint activity is when they are most at-work-being-themselves, or most possessed by something outside themselves. As my daughter, innocent of philosophy, would say, “It’s freaky, either way.” Each evening at dinner we watch the sun set over the Caribbean from our seaside patio dining room. We look for the proverbial “green flash” at the very instant of the sun’s disappearance below the horizon. We have yet to see it. To be honest, more often than not these passing days, we forget to look. Some of the old and experienced divers I have met have grown tired of looking for new things on the reefs, and don’t seem to think it is worth the effort anymore to go deep. Of our “brave new world, that has such creatures in it,” they would say (if they knew their Shakespeare), “’Tis new to thee.” Can we not find ways to keep this world new? When we have our diving friends to dinner, we sometimes find it pleasant to play a game of “sea charades.” The children start it off by acting like their favorite fish. Even the tired, old divers enjoy the renewed experience of not quite knowing what in the world they’re looking at: Abigail wiggling around on her back is . . . a fairy basslet, which can swim belly up; Louie sticking out his stomach and pulling at his nose in the corner is . . . a sharpnose puffer that inflates itself when there is no escape. When it’s my turn, I go to the refrigerator and take out the most unappetizing leftover I can find and eat it. I am . . . an angelfish, which has evolved to eat certain things that no other fish will eat (sponges) because they taste bad. In fact, I have adapted myself to occupy this niche in our family, as a matter of economy. But to see the �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW familiar things in life as tasteless leftovers is not a fine, or even fitting, use of either our senses or their things. Let it always be worth the effort, I pray, to go down deep, again and again, into this world of sensuous things. That is the simple meaning of this sabbatical, put into words. I was afraid at one time that by revealing my free and easy occupations in this “Divers Paradise” (the official motto of the island), I would cause there to be sent a “messenger of Satan” to molest my breathing and my buoyancy. That messenger has long since come to the occupants of the air-breathing world, even here on Bonaire; but not even the omnipresent internet together with all its beeping, vibrating, pocket-sized accomplices can reach me underwater—yet. So then, as my surface interval comes to a close, I end these impressions of my island life without fear of the new or the old, but with gratitude for the existence and easy availability of this underwater world that is not all the world, and with praise to the College for granting its tutors this time of rejuvenation to keep us up with youth and its joys—and in touch with things of beauty and wonder. Fare you well, as to the elements of the isle I go free, unwearied, changed, to see things rich and strange. REVIEWS 83 FAT WEDNESDAY John Verdi, Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on Aspects. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010, xii + 296 pages. Book Review by Eva Brann I’ll reveal my own predilections and aversions up front: I trust Socrates—without completely believing him—and I distrust Wittgenstein, without thinking him completely wrong. In fact, I’m in some respects terminally puzzled by both, but more so by Wittgenstein, whose main book, as John Verdi tells us on the first page of Fat Wednesday (the title will be explained below and has a purely coincidental relation to “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras), contains 784 questions of which only 110 are answered, and 70 of those wrongly—on purpose. Now 744 unanswered questions seems to me an overplus of perplexity; I am especially sensitive to such erotetic overload (from erotesis, “question”), since I have heard it said of our college that we accept students who know nothing and graduate them now knowing that they know nothing. So I was a grateful member of a faculty study group on this question-laden work, the Philosophical Investigations, which John Verdi led in the spring of 2009, as he was writing his own book, with the resigned calm of a man who does believe in this author and is, for that very reason, unwilling to proselytize. Under his guidance and in conversation with my colleagues I learned a lot, enough to formulate two judgments. One concerned the reason for my near-constitutional incomprehension of Wittgenstein’s project: he is the only non-fiction writer I know whose outlook on life is systematically—and rousingly—askew of mine. The other judgment was that Verdi’s book would likely be a most trustworthy introduction to this strange thinker’s upending of all that seems humanly sensible. And so it proved. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In Fat Wednesday, Verdi approaches Wittgenstein through two notions central to his later thinking: aspect-seeing and experiencing the meaning of words. The first three chapters explicate these, while the last two introduce Verdi’s own development and applications of these two topics. So his book introduces us both to Wittgenstein and to the world his work implies. It seems to me that, considering Wittgenstein’s relentless the-proof-is-in-thepudding attitude toward human mentation, this organization is faithful to Wittgenstein’s intention, since it shows what one can do with his way of seeing and speaking. What then is aspect-seeing and why is it crucial to Wittgenstein? Such “seeing” is based on an ineradicable ambiguity: one shape, objectively self-same, is seen alternately in one way and in another. Since such ambiguity arises primarily in the absence of context, deliberately devised drawings instigate it best. The most famous of them (Verdi illustrates several) is the “duck-rabbit,” a figure showing two forked protrusions, devised to look now like a duck’s open bill, and then again like a rabbit’s laid-back ears. The picture is one, but the aspect “goes about hither and thither” (Verdi points out that this is the etymology of the word ambiguity), so that we cannot help “seeing” the picture flip between resembling a duck and resembling a rabbit. This raises the question, What is resemblance? Here I confess that I have two misgivings of my own about Wittgenstein’s project. One is that aspect-seeing is not a novel notion, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, but is related, rather, to an old, old question—the one-over-many problem in metaphysics, where it is precisely the aspect (a fair translation of eidos, that is, looks or form) that is one, and the appearances, the phenomena, that are many. (So why, incidentally, does Wittgenstein write as if philosophical investigation began with him?) The other misgiving, less born of irritation, is that I have little faith in basing inquiry on special and devised cases, which are essentially distinct from the ideal cases that I would rather look to. These ideal cases may go fuzzy at the edges, but are probably substantial at the center. But then, it is just this center that, as Verdi confirms, Wittgenstein wishes to attenuate. REVIEWS | BRANN 85 Wittgenstein’s aim is to establish the centrality of resemblance: family resemblance is to replace essence. Verdi [12]* quotes Wittgenstein’s account of this point: [F]or the various resemblances between members of a family . . . overlap and criss-cross in the same way. [W]e extend our concept . . . as in spinning we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some fibre runs through the whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres (Philosophical Investigations, §67). So we are not to ask, What do the phenomena to which we naturally give one name have in common? Instead, we are to look for a sequence of resemblances; the first and last of these must perforce be quite unlike each other or there will be, after all, a thread of sameness. In the old ontology (set out in Plato’s Sophist) resemblance or likeness is sameness conjoined with otherness. But, true to his program, Wittgenstein does not engage in nailing down centralities but in clarifying concepts: “Conceptual (linguistic) questions ground casual questions, not the other way around” [5]. (This is the late Wittgenstein. I want to take the opportunity here to express a personal fascination. Wittgenstein recanted— how deeply is a matter of debate—his early Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, a hard-edged view of a world consisting of logically connected facts exactly pictured by our language, which is similarly structured, so that reality is explicable by a logical analysis of language. To me it is an absorbing question whether there are systematic differences between thinkers who develop by absorptive tweaking and those whose maturity comes through degrees of self-refutation. Is the latter a mark of unflagging vigor or of suspect instability?) The crucial word of Verdi’s sentence is in parentheses: Wittgenstein seems to equate the terms conceptual and linguistic. A concept is not, as we were brought up to think, a cognitive entity. * Page numbers in brackets refer to Fat Wednesday. �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW As resemblance was construed anti-essentially, so concept is understood anti-cognitively—if cognition is thought of as an internal eventuation: Conceptual questions do not ask for interior states discerned by introspection, but demand observation of the external phenomena of linguistic usage—just enough such observation to discern how people actually use words. This notion establishes the transition from Verdi’s first chapter, “The Aspects Family,” to the second one, “Aspects and Words.” “Seeing,” for example, has two uses [25]. One use can be accompanied by pointing to the picture of the ambiguous duckrabbit. But pointing is not possible for the second use, for a duckrabbit is not a this, but rather it flips from a this to a that. Something similar holds for any seeing of resemblance. You can’t point to a resemblance, though you can point it out, that is, make useful observations in words. Wittgenstein means something much more radical than to say that words can be useful. He invites us to “think of words as instruments characterized by their use” [44]. In fact, the analogy is to a toolbox; the “functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects” (Philosophical Investigations, §11). Here are my misgivings on this point. This way of analyzing language should depend not only on a receptive ear for the phenomena of speech, but on conceding our fellow human beings’ primary competence to know what they mean. I have long had my doubts about Wittgenstein and his language-analytical progeny in regard to the first point. As for the second, there is little doubt that Wittgenstein means to correct my sense of which meanings are acceptable and to control my claim that overt words express interior events, that I often have a thought or feeling for which I subsequently labor to find the word, and moreover, that this language is really only residually private, because I cherish a faith (and, finally, what else is there?) that human souls, with all the particularity that embellishes their being, are ultimately alike— even when they willfully plead ultimate diversity. Or to express it in the relaxed logical mode of real thinking: we have our privacies in common. These opinions of mine are questioned in form, but proscribed in effect, by Wittgenstein. REVIEWS | BRANN 87 Privacy and sociality are central issues for Wittgenstein, since we operate, he thinks, with words as if we were playing languagegames. These games are governed by socially established rules that we must learn; the rules tell me what the words, the gamepieces of language, do and what moves are permitted, just as the rules of chess govern that game. “One would not say,” as Verdi neatly puts it, “‘I know what a bishop does. Now tell me what it really is’” [45]. It is a neat formulation because it raises the question-hackles. Does it mean “would not” or “should not”? I for one would ask, meaning I might like to think about, “What, really, is a lusory bishop, a piece of ecclesiastic anthropomorphism (like a nautical nun-buoy)? What causes its possibility, beyond its being enmeshed in a game?” Can I be talked out of that predilection? The rest of Verdi’s second chapter fleshes out, in lucid detail, Wittgenstein’s disabling of the “what is it?” question—not in terms of an argument against it, for that would be an admission of its admissibility, but by the circumscription of an alternative way of being in and with our world. It is a way that consigns the inner human being to terminal opaqueness, for which it then compensates by undertaking a persistent and critical analysis of behavior, both gestural and linguistic. This way of abstemious philosophizing has at least one tremendous virtue: it raises our sensitivity to how we learn and what we say [106]. In particular, it attunes our ears to distinguishing how people speak before misguided ratiocination has tempted language into useless utterance. Here Verdi stops to consider the very condition I touched on before, that there might be a real division among people’s experiences, and that some people might be “aspect-blind.” In the third chapter, he considers a group of true pathologies that afflict patients with the inability to see ambiguities. They are literalists of vision and language, and so miss crucial aspects of the world. They lack experiences of meaning. “Fat Wednesday” itself is an example of such an experience [150]. “Fat” here is not a metaphor, since there is no sensible relation of obesity to Wotan’s Day. Unless it seems perfectly nonsensical to you, it will evoke a meaning, an “emergent” meaning. I �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW think of it as a meaning-aura, a strong one for me. For in the Nazi Germany of my childhood, Wednesday was the day of mandated one-pot suppers (the resultant savings to be dropped into the collection can of a visiting storm-trooper)—and one-pot meals tend to be greasy. This “secondary meaning,” this emergence, is a startling development since it seems to be an overt intimation of interiority. As words have emergent meanings, so aspects can emerge; the inside will be outed. Emergent meaning governs the fourth chapter, “Aspects and Art.” It begins with a reflection on a portrait of Descartes by Franz Hals, a reflection addressed to the basic ambiguity of all pictureviewing: that there is, in one aspect, a piece of canvas with splotches of paint that we can point to, and in another, a likeness of something, here the man, that we can’t reach by following the laser line from our index finger. (I might point out here that this analysis of physical images was an abiding preoccupation of Husserl, his student Fink, and Sartre, but I also want to retract my complaint about Wittgenstein’s willful aboriginality. Much better not to be too entangled in conceptual indebtedness!) Here Verdi puts his Wittgensteinian sensibility to work on objects ranging from paintings (Verdi “sees” some arresting alternative aspects in well-known works) to music, to—and here it becomes wonderful—wine tasting, in the section entitled “Emergent Meaning and Wine.” Verdi plucks out, from notes on wine tasting in Wine Spectator Magazine, a group of enologically descriptive words that are candidates for emergence, including “velvety, chewy, taut” [201]. He observes that these terms of praise can’t be metaphorical. Who wants to run his tongue over something velvet-like? Instead the words carry emergent meanings, which are shared by other people and, he implies, widen our sensibility. If I don’t get it, I am (non-pathologically) aspect-blind. If I do, “I can better make my way in the world of wine-tasting and describing” [203]. The last chapter, provocatively entitled “Ethics and Aesthetics are One,” is a real culmination. It considers the discovery of new science as a form of aspect-shift, and the letting-be of others’ religion as a form of aspect-seeing. The latter case exemplifies the REVIEWS | BRANN 89 chapter title. Verdi is as far as possible from the despicable central European aestheticism that once permitted murder by day if only the nights were spent listening to Schubert Lieder. Doing right and seeing multivalently are one, to be sure, insofar as we must be aesthetically (that is, sensorily) adroit in order to be ethically (that is, morally) good. The former is not, however, so much a condition for the latter as it is the same with it—an attitude realized in a skill. Both are our very own; both are acquired by attentive learning. Verdi calls this disposition “active tolerance” [259]. Just as he is far removed from mere aestheticism, so too is he worlds apart from the essentially disrespectful, because inattentive, tolerance of “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Active tolerance is a subtle, sophisticated version of the ability to see both—or even many—sides of an issue. Where Socrates says, “Virtue is knowledge,” Verdi’s Wittgenstein says, “Ethics is aspect-seeing,” an ingrained appreciation of alternate possibilities and the respect that goes with it. Let me indulge in a final cavil, then, one which I’ve already intimated. Wittgenstein’s probing, pushing, and pulling feel to me like a clearly offered and cagily retracted condemnation: statements of absolute value are respectfully denominated nonsense by him [242]. So is Verdi’s deeply liberal conclusion still Wittgenstein, or has it become more Verdi? If the latter, I would, at risk of paining him, take Verdi over Wittgenstein anytime. If Wittgenstein has got under your skin, or if you want him to, read this book. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW REVIEWS 91 MONSTER AM I Paolo Palmieri, A History of Galileo’s Inclined Plane Experiment and its Philosophical Implications Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, Forthcoming, 2011, 220 pages. Book Review by Curtis Wilson The project of this book, Palmieri tells us, emerged slowly, in close relation with the attempt to reenact certain of Galileo’s experiments, in particular the inclined plane experiment. Galileo’s adventure with balls rolling down inclined wooden beams was not a single event to which a date can be assigned, nor yet a set of operations described in sufficient detail to admit of mere copying. It was a sequence of explorations lasting nearly a lifetime, involving difficulties and puzzles that Galileo struggled to resolve, with less than uniform success. A love affair, Palmieri calls it. Our author seeks to touch the very nerve of Galileo’s endeavor. He challenges the assumption—beguiling to some Galileo scholars—that armchair philosophy can plumb the complexities that Galileo met with in the inclined plane experiment. He seeks to put himself in Galileo’s actual problem-situation, with its puzzles on both the experimental and the theoretical side. Experimental work and theoretical explanation, carried on in tandem, pose questions of each other. The result, Palmieri reports, is liberating: the experimenter-theoretician-scholar probes more feelingly, with a new intensity. He becomes a participant in a revolutionary endeavor. The earliest writings we have in Galileo’s hand appear in Volume I of the Edizione Nazionale under the title Juvenilia, which was assigned by the editor, Antonio Favaro. He took them to be a compilation from unidentified sources (they remain unidentified today). Their late-medieval character is striking. Paragraphs frequently begin with Advertendum quod. . . (“It is to be Curtis Wilson is Tutor Emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW noted that. . .”), a scholastic verbal tic implying that the following sentence is accepted on authority. Is our scribe a mere copyist? Palmieri detects indications to the contrary. In places Galileo appears to be paraphrasing or summarizing; here and there he leaves blank spaces as though for later comment or elucidation. Included in the Juvenilia is a discussion of “the intension and remission of forms,” a much-treated topic in scholastic discussions from the fourteenth century to at least the early sixteenth century. It concerns increase or decrease in the intensity of a quality. The hotness or hardness of a body may vary from point to point or from instant to instant at a point. There is no evidence that the fourteenth-century schoolmen attempted actually to measure such variations, but they introduced language for describing them as measurable secundum imaginationem. One of the qualities thus dealt with was the speed of a moving body. To the uniform variation of the intensity of a quality, the schoolmen applied a special rule, now dubbed “the Merton rule” after the Oxford college where it seems to have originated. It states that a quality varying uniformly in intensity over a spatial distance or interval of time is equivalent to the unvarying or uniform quality of the mean degree stretching over the same extension, spatial or temporal. Suppose, for instance, that the hotness of a body varies uniformly from two degrees at one end of the body to eight degrees at the other, the degree being an imagined unit of intensity. This “latitude of form” was said to be equivalent to a uniform hotness of five degrees from one end of the body to the other. Applied to the intensity of motion or speed, the Merton Rule was interpreted as saying that the distance traversed in a motion uniformly accelerated from an initial to a final speed was equal to the distance traversed in a uniform motion having the same duration and the mean speed of the accelerated motion. Compare this with the crucial first proposition of Galileo’s treatise “On Naturally Accelerated Motion” in the Third Day of his Two New Sciences (1638)—do not both come to the same result? The Merton Rule is not mentioned in the Juvenilia or in any of Gali- REVIEWS | WILSON 93 leo’s writings. Nevertheless, a number of historians of science, Pierre Duhem and Marshall Clagett prominently among them, have concluded that Galileo’s theorem was a redaction of the Merton Rule. The jury, Palmieri objects, is still out: no evidence has yet turned up to show that Galileo actually encountered the medieval enunciation of the Merton Rule. Palmieri suggests that such influence as the medieval discussion may have had on Galileo was likely indirect, through the Geometry of Indivisibles (1635) of his friend Bonaventura Cavalieri. The trajectory of Galileo’s thinking, Palmieri urges (following Favaro), is best determined from his writings and the experiments he sought to carry out. At the very time Galileo was writing the Juvenilia, and thus becoming acquainted with the scholastic conception of the natural world, he was also annotating Archimedes’ On Sphere and Cylinder, a strict deduction of mathematical consequences from premises. The analytical thrust of Archimedean thinking, Palmieri believes, peeps through the text of the Juvenilia. Galileo sweats to understand the medieval four-element physics of the sublunary realm, and how all qualities are to be derived from the four “prime qualities” or “alterative qualities,” hot, cold, dry, and wet. Are motive qualities and speeds grounded in this fundamental Aristotelian ontology? The question is not explicitly addressed in the Juvenilia, but shows itself in Galileo’s De motu, dating from ca. 1590. The De motu, Palmieri observes, is polemical. Galileo denounces his teachers for the way they teach. When introducing the elements of physics, they bring in Aristotle’s other works, quoting from De anima, De caelo, or Metaphysics, as though their pupils already knew everything or else will accept all on faith. Galileo pledges to proceed differently, following the mathematicians in advancing solely by deductive steps derived from explicit premises. A central question posed in the De motu is: How do the weights and speeds of the same body, descending along planes differently inclined but of equal elevation, differ? By considering �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the forces needed to equilibrate the weight on the different planes as weights applied to a lever, Galileo shows that the forces are inversely as the lengths of the planes. (Unbeknownst to Galileo at the time of the De motu, this same result had been given in the thirteenth-century Scientia de ponderibus attributed to Jordanus de Nemore.) Galileo in the De motu also attempts to deal with the question of why a falling body accelerates. The body’s heaviness is a virtus impressa (impressed force) that acts downward. Were it acting alone, Galileo assumes that it would produce a constant speed of fall. But to this impressed force downward, Galileo adds an accidental lightness or levity, imparted to the body when we raise it from the earth. When we release it, its motion downward accelerates because the impressed lightness exhausts itself over time. The downward acceleration is thus explained in terms of the Aristotelian qualities of heaviness and lightness, with the important additional assumption that the accidental lightness decays with time. Galileo is here entangled in the fundamental ontology and categories of the Juvenilia, along with a misconception, widely accepted up to the time of the publication of Descartes’s safari, Principles of Philosophy, that every velocity has to be maintained by an impressed force. How did he free himself—as he unquestionably did—from the medieval mindset and its stultifying questions? Palmieri proposes that certain life-worldly learning experiences—among them, finding how to make glass goblets sing and brass plates howl—taught Galileo a lesson about the fine structure of nature. By patiently repeated experimentation, the young Galileo learned how to attend to and control the fine detail of what happens in the production of these effects. The beginnings were in the workshop of his father, Vincenzo Galilei. During the 1580s, Vincenzo, a professional lutist, engaged in musicological controversy. Opposing the Pythagorean claim that numerical ratios are the cause of musical intervals—that the ratio 2:1 is the cause of the octave, the ratio 3:2 the cause of the fifth, and so on—he claimed that these intervals are to be determined by the ear alone. One of his prime exhibits was the singing glass, a REVIEWS | WILSON 95 goblet containing water which, on being struck, gave forth a musical tone. The pitch depended on the amount of water. Years later Galileo Galilei in his Two New Sciences told of a further result, not previously reported: the goblet could be set singing if its rim were stroked with a wet finger-tip. Concomitantly, a standing wave was produced on the surface of the water. Sometimes the tone shifted up an octave, at which moment the number of waves per unit length in the standing wave doubled. Palmieri—apparently the first among Galileo commentators to do so—has replicated this experiment. Success requires practice, and it is best to begin with a large goblet (Palmieri used a brandy snifter). One must rub the rim rhythmically, while repeatedly wetting the finger and watching for the evanescent wave pattern. The wave pattern is more readily produced in the brandy snifter than in a smaller goblet, but Palmieri found it possible to obtain Galileo’s result also with the latter. The howling brass plate is another of Galileo’s experiments that Palmieri has replicated. As Galileo reports in the Two New Sciences, while scraping a brass plate with a chisel to remove stains, he found himself producing sounds. Sometimes they were musical tones, and in such cases the chisel left evenly spaced marks on the plate. On one occasion two tones sounded in succession, forming the interval of a fifth. In the two sets of marks formed on the plate, the numbers of marks per unit length were as 3 to 2. Getting these results was helped by a bit of practice, but was easier than obtaining the standing wave in the glass goblet. A correct interpretation of these experiments presupposes the physics of sounding bodies, which Galileo himself lacked as have some of his recent commentators. A sounding body vibrates predominantly with certain frequencies that depend on the shape and mechanical properties of the material. These frequencies are the body’s “natural modes” of vibration. For a body of regular and relatively simple shape, the predominant frequency modes are harmonically related, e.g. as octave or fifth, etc. The vibrations are reflected from the boundaries of the body, and the reflected waves, combining with the original train of waves, form a standing wave pattern. For a given speed of propagation (which is de- �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW termined by the medium), the wavelength is inversely as the frequency, and thus the wavelengths of two standing waves have ratios inverse to the integral numerical ratios of the corresponding natural modes. The natural modes therefore account for the emergence of the Pythagorean ratios in these two experiments. By confirming Galileo’s experimental results, Palmieri has put them beyond doubt. They form a beautiful early confirmation of the theory of natural modes. Important as this conclusion is, it is a different point that Palmieri aims primarily to make. Galileo’s experimental results are obtained only with patient attentiveness to the fine structure of experience. They yield an experience in which hearing, touching, and seeing are integrated—a holistic experience. Such experience can direct consciousness away from false expectations and toward new facts. This kind of learning, Palmieri proposes, assisted Galileo in liberating himself from the medieval mindset with its pre-established categories. What about the inclined plane experiment? Here also, besides the visual sight of a ball rolling down the plane, a complex of other sensory data is offered—sounds, vibrations that can be sensed through skin and bone as well as the ear, changes in sound as a bronze or wooden ball descends along the wooden track. Did Galileo attend in a focused way to these effects? We know only of the cases already cited, in which he focused on the details of experimental happenings with attentiveness and care. In the Third Day of the Two New Sciences, in the section On Naturally Accelerated Motion, he focuses on the kind of acceleration that nature employs for descending bodies—on this, its consequences, and not on causes. The latter question as posed by the schoolmen has been set aside: [W]e decided to look into [the properties of this kind of motion] so that we might be sure that the definition of accelerated motion which we are about to adduce agrees with the essence of naturally accelerated motion. REVIEWS | WILSON 97 It is this that he is now seeking the essence of—naturally accelerated motion itself. Galileo’s adoption of this new focus, Palmieri believes, could have been triggered by the very intensity of the auditory and vibratory experience of the ball rolling down its inclined track. To receive this nonvisual experience as fully as possible, Palmieri placed his forehead in contact with the underside of the beam serving as inclined plane, and grasped the beam with his hands around its sides so that his fingertips could sense the upper side of the beam. An assistant then released a ball to roll down the inclined plane. As it rolled, Palmieri’s fingertips picked up the vibrations induced in the beam, which were also transmitted through his cranial bone, and he heard the sound through his ears as well. The resulting experience Palmieri calls holistic auscultation. It is no mere juxtaposition of different effects, but an integrated effect. It powerfully suggests that through our senses we can delve deep into the fine structure of physical reality. The experience is markedly stereoscopic. The experimenter, hugging the plane at a particular location, is first aware of the ball’s starting to move far up behind his head, then hurtling close by, and finally fading away in the distance. The descending ball produces a sound that varies as the ball speeds up. Sound and speed grow uniformly together, and this togetherness takes center stage. The arresting character of this experience, Palmieri proposes, could have derailed the young Galileo’s ambition to reduce changing speed and sound to effects of the qualities dubbed primary by Aristotle and the schoolmen. In the scriptorium [where the Juvenilia were produced], the hot-cold-dry-wet chemistry of pitch and speed can only be thought-through. But it is possible to leave the scriptorium, visit workshops, and turn life into a tastier affair. . . . We reach a new balance between knowledge and values when we learn how to reconfigure life-worldly objects while letting our senses be affected by them. �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In The Two New Sciences Galileo stresses the simplicity of the means nature adopts—in the case of descending bodies, the increase of speed in proportion simply to time elapsed. Reenactments of Galileo’s inclined plane experiment, however, yield at best rough confirmations of this relation. In multiple repetitions of the experiment, Palmieri and his students used a water clock of the type Galileo describes, weighing the water released during the duration of the descent to obtain a measure of elapsed time. In a descent of the whole plane, compared with a descent of one quarter of it, the expected ratio of the times is 2:1. In five trials of a bronze ball one inch in diameter, running on the groove cut by a router into the beam (so that the ball was running as though on rails), the numbers obtained were 2.18, 2.19, 2.15, 2.09, 1.97, averaging to 2.12, hence with 6 percent error and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.08. In five trials of a bronze ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, running in the groove, the numbers obtained were 2.04, 1.90, 1.95, 1.90, 1.84, averaging to 1.93, hence with 3.5 percent error, and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.067. Palmieri records twelve more sets of five trials each. The errors are dramatically larger for decreased inclinations of the plane, especially in the case of smaller and thus lighter bronze balls. Five trials with a bronze ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter and an inclination of 1.36 degrees gave an average of 2.74, hence with 37 percent error; but five trials with a bronze ball one inch in diameter and the same inclination yielded an average of 2.17, hence with 8.5 percent error. An increase of the inclination to 3.8 degrees for these two balls reduced the errors to 18 percent and 6 percent respectively. The deviations from expected theoretical ratios do not easily admit of a detailed explanation, nor does Palmieri attempt one. Of the factors likely to be operative we mention two. Human reflexes cannot be relied upon to open the water-clock precisely when the ball is released to start rolling, or to close it precisely when the ball hits the stopping block. And, throughout the run, friction is no doubt operative. Friction is an action at or between surfaces. Seeking to find what schoolmen were saying in Galileo’s day REVIEWS | WILSON 99 concerning friction, Palmieri examined the Juvenilia and a book on natural philosophy by Galileo’s contemporary, the Paduan professor Giacomo Zabarella (d.1589). He found discussions of “reaction” and “resistance,” but not of friction. The presumptive role of friction in the inclined plane experiment, Palmieri believes, was a potent riddle leading Galileo to abandon scholastic explanations in favor of an atomistic ontology. Galileo knew and undoubtedly consulted Lucretius’s De rerum natura. It gives a psychophysical explanation of pleasant and unpleasant tastes in terms of smooth and rough or hooked atoms. The shapes of atoms could similarly account for friction in the sliding or rolling of one surface over another. Friction would thus be a “fight” between particles of different shapes. The amounts of friction would no doubt differ with the extent of contact between ball and trough, with the shapes of atoms, and with the speed of the ball. Such factors may be the causes of the deviations between observed and expected time ratios above reported. But it is hard to imagine how this hypothesis could be tested quantitatively. Besides, Galileo may have shied away from openly entertaining a hypothesis deriving from Lucretius’s philosophy—such a move on his part could have led to a new charge of heresy. One of Lucretius’s doctrines appears to have played a seminal role in Galileo’s thinking about falling bodies. Lucretius states that, since bodies falling in the void meet with no resistance, all fall with the same speed. He attributes the observed differences in the rates of fall to the checking action of the medium, which hinders the motion of lighter bodies more than that of heavier bodies. Galileo in the Two New Sciences will reach an analogous conclusion, but with a crucial difference: all bodies falling in the void fall, not with the same speed, but with the same acceleration. We recall that earlier, at the time of the De motu, Galileo had thought that the rates of fall would be as the specific gravities (weights per unit volume) of the bodies. That assertion differed from the Aristotelian position, which made the speed of descent proportional to the body’s weight. Galileo rejected the latter position on the basis of the following argument. He hypothesized that any heavy body that falls has its speed, or (if accelerated) its �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW degrees of speed, fixed by nature, so that the speed or the acceleration cannot be increased or decreased without violence. (Thus the argument applies whether the body falls with a constant or an accelerated speed.) He then imagined two bodies equal in volume and weight, e.g., two bricks. If let fall together, their speeds or accelerations are equal, and they remain side by side. If tied together so as to form the double weight, the result does not change: they still fall with the same speed or acceleration, neither “burdening” the other. Hence speed of fall cannot be proportional to weight. By the time he wrote the First Day of The Two New Sciences (probably in 1634), Galileo had concluded that all bodies that fall begin by accelerating, and he was hypothesizing that all bodies in the void, independent of their specific gravities, accelerate with the same acceleration. The reasoning leading to this conclusion, as given in the Postils to Rocco (marginal notes on a work in which Antonio Rocco attacked Galileo’s arguments in Two New Sciences) proceeds as follows. He imagines two equal spheres, one of gold and the other of cork, that are let fall from the same height. Since both are surrounded by air, both are buoyed up by the same force, equal to the weight of the volume of air they displace (the buoyancy effect identified by Archimedes). Each body in its motion will also be slowed by the viscosity of the air, and this effect, since it derives solely from a property of the air, would likewise be the same for both. Friction, which Galileo explains as due to the sticking of particles of the medium to the asperities of the body’s surface, can also be imagined to differ negligibly in the two bodies (both could be covered by the same surface material). Finally, there is the resistance to the speed of each body, which is greater for greater speeds. Galileo does not imagine that this resistance can be eliminated practically (as it was a few years later, after Galileo’s death, in experimentation with Torricelli’s mercury barometer and with von Guericke’s air pump). But experience, Galileo tells us, suggests that this resistance is entirely an effect of the medium. In a fall of the gold and cork spheres through 100 braccia (150 feet?) in air, the gold, he asserts, will REVIEWS | WILSON 101 precede the cork by two or three braccia. In a fall of 1 or 2 braccia the difference all but disappears. If in a thin medium like air, differences of speeds all but disappear, then, Galileo claims, we are entitled to hypothesize that in a vacuum the speeds would be identical. For this conclusion, we note, Galileo can claim only a hypothetical status. Galileo’s Third Day of his Two New Sciences is in one respect strange—even peculiar! The First and Second Days, dealing with the strength of materials, are clearly about real material bodies. The Fourth Day, likewise, deals with real projectiles, actual bodies moving through the air and resisted by it in their motion. The mathematical part of the Third Day, by contrast, is presented as about points descending along inclined lines. Real bodies are absent, as are real planes along which they could descend. Friction is nowhere mentioned. The idealization of bodies is at least as drastic as that in Euclid’s Elements. Galileo’s adoption of this extreme idealization may owe something to the seeming impossibility of eliminating the effect of the medium, and the difficulty of quantifying the effects of friction. Among the numerous theorems proved in the Third Day is the “expansion theorem”: points falling simultaneously along variously inclined lines starting from a single point as origin are all at each instant on the surface of an expanding sphere. Galileo has the interlocutors of his dialogue engage in a considerable discussion of this theorem. It may be, Palmieri suggests, a relic of an earlier project to elaborate a Lucretian cosmogony starting with point-atoms—another dangerous project which Galileo may have relinquished to avoid further conflict with the papacy. Early in his book Palmieri cites John Dewey’s Experience and Nature for its “take” on Galileo’s quest for a science of nature. To Dewey, Galileo’s turn to active, controlled experimentation represented a radical challenge to the Graeco-Christian spectator-theory of knowledge. In Aristotle’s philosophy, as coopted by Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, high value was placed on detached contemplation of the world. The human being was seen as situated at the center of the cosmos, empowered to survey and understand its parts. But in Dewey’s pragma- �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tist perspective, true knowledge can be gained only by intervening in the world and attempting to bring disturbing or confusing situations under control. Detached contemplation is “out of touch,” powerless to penetrate the intricate mysteries of the world. Only by intervening, risking mistakes and failure, can we begin to learn the world’s ways. Was Galileo self-conscious about the revolutionary break he was making with the methodology of earlier natural philosophy? Palmieri in his Chapter 7 adduces three pieces of evidence suggesting that he was. During his three-year professorship at the University of Pisa (1589-1592), Galileo had as friend, tutor, and colleague the professor of Platonic philosophy, Jacopo Mazzoni. Mazzoni was a syncretist, seeking to show the compatibility of Plato and Aristotle with each other and with Christianity. He was, indeed, the very model of a late sixteenth-century Graeco-Christian philosopher. Yet there was one opinion, apparently shared by Plato and Aristotle, that Mazzoni took issue with, the opinion that theoretical mind was categorically distinguishable in kind from practical mind. Every branch of philosophy, Mazzoni insisted, has both a theoria and a praxis. Each of these incorporates operations directed toward particulars. In theoria such operations are for the sake of propping up the truth; in praxis they are for the sake of attaining the truth, and of finding the essence of things in the order of existence. Such praxis Mazzoni saw as dangerously rushing toward particulars, plunging the seeker after truth into the perilous world of the unstable, of the disturbed situation where action can make the difference between failure and success. In this characterization Galileo, struggling to make sense of his results in the inclined plane experiment, might have recognized himself. Another glimpse into Galileo’s discomfort with the suffering of experiential learning may be gathered from his Considerazioni al Tasso. This consists of notes criticizing Tasso’s epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata. The publication of the poem in 1581 had sparked a lively debate among Italians as to its merit relative to REVIEWS | WILSON 103 Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516). Pro-Ariosto by taste, Galileo was vehemently anti-Tasso. He rejected Tasso’s treatment of the human passions. Whereas in Ariosto’s poem there was a metamorphosis of res into verba, leading to a satisfying outcome, Galileo judged Tasso’s poetry to lack poetic inspiration, and to end up cobbling together fragmented concetti (imaginations) lacking continuity and reciprocal dependence. The result was thus like marquetry, in which colored pieces of wood are fitted together, and the border lines between pieces always remain sharp and crudely distinguishable. Tasso had failed to realize that the passage from res to verba must be dynamic, transformative. Aficionados of Tasso found in his poetry a new conception of human feeling: feeling as a force originating from deep sources in the senses and the body, so strong at times as to overwhelm the mind. Imitating the pathos in Tasso’s poetry became a project for composers of madrigals like Monteverdi. The resulting works were among those sharply criticized by Galileo’s father Vincenzo. Vincenzo saw “modern music” as mixing together voices and modes, diverse words (in polyphony), different rhythms and tempos, and thus giving rise to disparate and confusing emotional reactions in the intellect of the listener. The future of music, Vincenzo urged, lay in resolving the polyphonic “confusion” of voices of the madrigal into a monodic style of singing. Vincenzo’s criticism of polyphonic music as fragmented and unintelligible is closely parallel to the younger Galileo’s criticism of Tasso’s poetry as marquetry. Palmieri sees Galileo’s disdain for Tasso as a disdain for “the real, oblique, polyphonic nature of experiential learning.” Galileo’s preference for Ariosto is “a preference for an ideal of experience in natural philosophy in which he had been inducted by Mazzoni’s teachings.” But “Galileo’s radically new practice of philosophy . . . had brought him face to face with the reality of experiential learning.” A deep rift runs through Galileo’s mind, as Palmieri reads him: on the one hand, Galileo ardently strives after a science of nature—which requires dealing with the reality of experiential learning; on the other hand, he would like that science to conform to the ideal sketched �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 104 by Mazzoni. Perhaps, Palmieri suggests, Galileo was salvaging something of Mazzoni’s ideal in his sanitized accounts of his experiments. Finally, Palmieri adduces a sonnet written by the dying Galileo, giving it both in the original Italian and in a translation by Dennis Looney. The latter runs as follows: Enigma Monster am I, stranger and more misshapen than the harpy, the siren, or the chimera. There is not a beast on land, in air or water whose limbs are of such varied forms. No part of me is the same size as any other part; What’s more: if one part is white, the other is black. I often have a band of hunters behind me who map out the traces of my tracks. In the darkest gloom I take my rest, For if I pass from the shadows to bright light, Quickly the soul flees from me, just as The dream flees at the break of day. And I exhaust my discombobulated limbs And lose my essence, along with life and name. Palmieri interprets the sonnet as a meditation on experiential learning, caught between the polarities of individuality and universality. The metaphor of the monster captures the jagged contour of experience. The darkness is Galileo’s blindness, physical as well as metaphorical. The hunters are his persecutors, real and imagined. Only after death, with the loss of individuality, will the light of truth shine forth. Thus Galileo recognizes that knowledge is not coextensive with human experience. His sonnet refracts as through a prism his lifelong pursuit of truth; an active engagement with the life-world, turning up more difficulty and more unsolved conundrums than he has been able to cope with. The strife, the tension, as he still relives it toward the end, is tragic in its intensity. The only resolution is limitless relinquishment. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2011 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott McClay, Barbara Sachs, Joe David, Anne McClay, Wilfred M. Verdi, John Petrich, Louis Wilson, Curtis Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 52, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2011. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_52_No_2_Spring_2011 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a016f43d22ea1713f2e68d2cc69e2f3a.pdf 42516c7656764de721785c130a5f20f4 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 53, number 1 (Fall 2011) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2011 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Contents Essays Reading the Constitution as a Great Book............................1 William Braithwaite Platonic and Jewish Antecedents to ...................................33 Johannes de Silentio’s Knight of Faith Jacob Howland Kant’s Rational Being as Moral Being ...............................47 Joseph Smith Reflections What Did You Learn? .........................................................73 Lise van Boxel Poem To the New Recruits............................................................81 Elliott Zuckerman Reviews Delphic Examinations A Review of David Leibowitz’s The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology ............................................83 David Bolotin Toleration A Review of Eva Brann’s Homage to Americans.............101 Janet Doughterty �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 1 Reading the Constitution as a Great Book William Braithwaite Our national political conversation is just now being much exercised in a deliberation about the Law and the Divine:1 on one side, those who hold sacred a certain place in New York City, because of those who died there; on the other, those who plead the cause of religious freedom. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have spoken on both sides. These circumstances can remind us that the horrific brutalities we human beings continue to inflict upon one another often arise somehow from what we believe about the Divine: either that it is, and the disputes over what it is, or that it is not, and the disputes over what, in this event, we should look up to, if anything. These questions are so ancient, universal, and persistent that they appear rooted in some primal dividedness of the soul. Politics and law cannot, it seems, escape the Divine; nor we, our own double nature. In Book I, Chapter 1 of the Physics, Aristotle observes the most natural path of inquiry starts from what is familiar. Especially to those Americans who have grown up with it, the Constitution is familiar. But if this makes us think we already know what it says, we might fail to read it with the care that a great book deserves. We can study the Constitution with this kind of care even while suspending judgment on whether it truly is a great book. We then avoid the error that is committed when, for example, one reads Euclid while assuming he has been made obsolete by Algebra—looking down, from a place of assumed superiority. We cannot know a priori whether William Braithwaite is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This article was originally a lecture delivered at the College in Annapolis on Constitution Day, September 17, 2010. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 2 Euclid’s Elements, Aristotle’s Physics, or the Constitution, is outdated, and we disable our judgment if we begin by looking down on what we may come to learn we should look up to. Diminishing its magnitude in relation to ourselves, we distort what it presents to us. We will not see it for what it is. Other obstacles besides familiarity can get in the way of reading the Constitution well. It is short; so we may suppose, mistaking its brevity for lightness, that it doesn’t need much time. It can be taken to belong to a special discipline, the law; lacking expertise, we read it without confidence that we can understand very much. It’s political; since it touches issues we may care passionately about, we search it for what we want it to say, and can fail to notice that what it does say might not agree with our partisan inclinations, or even when it does agree, that its grounds may be different from our presuppositions. This essay has five parts. In the first, I will suggest why I think the Constitution can usefully be read as the preeminent chapter, one of four, in what we might call the Book of the Constitution. The second and third parts deal, from two different points of view, with the distinctively American experience of trying to form a political union based on an idea, rather than on blood ties or religious beliefs. In the fourth part, I will propose a way of thinking about the Constitution’s Article VI, which contains the well-known “Supremacy Clause,” providing that the Constitution “shall be the supreme law of the Land.” In Part V, to conclude, I will suggest brief and tentative answers to two questions: Is the Constitution really a great book? Who can understand it best? I The Constitution is arranged into a Preamble, seven Articles, and at the very end, formulaic legal words attesting authenticity. Some Articles are divided into numbered Sections. Parts of Sections, or of Articles with parts not separately numbered, BRAITHWAITE 3 are called Clauses. These are either paragraphs, sentences, or parts of sentences. The Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The grammatical skeleton is: “We the People . . . ordain and establish this Constitution”—a subject, two transitive verbs, and one direct object. “We” is plural; “the People” can signify one or many. If we wanted to translate this sentence into Ancient Greek, should the verbs be singular or plural? Should the aspect of the verbs be aorist, to signify something completed? Was the American Founding over and done with, once and for all, when the Constitution was ratified, in 1789? A verb of progressive aspect would signify that the ordaining and establishing are continuous; they may still be going on. Would the verbs be active voice, middle voice, or passive voice? It makes a difference—doesn’t it?—whether the lawmaker says (active voice): I ordain and establish a constitution, a regime of laws, and you choose to accept it? Or (middle voice): I choose to obey, for my own reasons, only the laws I make for myself? Or (passive voice): I make the laws, and you have to accept them, like it or not? “The People” are “of the United States.” A State is more than a geographical place—land and water. The New York mosque controversy reminds us that there are sacred and nonsacred places, garbage dumps and burial grounds. What kind of place is a State of the United States—Maryland, for example? What does it mean to say that places are “united”? We all know that churches, temples, and mosques are sacred places. Do legislatures and courts partake of the sacred also? Those who serve there do take an oath, to uphold the law (Article VI, last Clause). Why do we require this? �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The Preamble says that “the People” “ordain and establish” the Constitution. “Ordain” means put in order; “establish” means make firm. But political things seem to be disorderly and always in flux. How is it possible that what is always changing can be arranged so that it is stabilized? In the Physics, Aristotle leads us through a long inquiry into this question. Among his elemental ideas are place, form, and material. What material do “the People” work on when they “ordain and establish” a Constitution? And what is the form of a constitution? Is it found in the words? If the Constitution has a place, where is it? In the national and State capitals, and halls of city government? In ourselves? When people speak of a “living Constitution,” where do they think the Constitution lives? The Preamble states six aims: union, justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty. What is the principle of order here? Did the men who wrote the Constitution believe, for example, that without union, justice would be harder to achieve? That without tranquility at home, Americans would be less well prepared for common defense against threats from abroad? That liberty’s blessings are secure in proportion to the general welfare of all Americans? The Preamble speaks of a “more perfect” union. Some kind of union already existed, and it was deficient, less perfect. It is named, in Article VI, “the Confederation.” This was the union ratified in 1781, though first proposed in the Continental Congress in 1777, ten years before the Philadelphia Convention proposed the Constitution we now have. The predecessor constitution we know as the Articles of Confederation. If the Constitution was a maturation, then it matters to know what it grew out of, just as it matters, if you want to know a tree or fish, to know how and from what it came to be what it is when it is full-grown. To read the Constitution well, we must read also the Articles of Confederation. I will say more about the Articles later. BRAITHWAITE 5 The Preamble may be the best-known part of the Constitution. We turn now to the least-known part, at the very end, the Attestation Clause. It says: “done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names.” Thirty-nine signatures follow. Constitution Day is September 17 because this is the day the Delegates signed it, attesting what they had done; it is the Constitution’s “birthday.” But why should its birthday be the day it was written, rather than the day it became legally effective? The 39 men who signed were the ones who proposed it, but under Article VII, only “the People” could make it law, by ratifying it in State Conventions. Is the Constitution’s birthday the date of publication, rather than the date of ratification, because publishing the words was more its coming into being than the actions of ratification which made it law? The Attestation Clause dates the Constitution from two beginnings: the beginning of the Christian religion and calendar (“Year of Our Lord”), and the beginning of the Americans as a separate people (“of the independence of the United States of America the Twelfth”). As the beginning of the Constitution implicates the Articles of Confederation, its end implicates the Declaration. To read the Constitution well, we must also read the Declaration, out of which it somehow grew. The words of the Declaration came into effect on October 19, 1781, when the commander of the main British army, General Cornwallis, acknowledged military defeat by his surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. But Americans celebrate their independence on July 4, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration in 1776. Were the words more the beginning of the United States than the deeds of war necessary to make them effective? �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The Constitution is a plan of government. The Articles of Confederation were a treaty, agreeing to a “league” among thirteen independent, sovereign States. The Declaration of Independence is neither of these. It is an argument. Its aim is to justify the action of Great Britain’s American Colonists in separating themselves from the Mother Country. It has an argument’s five-part formal structure: Introduction, Statement, Proof, Refutation, and Conclusion. An introduction is what leads us into. Here is the Declaration’s: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to the separation.” The Colonists appeal to Law, from three sources. Two are mentioned here; the third we will get to shortly. “Laws of Nature” points us back toward Aristotle’s Physics, the first sustained inquiry into the regularities and patterns we can see in the world around us. He shows that the phenomena of the natural world are not chaotic and jumbled, but on the contrary, have characteristic regularities and patterns, ways of being and working. Nowadays we would say they change, grow, and move according to laws—for example, the laws of force, which, as Newton demonstrates, govern the motions of the planets. If “Nature’s God” refers to the God of the divinely created order of the world described in the Book of Genesis, then this phrase points us back toward the Bible. In the Declaration, law comes ultimately from the Divine, by way of Nature, or from Nature as a manifestation, a showing forth, of the Divine. The Declaration does not “dissolve” all ties with Great Britain—only the political ones. Ties of blood, language, religion, and law, along with common culture, history, and habits BRAITHWAITE 7 remain. In the Refutation, the Americans call those in England “our British brethren.” The American War of Independence was in some sense a war within the family, a war of brothers. It thus recalls stories of other, more ancient animosities among kindred: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau; Polyneices and Eteocles, the sons of Oedipus; Romulus and Remus. How do we reconcile the apparent inevitability of war with the shedding of kindred blood, which seems to be one of the most unnatural of human actions? Thucydides claims that his History of the Peloponnesian War is the only book we need to read about war. It recounts the war of the Athenians and the Spartans, both of them Greek peoples, who once were united in resisting invasion by the Persians, an earlier war recounted by Herodotus. In the later war, they turn against each other. The paradigm of war, according to Thucydides, is the killing of kindred, the people of one’s own kind. In their War of Independence, 1776-81, the thirteen American States united against their “British brethren.” Three generations later, the Americans fought another war, also against kindred—our Civil War of 1861-65. Both wars were between people related by blood, or “consanguinity,” as the Declaration puts it. Both were wars about the words of the law: the earlier war was about who may speak words of law (only those who speak with “the consent of the governed”); the later, about what the words of the law meant (are all men created equal, and if so, in what politically relevant ways are they equal?). Both wars were also about Equality and Liberty: the American Colonists wanted to free themselves from a lawmaking power in which they had no equal voice; the American South, calling itself “the Confederacy,” wanted to be free to tell the negro slave and his descendants that they would never have any voice in making the laws to which they were subjected. �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The proposition to be proved in the Declaration’s Proof section is that “the present King of Great Britain” (he is nowhere named) is a tyrant. This Section begins: “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.” Eighteen complaints follow, and more than half deal specifically with the power to make laws. Throughout this 18-count “indictment” of the King, the Americans speak as if claiming no more than their rights under established English law. This is the third source of law they appeal to—not new rights, but traditional ones, belonging to them as Englishmen. The King is a tyrant because he has abused these traditional rights. Exercise of the powers of government without the consent of the governed is tyranny, the Americans argue. This is the startingpoint of their argument; it is found in the Declaration’s second part, which begins with the famous “self-evident truths.” There it is asserted that the only just powers a government has are those “derived from the consent of the governed.” That a government’s just powers derive from consent of the governed depends on prior premises. The first of these is asserted in the Declaration’s most famous words—“That all men are created equal.” This is the philosophical source of the American people’s claim that to be ruled rightly, they must be ruled by their own consent, by laws they themselves have made. “All men are created equal” are the words under contention during the Civil War, in which my own ancestors were on opposite sides. Whom did the Declaration’s authors intend to exclude, if anyone, from the words “all men”? Did they mean to exclude negro slaves and their descendants? In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Dred Scott v. Sanford, said Yes. Did the Court read the Declaration rightly and well? Do the Declaration and the Constitution exclude negroes from citizenship? I will say more about this question later. Many people seem to believe that the Constitution is about rights, mainly. It isn’t. What they are probably thinking of is the first ten Amendments, which we now call, collectively, the Bill of BRAITHWAITE 9 Rights. These were added later, in 1791, after the original Constitution was ratified. The Articles of Confederation and the Constitution are about powers; the Declaration and the first ten Amendments are about rights. According to the Declaration, the powers are derived from the rights, and the rights are derived from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Rights are primary, because they are the source; powers are derivative, because they pre-suppose rights. Thus the soul of American law is the Declaration, for it is there that the organic bond between powers and rights, or between government and nature, is made explicit. As the beginning and end of the Constitution implicate the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, the powers in the Constitution implicate the rights asserted in the Declaration and the Bill of Rights. To read the Constitution well, we must also read the Bill of Rights. With the Bill of Rights in mind, we have become accustomed to speaking of “individual” rights. The Constitution never does. Throughout the Constitution proper and the Bill of Rights, the standard language is “person,” “persons,” or “the people.” The Third Amendment does refer to “the Owner”; the Sixth, to “the accused”; but these terms are used nowhere else, I believe. The Sixth also uses three masculine pronouns, but for reasons that I will spell out later, with respect to the Rendition Clause, I believe it doubtful that these refer only to males. What is the difference, if any, between “individual” rights and rights of “persons,” or “personal” rights? Does the difference matter? “Person” comes from Latin persona, meaning mask, especially one worn by an actor. Our persona is our public face, the one we put on, for example, when we mask our private feelings from strangers or acquaintances we don’t know very well. Good manners require that we sometimes do this. Does politics require it too? What do people mean when they say “All politics is personal,” or “The personal is the political”? “Personal” �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW seems nowadays sometimes to mean “private.” What are the real differences, the ones that matter, between our public or political lives and our private lives? Does the Constitution suggest which things belong to which? Should it? The use of “person” in the Constitution was not motivated by an effort to find what some call today “non-sexist” language. “Person” is a technical term in law; it means human beings in their public, or political, capacity. This usage came into English law from Roman law, and is directly traceable to the codification of twelve centuries of Roman law that was ordered by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The language of “individual” rights began, I believe, to be more common and customary in American law during the middle of the twentieth century, when the now-extensive body of court opinions on the Bill of Rights was developing. “Individual,” like “persona,” is also Latin in origin, but its meaning and connotations are quite different. It is cognate with “indivisible,” that is, with the unit, the monad, the atom. This carries implications of the uniquely private—that which makes each of us, as each snowflake is said to be, absolutely different from every other of the same kind. Has the elemental language of mathematical physics crept unawares into our understanding of the law? Our vanity, pride, and ego certainly prefer “individual” rights. We cannot help wishing to be special; most of us do seem to have a deep longing to be loved for no other reason than that we are who we are. But what the Constitution secures, in law, is “personal” rights, not “individual” rights. In exchanging the former for the latter, what have we gained, and what have we lost? We now have a book of four parts: the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the Articles of Confederation of 1781, the Constitution of 1787, and the Bill of Rights of 1791. This is the Book of the Law for a self-governing people. To read well its pre-eminent “chapter,” the Constitution, we must read the whole of which it is a part. The theoretical first principles 11 BRAITHWAITE of this people are Equality and Liberty; these are mediated by Justice. The practical first principles are Prudence and Tolerance; these are mediated by Law. Among this self-governing people, all persons are politically equal. Each has equal right to speak freely in public places about all that relates to the common good. Each has, also, equal right to worship freely in his own church, temple, or mosque. It is the work of the law (among other things) constantly to mediate, heedful of prudence and tolerance, claims to these fundamental rights and to other rights derivative from them. Which, if either, is primary—the right of freedom of religion, or the right of freedom of speech? Both are mentioned in the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, and both are in the foreground of our national political conversation today. How are these two rights related? II To be one and whole is a human yearning. When our heart says yes, and our head says no, we say we are conflicted. We are at war with ourselves. We are not one and whole. In friendships, the things of each are common to both, says Phaedrus in Plato’s dialogue of that name (279c). In marriage, the Hebrew Bible’s teaching (Genesis 2:24), inherited by the Greek Bible (Mark 10:7-8), is that a man and woman become “one flesh.” Modern biology and genetics confirm this. So does Aristophanes, in Plato’s Symposium (189c-193e). What would a community that is one and whole look like? Might much of its law not need to be written? This would be the law of custom. In English legal history, unwritten or customary law was called the common law. The American Colonists inherited this law, and, consonant with its animating spirit, they reshaped it to their own circumstances. We learn the common law by living in it. We abide by the law, and it abides in us. It becomes a second nature, and eventually we may feel as if it were natural simply. At home in our community, we feel one and whole, �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW both in ourselves and in relations with others. We have a place. We know who we are. To be one nation and whole, a true political union, has been what Americans have aimed at since the beginning. It has therefore been our greatest political problem as well. Is it also the greatest political good and the greatest political problem simply? After their War of Independence, from 1775 to 1781, the Americans, recently united against a common foe, tried to establish a political union among themselves. Their first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, failed. Their second attempt, the Constitution, has stood the tests of 225 years. What made the American Union under the Articles “less perfect”? Both the Articles and the Constitution aimed at union. The plan of government each designed toward this end was different, however. This difference is apparent on the face of the two documents. The Articles are wordy and legalistic. Their substance is marred by excessive precision through avoidable repetition, the spelling-out in detail of cumbersome procedures for resolving differences among the States, and the political asymmetry of imposing obligations on the States without giving the national government powers to enforce them. Article IX (of thirteen Articles) spells out the powers of the Confederation Congress. It is over 1,400 words, in nine lengthy, unnumbered paragraphs. It would take over ten minutes to read it aloud, at a brisk pace. About two-thirds of Article IX deals with two subjects, boundary disputes and raising “land forces,” that is, an army. The complicated procedure for settling boundary disputes between States is set out in a single sentence of about 400 words. This sentence piles one dependent clause on top of another: three clauses begin with “if,” or “but if”; two others, with “provided that.” It is a labor to read and understand it. The provision for raising land forces gives the Confederation Congress power to request a proportionate quota of soldiers from each State. These requisitions “shall be binding,” but the Arti- BRAITHWAITE 13 cles give Congress no legal power to enforce them. This is true also of Congress’s power to collect contributions from the States to “a common treasury” and to pay expenses for “the common defence or general welfare.” Consequently, there was no national army and no national treasury, except insofar as the States chose voluntarily to comply with Congress’s quotas and requisitions. The different aims of the Articles and the Constitution are revealing. The Constitution’s Preamble, we recall, states six: union, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty. The Articles, in Article III, state three: defense, security, and general welfare. Notably absent are justice and domestic tranquility. That the Articles’ primary object was defense against foreign enemies is indicated by that part of Article III in which the States agree “to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them.” The vulnerability felt by the American States in 1781 is understandable. They were militarily weak, having just fought an exhausting five-year war. They had won only with the help of the French and good luck. England, Spain, and others still coveted further possessions in the New World. The Americans had won their independence; now they had to keep it. The Confederation’s “union” was “less perfect” in being more for defense against attack from outside than for political union within, and in being more detailed on paper than feasible in practice. The States agreed to a mutual defense treaty, but did not empower Congress to raise a national army through legally enforceable quotas of soldiers from each State. The fear of foreign enemies was counterbalanced by an equally powerful fear of yielding local powers to that genuinely national government which some thought necessary for true political union. Fear breeds, and is bred by, distrust. A sign of the States’ fear and mutual distrust was their uncertainty about what to call their relationship. In the Articles of Confederation, �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 14 the introductory “Whereas” Clause and the Attestation Clause at the end call it “a perpetual union.” Article I calls it a “confederacy,” Article II a “confederation,” Article III, “a firm league of friendship.” Perhaps they could not find the right name because they were not yet sure what they wanted to name. “League” may have been closest to the truth, in its sense of coming together for a common purpose. History has decided, however, to call our first, “less perfect” Union “the Confederation.” This fits, because “to federate” means to come together in a league. In another way, it does not fit. The Latin root of “federate” and “federal” is related to fides, meaning faith or trust. What is missing from the spirit of the Articles of Confederation trust is mutual trust. A coming together for a common purpose is not yet a union. III What drives us apart, makes us decide to separate? What are the differences that get in the way of forming a real and lasting union? Are there natural kinds, natural differences that inevitably have political consequences? Male and female seem to be different kinds by nature. Aristotle argues in Book I of the Politics that some men are naturally slaves, or slavish. Linguistic and cultural differences can feel almost natural. Whatever the source of whatever differences there are, political arrangments, if they are to be decent and sensible, will have to take account of them. Which differences matter most, politically? How do they matter, and to what extent? We now consider some differences of kind that are implicated in the Constitution. In 1972, it was proposed to amend the Constitution to provide that “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The intent of the Equal Rights Amendment was to prohibit, with the force of written law, discrimination against women. The main argument for it was the claim that the Constitution “excluded” women, because the only sex-specific pro- BRAITHWAITE 15 nouns in it are masculine. It is true that the Constitution’s text does not anywhere use feminine pronouns. Does this signify intent to exclude women from the rights of citizenship and the holding of public offices? Article II vests the Executive Power of the National Government in a President and specifies requirements of age, citizenship, and residency. It says, “No Person” shall be eligible to the office without these requirements. “Person” is neuter in grammatical gender, and does not exclude women. This Section further provides, with respect to the President, “Before he enter on the Execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation” (emphasis added). Do these masculine pronouns exclude women? The conventions of English grammar, both in 1787 and in 1972, allowed masculine pronouns to refer to the female sex. Whether a particular masculine pronoun was presumed to include females, or intended to exclude them, was to be determined by context. Supposing that the Constitution as a whole is the proper context, let us look at other uses of masculine pronouns to see if they exclude women. An example is in Article IV. Its Section 2 includes what is called the Rendition Clause. It says that a criminal fugitive who flees from the State where he committed a crime “shall on Demand of the Executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the Crime.” If we read the “he” in the phrase “the State from which he fled,” to refer only to men, here is the result: A man who robs a grocery store in Maryland and is later discovered by Maryland authorities to be in police custody in Virginia, is constitutionally required, by the Rendition Clause, to be “delivered up” to Maryland police. But his female accomplice is not, because she is not a “he.” It seems to me unlikely that the authors of the Constitution intended this result. The Equal Rights Amendment came close to being ratified before the time to do so ran out in 1982. How should we under- �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW stand the American people’s declining to ratify it, after more than ten years of public deliberation about it? No serious argument seems to have been raised, during the Democratic primary-election campaigns of 2008, that then-Senator Hilary Clinton was constitutionally ineligible for the Presidency because the ERA had not been ratified. The question remains, nevertheless, whether there are differences between men and women of such a kind that the law can properly make distinctions between them for some purposes, such as combat duty in military service. We turn now to another common misreading of the Constitution. Among some Americans, both black and white, an opinion persists that it favors, or supports, slavery. Three specific provisions deal with this subject directly, two others indirectly. None uses the words “slave” or “slavery.” Used instead is “Person” or “Persons.” It should seem odd that a law said to approve of slavery fails to name its subject plainly and correctly. What could account for such reticence? Article II vests the National legislative power in a Congress consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives. Section 2 provides that each State shall have not more than one Representative in the House for every 30,000 of its population. With exceptions not relevant here, population includes “the whole Number of free Persons, . . . [and] three fifths of all Other Persons.” No one disputes that by “Other Persons,” the Constitution’s authors meant slaves. Does the phrase “three fifths of all Other Persons” mean, then, as some people continue to believe, and to say publicly, that according to the Constitution, the negro is three fifths of a Person? Such an opinion would be consistent with the opinion that the phrase “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence was intended to mean “All white men,” and therefore to exclude negro slaves and their descendants (this is the reading of the Declaration by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case). Often not noticed by those who say these things is that the Three-fifths Clause deals not only with repre- BRAITHWAITE 17 sentation in the House, but also with taxation. The relevant language says, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States” according to population, counted according to the formula just noticed. From each State’s point of view, representation in the House and direct taxation have opposed incentives. To get more seats in the House, the Slave States wished to count all their slaves; to pay less taxes to the National Government, they wished to count none of them. The Free States, on the contrary—those in which slavery was forbidden—wished to have the Constitution count no slaves for representation in the House. This would give the Free States greater power there, increasing the prospect that Congress could eventually abolish slavery. But for taxation, the Free States would have been glad to agree to count all slaves. This would increase the tax contributions required from Slave States to the National Treasury. In this controversy over representation in the House, what the Free States wanted was that the Constitution not prohibit or impede the eventual abolition of slavery; what the Slave States wanted was its constitutional preservation. These opposed interests were compromised by joining the opposed incentives of gaining political power and reducing taxation. More House seats meant more taxes; paying less tax meant fewer House seats, and less political power. In Mathematics, three one-fifth parts of 100 is the same as 100 three-fifths of each unit. But the dispute in the Constitutional Convention addressed by the Three-fifths Clause was not about counting parts of slaves. It was about whether to count all slaves as whole Persons, or some of them, or none. Has the Three-fifths Clause been read in the mode of mathematics, rather than with a proper understanding of the language of the law? Reading the Constitution in the mode of mathematics is consistent with thinking of individuals, of ones or monads; but as we noticed earlier, the Constitution speaks of “persons,” not of “individuals.” Ones can be fractionally divided; “persons” cannot. What the Constitution says is that �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW three-fifths of the total slave population were to be counted as “Persons” and two-fifths were not to be counted at all. Did the authors of the Constitution mean to say, by these words, that out of every 100 slaves, sixty were Persons, and forty were property? Which ones were which? If the text obliges us to acknowledge that the Constitution acquiesces in counting two-fifths of the slave population as property, then we must concede that it also counts three-fifths of that population as Persons. More slaves are constitutionally recognized as human beings than are not so recognized. Is this pro-slavery or anti-slavery? It seems more just to the text to say that the Constitution looks up to the ultimate good aimed at—placing slavery “in the course of ultimate extinction,” as Lincoln was to put it—more than it looks down at the political constraints that made this good temporarily unachievable in 1787. Would negro slaves have been better off in 1787—would we be better off today—if the opponents of slavery in the Convention, acting on high-minded principle, had simply refused to consider any compromise whatever with the slave interests? (This was the stance, later on, of the Radical Abolitionists.) We have taken note of two differences that American Constitutional Law has had to deal with: man and woman, master and slave. The first difference is natural. Slavery, according to Aristotle’s Politics, has two forms, one natural, the other conventional. In American law, slavery is against natural law, or natural right. “All men are created equal.” Slavery existed here, legally, only by convention, by positive, written law. It could therefore be abolished, without injustice, if the lawmaker changed the law. The Slave States saw, and feared, that Congress would do exactly that. They were willing, in consequence, to fight a Civil War to keep what they claimed as their freedom, or “natural” right, to hold the Negro in bondage. In the decades leading to that war, the Southern legal arguments turned more and more to the assertion that “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” made Negro slavery BRAITHWAITE 19 lawful because it was both natural and consistent with the Bible. The slave interests felt these claims to be vindicated when the Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case in 1857. So the war came. It can be tempting to view the Union victory in the Civil War as a victory for the jurisprudence of natural rights, on which the Constitution is founded. With different political leadership, and if President Lincoln had not been assassinated, perhaps the victory might have had some chance to become that. But it didn’t. What the South lost on the battlefield, it won in politics and the law. One visible sign of the South’s triumph was racial segregation—that vestigial remnant of slavery which the most unregenerable elements in the South clung to, in defeated rage, dragging down with them their decent and moderate, but timid, compatriots. This was the South in which I grew up, in Virginia, during the 1940s and 1950s. The triumph of Southern jurisprudence involves, and is involved with, the story of what we today call “judicial review,” and this story belongs to a third difference for our examination—the different aspects of sovereignty. The specific question is this: what distinguishes the making of law, legislative power, from the interpretation and application of it in particular cases, judicial power? The Constitution, in Article I, vests the law-making power in Congress. The power to decide “Cases and Controversies” is by Article III vested in “a Supreme Court and such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” What we seek is to discern how these two powers, aspects of sovereignty, differ. We cannot, on this occasion, make an adequate inquiry into this question. I offer, instead, some observations we might draw upon, in order to begin thinking about how a judge differs from a legislator. “Judicial review” refers to the Supreme Court’s power to act as a kind of super-legislature by declaring Acts of Congress “unconstitutional,” which is taken to mean, “not lawful,” or not law. Is judicial review consonant with the spirit of the �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Constitution? What is the source of the Supreme Court’s power to overrule the deliberate will of “the People,” expressed in laws passed by Congress? What is at stake here, in the words of the Declaration, is the “consent of the governed.” The Declaration accused the British King of the arbitrary exercise of power. What are the differences, with respect to “consent of the governed,” between an arbitrary king, an arbitrary Congress, and an arbitrary Supreme Court? If “arbitrary” means unreasonable and willful, then all three are forms of unjust rule, even if different in formal appearance and practical consequences. Are an arbitrary Congress and an arbitrary Supreme Court dangerous in equal degree? This may depend upon the remedies available to the People, and on the kind of harm either branch might do by its willfulness. Senators’ terms are six years; House Members’ terms, two; the constitutional power to remove them belong to the People, and can be exercised at the ballot box. Supreme Court judges serve, constitutionally, “during good behavior”; they seldom resign voluntarily. With good health, most serve as long as physically and mentally able. The most recent retiree was ninety years old. The Chief Justice and the newest Associate Justice are both about 50; they are likely to serve for several decades. Bad or questionable laws enacted by Congress may be more accessible to correction, both constitutionally and in practice, than abuses of power by the Supreme Court. The Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, holding that racial segregation of negroes and whites in public schools was unconstitutional. To reach this result, the Court had to overrule its own prior decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy was decided in l895. Both Brown and Plessy involved state legislation, not an Act of Congress, so these two decisions were not, technically, exercises of the power of judicial review. But the jurisprudential progenitor of Plessy, insofar as it addressed racial segregation, the remnant of slavery, from the perspective of positive law rather than of natural law, or natural right, as affirmed in the Declaration, was the Court’s decision BRAITHWAITE 21 in Dred Scott v. Sanford, which did involve an Act of Congress. Dred Scott was decided in 1857. There Mr. Chief Justice Taney held that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from United States Territories not yet admitted to the Union as States. On the way to this conclusion, Taney opined that the words, “All men are created equal” were intended by the Declaration’s signers to mean only white men. “The Negro has no rights a white man is bound to respect,” he said. I believe this to be a misreading of the Declaration; if it is, Taney’s opinion “de-natures” the Constitution by poisoning its seminal source in the Declaration’s doctrine of natural right, tranforming its vital principle from the sovereignty of reason into the will of the sovereign. Beginning with the Dred Scott decision, and its repudiation of the political principle that “All men are created equal,” the Supreme Court’s prestige and authority stood behind the legally sanctioned and publicly tolerated policy of racial segregation for a hundred years, until the Brown decision in 1954. By contrast, efforts to change legislation enacted by Congress can begin, if the People choose, after the next election. The Civil Rights Movement of the l960s can be seen as a “bottom-up” citizens’ effort (assisted by a better-instructed Supreme Court) to make this ballot-box power effective against those Members of Congress who held influential committee chairmanships that made it possible for them to impede, stall, or stop civil rights legislation in the National legislature. A bad law is sooner corrected than a corrupted understanding of the law itself. In the most important moral controversy ever to divide this country, the Supreme Court was on the wrong side for a century. Dred Scott was the first time the Court effectually exercised the power of judicial review. In doing so, the Court abandoned, in order to assert the political power of a “super-legislature,” what might have been its proper role as law teacher to the nation.2 It also prepared the groundwork for suffocating the natural-right source of American law in the Declaration of Independence. Without �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 22 natural law, or natural right, the highest thing in American law is the power of the sovereign. By asserting the power of judicial review, the power of exercising a veto over Congress, the Supreme Court declared itself first sovereign. We are under a Constitution, a Chief Justice of the Court said in 1907 (and repeated in 1908), but the Constitution means what the Court says it means.3 This understanding of law seems to take as its essence the political (and sometimes military) force that is certainly necessary to make law effective in practice, rather than that ultimate good which law looks up to, aims at, and constantly strives toward. This good, according to the Preamble, is to “establish Justice.” IV What is law for us? This is Socrates’ opening question in Plato’s short dialogue Minos. The Constitution, I suggest, answers Socrates’ question for Americans in the way I shall now crudely sketch out; for a fuller answer, we would need of course to read Plato’s Laws, to which the Minos is propaedeutic, and some other books as well. Article VI in the Constitution has three unnumbered Clauses. The first requires that the National Government honor “Debts and Engagements” made under the Articles of Confederation. The obligation to perform contracts continues, notwithstanding a change in the external form of government. This first Clause gives constitutional recognition and stature to the principle of keeping your promises. This is a moral principle, because a promise invites reliance, and to ask reliance is to accept moral responsibility. Promise-keeping nurtures trust. When our words invite others to rely firmly on what we say, we vitalize our personal, social, and commercial relations. Our expectation that most people, most of the time, will generally do what they promise, governs such commitments as “I’ll meet you at the Dining Hall at 11:45” and my marriage vows, as well as our commitments to friends and all the buying and selling we do everyday, including the commer- BRAITHWAITE 23 cial contracts we enter into by e-mail and telephone with people we have not met, don’t know, and will never see. The law of promise-keeping is very ancient, its origins obscure. Abraham relies on it when he buys a burial place for Sarah; Jacob relies on it when Esau sells him his birthright. This law was for a long time unwritten, residing in the habits and customs of people’s ways of dealing with one another. In England, it was one element in the nurturant soil of what came to be called the common law. The second Clause of Article VI is the famous Supremacy Clause. It provides that the Constitution, laws enacted pursuant to it, and treaties made by the United States, “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” This Clause makes the Constitution the highest written, or positive, law for the American people. Unlike the law of promise-keeping, the Constitution and its Supremacy Clause are recent in time, and its authors are known by name. All peoples have laws of promise-keeping. But only the Americans have “this Constitution,” ordained and established by themselves. The third Clause of Article VI requires all members of Congress and the State legislatures, and “all executive and judicial officers” of the United States and of the several States, to bind themselves “by Oath or Affirmation” to support the Constitution. This requirement resonates with the tones of the closing lines of the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” These closing lines recall, in turn, the Declaration’s beginning, with its reference to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The three Clauses of Article VI ascend hierarchically. They move from the law of promise-keeping that has grown up spontaneously and been preserved among all peoples by custom, to the highest law of a particular people, to the laws that are highest simply, the Laws of Nature and the Laws of the Divine, however understood. The written Constitution referred �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to in the Supremacy Clause is in the middle of Article VI, placed between the unwritten laws of custom and the unwritten laws of the Natural and Divine orders. Is the being of the Law to be found more in its stability, which may be most manifest in its written and unchanging words, or more in what the Law is grounded upon and in what it looks up to? The structure of Article VI suggests that what we hold, or ought to hold, most solidly to be Law is the ways and usages, of unremembered origin, that give identifying character to us as a particular people. This, according to the Declaration of Independence, is the English common law (with its reliance on natural right), as we have adapted it to American circumstances. The structure of Article VI suggests, as well, that what American Law looks up to is the relation between Nature and the Divine. The Divine is referred to in the Declaration four times: as “Nature’s God” and the “Creator,” the source of “unalienable rights,” and hence of the just powers of government, and of law; as “divine Providence”; and as “Supreme Judge of the World.” As presented in the Declaration, the Divine could appear to be the transcendent original form of which the National Government’s three branches— legislative, executive, and judicial—are the earthly image and shadow.4 Such a view seems consistent with the Biblical testimony that Man is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). What does this way of reading Article VI suggest about reading the Constitution as a great book? Reading the Constitution as a great book entails trying to see what is in it, not only expressly, but also implicitly. I have suggested that both women and blacks are “in” the Constitution, as potential citizens—human beings who were not citizens in 1787, but whom the Constitution did not legally bar from becoming citizens. Women are “in” because they are “Persons,” and the men who chose the Constitution’s masculine pronouns knew these pronouns could be understood as including women. Women are in the Constitution because they are not out—they are nowhere excluded, expressly or by impli- BRAITHWAITE 25 cation. Blacks are “in” because even if the Constitution grudgingly acquiesces in treating 40% of negro slaves as not countable in the population, it affirmatively treats 60% of them as countable “Persons,” that is, as potential citizens, as “men” politically within the meaning of “All men are created equal.” It is best to interpret the words and intentions of the Constitution and the law in the same way we want our own actions interpreted, that is, in the way we should try to interpret the actions of others—by the good that is aimed at, rather than by the necessities, circumstances, and human weaknesses that impede or hobble the practical realization of our better hopes and dreams. Reading the Constitution as a great book entails trying to see, also, what lies under it—a Western tradition of over two thousand years, accessible to us in a few hundred surviving books. But much of what underlies the Constitution and the law is not in books. It was, and is, unwritten. No express words in the Constitution command us to be just, prudent, and tolerant. We learn such things, to the extent we do learn them, by living with, and among, others. Reading the Constitution as a great book also entails trying to see what is above it, what it appeals and aspires to—Nature infused with the Divine, the Divine as the First and the Final Cause of Nature. To read the Constitution most deeply, we have to read the Bible and Plato’s Laws, Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, Aquinas’s Summa, and much more. Reading the Constitution as a great book entails, finally, trying to see what is behind it, the background out of which its thought emerges. This background begins to reveal itself when we ask the questions, Does it make a difference that the Constitution was written in English? Could its meaning be expressed in German, or French, or Chinese? Perhaps what is particular in it could not be. But what about the things in it that are universal? Which things are these? If it makes a difference that the Constitution was written in English, then, for the same reason that reading Homer illuminates the background neces- �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 26 sary for reading Plato, reading Shakespeare illuminates the background for reading the Constitution. To begin to know what the Constitution and the law are— this is the work of a lifetime. V A great book, for me, is one that speaks with the authority of depth and weight about serious questions that really matter to me. Friendship is such a question. Who are my best friends? Surely those who want for me the highest good I am capable of. How do I know who these are? Aristotle’s Ethics might help me to know. Whom can I love? Whom can I trust with the innermost thoughts and secrets of my heart? Who, or what, should I love and trust the most? Plato and the Bible, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have a lot to say about these questions. A great book, for others as well as for me, is one that speaks with coherence and insight about questions that will matter a lot to most of us throughout our lifetimes. Work is such a question: What should I do with my life? What work am I most fit for? Aristotle’s Politics and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America can help us think about how to find a place in the American polis where we, all and each of us, may thrive with the talents we have by nature and the good habits we can acquire by care and self-discipline. A great book simply, for all human beings, speaks with clarity, harmony, and proportion about questions that stay with mankind always. What is Law? Does God exist? If God is not, where are we? What is the soul? Is it immortal? The Constitution was not a great book for me when I was in law school, or during the 25 years of law practice and law teaching that followed. Nor was it a great book for me when I came to St. John’s College in 1995. But, for me, it is now. Whether or not it is in itself a great book, I have found that it BRAITHWAITE 27 has always been a doorway and a path for me to the questions in the greatest books. What I had not known before was how to read it. Can the Constitution be a great book for you? Yes, if you choose to let it. But no book can matter very much for any reader who is not ready, or able, to accept as a genuine possibility that he may always have to be stretching upward in order to approach its meaning. Who can read the Constitution? Anybody willing to make the effort. But as with all other difficult and worthy activities, some people are likely to be able to do this better than others. A book published fifty years ago has something to say on this point. Its title is The People Shall Judge. The Preface begins this way: This book expresses the faith of one American college in the usefulness of liberal education to American democracy. If the United States is to be a democracy, its citizens must be free. If citizens are to be free, they must be their own judges. If they are to judge well, they must be wise. Citizens may be born free; they are not born wise. Therefore, the business of liberal education in a democracy is to make free men wise. Democracy declares that “the people shall judge.” Liberal education must help the people judge well.5 If a liberal education helps us read the Constitution better, then those with such an education have an advantage over those who lack it. It is unhappily the fact that most lawyers and judges today lack a liberal education, since one is to be had in only a very few colleges. Perhaps the most discerning readers of all will be those with much leisure who are able to use it well in reading the greatest books. Probably it would help to have had some direct experience of politics or war. The opportunities for such a life are infrequent, however, and the men and women few who can make the most of such opportunities when they are available. �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW BRAITHWAITE 29 The rest of us must do the best we can with whatever gifts we have, trusting in the indemonstrable premise that one evanescent glimpse of something high, even from a great distance, may be worth more than the solid worldly goods always tempting our grasp from nearby.6 EPILOGUE The artist of the work depicted in these four images is Albin Polasek. He was born in 1879, in Moravia, now the Czech Republic, and apprenticed as a wood-carver in Vienna before emigrating to the United States at age 22, later becoming an American citizen. He was head of the Sculpture Department of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly 30 years. At age 28, while still a student in sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, he made the work shown here. It is one of his most famous. Its title is Man Carving Out His Destiny. (Later he made the following �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW female companion piece called Unfettered, an exquisite nude in bronze, with blue-green finish: BRAITHWAITE 31 NOTES 1. At the time of this lecture, public debate was raging over whether a community center proposed by a Muslim organization should be built near the site of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. 2. See George Anastaplo, The Constitution of 1787: A Commentary (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 135. Unlike Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost, Polasek’s Woman directs her gaze exuberantly upward.) The first two views of Man Carving Out His Destiny show the work in progress, initially as a small-scale plaster model, then in full size, in stone, in a version that very likely was preliminary—compare the positions of the right arm in the studio and outdoor versions. The last two views show two perspectives of the finished work. As you see, the work of the Man whom the sculpture depicts is not finished. If we take this statute to represent a selfgoverning people shaping themselves by means of the law, then the verbs in our Greek translation of the Preamble should be progressive in aspect, not aorist: self-government is never over and done with, because our own lives are always a work in progress. So far as “the living Constitution” dwells within, to “ordain and establish” it is up to us. 3. “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution.” Charles Evans Hughes, “Speech before the Elmira Chamber of Commerce, May 3, 1907,” in Addresses of Charles Evans Hughes, 1906-1916, 2nd ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 185. “Congress may pass laws, but the Supreme Court interprets and construes them, and determines their validity. The Constitution, with its guarantees of liberty and its grants of Federal power, is finally what the Supreme Court determines it to mean.” Charles Evans Hughes, “Address Delivered at Youngstown, Ohio, September 5, 1908,” ibid., 307. 4. Cf. Anastaplo, The Constitution of 1787, 26. 5. The People Shall Judge: Readings in the Formation of American Policy, Vol. I, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), vii. 6. Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 279c. �32 33 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Platonic and Jewish Antecedents to Johannes de Silentio’s 1 Knight of Faith Jacob Howland As very young children, we tend to engage the world with the joyful expectancy and unimpeded capacity for delight that spring from a trust as yet unbroken. But repeated experiences of loss and disappointment almost inevitably cool our enthusiasm for life, and teach us the usefulness of detaching ourselves from what Kierkegaard in Either/Or calls “the fair wind of hope.”2 According to Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, Abraham was an exception to this rule: through “the wonder of faith,” Abraham remains “young enough to wish” and “preserve an eternal youth.”3 Fear and Trembling begins with the story of a man whose ever-increasing admiration for Abraham was proportionate to the degree to which “life had separated what had been united in the child’s pious simplicity.”4 Silentio thus announces the central question of his book: how can a mature understanding of the ways of the world coexist with a childlike love of life? Silentio is neither the first nor the last to pose this question. The associate between wisdom and resignation is something of a commonplace. In the Greek tradition, it appears as early as Aristophanes’ Clouds, in which Socrates, who is portrayed as the ascetic head of a school into which men have withdrawn from the city in order to devote themselves to philosophical studies, is called “miserably unhappy” by Pheidippides.5 In the Hebrew Bible, the same sentiment occurs in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “I set my mind to study and probe with wisdom Jacob Howland is McFarlin Professor of Philosophy and past Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Tulsa. �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW all that happens under the sun.—An unhappy business, that, which God gave to men to be concerned with! I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is futile and pursuit of wind.”6 In modern literature, this theme is expressed by Goethe’s Faust: True, I am more clever than all the vain creatures, The Doctors and Masters, Writers and Preachers; No doubts plague me, nor scruples as well. I’m not afraid of devil or hell. To offset that, all joy is rent from me. ***** Hemmed in by all this heap of books, Their gnawing worms, amid their dust, While to the arches, in all the nooks Are smoke-stained papers midst them thrust, Boxes and glasses round me crammed, And instruments in cases hurled, Ancestral stuff around me jammed— That is your world! That’s called a world! And still you question why your heart Is cramped and anxious in your breast? Why each impulse to live has been repressed In you by some vague, unexplainèd smart?7 Three decades after the publication of Fear and Trembling, Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that loving life is inconsistent with understanding it; wisdom produces nausea, while the appetite for life can take root and grow only within an atmosphere of illusion.8 For his part, Silentio insists that there is a solution to the problem of the unity of youthful enthusiasm and adult knowledge, the name of which is “faith.” But while Silentio does not doubt the actuality of faith—particularly as exemplified in Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice Isaac—he cannot satisfactorily explain its possibility, much less reproduce its movements in his own life. The subtitle “A Dialectical Lyric” announces that Fear and Trembling is simultaneously a philosophical and a poetic HOWLAND 35 work—one that employs intellect and imagination to illuminate its subject. Yet Silentio is unwilling to accept without qualification the title of “poet” or “philosopher.” More precisely, in denying that he is a philosopher, he affirms that he is a poet, and in denying that he is a poet, he affirms that he is a philosopher.9 If, as this contradiction seems to imply, he both is and is not a poet and a philosopher, we might be entitled to assume that he both does and does not know what he is talking about. We are thus invited us to identify and ponder the potentially fruitful inconsistencies in Silentio’s discussion of faith.10 Here is one such inconsistency. Silentio states: “I can very well describe the movements of faith, but I cannot make them.”11 But if the movements of faith are wholly internal, and so invisible to others, how could Silentio know them without having experienced them? Caveat lector: Silentio’s explanation of the internal structure of faith—in particular, his assertion that faith involves a movement of finitude that follows a movement of infinite resignation12—deserves critical scrutiny. I. Silentio’s Flat-Footed Knight The clearest description of the phenomenon that Silentio is trying to understand in Fear and Trembling is contained in his imaginative description of what he calls the “knight of faith.” Silentio’s first encounter with this knight is inauspicious. “Dear me!” he exclaims, “Is this the person, is it actually him? He looks just like a tax collector.”13 In Silentio’s imagination, the knight of faith is literally and figuratively “pedestrian.”14 We watch him as he strolls around the city and makes his way through the week. At work, he labors with the precision of an “Italian bookkeeper”; at church, he is “impossible to distinguish from the rest of the crowd”; at leisure, he resembles a “mercenary soul.” He walks like a “postman,” talks of food like a “restaurateur,” plans construction projects like a “capitalist,” and relaxes with his pipe like “the local tradesman . . . vegetating in the twilight.” In brief, Silentio detects in �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the knight of faith not the slightest “crack” through which one might catch sight of the infinite: “He is solid through and through. . . . He belongs entirely to the world; no bourgeois philistine could belong to it more.”15 But Silentio’s imagination goes beyond appearances, for he also tells us what the knight of faith thinks and feels. From this perspective, it is clear that he is free of the bourgeois philistine’s social ambition, restless anxiety, and slavish adherence to convention. Although he is poor, he “thinks about an appetizing little dish of warm food his wife surely has for him when he comes home.” Indeed, he “firmly believes that his wife has that delectable dish for him,” and to see him eat this meal would be an “enviable” and “inspiring” sight. But if she doesn’t have it, “oddly enough—it is all the same to him”; whatever he may find on his plate, so to speak, leaves him deeply satisfied. He runs into a stranger at a building site; “in no time he erects a building, having at his disposal all the resources required for that purpose.” For “if it came to that,” he thinks, “I could easily get it.” The knight of faith evidently has an active imagination—for how can a man who “does not have four beans” afford delicious delicacies, much less finance a building project? What is more, “he enjoys and takes part in everything”; “everything that happens—a rat scurrying under a gutter plank, children playing—everything engages him with a composure in existence as if he were a girl of sixteen.” In a word, “he lets things take their course with a freedom from care as if he were a reckless good-for-nothing.”16 Silentio remarks in passing that the knight’s appetite is “heartier than Esau’s.”17 This statement cuts two ways. Jacob purchases Esau’s birthright for a bowl of stew, and later steals his brother’s paternal blessing. Like Esau, the knight of faith, in his simple contentment and guileless freedom from care, must be an easy mark for more cunning men. But unlike Esau, the knight of faith is always blessed in life, because he receives everything as a blessing. And this is the main point. To the man for whom “life had separated what had been united in the HOWLAND 37 child’s pious simplicity,”18 Abraham presents a paradox. Just so, the knight of faith presents a paradox to Silentio, for whom “God’s love, both in a direct and inverse sense, is incommensurable with the whole of actuality.”19 Silentio supposes that the movement of faith comes after that of infinite resignation; faith makes whole what life has fractured. But his imaginative description of the knight of faith tells a different story. While this knight knows the difference between actuality and possibility, reason and imagination, he combines them in his day-today existence in such a way that each augments the other: he enjoys the products of his imagination as if they were actual, and the actual conditions of his existence as if they were what one could wish for in imagination. Silentio claims that the knight of faith is “not a poet,”20 yet we see that his love of life is essentially poetic and authorial.21 Inasmuch as he “enjoys and takes part in everything,”22 God’s love has furthermore never appeared to him to be “incommensurable with the whole of actuality.”23 The knight of faith is thus no more familiar with Silentio’s conception of resignation than he is with his Godforsaken conception of actuality, because the former is dependent on the latter. The knight of faith, to repeat, is “solid through and through”;24 there are no cracks, because he has never been broken. Let me put this point another way. Although Silentio does not explain why he thinks that God’s love is incommensurable with the whole of actuality, this is evidently a general conclusion that he has drawn from experience. On the whole, and setting aside particular exceptions, men act as if they did not love God, and events proceed as if God did not love man. Now this conclusion rests on the inherently uncertain presupposition that inductive reasoning gives one access to the nature of actuality as a whole. Silentio accordingly envisions faith as the solution to a problem that his intellect has posed.25 This problem, however, is entirely foreign to the knight of faith. Like Alyosha Karamazov, and unlike Alyosha’s brother Ivan, he has always loved life “before everything else,” and in �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW particular, before its “meaning” and “logic.”26 And because love has always come first for him, he has never felt the weight of the incommensurability that comes to light when one is guided primarily by the mind rather than the heart. Unlike Silentio, the knight of faith never renounced the world, so he does not need faith to get it back. II. Philosophers and Fools The differences between Silentio and the knight of faith can be delineated more clearly by looking at two antecedents to the latter—one from Athens, the other from Jerusalem. The first suggests that there may be more than one way to combine a youthful passion for life with a mature understanding of it, while the second suggests that the problem as Silentio understands it—namely, how to make the movement of faith after the movement of infinite resignation—may be insoluble. Plato’s Socrates resembles the knight of faith both externally and internally. Like Silentio’s knight, Socrates is poor; if anything, he is even more carefree in his poverty inasmuch as he does not work at all.27 Like Silentio’s knight, he is just as satisfied in times of scarcity as in times of plenty. Alcibiades explains in the Symposium that, during military campaigns, Socrates put up with hunger better than anyone, yet he alone was able to enjoy his meals when food was abundant.28 This last detail suggests Socrates’ equanimity in the face of death, something he amply demonstrates during his trial and execution.29 Like Silentio’s knight, Socrates is superficially pedestrian, and not just because he lacks the financial resources to attain any higher rank than ordinary foot-soldier. “He speaks of pack-asses and blacksmiths and cobblers and tanners, and seems always to say the same things in the same ways,” Alcibiades observes.30 But as with the knight of faith, the inner is not the outer: anyone who opens up his speeches or is vouchsafed a glimpse of his soul finds a sublime beauty beneath his quotidian exterior.31 Like the knight of faith, Socrates’ appar- HOWLAND 39 ent simplicity exposes him to the schemes of more cunning men. Callicles accordingly warns him that he runs the risk of being put to death by his enemies.32 But again, Socrates simply is not afraid of death—a fact that has caused some commentators to infer that Socrates hates life, or, in Silentio’s terms, that he embraces death with a kind of infinite resignation.33 This inference, however, flies in the face of his earnest and energetic engagement with the essential tasks and opportunities of a human life. As Socrates makes clear in the Apology, his watchword is wakefulness, not sleep.34 And yet, he takes leave of life without apprehension and without regret.35 Socrates’ relationship to the world could be described as one of engaged detachment. He approaches life in a manner analogous to an athlete who “leaves everything on the field,” but who nevertheless immediately forgets the result and is utterly gracious in defeat as well as victory. In my view, it is philosophical eros—which Socrates regards as even more essential to the philosopher than intellectual capability36—that sustains his attitude of engaged detachment. Socrates’ philosophical eros relates to a conception of actuality that differs both from Silentio’s inductive disappointment and from the poetically augmented conception of the knight of faith. Silentio describes a youth whose love for an unattainable princess is “transfigured into a love of the eternal being.”37 Here we have something like Socrates’ philosophical love of the Ideas or Forms, except that Silentio associates this love with a movement of resignation that springs from an intellec-tual acknowledgment of the disappointing character of actu-ality. But Socrates’ longing for wisdom is not a consequence of his understanding of the world, and is not born of frustration. Rather, it is nothing less than the most dedicated and persistent love of the whole of actuality—and here actuality must be understood not as the dispiriting way of the world or the tedious limitations of human life (whether real or imagined), but as that which most fully is, in the distinctive integrity of its being.38 �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The second antecedent of Silentio’s knight of faith that I would like to consider is the Hasidic fool in Rabbi Nachman of Bretslav’s influential story “The Clever Man and the Simple Man.”39 Nachman’s tale is a religious allegory about two childhood friends who follow separate paths in life. “Determined to conquer the world,”40 the clever man travels extensively, becomes an expert in “every artistic achievement,”41 and ultimately “penetrates the heart of everything in nature and in the soul of man.”42 He becomes “enormously rich and wise,”43 yet his wisdom serves only to make him miserable: “a violent disgust at the imperfection of life drove him from place to place, and he nowhere found rest.”44 This is consistent with Silentio’s assertion that God’s love is incommensurable with actuality. But the clever man goes further than Silentio, for when he is summoned by the king, he reasons—and tries to convince others as well—that the king does not exist. The simple man remains at home and learns the humble trade of shoemaking. He is a clumsy craftsman and lives in great poverty, yet he does not suffer from the spiritual anorexia that afflicts his clever friend. Indeed, he is “joyous and in good spirits from morning till evening.”45 Like the knight of faith, he uses his imagination to enhance his experience, and so savors everything that life sets before him. His wife gives him bread and water, but he delights in these as if they were the finest meat and wine: “Thus he seasoned the scanty bites with gay fancies . . . and while he ate he really tasted all the choice dainties of which he spoke.”46 He rejoices in his “shabby sheepskin” as if there were no “nobler garment.”47 People often make fun of him and attempt to dupe him, but their insults and tricks have no effect on his good humor. “Ay, friend,” he is accustomed to answer, “just see how foolish I am! You can be a good deal cleverer than I and still be a proper fool.”48 And when the king calls for him, he answers immediately, responding to this unexpected bit of good fortune estatically: “the joy of the simple man was overpowering.”49 It is significant that the simple man’s happiness is not HOWLAND 41 purchased at the price of ignorance. Because the simple man “had passed his life without intrigues, he knew how to see into the heart of right and wrong.”50 In the person of the simple man, this essential moral knowledge is inseparable from the knowledge of how to live joyfully, come what may. In Nachman’s story, it also pays off by conventional standards. Valued by the king for his “virtue and simple understanding,”51 the simple man becomes the governor of his province and finally the king’s prime minister. Meanwhile, the clever man becomes impoverished due to his unwavering devotion to exposing the “madness and delusion” of those who continue to believe in the king’s existence.52 One day he meets the simple man, and tries to prove to him that he, too, has been fooled about this fundamental matter. The simple man cannot counter his arguments, and does not even attempt to do so. Rather, the story ends with the simple man declaring to his friend, “You will never receive the grace of simplicity!”53 Rabbi Nachman’s tale recapitulates the main themes of Silentio’s imaginative encounter with the knight of faith. Both narratives trace the practical and theoretical problem of resignation to the sovereignty of the intellect in the soul. Conversely, both teach that equanimity, together with the ability to live joyously, springs from the poetically productive love of a trusting and grateful heart. But Nachman’s story does not merely confirm that Silentio’s problem of how to repair what life has fractured is foreign to the knight of faith, for it also warns that there may be a point beyond which what the intellect has broken cannot be made whole. Measured by the exacting standards of the intellect, the world manifests an ineluctable imperfection. The “violent disgust” elicited from the clever man by this imperfection convinces him, furthermore, that there is no king—and such a repugnant world is utterly inconsistent with the hypothesis of intelligent rule. The simple man rightly refuses to challenge this inference, because logical argumentation cannot address the deeper issue of the clever man’s profound spiritual and emotional �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW incapacity. How could one who regards every blessing as a curse learn to feel joy? By the “grace of simplicity,” on the other hand, the simple man is able to experience life as a blessing, and it is this experience that leads him thankfully to acknowledge God—the melech ha’olam, or “King of the Whole,” who is the ultimate source of all blessings. III. A Very Brief Conclusion Rabbi Nachman’s simple man is wiser in his foolishness than the clever man is in his wisdom, for only the simple man has attained knowledge of himself and others. In this respect, the simple man resembles Plato’s Socrates, who is also wrongly considered by more cunning and worldly men to be deluded. Like the knight of faith, Socrates and the simple man understand intuitively that love precedes cognition in the wellordered soul. This is a secret that Silentio makes available to his readers, even if he himself fails to grasp it. But unless we readers either love the whole or can learn to do so, our knowledge will be of no more value than Silentio’s ignorance. NOTES 1. This article was originally presented at the Sixth International Kierkegaard Conference at St. Olaf College in June of 2010. I would like to thank David Possen for his critical comments, and Ed Mooney for his encouragement. 2. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 292. 3. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 15. 4. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 7. 5. Aristophanes, Clouds, l. 104 in Four Texts on Socrates, trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 120. 6. Ecclesiastes 1:13-14. JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999), 1766. HOWLAND 43 7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, trans. George Madison Priest in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, vol. 47 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), Part I, ll. 366-370 and 402-413. 8. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 814. 9. “The present writer is not at all a philosopher; he is, poetically and tastefully expressed, a free-lancer” and “I am not a poet and go about things only dialectically.” Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 5 and 79. 10. This is not the only indication that Fear and Trembling presents us with a partial and incomplete understanding of its subject, yet one that nevertheless enables a discerning reader to glimpse more than its author has seen, and thus to begin to correct his mistakes. As Stephen Evans observes in his Introduction to Fear and Trembling, the book’s epigram—“What Tarquin the Proud communicated in his garden with the beheaded poppies was understood by the son but not by the messenger”— invites us to see Silentio as a messenger who is unaware of the deeper significance of his own message (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, x). But because we do not know whether this is the point of the epigram as Silentio understood it, we also cannot know whether Silentio himself understands that he says more in Fear and Trembling than he knows. 11. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 31. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 32. 14. Ibid., 34. The Danish word is Pedestre. 15. Ibid., 32-33. 16. Ibid., 33-34. 17. Ibid., 33. 18. Ibid., 7. 19. Ibid., 28. 20. Ibid., 33. 21. The word poet comes from the Greek poiētēs, which derives from �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the verb poiein, meaning to make or to produce—clearly apposite in reference to the knight of faith. The word author comes from the Latin auctor, which, among other things, signifies an authority, a creator, a principal cause, a founder of a people. Note, too, that Silentio consistently emphasizes the fruitfulness of faith as exemplified in “father” Abraham, the auctor generis or progenitor of the people. 22. Ibid., 32. 23. Ibid., 28. 24. Ibid., 32. 25. His relationship with God is mediated by his intellect: it is not God’s love that makes him “unspeakably happy,” but the “thought” that God is love. Ibid., 28. 26. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), 231. 27. Plato, Apology, 23b-c. 28. Plato, Symposium, 220a. 29. See Alcibiades’ description of his exemplary composure in battle in Symosium. 220d-221c. Alcibiades also makes it clear that Socrates has no desire for conventional honors, which others pursue as a means of overcoming the oblivion associated with death—cf. 220de and 208c-d. 30. Plato, Symposium, 221e-222a. 31. Plato, Symposium, 216e-217a. 32. Plato, Gorgias, 486a-b. 33. See “The Problem of Socrates” in Friedrich Nietzsche, The AntiChrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 162. 34. Plato, Apology, 30e-31a; cf. Republic, 476d. 35. Plato, Phaedo, 117-118. 36. In explaining who the philosopher is, Socrates accordingly begins not with the philosopher’s intellect but with his desire: he is a lover of the whole of wisdom. See Republic, 475b). HOWLAND 45 37. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 36. 38. See especially Republic, 476a-d. 39. Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice Friedman (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999), 71-94. On the significance of this story within the context of Yiddish literature, see Ruth R. Wisse, The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 40. Buber, Tales, 72. 41. Ibid., 74. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 78. 44. Ibid., 74-75. 45. Ibid., 75. 46. Ibid., 76. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 78. 49. Ibid., 85. 50. Ibid., 86. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 90. 53. Ibid., 94. �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 47 Kant’s Rational Being as Moral Being Jay Smith In the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes: This discussion as to the positive advantage of critical principles of pure reason can be similarly developed in regard to the concept of God and of the simple nature of our soul. . . . Even the assumption—as made on behalf of the necessary practical employment of my reason—of God, freedom, and immortality is not permissible unless at the same time speculative reason be deprived of its pretensions to transcendent insight. . . . I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the preconception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars against morality.1 As evidenced by the Critique of Practical Reason and other works such as Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, the simple act of limiting the excessive and dogmatic claims of speculative metaphysics in order to secure morality proved more contentious, difficult, and complex than the passage above suggests. The situation of practical reason changes in radical and complicated ways as it emerges out of the shadows of speculative reason to become the primary faculty that determines our rational being. I will first discuss the context established for practical reason and morality in the Critique of Pure Jay Smith is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. This article was first delivered as a lecture at St. John’s College in Santa Fe on April 10, 2009. �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Reason. Then I will try to show how pure practical reason is connected to rational faith in the Critique of Practical Reason. This examination will uncover the uncanniness of pure practical reason, an uncanniness hidden in part by Kant’s commitment to, and transformation of, a traditional view of pure reason. The uncanniness is caused by the operation of a power that is beyond, or out of, the normal course of nature—a power that differs from natural powers. This essay tries to show that Rational Being, for Kant, is Moral Being, and that this equivalence preserves a higher dignity for human beings than is compatible with the mere pursuit of secure and comfortable living. I. Practical Reason and Rational Faith in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant connects a concept of knowledge with a synthesis made possible by the reception of givens under the forms of sensibility, namely, space and time. By synthesis, Kant means an activity that produces a unity. These sensible givens are made ready for further synthesis by the productive imagination. Finally, by the exercise of synthetic judgments, the worked-up impressions are brought under the unity of the categories of the understanding, so that an object of experience is constituted. This constitution is possible only because these spatiotemporal givens worked up as presentations or representations are accompanied by the formal ‘I think’—they are prehended and apprehended by the same mind. It is this assertion of the necessity of an overarching unity, a transcendental unity of apperception, that is Kant’s response to Hume’s claim that the mind is only a bundle of impressions. Without this ‘I think’ belonging to a persistently identical self-consciousness, the subject would not recognize all these presentations as its own, and, immersed in the stream of lived happenings, would simply forget itself. SMITH 49 Let me give an example as a way to explain this process without getting too bogged down in Kant’s technical details. I am standing in the kitchen, I hear a loud noise, I turn, look out the window, and see a motorcycle going by. These impressions—hearing the loud noise and seeing the motorcycle— arise in a temporal sequence and are spatially arranged: I was standing by the refrigerator when I heard the noise, and then I turned my head to look out the window and see a motorcycle going by. These happenings, even given in a spatial and temporal arrangement, are not yet an experience in the Kantian sense. There is as of yet no constituted object of experience. To have an experience it is necessary that these two happenings be brought into unity—in this case, under the category of cause and effect: the loud noise is the backfire of the motorcycle. To be able to constitute an experience out of these happenings, I must be able to temporally and spatially rearrange these happenings, cutting their ties to the way I happened to notice them while standing in the kitchen. This rearrangement, which prepares them to be taken up into the categories of the understanding, is the work of the productive imagination. The sound I heard before I saw the motorcycle is not the cause of the motorcycle but vice versa. Our mind in this way rearranges these happenings to give us an objective experience, an experience in which the subject who has the experience—namely the transcendental subject who spontaneously produces the ‘I think’ that marks these happenings as happenings of the same, constant mind—also posits a correlative transcendental object of experience, a bare x, a placeholder as it were. The happenings become an experience, are constituted into an object of experience, when the reference point shifts from the subject of the happenings to the posited placeholder, so that the happenings are experienced as centered on an object over and against the subject. “Oh, that loud noise was the backfire from the motorcycle.” �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW This concept of knowledge and this description of how our experience is constituted—that is, how we shape experience and give it unity—are easily grasped by us and, for the most part, accepted. For instance, here is a common puzzle: we present someone with a series of, say, six pictures—six different stages of a person chopping down a tree. These pictures are presented in a random order with the expectation that everyone will reorder them in the same way. In Kantian terms, we would say that each person can synthesize these happenings into an objective experience valid for everyone. Why is this concept of knowledge important for a discussion of Kantian morality? First, because all objective experience is constituted in this way, even what we take to be our internal experience is given under a form of sensibility, namely time, worked up by the productive imagination and subsumed under the categories of the understanding. What we take to be our inner experience, our inner selves, our deepest and truest desires, are constituted and conditioned in this manner. Kant calls this inner self the empirical or phenomenal self. We have no speculative access, no intellectual intuition either into the thing-in-itself that is the self or into a putative “real” or “authentic” self—which Kant labels the noumenal self. This lack of speculative access into the self has significant repercussions on our discussion of morality and on what is demanded from practical reason. Kant’s concept of knowledge also produces a second, more complicated consequence for our discussion of morality. Kant seeks to reject the sort of speculative thought that emerged from mythical thinking when we began to claim access to a universal unity, a One. This One could be seen as the cause and the ground of the Many; in the light of this One, the Many could be conceived as a whole, a totality. In striving for such a conception, the human mind marks out for itself an extramundane point of reference in which the flow and jostle of concrete events and phenomena are joined together in a stable whole. In this distancing view, one is able SMITH 51 to differentiate between the totality of what is and individual entities, between the world and what occurs within it. Things are understood not in their particularity but in what underlies them. They are understood as ideas, as essences, as forms or substances; that is to say, they are understood in regard to what connects them back to the One. As part of this cognitive stance, of this bios theōrētikos, the soul, in striving for an intellectual intuition of the cosmos, forms itself as it becomes conscious of itself in the recollective and reflexive intuition of the One. The uniting of the knower with the One is both an ecstatic selftranscendence and a reflexive self-assurance that enables one to see and live his or her life from this extramundane point of reference. Within this self-assurance, fears of death, of isolation, of frailty, of contradiction, of surprise, and of novelty can be faced. Kant provides a universal unity as well, but of an entirely different stripe. He begins with the transcendental unity of the knowing subject which, in relating itself to itself, requires, as a posited correlate, a symmetrical concept of everything that stands over and against the subject—that is, a transcendental concept of the world as the totality of all appearances. Kant calls this correlate a Cosmological Idea, which aims at the whole of possible experience and the unconditioned. The unconditioned is the ground of appearance and occupies what would have been the place of the One. Perhaps an example from Aristotle might be helpful here. At the end of the Metaphysics Aristotle talks of an unmoved mover whose activity is thought thinking on thought. The experience that he wishes to ground is a theoretically worked-up experience that has its roots in our sense-experiences of an ordered whole, an eternal cosmos of ordered motions. Given that we can have such an experience, how is it possible? To understand Aristotle’s unmoved mover, I am often tempted to make a transcendental move of positing the unmoved mover as a necessary logical construct that lays out the conditions for the possibility of this eternal and ordered motion while unifying everything in �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW light of an overarching end. Aristotle, however, does not make this move. Instead, he makes the puzzling assertions that such an unmoved mover is alive, and that, in its activity of thought thinking on thought, it exhibits the best kind of life there is, the bios theōrētikos—which is a real possibility only for some of us and only for short periods of time. In whatever way we are to understand this exhibited life, we can point to it as something transcendent, as a One that is the ground of the order of the cosmos, a One of which we can say that it is not merely a logical construct. Dante, in the context of a religious journey, also calls upon this One at the beginning of his Paradiso: “The glory of Him who moves all things pervades the universe and shines in one part more and in another less.”2 Kant recognizes that this orientation toward the One, in the philosophical context, is motivated by the needs of reason. Reason is marked by universality and necessity as it strives for systematic completeness and perfection. Speculative reason seeks this One, this universal unity, as it attempts to bring together in one synthetic act the conditioned—that is, the whole of possible experience—and the unconditioned—that is, the ground or end of such a whole. The results unfortunately are the antinomies, the contradictions that reason inevitably falls into when it seeks to know, to speculatively point at, the overarching unity, the One. As Kant explains: “Either, therefore, reason through its demand for the unconditioned must remain in conflict with itself, or this unconditioned must be posited outside the series, in the intelligible.”3 The positing of something outside the series of appearances is needed in order to point to a ground for appearances that makes the possibility of appearances conceivable. This positing is also needed in order to give a fuller account of us than are provided by references to an empirical ego and to a transcendental unity of apperception. But why take the trouble to label this positing the intelligible world, especially since Kant has denied us any intellectual intuition, and since his concept of knowledge en- SMITH 53 sures that an intelligible world could never be a possible object either of experience or of knowledge? As a way to begin, let us look at what Kant accomplishes in resolving the antinomies of pure reason by the positing of an intelligible world. First, Kant preserves an idealizing synthesis, a world-constituting synthesis that allows the distinction to be made between the world as a whole and what is in the world. This distinction helps to guide understanding in its work of knowing objects in the world. In preserving the synthesis, however, Kant downgrades the cosmos into the object-domain of the natural sciences, into a kingdom of nature, a kingdom whose only unity is a unity under a certain set of laws. This unity is not a unity that could become an object of knowledge, much less exhibit the highest form of life. It is not the One that holds together the Many. This regulative unity merely assures us that for any set of conditions a previous set of conditions can be found from which the latter can be understood and so on, ad infinitum. This world of nature, of appearances, is no longer a whole organized according to ends; because its unity is merely regulative, it has the heuristic goal of advancing theory-construction. The regulative unity of the Cosmological Idea does not provide an extramundane point of reference, nor can it satisfy reason’s demand—or our need—for a whole that contains contingencies, neutralizes negations, and calms the fears of death and isolation. Second, Kant preserves a space outside of nature that does not conflict with the regulative unity needed for the functioning of the understanding, as he states in the section that discusses the Antinomy of Pure Reason: The sensible world contains nothing but appearances, and these are mere representations which are always sensibly conditioned; in this field things in themselves are never objects to us. It is not surprising that in dealing with a member of the empirical series, no matter what member it may be, we are never justified in making a leap out beyond the context of sensibility. . . . On the other hand, �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to think an intelligible ground of appearances, that is, of the sensible world, and to think it free from the contingency of appearances, does not conflict with the unlimited empirical regress.4 As we said above, this intelligible world cannot be known by us. The resolution of the antinomies of pure reason therefore evokes resignation, which Kant expresses in this way: The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of pure reason is therefore only negative; since it serves not as an organon for the extension of knowledge but as a discipline for the limitation of pure reason, and, instead of discovering truth, has only the modest merit of guarding against error.5 If there is to be a positive use of pure reason, it will not be in its speculative use but in its practical use. Furthermore, Kant’s assertion that he found it necessary to deny knowledge6 suggests that it is not in the search for truth that we find our dignity; it is rather in guarding against error that some other possibility is preserved for us. To conclude this first section, let us consider why this space is labeled “the intelligible world.” Our metaphysical desire, the desire for a One that can satisfy reason, cannot be satisfied speculatively; moreover, as Kant has shown, attempts to do so propel us into a land of illusion and deception. Unlike David Hume, who claims that this desire will disappear once we see that it cannot be satisfied, Kant rightly asserts that this metaphysical desire will not wither. The needs of reason are always pressing, and it is these needs that provide the context for Kant’s exploration of practical reason. The burden that speculative reason attempted to carry in response to the demands of reason and the needs of our metaphysical desire can only be carried by practical reason—and in particular, by practical reason intimately bound up with morality. This is why Kant says, SMITH 55 The idea of a moral world has, therefore, objective reality, not as referring to an object of an intelligible intuition (we are quite unable to think any such object), but as referring to the sensible world, viewed, however, as being an object of pure reason in its practical employment, that is, as a corpus mysticum of the rational beings in it, as far as the free will of each being is, under moral laws, in complete systematic unity with itself and with the freedom of every other.7 Kant strives to preserve for us a rational core, a moral world whose objective reality is affirmed by the fact of the ought. An ought requires an I beyond the empirical ego, an I not reducible to the kingdom of nature, an I somehow connected to considerations of freedom. Kant tries to preserve rationality by relying on pure practical reason, and on its affiliated concept of a world of rational beings, each of which acts at all times as if, through his maxims, he were a legislator in the universal kingdom of ends. Reason, which requires universality, necessity, and ends, must be at play in this moral world that is also intelligible. Comprehending such a world would be an exalted and stirring project; but Kant’s articulation of the project at the end of the Critique of Pure Reason—as was pointed out by Kant’s critics—lacked both clarity and content. Let us turn now to the work that tried to respond to such concerns, Kant’s second Critique, The Critique of Practical Reason. II. Kantian Moral Being Here is how Kant introduces his Critique of Practical Reason: The theoretical use of reason was concerned with the objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critique of it with regard to this use really dealt only with the pure cognitive faculty, since this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily lose itself beyond its boundaries, among unattainable objects or even among contradictory concepts. It is quite different �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW with the practical use of reason. In this, reason is concerned with the determining grounds of the will, which is a faculty either of producing objects corresponding to representations or of determining itself to effect such objects (whether the physical power is sufficient or not), that is, of determining its causality. For, in that, reason can at least suffice to determine the will and always has objective reality insofar as volition is at issue. The first question here, then, is whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can be a determining ground of the will only as empirically conditioned. Now there enters here a concept of causality justified by the Critique of Pure Reason although not capable of being presented empirically, namely that of freedom; and if we can discover grounds for proving that this property does in fact belong to the human will (and so to the will of all rational beings as well), then it will not only be shown that pure reason can be practical but that it alone, and not reason empirically limited, is unconditionally practical. Consequently, we shall not have to do a critique of pure practical reason but only of practical reason as such. For, pure reason, once it is shown to exist, needs no critique. It is pure reason that itself contains the standard of critical examination of every use of it. It is therefore incumbent upon the Critique of Practical Reason as such to prevent empirically conditioned reason from presuming that it, alone and exclusively, furnished the determining ground of the will. If it is proved that there is pure reason, its use is alone immanent; and the empirically conditioned use, which lays claim to absolute rule, is on the contrary transcendent and expresses itself in demands and commands that go quite beyond its sphere— precisely the opposite from what could be said of pure reason in its speculative use.8 A mouthful to be sure! Let us try and bring some clarity to this passage. First, Kant refers to pure reason as a unified faculty that can be talked about either in its speculative or practical use. Next, pure reason is concerned with the questions of SMITH 57 freedom, God, and immortality, as is made clear by Kant’s insistence upon universality and necessity. Finally, pure reason bears within itself the “standard of critical examination of every use of it.” Pure reason does not look to a higher authority for its standards, nor does it see its finiteness as marked and determined by reference to an infinite, divine reason. The unity of pure reason is preserved over the difference between its speculative and practical use by promoting pure practical reason to a place of primacy, while at the same time demoting speculative reason to secondary status. This reversal of priority is quite striking when compared to theological explorations of the relation between human and divine reason. A look to theology’s distinguishing of divine and human reason puts this reversal of priority in an interesting light. For some theologians, human reason is intimately connected to divine reason, because the former takes its standards and orientation from the latter. Thus, as regards human reason, the primary faculty is speculative and the supporting faculty is practical. In speculative reason man looks up to an order of higher ontological status than himself—God and his created order—while practical reason guides man’s actions within this order of ends. God, however, cannot have speculative reason as primary, since there is no order of higher ontological status for him to look up to. If there were such a higher order, he would not be the creator, but the divine craftsman. So for God it is his reason in its practical aspect that is primary. He creates by his word— Let there be light!—and then he beholds that it is good. By reversing the primacy of the two faculties of reason, Kant makes human reason resemble divine reason: pure practical reason, or reason in its moral activity, comes first; then speculative reason follows—creating, then beholding. There is no ontologically higher order that is open to man’s speculative view, and thus the traditional metaphysical claim that actuality anchored in this higher ontological order is prior to potentiality becomes suspect as well. This rejection of the priority of actuality is part of what is at stake in Kant’s �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW rejection of the ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God. For Kant, possibility—a possibility not tied to an already existing actuality, but a possibility tied to freedom—will be central. Since there is no existing order of the Good that is open to our view, and thus no way to measure our actions by reference to such an order, this reorientation is a significant break from traditional ethics with its concerns about such things as the distribution of goods, and with its grounding of obligation in the demand that we bring to fulfillment our potentialities as human beings. Let us now turn more directly to the passage quoted above. Kant seems to assert that practical reason determines the faculty of the will, but that the will can be determined in two different ways: it can produce objects corresponding to representations, or it can bring about such objects. To understand the first alternative, we must see how something can be a cause of our actions. In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant says, “Life is the faculty of a being to act in accordance with the laws of the faculty of desire. The faculty of desire is a being’s faculty to be by means of its representations the cause of the reality of the objects of these representations.”9 In other words, this faculty of desire requires representations of certain objects, from the very concrete (such as desiring an ice cream cone) to the more abstract (such as honor or shame). The subject is affected by a certain representation of a desired state of affairs, and then practical reason goes to work to determine how to attain or bring about such a state of affairs. The content of this representation and the attendant evoking of pleasure or pain is determined by our experience. Kant claims that we do not innately know what we desire and what will bring us pleasure or pain; and furthermore, he claims that these will vary from person to person. We find what it is that makes us happy through experience. When practical reason determines the will through representation, it is operating as empirical practical reason. Under various descriptions it should be familiar to all of us. SMITH 59 When we strive toward a desired end—usually happiness—empirical practical reason is at work as the overall endin-itself that needs no reference to another end. Maxims and rules of conduct formed in consideration of this end Kant calls hypothetical imperatives: if you want this, then you must act in this way. A way of life organized around such imperatives is a prudential life. Kant indicates this dependency upon experience by the word empirical. This dependency on experience motivates most of our actions, and that is why Kant sees those actions as pathological—because they are determined heteronomously rather than autonomously. Kant thinks that heteronomous determination is natural to us, since he believes that we are inwardly determined in the same way as the course of nature is determined. Our inmost, authentic desires, which we believe both determine and express who we really are, have been shaped by our education, by our experience, and by our society—that is, from without. Hence to be determined by these inclinations is not to be free, but to be determined heteronomously. Kant regards everything we think of as deeply, inwardly human—our desires, our social roles, our insights, our feelings of love, care, and devotion—as heteronomously determined, which is to say, conditioned from a moral perspective, and radically pathological. Kant considers all desire-driven action to be pathological because it arises in us as a pathos, as a suffering of a determination that arises outside of us. In this sense, therefore, pathological activity is not contrasted with normal activity—since it is precisely normal activity that is pathological—but with autonomous activity, that is, with freedom and the formal determination by one’s own will. This other possibility of determining the will, in which we are not determined heteronomously, is to have the will effect the object by the exercise of the faculty of pure practical reason that is not grounded in our experiences. This way of determining the will may be rather puzzling, but we can at least understand that it would eliminate the mediation caused by �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW representing to ourselves objects of experience that then activate the faculty of desire, thereby bypassing our dependence on experience. To be subject to representation and desire is in fact to be determined pathologically; moreover, to be motivated by concerns for happiness is to be determined heteronomously. Kant frames this option in the form of a question: “The first question here, then, is whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can be a determining ground of the will only as empirically conditioned.”10 Kant claims that what is at stake here is freedom and the possibility of autonomy in the sense of self-determination. Our freedom might well be at stake, but it is hard to accept the claim that pure reason alone, pure practical reason, can be sufficient in itself to determine the will. The common view, which is easier to accept, was expressed by Hume in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: “Reason being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery.”11 There are, of course, actions that we perform under the guidance of reason for which we have no immediate inclination— for example, submitting to a painful and risky surgery, or dragging oneself out of bed early to work at a job one dislikes. But the motivations for these actions are also tied to inclinations— to the desire for health or the desire for food and shelter. In other words, reason in its practical work can only direct inclination—that is, in Kantian terms, it can function only as conditioned or empirical practical reason. Kant is aware of this limitation, of course, and so he asserts that it is “incumbent upon the Critique of Practical Reason as such to prevent empirically conditioned reason from presuming that it, alone and exclusively, furnishes the determining ground of the will.”12 If we stand aside from our mode of representation, if we leave aside our faculty of desire—which is, after all, the defining faculty of life—we are certainly in an uncanny place. Is it possible that there could be an ethics or a SMITH 61 morality that is not the fulfillment of desire in some form, a fulfillment guided by the representation of the way the world is? Kant proposes that such an ethics or morality is possible, and that it is made possible by the operation of pure practical reason, a practical reason that is not dependent upon the representation of a desired object or state of affairs, not dependent on ends that are given to it. This claim about a will that can determine itself apart from representation sets the stage for the prominence of will as a basic metaphysical category for many thinkers following Kant. Kant pushes us very hard here. In effect, he says that we are less free than we believe. There is no internal sanctuary in which we can discover our true selves, and if we respond to divine commands or act on promises of an afterlife we are being determined heteronomously. Morality for Kant will not consist of a set of norms for bridling desire in order to keep our conduct free of excess. In relation to the smooth, normal course of events—now seen as pathological—morality is always an interruption, a going beyond the way the world is, a going beyond even the pleasure principle. Kant, in fact, rejects the distinction between higher and lower desires, between higher and lower pleasures, a distinction based on whether the desire originates in the intellect or in the senses. Such a distinction lies at the center of much moral reasoning and education, and is implicit in all appeals to moderation. The aim of such a morality is to refine our desires by reflection and to redirect them toward objects of higher ontological status, that is, objects that are visible to the mind only. By lifting our eyes to the intelligible heavens, as it were, we lift our desires as well. A simple example: Pleasures of the senses have a limit— sound, for example, can become so loud that it can destroy the sense organ; pleasures of the mind, on the contrary, can be unlimited—learning simply prepares the mind for more learning. Kant flatly states that all desires are on the same level; this is indicated, for instance, by the fact that we can and do leave a poetry reading because we want to go running and �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW vice versa. His contention is supported further by the fact that there is no intelligible heaven open to our view, and by the fact that we are determined in what we desire, we are fully conditioned beings. Because we are fully conditioned beings, we are less free than we believe, and everything we take as proper to our humanity stands on one side of the ledger, while only an invisible marker stands on the other side, pointing toward an empty dimension into which we can think ourselves, and in which we can imagine that it is possible to determine our moral being rationally, that is, universally and necessarily. If, however, on the one hand we are less free than we believe, Kant nevertheless also indicates that we are freer than we know. In his critique of practical reason, Kant often refers to the experience of moral necessitation, the experience of the ought—I ought to perform this action, I ought not to have done this, this ought not to have happened—and he gives us an interpretation of this experience that indicates that we are freer than we know: Lest anyone suppose that he finds an inconsistency when I now call freedom the condition of the moral law and afterwards . . . maintain that the moral law is the condition under which we can first become aware of freedom, I want only to remark that whereas freedom is indeed the ratio essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of free-dom. For, had not the moral law already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom (even though it is not self-contradictory). But were there no freedom, the moral law would not be encountered at all in ourselves.13 The positing of freedom is bound up with the moral law as a condition of its possibility, and this interpretation shores up the experience of the ought, making it a necessary, rather than a contingent, element in human cognition. In order, then, for the moral law to be encountered as the moral law—and for Kant SMITH 63 that means it must be encountered in its universal and necessary character—it is necessary to posit freedom. In this way, we are freer than we can know, since the moral law necessarily calls forth the postulate of freedom: even though freedom is not a possible object of knowledge for us, we must postulate it. This rational necessity of positing freedom is, for Kant, the first tenet of a rational faith. Of course it is critical for Kant that this positing of freedom should not contradict the doctrine of freedom found in the Critique of Pure Reason—namely, that freedom, though incapable of being an object of experience, is thinkable and conceivable as a transcendental connected with our noumenal selves, as part of the intelligible world needed to resolve the antinomies. This theoretical conceivability does not ground the concept of freedom, does not give it objective reality, but it does leave open the possibility of freedom. In the Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant says: The intelligible world signifies only a “something” that is left over when I have excluded from the determining grounds of my will everything belonging to the world of sense, merely in order to limit the principle of motives from the field of sensibility by circumscribing this field and showing that it does not include everything within itself but that there is still more beyond it; but of this something more I have no further cognizance.14 The only cognizance of the freedom proper to our intelligible, noumenal self, is an indirect one, a posited one. Only through the experience of the moral law, as interpreted in a certain way, can I become aware that I must be free. Of course this experience of the ought, of the moral law as universally and necessarily binding, can be interpreted otherwise. For example, following Freud, we could see the categorical imperative as an internalization of the strictures of our parents and society, resulting in the formation of the superego; or, following Freud’s contemporaries, we could see it as no- �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW thing more than the consequence either of long-settled custom or of the necessities dictated by prudence. Kant, however, is strongly drawn to this interpretation of the moral law because it solidifies many aspects of his thought. In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason he says, The union of causality as freedom with causality as natural mechanism, the first of which is established by the moral law, the second by the law of nature, and indeed in one and the same subject, the human being, is impossible without representing him with regard to the first as a being in itself but with regard to the second as an appearance, the former in pure, the latter in empirical consciousness.15 This positing of freedom fills out a possibility foreshadowed in the Critique of Pure Reason, allows for some kind of unity of the human being, and supports a view of reason that is not unavoidably in contradiction with itself. Our noumenal self in its freedom prescribes universal and necessary laws to our empirical and conditioned self, which experiences itself as necessitated by these prescriptions, not heteronomously, but autonomously, as self-determining. The preservation of the universal and necessary character of these prescriptions allows Kant to see this experience as rational. Only in this way do we gain some purchase on the intelligible world. We will take up this rationality again at the end of this essay. But why talk of this purchase on the intelligible world in terms of a rational faith? We see a similar move on the part of Maimonides in his recognition and resolution of a question that I am going to frame as an antinomy: Is the world eternal or does it have a beginning in time? Maimonides is concerned about the claim that Aristotle has demonstrated the eternality of the world. To hold onto the belief that God created and governs the world in the face of such a demonstrated claim is, for Maimonides, to be placed in an impossible situation. Neither he nor Kant could tolerate the proposition that we must SMITH 65 sacrifice reason for faith—that we should believe precisely because it is absurd. Maimonides spends a great deal of time showing that Aristotle did not claim to demonstrate that the world is eternal; and, in fact, he tries to show that it is not possible to demonstrate either that the world is eternal or that it has a beginning in time.16 We do not have a coherent, scientific account of our world to base such a demonstration on because our best physics (an Aristotelian one) and our best astronomy (a Ptolemaic one) are in contradiction. Thus, we are at liberty to decide this issue on other terms. Aristotle can hold a considered opinion that the world is eternal because it concurs with and supports his other metaphysical concerns. Of course, Maimonides is also at liberty to base his considered opinion on considerations of compatibility with his traditional faith. Kant goes a bit further than this compatibility, because he sees the moral law as universal and necessary: he holds that in determining the moral law we act as legislative members of a kingdom of ends. The underpinning of such universal, necessary, and teleological action must likewise have this rational character. Thus, for Kant, freedom is a tenet of a rational, not a traditional, faith. Let me now address the other two tenets of this rational faith. As mentioned above, somehow the will, quite apart from representation and desire, brings about an object. This object, for Kant, is the highest good, in which happiness ought to be distributed according to how much one deserves to be happy. Kant tells the painful truth: that in this world, those who deserve happiness often do not attain happiness—the wicked do indeed often prosper, and the good often suffer. Virtue is not its own reward; moreover, happiness does not constitute a coherent system: the things that make us happy often work against each other. In addition, it is not in our power to bring about this highest good. We can act individually as if we are legislating members of a Kingdom of ends, but to bring the highest good into being requires that others act with us—thus, �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to do so is not in our power. God is posited as a necessary condition for the possibility of such a highest Good, inasmuch as He can somehow harmonize our actions with those of others. Furthermore, the human will is not good, as we can see through the experience of being morally determined: we must struggle against our sensual nature as we strive to be virtuous. Now although we can strive to perfect our will, it is an impossible task, which Kant must reframe as an infinite task in order to make the completion of our striving at least conceivable. The condition for the possibility of such an infinite task is the immortality of the soul. Thus in order for the will to bring about the highest good, and thereby to have a rational hope that our actions are not completely futile, the rational postulates of God and immorality are required. The postulate of freedom grounds the moral law while the other two postulates, God and immortality, transform our moral actions (namely, making the world into what it ought to be and perfecting our will) into an infinite task. It is important to see that these rational postulates give us neither any knowledge of what God is in himself nor any knowledge of what life after death may be like. All I know is that it is necessary to assert these tenets in order to make it conceivable that we can bring about the highest good as an object of our will. In this way, our metaphysical desire is addressed and met by a rational faith; and this is the only way that these desires can be met, since Kant has demonstrated that they cannot be met by striving for a speculative vision. Let us now marshal further support for Kant’s assertion that we are freer than we know. We have already seen that in claiming to be the sole power that can determine the will, empirical practical reason oversteps its boundaries and closes off the uncanny space of freedom. This space is preserved by pure practical reason. But is there other evidence of our freedom? Kant presents several examples that show situations in which our freedom is made manifest. In the Critique of Practical Reason, he rebuts the claim that we are impotent in the face of our desires—that, for instance, those of us who lust SMITH 67 are controlled by our lust. Kant responds that a lustful person about to enter a brothel would soon learn to control his lust if he encountered a gallows in front of the door together with an official proclamation that anyone frequenting the establishment would be hanged. We can certainly conceive of controlling our lust under such a threat, but if we do exert control, it is for the sake of self-love and self-preservation. Kant then extends this rebuttal with a slightly different example: A prince pressures someone to bear false witness against an innocent man whom the prince wants eliminated. Kant claims not only that everyone knows what ought to be done in such a situation, but also that it is quite conceivable that someone in that situation would refuse to bear false witness even despite the threat of the gallows. The first example shows that we can exert control over our desires if something serious, like our life, is as stake; the second example shows that we can refuse to perform an action even if our life is as stake. These examples show that our relation to moral activity takes place on two planes; in one we appear to be determined by the situation, while in the other we appear to be free.17 A few pages later in the same book, Kant provides another bit of evidence for our being freer than we know—what might be called a phenomenological description of the difference in self-critical response between losing at a game and cheating at a game. He who loses a game (or, by extension, loses the game of life by not becoming as successful or respected as he might have desired), might be angry with himself or at his unskillful play; but if he knows himself to have cheated at the game, he must despise himself as soon as he compares his action with the moral law. These two failures are different; the second clearly lies in the moral realm and is connected to freedom.18 In this second response, we see again that there is a plane of moral action that points to an independence from external determination. Finally, let us look at one last piece of evidence for our freedom: the categorical imperative. Both our own inclinations and sometimes the blandishments of others, including our �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW friends and family, try to persuade us that we are a special case, that a normally prescribed action is necessary just this once, and that to take the action is really, in this situation, better for all concerned. We may be told that this action is what God, or our church, or our family, or our country demands of us if we are to fulfill our responsibilities. These persuasions of sentiment, reason, and authority are effective because they touch on our foremost moral weakness—the temptation to make a specific exemption for ourselves in a special case. The tendency toward self-favoritism or particularism is a commonplace both in philosophical systems of morality, where judgment of actions typically must be made by an impartial spectator, and in everyday legal practice, where we may not sit in judgment in our own case. The Categorical Imperative is a rational procedure that makes this common and pervasive temptation explicit, because it demands that actions be judged by universal and necessary laws: we must act so that the maxim of our action can serve as a law for all rational beings—including, quite pointedly, the law-determiner himself or herself. Now it may seem that following commands, doing as one is told, has the same form as Kantian duty. But this is problematic for several reasons. First and foremost is the sacrifice of freedom in following a command that is not the product of one’s own self-determination. In a bold move, Kant places following commands together with following inclinations (two functions that are kept strictly separate in most moral systems) under the same heading, namely, being determined heteronomously. It is at this point that Kant introduces his famous distinction distinguishing actions that are merely in conformity with duty from actions that are in conformity with duty and done for duty’s sake. Kant places actions that merely conform with duty in the category of legality, which is, strictly speaking, an empty formalism, since it is independent of intentions and motivations. Actions that are both in conformity with duty and done for the sake of duty bring into play the pure practical reason as well as a will that can determine itself, apart from SMITH 69 desire and representation, by means of the universal form of the categorical imperative. The pressing question here is: How can a form, namely the form of universality, serve as a material incentive? Kant’s answer to this question takes us to a strange place. In his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant asserts that we are free to decide, after a certain age, which of our inclinations we will we allow to influence us. He does not mean that we cease to feel these inclinations; he is asserting, rather, that in feeling them we are not necessitated to act. Or, to put it more broadly: we can choose our character by deciding which of our inclinations to emphasize. It is in this freedom of choice that we can decide to have the universal form be the principle of the maxims by which we act. This decision happens in the twinkling of an eye. Kant describes it in this way: [I]f a man is to become not merely legally, but morally, a good man . . . this cannot be brought about through a gradual reformation, so long as the basis of the maxims remain impure, but must be effected through a revolution in man’s disposition. . . . He can become a new man only by a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation.19 Strictly speaking, this does not constitute evidence of Kant’s uncanny space of freedom. But he is not the only thinker to claim that our freedom to decide what will influence us determines what character we will have. In the myth of Er near the end of the Republic, Plato depicts our souls in a place outside of time, having to choose a life, a character that they will fall into.20 Kant suggests something similar: a place of freedom, a place outside of time, in which we can actually exercise the faculty of choice. III. Conclusion Kant’s step of setting our humanity aside, of asking us to be indifferent to our desires, has evoked passionate criticism. Some �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW are upset by his refusal to allow our inclinations—especially our positive inclinations such as care and sympathy—to serve as a ground for obligation; others complain that he ignores the consequences of our actions; yet others are genuinely puzzled by what in the world (or out of it, for that matter) Kant could possibly mean by designating humans as “finite rational beings.” For the most part, these criticisms come from critics of single-principle moralities such as Kant’s that place a premium on conformance to duty and obligation; such moralities tend to denigrate concerns for life-fulfillment or happiness, that is, questions about what is good to love or good to be, both for ourselves and for others. The great benefit of Kant’s moral system is that it can resolve complicated situations in which there are competing goods, and cut short the angst of moral remorse. But the critics of single-principle moralities ask, At what cost do we purchase this benefit? And for them, the answer seems unacceptably high: At the cost of our humanity. All of these are understandable concerns, but behind most of these criticisms is the fear that if we become indifferent to our desires, to our humanity, we will lose what makes us most truly who we are. This self is our personal self—not personal in the Kantian sense of having standing in a court of law as a bearer of rights, but personal in the sense of a personal touch or personality. In creating the moral world by acting as if we are members of a possible kingdom of ends (a creation ex nihilo, since we are not guided by a pre-existing good nor tied to our existing potentialities), we are acting impersonally. Kant is asserting that at the very core of our being exists an impersonal space. It is this space that Kant seeks to preserve, because he sees it as the guarantee for whatever dignity we have. As he says in the Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals: There is a sublimity and dignity in the person who fulfills all his duties. For there is indeed no sublimity in him insofar as he is subject to the moral law, but there is insofar as he is at the same time lawgiving with respect to SMITH 71 it and only for that reason subordinated to it.21 Our dignity demands that happiness is not a blessing to be bestowed on us by a higher power as a reward for obedience or service; rather, it is a right belonging to reason, and it ought to be distributed in proportion to the worthiness of being happy. If we insist that a personal self lies at our core as the foundation for our dignity, we abandon the possibility of being a lawgiver in a possible kingdom of ends; in effect, we abandon reason. If we replace Kant’s pure reason with a reason that is socially and historically mediated, we relinquish the possibility that reason can access the space of freedom. For Kant, it is this lawgiving self, a universal, necessary, and enddetermining rational power, which is admittedly impersonal and uncanny, that is at the center of our being. This rational power, this pure practical reason, determines its own ends, and therefore it should be respected as an end-in-itself—that is, as a moral being. In Kant’s view, as expressed in the passage from the Introduction of the Critique of Practical Reason quoted earlier,22 pure practical reason allows us to attain a threefold end that other moral systems cannot match: the requirements of reason are satisfied by rational faith; the supremacy of our faculty of pure reason (which defines who we are) is preserved as practical; and our dignity remains intact—not as knowers of eternal truth, but as autonomous moral beings. NOTES 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929), 29 (Bxxix-xxx). 2. Dante, Paradiso, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 3. 3. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 482 (B592). 4. Ibid., 482 (B591). 5. Ibid., 629 (B823). �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 6. Ibid., 29 (Bxxix-xxx). 7. Ibid., 637-38 (B836). 8. Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason” in Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 148-49. 9. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 144n. 10. Ibid., 148. 11. David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,” in Moral Philosophy, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006), 274. 12. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 148. 13. Ibid., 140. 14. Kant, “Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals,” in Practical Philosophy, 107. 15. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 141. 16. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, Chapters XV-XIX. 17. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 163. 18. Ibid., 170. 19. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, ed. John Silber (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 42-3. 20. Plato, Republic 614b-621d. 21. Kant, “Groundwork,” in Practical Philosophy, 88. 22. See above, pp. 00-00 and note 8. REFLECTIONS 73 What Did You Learn? Lise van Boxel Congratulations on successfully completing the Master’s Program in Liberal Arts. Now that you have your M.A., it is a good time to reflect upon what you have learned and the reasons why you began the journey that led you to your degree. What knowledge have you acquired at St. John’s College? Have you gained any practical skills here? Your employers or potential clients, your friends and your family will certainly ask such questions. What will you say to them? What do you say to yourself? Before turning to a consideration of possible answers to such questions, consider briefly some of the presuppositions that often underlie them. Frequently, the real meaning of “What did you learn?” is, “In what way has this education contributed to your value as a worker or to your ability to earn a living?” These questions are not ridiculous. Unless you are lucky enough to be independently wealthy or to have a patron, you have to think about how to support yourself. On the other hand, it is wrong-headed to think of education simply or primarily in these terms, as if employability and income were the highest, most important considerations for a human being. Friedrich Nietzsche offers a vivid description of this impoverished and narrow understanding of education—an understanding that characterizes the modern era. In sum, he argues that an education that looks solely or primarily to the marketplace deforms the souls of its students because it is Commencement Address to the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, August 12, 2011. Lise van Boxel is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ignorant of, or denies, the proper fullness and activity of the human soul: [T]he present age is . . . supposed to be an age, not of whole, mature and harmonious personalities, but of labour of the greatest possible common utility. That means, however, that men have to be adjusted to the purposes of the age so as to be ready for employment as soon as possible: they must labour in the factories of the general good before they are mature, indeed so that they shall not become mature—for this would be a luxury which would deprive the ‘labour market’ of a great deal of its workforce. Some birds are blinded so that they may sing more beautifully; I do not think the men of today sing more beautifully than their grandfathers, but I know they have been blinded.1 Nietzsche grants that the emphasis on science, and more specifically on science directed by the marketplace, will indeed produce economic success, at least in the short term. However, he adds that this kind of science is a desiccated version of the comprehensive understanding that is the proper goal of science or higher learning more generally—a goal that the modern world has largely abandoned: I regret the need to make use of the of the slave-owner and the employer of labour to describe things that in themselves ought to be thought of as free of utility and raised above the necessities of life; but the words ‘factory’, ‘labour market’, ‘supply’, ‘making profitable’, and whatever auxiliary verbs egoism now employs, come unbidden to the lips when one wishes to describe the most recent generation of men of learning. Sterling mediocrity grows even more mediocre, science ever more profitable in the economic sense. . . . Those who unwearyingly repeat the modern call to battle and sacrifice—‘Division of labour! Fall in!’—must for once be told in round and plain terms: if you want to push science forward as quickly as possible you will succeed in destroying it as quickly as possible; just as a hen perishes if it is compelled to lay eggs too quickly.2 REFLECTIONS | VAN BOXEL 75 If Nietzsche’s account of the trend in modern education aptly describes the kind of education you did not receive and to which, I think, St. John’s is opposed, how might you describe what you did learn here? While denouncing an overly narrow view of education, Nietzsche alludes to the effect of a complete education: it would create “whole, mature and harmonious personalities.” Neither you nor I can honestly claim that you acquired a complete and harmonious soul as a result of several years of education at St. John’s. This is not to say that I reject the idea that the truly authoritative education aims at, and can produce, a harmonious soul. Rather, I think this education is the ongoing activity of a lifetime. Nonetheless, I do believe that the liberal education you received here can contribute greatly to the attainment of this goal. However, I will put aside these ideas for the moment, and I will turn instead to a more modest articulation of what a liberal education is and what skills may be acquired as a result of it. To do so, I will replace Nietzsche’s high-flying, though accurate, description of a complete education with Aristotle’s sensible, though still ambitious, account of a liberal education. In distinguishing a specialist from someone who, like you, has been generally educated, he says: With regard to every [kind of] contemplation and inquiry, both lowlier and more esteemed alike, there appear to be two ways of being skilled, one of which it is well to call the science of the thing, and the other as it were a kind of educatedness. For it is characteristic of an educated man to be able to hit the mark and judge appropriately what the speaker sets forth finely and what he doesn’t. For something like this is in fact what we suppose the generally educated man to be, and that to be educated is to be capable of doing this very thing— except that we believe that this one, the generally educated man, is able to judge about virtually all things, though being one man, but that the other one is able to judge [only] about some limited nature.3 �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I do not recommend launching yourself into this quotation when asked what practical skills you acquired at St. John’s College, though if you decide to do so, take a deep breath, and deliver it with panache. You can, however, capture the essence of what Aristotle says in your own words. In my own words, I say that, as a result of your liberal education, you are better able to judge when an argument or account is adequate and when it is not. When it is inadequate, you are more capable of seeing how it is deficient and what would need to be addressed to alleviate this shortcoming. Such judgment can be brought to bear on any argument, regardless of the field. If the argument includes technical language, all you need is the time to look up the definitions of these words before you are able to proceed as you would with any other account. At bottom, such an argument is no different from any other. To Aristotle’s description, I would add that, as a result of your education, you are now better able to admit when you do not know something, and to do so without embarrassment. Do not underestimate the value of this intellectual honesty. It will help you to continue to learn. In addition, it will be greatly appreciated by other people, most of whom are anxious about their own ignorance, but are afraid to admit that they do not know. It can be a tremendous relief to encounter someone who can say without shame that he does not know, but that he wants to learn. This training in judgment—in clear thinking—is an essential part of a liberal education. And it can indeed help you to advance your career. I advise you, therefore, to consider how you can describe this skill to others so that you can represent it with the full strength that it deserves and in a manner that is readily apparent to others. If you do this, you will be well equipped to respond to those who want to know how you can apply what you learned to the workplace. This account of your education, however, is neither complete nor does it capture the most important element of VAN BOXEL 77 education. Aristotle would say that, in order truly to judge well, one must have a satisfactory understanding of the ultimate end at which one aims. It is not enough to have an idea of the proximate goal that one seeks to fulfill. One must have adequate knowledge of whether and how this proximate goal accords with the highest and most comprehensive goal at which human beings can and should aim. Without a sufficient account of this authoritative, supreme good—the Good—no judgment is adequate, strictly speaking, and consequently one cannot truly be said to know. Thus, any education can and must be considered in terms of whether and how it can contribute to the Good. Regarding questions about whether your education here was practical, therefore, the real issue is not whether this education will contribute to your employment opportunities, but whether it contributes to your knowledge of the Good. And the real question about your job is not whether your education has made you suitable for it, but whether it can contribute to your ability to lead a good life. No, I will not let go of the highest account of education to which Nietzsche alludes and which, I dare say, all great thinkers share. Moreover, I expect that you empathize with me in my refusal to forgo these highest goals. While some of you came to St. John’s partly in order to advance your career, I doubt that any of you came here primarily for this reason. You came because you had questions—questions that perhaps you could not quite articulate, even to yourself, but that you could not put aside. As you made your way through the works of our Program, I suspect many of you began to recognize your questions reflected back to you in the Great Books: “What is justice?” “What is love or friendship?” “What kind of beings are we, and what is our place in this world?” Many and perhaps all of these questions arise from a common origin: the yearning to have a good life, combined with the realization that you do not know clearly enough what this is. I suspect, in other words, that the fundamental reason �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW why you came here was because you thought this education might help you to understand the Good. Since our human life is limited, and since the clock is already ticking on the time that we have, this question of the Good is urgent. No one wants to realize at the end of his life that he misused or wasted his time. And since none of us know how much time we have, it is foolish for any of us to postpone the question of the Good indefinitely. Such talk of mortality and the Good sounds very serious. Well, what did you expect? Has anything valuable that you have read or discussed here been unserious? Thankfully, seriousness does not have to be grave. You need only recall the company you have kept as you have pursued your questions, and you will feel, not weighted down, but elevated by the astounding souls who have walked alongside you. Here is Plato, on the same journey as you, speaking with a voice as nuanced and relevant as it was some 2,400 years ago. With a touch of mischief, he doubles himself, adopting the voice of Socrates, who recollects taking this same path, just a day earlier: “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston.”4 Another man introduces himself with the words: “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war.”5 He hands you his book, which contains his thoughts about your shared questions, saying as he does so: “I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”6 Homer turns his blind eyes upon you and points to Achilles and Odysseus, each of whom tackles the questions of the good life and what it means to be a good human being. Shakespeare speaks to you with a profundity that is surely expressed in some of the most beautiful language ever heard. Nietzsche reaffirms life with a cry from his electric soul: “We still feel it, the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of its bow.”7 REFLECTIONS | VAN BOXEL 79 These souls are among the best students and teachers ever to have lived. Their greatness consists largely in the fact that they investigated the most serious eternal questions with unmatched comprehensiveness and depth. What have you learned from them about the Good? If you have learned anything, it is that, when speaking to one who does not already know the answer, you cannot respond meaningfully to this question in a single sentence or two. You might say, for example, that they taught you that the good life is the philosophic life or the life devoted to the Divine, but then you would have to explain what philosophy or the Divine is and what it would mean to dedicate your life to such things. While there are answers to these questions, each answer leads to a new question—and this is not the occasion for a long conversation. It is the occasion, however, to remind you that all of these great students and teachers spent their lives engaged with such questions. Inquiry is thereby shown to be central to, if not the essence of, a good human life. Furthermore—and this is worth emphasizing, since you are have now exited the Master’s Program—these students were able to learn from virtually everything and everyone, if not directly, then indirectly. Life after your M.A. may not be as leisurely as it was when you were a student, but you can and will find opportunities to learn, if only you come to embrace life itself as a learning opportunity. I hope and expect that something of this way of life has become a part of you and that, if you look around now at the faces of your fellow students, you will see in their eyes something of the souls of those great human beings who are your models. Continue to be thoughtful. Be open-minded. Retain the flexibility of soul that is necessary for continued learning. In sum, keep the goal of a good life always before you. Use the Good as your North Star to guide every significant action and decision you make. Doing this will not guarantee that you �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW always make the right decision, but it will mean that you will have done the best that you could do, and that, whatever contingencies you may face, you will have led the best life that is possible for you. Let me conclude with one of Plato’s favorite valedictions: “Have success in action, and do what is good.”8 NOTES 1. Friedrich Neitzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 97-98. 2. Ibid., 99. 3. Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, 639a2-15, trans. David Bolotin. 4. Plato, Republic, trans. Allen Bloom, 2nd ed., (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 3. 5. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, in The Landmark Thucydides, ed. Robert B.Strassler (New York: Free Press, 2008), 3. 6. Ibid., 16. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kauffmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), 3. 8. Plato, Republic, 303 and 472. POETRY | ZUCKERMAN To the New Recruits Elliott Zuckerman From now on I’ll refer to you as waiters, even those whose ears do not resemble the picture in the magazine. You will be issued the standard bill of fare including a list of all the famous sauces and all the substitutions we allow. You’ll wear the studded cuff the collar and the pied cravat and those who can will wear the earrings that fascinate the men who dine here, whether they arrive by pre-arrangement or enter dazed directly from the street. I ask you not to fall in love. When two of you collide, just smile, stand up again and go about your business. The moppers will come running. Ignore the murmuring of the clients who deplore the loss of sequence in the dance. After a month or two you’ll get the steps and grow to like the music. Then we can film the service. We’ll play it back at half the pace of life And next we’ll show it speeded up. The comic rondo will delight us all. 81 �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW REVIEWS 83 DELPHIC EXAMINATIONS David Leibowitz, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 204 pages, $80. Book Review by David Bolotin David Leibowitz’s book on Plato’s Apology of Socrates is in the first place a thorough and penetrating interpretation of the dialogue. It also claims, however, and attempts to show, that the Apology is the key to the entire Platonic corpus, and to this end it includes thoughtful interpretations of various aspects of other dialogues. Yet the book’s ultimate ambition goes much further even than this. For its chief aim is to show, in Leibowitz’s words, “that Plato’s Socrates is not just a colorful and quirky figure from the distant past, but an unrivaled guide to the good life—the thoughtful life—who is as relevant today as he was in ancient Athens” (1).* Thus, Leibowitz combines his interpretations with arguments for the truth of the Socratic positions that he has brought to light. The book even includes arguments in Leibowitz’s own name that reply to objections a reader might make to Socratic views. Now it is likely to be younger readers who are most open to the question of whether Plato’s Socrates is an unrivaled guide to the good life, and thus the book’s primary audience is not other scholars but these younger readers. But Leibowitz asks of his readers that they follow him in his scholarly, and even more than scholarly, attention to the details of Plato’s text (24-25). And his reason for doing so is indicated in his book’s title. Socrates was ready and even wanted, on Leibowitz’s * Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology. David Bolotin is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW view, to be convicted at his trial and executed, out of a wish to promote the cause of philosophy by becoming a martyr for it. But this wish required him to explain to potential philosophers what philosophy is while concealing from the other citizens—even as he was courting death—those aspects of it that, as he thought, could never become publicly acceptable (59-60, 154-160). And in order to achieve all this in a single address, Socrates had to speak ironically, a term that Leibowitz well explains to mean speaking “in a ‘double’ fashion so as to be understood differently by different listeners” (18). But this implies that Socrates’ deepest thoughts could be revealed only in hints, whose intended meaning could come to light only though careful attention to his words. We who have the good fortune to be able to study these words as Plato presented them must therefore pay great attention to subtle details of Plato’s text. Leibowitz himself has surely done this, and though his account of the philosophic life and his argument for its being the good life are ultimately stated with great directness, he develops them in stages, following Socrates’ own guidance, through an almost line-by-line reading of the Apology. It would be too large a task for me to comment on Leibowitz’s work in its entirety. So I shall limit myself instead to what he himself presents as the core of his account, his interpretation of Socrates’ story of the Delphic oracle. According to Leibowitz, this story is a fiction, whose purpose is to call attention, as inoffensively as possible, to the central theoretical crisis in Socrates’ life. As we know from the Phaedo and from Aristophanes’ Clouds, Socrates in his youth was a student of natural philosophy. But the Phaedo also teaches us that Socrates’ study of nature led him to an impasse, since he realized that he could not be certain of the causes, i.e., the necessary causes, why things come into being, are as they are, and perish. Recognizing the limits of his knowledge of nature, Socrates also came to recognize that he could not even be certain that there is nature, which he understood as a necessity that limits what a being or class of beings can do or suffer. The implications of this awareness of ignorance were made more acute by his recognition that many REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 85 people at least implicitly deny that there is nature, since they believe in gods with unlimited power to intervene in the world. Moreover, at least some of these believers claim to have had evidence of there being such gods from their own experience of them. Thus, Socrates had to admit that, for all he knew, the study of “nature” was a pseudo-science based on a false premise, and also a turning away from the deepest human evidence of truth. According to Leibowitz, it was this crisis resulting from Socrates’ youthful pursuit of natural philosophy that led him to the crossexaminations that he pretended to undertake at the instigation of the Delphic oracle. In keeping with this suggestion, Leibowitz presents these examinations primarily as attempts by Socrates to learn that his interlocutors lacked the evidence of omnipotent gods that they thought they possessed—or in other words, that what they had thought of as evidence was illusory. For if he could know this about his interlocutors, then even though he lacked certainty that natural necessities are at the root of things, he could at least know that he knew no one else with a firmer hypothesis (63-69). Leibowitz also argues that there was a second reason for Socrates’ “Delphic” examinations, even on the assumption that he could successfully refute his interlocutors’ claims to superhuman wisdom. For he says that Socrates came to doubt, even on the assumption that there is no such wisdom, whether the life of philosophy is the best or happiest life, and he interprets the crossexaminations as having the subordinate aim of confirming that it is (72-73). In discussing Leibowitz’s interpretation of Socrates’ “Delphic” activity, I will stress what I see as difficulties with his account rather than its merits. This is not because I am blind to these merits—which seem to me to be quite considerable—or that I disagree with Leibowitz about what is primarily at stake in Socrates’ examinations—which I do not. But since I believe that he does not give an adequate account of this central aspect of Socrates’ life, I feel compelled to say why. Let me begin with the second of the two reasons that Leibowitz gives for Socrates’ Delphic examinations, since it is the one �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW he focuses on first in his own elaboration. To repeat, Leibowitz claims that Socrates had to examine the various classes of nonphilosophers in order “to confirm that the life of philosophy or science, or to speak more cautiously, the life based on human wisdom, is the best or happiest life if indeed there is no ‘superhuman wisdom’ to guide us” (72). And the first thing I would say about this suggestion is that I can see little if any evidence for it in Plato’s text. The only time that Socrates even mentions the question of whether his life is preferable to those of his interlocutors, as distinct from the question of whether he is wiser than they—though even here it is not simply distinct from it—is in the context of his examination of the craftsmen. And the reason he asks it seems to be that he had to grant to the craftsmen a superiority of sorts in wisdom, since they were wise in their crafts, even though, like his other interlocutors, they turned out to suppose falsely that they were wise with regard to the greatest things. For that reason he asked himself whether he would prefer to be as he was, neither wise in their wisdom nor ignorant in their ignorance, or to be as they were; and he replied that it was better for him to be as he was. But apart from this, Socrates’ account of his examinations deals only with the question of whether he was wiser than his interlocutors. It is true, of course, that he will later claim that his own way of life is “the greatest good” (or, perhaps more precisely, “a very great good”) for a human being, and that “the unexamined life is not livable for a human being” (Apology of Socrates 38a1-7). But he never suggests that these conclusions relied on any fruits of his examinations other than the knowledge he gained of his interlocutors’ inferiority in wisdom. Further difficulties with this suggestion of Leibowitz’s emerge when we consider his discussion of it in more detail. Leibowitz stresses, and rightly, that after coming to the conclusion that the first political man he examined was not wise, Socrates “did not leave it at that. Instead, he tried to show him both that he thought he was wise and that he was not. . . . In short, Socrates exposed him as a fraud” (75). Not surprisingly, this caused Socrates to be hated, both by the politician and by many REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 87 of the bystanders, and Leibowitz asks what Socrates’ reason could have been for “the seeming malice of his procedure. Why did he rub the man’s nose in his foolishness” (75)? Dismissing what I agree is the implausible suggestion that Socrates hoped to steer the politician toward philosophy, Leibowitz proposes an answer to his question in terms of Socrates’ eagerness to establish—even assuming “that he is already confident that no superhuman wisdom (divine guidance) exists”—that “philosophy is the best way of life for any human being capable of living it” (77-78). And he suggests that Socrates hoped to confirm this belief by prompting his interlocutors, once they saw that they lacked wisdom about the noble and good, about which he questioned them, to acknowledge that their lives appeared “fundamentally defective or unsatisfying” (78). In other words, Socrates confirms that philosophy is the best way of life by showing that everyone can in principle be brought to agree with him that their alternative ways of life are unsatisfying. Ultimately, then, there is no dispute, since the philosopher is the only one whose belief in the goodness of his life can be maintained in the face of scrutiny. According to Leibowitz, Socrates’ interlocutor will come to feel dissatisfied with his life because the beliefs that Socrates shows to be false or inconsistent are central to his way of life. But how will Socrates’ interlocutor reveal his dissatisfaction with his life? Leibowitz says that he will do so by “getting angry at Socrates. . . , blaming him for his distress, perhaps even coming to hate him” (79). This anger and hatred will reveal the pain he feels once he sees not only that Socrates’ refutation is sound, but also that it destroys a prop on which his satisfaction with life has depended. And accordingly, “anger and possibly even hatred are part of the confirmation that Socrates seeks, not unintended, or altogether unintended, byproducts of his examinations. In many cases, they may be the only confirmation available” (79). But as I said, there are difficulties with this account. In the first place, it assumes that Socrates is successful in showing his interlocutors that they are unwise, or that their fundamental beliefs are false. But Socrates says explicitly, in the only case �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW where he describes at length this aspect of his examinations, that his (first) interlocutor did not see this, but that in Socrates’ view he continued to suppose that he was wise (Apology of Socrates 21d4-5). According to Leibowitz, however, this continuance of his false belief, and therefore also his continuing sense of satisfaction with his life, was the result of “powerful defenses,” which allow people to “bury this awareness [viz., that their lives are unsatisfactory] by the next day or even the next minute” (79-80). “But this changes nothing,” he continues. “For in their one moment of clarity, they themselves have judged their lives to be defective” (80). Socrates’ first interlocutor has revealed this judgment by his anger, or more precisely, “the disturbing insight that leads to his anger is clouded by or in the anger itself,” so that Socrates’ attempt to show him that he was not wise “both did and did not succeed” and “its success was partial and unenduring” (80-81). This is how Leibowitz can square his account with Socrates’ unambiguous statement that he thought he had not succeeded in his attempt to show this interlocutor that he was not wise. But in fact Leibowitz’s suggestion is unsupported by the text of the Apology. On the basis of the dialogue, it makes more sense to say that Socrates’ interlocutors, or at least those among them who became angry at him, never stopped believing that they knew what the noble and good (or virtue) was, even when their assertions about it were refuted. They may have recognized that they were unable to give an adequate account of it in the face of Socrates’ questions, but this meant only in their view that they were unable to give adequate expression to what they knew (cf. Meno 79e7-80b4; Laches 194a7-b4, 200b2-4). And so their anger at Socrates must not have stemmed from the pain of becoming aware of their ignorance, and thus dissatisfied with their lives, but rather from the more common pain of being insulted (cf. Meno 94e3-95a3). Indeed, an additional difficulty with Leibowitz’s suggestion is that an interlocutor’s anger could never reveal clearly that its source was anything other than this more obvious one. Leibowitz acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting an REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 89 interlocutor’s anger, but he dismisses it on inadequate grounds, with a mere assertion that in practice it “may not be very difficult” to distinguish the anger that he says Socrates is looking for from other kinds (79).1 But if Socrates’ attempt to make his (older) interlocutors aware of their ignorance was not aimed at eliciting the kind of anger and hatred that Leibowitz suggests it was, what was its purpose? I am not certain of the ultimate answer to this question, but the most plausible beginning point is that Socrates must have wanted to confirm what he in fact discovered, that he would be unable to show them their ignorance of virtue, or in other words that their confusion about it was ineradicably deep-seated or that they had a stake in holding on to this confusion. This discovery must have been important enough to Socrates that he was willing to incur the anger and hatred that he knew he would arouse in the course of coming to it. But he was not looking for the anger itself. Leibowitz has given a surprising amount of weight to what he regards as Socrates’ attempt to discover through conversation that his interlocutors, in addition to being his inferiors in wisdom, lived less satisfying lives than his own. His Socrates does not assume that his discovery of their lack of wisdom, or their confusion about virtue, is sufficient to confirm the superiority of his life to theirs. They themselves must be made to see, if only partially and only for a moment, that their lives are unsatisfying. Leibowitz argues for the significance of such a moment by reminding his readers that we human beings want more than illusory happiness, such as the “happiness” of a deceived cuckold, but a contentment rooted in truth (82-84). But what if it turned out that some human beings were satisfied with illusory happiness, or that their contentment with their lives was not affected, even for a moment, by the discovery that they were based on falsehood? How could this imagined state of affairs have been of any concern to a man like Socrates? Would it have made him doubt the superiority of his life to theirs? Hardly. And more generally, in order to be convinced of the choiceworthiness of the philosophic life, Socrates did not need to burst other people’s bubbles. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Leibowitz’s belief that Socrates deliberately sought to provoke anger and even hatred in his interlocutors has an unfortunate bearing, it seems to me, on the tone of his own writing. For too often he expresses his unavoidably challenging views with unnecessary and un-Socratic harshness, a harshness that could well provoke anger and hatred, especially in older readers. I have already cited his claim that Socrates exposed the first of his examinees “as a fraud,” and that he rubbed his nose “in his foolishness.” Along the same lines, he claims later in the book that those refuted by Socrates’ youthful imitators—their fathers, or at least men of their fathers’ generation—act “as if Socrates were to blame for their own stupidity.” And he adds that when they are asked how Socrates corrupts the youth, as they accuse him of doing, they are “of course not about to reply, ‘by teaching the young to expose men like me for the fools and frauds we really are!’” (105). Such language on Leibowitz’s part seems to me to show a failure to appreciate the respect—even intellectual respect—that Socrates, like any sane man, would naturally feel for at least some of those who turn out to be confused about the questions he raises. Another example of Leibowitz’s harshness is his suggestion that “ordinary decency” (which he here distinguishes from the “deeper and more solid decency” of the philosopher) is “perhaps the chief enemy” of philosophy (109). Or consider his claim that Socrates is confident, even before conversing with his typical interlocutor, that “his moral beliefs are always false. . . , in the first place because they are sure to presume the existence of ‘high’ things. . . , yet Socrates knows through his own reflection that highness in the relevant sense is literally inconceivable” (96). A footnote makes clear that by “highness in the relevant sense” Leibowitz means “intrinsic worth or goodness” (97). And later in this footnote he adds, “Given the unintelligibility of the notion [viz., of intrinsic worth or goodness], it is a cause for wonder, then, that belief in high things has such extraordinary vitality in people’s lives” (97). Now in company with Kant, as well as most ordinary people, I disagree with Leibowitz’s assertion that intrinsic worth or goodness is an REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 91 unintelligible notion (whether or not it is as fundamental a concern for us as Kant thinks it is). But even apart from this, why does Leibowitz choose to assign the word “high”—even if slightly qualified at first—to a notion that he rejects as unintelligible? Later in this footnote he admits, “[T]o deny that there are high things is not, of course, to deny that there are admirable or beautiful ones” (97). But this admission rings hollow in the wake of his initial rejection of the very notion of highness. And readers of what he calls ordinary decency, who are likely to be deeply attached to the notion of highness, whether or not they understand it adequately, are therefore also likely to feel anger and hatred toward a way of life that is said to reject it out of hand. Under less liberal conditions than those which prevail now in the West, such feelings could lead to a renewal of the persecution of philosophy. Even now, they are likely to stand in the way of Leibowitz’s attempt to guide the most promising young people toward the philosophic life (cf. 174). And I fear that Leibowitz’s apparent indifference to these concerns—in practice, if not in principle (cf. 59-60)—is at least partly rooted in his view of Socrates as a man who deliberately sought to provoke anger and hatred. But let me turn now to the primary reason that Leibowitz gives for Socrates’ Delphic examinations, namely, his concern to meet the theoretical challenge to philosophy posed by those who claim to have evidence of an omnipotent god or gods. For, to repeat, this claim directly calls into question the presupposition of philosophy that there are natural or necessary limits to all possible change. Now it is not immediately apparent, to say the least, to the reader of Plato that Socrates’ Delphic examinations had this anti-theological motive. But Leibowitz’s excellent interpretation of many large and small details of the Apology (and of other dialogues) might well convince even a reader who, unlike me, was not already persuaded of it that this view was sound. However, Leibowitz’s account of the precise manner in which Socrates’ refutations aim to meet this challenge to philosophy seems to me to be problematic, both in itself and in terms of the textual evidence that he claims for it. According to Leibowitz, �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Socrates thought that his Delphic conversations, which were primarily about virtue, “are somehow the key to answering the question of whether or not there are gods, and hence whether or not philosophy in the full sense is possible” (71). More precisely, I would say, and in keeping with the bulk of Leibowitz’s argument (e.g., 67-68, 72), Socrates thought that they were somehow the key to answering the question of whether or not human beings have genuine evidence of there being gods. In Leibowitz’s view, Socrates suspected that the belief that one has experienced the presence of a god, a belief whose soundness—or, as I would say, the alleged evidence for which—he could not dispute directly, “rests on other false beliefs” (88), about virtue or morality, whose falsity he thought he could show. Accordingly, his refutations are intended to lead his pious interlocutors, once they have seen the falsity of their own beliefs about virtue, to come to understand, if only for a moment, that what they previously may have interpreted as experience of the supernatural was no such thing. Leibowitz suggests that these interlocutors would perhaps reveal their loss of faith in what they had taken to be their experience of a god “by getting angry,” and he adds that “their reaction to what he showed them must have been a crucial part of his confirmation of the possibility of philosophy” (88, cf. 96). I have the same doubts about this last suggestion as I do about Leibowitz’s earlier suggestion that Socrates intended to provoke in his interlocutors a momentary awareness of ignorance about virtue and an angry response to it. But leaving this aside, let us see how he supports his more fundamental claim—that according to Socrates, belief that one has experienced the presence of a god rests on one’s beliefs about virtue or morality. He leads up to this suggestion through his account of Socrates’ examinations of the poets, which he begins by quoting from Socrates’ own report of these examinations. What Socrates says, in Leibowitz’s translation, is that he “soon came to know . . . that the poets do not make what they make by wisdom, but by some sort of nature and by divine inspiration, like the prophets and those who deliver oracles. For they too say many noble things, but they know REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 93 nothing of what they speak. And it was evident to me that the poets also are affected in the same sort of way (22b8-c4)” (86). According to Leibowitz, this passage means more than what it says clearly, which is that the poets, like the prophets and those who deliver oracles, do not speak as they do by wisdom or with knowledge of what they are speaking about. Leibowitz thinks it also means that these three classes are all “consciously or unconsciously . . . makers [not merely of poems and other verses, but] of gods and of reports of seeming evidence of gods,” and that they make these gods and these reports about gods by nature and not by divine inspiration (87-88). Now I do not accept this interpretation of the text or the argument leading up to it, but rather than going into tedious and I think unnecessary detail, let me say only what seems to me most important: by presenting Socrates as denying that his interlocutors were divinely inspired—though Socrates explicitly asserts that they were, whether or not he meant it literally (cf. Philebus 15e1)—Leibowitz weakens the focus of Socrates’ concern, which was not to learn what cannot be learned, namely, that there are no gods and no divine inspiration, but rather to learn that the poets and the others do not possess knowledge of what they speak about (which would of course include the gods). But to continue with Leibowitz’s account, he goes on to ask, “How has Socrates confirmed . . . that all three classes make what they make by nature and not by wisdom or divine inspiration? How has he to this extent settled the question of the gods? He explains briefly with the words, ‘for (γάρ) they too’—the prophets and those who deliver oracles as well as the poets—‘say many noble things’—he does not say true things—of which they know nothing. In other words, he implies that the belief that one has been inspired by a god rests on other false beliefs about the noble” (88). But these words of Socrates, which are presented by Leibowitz as an answer to his question of how Socrates has settled the question of the gods (to the extent at least of ruling out that poets or prophets are divinely inspired), are clearly intended rather by Socrates to explain why he has just likened the prophets and those who deliver oracles to the poets. And from all that I can �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW see, Socrates is not concerned here to settle the question of the gods, except to the extent that his interlocutors’ claim to knowledge of them can be successfully challenged through the discovery that they say the many beautiful things they do—primarily, as I agree, about virtue and about the noble, rather than the gods (cf. Republic 598d7-e4, 599c6-e1, 600e5-6; Ion 531c2-d2)—without knowledge of what they are speaking about. But precisely how could the discovery of such ignorance on the part of his interlocutors help Socrates make any progress at all with respect to his question about the gods? Leibowitz addresses this question directly in a section of his book entitled “Socrates’ Approach to the Theological Problem” (92). He contends that Socrates tries to show his interlocutors, or at least those among them who claim to have had “vivid and detailed experience of a god,” that “the moral content of their experience—the divine command, let us say—is incompatible with the moral perfection . . . that they demand, perhaps without knowing it, of god” (93). “Consciously or unconsciously,” as Leibowitz elaborates a bit later, “the believer raises the claim that god’s commandments and actions are just, and this claim can be examined” (94). And, returning to the original passage, “In the most successful cases the interlocutors then come to doubt, at least for a time, that their experience was genuinely divine” (93). This would of course corroborate Socrates’ own suspicion. Leibowitz illustrates the possibility of such conversations by referring to Socrates’ refutation of the definition of justice that he attributes to Cephalus at the beginning of the Republic. In Leibowitz’s view, Cephalus’ belief that it is a requirement of justice always to return what one has taken—to the extent, at least, that this really was his belief— seems to have its origin, or to find support, in dreams in which a Zeus-like figure commanded him to pay all his debts or be tormented forever. On this view, and assuming that Cephalus really held this belief about justice, Socrates would have hoped to confirm that Cephalus would not respond to a reasonable critique of this belief by objecting that a god’s commands must be obeyed REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 95 whether or not they are just or seem just to our human reason, but would instead come to doubt that his dreams were really divine. This account, however, of Socrates’ approach to the theological problem suffers in the first place from a lack of textual evidence. Leibowitz’s premise that Socrates’ interlocutors thought of morality or virtue as consisting in obedience to divinely revealed commands seems to me to find no support, except in the Euthyphro, where the virtue in question is piety (cf. Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse, 134-35). The only other instance I can think of where interlocutors in a Platonic dialogue speak of virtue as obedience to divine commands, and where their beliefs about what the gods have commanded are transformed in the wake of a rational critique of their opinions about virtue, is in the Laws. But in the Laws, the philosophic character is not Socrates, but an Athenian stranger. And though this stranger does indeed seem to be a kind of fictional “Socrates” (who chose to flee Athens rather than accept death at the hands of the city), his intention is not to provide a theoretical defense of the possibility of philosophy, but rather to help frame a code of laws for a newly founded city in Crete in which philosophy would, to the extent possible, have legal sanction. Now it is true, as these two instances suggest, that Leibowitz’s account does indeed capture a genuine aspect of Socratic thought. But I see no evidence that it gives an adequate picture of what Socrates hoped to learn about the gods, or about our knowledge of them, from his Delphic examinations. Moreover, there is at least one substantive difficulty with Leibowitz’s account, a difficulty that he raises himself, namely, that it deals only with those interlocutors who believe that the gods are just, and not with anyone who believes that they are “unjust or unconcerned with justice” (95). Now for Leibowitz to state the objection in this way is perhaps unfair to his own argument, since he has just said that in Socrates’ view the believer “consciously or unconsciously” (94) claims that god’s commandments and actions are just, and he has argued that Socrates confirmed this view by seeing his interlocutors’ response to his �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW refutations. But at all events, Leibowitz goes on to downplay the significance of this objection by claiming, as he suspects that Socrates discovered, that the belief in gods who are unjust or unconcerned with justice is both rare and “almost never supported—at least among believers who are even modestly educated and sane—by the experience of revelation, that is, by seeming evidence that natural philosophy cannot assess” (95). Still, he acknowledges that “Socrates’ approach to the theological problem cannot tie up every loose end,” and that “the possibility of revelation from an amoral, willful, or radically mysterious god cannot be ruled out” (95). But this last is a very serious admission. For whatever may be the case about belief in gods who are unjust or unconcerned with justice, the belief in a god who is radically mysterious—in his actions, and even in his commands—has been held by thoughtful people throughout the centuries (cf. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III 25-26). For Socrates to leave unchallenged, then, the alleged evidence of those who claim to have had experience of such a god would be to fail to respond to a most serious objection to the possibility of philosophy.2 But let me turn to Leibowitz’s most important reason for focusing only on believers who believe in (intelligibly) just gods, a reason that comes to light in what is also his most important discussion of the confusion about morality that he thinks these refutations disclose. Leibowitz claims that Socrates thought of morality or virtue as something that people regard as the source of happiness, not by constituting happiness itself, but by promising it as a deserved reward. But since virtue itself, as the argument continues, does not deliver this reward, it can have the power that people think it has only if there are gods who do deliver it. “Virtue, one can perhaps say, is a claim on the attention and concern of just gods” (177). Leibowitz goes on to argue that Socrates rejected the belief in just gods on several grounds, but chiefly because the concern for virtue that it presupposes (and to which it also gives support) rests, as he claims that Socrates thought, on a confused and even contradictory view of our own motivation. Leibowitz presents what he sees as this contradiction REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 97 in the following way. He begins by observing that “virtue, seen in the first place as noble, inspires devotion” (178). But then he says that “devotion would seem to be harmful, if only because it distracts us from the pursuit of our own good” (178). And since, as he reminds us that Socrates claimed, no one voluntarily (or knowingly) harms himself, he asks how voluntary devotion is possible. His proposed answer to this question is that devotion to virtue gives us hope that we will obtain—because we deserve to obtain—a greater good than anything we might give up as a result of such devotion. It is, then, as he says that Socrates suggests, “the expectation, perhaps only half-conscious, of benefit to oneself that makes devotion possible” (179). But this line of reasoning, Leibowitz continues, which would seem to establish the possibility of voluntary devotion, “suggests instead the impossibility of all devotion. For if benefit to oneself—as Socrates implies—is our ultimate consideration, no true devotion is possible, for devotion embraced as a benefit is not true devotion” (179). And “if men are never truly devoted, they never meet the condition of deserving rewards as they understand that condition” (179). However, most of us never face up to this truth about our motivation, and it is through this failure that we can preserve the hopes that our attachment to virtue inspires. Accordingly, Leibowitz concludes, our attachment to virtue, or at least the kind of virtue that arouses hope in rewards from the gods, is rooted in the contradictory thought that what we most care for is both the noble and our own happiness. This is a powerfully stated argument, as it seems to me, and I am sympathetic to it, having even tentatively proposed something similar to it in print myself. But Leibowitz proposes his argument without tentativeness, and I must therefore say that in my view he has failed to make his case. I will leave aside the difficulty that his description of the believer as someone who thinks he deserves divine rewards shows a surprising insensitivity to the fact that at least the most thoughtful believers regard themselves as unworthy to receive the blessings they hope for. For even apart from this, the argument fails to show that the believer has contradictory �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW thoughts about what he most cares for. A believer will readily grant to Leibowitz that he cares very much about his own good or his own happiness, which he hopes for both in this world and the next. But he would deny that this is what he loves or cares for most (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, qu.26, a.3). He might fear that, because of his weakness, a loss of hope for his own happiness could undermine his attachment to virtue, but he would not believe that it would necessarily do so, and he might even be thankful never to have experienced or yielded to such loss of hope. And Leibowitz’s argument, it seems to me, has done nothing to show that the believer’s view of himself is wrong. The most he has done is to attribute to Socrates the claim that we care mostly for our own good. But I don’t see his evidence even for this assertion. What he apparently relies on is Socrates’ exhortation to virtue, “Not from money comes virtue, but from virtue comes money and all of the other good things for human beings (30a-b).” Leibowitz interprets this exhortation to mean that “men should care above all for virtue, and for virtue for the sake of the good things it brings. Men should and should not care above all for virtue” (178). It is the latter of these conflicting claims that he thinks Socrates means seriously. But Socrates’ statement that all good things come from virtue does not say, as Leibowitz says it does, that men should care for virtue for the sake of the good things it brings, and surely not for the sake of these good things above all. Socrates knew, of course, that the many among his listeners might take him to be saying this. But that he made it easy for them to do so means only that he understood them well enough to know that he could not reach them with a higher appeal. Leibowitz has therefore not shown that our own good is our ultimate concern even according to Socrates. And so he has also not shown, and not even shown that it was Socrates’ view, that a believer’s hope for divine rewards rests on self-contradictory thoughts about what he cares for most.3 And this means, finally, that he has neither undermined nor shown that Socrates thought he had undermined the basis for this hope on the part of the believer. REVIEWS ｜ BOLOTIN 99 It seems to me, then, that Leibowitz has not explained with sufficient clarity what Socrates wished to accomplish through his Delphic examinations or how he sought to accomplish it. In particular, he has not explained adequately how Socrates hoped to meet the challenge posed to philosophy or the study of nature by those who claim to have evidence of miraculous gods. On the other hand, he has outlined this challenge in an unusually compelling way, and he has made a persuasive case that the Apology presents the core of Socrates’ response to it. For this merit, among many others, we should be grateful to Leibowitz for his book. Even if he has not shown, as he intended to show, that Socrates is an unrivaled guide to the good life, he has, I think, shown that this is at least a serious possibility, and he will help his best readers to keep considering the evidence for and against it on their own. NOTES 1. In a footnote, Leibowitz refers to Callicles’ anger in the Gorgias as a clear case of what he calls the deeper kind of anger, but he offers no evidence that Callicles ever becomes aware of his ignorance of virtue, as I believe he does not. (Moreover, at the moment when he seems to come closest to that awareness, at Gorgias 513c4-6, he is not angry at Socrates.) 2. I suspect that Leibowitz thinks that the possibility of revelation from a radically mysterious god can indeed be ruled out, at least to some extent, on the basis of what he speaks of as a necessary “second branch” of Socrates’ Delphic examinations, or the conversations he had with those “promising” young people who could go “to the end of the road” with him in their critique of our ordinary moral beliefs. Accordingly, when he says that Socrates sought to determine “whether for them, as for himself, all traces of seemingly divine experience eventually disappear,” I think he meant to include in this even the apparent experience of a radically mysterious god (98-100; cf. 134: “the so-called experience of the gods of the city, and indeed of any gods”). But even if one admitted for the sake of argument that this was Socrates’ intention and that he learned what he hoped to learn from his most promising interlocutors, this would not be adequate to the question at hand unless one could show the bearing of these conversations with regard to his examinations of his more typical interlocutors. After all, a radically mysterious god, and even a not so mysterious god, might be disin- �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 101 TOLERATION clined to reveal himself to people like Socrates. And I do not think that Leibowitz has given an adequate account of the bearing of this “second branch” of Socrates’ Delphic examinations. 3. There is perhaps the outline of a stronger argument for Leibowitz’s view of our ultimate concern in his discussion of Glaucon on pages 96 and 97. But even there I think he has failed to present an adequate case. In this connection, I wonder about Leibowitz’s claim, in note 72 on page 99, that Socrates would like to know “whether those who reconcile themselves to unfathomable gods and inexpressible divine experiences could also, if brought to see the truth about highness, reconcile themselves to the unintelligible nobility and goodness of the commands that these allegedly divine experiences communicate.” For if Socrates knows, as Leibowitz claims he knows, that “the noble and good,” or virtue, “does not exist” (180), because it rests on contradictory thoughts about our motives, why would he care whether others who appeared to understand his argument would accept its conclusion? If they did not accept the conclusion, wouldn’t he assume that they had not understood the argument? Eva Brann, Homage to Americans Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010. 273 pages, $19.95. Book Review by Janet Dougherty Eva Brann’s Homage to Americans is an expression of heartfelt, genuine, and ungrudging respect for the American people. As Ms. Brann explains in the first essay of the book, “Mile-High Meditations,” true respect may involve—nay, it requires—thoughtful and sometimes pointed criticism. In particular, she notes that toleration, which has eclipsed and perhaps supplanted all other standards in contemporary American society, is “helpless before reality” (7)* and “culpably helpless in the face of evil” (3). Like Lincoln, Ms. Brann displays a kind of “radical conservatism” in her writing: she reminds us of our roots and thereby invites us to renew our awareness of our convictions and our goals. She never preaches; she reflects. Beginning, as she says all reasoning must, in media res, Ms. Brann speaks for herself and writes so as to invite her readers to engage in the examination of our shared habits of thought. Homage to Americans is the work of a master teacher who respects her students and therefore wishes them to think for themselves. Homage to Amerians is divided into three parts: “Mile-High Meditations,” “Close Readings,” and “Time-Spanning Speculations.” “Mile-High Meditations” is a single essay in eight sections, named according to the time and place of her reflections. In it we see Ms. Brann’s mind at work, beginning with immediate responses to what she sees around her and deepening into philosophical and practical thinking of wide-ranging significance. The second part of the book comprises close readings of Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance * Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Homage to Americans. Janet Dougherty is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The third part includes a lecture given to the students of the Air Force Academy on “The Paradox of Obedience,” together with a lecture given at St. John’s College on the destruction of two great South American civilizations, the Aztec and the Inca, by conquerors from Spain. The book is unified by Ms. Brann’s persistent concern with the integrity of American culture, and therefore with the prob-lem of reconciling the adherence to true and defensible principles of human society with toleration of otherness. “Mile-High Meditations” is a fitting opening of the book, for in it Ms. Brann puts into perspective the principle of toleration—which means, in part, putting it into the context of the Western tradition. Ms. Brann and the Americans to whom she speaks share this tradition, albeit some of us half-heartedly and with little awareness. Her writing moves seamlessly from contemporary American society to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Spinoza and Heidegger, Swift, Shakespeare, and Wallace Stevens. This is no display of erudition, but rather of openness to the tradition wherever it can offer support for genuine inquiry. Ms. Brann’s style of writing is egalitarian in its openness to insight wherever it manifests itself, and therefore to the tradition that shapes our society. In “Mile-High Meditations” she invites her readers to reflect upon the appropriate limits to toleration, and the invitation is unequivocally democratic. All may engage in the inquiry she shares with her readers; all, that is, who are willing to risk “respectful contempt,” the rightful punishment for those who fall short of the standard to which we deserve to be held. This is democracy in the high sense. This is the democracy that we ought to count as our heritage. For a thoughtful citizen there are no insuperable barriers between intellectual inquiry and everyday reflection. Americans can seek depth of understanding wherever it is to be found and we ought to begin wherever we find ourselves. Ms. Brann shows the way by reflecting on an overweight couple playing chess in the Denver airport. (Their tastes, happily, are not limited to fast-food pizza.) She provides a model of judging cautiously without surrendering the power to make judgments. Toleration, she shows us, cannot be held REVIEWS ｜ DOUGHERTY 103 as a principle overriding all others without being intellectually flabby as well as weak in the defense of right; but respect for others requires openness to their sometimes surprising combinations of traits. With no absolutes to rely on, Ms. Brann plunges into the morass of distinctions that alone help to untangle mere prejudice from thoughtful conjecture. In this piece Ms. Brann exhibits an intellectual courage and straightforward honesty worthy of emulation. She acknowledges that she shares the “bias for the thinkable, the bias of our West” (63). (Who, after all, lacks biases?) Her ability to examine the grounds of her convictions and the convictions that characterize the West does not fade but rather gains momentum as she identifies what may be the bias of all biases: “The faith that some thoughts are true and their opposites false is attended by this unease: It is not itself a truth, meaning a mode of the intellect in which it is through and through lucid and—or rather because it is—about something through and through genuine. It is rather an opinion, even a prejudice” (27). The prejudice that there are truths drives one to seek them. Ms. Brann does not pretend to settle the difficulties she articulates and clarifies. But she does work towards greater clarity and, ultimately, toward answers. The compelling question of this piece, as I see it, is whether our biases serve us as human beings worthy of respect, and, in doing so, serve humanity? Do they allow for the “personal practice of virtue” (both intellectual and moral) that Ms. Brann, by her own admission, prefers over general principles of morality (79)? While falsity is a condition for thinking through to the truth (31), and a multiplicity of perspectives can give us insight into another’s position, to acknowledge those perspectives is not to obliterate the sense that some things are beyond the pale. Near the close of this essay Ms. Brann reflects on the difference between intellectual and moral virtue (“a virtue in thinking is, however, often a vice in doing” [82]), and announces the importance of “doing right.” This conviction is easy to account for in those who “care less about the livability of life than its consecration” (8)—that is, those who acknowledge a firm religious faith. With regard to faith in God, Ms. Brann is Socratic: she chooses “knowing that I don’t know” (49). She begins and ends the essay, however, �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW with a reference to the possibility of evil. Without assuming that evil is always easy to recognize, one must acknowledge the problem of evil while putting toleration into perspective. One brief reference to Nazism is enough to prove the point: “What, for example, was the attraction offered by the Nazis to the young but Romanticism writ large and made official” (82)? The key to toleration might be seen as “letting others alone,” but in the face of evil it is clear that such thoughtless toleration is shameful and irresponsible. In section IV of the essay, Ms. Brann lays out several reasons for thoughtfully respecting, not merely tolerating, others. Throughout the essay she demonstrates what it means to avoid forcing the truth into preconceived notions, by letting something be, but not letting it alone (12), and this distinction, it seems to me, points to a standard for action as well as for thought. Like people who espouse values in conflict with one’s own, the current trends demand respectful examination; Ms. Brann demonstrates that they are unworthy of slavish adherence. Toleration without respect is a standard that is below the dignity of human beings. The contemporary emphasis on the dissimilarity of races, for example, on “dissimilation” rather than assimilation (59), is flawed in that it overemphasizes otherness. Particular humans combine their share in universal humanity with particular accidents and unique choices—here Ms. Brann finds an opening into the perennial philosophical problem of the relation of same and other. That problem is just beneath the surface of the complex and delicate issue of how various ethnic, racial, religious and otherwise differentiated groups relate to one another in a society that derives its fundamental principles from universal humanity and whose status depends upon the respectability of these principles. American society cannot maintain its integrity unless its members maintain a habit of thoughtful reflection. Ms. Brann’s “Mile-High Meditations” provides us with a model. In the next section of Homage to Americans, Ms. Brann goes on to make available to the reader the kind of thinking and writing that gave this nation its character. Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address are both models of thoughtful eloquence; the first united Virginians, the second, Amer- REVIEWS ｜ DOUGHERTY 105 icans committed to the preservation of the union, to uphold convictions that provided the basis for liberty and mutual, respectful, toleration. Ms. Brann’s examinations of these two texts are models of close and informed reading. Her analyses reveal to the reader the greatness of these documents in a way that a casual reading—that is, a reading uninformed by knowledge of the tradition in which Madison and Lincoln were steeped—cannot. After a paragraph by paragraph account, Ms. Brann, quoting from Hume’s “On Eloquence,” sums up Madison’s work as “at once ‘argumentative and rational,’ grandly passionate and carefully constructed” (123). As for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Ms. Brann shows in a line-byline reading its beauty as poetry and its resonance with the Biblical language by means of which Lincoln tried to persuade his audience of the “bonds of affection” (181) that could alone preserve the union. Both sections of this central part of the work deserve slow and careful readings. The section on Madison’s Memorial showed me that I had read this document only superficially. While I have read and heard Lincoln’s Address many times and with great appreciation, Ms. Brann’s account showed me that it too is a richer piece of writing than I had ever imagined. In his Memorial and Remonstrance, Madison argued against a bill to support Christian education and in support of the toleration of all religions because he was confident that without governmental interference they would thrive. He was far from disparaging the role of religion in supporting a healthy society. Ms. Brann asks, “What would Madison have said in the face of an observable decline of religious commitment and the increasing legal expulsion of religion from communal life” (110)? She wonders whether the kind of rhetoric he uses in the Memorial is an irrecoverable art. These are pressing questions for us to consider, questions, it seems to me, that were easier to address in a time when the hope that the United States could provide a “practical political pattern to the world” (161) was not considered narrowly self-serving, and when few if any would claim that “truth is a private predilection and everything is ‘true for’ them that believe it” (116). Not only did Lincoln and Madison not share this prejudice, but �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW they did not feel obligated to respond to it. The depth of both statesmen’s grounding in religion, far from being a hindrance to their promotion of democracy, was at its heart. Lincoln looked forward to a “new birth of freedom” in the aftermath of the Civil War, a new birth that was possible only through the common respect for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and especially the principle that “all men are created equal.” The principles of the Declaration must be held, he thought, as sacred. Respectful tolerance thrives on the support of such principles. In the penultimate piece of Homage to Americans, a lecture addressed to students of the U. S. Air Force Academy entitled “The Paradox of Obedience,” Ms. Brann maintains her characteristic sense of balance between opposing respectable views in the difficult context of the use of armed force. She avers that an “unthinking warrior is a fearful thing” (195), and argues that “submission can be an act of freedom” (208). She broaches a question that is urgent for those who defend this nation with force: how does one fulfill one’s duty to obey one’s superiors while cultivating a thoughtful awareness of the possibility that “personal, conscientious disobedience” (206) may sometimes be morally necessary? Citing the Spartan obedience to law rather than to an individual, Ms. Brann suggests the possibility that freedom requires some sort of obedience. But blind obedience cannot support freedom. It seems to me clear that the respectability of a warrior must depend on the respectability of the nation he or she serves, but it is equally clear after reading this lecture that the nation’s general character is insufficient by itself. The discussion of toleration that opens the book is complemented by the last piece in the book: “The Empires of the Sun and the West”—and in particular by Ms. Brann’s account of the intolerance of human sacrifice that characterized Cortés and his men, which contributed to their determination to conquer the Aztec people. This is no whitewashing: the Spanish conquistadors were guilty of unnecessary brutality, which Ms. Brann appropriately deplores (253). The motives of the Spanish conquerors were self-interested, but their prejudices, like ours, were integral to the Western tradition that promotes respect for human dignity. Where then ought REVIEWS ｜ DOUGHERTY 107 we to set the limits to toleration? This is no small problem. Ms. Brann peremptorily dismisses the suspension of judgment as any kind of solution: “A non-judgmental historian is an incarnate contradiction and produces only an armature of facts without the musculature that gives it human shape (222). In this respect she sides with Cortés himself, who “dignifies his subjects with his condemnation” of their practice of ritual human sacrifice (223). The role of human sacrifice in the Aztec (or Nahuan) culture, Ms. Brann argues, is the key to their defeat by the Spanish conquistadors. For the Aztec people thought they were compelled to sacrifice human beings in order to render more reliable the annual and epochal returns of the sun, their primary god. The nobles themselves may have experienced a sense of doom, for they were “living over a moral abyss” (241) created by the compulsion to kill their own kind. They were betrayed by their trust in their gods (248-9). The Spanish, by contrast, worshipped “a god mysterious but not capricious, [who] made nature according to laws and left it largely alone” (257). Although Ms. Brann describes the conquistadors as ruffians, she attributes their victory over the Aztecs and the Incas to the Western culture that shaped them, and she supports their disgust and horror at a practice they could not see as justified or tolerable. This account of the conquest of the Aztecs is well informed and extensively researched. Ms. Brann describes a wide variety of sources, including Cortés’ own letters to his king, and acknowledges their biases. No set of citations can demonstratively establish the truth of Ms. Brann’s account, but its plausibility is, to me at least, manifest. The contest was by no means a conflict between good and evil: it is worth repeating that there was plenty of wrongdoing on the side of the Spanish conquerors. But their victory does seem to have been a victory of the West (our “West”—an ambiguous but convenient term, as Ms. Brann acknowledges [217]), of a culture that produces a kind of human being who knows “how to fight back,” and “how to correct our aberrations by returns to sounder beginnings” (229). The Aztecs were trapped by their culture; we, with all our defects, may find renewal at the heart of ours. This is not a promise but a task. �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Ms. Brann has accomplished a great deal if she has helped her readers to understand that task. I think she has done that and more. To read Homage to Americans is to prepare to undertake the task of renewing our culture. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 108 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2011 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T. H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Braithewaite, William Howland, Jacob Smith, Joseph Boxel, Lise van Bolotin, David Dougherty, Janet Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 53, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2011. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_53_No_1_Fall_2011 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8c89dd3cbc4ea59e815dcc22da00f689.pdf 5524f9fe0ae70d9b435ec574ea6e608f PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 53.2 (Spring 2012) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2012 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �Contents Essays & Lectures Aesthetics Ancient and Modern .........................................1 James Carey Passion and Perception in Mozart’s Magic Flute ...........38 Peter Kalkavage Socrates, Parmenides, and the Way Out ...........................68 Judith Seeger Rolling His Jolly Tub: Composer Elliott Carter, St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942.........................97 Hollis Thoms Reflections Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening .............................133 Eva Brann Caged Explorers: The Hunger for Control.....................150 Howard Zeiderman Poetry The Love Song of the Agoraphobic ................................177 Elliott Zuckerman Reviews Henry Kissinger on China: The Dangerous Illusion of “Realist” Foreign Policy Book Review of Henry Kissenger’s China..........................179 Joseph A. Bosco Everything is One Book Review of Eva Brann’s The Logos of Heraclitus ......195 David Carl �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �ESSAYS & LECTURES Aesthetics, Ancient and Modern: An Introduction James Carey The phenomenon of beauty is trans-political, trans-historical and trans-religious. Whether we are believers or non-believers, we can admire Greek temples, an archaic statue of Apollo, Islamic calligraphy, a Gothic cathedral, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Hindu architecture, Chinese landscape painting, a Japanese tea ceremony, and so forth. Our admiration of these things need not be animated by religious belief. To be sure, they mean incomparably more to those who believe that they are intimately connected with the sacred or divine than they mean to those who deny such a connection. But the beautiful in art is accessible to all, the beautiful in nature even more so. We should not be surprised, then, to find some agreement among the greatest minds as to what beauty is. It is often pointed out that philosophical inquiry into the nature of the beautiful did not get designated as “aesthetics” until the eighteenth century. The inquiry itself is not an exclusive modern concern, however. It was launched by Plato. His most impressive attempt to shed light on the nature of the beautiful is not to be found in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, but in the Hippias Major. The Symposium and the Phaedrus are chiefly concerned with the erotic relation of the soul to the beautiful. The concern of the Hippias Major is, on the face of it, more limited: what is the beautiful? Hippias has come to Athens on a diplomatic mission to represent the interests of his native city of Elis. He is a well known sophist. He plays a small role in Plato’s Protagoras James Carey is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. A shorter version of this essay was delivered as a lecture at St. John’s College, Annapolis, on September 10, 2011. This essay is dedicated to the memory of Thomas McDonald, in whose soul were uniquely combined intellectual powers of the highest order with rare loftiness of spirit and refinement of taste. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and he is the chief interlocutor with Socrates in another dialogue, the Hippias Minor. He has a high opinion of how much he knows, and he boasts about it without shame. Hippias is, as one of the most careful students of the Platonic dialogues notes, “the great fool.”1 There are other fools in the Platonic dialogues—Ion and Euthyphro come quickly to mind. But Hippias is the greatest fool of them all. His limitations in combination with his vanity keep the conversation with Socrates from ascending to the highest peaks of speculation. But the conversation ascends very high nonetheless, though to appreciate this the reader has to compensate for Hippias’s dullness by engaging his own thought with what Socrates has to say. There is a rather lengthy introductory exchange between the two men. It begins with a comparison of earlier sophists with contemporary sophists. It thereby brushes up against the theme of wisdom, though without explicitly exploring it. Instead, the introductory exchange centers on the problem of Hippias’s failure to make money through sophistry on his visits to Sparta, in contrast to his general success in this endeavor elsewhere. At one point, when Hippias claims to have composed a beautiful speech about the beautiful, Socrates says that Hippias has reminded him “opportunely” of something.2 Someone, Socrates says, has recently been throwing him into confusion with the question, “What is the beautiful?” Socrates asks Hippias to help him find an answer to this question. But his expression “opportunely”—eis kalon—is not quite serious, since he has used the word kalon, the Greek word for” beautiful,” or its derivatives seven times in the opening exchange. Hippias himself used it once in the opening exchange, rather strangely.3 He does not, however, seem interested in elaborating what he might mean by it, in spite of the fact that Socrates tacitly invites him to do so by responding with a double echo of the word.4 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 3 Unlike the conversations that Socrates has with Euthyphro and Meno in the dialogues named after them, and, in particular, unlike the exchange at the beginning of the Republic and the ensuing conversations with Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, Socrates himself initiates the conversation with Hippias in this dialogue, as he also does in the Hippias Minor after being invited to do so by Eudicus. When Socrates initiates a conversation we must ask ourselves what he hopes to accomplish through it, that is, why he even engages in it. And it is especially important for us to ask this question when Socrates bothers to initiate a conversation with someone like Hippias or Ion who is not already a friend or associate of his and whom he knows in advance to be limited in philosophic capacity and commitment. We might think that Socrates is not well acquainted with Hippias. But right off the bat he appeals to Hippias’s vanity by calling him “Hippias, the beautiful and wise” and in the same sentence he refers to a prior encounter with Hippias. Socrates may be alluding to Hippias’ role in the conversation reported in the Protagoras, where he does not make a good impression.5 Is it possible that Socrates thinks that Hippias, in spite of his limitations, might nonetheless help him achieve a bit of clarity regarding something about which he is admittedly perplexed? In response to the distinctively Socratic question, “What is the beautiful?” Hippias offers three answers. The beautiful is a beautiful maiden, it is ornamental gold, and it is the solemn occasion of a funeral. Socrates exposes the deficiencies of these answers. In doing so, he couches his observations in the name of a third party who is not present, someone who, Socrates says, chastises him about his thoughts on the beautiful (to kalon). It later appears that this person is Socrates himself. Socrates, then, presents himself as being in conflict �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW with himself about the beautiful. And yet one of the very few things that he says he is an expert on is erotics.6 So, given Socrates understanding of the necessary relationship of eros to the beautiful, we find a tension, to say the least, between his uncharacteristic profession of expertise and his apparent confusion about something that falls within the purview of his expertise, to be even at the center of it. After disposing of Hippias’s answers to the question, “What is the beautiful?” Socrates himself suggests three answers. His first answer is that the beautiful is the fitting (or the appropriate—to trepon).7 This leads to the question of whether its presence causes things just to appear beautiful or to really be beautiful. The difficulty here is in the Greek expression to kalon itself. It can mean the beautiful as we today usually use the word, the aesthetically beautiful.8 But to kalon can also mean the noble—moral nobility or nobility of character. In the case of the latter there can be a great difference between being and appearance. Someone could have a noble character without appearing so, not at first glance anyway. Socrates himself is the conspicuous example. Nobility manifests itself most conspicuously in those situations that, as we say, exhibit one’s character. In the case of noble laws and pursuits, the discrepancy between being and appearance is so striking and of such contention as to lead, Socrates says, to “strife and battle . . . privately for individuals and publically for cities.”9 In the case of the aesthetically beautiful, the other sense of to kalon, there seems to be no difference at all between being and appearance. It would be strange to say that a landscape or a painting, for example, only appears to be beautiful but is not really so. Socrates’ second answer to the question “What is the beautiful” is that it is the useful (to chrēsimon). And this an- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 5 swer gets transformed into the claim that the beautiful is the helpful (to ōphelimon).10 We can perhaps think of the noble this way, although we can easily imagine situations in which nobility of character does not help very much, and other situations in which it even brings physical harm to him who exhibits it. It is even less obvious how something aesthetically beautiful, such as a statue or a sunset, is useful or helpful. We might get the impression from his first two definitions that Socrates is interested in debunking the aesthetically beautiful, which sometimes gets pejoratively called the “merely pretty.” This impression is dispelled with Socrates’ third and most interesting, definition. Here is what he says: I think that I have just now found my way out. Observe. If we were to say that what makes us delight is beautiful—in no way do I mean all pleasures, but rather that [which pleases] through hearing and sight—how then would we do in the contest? I suppose, Hippias, that beautiful human beings at least, but also all decorations and paintings and pieces of sculpture, whichever ones are beautiful, please us when we see them. And beautiful voices and music in general, discourses and stories too, produce this same thing, so that if we should answer that bold man [i.e., Socrates’ “critic”] this way—“Noble one, the beautiful is the pleasant [that pleases] through hearing and sight”—don’t you think we would check his boldness?11 We notice a couple of peculiarities in this passage. In the first place, there is a double chiasmus. Socrates speaks of the pleasant that comes through hearing and sight, in that order, at the beginning of this passage and again at the end. The �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW pleasures that come through hearing would seem to have some primacy over those that come through sight. And yet, in the middle of the passage, Socrates first mentions the pleasures that come through sight, and afterwards those that come through hearing. So, though one might infer that Socrates holds discourses to be more truly beautiful than sights, the passage above does not support this inference. Beautiful discourses and beautiful sights are situated on the same plane here. In the second place, Socrates includes the human as well as the non-human in that which can please through hearing and sight. And he also includes that which pleases without any logos in the strictly discursive sense of the word, such as decorations, paintings, sculpture, voices, and music, and that which does please discursively, such as discourses and stories. He thereby highlights the two senses of to kalon, as meaning, again, both the aesthetically beautiful and the morally noble. The morally noble, which pleases us through a rational consideration of it, and the aesthetically beautiful, which pleases us through sensation and presumably without any rational consideration, are intimately connected, so much so that, again, a single Greek word can mean both. Beautiful human beings, in particular, can be beautiful in their looks or beautiful in their character, or both. We leave the Hippias Major at this point, with some regret. For we shall not follow up Socrates’ ensuing and profound distinction between two types of classes, a distinction that no lesser a student of Plato than Jacob Klein held to be the clue to Plato’s understanding of the eidetic duality that is constitutive of Being itself, a theme that Klein shows is at the heart of the Sophist and is alluded to in other dialogues as well.12 Our regret, however, is somewhat assuaged. For Socrates’ claim in the Hippias Major that the beautiful is what pleases �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 7 through sight and hearing induces us to reflect on similar claims about beauty made in the greatest work on the subject ever written, Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The Critique of Judgment is divided into two parts, the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and Critique of Teleological Judgment. We confine our attention to the first part, the principal task of which is to validate the concept of taste as something that can be cultivated, something that can be good or bad, and something that has the beautiful—and not the pleasant simply—as its primary object. Early on Kant raises the question of whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes or follows the judging of the object.13 One might think that this question could be decided empirically, simply by paying attention to the temporal sequence in which feeling and judgment occur. But the mind moves so rapidly that the question cannot be answered by empirical inspection alone. It can only be answered by way of an argument. Kant says that the solution to this problem is the key to the critique of taste. He argues as follows. Nothing can be universally communicated except cognition (Erkenntnis) and presentation (Vorstellung), so far as it belongs to cognition. One can report a certain sensation, say, that buttermilk tastes good. But one cannot be sure that others who have also tasted buttermilk will concur in this report. If a difference of opinion emerges, that is the end of the matter. On the other hand, an argument, say, a Euclidean demonstration, can be not just reported but universally communicated. Anyone who sets out to prove, for example, that the base angles of isosceles triangles are equal, can expect anyone else who is familiar with the preceding definitions, common notions, postulates, and propositions to follow the demonstration. Each step of the argument can be made clear. And if �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW someone observing the demonstration discovers a flaw in the argument, then that discovery too can be communicated. The reason for this agreement is that, when we communicate our cognitions to one another, what is individual about us recedes into the background. We communicate our cognitions simply as one rational being to another rational being. In doing so we expect agreement; and if we find disagreement we expect an argument of some kind in support of it. We do not communicate our sensations to each other this way. If I say that the room is warm, and you say that it is cold, I do not ask you for a demonstration that it is cold. If I find a certain dessert excessively sweet, and you don’t find it sweet enough, we do not set out to refute each other. In a similar way, if I experience something as beautiful, say, the slow movement from a late Beethoven string quartet, and you hear it as more boring than beautiful, I do not try to demonstrate to you that it really is beautiful. An argument establishing something as beautiful, a definitive argument compelling assent from everyone who can follow the argument, is not possible. But in spite of this similarity, the experience of something as beautiful is not just a feeling of pleasure either, though pleasure is surely bound up with this experience. Kant thinks that, unlike the feeling of pleasure, the judgment that something is beautiful is universally communicable, at least in principle. This is possible because the encounter with something beautiful gives rise to a peculiarly harmonious interaction of the understanding, or the faculty of concepts, with the imagination, and hence produces a state of mind (Gemütszustand) that can be communicated. There is no comparable harmonious interaction of the cognitive faculties in the experience of something as merely pleasant, such as the scent of patchouli or the taste of cilantro, about which there can be �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 9 a difference of opinion that is in principle irresolvable. In the case of a judgment of cognition proper, there is also a relationship between the understanding and the imagination. The synthesis of the imagination is subsumed under a definite concept. For example, two events are subsumed under the a priori concept of cause and effect; the empirical concept of a plate is subsumed under the pure concept of a circle; an individual dog is subsumed under the general and empirically derived concept of a dog. Such subsumption under a definite concept Kant calls a determinative judgment. This kind of judgment determines the object as this or that definite kind of thing. It fixes the object, establishes its boundaries as it were, and thereby renders it intelligible. The result is a definite cognition. In the judgment of something as beautiful, however, the synthesis of the imagination is not subsumed under a definite concept. The harmonious interaction of the cognitive faculties that is initiated by the presence of a beautiful object Kant calls “free play” (freies Spiel). The resultant state of mind can be universally communicated because it is formed by a free play of cognitive faculties that we all possess. On the other hand, this harmonious interaction, precisely as free play, does not give rise to a definite cognition (ein bestimmter Erkenntis). It is only what is required for cognition in general (Erkenntnis überhaupt). That this state of mind is communicable, even universally so, does not by itself imply that it is actually communicated. For the latter, taste is also required. And taste is developed primarily by cultivating a habit of attention to the formal relationships that are present in beautiful objects. These relationships, precisely as formal, cannot be apprehended through sensation alone—as pleasure can—but must be apprehended by specifically cognitive faculties. And yet, be- �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cause here the imagination is not simply subordinated to the understanding and placed in its service, but harmoniously and freely interacts with the understanding, a feeling of pleasure necessarily arises, as always happens in play. A judgment that proceeds, not determinatively and by way of subsuming a particular object (in the broadest sense of the word) under a given definite concept, but by finding a universal concept for the particular object is what Kant calls a reflective judgment. In the investigation of nature determinative and reflective judgments are sequentially made. But in the experience of an object as beautiful only a reflective judgment is made, though in reading a work of literature in particular, determinate judgments prepare the way for the reflective judgment that the work is beautiful. The universal concept “beautiful,” the predicate of the reflective judgment, “This object is beautiful,” is an indefinite concept. It refers only to the way the individual object has of animating the cognitive faculties into free play.14 The effect of this free play is a pleasure that we expect everyone who has taste to feel. To Kant’s argument that, in the encounter with a beautiful object, the feeling of pleasure is consequent to and founded on the judging of the object as beautiful, and not vice versa, one might object that he has only shown what the sequence could be. He has not shown what the sequence must be. But Kant would respond that only this argument accounts for the phenomenon of aesthetic enjoyment. For we do not call all the things that please us “beautiful”—not by a long shot. There would, however, be no reason not to do so if pleasure precedes and founds the judgment that the object is beautiful. Kant’s argument also makes sense of how one can distinguish between good taste, educated taste so to speak, and bad or uneducated taste. Most of us recognize that our taste is more refined now than it was when we were younger. The �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 11 broadening experience of attending to the formal relations present in beautiful objects enables us to note, appreciate, and, as a consequence, delight in them. Again, these formal relations cannot be apprehended by sensation alone, as is the case with pleasures that are not mediated by judgment and the cognitive principles that make judgment possible. And yet, because no definite cognition is involved in a pure judgment of taste, we cannot actually demonstrate that an object is beautiful, however perfect its formal articulation. What we say by way of communicating the satisfaction we take in a work such as the Adagio of Beethoven’s “Hammerclavier” Sonata or Josquin Desprez’ “Déploration de la Mort de Jehan Ockeghem” to someone whose musical taste we think is cultivated or susceptible of cultivation, is “Just listen to this.” Or, in the case of painting by, say, Vermeer, “Just look at this.” A beautiful object does not consist of formal relations alone. It has a material element as well, such as shades of color or volume of sound. Unlike form, this material element, which gives rise to what Kant calls the charm of sense, is not communicable. Two individuals might possess an equally developed and refined appreciation of the formal relations in a Bach fugue. But one of them prefers to hear a given fugue played on the piano rather than on a harpsichord, whereas the other prefers exactly the opposite. The timbre of a harpsichord and the timbre of a piano belong to the matter of the music. For that reason, the extent to which one pleases more than the other lies entirely within the domain of individual preference. But the motivic, melodic, tonal, and structural elements belong to the form of the music. It is these formal relationships that stimulate the free play of the cognitive faculties and thereby allow for universal communicability. Formal relations are best apprehended at a distance. We �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW can experience little in the way of formal relations through the sense of touch, and only a little more through the sense of taste and the sense of smell. Our sense of smell, unlike our senses of touch and taste, can, of course, apprehend things at a distance. If it were more developed in us humans we might be able to smell formal relationships. But as it is, we cannot do so, certainly not as readily as we can through sight and hearing. It should not be surprising, then, that we rarely if ever speak of a tactile sensation, however pleasant it may be, as beautiful, and the same is true of an excellent meal or a fine wine. We might say that the layout of a meal is beautiful, or that the color of a wine is beautiful. But on tasting these things we do not say, “What a beautiful flavor!” We say instead, “What a delightful flavor!” and maybe even “What a lovely flavor!” Someone might decide to say “What a beautiful flavor!” just to show that it is possible to do so. But this is not how we typically speak, however pleasant we may find tactile, gustatory, and olfactory sensations. The reason seems to be—and this is what Plato caught sight of—that any formal relations we might apprehend through touch, taste, and smell are almost infinitely vague in comparison to what we can hear in a piece of music or see in a painting, to say nothing of what we can apprehend in a work of literature.15 There is a further sign that Plato and Kant are right in their agreement that the beautiful pleases through sight and hearing uniquely. In the case of touch, taste, and smell, the pleasure is felt right on the skin, and right on the gustatory and olfactory organs. One feels a pleasure in or on the organs of sensation, granted that it can also be quickly suffused throughout one’s body as a whole. This is not the case regarding the pleasures associated with sight and hearing. On looking at a beautiful painting one does not experience a pleasing sensation on the eyeball. Nor on hearing a beautiful piece of �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 13 music does one experience a pleasing sensation in the ear. Regarding music in particular, we can enjoy it up to a point just by remembering it. A talented and well trained musician can imagine and delight in music he has never heard before just by reading through a score as though it were a book. Beethoven composed his greatest works when he was stone deaf. Schubert did not live to hear a single one of his symphonies performed. Brahms is reported to have said, partly in jest but not entirely so, that when he wanted to hear a really fine performance of the Marriage of Figaro he would light up a cigar and stretch out on his couch. Many composers refuse to compose at the piano. They want their compositions to originate in the imagination, not in their fingers, not even in their ears. The distance that separates what is visible and audible from our eyes and ears enables us to apprehend the visible and the audible with a measure of detachment. To be sure, a light can be so bright that it causes a pain in one’s eyes, and a sound can be so loud that it makes one’s ears hurt. But, again, the intensity of a light or a sound pertains to sensory matter, not to form. Form, as such, causes no pain in the sensory organs, and the pleasure it gives rise to does not occur there but somewhere else. It occurs in the mind. Kant argues that the satisfaction associated with the experience of the purely beautiful is disinterested. He has been famously taken to task on this point by Nietzsche.16 If Nietzsche read the Critique of Judgment, he did not possess the patience to read it carefully; for Kant very early in that work explicitly says that “a judgment about beauty, in which the least interest mingles, is quite partial and no pure judgment of taste.”17 A judgment of taste can indeed be interested, but to that extent it cannot be a pure judgment of taste. The judgment of a beautiful human form, for example, is an aesthetic judgment, but �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW it is not entirely disinterested. Kant recognizes this, though Nietzsche seems to think it undercuts Kant’s thesis. Even when the beautiful is combined with the good, it cannot, according to Kant, be the object of a pure judgment of taste; and the same is true of what he calls “the ideal of beauty.”18 In Plato’s Symposium Socrates relates Diotima’s saying dictum that “eros is not of the beautiful. . . . It is of engendering and bringing to birth in the beautiful.”19 However we are to understand this, Plato seems to recognize, as Kant does, that eros, being about as interested as interested can be, for that very reason cannot have the beautiful, simply, as its real object. The antecedent disinterested contemplation of the beautiful may well give rise to a consequent interest in, even a desire for, a certain non-contemplative relation of oneself to the beautiful, a relation of engendering and bringing to birth in it. Still, what eros is of is not the beautiful. Instead, Diotima says, “eros is of the good’s being one’s own always.” Diotima seems to be saying that, though the good can be one’s own, the aesthetically beautiful cannot be one’s own. The delight you take in contemplating the beautiful object in no way detracts from the delight I take in it. Quite the opposite. Your delight enhances my delight. The experience of pure beauty gives rise to a disinterested satisfaction not simply because beautiful sights and sounds, unlike pleasant tactile sensations, flavors, and odors, are mediated by distance, but because they are thereby also mediated by judgment. The satisfaction bound up with the merely pleasant, on the other hand, is immediate. No act of judgment is needed to enjoy the pleasing sensation of a cool breeze on a hot day. An irrational animal can enjoy tactile sensations as easily as a human being can. When we call a flower “beautiful,” we do so because of how it looks, not because of how it smells. After all, one can, and often does, call a flower beau- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 15 tiful without ever smelling it. One does not, however, call a flower beautiful without seeing it, however pleasant may be the scent that comes wafting through the window. The assessment of how a flower looks, of how it is shaped and articulated, is made in an act of reflective judgment, which occurs so naturally and rapidly that we rarely realize that we are even making a judgment. Because the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is consequent to and founded on the judgment that the object is beautiful, this pleasure bears an analogy to, without being simply identical with, the pleasure we take in contemplating moral nobility. As Kant argues, we do not do what is morally right because of the pleasure that doing so gives rise to. For we would not experience any pleasure in doing what is morally right unless we thought that acting this way was good in itself, regardless of whether it gave rise to more pleasure than pain or the reverse. Any reduction of moral nobility to pleasure seeking is as morally obtuse as a reduction of the admiration of moral nobility to pleasure seeking.20 The remarkable affinity between the pleasure taken in the beautiful and the pleasure taken in the morally good leads Kant to speak of beauty as the symbol of the morally good. Aesthetic education, though by no means a substitute for moral education, can nonetheless facilitate moral education. The cultivation of taste elevates one above enjoyment of the coarser and more immediate pleasures to those refined pleasures that are mediated by judgment. The pleasure that one takes in contemplating the aesthetically beautiful is then analogous to the pleasure that one takes in contemplating exemplars of moral nobility, and to the pleasure that one can also take in establishing a measure of integrity in one’s own character. Kant says: Taste makes possible, without too violent a leap, �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the transition (as it were) from the charm of sense to habitual moral interest, because it represents the imagination in its freedom as purposively determinable for the understanding, and so teaches us to find even in objects of sense a free satisfaction apart from any charm of sense.21 Thomas McDonald puts this matter well when he speaks of a teleological function of aesthetic education. It is conducive to developing “a susceptibility to rational determination immanently, working from within and from beneath, [such] that one’s practical moral determinations not always be imposed from without or from above.”22 That there is but one Greek word, kalon, for both the aesthetically beautiful and the morally noble is not a linguistic accident.23 To return briefly to the Hippias Major, that to kalon pleases through sight and/or hearing holds true of the morally noble as well as of the aesthetically beautiful. Moral nobility can be seen in an act and heard in a speech. Obviously it cannot be touched, tasted, or smelled. Now, Socrates sees that this formulation, though true and highly significant, describes a beautiful object only in terms of its effect. He is interested, however, in more than the effect that the beautiful object has on the subject. He is also interested in what causes the beautiful object to be beautiful. If we say that the cause of the beautiful object is itself the beautiful—a possibility that Socrates briefly entertains—then we are not saying very much: the beautiful is the cause of the beautiful; cause and effect are the same. And yet if the cause and the effect are different, but both are somehow beautiful, we find ourselves confronted with the so-called “third man” problem: there must be some third “beautiful” in which the beautiful as cause and the beautiful as effect both participate; and then some fourth “beautiful” in which all three participate; and so on ad �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 17 infinitum. The question of what causes an object to be beautiful is a real question. Socrates does not answer it. Kant, however, does answer this question. The cause of the beautiful in art—we are not speaking now of the beautiful in nature—is genius. Kant does not use this word the way we do. For him it does not necessarily denote someone with an exceptionally high intelligence, as intelligence is commonly understood. Newton, he says, is not a genius, and Kant would certainly not call himself one. Genius names a kind of mysterious spirit that is at work within the artist, assuming that he is a great artist.24 According to Kant, only an artist can possesses genius. Newton notoriously moves from one assertion to another without supplying the intervening steps that logically connect the one with the other. But Newton can fill these steps in. With much more labor than it cost him we can fill them in as well. Newton can justify each step in his demonstrations. If we understand his demonstrations we can do the same. Kant maintains that the case is different with the artist and his art. Mozart, for example, cannot explain why the interval of a sixth at just this point in a melody is exactly the right interval, and not, say, a fourth. Michelangelo cannot explain how he visualized a captive within an uncut block of stone, or why he decided to paint the newly created Adam just as he painted him. The great artist must of course possess a communicable knowledge of the elements of his craft. And these elements are teachable. Mozart could teach counterpoint, and Michelangelo could teach the techniques of sculpture and of representing perspective in two dimensions. But Mozart could not teach anyone, no matter how technically proficient he was at mastering the rules of counterpoint and harmony, how to write a “Jupiter Symphony,” or even a comparatively simple but beautiful melody like “La ci darem la �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW mano” from Don Giovanni, or the even simpler but equally beautiful melody from The Magic Flute, “Drei Knäbchen, jung, schön, hold, und weise.” (The latter melody, in B-flat major, begins implausibly with five F’s in a row followed by five D’s in row, and then three B-flats in a row—and yet, for all its simplicity, I daresay there is nothing more beautiful in opera.) Similarly, Michelangelo could not teach anyone how to sculpt a masterpiece comparable to his “David.” Kant says that to the extent that an artist is animated by genius he cannot articulate the rules by which he produces his works of art.25 Genius presupposes technique, but it is not identical with technique. Genius is an altogether mysterious force that even the artist cannot account for. Brahms once said that when he was a young man melodies came to him while he was polishing his shoes. This attitude of the artist toward the sources of his inspiration is a familiar one and millennia old. An unnamed goddess is invoked in the third word of the Iliad; an unnamed muse is invoked in the fourth word of the Odyssey. In Plato’s Ion, Socrates makes a number of comic observations about the pretentions of rhapsodes, poets, and soothsayers. While we are laughing at them, however, we should not overlook a remarkable observation he also makes that is not so comic: A great indication [that the god is speaking through these people] is Tynnichos the Chalcidean, who never made any poem whatsoever that would be worthy of remembering, but then [made] the paean that everyone sings, just about the most beautiful of all lyric poems, simply (or artlessly—atechnōs) as he himself says, “a discovery of the muses.”26 How did Tynnichos manage to do this? Socrates does not say. One might say that Tynnichos was visited by genius. If �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 19 so, it was a brief visit. Beethoven, who was in a position to know, held that genius is always prolific. Beethoven may have had Bach in mind. He once said, “Bach ought not to be called Bach (German for “brook”) but Meer (German for “ocean”). What is the ultimate source of the beautiful in art? The twentieth-century German philosopher Max Scheler gave a blunt and characteristically provocative answer to this question. “The artist is merely the mother of the work of art. God is the father.”27 So direct a theological answer to this question is not the only one. Leo Strauss, hardly an unqualified admirer of the fine arts as distinct from the liberal arts, and highly suspicious of aesthetics, writes in a letter, “[O]nly the moderns are so crazy [as] to believe that ‘creation’ of a ‘work of art’ is more worthy of wonder and more mysterious than the reproduction of a dog: just look at a mother dog with her puppies . . . .” It is not clear what crazy moderns Strauss has in mind. Kant, for one, would grant that nature, prodigal in its production of the beautiful and sublime, is more worthy of wonder than any work of art. But also worthy of wonder is the process of artistic production. Strauss recognizes this, and continues his sentence as follows: “. . . and the force, by means of which Shakespeare conceived, felt, and wrote Henry IV, is not Shakespeare’s work, but [is] greater than any work of any man.”28 Kant is not averse to a theological account of artistic genius, but he is determined, as always, to keep theology at arms length until compelled by his argument to bring it into the picture. He entertains the possibility that what is at work in genius is nature. “Genius is the innate talent of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.”29 A bit later Kant says: In science . . . the greatest discoverer differs only �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW in degree from his laborious imitator and apprentice, but he differs specifically from him whom nature has endowed for beautiful art. . . . The artist is favored by nature. . . . [Artistic] aptitude (Geschicklichkeit) cannot be communicated; rather, it is imparted to every [artist] immediately by the hand of nature; and so it dies with him, until nature endows another in the same way, who needs nothing more than an example to let the talent of which he is conscious work in a similar way.30 The way nature works is mysterious. After Mozart died a lot of attention was directed toward turning his son into “another Mozart.” It did not work. The boy had a very good ear, and he was taught the nuts and bolts of composition, but he lacked genius. He was not one of nature’s favorites. In the above passage Kant indicates that artistic activity, which cannot be reproduced, can be a way in which artistic activity gets, not exactly reproduced but further produced, assuming that talent is present and technique has been mastered. The artwork of an earlier artist can serve as an example to a later one—not to be copied of course, but to be emulated. Beethoven’s great piano concertos are not copies of Mozart’s, not even structurally. But they were in large measure inspired by Mozart’s concertos. Artistic inspiration is, to be sure, occasioned not only by examples of artistic masterworks. Beethoven wrote the “Molto Adagio” of his E minor string quartet under the direct inspiration of the night sky. The literary critic Eric Heller reports that the great physicist Werner Heisenberg was once speaking with a small group of English research students on the difference between humanistic studies and scientific pursuits. A grand piano was in the room, and after the discussion Heisenberg, who was a highly accomplished pianist, improvised on it a bit. He then played, beautifully, a Beethoven sonata. When Heisenberg �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 21 finished, he said to those present, “If I had never lived, someone else would have discovered the Uncertainty Principle. For this was the solution of a problem that had emerged from the logical development of physics and had to be solved in this and no other way. But if there had never been a Beethoven, this sonata would not have been composed.”31 Kant’s claim that genius is an endowment of nature is problematic. He labored at length to ground and validate the post-Aristotelian, non-teleological, mathematico-mechanical concept of nature in his first Critique and in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Kant construes nature in these works as simply the complex of phenomena standing under architectonic laws prescribed to it a priori by the human understanding. It is hard to see how nature, so construed, could be the source of anything so inscrutable as artistic genius. The post-Kantian rise of a putatively non-teleological biology has the effect of making genius all the more inscrutable. One might say that the force that produced, say, Schubert’s final piano sonatas, his Ninth Symphony, his Grand Duo for four hands, and his great string quintet (the last three works all composed in C major, incidentally) was just a rare and transient anomaly, like a black swan. But this claim does not adequately account for the taste by which we are able to appreciate these works, and this taste is not anomalous at all. It is not easy to see how taste for beauty, or even the capacity for such taste, could have gotten naturally selected for enhancing the survival prospects of the human species. For, again, the satisfaction bound up with our experience of the beautiful is the effect of a disinterested judgment. The cognitive faculties that are set in free play by the presence of the beautiful can certainly be placed in the service of our biological needs. But does their free play serve these needs? It is one thing to assert that it does. It is something �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW else to make sense of this assertion. The nature that gives rise to genius can hardly be the nature of modern natural science. It is something whose inner workings in the case of genius are essentially veiled from view—from the view of the scientist and from the view of the artist as well. The activity of artistic genius is as mysterious as its ultimate source. Kant understands this activity to be one that is productive of what he calls, almost paradoxically, “aesthetic ideas”: [B]y an aesthetic idea I understand that presentation (Vorstellung) of the imagination that occasions much thinking, yet without any definite thought, i.e., any concept, being adequate to it, a presentation that speech, consequently, cannot completely compass and make intelligible.32 In spite of the last clause, Kant understands poetry to be the art form that is most impressive in its production of aesthetic ideas. Intelligibility, according to Kant, is constituted through the understanding’s imposition of concepts on intuitions that have previously been synthesized by the imagination.33 This activity of our understanding is highly selective. Only a portion of what the imagination has previously synthesized in intuition gets attended to. For us to understand something, much of the material that the imagination synthesizes has to be passed over and disregarded. It suffices to think of the controlled experiment, in which the scientist deliberately attempts to eliminate everything from consideration that is extraneous to the experiment itself. In the case of writing poetry, something quite different happens. Kant says that there the imagination “is free to furnish unsought, over and above . . . agreement with the concept, extensive undeveloped material for the understanding, material which the understanding did not take into consider- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 23 ation in its concept.”34 Though this activity of the imagination is not in the service of the understanding’s constitution of an object, and hence not in the service of acquiring knowledge, it is still, as Kant says in the preceding quotation, “for the understanding.” In the first place, this activity “quickens the cognitive powers.” That’s the element of free play, assuming genius in the artist and a cultivated taste in his audience. But in the second place, this activity, in the case of poetry especially, provides a kind of “nourishment” for the understanding. “[T]hrough his imagination [the genius] gives life to his concepts.”35 Let us consider a few lines of poetry to see how imagination furnishes material for the understanding that is deliberately ignored by the understanding in its purely cognitive endeavors and typically overlooked in ordinary experience by those of us who are not geniuses. The rejected lover says, in a poem by Fulke Greville: Cynthia who did naked lie Runs away like silver streams; Leaving hollow banks behind, Who can neither forward move, Nor if rivers be unkind, Turn away or leave to love.36 Banks of a river exposed by receding water are gray, grassless, and pitted. Warped roots of nearby trees protrude at random. They are desolate, and anyone can see this. But to connect this sight with the condition of a lover who has been abandoned and can neither follow his love nor cease loving her is the work of genius. It is the production of aesthetic ideas. Frederick Goddard Tuckerman attends to the phenomena of nature with all his senses, though he finds little consolation for grief even in its splendors: �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW But not for him those golden calms succeed Who while the day is high and glory reigns Sees it go by, as the dim pampas plain, Hoary with salt and gray with bitter weed, Sees the vault blacken, feels the dark wind strain, Hears the dry thunder roll, and knows no rain.37 Thomas Hardy, with a sensibility as cultivated as Greville’s and Tuckerman’s to “undeveloped material normally passed over,” writes of how others may remember him after he has died: If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink, The dew-fall hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think, “To him this must have been a familiar sight.”38 We are accustomed to speak of such things as Hardy’s “dew-fall hawk” and “wind-warped upland thorn” as poetic images. But this is an imprecise way of speaking, for they are not images of anything else. They are the bird and the branch, not visibly present in this room to be sure, but surely, in their own way, present in the poem. In these passages we can see how the imagination provides the understanding with material for, as Kant puts it, “much thought”—not the kind of thought that is at work in scientific research and philosophical enquiry, but thought directed to features of human experience in which we take an interest as mortal beings and not as minds only. Kant understands the taste for beauty to be something unique to man, to a finite but nonetheless rational being, an animal possessing both sense organs and intellect. Beauty is a sensible phenomenon. It is a spatial or temporal phenomenon, or both spatial and temporal. It is for this reason that, for Kant, the term “aesthetic” can designate fea- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 25 tures or statements regarding the beautiful and sublime as well as space and time themselves. In fact, the different art forms can be ordered in terms of how they work with space and time. Painting is the most spatial and least temporal of the arts. A painting can be seen all at once, assuming that it is not excessively large or curved like a cyclorama. The time involved in the apprehension of its composition is minimal. In the case of sculpture more time is required, for one must move around it to take all of it in. In the case of architecture, yet more time is required, not only because buildings are larger than statues, but also because one must enter them as well as walk around them. In the case of dance we observe spatial figures themselves move through time. This is true of theater and also of film, where we must also apprehend speech. Speech fills time and takes time to understand. In poetry and literature in general the spatial relations referred to occur only in the imagination of the reader.39 Music is at the opposite end of the scale from painting. Spatial relations are absent, though they can be imagined. The formal relations in music are temporal. And all these different forms can be combined, most comprehensively in opera. Wagner intended his gigantic music dramas to be unities of all the art forms. The various art forms can, of course, make man himself their theme. Kant speaks of the possibility of representing man at his height in a section of the Critique of Judgment entitled the “The Ideal of Beauty.” The following sentence from the Critique of Practical Reason can serve as an introduction to it. There Kant says: The [moral] law should obtain for the world of sense, as a sensible nature (as this concerns rational beings), the form (Form) of an intelligible world, i.e., the form of a supersensible nature, without interrupting the mechanism of the former.”40 �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW It is our consciousness of the moral law that causes us to regard other human beings to look like something more more than obstacles to be gotten around or targets of sexual appetite, and causes them to manifest themselves not as things at all but as persons. The very looks of the phenomenal order are modified, indeed ennobled, by our consciousness of obligation. In the expression of the human being before us, in the pressing out of his interior rationality and intrinsic worth to the surface of his countenance, we behold an end-in-itself that our consciousness of the moral law commands us not to treat as a mere means to the attainment of our private ends. In his treatment of the ideal of beauty in the Critique of Judgment Kant makes two important distinctions. The first is between idea and ideal. “Idea properly means a rational concept [a concept of reason], and ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate to that idea.”41 The distinction between idea and ideal is the fundamental distinction governing Hegel’s aesthetics. For Hegel the idea is the whole dialectically interrelated system of rational concepts, which he attempts to explicate in his Science of Logic. According to Hegel, art attempts to make the idea, which is truth in its purity, immediately present to sensible intuition. The attempt is never fully successful, for what it aims at is impossible. Art according to Hegel necessarily falls short of philosophy. The ideal is for him only an ideal. On the other hand it really is ideal. The ideal would be (per impossibile) that the idea be intuitively present, right there in front of us, rather than accessible solely through discursive, laborious, and largely abstract thought, as Hegel argues it must be. According to Kant, however, the great artist is more successful at presenting the ideal than Hegel supposes. The unconditioned, for Kant, is not so much a comprehen- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 27 sive system of speculative concepts as it is a practical law. And it is possible to depict a human being as governing himself through this law. Kant makes a distinction not only between the idea and the ideal but also between the aesthetical normal idea and the ideal. The aesthetic normal idea is the visible archetype of the species, whether of man or of some other species. It exhibits regularity and perfect fitness of form to function, whether of man or animal. The ideal, on the other hand, “makes the purposes of humanity, inasmuch as they cannot be sensibly presented, the principle for judging of a figure [Gestalt] through which, as their phenomenal effect, those purposes are revealed [offenbaren].”42 According to Kant, this ideal can be represented only in the human figure, and it is an expression of the moral. The visible expression of moral ideas that rule men inwardly can, to be sure, be taken only from experience; but to make their connection with all that our reason unites with the morally good in the idea of the highest purposiveness—goodness of soul, purity, strength, peace, and so forth—visible as it were in bodily expression (as the effect of what is internal): all that requires a union of pure ideas of reason with great imagination even in him who wishes only to judge of it, still more in him who wishes to present it.43 If we leave aside specifically religious art, with its own complications and profundities, and limit our attention instead to secular art, two candidates for the ideal of beauty in painting immediately suggest themselves. One is a portrait by Rembrandt. But Rembrandt’s portraits, though in the finest instances surely representing “moral ideas that rule men inwardly,” do not take their departure from the normal aesthetic normal idea. Quite the contrary, the individual in �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW his individuality is represented—warts and all, as we say. His face is not the ideal type of our species. A better candidate for the ideal of beauty is Michelangelo’s sculpture of Lorenzo de Medici, Il Penseroso (Fig. 1). This sculpture does not represent the Duke of Urbino as he really looked, and probably does not even try to represent him as he really was. The task of making a statue of Lorenzo for the de Medici tomb seems to have served as the occasion for Michelangelo to present, on the foundation of the normal aesthetic normal idea but rising Fig. 1: above it, the ideal of the beautiful as the Michelangelo, visible expression of “all that our reason Il Pensoroso unites with the morally good in the idea of the highest purposiveness.” The interest, essentially practical, that we take in the ideal of the beauty as Kant understands it, that is, as the visible expression of moral nobility, keeps the judgment pertaining to this ideal from being a purely aesthetic judgment. The same can be said of the interest we take in beautiful poetry. Poetry, however so beautiful it may be, to the extent that it treats of human concerns, cannot be the object of an entirely disinterested satisfaction, and our judgment of it is not a pure judgment of taste. And yet Kant ranks poetry as the highest of the arts. And so we are led to an unexpected conclusion: loftiness of beauty and purity of beauty are not identical. Although the primary focus on of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is on the beautiful, its secondary focus is on the sublime. Kant thinks that the beautiful exists not only in art, but in nature as well, in flowers, gardens, landscapes, and, of course, in the human figure. Though what Kant has to say about natural beauty is intriguing, we have restricted our at- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 29 tention to what he has to say about beautiful art because of its connection with genius and aesthetic ideas. We turn now to his account of the sublime, for it too has a relation to the moral, though one quite different from that of the beautiful to the moral. Whereas the beautiful is characterized by phenomenal form, the sublime in nature is characterized by phenomenal formlessness. Kant divides the sublime into the mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime. The mathematical sublime appears as vastness: a towering mountain, a view from its summit, the ocean in a still calm, and, most strikingly of all, the celestial vault on a clear night. The dynamical sublime appears as power: a cataract of water, flashes of lightening, a violent hurricane, the ocean in full tumult. We take a certain pleasure in beholding such things, though only when we behold them from a safe vantage point. If they place us in imminent peril, we are too frightened to take pleasure in them. But why, even if we are not threatened, do we take any pleasure in them at all? Kant’s answer to this question is remarkable. The mathematical sublime requires us to recognize that our physical being is, by comparison, infinitesimally small, and the dynamical sublime requires us to recognize that our physical being is infinitesimally weak. But at the same time the sublime leads us to recognize that in our moral being we are elevated above the whole phenomenal order. For nothing, no threat of extinction, not even extinction itself, could cause us to freely betray our moral principles. Some force of nature, even a drug, could wreak such havoc on our nervous system as to impair or even destroy the rationality that is the origin of our moral principles. But as long as we possess our rationality, and hence our will,44 no external force or threat of force can compel us to abuse our freedom. The sublime in art is similar to the sublime in nature. The �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sublime in art, however, cannot be formless. For then it would not be art at all, but a mess. In sublime art, form is placed in the service of representing vastness and power. An example of the mathematical sublime in art would be that part of the façade of Saint Peter’s Cathedral that was designed by Michelangelo (Fig. 2).45 An example of the dynamical sublime in art would be the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, especially that point at which, the Fig. 2: Michaelangelo, development having been brought Façade of St. Peter’s Cathedral to pitch of intensity, the hushed D minor opening is recapitulated in a blazing and thundering D major, but in first inversion with an F-sharp in the low bass, as though the very cosmos were exploding, or fully displaying itself for the first time. We said earlier that the satisfaction bound up with the judgment of taste is, according to Kant, disinterested. It is to that extent unlike both the satisfaction one takes in the merely pleasant and the satisfaction one takes in morally good—as different as these latter two satisfactions most definitely are from each other. The beautiful pleases, but it is not the merely pleasant. And, though the beautiful can serve as the symbol of the morally good, it is not the morally good. Nor does a cultivated taste imply moral nobility, though an aesthetic education can, as we noted, facilitate the task of a moral education. Aristotle says that the beginning of philosophy is wonder, especially regarding the causes of things. But, he adds, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 31 we must end in the opposite and the better state, not with wonder about the causes of things, but with knowledge of the causes. Knowledge is better than wonder.46 And Aristotle seems to think that we really can know something about ultimate causes, even if we know them, not as they are essentially and in themselves, but only as the ultimate cause or causes of what we are familiar with, of what is close at hand, of what is not first in itself but first for us. Kant does not think that even this attenuated knowledge of ultimate causes is available to us. Wonder is not only the beginning of philosophy. It is itself a kind of end, an end not replaced by knowledge. Wonder is present in our aesthetic experience of the beautiful and the sublime, and in a different way it is present in our moral experience as well. Wonder is bound up even with the longed for, indeed a priori assumed, discovery of special empirical laws of nature and their interconnection, which is not accomplished by the human understanding’s a priori prescription of architectonic laws to a nature in general.47 Like aesthetic experience in general, wonder is possible only for a finite though rational being. Kant speaks of the wonder that emerges from the accomplishment of reason, both speculative and practical, in an impressive passage that occurs near the end of the Critique of Practical Reason. Part of the first sentence was inscribed on his tombstone. It is well known and frequently quoted. But the whole passage should be better known. If the ancient philosopher Plato often seems to be the most poetic of philosophers, the modern philosopher Kant often seems to be the most prosaic. And yet the passage at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, which can serve as a conclusion to this introduction to aesthetics, shows that there was more poetry in Kant’s soul than one might have guessed �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW solely from working one’s way along the “thorny paths” of the Critique of Pure Reason: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe (Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht) the more often and more steadily reflection occupies itself with them: the starry sky above me, and the moral law within me. . . . The former begins at the place I occupy in the external world of sense; and it broadens the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems and into the limitless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their continuance. The latter begins at my invisible self, my personality and exhibits me in a world that has true infinity, but which is perceptible only to the understanding, a world in which I recognize myself as existing in a universal and necessary (and not only, as in the first case, contingent) connection, but thereby also in connection with all those visible worlds. The former view, of a numberless mass of worlds, annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which must give back to the planet ([itself] a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came, the matter which is for a short time provided with vital force, we know not how. The latter, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as that of an intelligence through my personhood, in which the moral law reveals a life independent of all animality and even of the whole world of sense—at least so far as it may be gathered from the purposive destination assigned to my existence through this law, a destination that is not restricted to the conditions and limitations of this life but extends into the infinite.48 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 33 NOTES Leo Strauss, Letter of February 26, 1961 to Helmut Kuhn, in The Independent Journal of Philosophy 2:1978, 23. 2 Greater Hippias Major 286c5 3 282d6. Cf. fn. 1 in the Greater Hippias, translated by David Sweet in The Roots of Political Philosophy, edited by Thomas Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 307. 4 At 283a1 and a9. 1 Protagoras 314b10-c8; 337c7-338b2: “meta de ton Prodokon Hippias ho sophos eipen” ff. Cf. fn. 17 of in Sweet’s translation of the Greater Hippias, 307. 6 Symposium 177d79-810. 7 Greater Hippias Minor 293e5. 8 The later coinage of the term “aesthetics” emerges for a reason. There is a special connection between aesthesis, the Greek word for “sensation,” and beauty. The beautiful, and the sublime too, are present in sensory experience, even if something super-sensible shines through them. For this reason the expressions “the aesthetically beautiful” and “the morally noble” can both be used to translate the two distinct but related senses of the expression to kalon. 9 294d1. 10 295c3 and; d9; 296e2. Note the introduction of power (or that which is powerful, to dynaton) at 295e5, and the grouping of the helpful, the useful, and “the power to make something good” at 297d4. 5 Hippias Major 297e4-298a8.; Cf. Phaedrus 250d1-e1. 12 Greek Mathematics and the Origin of Algebra, translated by Eva Brann (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968), 79-99. 13 Immanuel Kant, Werke in Zehn Bänden, hereafter Werke, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), Band 8, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 295-298. (English translation, Critique of Judgment, translated by J. H. Bernard, (New York: Haffner Press, 1951), 51-54. Pagination for in this translation will hereafter be given immediately following the German pagination and separated from it by a slash. I have made some alterations in the translation in the interest of greater literalness.) 11 14 The concept beautiful is nonetheless predicated of the object; it is not �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW predicated of the subject. But, for Kant, it is predicated of the object only because of what it occasions in the subject. And yet the object would not occasion this effect were it not, in itself so to speak, already characterized by perfection of composition, simplicity of means and richness of effects, radiance and mutual illumination of whole and parts or, in the language of Thomas Aquinas, integritas, consonantia, and claritas (Summa Theologiae 1, Question 39, Article 8, corpus). Kant’s argument in the Critique of Judgment does not presuppose the particulars of the case he makes for the a priori constitution of nature via transcendental subjectivity in the Critique of Pure Reason. On the contrary, beautiful objects, just like special empirical laws of nature, are not deducible from the architectonic laws of a nature in general that he argues are prescribed to it a priori by the human understanding. The exact source of the special laws of nature as such is as mysterious as the exact source of beauty. It remains a problem that, though taken up again in the “Introduction” to the Critique of Judgment, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and in the Opus Postumum, is never fully solved by Kant. “For who can entirely draw out from nature her secret?” Werke, Band 8, 316/70. 15 In the case of a really fine wine, one goes so far as to speak of structure, balance, and bouquet, borrowing terms from architecture and floral arrangements. Still, one does not call the taste of the wine, but only its looks, beautiful. The same can be said of fine pipe tobacco. It may look beautiful in the tin, but no one says that it tastes or smells beautiful. Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 6. 17 Werke, Band 8, 281/39. 18 Ibid., Werke, 311/66; 314/69. We shall consider the ideal of beauty below. 16 Symposium 206e1-207a3. Cf. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 128. 19 20 Werke, Band 8, 462-463/200. 22 From “Thoughts on Kant,” a Friday-night lecture given at St. John’s College, Annapolis, in the spring of 1979. This lecture, which Mr. McDonald delivered from notes, was recorded, and each library on the two campuses of St. John’s has a compact disk of it. I listened to the lecture more than once in gearing up to write the present essay, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in understanding Kant’s project in its full scope. 21 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 35 “Shakespeare wrote at a time when common sense still taught . . . that the function of the great poet was to teach what is truly beautiful by means of pleasure.” Allen Bloom and Harry Jaffa, Shakespeare’s Politics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), 6. Kant would say that this formulation (whether or not it is what common sense taught in Shakespeare’s time, which one can doubt) gets the relationship between beauty and pleasure exactly backwards. The function of the great poet is to teach what is truly pleasant by means of beauty, inasmuch as the truly pleasant—more precisely what is pleasant to a rational animal as such— presupposes the recognition that what is under consideration is aesthetically beautiful, or, for that matter, morally noble. 23 Werke, Band 8, 417-420/160-163. This spirit can be thought without contradiction as being divine in origin. 24 Werke, Band 8, 406-410/151-153. Ion 543d7-10. 27 Quoted by Gershom Scholem in “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism, (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 303. 28 Letter of August 20, 1946, to Karl Löwith. The force that Strauss speaks of in this clause cannot be easily distinguished, in the case of the genius, from the “creation” to which he refers, within quotation marks, in the preceding clause. 25 26 Werke, Band 8, 405-406/150. 30 Werke, Band 8, 408/152. 31 Eric Heller, “The Broken Tradition: An Address,” in The Age of Prose, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 31. 29 Werke, Band 8, 413-414/157. “Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind” (Critique of Pure Reason B 75, Werke, Band 3, 98). “An object is that in whose concept the manifold of a given intuition is united” (ibid., B 137, Werke, Band 3, 139). “It is one and the same spontaneity, which [in the synthesis of apprehension] under name of the imagination, and [in the synthesis of apperception, under the name] of the understanding, brings combination into the manifold of intuition” (ibid., B 162 note, Werke, Band 3, 155). 34 Werke, Band 8, 417/160. 35 Werke, Band 8, 423/165-166. 32 33 �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW From Number 56 in “Caelica,” Selected Poems of Fulke Greville, edited by Thom Gunn, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 85. 36 From Sonnet 5 of the First Series, 1854-1860, in The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, edited by N. Scott Momaday, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 5. 37 From “Afterwards,” in The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, edited by James Gibson, (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 553. Particularly fine studies on the poetry of Greville, Tuckerman, and Hardy, among others, can be found in Yvor Winter’s Forms of Discovery (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1967). 39 On the quite different, even opposed, ways in which great poetry and great painting stimulate the imagination, see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s magnificent study, Laokoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766). 38 Werke, Band 6, 156. 41 Werke, Band 8, 314/69. Compare Critique of Pure Reason B 595-598. For Kant, an aesthetic judgment in the strict sense is singular (Werke, Band 8, 293-294/49-50). The individual per se is not the concern of science. (Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 81b8: there is no scientific knowledge, no epistēmē, of singulars—though for a possible exception to this general rule see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, Question 1, Articles 2-8). But the individual per se is very much the concern of fine art. One reason why Plato so frequently gets called a “poet” is that he presents his teaching through the voices of flesh and blood individuals, Socrates chief among them. Dostoyevsky goes somewhat further in this direction: “[T]he image of the [Dostoyevskian] hero is inseparably linked with the image of an idea and cannot be detached from it. We see the hero in the idea and through the idea, and we see the idea in him and through him. . . . [W]hat is important is not the ordinary qualifications of a person’s character or actions, but rather the index of a person’s devotion to an idea in the deepest recesses of his personality.” Mikail Bakhtin, “The Idea in Dostoyevsky,” in Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, (edited and translated by Caryl Emerson in Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 8, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 87. Cf. infra, fn. 44. 40 Werke, Band 8, 315/70. Werke, Band 8, 318/72. 44 “Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has the capacity to act according to the idea (Vorstellung) of law, i.e., ac42 43 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY 37 cording to principles, [and so has] a will.” Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals in Werke, Band 6, 41. 45 See Ralph Lieberman, “Bramante and Michelangelo at St. Peter’s,” The St. John’s Review 40.1 (1990-91), 1-38. Our Fig.2 is Fig. 37 in Lieberman’s article. He submits it in support of the following perspicuous observation: “Michelangelo’s predecessors at the church, even the most gifted of them, could merely build big; he solved the problem of St. Peter’s because he could think big” (35-37). Metaphysics 982b11-21; 983a12-20. Cf. Plato, Theaetetus 155d1-8. 47 Critique of Pure Reason B 164-165; Critique of Judgment inerke, Band 8, 260- 267/17-25. Cf. fn. 14 supra. 46 48 Werke, Band 6, 300. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 38 Passion and Perception in Mozart’s Magic Flute Peter Kalkavage Mozart leads us deep into the realm of spirits. Dread lies all about us, but withholds its torments and becomes more an intimation of infinity. —E. T. A. Hoffman on Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 This essay is an excursion into the world of Mozart’s Magic Flute. My focus will be the aria “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön,” “This image is enchantingly beautiful.” One of the most exquisite love songs ever written, it occurs early in the opera and is sung by Prince Tamino as he gazes upon a likeness of Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night and Tamino’s destined Other. Mozart’s final opera, written in the last year of his short life, is a musical meditation on large themes: love, friendship, marriage, the human and the divine, world-order, virtue and vice, light and darkness, lust, resentment, vengeance, illusion and disillusionment, hardship, despair, trials, death, and reconciliation—all this in the context of a bizarre fairy tale that is by turns solemn, light-hearted, homiletic, dire, ceremonial, and slapstick. The Magic Flute is a magical work that reflects on magic, especially the magic that is music. It offers us a perfect opportunity to examine the elements, principles, and causes of musical phenomena in an admirably distilled and lucid form. Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay was first delivered as a lecture at Thomas Aquinas College on 11 November 2011. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 39 The Magic Flute has been called Mozart’s “Masonic opera,” and so it is. Mozart was a serious Freemason. So was his librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, at whose Viennese theatre the work was first produced and who was the first to play the birdman, Papageno. The opera—or rather Singspiel, “play with songs”—is filled with the ideals, symbols, terms, rituals, and numerology of Freemasonry.1 The Masonic Three is especially prominent: three flats in the key signature, Three Ladies, Three Boys, Three temples, and, of course, three tones in the major triad, which Mozart celebrates in the middle of the Overture and throughout the opera.2 The sovereign Three is the major triad, which Mozart highlights in various ways throughout the opera. I say all this now because the Masonic influence, though pervasive, will not be my concern. I want to focus instead on the power—and, as I hope to show, the wisdom—of Mozart’s music. Part One: The Story The plot of the Magic Flute is strange, to say the least, and often confusing. Since it may be unfamiliar to some of you, I will go through it briefly. Our story begins with Prince Tamino, lost in the dark wood of C minor and pursued by a giant serpent.3 He carries a bow but no arrows. Three Ladies who work for the Queen of the Night slay the serpent and give Tamino a portrait of the Queen’s daughter, which causes the prince to fall in love and to express his feeling in the aria we are about to examine. By this time, he has heard Papageno sing his lusty birdcatcher song. The Queen majestically appears. She tells a sad story about her daughter’s abduction by Sarastro, and sends Tamino on a mission to rescue Pamina from this fiend. Tamino is given a magic flute, and Papageno, now Tamino’s sidekick, is given silver chimes. The flute inverts the dark passions of its listeners: its magic turns sadness to smiles, �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cold-heartedness to love. Flute and chimes will protect the two friends, who are also assigned guiding spirits: Three Boys who are said to be “young, beautiful, gracious, and wise.” In the next scene, we meet Pamina. Her cruel treatment at the hands of the slaves and the Moor Monostatos (“he who stands alone”) suggests that Sarastro is indeed a villain and tyrant. Papageno arrives ahead of Tamino. He and Pamina become fast friends, as the birdman tells her about his longing for a mate and the young prince who is on his way to rescue her. The princess and the birdman sing a graceful 6/8 duet in E-flat major. It is an ode to marriage. “Man and Woman, Woman and Man,” they sing, “reach unto divinity.” This brings us to the Finale of Act I. Having arrived at the stronghold of Sarastro,Tamino enters the Temple of Wisdom and meets a priest, who tells him he will never achieve the reward of love and virtue while he burns with death and vengeance. The priest disabuses Tamino of his false opinion about Sarastro, who rules in this Temple. Tamino is told that many of his questions must for now remain unanswered. One thing he does learn: Pamina is alive. His spirits renewed, Tamino plays his flute, as wild animals gather and listen, their impulses tamed by the flute’s warbling. Papageno and Pamina arrive, but before they find Tamino, Monostatos and the slaves arrest them. Papageno plays his silver chimes and, for the moment, charms his would-be captors. Then Sarastro enters, as the chorus sings: “Hail, Sarastro! He it is to whom we joyfully submit!” Pamina, resolved to tell the truth, confesses her guilt. She gives Sarastro two reasons for her escape: the Moor’s lustful advances and the sweet sound of her mother’s name. Sarastro cuts her off. Her mother is a proud woman, he says: a man must guide Pamina’s heart. Monostatos drags in Tamino, and �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 41 he and Pamina see each other in person for the first time. Monostatos thinks he has earned a reward but is brutally disappointed. Sarastro sentences him to seventy-seven strokes on the soles of his feet. As Monostatos is led off, the chorus resumes its song of praise. Tamino and Papageno are then taken to the Temple of Probation to be purified. Act II begins with Sarastro’s prayer to Isis and Osiris. He asks the deities to send the spirit of wisdom to the young couple, along with patience in the upcoming trials. If Tamino and Pamina succeed, they will have proved themselves worthy of one another and of acceptance into the priesthood. The male hegemony will be transformed through marriage. It will incorporate Woman into the ruling class—a bold move on the part of Mozart and Schikaneder, since women were not allowed to become full-fledged Freemasons.4 Tamino and Papageno go through the first trial together. They resist the temptations of the Three Ladies, who now appear in their true, demonic form. Meanwhile, the Queen of the Night comes to Pamina and is similarly unmasked. She gives Pamina a dagger and commands her to murder Sarastro.5 “The vengeance of hell,” she sings, “boils in my heart.” If Pamina refuses, her mother will cast her off forever. After the Queen leaves, Monostatos enters. He has heard everything about the planned murder and blackmails Pamina, who can save herself and her mother only by yielding to his lust. When Pamina refuses, Monostatos says: “Then die!” As he raises the dagger to kill her, Sarastro enters and holds him back. He dismisses the Moor and reassures Pamina with an aria that is warm, regal, and deep-sounding. Pamina need not fear that Sarastro will take vengeance on her mother. In these sacred halls, he says, vengeance is unknown, and the spirit of friendship and forgiveness reigns supreme. Tamino and Papageno must again endure a test: this time �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW they must remain silent in the face of all temptation to speak. Papageno has a comic interchange with an old woman who brings him water. She is about to reveal her name when a thunderclap calls her away. The Three Boys come on the scene and hand Tamino and Papageno their instruments. The flute attracts Pamina, who arrives to find her beloved sad and silent. She takes this as a sign that Tamino no longer loves her. She sings of her despair in a deeply tragic aria, which sadly mimics the lilting 6/8 rhythm of Pamina’s marriage duet with Papageno.6 Sarastro tells Tamino that two “dangerous trials” remain. Pamina is summoned, only to be separated from Tamino, who goes off to face the test alone. Meanwhile, the old woman returns to Papageno and gets him to promise marriage, at which point she is magically transformed into Papagena—a female Papageno! But when Papageno tries to embrace her, she is led away by an official who tells her that Papageno is not yet worthy of her. Papageno and Pamina are now paired once again, but in contrast to their duet, in which they sang joyfully about the blessings of marriage, this time they sing separately about their loneliness and despair. Both attempt suicide, but they are stopped by the Three Boys, who rekindle Pamina’s hope by informing her that Tamino is waiting for her. Tamino prepares for his first dangerous trial, thinking that he must go it alone. He hears Pamina’s voice. “Tamino, stop,” she calls, “I must see you!” The two Men in Armour—who gravely warn Tamino about the need to be purified by the four elements, and to conquer the fear of death—switch to a jolly tune once Pamina shows up. They tell the pair to enter the Temple hand in hand. Pamina vows never to leave Tamino’s side and to face whatever hardships come their way. “I myself will lead you,” she says, “love will guide me.” She urges Tamino to play his flute, so that by the power of music �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 43 they may “walk joyfully through death’s dark night.”7 After they endure the tests of fire and water, the chorus greets them with a song of triumph. The scene shifts to Papageno. After preventing his suicide, the Three Boys remind Papageno about his magic chimes. The chimes play, and Papagena appears. The pair sing a courtship duet suited to their birdy nature. They take turns repeating the opening syllable of their names—“Pa, pa, pa”—in a musicalized rendition of panting. They sing about all the offspring they plan to have. But a menace looms. Monostatos, the Queen, and the Three Ladies march on the temple, supported by a threatening accompaniment in the key of C minor. Thunder and lightning defeat them, and they are plunged into “eternal night.” The scene then shifts to the Temple of the Sun, as Sarastro stands on high, and Tamino and Pamina appear dressed in priestly vestments. “The sun’s rays,” he says, “drive away the night, destroy the stolen power of the hypocrites.” At the end, a jubilant chorus hails the two initiates and offers thanks to Isis and Osiris. “Strength,” they sing, “conquers and crowns, as a reward, beauty and wisdom with an eternal crown.” Part Two: The Unfolding of a Song We love music because of how it makes us feel. We listen to some works more than others because we want to experience, again and again, the feelings they stir in us. But feeling is not primary in music, nor is it always the reason why we listen. Sometimes we listen to a piece of music because we wish to hear a quality or perfection that is present in it. The reason for listening is an active, even strenuous, contemplation through which we participate in, and unite with, the life and shape of the musical object—not the emotion the object arouses.8 Our feelings, in any case, are grounded in, and �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW prompted by, what we perceive in the tones; they are rooted in what is there in the phenomenon we call music. As we now turn to Tamino’s aria, I shall make the attempt to say what is there. Tamino’s aria is inspired, as we know, by an image of Pamina, or, as we might call it, given Tamino’s fervent devotional response, an icon. The image is said to be magical, but it surely needs no magic beyond Pamina’s likeness to enchant the young prince, who sings as if caught up in a dream. The words to his song are as follows: This image is enchantingly beautiful, such as no eye has ever seen! I feel it, how this divine portrait Fills my heart with new emotions. I cannot name this, yet I feel it here burning like fire; Could the feeling be love? Yes, yes, it is love alone! O, if only I could find her! O, if she were standing before me! I would, warm and pure . . . what would I? Enraptured I would press her to this burning breast, And forever would she be mine. Tamino’s words trace out a progression in three stages: first, he admires a divine image; second, he asks whether the feeling it inspires in him, and which at first he cannot name, is love, but then affirms that it must be love; and third, he wonders what he would do if the beloved were standing before him, concluding that he would press her to his breast, and she would be his forever. Tamino is doing more in this song than expressing his feelings. He beholds his inner state and makes it an object of reflection. He wonders at the power of the magical object that he perceives and his passionate response to it. He does not immediately identify his new emotion with love but rather �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 45 reaches that conclusion through inner dialogue and questioning. Mozart’s music perfectly expresses the stages of Tamino’s response, the meaning of his words, and the motions of his soul. The music that accompanies these words is one of Mozart’s greatest love songs. Young listeners are sometimes put off by the aria, as if embarrassed by Tamino’s heart-onthe-sleeve outpouring of feeling. It is easy to be condescending toward Tamino, who is young, naïve, and not very bright. He lacks irony.9 His aria, nevertheless, towers above immature judgment and puts it to shame. As a musical object, a work of art, the song is gorgeous, brilliant in its shadow play, and deep. It is also truthful—a faithful rendering of the human soul in one of its most profound shapes. Do we want to know what it is like for a young, noble soul to experience romantic love for the first time? If so, then we should immerse ourselves in the aria—in what tones can tell us about love. My musical starting-point is the observation that “Dies Bildnis” is a precisely formed, perfectly balanced whole. Tamino is agitated and confused. But his music, though passionate, is restrained, stately, and inward-sounding.10 It expresses his awareness, not just his feeling. The music critic and writer of tales E. T. A. Hoffmann once said that Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all had the musical virtue of “Besonnenheit.”11 The word means something like rational awareness, sensibleness, being in one’s right mind. Tamino’s aria, with its beautiful melding of feeling and form, passion and restraint, is a superb example of this virtue.12 The song is in E-flat major—the solemn, heroic key of the opera—and has a moderately slow, two-beat measure. It is scored for strings, clarinets, bassoons, and French horns (no flutes or oboes). Their sound is like a warm glow ema- �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW nating from Tamino’s heart. The aria is in a truncated version of sonata form. It follows the usual tripartite structure of the sonata—exposition, development, and recapitulation—inasmuch as its key-area plan goes from tonic to dominant and then back to the tonic; but there is no repeat of the opening theme as is customary in the sonata. Unlike song-form, which is also tripartite, the sonata emphasizes the progressive, forward-moving unfolding of musical ideas. Circularity is achieved, but only at the end. Along the way, the tones move in a linear, arrow-like trajectory.13 The opening sound: a tender statement of the E-flat major triad spelled out in dotted rhythms and played by the strings. Clearly, the singer we are about to hear—unlike Papageno, with his bouncy bird-catcher song—is noble. Tamino’s first utterance is a leap on the words “Dies Bildnis,” “This image”—a rising major sixth from scale degree 5 up to scale degree 3 (B-flat up to G). This tonal leap expresses an event in Tamino’s soul, the passionate wonder inspired by Pamina’s likeness.14 When his sentence is spoken in German, the accent is on “schön,” “beautiful”—“Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön.” Mozart’s melody shifts the accent to “Bildnis,” “image,” leaving no doubt that for Tamino the focus is on what he sees, on the source and cause of his surging passion.15 After the inspired leap from 5 to 3, the melody gently descends by steps, pausing on degree 4 (A-flat), an unstable degree that tends downward toward 3. The musical phrase corresponds to the first phrase of the sentence: “This image is enchantingly beautiful.” As Tamino moves to the second part of his sentence—“as no eye has ever seen”—he sings a second rising sixth—from 4 up to 2, A-flat to F. He then descends by steps to 3, the tone to which his earlier 4 was pointing. Whereas the first phrase landed on a tone that was unstable and “wanted” to move, the second complements the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 47 first and brings it to rest. The two phrases, thanks to the postponement of the move from 4 to 3, form a single phrase— not two sets of tones but one coherent movement composed of two sub-movements.16 The entire phrase is bounded by an octave that extends from the high 3, to which Tamino leaps, to the low 3, to which he descends by step. Mozart’s musical language is that of tonal harmony. This means that the music is firmly grounded in a tonal center, the tone to which all the other tones point, and has a background or underpinning in the movement of what we call “chords.” We can say that this movement is an accompaniment to the melody, but it is more precise to say that the harmony is the structured movement that interprets the melody and reveals its depth.17 Harmony is present in the two-part phrase we have just examined. The harmonic movement is from the I chord, or tonic, to the V7 chord, or dominant seventh, and back again to I—a musical oscillation. This works because the instability and tension of the V7 chord has a precise direction: it points unambiguously to the I chord, in this case the E-flat major triad. And so, we can regard Mozart’s opening two-part phrase as the cooperation of melody and harmony, or rather as the unity of two simultaneous kinds of tension that beget movement: the melodic tension of individual tones and the harmonic tension of chords. It is possible to argue that these directed tensions and their various relations to one another are the primary object of musical perception, that to listen to music, at least in the tradition of tonal harmony, is to perceive not pitches per se but forces—dynamic qualities that manifest themselves in and through pitches and hold the piece together.18 After the opening phrase, which goes harmonically from I to V and back again, the tones open up and move forward. This effect is due largely to the harmony, which, having so �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW far confined itself to I-V7-I, now moves to the IV chord, or subdominant, a chord that signals the “away” move in a tonal journey, as well as a certain leisureliness and lessening of harmonic tension. Tamino moves from the picture to his inner state: “I feel it, I feel it, how this divine portrait fills my heart with new emotions.” As he says “I feel it, I feel it,” he sings appoggiaturas on “feel”—B-natural to C, then A-natural to B-flat. Appoggiaturas are leaning tones, unstable tones on strong beats, which briefly delay the arrival of a main tone in the melody. The effect is an increased expressivity, an inflection perfectly suited to Tamino’s word “feel.” The accompaniment echoes the heartfelt leaning tones: as Tamino leans into his feeling, the entire string section leans as though in sympathy with him. Right after his appoggiaturas, Tamino speaks of his heart, “Herz,” and the new emotions that have been aroused in it. He expresses an outburst on “Götterbild,” “divine portrait,” with a second dramatic leap, this time from B-flat up to Aflat, the highest tone of his song. The interval, a minor seventh, is an even bigger leap than his opening sixth. The melody here outlines part of the V7 or dominant-seventh chord. The music does not resolve this tense chord, which points to the tonic, but rather stresses it and lingers on it. When the tonic chord finally arrives, it is not the end of the previous phrase but the beginning of a new one. Now past his initial outburst, Tamino retreats to a calmer, more inward mood as he completes his sentence: “fills my heart with new emotions.” The accompaniment is measured and lovely, like the gentle strumming of a guitar: bass note, chord / bass note, chord. The harmony takes us on a little musical journey, as the melody above begins and ends on scale degree 1, that is, E-flat. The sequence of chords here—I6, IV, I6/4, V7—arouses the expectation that the tense V7chord will resolve to the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 49 tonic, which would fit with the E-flat, or scale degree 1, in the melody. But this does not happen. When Tamino sings his E-flat on “füllt,” “fills” (which in German closely resembles “fühlt,” “feels”), the harmony subverts the expected closure. It interprets this E-flat as part of a dissonant diminished seventh chord based on A-natural. The tones seem to have gone off course. We have here a so-called deceptive cadence: we expect the cadence to reach its end, but the harmony takes a detour at the last minute and puts instability (in this case, extreme instability) in place of stability. This creates tension and the need for continued movement—for a repeat of the formula that will finally reach its destination. This is in fact what happens. The unexpected and darkly passionate diminished-seventh chord is an applied dominant (or secondary dominant). This is a dominant that tenses toward a chord other than the tonic, in this case, to the V7 chord of E-flat: a B-flat dominant seventh chord. As Tamino rises up stepwise to his E-flat on “fills,” the tones fill the measure with a mounting passion. On this word, three kinds of musical tension unite in a single chord: deceptive cadence, applied dominant, diminished seventh chord. Tamino’s unassuming E-flat in the melody does not reveal the depth of the word he sings or of the passion it expresses. But the harmony does: it interprets Tamino’s Eflat and releases in it an unexpected possibility.19 This harmonic inflection of a melodic tone recalls what Wagner said about harmony in general: that it is “the first thing that fully persuades the feeling as to the emotional content of [the] melody, which otherwise would leave to it something undertermined.”20 The more we perceive the structure and detail of this flawless movement of tones when Tamino first sings the word “fills:—this marriage of melody and harmony—the more intimately we move with it, know it for what it is.21 �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Right after the deceptive cadence, the first violins, as if inspired by Tamino, sing rising phrases that form a gentle two-part wave: up and down, higher up and down. Their tones outline the degrees of the B-flat7 chord, to which the diminished-seventh chord was pointing. With this move, the tones regain their direction in the musical journey. The dominant seventh chord spelled out by the first violins gently leads Tamino to repeat his sentence, this time with musical closure. Again he sings his passionate rising sixth from B-flat to G on the words “mein Herz,” “my heart,” and then goes even higher—to his A-flat. He ends his phrase with a smooth 3→2→1. The harmony here traverses a complete cycle or journey, at the end aligning itself with Tamino’s Eflat: I, ii6, I6/4, V7, I. I observe in passing that this conventional symbolism, which is admittedly useful for analysis, conceals the true phenomenon, which is not a succession of separate tone-stacks but rather a continuous movement of closely related phases: starting-point (I), stepping away (ii6), preparing to point back (I6/4), pointing back (V7), and being back (I).22 Moreover, the cadence formula is not tacked on but grows, as if organically, from what has come before. Not a device that merely stops movement, it is a true telos, the gratifying completion of Tamino’s opening 16-measure period. Throughout my discussion I have emphasized musical tension. Indeed, the Greek word for tone, tonos, derives from the verb tenein, to stretch or strain. Tonal music makes sense, even to the untutored ear, because we directly perceive the continuity and the whole formed by the interrelation of musical tensions. Precise expectations are aroused, postponed, and ultimately fulfilled. Tonal harmony may thus be characterized as erotic, as constituting a musical universe animated by a desire or longing that is present in the tones themselves.23 That is perhaps why the tones can arouse longing in the per- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 51 ceptive-passionate listener. In the tones we hear the strains of our souls: the music gives them coherent shape and represents them as objects for our contemplation.24 Right after his opening 16-measure period, Tamino pauses, as clarinets in gentle thirds take us into a new section of the exposition. Here the music changes key from E-flat to B-flat, from I to V. This is a standard move for a sonata-form piece in a major key. But it is not an imposition of a prefabricated abstract schema. It is rather an organic, natural continuation of musical movement. I and V are intimately related: they are neighbours on the circle of fifths. Also, V is the harmonic degree that points to I. Finally, in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, V functions as a sort of counter-pole—an opposite that competes with I for tonal supremacy.25 In our present case, we should note, above all, how E-flat is dislodged and B-flat established as the new tonic. The upper clarinet goes from G to F, that is, from 3 to 2 in E flat, and then repeats the F. Had it gone from G to F and on to E-flat, the key of E-flat would have been maintained: 3→2→1. It is the emphasis on 2 that subtly begins to move the harmony from I to V. It blocks the move to E-flat as scale degree 1, and begins to set up F as degree 5 of our new key, B-flat. The appearance among the tones of A-natural, scale degree 7 in the B-flat scale, solidifies this move. Earlier, Tamino sang his appoggiaturas and the orchestra followed. Now the reverse happens. The upper clarinet introduces a new musical strain, which Tamino follows, as if inspired by it. “I cannot name this,” he sings, “yet I feel it here burning like fire” (“Dies Etwas kann ich zwar nicht nennen; doch fühl ich’s hier wie Feuer brennen”). In imitation of the clarinet, Tamino begins on his high G (now scale degree 6) and descends stepwise. His gently undulating phrase ends with a leaning tone (C-sharp leaning into D) on the word �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “nennen,” “name.” He then repeats the phrase, with a slight variation, on the words “yet I feel it here burning like fire.” The harmony is simple: oscillation between the tonic (now B-flat) and the dominant (now F). A brief transition in dotted rhythms, played by clarinets and bassoons, takes us to Tamino’s first question, which he stresses by singing it twice: “Could the feeling be love?” (“Soll die Empfindung Liebe sein?”) Both phrases end on tense chords: the first on an applied dominant (the V7 of V), the second on the dominant of B-flat (an F major triad). This harmonic tension—this upward-tending interrogative gesture—is reflected in the melody. Tamino’s first utterance of his question outlines the B-flat triad and ends on an E-natural, a tone foreign to B-flat (the F at the top of the triad becomes a leaning tone to the E). His second utterance begins with a downward leap from G to B-flat (the inverse of his opening sixth) and ends on the unstable scale degree 2. The E-natural with which Tamino ends the first utterance of his question is especially affecting: “Could this feeling be love (“Liebe sein”)?” The chromatic E-natural (highlighted by the preceding F as leaning tone), the applied dominant of which it is a part (C7), and the florid notes of the first violin all sound as though a light were beginning to dawn, as though the question “Could this be love?” was more than just a question. The anticipation of the answer is heightened by the brief interlude played by the clarinets. Their rising phrases in dotted rhythms give Tamino his cue. His “Ja, ja!” completes the sequence of upward melodic gestures. Tamino answers his question: “Yes, yes, it is love alone, love, love, it is love alone.” He utters the word “Liebe,” “love,” four times in all—three times with an expressive leaning tone and once with a climactic flourish called a “turn.” At the end of his first phrase (right after “Ja, ja!”), Tamino �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 53 sings a straightforward 3→2→1 (D→C→B-flat) on the word “allein,” “alone” or “only.” But the harmony undercuts the stability of his final B-flat with a deceptive cadence. Instead of V→I, we get V→VI, where VI is a minor chord. Musically, this is a subtle way of extending the phrase and producing the need to move on. Also, the minor VI adds a gently dark inflection and fervor to the word “allein.” But the deceptive cadence may also suggest, in this case, that Tamino’s certitude is doubtful, that he is still in the dark about what he is feeling, just as he is ignorant of what it really means to love. As Tamino repeats his sentence (“It is love alone”), he dwells on “Liebe” and makes it into its own musical phrase in three parts: first a leap that gently descends by step, then this same phrase repeated, and finally an embellished ascent to a high G. The chord on this G is a dramatic diminished seventh chord that points to the F major triad, the V of B-flat. Both melody and harmony are at this point up in the air, begging for resolution. The eighth-note rest that follows heightens the suspense. After the rest, tension is released, as Tamino completes his sentence: he drops more than an octave to an F and proceeds by step to B-flat, scale degree 1, this time supported rather than undercut by the accompanying harmony. The cadence, embellished by a turn played by the first violins, brings the section to a close. It provides the release that the preceding deceptive cadence had postponed. We now enter the development or middle section of the aria. I think you will agree that although not much time has passed, much has happened. We have perceived the unfolding of a musical idea that expresses the unfolding of Tamino’s enraptured soul: music has given us access to the soul that words alone cannot give. That the tones are embarking on a new large section of the piece is signalled by a pronounced �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW shift to quicker rhythms in the accompaniment. The tonal drama now has more forward momentum. Up to this point, it has been pretty much a matter of beautiful phrases in starts and stops. This new section as a whole, this middle of the aria, is the point of maximum tension—the crux of the tonal drama. As we put ourselves into this extended moment of mounting tension, we are unsure of where the tones will go. How will the tones end this section and lead into the recapitulation? How will the recapitulation resolve all the tensions that have built up in the course of the song? The quicker rhythms in sixteenth- and thirty-second notes are played by the strings. The winds enter with a recurring pattern of syncopations or offbeat rhythms. Underneath this dense rhythmic complex, the bass viols provide support with a persistent B-flat in sixteenth-notes (a so-called pedal point). They are the quickened pulse and heartbeat of this part of Tamino’s music. Mozart brilliantly adds yet another rhythmic element that heightens tension: he has the first violins surge upward in thirty-second-notes grouped in quick pairs, followed by a rapid succession of appoggiaturas. These leaning tones then take over and become the principal theme of the violins. They are like little flutters of the heart produced by heightened expectation. All the rhythms together form a complex musical image of the surging yet reflective passion that leads Tamino to his second, more pressing question: “O, if only I could find her! O, if only she were standing before me! I would, warm and pure . . .what would I?” The melody here begins as a stepwise ascent, which Tamino then repeats, from B-flat, that is, scale degree 1, to the high A-flat. Could this A-flat be hinting that we are already on our way back to the home key of E-flat major, or is it just part of an applied dominant? When Tamino sings the A-flat to complete his sentence “O, if only I could find her,” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 55 he outlines three-fourths of the dominant seventh chord that points to E-flat (the pitches he sings are A-flat, F, and D). But the harmony does not go to E-flat. The tones seem to be caught in a region of harmonic indeterminacy, which is highlighted as Tamino repeats the same phrase with the same harmony. As he approaches his second question, he breaks the pattern and sings a perfect fourth from C up to F on “ich würde” (“I would”), then another perfect fourth from B-flat up to E-flat on “würde” repeated. The repetition alone suggests that Tamino is suspended in mid-thought by the indeterminacy of his feelings and intentions. His melodic indeterminacy is echoed and strengthened by the accompaniment, which here plays mysterious, dusky sounding measures with a flurry of chromatic appoggiaturas. When Tamino sings “warm and pure,” he uses a warm-sounding G-flat on “warm.” The harmony interprets this G-flat as part of a diminished seventh chord on A-natural, scale degree 7 of Bflat. This chord points to the B-flat major triad. The tones seem to have found their direction, their tonal center, in scale degree 1 of B-flat. But as Tamino now utters his second question (“what would I?”), he ends his phrase by falling a major sixth from F down to the A-flat an octave below the A-flat we heard earlier. The gesture is an anticlimax, coming as it does after Tamino’s three dramatic rising phrases: two ascents to A-flat and one to G-flat. The gesture suggests a momentary deflation—rising confidence that is suddenly at a loss. The low A-flat blocks the reassertion of B-flat as key. It is part of a B-flat7 chord, the dominant seventh of E-flat major, our home key. Tamino’s question “What would I?”, melodically a deflating fall from F to A-flat, finds a fitting harmonic expression in an upward gesture of incompleteness—an unresolved V7 chord that leaves this entire section of the aria hanging. �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The intense anticipation that has built up is further emphasized by the full measure of rest that follows. It is the longest, most dramatic pause in a song full of pauses. The soundless measure is no mere absence. It is an active nonbeing—the tense non-being of eros, that greatest and most potent of all human tensions, the tension music seems uniquely suited to express. Once again, the orchestra leads the way, as the bass viols play a constant E-flat in sixteenth notes and the violas play an oscillating figure called an Alberti bass in thirty-second notes. This confirms that the B-flat7 on which Tamino’s question ended was indeed the V7 of E-flat. We have returned to the home key, and the recapitulation has begun. In this final section of his song, Tamino, with rising self-confidence, answers his second question: “I would press her to this burning breast, and forever would she be mine.” The harmony is refreshingly determinate. We know where we are—firmly planted in E-flat major—as the harmony oscillates repeatedly between I and V7. We are hearing a tonal homecoming. Tamino’s melody is straightforward: first, a little melodic wave that starts on a B-flat and rises to E-flat through an appoggiatura on F—“ich würde sie” (“I would her”)—then the same melodic phrase repeated—“voll Ent-zü-cken” (“enraptured” or “utterly thrilled”). His next phrase, which begins similarly, introduces a pattern of skips and ends on a chromatic D-flat: “an diesen heißen Busen drücken” (“press to this burning or heated breast”). The E-flat to D-flat on “drücken,” “press,” captures the act of pressing. This chromatic tone tenses forward. It conspires with the tones in the accompaniment to form a I7 chord, that is, the E-flat major triad with D-flat as a destabilizing seventh. The I7, which interprets and deepens Tamino’s D-flat, is an applied or passing dominant that pushes into the final phrase of the aria: “und �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 57 ewig wäre sie dann mein,” “and forever would she be mine.” Tamino repeats this final phrase five times in all, three times with the upbeat “und” (“and”) and twice without. The phrases without the “und” have greater urgency and are allowed to begin on the crucial word “ewig,” “forever.” The I7 chord on “drücken” tends toward an A-flat triad, the IV chord, or subdominant, in E-flat major. But as Tamino moves to his first utterance of “and forever would she be mine,” Mozart substitutes the ii6 chord, which plays the same role as IV in the harmonic cycle—the moment of stepping away and preparing for the dominant. Why the substitution? No doubt because the ii chord, being minor, has greater warmth. On this ii6 chord, which lasts an entire measure, Tamino sings a smooth ascent to his high A-flat. He then drops to D, scale degree 7 in E-flat, by way of a leaning tone. The first violins second this lovely melodic phrase. The D is part of the chord played by the strings: the V7 of E-flat. The music pauses on this tense dominant chord. Then, something familiar returns: the calm measured phrase from the exposition, where Tamino sang the words “fills my heart with new emotions.” The first appearance of this phrase ended with a deceptive cadence on a diminished seventh chord (on the word “fills”). Mozart repeats that cadence here. But whereas in the exposition Tamino ended his second phrase serenely on scale degree 1, here, at the corresponding moment, he bypasses the E-flat and leaps to a high G on “mein.” This is the measure in which phrases with “und” switch to phrases without it. This change quickens the movement of the song. It also produces an elision on the tones G, E-flat, and C that allows Tamino to combine “mine” and “forever” in the single phrase “mine forever.” Tamino goes on to stress the degrees of the E-flat major triad in a smoothly flowing phrase that seems destined to land �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW on a low E-flat, that is, scale degree 1. But at the last moment he leaps from low F (scale degree 2) to the G a ninth above on the word “mine”— and then overtops the G with an A-flat on “ewig.” This is the most dramatic moment in the aria, as Tamino intensifies his previous elision, his musicalized, heartfelt dream of eternally possessing his beloved. Tamino sounds very heroic and confident here. He sings his signature G a lot, as though this single tone, scale degree 3, embodied the whole of his passion. When he gets to the last restatement of his phrase, the melody emphasizes the tones of the E-flat major triad. He leaps, for one last time, to his signature G— this time, significantly, on the word “sie,” “her.” This G is not a stable degree of a chord but an appoggiatura tending toward F, scale degree 2. Tamino, in other words, does not merely stress the pronoun that refers to Pamina with a high note; instead he puts his whole heart into the word and leans toward his beloved. Having reached high G, the tones now descend to E-flat, scale degree 1, by step, with the assistance of D, that is, scale degree 7: 3→2→1→7→1 (“sie dann mein”). A straightforward cadence affirms closure: IV, I6/4, V7, I. The entire orchestra ends the piece with a brief, noblesounding coda composed of two complementary phrases. The phrases are the tonal expressions of the two complementary sides of Tamino’s nature, as it is revealed in the aria: the first heroic and forte, the second tender and piano, a recollection of the fervent E-flat chords with which the song began. So ends my journey through Tamino’s aria. I have tried to be faithful in speech to what is there in the tones. I have not, of course, captured all that is there. No one could. Mozart’s music, like all great music, is inexhaustible, and every act of listening brings new discoveries. I have tried to present the aria as a wondrous object—a time-structure—that �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 59 comes to us and is welcomed by our musically receptive souls. This time-structure “speaks” to our passion and our perception, just as the enchanted portrait, a visual or spatial form, “speaks” to the soul of Tamino. I have placed special emphasis on tonal tension, and on directed tension as the possible ground of coherence and unity in tonal music. To listen to Tamino’s aria—his strain of musicalized longing—is not just to hear coherence from one moment to the next. It is to hear the tension at work in the whole: in the overall form that unfolds in time, by analogy with organic growth. The exposition is an ordered accumulation of tension. The development section extended and heightened that tension; it expresses Tamino’s point of maximum anticipation and perplexity. Of all three sections, it is the one that most has the character of an arrow. The recapitulation takes us home, reaffirms E-flat as the central key, recalls part of the music from the exposition, and brings the whole time-structure to perfect balance and resolution. It does all this by accumulating its own tensions, with which the tones move swiftly and urgently to a satisfying close. To listen perceptively to the aria, to hear what is there, is demanding. It takes effort and study. I would like to suggest that behind all the complexities, a simple scheme prevails. The melody, as we know, begins with a rising sixth to a G, scale degree 3 of E-flat major. The entire piece may be heard as the attempt by 3 to reach 1 through the intermediation of 2: G→F→E flat. Recall that the first key change came about because the first clarinet played 3→2→2 rather than 3→2→1. This facilitated the transformation of 2 in E-flat into 5 in Bflat. The rest of the piece—key changes and all—exploits and further develops this move to 2.26 The completion of the move 3→2→1 in the overarching scheme takes place only at the end, only after the recapitulation has affirmed E-flat, not �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW merely as the key of the final section but as the governing tone of the entire aria. Only at the end of the journey do we really have the beginning. Part Three: Wisdom My account of Tamino’s song would be incomplete if I did not talk about Pamina, the enchanting object of Tamino’s love. Pamina is the focal point of the opera. Of all the “good” characters, she endures the greatest and most prolonged sufferings: her mother’s absence, the stern tutelage of Sarastro, the violent advances and blackmail of Monostatos, and the revelation of her mother as a demon bent on a murder Pamina herself is ordered to commit. Finally, she suffers despair over what she thinks is lost love, and is almost driven to suicide.27 Pamina is also an exalted figure in the opera. It is she who most embodies what is new about the new order. It is she, a virtuous woman, who gives the lie to all the negative things said about women in the opera. Sarastro told her that a man must guide her heart. This is true, in a sense: Tamino gives Pamina’s heart its proper object and bearing. But in the last two trials, it is Pamina who guides Tamino, as love guides her. Finally, it is Pamina who reveals that the magical vocation of music is not to gain power over others, or merely to amuse oneself, but to ward off the fear of death. When Pamina joins Tamino for the final trials near the end of the opera, the two face each other in more than the obvious sense. They now see each other clearly for the first time. There is mutual recognition. This recognition is mirrored, or rather enacted, in the complementary phrases the lovers use to sing each other’s names: “Tamino mine! O what happiness!” “Pamina mine! O what happiness!” The string of monosyllabic German words that the lovers sing to each other—“O welch ein Glück”—is both simpler and more con- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 61 crete than this English translation. A more accurate rendering is: “O what a stroke of good fortune!” Tamino and Pamina are not referring to a subjective state or feeling, but to an event, to something wondrous that has just happened and that presents itself to their perception: the arrival and the presence of the beloved. The phrases they sing are two halves of a little musical circle or period in F major. When Pamina sings Tamino’s name, she does so with a rising major sixth—the same interval with which Tamino’s soul rose up in response to Pamina’s image. But this is not mere repetition. The sixth at the beginning of Tamino’s aria was the sound of passion that aspired but did not know itself. It had shadows. Pamina’s sixth is different. It is pure, luminous, and rationally aware. It has “Besonnenheit,” and in more than the strictly musical sense.28 Pamina’s sixth is the enlightenment and perfection of Tamino’s. It is the sublime moment in which passion, now perceptive, finds its purpose. When Tamino first responded to the magic that was Pamina, his love was mediated by an image. He asked himself what he would do if the beloved were standing in front of him. That moment has arrived, for here stands Pamina, not as image but as solid reality. Tamino’s first rush of love was itself a kind of image and dream, a first step in the soul’s journey from erotic striving and heroic aspiration, through painful disillusionment and trials, to the moment of enlightenment, when images are seen for what they are, and when the lover, having transcended mere feeling, now grasps what love really is. Pamina is the Other in and through whom Tamino can know himself as the man who loves Pamina, not as a possession but as partner. He can see who he is in the eyes of the beloved because the sound of her rising sixth, as she sings his name, shows him how. Her sixth, her love in musical form, is his unfailing guide. �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Pamina is more than Tamino’s beloved, more than a symbol of virtuous womanhood (her mother in redeemed form), more even than the first Woman Ruler of a new order based on marriage and reconciliation. She is Tamino’s wisdom, and the wisdom—and true magic—of Mozart’s Magic Flute. NOTES 1. For an exhaustive study of the Masonic elements in Mozart’s opera, see Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, Masonic Opera, trans. Herbert Weinstock (New York: Knopf, 1971). Chailley finds Masonic meaning even in the number of notes used in individual phrases. His analysis makes the plot more coherent but ultimately distracts us from Mozart’s music. 2. Chailley makes the interesting observation that there were originally five Ladies, in keeping with the Masonic number for the Female, and that this was reduced to three due to “necessities of casting” (109-110). 3. “[T]he key of C minor throughout Die Zauberflöte is nearly always connected with death or the threat of death.” From Erik Smith, “The music,” in Peter Branscombe, W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 130. 4. During Mozart’s time there existed ancillary Masonic lodges that accepted women—so-called “Lodges of Adoption”—but the members of these lodges were barred from the loftier honors and duties open to men (Chailley, 74-79). 5. The Queen explains that killing Sarastro is the only way she and her daughter can retrieve the “seven-fold Circle of the Sun,” which Pamina’s father, at his death, gave Sarastro. She recalls, resentfully, that the father wished to give the magical object to the “manly” care of Sarastro and refused to entrust it to “your woman’s spirit.” In the Queen’s resentful mind, the murder of Sarastro will topple the dominance of the Male and assert the supremacy of the Female. 6. Pamina’s aria is in G minor, the key her mother used to tell the story of her daughter’s abduction. It is also the key Papageno will use when he prepares to commit suicide. Charles Rosen observes the following: “In all of Mozart’s supreme expressions of suffering and terror—the G minor Symphony, Don Giovanni, the G minor Quintet, Pamina’s aria in Die �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 63 Zauberflöte—there is something shockingly voluptuous.” The Classical Style, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1997), 324-5. 7. It is here that Pamina reveals the history of the flute, which her father carved, amid thunder and lightning, from the heart of a thousand-yearold oak. 8. See Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, translated by Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986). Hanslick famously attacked the “aesthetics of feeling”: “to induce . . . feelings in us is not the task of music or of any other art. Art first of all puts something beautiful before us. It is not by means of feeling that we become aware of beauty, but by means of the imagination as the activity of pure contemplation” (4). Unfortunately, Hanslick’s dichotomy makes it impossible to understand the musical bond between feeling and contemplation, or, in the terms of this essay, between passion and perception. 9. Kierkegaard (or rather one of his personae) criticizes Tamino, who compares poorly with Don Giovanni, Mozart’s fully developed embodiment of music as eros: “As a dramatic character, Tamino is completely beyond the musical, just as in general the spiritual development the play wants to accomplish is a completely unmusical idea” (“The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic,” in Either/Or, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 2 vols. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987], Vol. I, 82.) The Magic Flute is musically deficient, it would seem, because “the whole piece tends toward consciousness,” that is, toward the clear daylight delineation of good and bad, or the ethical. It celebrates marriage, which “is absolutely unmusical” (ibid., 83). In these assertions, Kierkegaard (or rather his alter ego) seems unaware of the subtly dark, erotic side of the noble characters in Mozart’s fairy tale. See note 3 above. 10. Ingmar Bergman’s film portrays Tamino accurately as he sings this aria. The actor gazes lovingly at the picture and, at one point, presses it to his heart. The singer performs the song not as though he were seeking the admiration of an audience, but as an internal, musical-erotic meditation. Even his high notes, which sound properly heroic, retain this inward quality. 11. Hoffmann defends Beethoven against the charge that he doesn’t know how to control himself as a composer: “In truth he is fully the equal of Haydn and Mozart in rational awareness, his controlling self detached from the inner realm of sounds and ruling it in absolute authority.” �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (“Beethoven’s Instrumental Music,” in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, edited by David Charlton, translated by Martyn Clarke [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 98.) Mozart’s own affirmation of this virtue appears in a letter to his father. Explaining his reasons for a certain key change in the Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart writes that just as “passions whether violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of exciting disgust,” so too “music, even in the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or in other words must never cease to be music.” (The Letters of Mozart and his Family, translated and edited by Emily Anderson [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966], Vol. II, 769). 12. The Queen, too, in her most hysterical moments, sings in a way that is orderly, lucid, and musical. She is always a pleasure to hear. In Mozart’s universe, even the Queen exhibits “Besonnenheit”—though, admittedly, she pushes the envelope. 13. For the authoritative treatment of sonata form, see Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (cf. note 4 above). For a revealing account of “circle” vs. “arrow,” see Karol Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Berger argues that whereas the music of Bach presents time as a self-enclosed, circular image of eternity (“God’s time”), that of Mozart affirms an arrow-like progression that imitates “the temporal disposition of events” (179). Circle and arrow are central metaphors for Victor Zuckerkandl, who stresses the arrow-like movement of counterpoint. He acknowledges, however, that the classical sonata combines “chain” (arrow-like succession of phrases) with “circle”: “The whole [of a movement] is symmetrical: A—B—A; but within each section [exposition, development, recapitulation] the chain principle is dominant” (Victor Zuckerkandl, The Sense of Music [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959], 96). 14. It is tempting to compare Tamino’s rising major sixth with the most famous rising sixth in all of music—the minor sixth at the very beginning of Tristan and Isolde. What do these sixths show us about the nature of eros? Do they point to two different kinds of erotic love? Or are they two sides of the one passion we call eros? 15. For a fuller discussion of Mozart’s shift of accent in the Magic Flute, see again Erik Smith’s essay in Branscombe, Magic Flute, 120-124 (cf. note 2 above). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 65 16. Hanslick stresses the perception of movement in music in his famous definition of music’s content: “The content of music is tonally moving forms” (The Beautiful in Music, 29). He does not, however, speculate on the cause and nature of this movement. 17. On harmony as the third dimension of depth, see Victor Zuckerkandl, The Sense of Music, 171-179. Throughout this essay, I use the term “chord” loosely and without much reflection. It is in fact not easy to say what a chord is, and hence what it means for harmony to be the movement of chords. At one point in his discussion, Zuckerkandl asks: “Where is the chord?” He answers: “the chord is not in the tones but, in a sense, above them, more immaterial than the tones themselves” (ibid., 184). This leads him to the fascinating assertion that a chord is “something like an idea—an idea to be heard, an idea for the ear, an audible idea.” 18. The theory of tones as “dynamic qualities” is that of Zuckerkandl, who develops the theory in three amazing books: The Sense of Music, Sound and Symbol, and Man, the Musician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 1956, and 1973 respectively). 19. It is worth noting that a deceptive cadence is not a sudden, disruptive shock, but rather a musical surprise that makes sense to the ear. The reason is that the unanticipated chord has at least one tone in common with the chord we expect. In the most common deceptive cadence, the V7 chord goes to VI, which has two tones in common with the I chord. In the present case, the deceptive chord—the diminished-seventh chord built on Anatural—has in it the two tones common to I and VI (C and E-flat), but adds the destabilizing tones A-natural and G-flat. That this tense unexpected chord arrives so naturally, and just as naturally leads to the V7 of the key of E-flat, points to the marvelous fluidity and ordered freedom of harmonic movement. 20. Wagner on Music and Drama, selected and arranged by A. Goldman and E. Sprinchorn (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), 214. 21. The psychologist Géza Révész writes the following about the musical listener: “He is able to follow the composer’s intentions, even at times to anticipate them. It is also characteristic of the musical person to sink himself into the mood of the music, and achieve a relation to it that has an effect on his whole spiritual being. He experiences the art work so inwardly and so profoundly that he feels as though he were creating it” (Introduction to the Psychology of Music [New York: Dover, 2001], 133-134). �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 22. One especially problematic aspect of the usual chord notation is that it implies but does not emphasize the motion of the bass. The various “positions” of triads—root, first inversion, second inversion, etc.—are really ways of composing a bass line. In the present case, where the chordal progression is I6, IV, I6/4, V7, vii5/6 of V, V7, the bass has a beautifully continuous ascent: G to A-flat to B-flat to B-flat repeated to C to D, and finally to the E-flat, the root of the E-flat triad that begins Tamino’s complementary phrase and the harmonic progression that culminates in the perfect cadence to the 16-measure period. A good way to hear this bass line, this voice in its own right, is to sing along with it. 23. Zuckerkandl, following the music theorist Heinrich Schenker, calls this Tonwille, the will of the tones. 24. Schopenhauer is perhaps the only philosopher who attempts to explain the intimate connection between music and the human self, and to explicate the classical idea according to which music is a form of imitation. Music, he argues, is a copy of the will that is the source of all representation. This will, to which we are tragically enslaved, is an urge or desire that is incapable of being satisfied. In music, we hear this urge as pure striving detached from particular objects. This removal of determinate objects permits us to enjoy the pleasant, aesthetic contemplation of the tragic source of all things, and of ourselves. Through this enjoyment, we gain momentary refuge from the suffering and curse that is human life. See The World as Will and Representation, translated by E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969), Vol. I, 255-267, and Vol. II, 447-457. 25. See Charles Rosen on this point: “The greatest change in eighteenthcentury tonality, partly influenced by the establishment of equal temperament, is a new emphatic polarity between tonic and dominant, previously much weaker” (Rosen, The Classical Style, 26). I have borrowed the term “counter-pole” from Zuckerkandl, who uses it to characterize the role of scale degree 5 in the major scale (The Sense of Music, 26). 26. The “history” of F in the piece tends to support my suggestion: the initial emphasis by the clarinet at the first key change, the continued emphasis of F in the melody that follows, the peak of Tamino’s “Ja, ja!” and the appoggiaturas that follow, the Fs that appear in various roles in the development, and the appoggiatura Fs at the beginning of the recapitulation, which lean temptingly to E-flat, as if asking other tones to help it make a final convincing close. (The harmonic move from II to I occurs �ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE 67 in the second Act, where the key of F major, with which the Act begins, returns right before the E-flat Finale.) My suggestion about 3→2→1 as the underlying structural principle derives from Heinrich Schenker’s notion of the Urlinie or “primordial line.” See his Free Composition, translated and edited by Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 3-9. 27. Branscombe notes another important aspect of Pamina’s suffering: “Without the advantage accorded to Tamino and Papageno of knowing about the trials to be undergone, she survives her own trials” (Branscombe, Magic Flute, 217). 28. Pamina shows her capacity for straight speech when Sarastro appears at the end of Act I. Papageno anxiously asks her in C minor: “My child, what now shall we speak?” The harmony intensifies his anxiety with the extremely tense augmented sixth chord, an applied dominant to the V on which the question hangs. Pamina responds with a soothing move to C major: “The truth, the truth, even if it were a crime.” Charles Rosen observes that when Pamina sings “the truth,” “the music takes on an heroic radiance unheard in opera before then” (Rosen, Classical Style, 319). �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 68 Socrates, Parmenides, and the Way Out Judith Seeger Before I begin, I would like to warn you that you must not expect this lecture to present a definitive interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides. Indeed, I am so far from being an expert on Plato that I am somewhat amazed to find myself here behind the podium, where experts usually stand on Friday nights. Furthermore, the Parmenides is perhaps one of Plato’s most difficult dialogues—a fact that, curiously enough, gives me comfort, for I have yet to hear or read an unambiguously persuasive interpretation of it. In any case, as you know, the lecture itself is only part of these Friday-night events. If I succeed in opening a discussion in which we all can participate and learn, then I will have accomplished something. My goal, you see, is modest. The talk will consist of the following sections. First, I will summarize the story for you, drawing your attention to the character of the interlocutors as it is revealed through their words and through the narrator’s observations. I will explore in particular the character of young Socrates, and I will also give some attention to Plato’s portrayal of Parmenides as compared with what we know about the philosopher Parmenides. Then, I will consider the fundamental questions raised by the dialogue, which are, I believe, put most succinctly: “What is philosophy?” and “Is philosophy possible?” Finally, I will suggest that the dialogue not only raises these questions, but also answers them favorably, though in such a Judith Seeger is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was originally delivered on January 20, 1995. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 69 way that we are forced to look beyond the words themselves and compelled to pursue the answers. That is, we are invited to engage in philosophy ourselves. I don’t remember where I was when I first read every dialogue of Plato’s, but I do remember where I was when I first read the Parmenides. The year is 1990. It is the afternoon of the day before seminar. I am sitting in my living room on the dark blue loveseat between two windows. My back is to the west wall, and, looking up, I can follow the sun’s slow sinking by observing the lengthening patches of brightness (cold brightness, because it is a January afternoon) on either side of me. They stretch toward the opposite wall, then reach and start to climb it. Dust motes, drifting lazily in the sunbeams, begin a crazed dance as the furnace fan kicks on. When the fan goes off, the dance subsides. Do you get the impression that I was having trouble concentrating on my reading? Actually, it was maddening. When I reached the end of the assigned reading (which is partway through Parmenides’ argument for the existence of the One, after which we jump directly to the final statement) and managed, out of respect for the other dialogues in the volume, not to pitch the book against that same wall the sunlight was climbing, I was convinced that I had just read a very old joke, which I was possibly the first one ever to “get” (for otherwise why would we be wasting our time reading it?), but which wasn’t really very funny. I was relatively new to philosophy. But it seemed to me that Plato had been pulling our collective leg for a long time. That seminar conversation, and the one the following year, when I read the dialogue for the second time, helped a little; but neither one dispelled my conviction that the dialogue was, at best, seriously unbalanced, a feeling which became only more acute when one of my seminar co-leaders �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW dismissed the last sentence of the dialogue as “nonsense.” Parmenides concludes (in R.E. Allen’s translation): “Then let this be said, and also that, as it seems, whether unity is or is not, both unity and the others are and are not, and appear and do not appear to be, all things in all ways, relative both to themselves and to each other.” To which young Aristotle, who has been Parmenides’ chosen interlocutor during the exercise, replies “very true” (166c). Recall, also, that this particular Aristotle, as we are deliberately told in the dialogue, later became one of the Thirty Tyrants, whose crimes Socrates speaks about in the Apology (32d). So Parmenides’ display of dialectical fireworks in the second part of the dialogue seems to be nonsense, and possibly dangerous nonsense, to boot, if someone who is as thoroughly persuaded by it as young Aristotle seems to be grows up to be a tyrant so ruthless as to try to implicate innocent men, including Socrates, in the murder of other innocent men. (Cf. Republic 537e-539d, on the dangers of teaching dialectic to young men). Nonetheless, Parmenides’ dialectical exercise follows an impressive presentation of young Socrates in the beginning of the dialogue. Plato shows us what appears to be Socrates’ first, sincere, if perhaps somewhat naive, account of the Forms. And he shows us Socrates exploring one of the difficulties raised by the concept of Forms: the so-called problem of participation. Thus, a fundamental tenet (perhaps the fundamental tenet) of Socratic and Platonic thought is paired with what appears to be closely reasoned gobbledygook. This presents us at the outset with a formidable dilemma. The Parmenides, like many other Platonic dialogues, but perhaps more blatantly than most, seems to have a split personality, to be composed of two parts that fit together uneasily at best. The problem of unity in this dialogue, then, part of which �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 71 is at least ostensibly about the One, is striking, even on the level of its organization. Questions arise which, like the problem of participation itself, will simply not go away. What is the nature of this exercise Parmenides calls a “devious passage through all things” (136e), without which he claims the mind cannot attain to the truth? How are we to read it? There are several possibilities. One is that Parmenides’ tedious “gymnastic,” with its nonsensical conclusion, is so far from being a legitimate means of searching for truth that we might read it as Plato’s example of exactly what not to do if you want to pursue philosophy. The sort of reasoning we scornfully call logic-chopping comes to mind. In this reading, Parmenides is the consummate sophist, who can manipulate words to mean anything he wants, with the inescapable outcome that ultimately they can mean nothing at all. If this Parmenides is really supposed to represent the philosopher by that name, the sense of such an interpretation would be that the older man has not only been displaced but has also been made to discredit himself. He becomes an old fool, who would be dangerous if we were foolish enough to take him seriously. There are, nonetheless, problems with this reading. It does not take into account the care Plato apparently lavished on this dialogue, or the respect with which Socrates seems to regard the older philosopher. Parmenides claims that the exercise he performs regarding the One is necessary for Socrates’ philosophic maturation; and young Socrates, so far as we know, remains present and attentive throughout (although at least a few of the members of my preceptorial on Parmenides thought that surely he must have silently departed—at least, that is what they would have done). It seems not unreasonable to suppose that Socrates is learning something necessary, and before we decide that this necessary �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW something is how not to proceed, the dialogue deserves a closer look. So let us return to the first part of the dialogue to examine its setting and characters and try to determine who this Socrates is, who this Parmenides is, what the one might have to learn from the other, and what we might have to learn from it all. The part of the dialogue before Parmenides begins his exercise comprises only a bit more than a third of the entire piece. It is immediately evident that the dialogue is set in a “present” which is very remote from the conversation among Socrates, Zeno, and Parmenides that it recounts. Though we are given no date, we may assume that all the participants in the original conversation are dead, including Socrates, if only because, had Socrates been alive, Cephalus, who is the firstperson narrator of the entire piece, would certainly have gone directly to him rather than to a man who had acquired the conversation second-hand. In the “present” (which is itself actually a “past” recounted by the primary narrator to unnamed listeners who become us, the readers), Cephalus and some of his fellow-citizens who are interested in philosophy have come to Athens from Clazomenae in Ionia. They have made this journey because they have heard that someone in Athens has memorized that long-past conversation, and they would like to hear it. This Cephalus, by the way, is not the Cephalus of the Republic, a man who, you will recall, was not sufficiently interested in philosophy even to stay in his own home when Socrates was brought there (331d), much less to go out of his way to seek out a dialogue from the distant past. The opening scene of the Parmenides is, nevertheless, reminiscent of the beginning of the Republic, both in the name of its narrator and in the first sentence, which recalls Socrates’ narration of his descent into the Pireaus. Cephalus �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 73 begins, “When we arrived at Athens from our home in Clazomenae, we met Adeimantus and Glaucon in the Agora” (126a). Unlike Socrates in the Republic, Cephalus is not forcibly detained by eager questioners. Instead, Glaucon and Adeimantus (who are those once-young men of the Republic) welcome him cordially, and he tells them he has come to ask a favor. He would like for them to take him and his friends to their half-brother, Antiphon (who is also Plato’s halfbrother), who, he hopes, may be persuaded to recite from memory the conversation held by Socrates, Zeno, and Parmenides that Antiphon learned from a student of Zeno’s named Pythodorus, who was present at that encounter many years ago. Antiphon—who was once sufficiently interested in philosophy, if not to practice it, at least to memorize an exceedingly complex conversation—is now more interested in raising horses. The others come upon him instructing a smith how to make a bit. At first, Antiphon is reluctant to comply with their request, for reciting the conversation will be, as he says in words later nearly echoed by Parmenides himself, an arduous task. But he finally allows himself to be persuaded to perform, as Parmenides will later in the dialogue (and did, earlier in time). Since Antiphon was not present at the conversation he is about to relate, he gives his listeners Pythodorus’s account. As Pythodorus told it, Zeno and Parmenides once came to Athens for the Panathenaia festival, and stayed outside the walls in Pythodorus’s house. Parmenides was elderly at the time, quite gray, and distinguished-looking. Zeno was about 40 years old, tall and handsome. It was said that Zeno had been Parmenides’ favorite; the suggestion is of an erotic relationship. We do not know the age of young Socrates, but the dialogue emphasizes that he was very young, though older than Parmenides’ interlocutor Aristotle. Socrates, at the �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW beginning of Pythodorus’s account, has been listening to Zeno read a treatise, of which we readers hear nothing, for Pythodorus had heard the treatise before, and, evidently not caring to hear it again, enters the house with Parmenides only after Zeno has finished reading. Socrates asks Zeno to read the beginning again, and Zeno does; but the second reading serves only to emphasize the utter unimportance of Zeno’s text, for the narrator does not give it to us, even though he is now present. We hear instead only Socrates’ summation of it, which is this: “If things are many, then it follows that the same things must be both like and unlike, but that is impossible, for unlike things cannot be like or like things unlike” (127e). Zeno agrees that this summary is accurate, and Socrates presses on: “Now, if it is impossible for unlike things to be like and like things unlike, it is also impossible for there to be many things; for if there were, things would undergo impossible qualifications. Isn’t that the point of your arguments, to contend, contrary to everything generally said, that there is no plurality? And don’t you suppose that each of your arguments is a proof of just that, so that you believe that you have given precisely as many proofs that there is no plurality as there are arguments in your treatise? Is that what you mean, or have I failed to understand you?” (127e). It appears that Socrates is baiting Zeno, suggesting that he has become mired in the contradiction of providing many arguments to prove that there is no such thing as many. But Zeno, again, graciously concedes that Socrates’ estimation of his work is correct. Since innuendo did not work, Socrates now attacks outright. Addressing not Zeno but Parmenides by name, he accuses Zeno of saying much the same thing as Parmenides himself while misleading his readers into thinking he is saying something different. Parmenides remains silent, and again Zeno, clearly stung, replies, but quite mildly considering that �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 75 he has just been accused of a kind of cheating. He protests that this particular treatise was, in the first place, the work of a young man written in a spirit of controversy, not of an older man zealous for reputation, and, in the second place, that it was stolen from him and published without his consent. Though the effect of these disclaimers is less to enlighten us than to cause us to wonder why he is reading the discredited treatise of his youth now that he is older and presumably knows better, Zeno continues to agree that Socrates did not misrepresent his thesis. Parmenides, meanwhile, makes his presence increasingly felt by saying not a word. Socrates has tried both innuendo and direct accusation in what appears to be an unsuccessful attempt to draw first Zeno and then Parmenides into discussion. He plunges on. The paradox of unity and multiplicity raised by Zeno has a simple solution, Socrates claims. The answer is the Forms, which exist alone, by themselves. If someone could demonstrate to him that Forms could change, that would be amazing, Socrates asserts. But it is not at all remarkable that other sorts of things should share contrary characteristics. Socrates uses himself as an example. In order to say that he is many, that is, partakes of multitude, all anyone would have to do would be to consider his front, his back, his upper body, his lower body, and so on. If, on the other hand, someone wanted to say that he partakes of unity, that person would need only consider him one of the seven—but remember that only five are named—present at this particular conversation (129d). With regard to the changeable things we perceive, plurality and unity depend, in effect, on how you look at them. There is no genuine paradox in this, only a manipulation of language. The tone of Socrates’ speech is aggressive. He seems to be implying that Zeno is either a liar or a fool. I have tried to capture something of Socrates’ tone in this �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW summary. He has, of course, expounded his opinions at much greater length than I just have. If you were reading it your impression would likely be that this brash young man has indeed gone too far: he’s smart all right, but he is also rude and offensive. That is, evidently, the feeling the reader is supposed to have, because suddenly we are recalled to Pythodorus, who, Antiphon says, expected Zeno and Parmenides to become angry, and was surprised when instead they glanced at each other from time to time as Socrates spoke and smiled as if in admiration. Now, for the first time, Parmenides speaks, and his words reveal that young Socrates, in flailing away at Zeno, has been, in effect, setting himself up. Young Socrates is about to meet his master. First, Parmenides blandly commends Socrates on his talent for argument; then he asks if he himself was responsible for the distinction between Forms and the things that partake of them. Parmenides does not give Socrates time to reply to this question, so I suppose we do not really know the answer. Instead, he immediately becomes more specific. Is there, he asks Socrates, a likeness apart from the likeness we possess? Is there One? Is there Many? “Of course.” Then what about the just, the beautiful, the good, and all such things? “Yes.” Then are there Forms for such things as man, fire, and water? Socrates has no answer. Within three simple exchanges, Parmenides has reduced him to a state of perplexity, that condition of ignorance which is discomfiting to say the least, because anyone who is aware he is in it also knows that he must escape from it, and there is, at least as far as Socrates can see at this point, no way out. This is a most important moment, for it is evidently the first time that Socrates has realized that he is in the state to which he will later try to reduce all those with whom he speaks. The force of this image of aporia, recalling Zeno- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 77 phon’s use of it in the Anabasis (III.1.11-13), is of a desperate need to escape from imminent danger, to find a pathway to safety where none is apparent. If Parmenides had stopped here he would have accomplished quite a lot, but he is not yet finished with young Socrates. What about certain other things, he asks, vile and worthless things, like mud, dirt, and hair? At first Socrates seems to have returned to firm ground. Not at all, he answers, in his previous assured manner. That would be impossible. But then he stumbles a bit, driven to face the abyss, I think, both by the questions of a man he clearly respects and by a characteristic honesty as remarkable as the intelligence and talent for argument he has already demonstrated. “Still,” young Socrates says, “I sometimes worry lest what holds in one case may not hold in all, but when I take that stand, I retreat, for fear of tumbling undone into depths of nonsense. So I go back to the things we just said have characters, and spend my time dealing with them” (130d). This is no way to escape from aporia. It may very well be that there is a significant difference in kind between justice, say, and hair, but a simple assertion of that difference is not sufficient to make it so, and Socrates knows it. He is in this position, Parmenides says, because he is still young and philosophy has not yet taken hold of him. When he is older and more experienced he will despise none of these things. Now he still pays too much attention to what people think. This reply is problematic for a sympathetic reading of Parmenides, if it implies that he considers mud, dirt, and hair equal in kind to justice, beauty, and the good. I do not think that he does, if only because he calls them particularly vile and worthless, but we will consider this further when I explore the question of who this Parmenides is. Whatever the reading, it is clearly not Parmenides’ intent here to explore what sorts of things have Forms. Rather, simply by raising �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the question, he has done this bright young know-it-all the immense favor of reducing him to a state in which he has been forced to admit perplexity and doubt, a state which we know (because we have read dialogues in which the older Socrates partakes, dialogues that were composed before this relatively late one) is absolutely necessary for him to recognize if he is to understand that he is in danger and must search for a way out—that is, he must pursue philosophy. At this point in young Socrates’ education, concentrating on such ideas as justice, virtue, and the good is a retreat, in so far as it represents a failure to face the real dilemma inherent in the notion of Forms. Furthermore, Socrates has confessed that fear of falling into nonsense has caused him to turn away from questions that had occurred to him before his encounter with Parmenides. Parmenides, then, has forced the young man to admit, first, that, despite his intellect and talent for argument, he is in a perilous situation; second, that he must search for a way to escape from this danger; and, third, that his fear has led to intellectual cowardice and laziness. Whether there actually is a possible way of escape remains to be explored, and this is the question to which Parmenides immediately turns his attention. Assuming with Socrates that Forms exist even though we are not yet sure which of the things we perceive has a Form, Parmenides directs the conversation to the problem of sharing. This in turn raises the dilemma of participation, which, in its most general expression, has to account for the relationship between the Forms and the things that partake of them. The effect of this conversation will be to reduce Socrates once again to perplexity, and it will lead to a difficulty that is more fundamental than the question about which of the things we perceive partake of Forms. Parmenides readily agrees with Socrates that there are unalterable Forms, but, through �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 79 questioning, he compels Socrates to admit (and readers to see) that if we cannot discover a relationship between the things we see and the Forms—that is, if we cannot find a way to escape from deceptive change into the reality of the absolute—there can be no knowledge and, hence, no philosophy. How, Parmenides asks Socrates, can there be any relationship between the things we see and the Forms of which they partake? More specifically, how can a Form be at once in itself and in the others (that is, the things that partake of it) without being separate from itself? Socrates has an ingenious solution to this problem: It might be like a day, he says, which is in many places at once yet not separate from itself. “Very neat,” replies Parmenides, flattering the young man, “you mean like a sail spread over many persons at once.” “Perhaps,” responds Socrates, apparently sealing his doom in the discussion, since a sail really does not seem to be like a day at all. Unlike a day, it is a material object, capable of being cut into pieces, a characteristic Parmenides will exploit in his refutation of the idea. Why does Socrates accept the substitution? Is he being polite? He wasn’t very polite to Zeno, but he obviously has more respect for Parmenides. Did he succumb to the older man’s flattery? For whatever reason, Socrates, perhaps with some reluctance, accepts the sail in place of the day. Parmenides then raises the paradox of divisibility, with an argument that irrefutably concludes, to put it briefly, that other things cannot partake of Forms either as parts or as wholes. Next he raises the difficulty of infinite regress. Using largeness as an example, he obliges Socrates to agree that when we look at a number of things that are large we believe there is the same Form of largeness in all of them, and thus believe that Largeness is one. But then don’t we need yet another largeness by which that one largeness �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW can appear large, and then another, and another? The search for the last largeness will never end. Socrates, trying to escape from this infinite regress, suggests that Forms are thoughts (noēma, a word that is rare in the Socratic dialogues); but Parmenides parries that for a thought to be true it must be a thought of something that is, and Socrates, if he is not to be trapped in relativism, is compelled to concede. Perhaps, then, he replies, the Forms exist in nature as paradigms, which other things resemble and imitate. But if this is so, Parmenides counters, the Form must resemble the object that resembles it, in so far as that object resembles it, and thus a third “entity” is called into being: that by participation in which like things are made like. Again we are faced with an infinite regress, a hall of mirrors. All of these arguments, none of which Socrates can refute, lead to what Parmenides calls the greatest difficulty of all: If we maintain that the Forms are separate, independent beings, we are in danger of having to concede that they cannot be known, and the consequence of that is that there is no way out of our difficulty. Aporia becomes absolute; philosophy is impossible. If this is our condition, Forms may or may not exist; if they exist, they may have their nature relative to themselves, and the things we perceive may have their nature relative to themselves. But if the Forms and the things among us have no relationship to each other, Parmenides and Socrates agree that we can have no knowledge of truth. Put another way, we cannot know any of the Forms because we, by our nature, cannot partake of absolute knowledge. The gods, on the other hand, by their nature, would have absolute knowledge, but that would make no difference either to us or to them, for if there is no connection, no path, between the transient and the absolute, the gods could know our world no more than we could know theirs, and we all might as well go �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 81 raise horses. This is not to say that Parmenides has given up. He asserts twice (133c and 135d) that there are ways out of this dilemma, which are open to people of wide education and ability who know how to seek them. Further, Socrates clearly possesses the considerable natural gifts that will allow him to seek a way out, and perhaps eventually to teach others to do so. Parmenides knows this because he heard Socrates discuss these questions with young Aristotle the day before, and he observed his noble and divine impulse toward argument (logos), as well as his refusal to discuss problems in terms of visible objects, appealing instead always to absolutes. The problem is that Socrates is trying too soon, before he is properly trained. He must exercise and train himself in an art that the many call idle talk if the truth is not to escape him. Parmenides approves of Socrates’ attention to the things that are rather than the things that merely seem to be. But he claims that Socrates lacks rigor; he must learn to examine the consequences that follow from each hypothesis, for example, “should you hypothesize if likeness is, or if it is not, what will follow on each hypothesis both for the very things hypothesized and for the others, relative to themselves and relative to each other” (136a). The same procedure must be followed for anything that may be hypothesized as being and as not being, and as undergoing any other affection whatever. Before looking at the exercise in more depth, let us return to several questions raised in the segment of the dialogue I have just summarized. I would like, in particular, to explore the characters of young Socrates and of Parmenides, as they are presented in the dialogue, and the problem of participation as it is framed here, with the consequences it has for the pursuit of philosophy. Let us look first at Socrates. Much is made in the dialogue �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of the fact that he is young. Parmenides has remarked upon his youth, and Pythodorus, too, as quoted by Antiphon, observes that he was very young. He seems in his interchanges with Zeno to be exhibiting some of that controversial spirit of youth to which Zeno, speaking of himself, alludes. Socrates’ attacks on Zeno show that he has mastered argument; but his remarks are glib and aggressive, the over-confident assertions of someone who (in a contrast that could not be more striking with the older Socrates) knows it all. Young Socrates, a sort of philosopher warrior slashing away with a sword of words, does not hesitate to take on the leading philosophers of the day. Though it is not used, the word thumos (in the sense of spirit, heart, will) comes to mind. And, as we have seen, both Zeno and Parmenides are delighted. This is surely not because of the easily-avoided swipes Socrates is taking at Zeno in his apparent wish to replace him in the great man’s affections, but rather because of his eager desire for logos and his conviction that there are absolutes. Socrates is a young man of great gifts in dire need of a lesson in directing those gifts if he is to find the true way of philosophy. And who better to give the lesson than Parmenides? I know that this is a tricky question, for the character of Parmenides in this dialogue is problematic. Respected commentators have argued that this Parmenides cannot be intended to be the philosopher by that name because the real Parmenides could not possibly have spoken in the way this Parmenides does; but I, at least at this point in my study, am compelled to follow the more direct route of believing that Plato meant this Parmenides to represent the great philosopher, while, of course, writing the character to suit his own purposes. Many of you probably have not read Parmenides’ poem on being, and I do not have time here to give more than the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 83 briefest of summaries of a work which is very hard to summarize, both because of its inherent difficulty and because it has survived only in widely scattered fragments and quotations which have been stitched together, leaving great gaps. Parmenides of Elea would have been born around 515 BCE, if we use Plato’s dialogue (about whose date, of course, we can only conjecture) as a way of estimating his birth date. He wrote a poem in the archaic hexameters of Greek epic poetry whose first-person narrator is a youth of great thumos who has undertaken a sort of mystic journey. Well-guided horses pull the youth in a chariot whose axle glows and whistles with heat along a wide road leading out of darkness into light. Maidens, identified as daughters of the sun, escort him along the road and through a mighty doorway into the abode of a goddess. The maidens then persuade the goddess to give the youth two accounts, one of which has been called the Way of Truth and the other the Way of Seeming. The Way of Truth states that being is and non-being is not, and that only being can be thought or learned. Being has certain characteristics, which the goddess lists for the youth: It is ungenerated, imperishable, whole, single-limbed, untrembling, complete, indivisible, changeless, held in limits by the chains of justice. Most mortals, she continues, do not realize that only being is knowable; instead they wander, twoheaded, lost along the well-trodden but misdirected way, thinking, mistakenly, that they can name and know opposites. This mistaken way is the Way of Seeming, and its relationship to the Way of Truth is not completely clear in the poem. What is clear is that being is one and absolute (though finite) and that it can be truly known, while non-being, as it does not really exist, cannot be known or even thought. Now this is not quite the doctrine that Parmenides upholds in the dialogue. The Parmenides of the dialogue does �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW still maintain the fundamental principle of the poem, namely, that only absolute being can be known. Nonetheless, by accepting without question Socrates’ notion of Forms, he has allowed multiplicity into being. So if the Parmenides of the dialogue is the Parmenides of the poem, he has changed at least part of his understanding of the nature of being. Furthermore, in the dialogue he raises that fundamental difficulty which young Socrates has apparently not considered fully, namely, the relationship of Forms to the things of this world. This difficulty, as Parmenides sees it, has two parts. One part is the question of which things in our world participate in Forms, and the other concerns the nature of that participation. The Parmenides of the dialogue is very concerned with the relationship between seeming and being, a relationship which is truly problematic in the poem, where, after stating that only being can be known, the goddess provides a surprising amount of information about seeming things, particularly heavenly bodies and sex. Remember that we have no way of knowing how much of the Way of Seeming has been lost, and its reconstruction is particularly difficult because the fragments are so short and puzzling. If there is any connection between the Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming in the poem, we have to devise it ourselves; it is not given to us. In fact, we have already seen that the poem tells us as plainly as it tells us anything that one way is true and the other is false. So the poem and the dialogue concur that only being is absolute and knowable, but in the dialogue we have a Parmenides who, unlike the author of the poem, has, in the first place, accepted a plurality of absolutes (that is, the Forms) and who, in the second place, considers the relationship between those absolutes and seeming things to be of utmost importance. Furthermore, he engages in an exercise that takes �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 85 the form of dialectic, an interchange of a sort entirely absent from the poem, whose young man remains silent, listening (in a way reminiscent of Socrates’ encounter with Diotima in the Symposium) to the teachings of the goddess. These are three undeniably significant differences between the Parmenides of the poem and the Parmenides of the dialogue. Our conclusion might be that these are different men. It seems more fruitful to say that Plato has taken the fundamental questions raised by Parmenides in the poem and pushed them in the direction he felt they had to go if the approach to knowledge was to be anything other than a metaphorical journey leading to a mystical vision. Who better than the great philosopher himself to give his blessing to such an enterprise, and to anoint young Socrates as the spirited youth, the young hero, capable of pursuing it, if only he can summon the courage to undertake such an arduous task? The dialogue, in effect, resurrects the venerable authority and has him declare, with Zeno’s approval, that Socrates is his true heir. Parmenides passes his legacy to Socrates in five ways. First, the great philosopher who first asked the question “What is Being?” has accepted the Forms as the answer to that question. Second, he has repeatedly complimented young Socrates on his ability and divine inclination toward logos. Third, Parmenides has, by his questioning, forced Socrates to recognize that he is in a state of aporia, by raising the question of the status of such things as mud, dirt, and hair—which the author of the Way of Truth could never have valued any more than Socrates ever will. Fourth, he has shown the young man a possible way out of his aporia by instructing him in the method that he will later adopt, that is, dialectic. And, fifth, he has given him a demonstration of the courage that young Socrates showed he lacked when he admitted he was �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW afraid to face the possibility that mud, dirt, and hair might partake of Forms. Parmenides demonstrates courage to Socrates when he allows himself, despite a fear that he voices several times, to be persuaded to undertake the exercise of exploring the consequences, both for the One and for the others, of the existence and of the non-existence of the One. This is the most difficult part of the dialogue to read. I have already raised one possible interpretation: that the exercise is intended to demonstrate how not to proceed if we are seeking truth. The consequence of this reading, however, is that Parmenides becomes a buffoon, and I do not believe the dialogue supports that contention any more than do later mentions of the philosopher in the Theatetus, where Socrates, an old man himself, refers to the nobility of Parmenides’ “reverend and awful figure” during the encounter we are discussing (183e), or in the Sophist, where, even though Father Parmenides is killed by his own Eleatic follower, Socrates remembers the magnificence of the arguments he employed in that long-ago meeting (217c). Even allowing, as we must, for the possibility of irony, it is not at all clear what purpose would be served by making a buffoon of the philosopher who first conceived of being as unchanging and as capable of being known. More consistent with the raising of Socrates into true philosophy is the reading that makes Parmenides into a revered elder, aware of his own limitations, but still able to inspire a spirited youth to carry on the journey that, for an old man like himself, has become just another run around the track. No longer a youth pulled by well-guided horses, but rather like an old horse himself, Parmenides is nonetheless capable of recognizing a worthy heir and guiding him to pursue philosophy along the correct route. As I have observed, the novelty of the dialogue with re- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 87 spect to Parmenides’ poem as far as the practice of philosophy is concerned is the introduction of dialectic. Parmenides in the dialogue has already shown a dialectical bent uncharacteristic of the poem in his questioning of Socrates. This questioning is suggestively juxtaposed with Zeno’s reading of an old essay—an essay that the author himself, when challenged, repudiates. And when Parmenides agrees to perform his exercise, it is dialectical rather than expository; that is, it is unlike the teaching of the goddess in Parmenides’ poem. He then chooses the youngest one present, that is, young Aristotle, to be his interlocutor, giving three reasons. First, the youngest will give least trouble; second, he will be most likely to say what he thinks; and third, his answering will give the older man a chance to rest. The first and third reasons indicate that Parmenides’ primary interlocutor in this exercise will really be himself. This locates his demonstration of the method closer to exposition than to dialogue. But the second reason is interesting insofar as it recalls Socrates’ demonstration with the slave boy in the Meno; like the slave, who has no reason to hold back from Socrates’ questioning, young Aristotle possesses a kind of pure outspokenness, a kind of fearlessness, that tends to be smothered by conventional thought as a person ages. We can see that even the gifted young Socrates has already fallen prey to convention if we read the “perhaps” with which he accepts Parmenides’ substitution of a sail for the day as a grudging acceptance of a substitution he does not really admit. Whether he is being polite or he is responding to the flattery Parmenides has just lavished on him, Socrates, who contradicts Zeno so freely, seems unable to contradict the admired older man. The exercise itself is extremely difficult to read and understand, but it is carefully organized. (This is a feature that is not evident in the truncated seminar assignment). Par- �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW menides has said that he will consider the consequences both for the One and for the others of the hypotheses both that the One is and that it is not (135e-136c and 137b). I will repeat the tangled conclusion he reaches: Then let this be said, and also that, as it seems, whether unity is or is not, both unity and the others are and are not, and appear and do not appear to be, all things in all ways, relative both to themselves and to each other (166c). It is, as I said earlier, possible to read this as a demonstration that nonsense is the only possible outcome of this particular method of reasoning. In contrast, some commentators have claimed that Parmenides’ exercise has indeed answered the questions of participation that he raised in the first part of the dialogue. Constance Meinwald, for example, argues ingeniously that it is possible to make sense out of the final statement, essentially (though, of course, this follows a complex, book-length argument) by reading the verb esti, “to be” as existential in some occurrences and predicative in others.1 According to this reading, the exercise would have explored the possible pitfalls of language in general, and of that troublesome verb in particular. I would like, however, to argue for a third interpretation. I believe that Parmenides has answered the questions he has raised, but that the answer is so deeply buried that its very hiddenness begs to be explored. Let us begin to do this by looking at the organization of the argument in the light of Jacob Klein’s “Note on Plato’s Parmenides.”2 As its title suggests, Klein’s piece is no more than a brief observation. The concern of the note is the “indeterminate dyad,” mentioned by Aristotle in the Physics and Metaphysics.3 Aristotle’s contention is that the indeterminate dyad was the substitute for the single “unlimited” or “indeterminate,” and, further, that this dyad consisted of “the Great �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 89 and the Small.” Aristotle observes that the indeterminate dyad is never explicitly mentioned by Plato. Klein believes, however, that there is a clear, if oblique, allusion to it in the Parmenides, specifically in Socrates’ apparently casual remark, following Pythodorus’s observation that “many” others came with him to hear Zeno’s reading. I mentioned earlier that there were, in fact, seven men present at this conversation, of whom only five are named. Parmenides also calls our attention to the group, without, however, numbering it, when he agrees to engage in his laborious pastime. Klein suggests that this equation of “many” with “two” is deliberate, and that it is a veiled but unmistakable reference to what Aristotle called the indeterminate dyad. Klein continues: Zeno’s lecture (composed in his youth) was meant to show that the consequences which flow from the assumption of multiplicity in this world are even more absurd and ridiculous than the consequences which flow from the derided Parmenidean assumption that “the One is” (128d). The thesis of multiplicity, in Zeno’s presentation, seems to imply the absence of unity, just as Parmenides’ assumption divorces the One entirely from any multiplicity. It is noteworthy that, in the dialogue, Parmenides himself unfolds before his listeners—young Aristotle acting as his dialectical partner—the contradictions involved both in the assumption and in the rejection of the “One” as the one and only archē. There is an imbalance between Zeno’s thesis and Parmenides’ performance: the denial of multiplicity is not subjected to any scrutiny. What is lacking is a discussion of the consequences which flow from an explicit rejection of the many (cf. 136a). Instead we are led by Parmenides and Aristotle to the threshold of the insight that the root of the contradictions concerning the “One” taken by itself is precisely the nonadmittance of another archē responsible for the “Many” �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and correlated with the “One.” The dialectic of the “One” cannot avoid bringing this other archē, the “Other,” into play. But its role within the framework of the dialogue is, as it were, illegitimate. Still, its power is there, conspicuously, though silently present. The two undetermined men in the audience represent it. They embody the elusive “indeterminate dyad” itself. This is their mimetically ironic role.4 The structure of Parmenides’ exercise supports Klein’s interpretation. Precisely what is lacking is what Klein has called scrutiny of the denial of multiplicity. The structure of the exercise is relatively simple.5 With one exception, it is divided into four sections, which follow Parmenides’ stated plan. Two segments of the exercise consider (each one in two parts) the consequences for unity and for the others if unity exists. The other two (also each in two parts) consider the consequences for unity and for the others if unity does not exist. The opening argument, however, stands alone. Parmenides’ initial assumption is that the One is not Many. Of course, young Aristotle agrees, for if anything is obvious, it is that one is not many. Nevertheless, the outcome of this assumption is disastrous. Parmenides concludes that if the One is not Many “then it cannot be named or spoken of, nor is it an object of opinion or knowledge, nor does anything among things which are perceive it,” and young Aristotle concurs that none of those things can be true of unity (142a). Well, if the One is not not-Many, does it then follow that the One is Many? This is the balancing argument, which is missing. It seems so absurd. There is no way in our everyday language that the one can be many. There is no speakable way out of this perplexity. And this is perhaps the crux of the indeterminate dyad, the manyness in the one that cannot be named but which must somehow exist if we are to be able to link the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 91 Forms with the things of this world, that is, to practice philosophy. There is, then, a missing argument (and it could not be otherwise, for the argument cannot be made with language as we know it)—a fact that becomes apparent only when we step back from the words and look at the structure of Parmenides’ exercise. This missing argument, necessarily absent, is the one for the indeterminate dyad, the multiplicity within the One, to which the presence of two unnamed men in the first part of the dialogue points. Let us look briefly once again at the principal questions that the dialogue has raised and, I believe, answered. The first is “What is philosophy?” In this dialogue Socrates is located firmly within the Parmenidean tradition with respect to the question of the nature of being: Only unalterable being is true and knowable, and the philosopher seeks to know the truth, that is, being. The second question—“Is philosophy possible?”—is no less important for human beings who would seek to know. For if there is no way out of our perplexity— and there is no way out unless the things we see can be related to the things that are—then we are trapped in the world of change, and the questions that philosophy raises are inaccessible to us. This is the difficulty with which Parmenides is principally concerned in this dialogue; and the dialogue shows us, if we know how to look at it, that there is a relationship between the things that are and the things that seem to be. There is, in other words, a way out. That way is what Aristotle called the indeterminate dyad, the multiplicity within the One, and it must be sought in the dialogue as a whole. Let us return to the puzzling last sentence of the dialogue. What are we to make of the stupendously unsatisfying conclusion to Parmenides’ exercise? If it is true that the dialogue is seeded on various levels with covert allusions to the un- �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW named and unnamable indeterminate dyad, the nonsensical end of the dialogue may be a truly thumping clue that there is a meaning here, and that the actual words are not where it is to be found. This is a reading that takes us outside the text, where we meet Socrates, who is, as it were, “in on it,” for he is the one who alludes to the indeterminate dyad by mentioning that there are seven men present. Would Plato be capable of performing such a trick—for our benefit, of course? I think so. There is duality everywhere you look in this dialogue; and furthermore, it is a duality that by its very ostentatiousness implores us to attempt to forge a simple unity of it. Plato does not coddle his readers, for one of his points is that philosophy is hard work. We must be alive to the difficulties of reading at every level of his intricately composed mimetic texts. In conclusion I would like to recall a conversation I had during a paper conference with one of the students in my Parmenides preceptorial, Adrienne St. Onge. She was troubled by what she feared was an implication that only the young had the spirit necessary to pursue philosophy. The initiate in Parmenides’ poem is, after all, a young man, and in the dialogue, the point is made again and again that Socrates, the spirited one, is very young. Zeno, a member of the generation before Socrates, is frozen in time. Rereading old, repudiated treatises, he is going nowhere. Indeed, if the significant difference between youth and age is the difference between zeal for controversy and zeal for reputation, there is nowhere to go. Parmenides, a member of the generation before Zeno’s, provides an example that is not much better, comparing himself both to an aged lover and to an old racehorse reluctantly running around in circles—that is, once again, going nowhere. But as we talked we began to realize that this is the beauty of the posthumous setting. Cephalus has come to Athens because of what Socrates later became. And we read- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | SEEGER 93 ers know what Socrates became because we have read dialogues written earlier, but situated later in his life. We know that Socrates never lost his desire for philosophy. We know that he never confused truth with mud. Plato contrives to have the venerable philosopher anoint and assist his heir, and what that heir has become we already know. Still, the “present” of the dialogue is troubling. It is true that men have come from Clazomenae to hear the conversation, but the state of philosophy after Socrates’ death seems perilous. I doubt that we ever expected Glaucon and Adeimantus to become philosophers; but Antiphon, who in this dialogue is the closest link to Socrates’ time, is shown instructing a smith to make a bit for a horse. I can’t help but read this as a discouraging allusion to the well-guided horses pulling the young man’s chariot toward the light of truth at the beginning of Parmenides’ poem. Antiphon is not a man of philosophical desire or spirit. The text, as he recites it, is trapped in time, as dead as Zeno’s treatise. So is it only exceptional people who can become philosophers? We have Socrates, who surpassed his mentors, and Plato, himself, who by implication may have surpassed Socrates. But now what? The dialogue assures us that philosophy is possible, but it does not suggest that it is easy. On the contrary, the philosopher must possess unending desire, unusual intelligence, and divine devotion to truth. This is all the more reason to wonder if Plato deliberately planted in his dialogues hints that would not be accessible to the many, those who despite everything and will always persist in traveling the wide and well-trodden, but wrong, way. Plato will not do our work for us, for if he did we would not be moved to philosophy. Both in this dialogue and more explicitly in the Phaedrus, he warns us of the danger of dead texts. To have meaning, the writing must somehow live. For more than �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW two thousand years we have been trying to tease meaning out of Plato’s texts, and the Parmenides has been among those most resistant to our efforts. Manifestly, Plato would not expect such endeavors to lead everyone to philosophy, but insofar as our search for meaning has led us to seek a way out of our perplexity, we have engaged in the only philosophy Parmenides and Socrates (and, I think, Plato) would agree is real: the living search for a path to knowledge. NOTES Constance Meinwald, Plato’s Parmenides (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 1 In Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 285-87. 2 3 For references see Klein, 285. 4 Klein, Parmenides, 287. I owe a debt of thanks to a student, Darcy Christ, for making this clear to me. 5 �95 �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Elliott Carter at St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942 �ESSAYS & LECTURES 97 Rolling His Jolly Tub: Composer Elliott Carter, St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942 Hollis Thoms Away went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth called (the) Cranie; and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter him from the injuries of the weather. —Rabelais Elliott Carter, now one of America’s foremost living composers, was a Tutor at St. John’s College from 1940 to 1942. This was a turbulent time both for the College and for Carter. The College was still in the process of phasing out the “old” curriculum and was trying to establish the “new” Great Books curriculum. Then, just after the last students under the old regime were graduated in 1941, World War II began to coopt college-age men for the war effort. In Carter’s life, his recent marriage, together with the lingering effects of Great Depression, made it imperative for him to secure an academic position. At the same time, he was transforming his compoHollis Thoms is a composer and researcher from Annapolis, Maryland, who received the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degree from St. John’s College in 2006. Many thanks are due to individuals at St. John’s who facilitated research for this paper: Chris Nelson, President; Catherine Dixon, Library Director; Cara Sabolcick, Public Service Librarian, Daniel Crowe, Registrar; Jacqueline Thoms, Assistant Registrar; Eric Stoltzfus, Music Librarian; and Mark Daly, Head of Laboratories. Thanks also to Dr. Philip Allen, who edited the first draft. �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sitional practice, casting off traditional influences, and moving in a radically new musical direction. The story of Carter’s time at St. John’s is the story of two interlaced experiments: the College’s experiment in higher education, and Carter’s experiment in finding his vocation as a composer. Elliott Carter, 1908-1940 Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. was born in New York on December 11, 1908 to lace-import businessman Elliott Cook Carter, Sr. and his wife Florence, née Chambers. The young Elliott was intended to succeed his father at the lace-import firm. As he grew, however, his musical talents and interests led him away from business and toward a career in music. The elder Carter was openly contemptuous of such an impractical scheme (Wierzbicki 2011, 5-6). But Clifton J. Furness, music teacher at the Horace Mann School where Carter studied from 1920 to 1926, recognized and encouraged his student's talent. He took the teenage Carter to avant-garde concerts, exposing him to new music by composers such as Bartók, Ruggles, Stravinsky, Varèse, Schoenberg, and Webern. And he introduced him to many New York musicians and composers, including Charles Ives, the eccentric millionaire businessman and experimental composer. Ives often invited Carter to join him and his wife in their Carnegie Hall box for performances by the Boston Symphony, which, under the leadership of Serge Koussevitzky, commissioned many new works by living composers. Ives became a musical and intellectual role model for Carter (Wierzbicki 2011, 7-9). The distance between the younger Carter’s ambitions and his father’s continued to grow during these years. When Carter was sixteen in 1925, his father took him along on a business trip to Vienna, where all his attention was focussed on trying to acquire all the currently available scores of �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 99 Schoenberg and Webern. Carter remembers going with his father to a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which the father summed up with “Only a madman could have written anything like that.” Yet that performance was one of the experiences that inspired the young Elliot to become a composer (Edwards 1971, 40, 45). So, contrary to his father’s wishes, Carter decided to study music at Harvard. Ives wrote a letter of reference in which he pointed to Carter’s artistic instincts: Carter strikes me as rather an exceptional boy. He has an instinctive interest in literature and especially music that is somewhat unusual. He writes well—an essay in his school paper—“Symbolism in Art”— shows an interesting mind. In don’t know him intimately, but his teacher in Horace Mann School, Mr. Clifton J. Furness, and a friend of mine, always speaks well of him—that he’s a good character and does well in his studies. I am sure his reliability, industry, and sense of honour are what they should be—also his sense of humor which you do not ask me about (Schiff 1983, 15-16). He intended to major in music at Harvard in the fall of 1926, but lasted only a semester in that program. He remained at Harvard, however, but opted to spend his undergraduate years working on a degree in English literature. The Harvard music department was not to his liking, since it would have nothing to do with the new music in which Carter was interested. Carter said that he “would have been glad if somebody at Harvard had explained to me what went on in the music of Stravinsky, Bartok and Schoenberg, and had tried somehow to develop in me the sense of harmony and counterpoint that these composers had” (Wierzbicki 2011, 11). �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Carter enjoyed his English literature experience, but, as with music, he went further than the traditional literature offerings, which stopped with reading Tennyson. He preferred reading more avant garde authors such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, T. S. Elliot, e. e. cummings, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, and others. In addition to studying classics, philosophy, and mathematics, he also studied German and Greek—which, in addition to his fluency in French, made him quite proficient in languages. Carter spent his undergraduate years pursuing the broadest possible education, for he saw music not merely as a technical study, but as an art form embedded in and intimately connected with the liberal arts. He, did, nonetheless, participate in more traditional musical activities during his time at Harvard, taking instruction in piano, oboe, and solfeggio at the Longy School. He sang tenor in the Harvard Glee Club and in a Bach Cantata Club. He also spent time studying the scores of the past masters, taking full advantage of the vast holdings of the Harvard music library (Wierzbicki 2011, 15-19). Carter’s youthful interest in the new music can be seen in the repertory of works he performed with his old music teacher Clifton Furness in a joint piano recital in Hartford, Connecticut on December 12, 1928: the program included pieces by Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Arnold Schoenberg, Francis Poulenc, Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Henry Gilbert, Charles Ives, Eric Satie, Paul Hindemith, and George Antheil (Schiff 1983, 15). After Carter graduated, he went on receive an MA in musical composition at Harvard, because, when Gustav Holst came as a visiting composer and Walter Piston returned from studying in Paris, there was a new interest in contemporary music at Harvard, so that Carter felt more at home in the al- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 101 tered the musical environment. Piston recommended that Carter go to study with the well known teacher of composition Nadia Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and Carter did so from 1932-1935. Carter’s fluency in French made Paris a natural choice; and because both Piston and Aaron Copland, whom Carter knew and admired, had studied with her, he felt that it was a reasonable thing to do (Wierzbicki 2011, 20-21). Despite persistent financial worries while in Paris—his father did not approve of the plan and cut his allowance in half, though his mother continued to supplement the allowance—Carter thrived as a student of Boulanger, whom he remembers with admiration for the way she illuminated both the past and the future of music: The things that were most remarkable and wonderful about her were her extreme concern for the material of music and her acute awareness of its many phases and possibilities. I must say that, though I had taken harmony and counterpoint at Harvard and thought I knew all about these subjects, nevertheless, when Nadia Boulanger put me back on tonic and dominant chords in half notes, I found to my surprise that I learned all kinds of things I’d never thought before. Every one one of her lessons became very illuminating. . . . Mlle. Boulanger was a very inspiring teacher of counterpoint and made it such a passionate concern that all this older music constantly fed me thoughts and ideas. All the ways you could make the voices cross and combine or sing antithetical lines were things we were involved in strict counterpoint, which I did for three years with her—up to twelve parts, canons, invertible counterpoint, and double choruses—and found it fascinating.” (Edwards 1971, 50, 55. Emphasis added.) �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Then also, when I was studying with Mlle. Boulanger I began for the first time to get an intellectual grasp of what went on technically in modern works. I was there at a time when Stravinsky, who was of course the contemporary composer she always admired most[, was also in Paris]. . . . The way she illuminated the details of these works was just extraordinary to me. . . . I met Stravinsky, because he used to come to tea at Mlle. Boulanger’s. . . . [W]hat always struck me every time I heard Stravinsky play the piano—the composer’s extraordinary, electric sense of rhythm and incisiveness of touch that made every note he played a “Stravinsky-note” full of energy, excitement and serious intentness” (Edwards 1971, 51, 56. Emphasis added.) Boulanger’s attitude toward music matched his own: in his daily lessons, composition as a craft was combined with composition as in the context of the liberal arts. Carter spent three years studying with Boulanger, and as a result of her tutelage, he gained both the musical craftsmanship and the self-confidence to produce compositions that he considered worth preserving. It was only “after Paris” that Carter “could begin to compose” (Wierzbicki 2011, 24). After his return from Paris, Carter immersed himself in musical activities, groups, and composing, first in Boston and then in New York. He wrote a number of choral works including one called “Let’s Be Gay,” a work for women’s chorus and two pianos based on texts by John Gay. It was written for, and performed by, the Wells College Glee Club in the spring of 1938, which was led by his friend Nicolas Nabokov, who was to figure again in Carter’s career a few years later (Wierzbicki 2011, 25). The Great Depression made it impossible for Carter to find a secure job, but he was able to become a regular con- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 103 tributor to Modern Music, a journal that had been founded in 1924 as the house organ of the New York-based League of Composers. In the process of writing thirty-one articles and reviews for the journal, he gained familiarity with current compositional activity in New York, and he developed the skills of a professional music critic (Wierzbicki 2011, 26-27). In addition, he was hired as a composer-in-residence for the experimental ballet company Ballet Caravan, formed in 1936 by Lincoln Kirstein, whom Carter had met in Paris. In that same year, Carter wrote the piano score of a ballet for the company, called Pocahontas, which premiered in 1939. In June of 1940 the New York Times announced that an orchestral suite drawn from the ballet had won “the Julliard School’s annual competition for the publication of orchestral works by American composers.” This prestigious award finally launched Carter’s career as a composer at the age of 31 (Wierzbicki 2011, 27). Shortly before the premiere of Pocahontas, on July 6, 1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones, a sculptor and art critic, whom he met through his friend Nicolas Nabokov. With the possibility of a family now on the horizon, Carter redoubled his efforts to find employment. At Aaron Copland’s suggestion, he applied in the spring of 1940 for a teaching position at Cornell University. Cornell was actively considering him, but the school was not in a hurry to hire. Carter, on the other hand, wanted a position for the fall. So instead he accepted an offer to teach music, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and Greek at St. John’s College in Annapolis (Wierzbicki 2011, 28). The offer from St. John’s was also due to Carter’s friend Nicolas Nabokov, who recommended Carter after himself turning down the offer of a position for 1940-1941. In a letter to Stringfellow Barr dated June 22, 1940, Nabokov ex- �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW plained, first, that he could not accept the position for that year because his wife was expecting a child and, since they lived in Massachusetts, it would be too inconvenient to move or to commute between the arduous new job and his family; second, that the compensation offered at St. John’s College was not adequate for him to take care of his new family; and third, that he could not in good conscience leave Wells so soon before the beginning of the fall term. In declining the position, Nabokov recommended a substitute: “Mr. Elliott Carter of whom I spoke to you the other day and more extensively to Mr. Buchanan would in my opinion fit perfectly into the St. John’s place of education. . . . Mr. Carter as you will see from his curriculum vitae and the enclosed articles is a very thorough, serious and reliable man and I recommend him to you very highly. . . . [H]e is very anxious to undertake the job.” He suggested that Carter could substitute for him for during the coming school year, and then Nabokov himself would come to St. John’s the following year. Nabokov did indeed arrive at St. John’s the following fall to take over the teaching of music; but Carter did not leave. Instead he spent a second year at St. John’s teaching Greek, mathematics, and seminar (Nabokov 1940). Carter’s decision to accept the position at St. John’s could not have been easy to make. He was just beginning his career as a composer, trying to develop a distinctive creative voice in challenging financial circumstances, which were made even more challenging by his recent marriage. This was certainly a turbulent time in his life. He was to join the St. John’s community at a turbulent time in its own history. The college had recently launched an educational experiment unprecedented in American higher education, the success of which was far from certain. The prospect of teaching at the third oldest college in the nation �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 105 (the direct predecessor of St. John’s, King William’s School, was founded in 1696, after Harvard in 1636 and William and Mary in 1693) might have seemed a more stable position than anything the young composer could find in New York, but he would soon discover a great deal of unstable dissonance in the community he was to join. St. John’s College in 1940: Turbulence In 1937, St. John’s College found itself at a crossroads. In addition to a severe financial crisis, the physical plant was in deep disrepair. A weak Board of Governors and Visitors had appointed three new Presidents within nine years in an attempt to find someone who could remedy the situation. All three had failed, however, and the College had lost its accreditation status with the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Demoralized faculty members were leaving. (See Murphy 1996 and Rule 2009 for the facts in this section.) The stronger members of the Board decided to take drastic action. They named Robert Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, who had long been involved in attempts to revive the liberal arts, to chair the Board. The Board also hired two colleagues of Hutchins’ from the Committee on Liberal Arts at Chicago as President and Dean, Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan. Their charge was to effect a complete transformation from a traditional college curriculum to a radically “old” Great Books curriculum. There would no longer be the traditional options leading to specialized degrees; the faculty would no longer teach only in their areas of expertise, but in all areas of the curriculum; the college would no longer participate in intercollegiate sports; there would no longer be fraternities on campus. Instead, the completely renovated curriculum, known as �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the “New Program,” consisted of two seminars (discussion groups) per week on one of the books on the prescribed reading list, five tutorials (small classes) per week in mathematics, five language tutorials per week, at least one three-hour laboratory period per week, and at least one formal lecture per week. (Barr 1941, 44.) In order to effect the change, the New Program was phased in over a four-year period. Students entering in the fall of 1937 were allowed to choose which curriculum they would pursue. Thereafter, all incoming freshmen entered the New Program. Carter arrived in the 1940-1941 school year, the last year of the unsettled transitional period, at the end of which the last graduates under the old curriculum were awarded their degrees alongside the first graduates under the New Program. By Carter’s second year, 1941-1942, the New Program had completely replaced the old curriculum. Clearly, the board was taking a risk by instituting such an innovative and untried curriculum, and the risk paid off slowly. On 1937 there were twenty freshmen who entered in the New Program; in 1938, forty-six; in 1939, fifty-four; and in 1940, when Carter arrived, there were ninety-three. The total number of students held steady at around 170 during the first four years, so the transition seemed relatively painless from the enrollment point of view. But the exodus of faculty members continued, since quite a few were not prepared to give up their specialties to become co-learners along with their students in an environment of cooperative learning in all the liberal arts. In his quarterly report to the board of April 1939, Stringfellow Barr described the sort of student and the sort of tutor that would thrive in the New Program. The students would have to be able to think clearly and imaginatively, read the most diverse sorts of material with understanding and de- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 107 light, distinguish sharply between what he knows and what is mere opinion, have an affinity for first-rate authors and an aversion to second-rate authors, derive great pleasure from exercising his intellect on difficult problems, and desire to be a thoughtful generalist rather than a highly proficient specialist. The tutors, on the other hand, would have to transcend divergent intellectual backgrounds, be clear expositors, imaginative artists, and cooperative fellow seekers, know how to teach and learn through discussion, and, above all, be intellectual treasure-hunters. For unquestionably, the treasures our authors had written were for our generation partially buried. We needed men who wanted to help our students dig them up. The best that we could do, the best indeed that could be done, was to call for volunteers, volunteers for the treasure hunt, remembering for our comfort that this treasure hunt has never wholly ceased during the intellectual history of our Western civilization (Nelson 1997, 52-59). When Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan recruited Elliott Carter they were looking for a “treasure hunter.” They found in him a kindred spirit who transcended intellectual narrowness, thought clearly, and was an imaginative artist. Their relationship continued long after all of them had left St. John’s. Years later, in 1962, when Barr was invited to nominate Elliott Carter for an honorary degree at Rutgers University, Carter replied from Rome in a letter that testifies to their enduring friendship. (Barr was affectionately called “Winkie” by his close friends. Carter, 1962.) Dec. 18, 1962 Dear Winkie — I am sorry to say that I will not be back in New York �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW until July — I do thank you very much for thinking of me in connection with the honorary degree from Rutgers but again I must beg off — to my sorrow — because as usual my work seems to have taken over and dictated the plan of my life for me — and I must stay here until I finish my Concerto — Merry Xmas and Fig. 1: Letter to Scott Buchanan Happy New Year to you (St. John’s College Library Archive, and Tak [?] — And thanks Barr Personal Papers, Series 2, Box 10, folder 20) for the suggestion Sorry not to be able to accept it — Affectionately, Elliott 1940-1941: Tutor and Director of Music In the college catalogue of 1940-41, Carter was listed as Tutor and Director of Music (St. John’s College Catalogue 1940-41). His responsibilities included supervision of the entire music program. According to the college newspaper, The Collegian, which ran a long article in October about the upcoming year’s music program, Carter would plan and schedule a series of six concerts by visiting artists; he would give a lecture the week before each concert to discuss the works on the program; he would organize and direct student instrumental ensembles to appear in recitals and accompany the Glee Club; he would conduct the Glee Club, which was to rehearse three times per week and give numerous recitals during the year; he would lead a music discussion group on Saturday mornings for interested students; he would lead a counterpoint, harmony, and composition class for interested �109 ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS students; he would supervise concerts of recorded music four times per week; he would prepare the music room in the late afternoon each day for students to listen to recorded music (The Collegian, Oct. 19, 1940). Carter seems to have taken to these duties enthusiastically, if the pictures in the 1941 St. John’s College Yearbook give any indication. In the faculty section of the yearbook there is a picture of Carter working assiduously at his desk, and in the Glee Club section there is a photo of him directing the singers with deliberation. The yearbook also provides a positive evaluation of Carter’s work with the Glee Club over the year: The aims of the Club are primarily to foster competent group singing (not necessary concert competency), to gain a better understanding of choral music, and . . . to let the ear hear what the voice does. To date the criticisms received from the two mid-winter recitals give encouragement to the feeling that the Glee Club is headed in the right direction. Studies, scholarship work, and talents turned toward other interests have naturally taken their toll of the initial roster, but there still remains a group large enough to work with the music under consideration. The members are from the three lower classes, which means that their return next fall will leave only the task of inducting freshmen and learning new songs; this is Fig. 2: Carter’s four-part setting indeed a strong incentive of “St. John’s Forever” �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW for the club’s continuation and success (St. John’s College Yearbook, 1941, 30). And the work Carter did with the music program was indeed quite varied. For instance, on Saturday, December 20, 1940, the Glee Club performed, at the request of Scott Buchanan, on the St. John’s College monthly radio broadcast from WFBR in Baltimore. On that occasion they sang “St. John’s Forever,” arranged especially by Carter for the broadcast. (A copy of this arrangement can be found in the St. John’s College Music Library.) They also sang at “Miss Alexander’s Christmas Party” on December 18. And Carter assisted in making the musical arrangements for the end-ofterm variety show That’s Your Problem, which showcased the vaudeville talents of both students and tutors (The Collegian, Nov. 13 and Dec. 13, 1940). When the first performance of the year’s concert series was announced, The Collegian took the opportunity to explain the purpose of the lectures that Carter would give in preparation for each concert: While Mr. Carter plans to discuss primarily the program for each concert, the entire lecture series will form a course in music appreciation. As Mr. Carter is himself a talented musician, the course affords a unique opportunity in musical education (The Collegian, Nov. 1, 1940). The Collegian also reviewed each concert, and while the performances were sometimes panned, sometimes praised, there was no criticism of Carter’s work in organizing the series and lecturing on the pieces performed. Things went less swimmingly with some of Carter’s other duties. The counterpoint, harmony, and composition class that had been announced in October was “on the verge of collapse” at the start of the second term because of waning at- �111 ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS tendance. The Saturday morning music discussion class was considered to be “somewhat irregular”; nevertheless, in January the group had just finished an analysis of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and was starting to study Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (The Collegian, Jan. 31, 1941). In February it was announced that, “at the request of a small group of students,” Carter would be offering a new class in eartraining and sight-singing on Saturday mornings (The Collegian, Feb. 14, 1941). Taking into account the addition of this new class, Carter’s teaching schedule for his first year at St. John’s looked like this: Elliott Carter’s Teaching Schedule, 1940-41 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday 4-6 Sunday Music discussion and ear training 10-12 2-3 Saturday Counterpoint Music Music Room Room Music Room Music Room Counterpoint Music Music Room Room Recorded Glee Music Club Recorded Music Glee Club Glee Club 6-7 7-8 Recorded Music In addition to his teaching hours, it seems that Carter was responsible for writing several manuals relating to musical studies during the fall 1940 term. Not surprisingly, he authored a “Manual of Musical Notation” explaining how to read and write music, which was no doubt intended for the use of students in his various music classes. But his name is also attached to several manuals of musical studies that were part of the Freshman Laboratory curriculum: “Musical Intervals and Scales,” “The Greek Diatonic Scale,” and “The Just Scale and Its Uses” (Schiff 1983, 336). Another manual exists �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW for a fourth laboratory unit called “The Keys in Music,” which, though unsigned, must also have been devised by Carter, because the musical examples are written in his distinctive musical script. (All the documents mentioned in this paragraph can be found in the St. John’s College Library Archives.) All these manuals demonstrate Carter’s understanding of the integration of music with the rest of the curriculum of the New Program. The “Manual of Music Notation,” for instance, likens music to language, and musical notation to linguistic writing systems. Musical notation is the method used to represent graphically the patterns of sound which are the basis of music. Like the writing which represents the language of words, it serves man to overcome his lapses of memory by maintaining a more permanent record and aids him in the transmission to other men of the work of his mind as well in art as in thought. The simplest kind of notation of music sounds indicates in a general way the prolongation or shortening of the vowels of words and also the rise and fall of the voice while it is sounding them (Carter 1941, 1.) The comparison between music and language was a favorite notion of Scott Buchanan’s, and Carter seems to have agreed with him. It is likely that the two discussed the matter before Carter wrote this manual. There is a record from this period of Buchanan’s thoughts on music—a three-page outline of the topic “Music” dated November 8, 1940 that shows clear parallels to Carter’s formulation. The first page of the outline contains these notes (Buchanan 1940, 1): Voice—noise Words 3 Dimensions of Words Pitch �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 113 Time Accent-Rhythm Other Dimensions Expression Music Without Words Measurement and Words Verbal Analogies Figures of Speech Metaphor Simile Analogy Allegory It appears that the two men were in agreement that music is one of the writing and reading disciplines in the liberal arts tradition, and that this view needed to be expressed somehow in the New Program. If Carter’s music-notation manual links the study of music to the study of language, his laboratory manuals even more clearly link it to the study of mathematics and physics. In 1939-1940, the year before Carter’s revision of the music element in the laboratory program, there was only one music laboratory exercise during the entire year, and the text of the manual for that exercise was a mere five pages that described the design of a simple, two-string sonometer (sounding board), gave instructions for duplicating Pythagoras’ experiments on musical ratios, provided directions for creating various musical scales, and posing questions to be answered in laboratory reports. Carter’s four laboratory units brought the total number of manual pages devoted to musical topics up to sixty-eight, and the experiments he devised demonstrate a wide-ranging knowledge of early music theory and mathematics. The lessons covered Pythagoras’ experiments, Euclid’s division of the canon, the music of Plato’s Timaeus, �114 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and Kepler’s notions of the musical relations among the planets; he had the students create eight- and thirteen-string sonometers to explore the discovery and historical development of musical intervals, modes, scales, melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions from the most ancient tunings through the experimental temperaments of the Baroque and early Classical period to modern equal temperament. (The sonometer in the accompanying photo is located in the St. John’s College Music Library.) Moreover, these lessons were coordinated with the readings that students were doing in matheFig. 3: Carter’s Sonometer matics tutorial and seminar. According to the teaching schedule, the Freshman music laboratories would have occurred during the fifteenth through the eighteenth weeks of the school year, that is, probably in December and January. These units therefore would have followed previous laboratory studies of physical phenomena dealing with rectilineal angles, areas, weights and measures, light, lenses, and circular motion, and mathematical studies of polygons, simple ratios, compound ratios, and simple quadratic equations. Virgil Blackwell, Carter’s personal assistant, calls the two years at St. John’s the “lost years,” because they have not been much discussed by Carter’s biographers. He also told me that Carter had a good laugh when he saw the image of the sonometer I had sent via email (personal communication, Nov. 6, 2011); he remembered that “the students made the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 115 sonometer” (personal communication, Nov. 8, 2011). These remarks indicate that Carter approached the teaching of the music laboratories in the participatory, exploratory, experimental spirit of the New Program. He and his students would investigate the most complex concepts of tuning by means of the sonometers they built with their own hands, by applying bridges, weights, rulers, wires, nails, rubber mallets, bows, and resin to manipulate string lengths in an effort to discover the mathematical underpinnings of the auditory phenomena. While Carter thus set the foundations for the mathematical study of music at St. John’s, his initial designs began to be modified in the very next school year. Since the program of study at the college has always been under continuous revision, the music labs too went through changes over the years, until Carter’s original contributions were all but forgotten. His four laboratory exercises lay neglected in the library archives, together with the drawings of the eight- and thirteen-stringed sonometers. The seventy-year old sonometer, discovered some years ago in a basement storage room, was tucked away as a curious relic in a corner of the music library, its purpose and origin unknown. 1941-1942: Tutor of Greek, Mathematics, and Seminar In the 1941-42 school year, Carter’s friend Nicholas Nabokov arrived at St. John’s to take over the duties of Director of Music. Nabokov expanded the music program considerably. While the Glee Club continued, he added two new vocal groups: a chamber choir and something called the “Vespers” group. He also started a chamber ensemble and a community orchestra. Since Carter had relinquished his responsibilities to Nabokov, he then took on the regular teaching schedule of a tutor at the College. Initially it was difficult to determine ex- �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 116 actly what he taught during his second year. After seventy years, the original records of teaching schedules and tutor assignments had been lost. But the current Assistant Registrar at St. John’s, Jacqueline Thoms, recently discovered some ledgers detailing all the classes attended by each Senior in the graduating class of 1945 during their four-your career, together with the names of their tutors. By compiling the classes that these students attended during their Freshman year, it was possible to identify the classes Carter taught during the 1941-42 school year, and the number of students in each of his classes (Ledger 1941-42). This research confirms the facts that were already known about Carter’s teaching that year. He taught Freshman Greek, Freshman Mathematics, and his four Freshman Laboratory units when they came up in December or January. In addition, he coled a Freshman Seminar with fellow tutor Bernard Peebles. Elliott Carter’s teaching schedule 1941-42 Monday 9-10 Greek Tutorial 9 students Tuesday Greek Tutorial 9 students Wednesday Greek Tutorial 9 students Thursday Greek Tutorial 9 students Friday Greek Tutorial 9 students 10-11 11-12 Mathematics Mathematics Mathematics Tutorial Tutorial Tutorial 9 students 9 students 9 students Mathematics Mathematics Tutorial Tutorial 9 students 9 students 12-2 Laboratory Freshman Exercises 15-18 2-5 5-8 8-10 Seminar with Peebles 18 students Seminar with Peebles 18 students Although Carter’s responsibilities as Director of Music were no doubt heavy, his responsibilities as a tutor were even heavier. In addition to facilitating discussion in his Greek and �117 ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS Mathematics tutorials, he also had to set up, prepare, and lead the laboratory exercises for the students. All these classes also required him to read and respond to short papers and reports, and to devise and correct occasional quizzes. In his Seminar he had to complete the extensive required readings from the Great Books, moderate the two-hour long seminar discussions twice a week, read longer papers, and conduct oral examinations. In addition, he also would have spent considerable time advising students individually on their classwork, and helping them to write, revise, and complete the required essays. One can get an idea of the sheer amount of reading Carter had to do for seminar alone from the schedule of readings from the 1940-41 school year, which would not have changed much during the following year: September 26 September 30 October 3 October 7 October 10 October 14 October 17 October 21 October 24 October 28 October 31 November 4 November 7 Homer, Iliad, 1 November 11 Aeschylus, Choephoroe, Eumenides Homer, Iliad, 2-4 November 14 Plato, Charmides, Lysis Homer, Iliad, 5-10 November 18 Plato, Symposium Homer, Iliad, 11-16 November 21 Herodotus, History, 1-2 Homer, Iliad, 17-24 November 25 Herodotus, History, 3-5 Plato, Ion, Laches November 28 Herodotus, History, 6-7 Homer, Odyssey, 1-8 December 2 Herodotus, History, 8-9 Homer, Odyssey, 9-16 December 5 Plato, Gorgias Homer, Odyssey, 17-24 December 9 Plato, Republic, 1-2 Plato, Meno December 12 Plato, Republic 3-5 Plato, 3 works December 16 Plato, Republic, 6-7 Plato, Phaedo December 19 Plato, Republic, 8-10 Aeschylus, Agamemnon Christmas Vacation January 6 January 9 January 13 January 16 January 20 January 23 January 27 January 30 February 3 February 6 February 10 Plato, Cratylus Plato, Phaedrus Sophocles, 2 works Aristotle, Poetics Sophocles, 2 works Euripides, 3 works Plato, Parmenides Plato, Theatetus Plato, Sophist Hippocrates, 4 works Hippocrates, 5 works February 13 February 13 February 20 February 27 March 3 March 6 March 10 March 13 March 17 March 20 Plato, Philebus Plato, Timaeus Aristotle, Categories Aristotle, Prior Analytics Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Thucydides, History, 1-2 Thucydides, History, 3-4 Thucydides, History, 5-6 �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 118 Spring Vacation March 31 April 3 April 7 April 10 April 14 April 17 April 21 April 24 April 28 Thucydides, History, 7-8 Aristophanes, 3 works Aristophanes, 3 works Aristotle, Politics, 1-4 Aristotle, Politics, 5-8 Plutarch, 5 works Plutarch, 3 works Nicomachus, Arithmetic 1 Nicomachus, Arithmetic, 2 May 1 May 5 May 8 May 12 May 15 May 19 May 23 May 26 May 29 Lucretius, On the Nature of Things Lucretius, On the Nature of Things Euclid, Elements, Bks. 5, 10, 13 Aristarchus, Sun and Moon Aristotle, Physics, 1 Aristotle, Physics, 2-3 Aristotle, Physics, 4 Archimedes, Works (unspecified) Lucian, True History (Barr Buchanan Series III, Curriculum in Motion, December 1940, Box 2, Folder 25, St. John’s College Library Archives) As we have seen, Carter’s remarkable education prepared him well for his duties as a tutor at St. John’s. Nevertheless, the new experience of teaching Freshmen, the pace of the curriculum, and the many hours spent meeting individually with students must have kept him extraordinarily busy. 1940-1942: Elliott Carter, Composer According to Virgil Blackwell, Carter says that his choral work In Defense of Corinth was written during his time at St. John’s College, and that he began working on the sketches for his Symphony No. 1 immediately after leaving the college, when he and his wife moved west to Arizona and New Mexico. Both works relate to our consideration of Carter’s career at St. John’s. In Defense of Corinth for speaker, men’s chorus and piano four hands, was commissioned by the Harvard Glee Club and performed by them on March 12, 1942, with G. Wallace Woodworth conducting (Schiff, 329). The work has many similarities to Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. It is based on a passage from “The Author’s Prologue” to Book Three of Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (14951553). The text could be construed as a satirical commentary on militarism and a mockery of war-hysteria. Carter’s work �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 119 was composed close to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The satirical attitude toward war displayed in the piece did not, however, carry over into Carter’s personal life: he attempted to enlist in military service as soon as the United States entered hostilities, as did many of his St. John’s students over the next few years. Because he had terrible allergies, however, he was rejected for active duty on health grounds. Eventually, from late 1943 until June 6, 1944 he worked as a musical advisor for the U. S. Office of War Information (Wierzbicki 2011, 29). Whatever his personal political feelings, Carter’s In Defense of Corinth is a musical metaphor for his situation as composer in a world made mad by war. The work is divided into three distinct sections. In the first section, a speaker and male chorus use the spoken narration, speech-song, and full singing of a speaker and male chorus join with a four-hand piano accompaniment to build up musical textures in imitation of the building up of the Corinthian war effort against Philip of Macedon: Everyone did watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket. Some polished corslets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the headpieces, mail-coats, brigandines, salads, helmets, morions, jacks, gushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars and cuissars, corslets, haubergeons, shields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs. Others made ready bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or fireballs, birebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such warlike engine expugnatory and destructive Hellepolides. They sharpened and prepared spears, staves, pikes, brown bills, hailberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes, quarterstaves, eesleares, partisans, troutstaves, clubs, battle-axes, maces, darts, dartlets, glaives, javelins, javelots, and truncheons. They set edges upon scimitars, cutlasses, badelairs, backwords, tucks, rapiers, bayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers, mandou- �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sians, poniards, whinyards, knives, skeans, shables, chipping knives, and raillons. . . . Every man exercised his weapon. (Rabelais 2004, 265.) Accompanying this relentless concatenation of weaponry, the musical elements continue to pile up, steadily getting louder, sharper, more percussive; the voices progress to confused speaking and shouting, reaching a climax in pure noise. Fig. 4: In Defense of Corinth holograph score (Library of Congress, ML96.C288 [Case]) The brief second section is a quieter setting in which the main character, Diogenes, seeing everyone around him so hard at work making war while he is not employed by the city in any way, contemplates what he should do. Surely this must reflect Carter’s state of mind at the time: unable to join the war effort because of his allergies, he finds himself surrounded by young men, including his students, preparing for �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 121 and leaving for war. Like Diogenes, he must have been contemplating his situation, and what he should do next. In the third section Diogenes, in a moment of sudden awakening, is roused and inspired by the war effort going on all around him. He leaves town, goes toward a little hill near Corinth called Cranie, and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter him from the injuries of the weather: there, I say, in a great vehemecy of spirit, did he turn it, veer it, wheel it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it, huddle it, tumble it, hurry it, jolt it, justle it, overthrow it, evert it, invert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, batter it, knock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it, shake it, toss it, throw it, overthrow it, upside down, topsy-turvy, arsiturvy, tread it, trample it, stamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it, resound it, stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it. . . . And then again in a mighty bustle, he . . . slid it down the hill, and precipitated it from the very height of Cranie; then from the foot to the top (like another Sisyphus with his stone) bore it up again, and every way so banged it and belabored it that it was ten thousand to one he had not struck the bottom of it out. (Ibid.) This text is set with hocket imitation and short fugue-like segments, piling the words on top of one another, so that the result is quite similar to the raucous first section. And also like the first section, it undergoes a steady crescendo until it reaches a thundering climax. At this point, the final section begins. The narrator speaks the last few lines quietly: When one of his friends had seen, and asked him why he did so toil his body, perplex his spirit, and torment his tub, the philosopher’s answer was that, not being employed in any other charge by the Republic, he thought it expedient to thunder and storm it so tempes- �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tuously upon his tub, that amongst a people so fervently busy and earnest at work he alone might not seem a loitering slug and lazy fellow. (Ibid.) It is not too far-fetched to imagine that Carter may have seen himself in the role of Diogenes, and that composing this wild, raucous piece was Carter’s way “tormenting his tub” in order to avoid being seen as doing nothing while everyone around him was consumed by the war effort. There is certainly no doubt that the atmosphere on campus after the declaration of war resembled the situation in Rabelais’ Corinth. The preparations for the war were both pervasive and intrusive. There were military exercises on campus, information poured in about military employment opportunities, new classes appeared on the mechanics of gasoline engines and the electronics of radio devices (The Collegian, various issues from 1942). Periodic lectures about the causes and progress and status of the war were offered, and a rash of military enlistment by the students so depleted enrollment that by the war’s end there war great concern that the St. John’s might have to close its doors. In Defense of Corinth certainly reflected the conditions that surrounded Carter while he composed the work, and no doubt reflected his inner state as well. Carter’s second major work of 1942 is his Symphony No. 1, which he completed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about six months after leaving St. John’s. In the sketches for this work, which are housed at the Library of Congress along with holograph score and the revised score from 1954 (Carter 1942), it seems that Carter is again playing the role of Diogenes tormenting his tub; this time, however, the tub is the Symphony. The 184 pages of sketches show beating, battering, slicing, compressing, enlarging, twisting, and transforming of apparently innumerable musical ideas from all three movements in the finished piece. There is an explosive vitality combined �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 123 Fig. 5: Sketches for Symphony No. 1 (Library of Congress ML96.C288 [Case]) with a restless energy in the musical handwriting, which seems almost thrown onto the pages in instants of creative inspiration. What is more, this material is not limited to musical notations. The sketches fall into ten categories: 1. Fragments of one to many lines, some crossed out; 2. single-line drafts worked out and developed; 3. two-part piano reductions of sections in progress, for playing at the piano; 4. fair copies of two-part part piano reductions, including one of the entire first movement, 5. reductions of three to five parts, for working out complex ideas; 6. larger orchestral reductions with instrumentation noted; 7. full-score drafts with instrumentation noted; 8. verbal notes, such as “add a few dotted rhythms” or “avoid too many accents on the first beat”; 9. letter designations for the various motives and themes, such as “A,” “B,” “C,” and so forth; 10. verbal notes on the se- �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW quential organization of musical elements within a section. Out of all these disparate elements, Carter fashioned an elegant, hand-copied full score of 149 pages on December 19, 1942. In this pre-xerox, pre-computer era, it must have taken a considerable amount of time just to write out such a meticulous manuscript. And if one adds to that the amount of time that was clearly devoted to beating the tub while inventing, revising, discarding, reworking, drafting, and redrafting the thousands of sketches, it seems plausible to think that Carter began working on the symphony while still at St. John’s. Blackwell, however, indicated that Carter was “adamant” about the fact that he began working on the piece only after leaving St. John’s. If that is correct, then the explosive creative energy displayed in the sketches suggests that his compositional urge had been suppressed by his intellectual and instructional responsibilities at St. John’s, so that once those responsibilities were lifted, his musical imagination was able to generate ideas profusely. The Symphony No. 1 is a Janus-faced work, looking backward toward the influence of slightly older contemporaries like Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copland, but also forward toward traits that would become characteristic of Carter’s style—cross-accents and irregular groupings of rhythms, interplay of tonal centers, fluidity in the shaping of musical motives, a transformational approach to motivic development, evocative orchestral coloring (particularly in the use of woodwinds), and simultaneous balancing of dissimilar ideas (Schiff 1983, 117-121). The Symphony already shows the continuous ebb and flow from sparseness to complexity, from delicacy to brutality, from quietness to cacophony, from simple textures to convoluted contrapuntal intricacy that would appear fully developed in his masterpiece, the Concerto for Orchestra of 1969. One can see in the sketches and �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 125 hear in the music that 1942 was a time of compositional turbulence for Carter. He must have been bursting with competing ideas from old and new sources, all pushing him toward discovering his unique artistic voice. Whatever attractions the undeniably novel environment of St. John’s held for him as a curious, intelligent, inquisitive, and liberally educated thinker, he must have felt that, in his heart, he was essentially meant to be a composer. What else could he do but leave, so that the potential composer within him could become actual? Epilogue: Elliott Carter, Composer and Liberal Artist In the years just after leaving to pursue his composing career, Carter wrote two essays that relate to his tenure as a tutor at St. John’s. The first, “Music as a Liberal Art” (Carter 1944), which was written only two years after he left the college, discusses the decline of music as a liberal art in America. Citing the fundamental importance of musical training in Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s Politics and Poetics, Carter laments the fact that music has become a specialized and technical discipline, divorced from the connection it once had to the other liberal arts. At St. John’s, however, he says, “music has actually been taken out of the music building. It is no longer the special study of the specialist, of the budding professional. Instead it is examined in the classroom, seminars, and laboratories, in an effort to give it a working relationship with all other knowledge” (Carter 1944, 105). After describing in greater detail the relations between music, mathematics, philosophy, and physics in the St. John’s curriculum, Carter maintains that [w]hen the student sees the interconnection of all these things, his understanding grows in richness. And since today no widely acepted esthetic doctrine unifies out though on the various aspects of music, such a plan at least conjures up the past to assist us; it helps to raise �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the various philosophical questions involved. In one way or another these questions must be considered, for it is not enough to devote all our efforts to acquiring the technical skill essential to instrumentalists, composers, and even listeners. There must be good thinking and good talking about music to preserve its noble rank as a fine art for all of us, and the college is one of the logical places for this more considered attitude to be cultivated. (Carter 1944, 106). As we have seen, Carter’s view of music education was deeply attuned to the experimental approach being taken at St. John’s. This alignment must have made his teaching in the New Program a meaningful and rewarding experience for him, and this article is evidence of how highly he regarded the method of musical studies at St. John’s. The second article, “The Function of the Composer in Teaching the General College Student” (Carter 1952), reveals a second aspect of Carter’s understanding of music as a liberal art. While it is certainly true that reconnecting music to the other liberal arts provides students with a more profound understanding of music than specialized musical instruction, it is also true that connecting the other liberal arts to music provides students with a more profound understanding of their own inner life than specialized instruction in any discipline. In this article, Carter discusses the difference between the “outer-directed” man, whose primary focus is on adapting his inner life to the demands of society, and the “inner-directed” man, who primary focus in on adapting the demands of society to his individual conscience and imagination. Both the teaching scholar and the teaching artist, according to Carter, are trying to “preserve that liveliness of the individual mind so important to our civilization” (Carter 1952, 151). But they go about it in different ways. On the one hand, the teaching scholar of the general �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 127 music student aims for the “all-embracing, the dispassionate view of his subject” and “tries to find a harmonious and rationally explicable pattern in the past and present.” By contrast, the teaching artist is “only occupied with those aspects of music most important to him as an individual”; his goal as an artist is to create unique artworks that can move his audience and possibly shift societal demands. In short, he teacher treats music objectively, the artist, subjectively. This basic difference in attitude toward the subject gives rise to a difference in emphasis that marks the gulf between teaching scholar and teaching artist: the scholar highlights the “pastness of the past,” and communicates to students the impassive historicity of the subject matter, whereas the artist highlights the “presentness of the past,” and communicates to students the pliability of the past as material for the reshaping powers of the creative individual. Carter admonishes higher education for its preference for teaching scholars, who give students “scraps of information” about the past; he praises the teaching artist for “constantly trying to find a more powerful method of making his students more culturally alive,” by reshaping the past into a living and vital present (Carter, 1952, 153-154). At present, Carter emphasizes, we have got to help our students to realize that to enjoy the arts creatively and imaginatively will be far more rewarding to them as individuals in terms of stimulating vividness of thought and feeling, quickness of understanding, and ingeniousness in dealing with new problems—far more rewarding than the mere passive enjoyment which most mass-produced entertainment invites (Carter 1952, 155). The contemporary serious composer must be able to engage students in the “presentness of the past,” must be able to absorb the musical past, sublimate its essence, and recast it into new shapes that speaks movingly to the present while at the �128 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW same time embodying what was most enduring in the music of the past. At this point in the article, Carter once again describes the music program at St. John’s. Because the college wanted to move away from the teaching scholar’s approach to music toward a teaching artist’s point of view, “they called in a composer on the hunch that he would grasp the idea more than other members of the musical profession, and a plan was worked out from which it was hoped that students of widely different musicality could make contact with art” (Carter 1952, 156). It was hoped that students might attain “esthetic awareness” by studying music under the guidance of a composer, who could help the students see beyond the “pastness of the past” to the “presentness of the past” by showing them music history and the masterworks of the great composers through the contemporary lens of his actively creative perspective. But the teaching artist is not limited to exhibiting his works to his students. On the one hand, by means of his compositions, the teaching artist “can give life to and express all those things which, at best, he can but poorly indicate with words.” On the other hand, “sometimes verbal teaching, that is, the articulation of the principles and ideas he strives to embody in his works, is a valuable part of his development as a composer; and in this case he can be a useful member of the academic world” (Carter 1952, 158). In this last circumstance, the artist can bring his students along into the internal aspect of his creative process, and possibly stimulate them to develop their own creative powers. In this essay, as in much of his music, Carter seems to be trying to hold together two complex and somewhat contradictory themes. It is simultaneously true not only that the composer is the best teacher when he is writing music and �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 129 indirectly teaching others, but also that his students, and the composer himself as well, also benefit from his talking about music and directly teaching others. The two truths conflict. The working composer must be somewhat solitary; he must spend time away from others pursuing his personal creative projects. The teaching composer must engage in communal life; he must bring “presentness to the past” by speaking with others about listening to, performing, and creating music. For the teaching artist, this counterpoint of competing activities can enrich and deepen his creative life. But no one can do both at the same time. For Carter, his two years at St. John’s as a teaching artist seem to have stimulated his already intense creative drive— so much so, that he found it necessary to stop teaching in order to focus on his art. Over the years, he has returned to the role of teaching artist often, giving innumerable workshops, coaching prospective composers in academic and nonacademic settings, lecturing and writing essays about music education for academic audiences. One could argue that it was Carter’s decision to join the faculty at St. John’s that provided the opportunity for him to become an extraordinary teaching artist, and that it was his decision to leave St. John’s that provided the opportunity for him to create the many enduring artworks through which he could reach an ever widening circle of students with his teaching. Without both coming and going from St. John’s, Elliott Carter could not have become Elliott Carter. BIBLIOGRAPHY Blackwell, Virgil. 2011. Personal email messages to and telephone conversations with the author in November. Buchanan, Scott. 1940. “Music,” three-part handwritten note dated November 8, at Harvard University Libraries, MS Am 1992, No. 1547. �130 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Carter, Elliott. 1941. “Manual of Music Notation.” St. John’s College Library Archives. ———. 1942. Sketches for Symphony No. 1, Library of Congress Performing Arts Manuscripts, ML96.C288 ———. 1950. The Defense of Corinth. Library of Congress Performing Arts Manuscripts, ML96.C288 ———. 1944. “Music as a Liberal Art,” Modern Music 22:1, 12-16. Reprinted in Else Stone and Kurt Stone, The Writings of Elliott Carter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 105-109. ———. 1952. “The Function of the Composer in Teaching the General College Student,” Bulletin of the Society for Music in the Liberal Arts College 3:1, Supplement 3. Reprinted in Else Stone and Kurt Stone, The Writings of Elliott Carter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 150-58. ———. 1962. Personal letter to Scott Buchanan. St. John’s College Library Archive, Barr Personal Papers, Series 2, Box 10, folder 20. The Collegian. (St. John’s College newspaper.) Various issues, 19401941, 1941-1942. Maryland State Archives, St. John’s College Special Collection, MSA 5698. Edwards, Allen. 1971. Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Ledger 1941-42. Large format class ledger. St. John’s College Registrar’s Office Archives. Murphy, Emily A. 1996. “A Complete and Generous Education”: 300 Years of Liberal Arts, St. John’s College, Annapolis. Annapolis, Maryland: St. John’s College Press. Nabokov, Nicholas. 1940. Letter to Stringfellow Barr, June 22, 1940. St. John’s College Registrar’s Office Archive. Nelson, Charles. 1997. Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work, 1897-1982. Annapolis, Maryland: St. John’s College Press. Rabelais, Francois. 2004. Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And Sayings Of Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing. Rule, William Scott. 2009. Seventy Years of Changing Great Books at St. John’s College. Educational Policy Studies Dissertations. Paper 37. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/eps_diss/37 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS 131 Schiff, David. 1983. The Music of Elliott Carter. New York: DaCapo Press. St. John’s College Catalogue 1940-41. St. John’s College Registrar’s Office Archives. St. John’s College Yearbook, 1940-1941, 1941-1942. St. John’s College Library Archives. Stone, Else and Kurt. 1977. The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wierzbicki, James Eugene. 2011. Elliott Carter. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. OTHER RESOURCES LOCATED AT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE In the St. John’s College Library Archives Photo of Elliott Carter at desk Musical programs from 1940-41 Carter’s Five Laboratory Manuals : “Musical Intervals and Scales” (Laboratory Exercise 15, 1940) “The Greek Diatonic Scale” (Laboratory Exercise 16, 1940) “The Just Scale and Its Uses” (Laboratory Exercise 17, 1940) “The Keys in Music” (Laboratory Exercise 18, 1940) “Manual of Musical Notation” (1 March, 1941) In the St. John’s College Music Library Carter’s sonometer Carter’s four-part setting of “St. John’s Forever” �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �REFLECTIONS 133 Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening Eva Brann I imagine that on Parents’ Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read—but read out loud, delivered in the writer’s voice. Thus, the sequence goes: I thought, I wrote, I read, I speak. Although this is the principal way of teaching at institutions of higher education, it is a curious one. Here at St. John’s, we show our respect for the possible profit we might derive from it by requiring our students to come to a lecture every Friday night—just when, elsewhere, it is prelude-time to party night. And we express our suspicion of lecture-hearing by asking students to listen to a lecture—but only once a week. So this one weekly hour of just sitting and listening is mandatory, and about as enforceable as a mandatory evacuation before a storm. (This simile appears here because this lecture was written in the dark during Hurricane Irene.) The attendance that we do take utterly seriously is presence in class—seminar above all. In seminar, no speeches are delivered. Instead we talk, in turn, to one another. So rather than call my lecture “Speaking, Writing, Reading, Listening,” I have substituted “Talking” for “Speaking.” Talk seems to denote a more conversational, almost social mode of speech, less formal, more spontaneous, more participatory. And yet our seminar is a mandatory, scheduled class, with prescribed texts. Is that a setting for talk? So I would like to think in public about our modes of being together, about the how and what of this college as a community of learning. Since we, the tutors, collude with our students in making them a little impatient with being talked at, I’ll sneak around that resistance, which I share. I’ll snaffle their good will (old books on rhetoric called this formal beginning of a speech the captatio benevolentiae, This lecture was delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis on the Friday of Parents’ Weekend, November 4, 2011. Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean of the College. �134 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “the capture of benevolence”) by speaking about talking itself and what it entails. Your children, our students, will probably have told you now and then that parents don’t know anything. Freshmen, on the other hand, know everything. They are fresh, unimpaired in spirit—and also, perhaps, somewhat fresh in a now obsolete meaning of the term: cheeky. Sophomores know a little less; their class name means “wise fools,” as their knowledge of Greek will tell them; it is a combination of Greek sophon, “wise” and moron, “foolish.” Juniors and the college elders, the seniors, have reapproached their parents and become almost perfect in ignorance. I am, in fact, being serious. The members of this community of learning are not ashamed to own up to their own ignorance; indeed we think better of this thoughtful confession than of a profession of expertise. It’s why the teachers here call themselves “tutors,” guardians of learning, rather than “professors,” authorities of knowledge, and it is why our students are to some degree our fellow-learners. Thus we are apt to think of even the most positive, content-replete learning as a specification of our ignorance. It’s a fancy way of saying that all our learning starts and ends in questions— a point to which I will return as we go along. So this acknowledged ignorance is not false humility, but a confident, even competent, way to conduct a college. Yet, of course, sub specie aeternitatis, “under the aspect of eternity,” as the philosophers say, we are, as limited beings, all equal—equally diminutive before the infinitely distant ultimacies we long for. This is cause enough for some personal modesty and even occasional dejection. I’ve been saying “we,” meaning the college of students and tutors. Now I’ll mean mainly the tutors when I say that, although there’s probably nothing we all agree must be true, there is something we all agree must be done. Some of us, perhaps even most, think that the Appearances before our senses bespeak a Being behind them; some of us suppose there is a Ground in which all nature is rooted; and some of us believe there is a realm of Divinity above us. Others see no reason to agree to any of these. But we all agree that, in regard to our ignorance about matters of most persistent importance to human beings, we are close to our students, and that we are therefore guardians of learning rather than transmitters of doctrine. �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 135 We have a model for this unteacherly mode of teaching, presented to us in the writings of Plato: Socrates. Not all of us, particularly freshmen, take to him. He describes himself now as a gadfly, stinging a sluggish horse into wakefulness, now as a demon mediating between earth and heaven (Apology 30e, Symposium 202d, ff.). So he is both irritating and elusive. One moment he argues like a sophist, that is to say, a trickster of the intellect; another moment he intimates his most genuine relation to truth. He is both bully and benefactor. So when he declares, often and insistently, that he is ignorant, we must suspect irony. “Irony,” eironeia, is the Greek word for dissembling, pretending to be what one is not. What then is this Socratic ignorance, which in some of us engenders trust precisely by causing dis-ease? We’ve all come across genuine inarticulate cluelessness, truly dumb ignorance—though I think it is fairly rare in human beings. Socratic ignorance, on the other hand, is anything but dumb; it talks, and that makes all the difference. For example, in the first philosophical work our students read together, Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates blames himself for knowing “nothing at all” about human excellence (71b). That is why he can genuinely ask: What is it? But look what this question involves. First of all it is an admission, actually an assertion, of self-knowledge. People who ask, know what they lack. They know what they don’t know. Acknowledged ignorance is important knowledge about ourselves. And second, it is a very precise negative knowledge of what we are asking after. The word “comprehend” comes to mind; it means “to get, to enclose, in one’s grasp.” Human thinking is wonderfully prehensile. It can get at, wrap itself around, something it does not yet really “get” in the sense of “understand.” In this dialogue, Meno is Socrates’ “interlocutor,” which is learned Latin for “conversational partner.” I use the term here because Meno—who, as we know from other sources, was as bad a man as you’ll never want to meet—can’t really be a partner, and certainly not a participant, in the sort of searching conversation Socrates cares about. In fact he tries to forestall such talk by producing a clever argument. He has the clever ignorance that defines human badness for Socrates. This obstructionist argument turns that very wonder of question-asking, which I’ve described as our ability to wrap our thought around what we haven’t yet got, into an obstacle: If you know something why would you ask about it? If �136 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW you’re ignorant of it, how would you recognize it if you did get it? Socrates has a reply that has resonated down through the ages; it bears on the essential character of talking, and I’ll come to it soon. Meanwhile, there’s a third aspect to questions, shown in their very asking. We ask ourselves in inner speech, but in the world, and in that little world, the seminar, we ask each other. This asking presupposes a sort of trust: the trust that we will be comprehended and met halfway by our fellow learners. For a question is a sort of appeal: “Share my perplexity; help me.” A fourth trait of asking is one that Socrates, who claims to know so little, claims to know for sure: To inquire, to seek by questions, to search for what one does not know—that makes us better, braver, less lazy than giving in to Meno’s clever sophism (86b-c). And finally a fifth feature, which sounds odd but is central. I know of only one subject in which Socrates claims outright to be an expert: He says of himself that he “knows nothing else than matters of love” (Symposium 177d). There are in the dialogues several examples of a wonderfully illuminating word-play: love, eros, and questioning, erotesis, sound very much alike (Symposium 199d, Phaedrus 234c); they are almost homonyms. The love in which Socrates is an expert is the longing for knowledge, the “love of wisdom” which is the English translation of the Greek word philosophia. But this longing, this pressure of desire is exactly what you might call the question-feeling. It transfigures apparently insoluble problems into beckoning mysteries, where by a mystery I mean an ultimate problem that attracts energizing reverence rather than dispirited resignation. Our students’ much misused word “awesome” applies here, for once. Thus genuine asking is the expression of a desire. For Socrates— and for all of us—such question-desire is always close to real human love. In fact Socratic love has a great penumbra of intermingling loves, among them the affectionate delight that elders feel for the young, the fond respect that colleagues—at their best—feel for one another, and, best of all, that lifelong care which develops between students who have spent many a night talking together. It’s a tutor’s delight to hear the selfless admiration in the voice of a student who tells of having found such a partner—admiration together with a very proper and surely life-long pride in having accomplished such a friendship. Here is half a line from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” which, in �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 137 Beethoven’s setting, our Freshman Chorus often sings: Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen Eines Freundes Freund zu sein. . . One who’s managed the great fortune To become a true friend’s friend . . . such a one is entitled to join in this ode to joy. Schiller has it just right: Friendship is an effortful accomplishment resting on great good luck. This school is its propitious setting: In the talk that is a questioning, friends are found. Aristotle, Plato’s true—that is to say resistant—pupil says brusquely: “[Socrates] asked, but didn’t answer, for he claimed not to know” (On Sophistic Refutations, 183b7). Now ironic Socrates is surely unsettling, but no-nonsense Aristotle is often more so. Does he mean it? If I take him at face value, then he is certainly wrong. Socrates does answer, probably always, though often not in explicit words. His questioning doesn’t lead to the levity of easy skepticism. He does often begin by “questioning.” Light-minded talk about higher education tends to fall into two camps. One camp thinks that this education happens when authorities pour expertise into mostly recalcitrant pupils. The other camp thinks this education occurs when academics incite all too willing students to “question,” that is to test, with the implicit intention of refuting, received wisdoms. Socrates often does begin by showing that people’s opinions are wrong-headed or incoherent, and, above all, not their own thought but some received doctrine confidently proclaimed to the world but negligently adopted within the soul. That is questioning in the somewhat hostile sense; it is “interrogation.” But it is only done in order to clear the decks for a second, more gracious question-asking, by which what ordinary people are really after is confirmed. Socrates is a horsefly to the lazy, to wake them up, but a winged love-god to those ready to be impassioned. I said Socrates gives answers. About present human life he proposes himself as a model that says to us, “Live to learn, and learn to leave life, to be dead” (Phaedo 61c ff.). What he means, I think, is this: Devote some of your time every day to reaching for what is behind, beneath, above the world we live in. Here many thoughtful peo- �138 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ple part company with him—and our students often do, understandably. About ultimate things he offers only working conjectures and hypotheses, which he leaves to his companions to take up. And indeed that is what happened; the thinking generations took him up. Alfred North Whitehead—it figures here that an emigrant to America is speaking to you—says that “the European philosophical tradition . . . consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Process and Reality, Ch.1, Sec.1)—and that means largely Socrates as Plato pictured him speaking. I am about to leap into that two and a half millennia-long footnote for help in thinking more precisely about our kind of talking. Each seminar starts with a question, asked by a tutor. Framing seminar questions is the one expertise a tutor might be said to develop. Such a question might well have much thought behind it, but it shouldn’t be an invitation to guess the tutor’s pet theory. It could be a wideopen admission of puzzlement, but it shouldn’t be mushily vague. It might take off from an inconspicuous but significant detail of the text but it shouldn’t run the conversation up the creek of a side issue. Why start with a question rather than, say, a tutorial interpretation? A question is, of course, the very embodiment of a teaching mode devoted to eliciting thought rather than delivering thought-products. The reason lies in the five features of question asking I’ve mentioned, the most pertinent of these being that questions solicit responses by evincing trust in the willingness and ability to respond in those addressed in the question mode. What then is responsive talk? Here I’ll go into the footnote mode. In the Middle Ages, certain thinkers developed the notion of “intentionality.” In fact it had come to Europe through the Arabic philosopher Avicenna (c. 1000 C.E.). Most good ideas have their comeback time, and intentionality has been brought back in modern times. It’s probably not wrong to say that its beginning is in Socrates’ passion for this question: What is it that is knowable in our ever-changing, illusion-rife world, and how is it that words can convey what things are? Intention is both a characteristic of thinking and a capability of speaking (where it is called “imposition”)—one that we can ascribe to nothing else in the world or out of it. Its meaning is the action of “stretching towards,” of reaching for something. Its descriptive name is “aboutness,” the action and the result of something laying itself �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 139 about, of “comprehending” something. Perhaps words show more of the stretching, reaching-toward motion, while thoughts are more like embracing, enclosing structures. Take an example of what intentional aboutness isn’t: a wrapped gift. The gift paper is distinguishable from the box of nougats—and so you can unwrap the candy—but it’s also of the same kind, material stuff. What you can’t do is put the gift-wrap about your affectionate wishes, as you can’t wrap your sentiments around the nougat—except poetically. Now think a thought. Let’s not be particular about its exact nature—whatever we mean when we say that we have something in mind—an object, a relation, an idea, an interpretation—any thoughtthing. Then ask yourself, Can I unwrap my thinking from the thought? When I say that I am thinking a thought, is my thinking separable from the thought? Or it is rather that thinking (that is, a form of the verb for which thought is the noun), is the same as the thought, so that when I think of something, intend it, attend to it, my mind becomes that thing? Do thinking and thought become one? If that’s what happens, then which element wins out—the mine-ness of my thinking or the object-ness of the content? Do I taint it with my prejudices, do I rectify it to my standards, or do I let it be what it is? When I think, it is often about a material object in a worldly environment. What aspect of things comes to or into my mind—a mental, quasi-visual image, some ideal essence, or just their use? In what way, as I attend to the world of objects, do they tend toward me? When my talk is for real— that is, when it is about something—how do I begin? How do I get my thoughts to collect themselves in words? Or does my acquired language in fact produce the mental state that feels like thinking, and by its very grammar give me the sense that there are mental objects? How are my words about objects? Do these offer labels that present themselves for me to read off insofar as I know the vocabulary of the world, or do my words tend out from me to the objects, throwing from my mind an ideal sort of lasso, a thinking-noose, that will cast itself about them and snaffle them in a mental shape suitable for my mind? This long litany touches the Socratic mysteries, which, I have said, he started on their way along with some conjectured elucidations. Not that, after all, it matters much who began. These questions, at least, are now ours. Questions about thinking and speaking must surely be central to �140 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the education of human beings, who, as even animal ethologists are willing to admit, are the only animal that can ask questions rather than solicit reactions. But my main point here was to establish one sure thing about talking—that it has the capacity of aboutness, which turns out to make a piece of life like the seminar possible to begin with. Now in the world at large there is much talk that has the aspect of serious, even sophisticated, meaning but that, like many a hard-tocrack nut, has no kernel. So too, in the seminar, there is twaddle— quite a lot of it. Twaddle has in fact a sort of squatter’s right in the seminar. Concern for spontaneity and respect for potential make us leery of suppressing it too soon. I can think of three kinds of seminar twaddle. Some among us are so eager to capture attention that they utter words before they have collected a thought. Others are so abashed by the insufficiency of their speaking that they go on for quite a while after they have finished; in the hope of amending their fault they make it worse. This happens to us all and is easily fixed. We just have to become aware of it, as we do of any minor habit. The third kind of twaddle goes much deeper. All worthwhile activities have their specific nullifications, and twaddle is the negation of intentional talk. It is the consequence of a curious negative ability that human beings have: the ability to fashion well-formed sentences that express none of their own thinking, but that sound comfortably explanatory. Here is an inevitable example from the first freshman seminar: Why is Achilles so unassuagably angry when Agamemnon takes his woman away? Student answer: Because he feels dishonored, and “in the culture of that time honor was important.” Tutor’s overt follow-up question: What do you know more about, the culture of the time of Homer’s epics (this time happen to be a fictional composite of times) or about Achilles? Tutor’s suppressed internal question: How did this most murky of notions—culture—come to seem like a handy explanatory principle to generations of students? Equally silent answer: Because Socrates’ notion of opinion is so right. We all share in the remarkable inclination to find satisfaction in surrendering our minds to enticing terms of thought without reaching for the intended thought itself. “Culture” is the most perfect cover-all, the universal wet-blanket for glimmers of penetrating thought. A somewhat impatient tutorial response to twaddle is thus, What �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 141 are you talking about? And generally, what are we talking about in seminar? Books. We prepare for seminar by reading assignments, and then we bring our readings to class. For my part, I don’t care how the readings are delivered. If students find graven stone tablets their medium of choice, let them bring those, or if e-books, let them bring those, provided they don’t get diverted and distracted by appended applications, and provided they can find their place. After all, one reason we center seminar on books is so that we may all be on the same page. Let me interrupt myself here for an observation. Our faculty recently had a long discussion about the question: Should e-books be permitted in seminar? We sensibly decided to leave it up to the tutors. In last year’s freshman seminar I was expecting an invasion of electronic tablets. Not a one of them appeared. Word was that upperclass members were discouraging them as not in our spirit. The world’s opinion is that the young thrive on novelty; the truth as I’ve experienced it is that, having found a place to cherish, they become its radical conservatives. I have much sympathy. The material book—be it of papyrus, parchment, paper—has, besides its sensory pleasures, one great advantage: it’s all there at once in real space. This is a handy representation of one important characteristic of a text: it’s an all-present whole; it exists simultaneously with itself. And now that I’ve used the word “text” let me explain this slightly pretentious term. I use it, first, because it is broader than “book,” which is usually composed of words. But we read, in a broad sense, also compositions of notes (musical scores) and books containing more diagrams and symbols than words (mathematical texts). Moreover, “text” reminds us of two etymologically related words: “textile,” a woven fabric, and Greek techne, “skill, craft.” Books are artfully crafted, carefully coherent artifacts. Well, not all books. The tutors of this college are pretty much at one in thinking themselves not so much entitled as obligated to discriminate between great books and lesser books. St. John’s College is, unpopular though that term may be with terminally egalitarian souls, a great books school. Let me say right away that the not-sogreat but good books, as well as the mediocre ones, and even the outright shoddy stuff—all these have their saving graces. The best policy is to read some of everything. (When I was a little girl I developed �142 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW for a while a passion for reading product labels, especially the fractured instructions written by people for whom English was a second language.) But together we read great books, because, to use a gross metaphor, these are the ones you can sink your teeth into, the ones that stick to your ribs. There are statable criteria for them, of which I’ll mention the ones most pertinent to the life of the seminar: Great books are usually self-sufficient, so that no background information or annotation is absolutely necessary to getting absorbed in the text; the best context for them is another great book—perhaps, but not necessarily, its chronological predecessor. Second, a great book, approachable as it is on one level the first time around, is inexhaustibly new, so that on opening it a fifth time you ask yourself, “Could I have read this before? Where was I, to miss so much?” Third, such books are endlessly artful—sometimes beautiful from shapely depth and something ugly with significant contrivance. And fourth, great truth-seeking texts of reflection are full of imagination and great imaginative works of fiction are full of reflection. The former present universals corroborated by particular instances, the latter represent particulars coruscating with universal application. Thus philosophy and fiction go hand in hand. Take, for example that famous first sentence of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What is it but an applied version of Aristotle’s dictum in the Nicomachean Ethics: “There are many ways of going wrong but only one way which is right” (1106b28)? So such texts are what seminar talk appears to be about. To prepare for seminar we all read the same book—students for the first, tutors for the umptieth time. Reading is, for us, a silent, solitary activity. I say “for us”; Augustine in his Confessions (c.400 C.E.) tells with amazement how his beloved bishop, Ambrose, read. As his eyes moved down the page, “his heart sought out the meaning but his tongue remained silent” (VI, 3). It was an inestimably great revolution, this inward relocation of the written word, which, among other things, made possible summary reading both divorced from and unconcerned about precise wording. We are the heirs of this revolution. This preparatory reading we do is a curious business, then. New �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 143 readers actually mouth the words; more mature ones read silently but subvocalize the text laryngeally; others let the writing glide directly into the mind. They get the thought, but see rather than hear the words. They register whole sentences through the eyes and turn language, the business of the tongue, into sight-seeing, the work of the eyes. However they do it, they now have in their minds and hearts the words and thoughts of someone else. Our texts, then, are writings, for the most part. And surprise, surprise! Books are written before they are read. How does writing come about? Here is how I do it myself and imagine it for others: Writing comes after talking, in two ways. First, in my own personal history I learned to speak way back, effortlessly, but to write later, with difficulty. I also know that in the larger history of human beings, writing, especially the kind that records the sound of speech, alphabetical writing, did not, in fact, come to Greece until the late eighth century B.C.E. (where in my early years as an archaeologist I had a chance to publish some of the earliest graffiti—that is, scratched letter-words). Second, before and as I write, I talk to myself, because speech is the concretion of thought; it collects its misty pressure into concise sentences and utters them in sensory shape. It’s often said that the primary purpose of speech is “communication.” The evidence seems to me otherwise. I imagine that most of us say to ourselves in the course of our day hundreds of words for every word we say to others. Speech certainly begins that way. Listen to what students of child development call “jargoning,” that sweetest, most melodious gibberish of late infancy, which issues from a lonely crib. Whether it is the antecedent of adult twaddle or carries mental meaning no one knows. This internal speech is what we write down. In “paper conferences” with students tutors can’t do better than to persuade them that it is this talk with themselves that they ought to record, without dulling rectification in the interest of a risklessly pompous formality. An author—the word means an originating “augmentor”—is a recorder of an inner speech that improves upon the banal ordinariness of a relaxed inner life by saying something original, either in the sense of “neversaid-before” or in the sense of going to the origin of things—or both. This is practically a definition of what the authors of our great books accomplish. They are the masters of pouring thought into the mold of inner speech and of turning that mold out onto the expectant paper. �144 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I must add here that, although you’d scarcely believe it, both claims—that books have authors and that speaking comes before writing—have been disputed in the later part of the last century. The former claim, that there is no originating authorship, is disputed because whatever is said has been pre-shaped by predecessors and will be reshaped by readers. The latter claim, that writing precedes speaking, is disputed on the ground (too sophisticated for presentation here) that writing has a character more original than speech and in fact, subsumes it.1 Reading presupposes writing, and writing poses at least two dangers. The one I’ve just touched on is that in the interest of liberating our students from being possessed by the opinion of others we in fact subject them to four years of others’ very powerful opinions. Another way to put this is that even—or especially—the devoted study of books is not direct thinking, immediate aboutness. It runs the danger of producing a commentator’s soul. I mean that to study books is not quite the same as to think about things; it is to be attending to a secondary sort of aboutness. By thinking in a primary way I mean appropriating the cry of early modern scientists: “To the things themselves!”—without mediating texts. The other danger, really the complement of the first, is set down in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus. Socrates tells approvingly of an Egyptian king who refused the gift of writing because, he said, those who put trust in writing will learn to forget how to go into themselves to recollect the truths within. Writing will then turn out to be no medicine for memory, but merely a reminder (272c ff.). Writing is external memory; we call on it to remind us now and then of baggage we do not care to keep always with us. Whatever is readily accessible as a filed record becomes storable stuff, a bit of fractured fact, related to living thought as a cellophane-wrapped fish filet is to a frisky live fish. It becomes information, which is as apt to wreck as to rectify judgment. I think this is an up-to-date version of Socrates’ misgivings about writing. However—you might call this Platonic irony—this condemnation of writing is delivered to us in the most ravishing piece of philosophical writing I know of, the work that drew me into phi1 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967), Chapter 2. Derrida, the author of both claims, at one point instituted a suit for plagiarism. Imagine! �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 145 losophy as a graduate student. Evidently Plato thought of a way to overcome the rigidification of writing—by incorporating conversation into the text. We extend this trick by incorporating books into a living dialogue, the seminar. How do we then mitigate these drawbacks? Well, we get together, come out of studious privacy, to talk with each other. In universities, “seminar” means an advanced study group under the leadership of a professor. Papers are written, read, and discussed. It is a place of earnest, highly disciplined speech. Our seminars are serious, but perhaps not earnest, or at least not dead earnest, but live earnest—lively. Walk through our corridors on seminar nights, and if you don’t hear hilarity issuing from behind this or that door, you may conclude that we’ve turned into the sitting dead, like the ancestral mummies the Incas brought out to sit at their feasts. For laughter is the explosive expulsion of breath that follows from having one’s equanimity pleasantly pinpricked by an acute incongruity—the result, in other words, of a startling insight. Laughter is the grace note of our seriousness. To be sure, the books lie before us, well used, even marked up (which is why we should buy, not borrow, seminar books), and they are the first focus of our attention. But that is also a misapprehension. Books, texts, are occasions, not ends. We don’t live in but through books. That formulation would be mere verbiage, were there not a way of study that stays strictly with the text and in it. For instance, in graduate study, say, in English or philosophy, all the student’s effort is really invested in the text. The goal is to know the text accurately, to be acquainted with scholarly opinions about it, to work out its arguments in detail, all the while setting aside questions of truth-telling and personal illumination. We encourage a different kind of reading—more direct, and if you like, somewhat naïve. Because the author wrote about or expressed something, we feel entitled to pass through the text to that something. We find it plausible sometimes to ask “What did the author have in mind?” and sometimes “Does this representation agree with our experience of life?” and sometimes “Can I corroborate this claim in my own thinking?” Not that we ignore the literal words in their artfulness—not at all—but we regard them as a sort of come-on to catch and hold us to the text until it gives up its meaning. �146 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Let me give an example from the freshman seminar that was going on while I was writing this lecture —a wonderfully lively seminar. We asked: “Do the Homeric gods, in all their irresponsible levity, look the same to Homer as to his heroes, does he have access to a view of Olympus, transmitted to him by the Muses, that none of his humans have?” We asked: “Is it in accord with our experience that gentle, thoughtful Patroclus is transformed into a wildly impetuous warrior just by wearing Achilles’ armor?” We asked: “Can we follow Socrates in his claim that truth already lies in us and can be retrieved, ‘recollected,’ as he says, by the right questions?” So to sum up our sort of reading: We pay careful attention to details for the sake of the text’s—the author’s—intentions, and we pay attention to these for the sake of world and life. That effort requires skills, namely, the arts of reading in the broad sense, the liberal arts. We have the corresponding tutorials, where we practice dealing with thought-laden words in the language class and with thought-structured symbols in the mathematics class. We add to these the latest of the liberal arts to appear on the scene, the art of making nature speak in numbers; for that we have the laboratory class. I’ve now talked in turn about talking, reading, writing. Now comes the high point: listening. Among the boons of living within a study program like ours—one that is stable and changes, though steadily, yet slowly—is that truly new experiences can come to us tutors. For our students, it’s all new anyhow. By contrast, when so-called innovation, that is, deliberate variation, is the universal background, we may indeed be stimulated by novelty—the ever-diminishing frisson accompanying continual variety—but we can scarcely experience newness, which is the poignant sensation of a substantial accession— a real expansion of our psychic holdings. Under the influence of continual novelty our mind, as Shakespeare so tellingly puts it, “Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream, / Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide, / To rot itself with motion” (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.4.45-47). Thus it was that through our way of acquiring truly new insights, I belatedly discovered a philosopher—as it happens the very first one whose writings we have. He was born around 540 B.C.E. I had often glanced over, but had never made my way into, his sayings. He thinks in aphorisms, that is, terse revelations. The most enticing one of these �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 147 begins in this way: Listen not to me but to the logos . . . (Heraclitus, D50). Logos is one Greek work all our students are apt to have something to say about. It had dozens of uses and more than one central meaning: word, speech, saying, thinking, reason, ratio. Heraclitus’s saying goes on to tell us what we must, in turn, say when we listen to the Logos, the Logos with a capital L. This Logos is the principle that governs everything, and it has something to say to us. I won’t go into the entirety of the world-informing thought that the Logos utters to Heraclitus, but I’ll attend to the first part of it. I think it has, and is meant to have, several meanings—a fact that governs many of Heraclitus’s sayings and makes reading him so pleasurably difficult. One of these sayings, the one just quoted, is, as it were, made to be the principle of our seminar. I’ll retranslate it: Listen not to me but to my intention. The civility of the seminar, expressed in our addressing one another by last names together with the honorific Ms. or Mr., goes much deeper than a mere form of address. It makes for respectful distance. It means listening past personalities to the thought-gist of our speaking. It enjoins us to try to hear what our fellow speakers intend us to hear, even if we have to hear past the words they are actually, and perhaps ineptly, saying. Of course, we take in each other’s looks, mannerisms, gestures. It is, after all, through these that the human being to whose intention we are to listen appears to us. Of course, the “me” Heraclitus wants us to listen past is unavoidably up front. We all, particularly tutors, whose business it is to form impressions of the candor, seriousness, and preparation of speakers, observe the physical façade. Any student who imagines that tutors don’t know, by such observations, whether they’ve done their seminar reading or are improvising—be it brilliantly, be it twaddingly—is living in cloud-cuckooland. The tutors’ version of Heraclitus’s injunction is the prospective principle of hopeful pretense: Listen for the intention, for what the speech is about, listen to all the speeches extendedly and intently, until they are about something; help students frame what they mean or find �148 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW out what they intended to say by evincing a staunch faith (even against all evidence) that they did mean or intend something. What is for Heraclitus a call to hear the speech of Thought—capital T—itself, is for us a pedagogic principle: Give respect even before it is due, so that it may become due. Advise students with tacit benevolence as Hamlet does his mother with demonstrative bitterness: “Assume a virtue if you have it not” (Hamlet, 2.4.162). For Aristotle teaches that virtues are acquired by being practiced before they are truly possessed (Nicomachean Ethics 1103a-b). So also should students listen to each other in the Heraclitean mode: Suppress animosities and aversions, go for the significant gist in one another’s talk. The question “Did you mean . . . ?” is helpful respect made audible. After all, the seminar was intended to bring us out of the isolation of studious reading and the rigidity of recorded, written speech, and to introduce responsiveness into the life of learning. The underlying hypothesis here, which we hold to through thick and thin, is that to be human is, given a chance, to be intelligent. Now intelligence has this feature, one that has been the millennial preoccupation of thoughtful people: What we each think with is our very own intelligence—which makes us interesting to one another—and that what the intellect is about is common to us all—which makes it possible for us to hear one another to begin with. In my hurried summary of the liberal arts and the tutorials devoted to them I left out the music tutorial and the chorus. Among the Greeks, music stands near the apex of the liberal arts; it is the prime mode of praising God for the Hebrews; and it stands close to theology for certain Christians. (See, e.g., Plato, Republic 530d ff.; Psalm 33:3; Luther, “On Noble Music”). Our president recently put music at the center of his convocation address, and then, to confirm his words, the college sang. For as we are rightly called a talking college so we are surely a music-making community. As words are to our thoughts, so is music to our feelings. Without music our program would be radically incomplete; we would be neglecting the affective root of our nature, our sensibility, and our passions. We have been called a severely intellectual college, and this could be an accusation rather than a compliment, if we did not also have a place in the program for cultivating the very sense, hearing, that both takes in linguistic utterances ad- �REFLECTIONS | BRANN 149 dressed to the intellect and also hears tonal structures calling to our passions. In the music tutorial we learn how passions are informed by number, not by the merely quantitative but by the wonderfully qualitative mathematics of tones in a scale. Moreover, we consider how sounds and words respond to each other, and we attend to a relation of sensation and thinking which we expect to carry over into all our learning—that tenacious thinking is replete with feeling, that steady passion is contoured by thought, and that the sensory surface itself, be it conduit or last stop, is deeply questionable. And finally, in Chorus, we are the singing college. In talking we face toward each other and speak to each other, turn and turnabout, vice versa—that is the very meaning of con-versa-tion. But we sing with rather than to each other, and we do it mostly not in turn but simultaneously. We are together in the presence of something we are at once hearing and doing, receiving and producing; we are absorptive and responsive, listening to ourselves and to our fellow choristers. It’s like hearing a heavenly lecture, for that’s how I imagine the angels listen. And that is the end of this merely earthly lecture, addressed to the parents over our student’s heads, so to speak, but really meant for them. So thank you all for listening. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 150 Caged Explorers: The Hunger For Control Howard Zeiderman To achieve happiness and freedom you must desire nothing else but what is entirely in your control— and that is only your own thoughts and opinions. —Epictetus, The Manual The letter’s return address had a name, the letters MHC, and a number next to it. I had no idea what it meant, but it was obvious from the carefully lettered envelope and handwritten letter that great effort was spent preparing it. The letter was a strange and bold request. It would lead me to the gates of the Maryland House of Corrections, a high medium/maximum security facility, the flagship of seven prisons surrounding a place in the Maryland landscape called Jessup, only a few miles from Fort Meade, the home of the National Security Agency. My first contact with the Maryland House of Corrections had occured sometime earlier, when I had received a request for some Touchstones materials to be distributed during an information fair at a prison. Twice a year, the organizations that assist prisoners arrange some contact with their families, and the many self-help programs that are designed to encourage prisoners present their information in a large activity area. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, violence prevention programs, parenting advice, various Christian and Muslim ministries, and even the Junior Chamber of Commerce send representatives with brochures. Touchstones is a program originally designed for pre-college students of all backgrounds to overcome their passivity and enable them to collaborate and explore. It uses short seminal texts to initiate discussions in which students transform their thinking and their behavior toward others and themselves. Since at that time my work with Touchstones was primarily in schools, I sent the first high school volume of texts along with Howard Zeiderman is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, and President of the Touchstones Discussion Project. This account is dedicated to the memory of Brother Robert Smith, who wished that it be shared with the St. John’s College community. �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 151 the accompanying guide explaining how leaders should utilize these materials. I thought nothing of this until two months later when I received the letter. The letter was from Marvin, a prisoner serving, he said, “life plus 30.” The language was simple and direct. “Dear Professor,” the letter began, “I’ve been looking at your books. They’ve been in the Legal Clinic office for a while. Two days ago I started reading them. First I was confused. But now I see how the leader’s guide can help you run the meetings. But we need someone to help us get started. Would you come meet with us? I talked to a few of the guys. We all think this would be good here. Nothing they give us here makes any sense. But last night six of us were sitting around. I read out loud the story about the old man asking for his dead son back. And we talked about it. We were thinking about it. How brave the old man was to face his son’s killer and what pain he felt.” I was startled as I read his account of a text in our Volume I—a text from Homer’s Iliad, in which the old king Priam begs the young warrior Achilles for the return of the dead body of his son Hector. He went on to say he hoped we could talk about how such a program might work in a prison. Though I was stretched in my commitments with Touchstones’ efforts in public schools, with my normal teaching at St. John’s, and with an executive group of investment bankers, CEOs, lawyers, and journalists up in New York, I couldn’t think of a sufficient reason to say no. In addition, I knew of a pilot program that had been tried at the New Mexico State Penitentiary, where the ghastly riot had occurred in 1981. I was intrigued by the idea of working with prisoners, and I had hoped we could find a location closer to home Each type of group we work with is unique. Each group brings specific talents to the program as well as specific needs. Each new effort is therefore a collaboration. The program that Marvin reviewed was designed for high school students, both for the gifted and for those who couldn’t read. For that reason, it was a good first step. It seemed wrong not to answer the request. But in spite of my desire, I was hesitant. I was influenced by what the media reported about prisoners. I had the images of countless movies and memories of the hostages at Attica in my imagination. I remembered the atrocities, the disembowelments, at the New Mexico prison outside of Santa Fe. I’m afraid I must admit that often in the �152 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW early days I went into the prison because I couldn’t think of a way to avoid going in without embarrassing myself. So in September of 1995, I took the thirty-minute drive to Jessup and entered a vast structure that from a distance looked like an ancient nineteenth-century Liverpool textile mill, but on closer inspection was revealed to be a fortress designed to keep two worlds entirely separated from one another. It was a Tuesday evening when I crossed the barriers of double steeland-glass doors and razor wire to meet the nine men who would embark with me on the exploration of a world that none of us knew existed. I was reminded of Plutarch’s description of England as seen by the Romans before they crossed the water from Gaul: a land that existed only in myth and legend. Over the next two years we would take the first steps together into unknown territory. I would later realize that my entry on that day was remarkably efficient. My name was listed on a count-out document at the first control booth and I was moved quickly through sets of double doors where I saw chains, handcuffs, and shotguns in a glass-enclosed watch area. I walked nervously past interrogation rooms and holding cells to what was called the Main Control Area: a large, cubical, steelbarred enclosure filled with guards. Unlike other such enclosures in the prison, this one contained the only exit to the outside world. A corrections officer announced through a loudspeaker that we were leaving the cage—which, ironically, was the Main Control Area—and entering the actual prison. We were now on the inside, surrounded by tiers of cells and the sound of the movement of a thousand men. I was escorted by a guard up a flight of stairs past a hundred men descending from their cells. At moments I was lost in the crowd, but with great effort I moved upstream through the confusing mass of people. After a brief and nervous wait at a landing, a metal door opened into a large space, perhaps thirty by seventy feet, in which another guard sat at a small desk. The meeting took place in a small room at the edge of this large activity area where we would eventually hold all our sessions, amid the 100-decibel noise of the prison and the rival claims for space of the Nation of Islam and the Jessup Jaycees. Around the open area were a number of these rooms, allocated to the use of various prisoner organizations. There was the writer’s club, the prisoner newspaper, the Colts—a sports club whose allegiance now focused on birds—Orioles �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 153 and Ravens—instead of horses. There were the rooms for AA and NA, and the fifteen-by-ten-foot area where men who had expressed themselves through crime now used brushes and paints. We met in the room of the most important prisoner organization—the Legal Clinic. This was where the men came for advice from other more experienced prisoners on how to represent themselves, since, whether guilty or innocent, their previous defenses had rarely warranted the name. It was significant that we met here, since this was where prisoners most felt the distance between themselves and the world outside the walls. This was where they experienced most acutely their helplessness in the subtle labyrinth of our society’s legal system. Five of the men I met were the high priests of this order. They were the officers— present and past—of the Legal Clinic. They held the keys to helping others at least attempt to control their futures. The four others were equally important. They were presidents of other prisoner organizations. These were all older men, men who had somehow survived the years of indignity and abuse and isolation. The youngest was in his late thirties, and all but one were serving at least one life sentence, whereas most were serving multiple such sentences either concurrently or in succession. These were men for whom prison was to be their world and not merely an interlude before reinserting themselves into ours. I was clearly nervous as I entered, and they had me sit in a part of the small room where I was no longer seen by the guard in the main area. The meeting began awkwardly. I thought they knew what they wanted from my visit, but in fact some were only vaguely aware of why they were meeting. Marvin began by having us go around the room and state who we were. I said I was a teacher, and others spoke briefly about themselves. They never said it explicitly, but each said enough for me to infer that I was sitting with nine men convicted of murder, in a small room concealed from a guard. When we finished, Marvin took the lead again. “Why don’t you tell us about the program,” he said in a voice filled with suspicion. I had thought that he would be my ally in this alien world but his tone was distant, as if he now wished to appear that he had played no part in my coming into the prison. From the introductions, it became clear that half were invited to this meeting to hear about the program for the first time. I could see a couple of the men whispering to one another and even �154 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW heard one ask—to no one or to all—why I was there. Rather quickly the roles had become reversed. Instead of being asked to come to respond to their request, it seemed that I had to convince them that they should become involved. I could feel control slipping away from me. Perhaps it was implicitly a test to see if one more white volunteer could offer something they really wanted, or perhaps it was an exploration they were undertaking to find out what they needed. When they asked me to describe the program, I did a very poor job. I kept speaking in ways that were either too abstract or too rudimentary. I hoped to interest them in probing the conceptual presuppositions and biases of our culture though I didn’t describe it in quite those words. Such an exercise hardly moved them, however, since their incarceration incorporated the presuppositions and biases of our culture. Of all the men I met in prison, very few asserted their innocence. Yet most felt that they were political prisoners—prisoners on account of our country’s politics stretching back to the very origins of the European conquest of the New World. They didn’t offer this as an excuse, but merely reported it as a fact. They saw their crimes as pretty much along the lines of infractions against their masters on the plantations. Nor were they particularly engaged by the prospect of increased skills. The skills they needed were quite specific, and it wasn’t clear how Touchstones could help them overturn a conviction. While I was speaking, becoming more uneasy as I felt their eyes glued to me, a short, heavily tattooed prisoner interrupted. “These guys,” he said, referring to the authors of the texts in the collection he had in his hands, “are all white.” I was taken aback by his claim. In regard to the specific volume I had sent in, he was correct. I again started trying to explain that this program was very different from classes they had in school and that the Eurocentrism of this particular collection of texts wouldn’t affect what we discussed. But they looked skeptical. The meeting seemed to be going nowhere until Marvin looked up from fingering the book of readings. “It could help us think for ourselves,” he said calmly. “That’s something they can’t control.” Immediately, I could see their faces change as if they finally heard something that might be useful or even important. “You think that? Say more,” said Lee, the president of the Legal Clinic whose great knowledge earned him the respect of everyone in spite of a terrible �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 155 stutter. “Yeah, it’s like when we talked about that dead guy. That Trojan. And you asked us how we would mourn a friend. There was no one to tell us who was right and what to say. We were all thinking.” A few of the most senior nodded agreement and the others—even the tattooed critic—seemed to concur. That remark finally penetrated to the core of their concerns. Perhaps Marvin had sensed this in the description of the discussion format. Perhaps these experts in the omnipresence of arbitrary control sensed an opportunity for the first time to undertake the pure act of thinking. Perhaps my own inability to supply an answer allowed them the leisure to determine what they needed. In their eyes, I was no longer a professor or a teacher of the kind they had previously experienced. I was merely a technician who could help them create the structure through which their own thought would take shape. “Thinking for yourself” was not an offhand expression for them. Within that phrase was lodged the full intensity of their suffering. In prison, all control and initiative was stripped from them. After one session in which we discussed a passage from Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail and why we need the stability of laws, Eddie, a lifer who had served 25 years, took me aside out of the hearing of the others. “Here you’ve got to be careful. Yeah, even you. They change the rules every day. And they never tell you. That way they control all of you.” To supply the desperate need they felt to establish a realm in which they were not entirely passive, they had two options. He took me further aside as if to confide a great truth about his life. “We try to fight it. We work out with weights in the yard or in the gym. That way we at least control how we look. Or we control the fags and the slaves.” A rigid hierarchy of keepers and kept transects the prison. The keepers tell the kept what to do, how to act, and what to think. The thoughts of the kept are as imprisoned as their bodies, since the constant pressure of others establishes a tyranny that overrides the distinctions between guard and prisoner. Control in its rawest form flows everywhere in the prison, and it was their horror at this that these men felt our programs might transform. The task was now clear: to go about establishing the conditions for prisoners to reassert their freedom, their ability to become human again, by bestowing significance on their lives through the mere act of thought. �156 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW By the end of the meeting certain things had been settled. I had committed to coming in every Friday evening for two hours, though we never had that much time. Security always dictated how long it took to enter. Sometimes I would be held in a control area for an hour only to be told the paperwork couldn’t be found. This was always exasperating; however, when I once complained to the group about it, they just laughed. Roderick, one of the older prisoners, explained, “We were hopin’ it would happen. It’s good for you. It’ll help you understand something about here.” From then on I sometimes even savored the delays, because they revealed in a trivial and temporary way what the prisoners experienced continually. I began to grasp what it meant to be no longer a person but only a thing. These men had no control over their lives. I too felt that lack of control every time I entered the facility. It was as if I had entered another world in which I had no standing and no say about what might happen to me. It was a separate world, dimly lit, and chaotic. Anything could happen in those dark passageways as I walked past the correctional officers and groups of prisoners. My only security was the hope that it wasn’t worth their effort to interfere with me. Control as it is implemented and experienced in our prisons is a uniquely modern construct. In contrast to ancient prisons, our prisons reduce prisoners to beasts through control and dehumanization. Although ancient prisons were dark and oppressive places where vermin, neglect, and disease dominated, prisoners were not dehumanized. Those vast ancient structures held people of various sorts, often in accommodations that suited their relative rank. Prisoners still retained respect, and, in some cases, the accoutrements of their position in society. The ranks the prisoners held were part of them and could not be stripped from them whatever their crime or infraction. This began to change as religion and science struggled for our souls. Prisons, in a temporary compromise, became penitentiaries, places where fallen human beings would do penance and assert their humanity again. These prisoners were not yet considered fundamentally different from those who would confess their sins in prayers during church services. The distinction was only that they required a more intense regimen of prayer in places where there were fewer distractions from the work of their salvation. As religion lost its primacy to scientific technology, however, the penitentiary became the house of correction. �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 157 Some of the group, a few who had served over forty years in prisons in many different states, could actually remember this change. Once, when we were considering a drawing as a text, we suddenly heard the story first-hand. The text was a drawing by Kathe Kolwitz, Prisoners Listening to Music. The three prisoners depicted are skeletal, with hollow eyes—and all seemingly gripped by something. The session was not going very well, and I regretted trying to use a text that connected too vividly with their situation. A number of the younger members were clearly repulsed by the drawing. When I asked why a few who often spoke were being silent that evening, Larry answered. “It’s scary looking at them. I don’t want that to be me.” As he finished, another prisoner, Craig, a man almost seventy years old who first served time more than fifty years before, laughed. “You don’t understand nothing. They’re not dying. They’re gettin’ past their hungers. It’s the music that makes them pure—like angels. Listen— when I was young down south we had a chaplain. Every day he would play music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn’t listen to it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes a song would last a long time, no words. But then we started to love it. We would listen like in the picture, and we’d remember things. And we’d cry. Sometimes you could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest would cry too. We were all together in it. But then he retired and a new chaplain came. He was different. He wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the caseworkers. They would ask us questions about ourselves and make us go to classes, programs. They were working on us and the music ended. It was different. It was them against us.” Correction, as Craig sensed, is entirely different from penance. This is one reason why the allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic, one of the most powerful Touchstones readings for any group, is especially fertile in a prison. The status of the modern prison as its own self-enclosed world became explicit during a discussion about this text. It is the story of people who are themselves prisoners in a barely illuminated cave, and who believe that the shadows they see, cast by objects that move behind them, are reality. Eight weeks into the program I decided use this text to encourage the prisoners for the first time to speak explicitly in the group about their own situations as prisoners. For a while they argued about details of the allegory, but finally Thomas, a serious and highly intelligent prisoner, moved the �158 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW discussion to their own reality. He started to consider how a freed prisoner from Plato’s cave who saw the reality outside would communicate, if he were to reenter the cave, with those who were still underground. To make his point about the difficulty of communication, he began to describe his own return to prison. “When I came back in,” he said, “I thought I’d find my old friends, and I’d talk to them. But I couldn’t. Nothing I said made any sense. I had to learn a new language.” Ken, who had been silent, agreed. “Nothing here makes sense out there. Nothing you would do out there works in here. It’s like going from earth to Pluto. They make us into aliens, animals, and then they wonder why we end up coming back to the barn.” It was into this highly controlled and dehumanizing space that I had entered in response to an appeal from nine lifers attempting to reestablish themselves as men who had committed crimes rather than as members of a separate species, a criminal class. Like the priest who played the music and cried with his prisoners, perhaps like Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima crying for himself as much as for them, I was joining them on a journey we would have to undertake together. Soon, the nine men decided to involve another ten so we would have a group of about twenty. They had to explain our goal to the others as best they could. The goal was a rare one in the prison. I would undertake to turn over control of the program to them so they could spread the program throughout the facility. In short, I wasn’t—like other teachers or volunteers—coming to do something for them. Rather, I would try to make it possible for them no longer to need me. That is what all teachers want, but here it was essential that they not feel indebted to me. The program would only work if they felt it was also theirs—that they had collaborated in its creation. However, I knew that it would be as difficult for me to surrender control to them as it would be for them to accept it. I created the program they would learn. I felt I knew better than they what would work and what structure was best. Yet to succeed I would have to enable them to collaborate with me actively in shaping the program for prisons. I was worried that I might not be able to achieve this act of surrender. And would they be able to forget who I was and allow me to be involved without feeling I was judging them, that I was the expert and therefore in control of the situation? Here we were touching on some of the deepest issues of our culture, issues that pervaded both the prison and �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 159 also our own lives—questions about the need for control, the fear of surrender, and the very ownership of one’s words. Every discussion group confronts the same set of barriers to a genuine collaborative activity. There are always initially the issues of control, power, and expertise. This initial stage is followed by competition among groups or individuals—in other words, factions—who struggle with each other to assert dominance. The next barrier is the problem of listening without imposing our own thoughts on one another. After overcoming these impediments, there is the effort one must make to evolve a type of leadership and responsibility that is shared among all the participants. These issues raise the most complex human problems and questions irrespective of culture. The culture determines how the group approaches these problems, but not what the barriers are. In addition to these problems, there are others that characterize a group as a unique collection of people immersed in a specific institutional or social environment. These problems concern all of us in some measure, but specific groups face certain peculiar problems that pervade their lives and their circumstances. They have special expertise in dealing with the particular problems they must continually face, problems that the rest of us share to a lesser and more occasional extent. They can therefore become a resource for us all as they struggle in the discussion environment to overcome the barrier that uniquely affects them and shapes their lives. The prisoners had their own specific and complex needs, needs that centered on the issue of control and their attempt to overcome the passivity imposed by their violent and arbitrary environment. They had a hunger for control. But in order to create a genuine group, they would have to transmute this desire into a form that enabled them to surrender control in its customary forms. It was with regard to such issues that they could most clearly be a resource for others. Prisoners also certainly need the intellectual skills and the skills of cooperation to better equip them to enter society as employable people. The needs expressed by these prisoners, however, had a different urgency. These nine men were to spend their lives in prison, and their needs dealt not with the future but with the environment in which they all lived. Their needs were threefold. The first involved the fact that MHC, like all prisons, was over- �160 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW crowded. There was a certain freedom of contact and movement simply because there was not enough space to keep prisoners separated. This mobility, of course, increased the possibility of collisions among prisoners or gangs of prisoners. Through spreading Touchstones in the prison, the men aimed gradually to change the environment where they all lived. A modest success was recounted one evening after one of the discussions. We had just discussed the opening scene of Ellison’s Invisible Man, in which the “invisible” narrator collides with a white man and comes close to killing him. During the session they had mostly considered their prejudices, their assumptions about one another. But near the end of our time, Alan, a white man, spoke up more personally about James, a black man who sometimes attended our sessions. “This happened yesterday. I was on line at lunch, carrying my tray. James was in front of me. Don’t know how, but I bumped into him. His lunch fell. Three months ago he would have hit me hard, maybe killed me. But he didn’t, and we cleaned up the mess. And other people gave him some of their food. That’s never happened here before.” Lee, one of the leaders, seemed to speak for all of them, when he commented on this incident. “They try to make us savages. And before we started talking to one another, we used to believe them.” In short, their startling goal was to humanize their world—a world in which they were viewed, and viewed themselves, as barely human. Their second need involved a peculiar paternal attitude toward the younger men. These men were old timers, men who had survived years of abuse and indignity from guards and other prisoners. They knew how to remain alive. They were the wisest of the wise. Each of them was unique, and the only image that captured their stature for me was a comparison with the Greeks and Trojans of the Iliad: Ajax, Sarpedon, Patrocles, Achilles, and Hector. These men hoped to influence the young ones, seventeen-to-twenty-five-year-olds, who came for two or three years and then graduated, as if they had attended a college course in how to commit crimes. These young felons never grasped that they too might spend their lives behind these walls. The group of lifers felt that speaking directly wouldn’t work. They hoped that their words would carry more weight after having worked together in these more neutral, though important, discussions. The third need was the one that affected each of them most intimately. It wasn’t just a matter of their environment or a concern for �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 161 those who would follow the paths these men regretted having themselves pursued. Rather, it was the sense that they too, even in these hostile and precarious and dehumanizing conditions, were capable of contemplating the deepest issues that confront all of us. This became vivid to me and to them one Friday evening. The text was a short passage by Kant on morality. He claims that we are moral only when we act from duty and not because we want to. Most of the group considered him crazy. They gave example after example of helping others— family, friends, even enemies—because of pity or affection. Finally Sam interrupted. “You guys really don’t get it. He’s saying that what you’re talking about is only like eatin’ when you’re hungry. That’s no big deal. It’s only when it’s hard, when it hurts, and you do it anyway that you can respect yourself. Then you know you’re a man.” As he spoke, I and others nodded in agreement. The intensity of Sam’s thought, exploring an idea that no one had been able to consider, enabled me and others to take Kant’s claims more seriously. In these sessions they felt they could finally exercise control over their own thoughts—they could, as Sam did, think for themselves. This they sensed would once again make them fully human in their own minds and capable of respecting themselves as well as others. The task that we set ourselves was to create a group of about ten discussion leaders, each of whom would eventually be able to conduct groups for other prisoners. The ultimate aim for the men was to involve as many prisoners as possible in the programs and to make these discussions part of the ongoing life of the institution. In addition, a collection of texts was to be selected and tried out for use both in this prison and possibly in others as well. In this program and the other programs I have designed, the texts are understood as tools, as touchstones. Though they are sometimes—like the Kolwitz drawing—specific to particular groups, most texts selected, like Ellison’s or Kant’s, touch so deeply on our habits, our expectations, and our past cultural and historical inheritance that they are useful for a wide variety of groups. In the case of the prison population, we needed to determine which texts would enable the participants to consider the issues of real concern to them. At the same time, the process should not force them into areas that they would only want to approach in their own time. So it became necessary both to explore the problems these leaders would face and to understand why certain kinds of texts were used. �162 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In other words, for the men to learn to lead a group, they would have to grasp, to a certain extent, the underlying structure of the program. The men in the group were therefore a core of nine who had committed to the project together with a varying group of others who would join only as participants. These latter were sometimes known to the other participants, though prisoners sometimes appeared for one or two meetings who were not known to the main participants. In certain cases we knew that prisoners were asked to attend in order to inform prison officials and to monitor what was happening. I never knew who these other occasional participants were. I never knew if they were sent to disrupt the session, either by another prisoner organization that objected to what was happening, or by the prison administration, or simply by another prisoner who might be angry at one of the participants or upset by the idea of changing the status quo of the institution. Uncertainty is built into the nature of the discussion process, and these visitors exacerbated the uncertainty surrounding our work. This ongoing uncertainty also made it clear to me that, in a real discussion, no one is ever in control. Both participants and leaders are dependent on one another. And consequently a genuine discussion cannot be an event that is isolated from the environment or culture or organization in which it occurs. The first stage of our work was to give the men the experience of genuine discussion. I used texts from the Touchstones series, nine graduated volumes ranging from works for third- and fourth-graders up through high schoolers and beyond. These volumes, especially those of the middle and high school series, are also perfectly suitable for adults. In a school setting, the volume a group uses is rarely a function of reading level, since the program can be done orally, but is rather a matter of experience with discussion. In high schools, our goal during the first year of participation is for the participants to understand each stage of the process itself and, after twenty to twentyfive sessions, to begin conducting the classes themselves. This became the model for our prison group. Each session was filmed, the video was copied, and one of the copies was returned to the men. A typical session would involve my passing out a text which was read aloud, followed by preparatory individual and small-group work. The whole group would then reunite, and I would lead the discussion. This would last about fifty to sixty minutes. Then I would break the discussion, �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 163 and for the last thirty minutes we would analyze what had occurred. This was the procedure we followed week after week. Often the analysis of the discussion process would revert to the text or revive the topic of the main discussion. Once, after a discussion of the short essay “About Revenge” by Francis Bacon, one of the prisoners named James interrupted an argument between two very assertive men about whether there had been dominance in the session. “Hey,” he asked in an innocent tone, “did anyone take revenge during the meeting?” For a few moments no one responded, though a number of eyes turned to Michael, the man James had seemed to address. Then Lee acknowledged that he had been tempted to respond to what he had taken as a slight—but didn’t. Finally, Michael spoke up. “I did. What Vaughn said rubbed me wrong and I thought he knew that—so I went at him. It was stupid.” The group then recurred to the text on revenge: Michael and Lee discussed how they had reacted in different ways, why one tried to get even while the other didn’t, and how they felt about their actions. This sort of event was common in the post-discussion analysis sessions. The process of the discussion freqauently echoed the text. In order for this to happen, texts must be selected that exemplify the structures and attitudes of our society and institutions. The discussion then becomes a unique kind of cultural exploration, in which the presuppositions of the culture can be made visible, and new forms of thinking and behavior can be explored. The entire history of slavery was continually present in the prison. Jessup, like most American prisons, is filled primarily with black men—the descendants of slaves once again in something very like slave quarters. Not only are their cramped cells and chains reminiscent of slavery, but, as the states increasingly involve prisons in various commercial enterprises, we are once again witnessing the use of what is essentially slave labor. The entire drama and stage setting of incarceration duplicates the four hundred year history of slavery on this continent. Slavery and the complete lack of control over one’s decisions, one’s future, and one’s life were clearly the issues that should be probed by these men. They have an expertise that the rest of us don’t have and yet sometimes need in our own lives—an expertise in surviving while facing the passivity imposed on us. It is part of the aim of these discussions ultimately to enable the �164 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW participants to discuss the most vital and volatile issues. But no one is prepared to undertake this without the skills that the program develops. It is only quite late in the process that texts are dispensed with and topics themselves confronted. When that occurs prematurely, the result is mere conflict, or a series of monologues. It requires great discipline to undertake a genuine discussion of what one cares deeply about. Thus, though slavery was at least one of the main concerns of this group, its discussion as a topic would not occur until much later. We would approach it through the mediation of specific texts until the group became more skilled. Every group has certain issues like this, and these will come up in the process itself, in the experiences the group has in their lives, and in the institutional structure within which they live. I therefore selected texts at various stages which would push aspects of the issue of slavery to the surface. The choice of a passage from Epictetus’s Manual was a first attempt. The passage is a terse statement of stoicism, a very abstract claim about slavery and freedom which holds that we are all enslaved, and that only by desiring what is completely and entirely in one’s control could anyone be free. Epictetus goes on to claim that only our thoughts and opinions are entirely in our control. This, he argues, is because all people for whom we might feel love or affection and all property we possess or desire could be lost through some unpredictable event. The discussion of this text occurred about two months into the program. The group was large that Friday night—about thirty—so the shape of the arrangement of chairs had departed far from from the customary circle into a very elongated ellipse. The configuration of the chairs often plays a key role in a discussion, since everything in a format like this has significance. I wanted to modify the shape of the ellipse and make it more uniform but I hesitated. I always felt I should accept the circumstances that presented themselves in the prison as much as possible. Whether one manipulates the seating arrangement depends on the setting, the group, and the leadership role. Leading a discussion is not a uniform task. There is not one model that all must adhere to in every situation. The goals remain the same across groups of the same kind but how one achieves them can vary considerably. I was at pains to make few demands on the situation and on the men in it. I didn’t wish to be perceived as part of the organizational �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 165 structure that moves them from place to place. When a prisoner would run the group, he would exercise much more control and direction than I did. It makes sense for that approach since he needs to demarcate himself as an expert in the initial phases whereas I wanted to minimize that status. This is the great issue confronting this effort to create a genuinely collaborative activity. People want an expert who will take control and yet wish to be free of that very desire. So the question is how one should share leadership and authority. That of course is a problem that will face all of us in every aspect of life. These discussions therefore are a laboratory in which the new directions to be pursued in our society can be explored and worked out. I sat on the long side of the ellipse where I could best see all the men. Many of them were new. There were three foci to the discussion. One group was led by a large man named Karem, who sat at one of the endpoints of the major axis—a dominant place in such a configuration. Karem agreed with Epictetus. He contended that the prison had enslaved his body but his mind was free. He argued that they couldn’t enslave that. “No one can chain my mind,” he boasted. “Though my body is locked in this sewer, my mind can roam everywhere.” He spoke in such a forceful way that many men, in spite of themselves, agreed. Kevin, on the other hand, violently disagreed. The officers didn’t just control his body. By controlling that, they controlled him. They determined when he could move and where he could be. And these decisions controlled his life, his desires, his thoughts, and his dignity. While Karem held that he still felt free, Kevin vividly described what had happened to all of them—a need to urinate while waiting somewhere in the prison. “And,” said Kevin, “they take their damn time. They know what’s happening. They can read our faces, and we’re forced to humiliate ourselves. They turn us into children or animals.” Kevin went on to claim that such an indignity can happen at any moment, and that to deny one’s feelings about it is not to be free but rather to be less than human. Karem tensed at this point. It was as if someone had said the words that exactly characterized the situation all of them were in, and which they were all striving to change by their own efforts. Sometimes it is difficult to lead a discussion because what is said grips everyone with the reality of the lives of some of the participants. Even with experienced leaders, when a discussion becomes intensely personal to �166 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the participants, it is difficult for the leader to focus on the long-range goals of the project. Here I was listening to a discussion of Stoicism by people who weren’t merely speculating and imagining what it would be like to practice it. These were people whose very survival and sanity often depended on their living that way. Some people in that room were in fact stoics and could speak to Epictetus as if they were colleagues. on the same path. Others knew well the temptation of stoicism; perhaps they had tried it and abandoned it. It is this aspect that gives such power to discussions that are designed to use text and experience to echo one another. This productive tension between the experience of the group and the text reveals how such discussions differ radically not only from education in the traditional sense—in which an idea or text is explored and but also from therapy—in which what is at issue is the experience of the particular participant. In discussion, personal experience is mediated by a text that is often the seminal source of a concept or institutional structure; yet, because of the difference betwwen text and personal experience, the participants can view themselves from a distance. In fact, this very issue itself came up in the discussion on Epictetus and soon became the main focus. One of the men—Eddie, a former Black Panther who was a lifer but always proclaimed his innocence—brought this home to all of us. “None of us are free. We’re all enslaved,” he said, breaking into a brief moment of silence between Kevin and Karem. “And not just those like us in prison. Yeah, we’re held in place by bars and wire, but that’s not all. Our minds themselves are enslaved. And not just ours, Howard’s too and everyone out there. Our thoughts aren’t our own. They’re just the ones we grew up with. How can we be free when how we think is our prison?” This took everyone aback. Everyone realized this was an important thought that we would have to continually consider and struggle with. Eddie’s remark defused the tension between Karem and Kevin by revealing how this issue of our slavery was the struggle we all had to face. The men bounced all these ideas around as if they were in a three-sided tennis match. No one changed an opinion, but each gave the others the chance to speak. And this session was decisive for the group because they finally recognized, as Eddie implied, that I had nothing more to offer on this subject than they had, and in fact less. After an hour I broke off the discussion so we might evaluate what �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 167 had just happened. In order to encourage people to emerge briefly from the prisons in which Eddie claimed we were all captive, I wanted the men to spend time with prisoners they didn’t know. I asked the men to count to four and get into small groups according to number. That would effectively separate friends from one another, and I instructed them to consider what they felt were the strong and weak points of the discussion. When these groups reported their analyses, most of the groups agreed. They felt there had been a presentation of views but no discussion. As Vaughn said, “no one changed an opinion, and no one looked at what they themselves were saying. We were just stating our minds.” But Thomas responded: “That isn’t so terrible. At least we could finally say what we really thought. And the rest of us listened even if we didn’t react. That was important. Others listening—we get some dignity that way,” he claimed. A number of men agreed. But then Karem, who had been listening with a clear expression of discomfort, interrupted. “But that means you need others to be free. And how could this Epictetus be right about being free in your thoughts when we need one another for our own self-respect? And don’t you need self-respect for freedom?” It was there in the metadiscussion that the real discussion finally occurred. It was when they had made the claims of stoicism visible to themselves in their very activity that they could seriously consider the implications. The discussion did in fact act as an experiment for discerning new forms of activity. There was no official status in my position, and the men received nothing for their participation. There was nothing concrete they would gain. I therefore had no power to bestow anything obviously useful or valued in that environment. The men came because they were allowed to think. The excitement of thinking and knowing that they too were capable of this activity drew them into the group. They weren’t here to learn from a book but to explore, together with me, both themselves and this new terrain we were bringing into being. Discussion is possible only when there is no agenda. I had no agenda in terms of the conclusions we would reach or the paths we would take, though I clearly had a goal. I wanted to tailor the program to this institution. This meant I would try out texts, and explore the means by which I could turn over the responsibility for the program to these men. Often �168 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW they would ask me about our other programs and I would tell them about the possibilities and the difficulties we faced in the program with Palestinians in Gaza, or indentured children in Haiti, or CEOs at the Harvard Club, or middle school students, or senior citizens, or plebes at the Naval Academy, or my students at St. John’s. I think it was very important to these men to realize that what they were doing was identical in some of its fundamental principles with attempts being made throughout the world by people who were willing to risk high levels of uncertainty to undertake the effort to change themselves. It was the start of a sort of community where, we—there in the bleak activity area of a nineteenth-century prison, in the third floor private meeting room at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, in senior citizen centers, and in Haitian churches—were taking steps to explore a world which, though continuous with strands of all of these disparate worlds, nonetheless revealed glimpses of other forms of life and new ways of being and thinking. It happened sporadically, but often enough to hint at the outlines of a new possibility. The men knew that they were exploring in an unfamiliar territory of human experience. The trips to space were not the successors of the trips of Columbus and Magellan. Those early explorers needed to change their fundamental conception of their world in order to make room for what they saw. The astronauts merely solved the comparatively trivial problem of how to get from one visible and relatively known place to another, though the scale of their journey was immense. The problem we faced, on the other hand, was not going from here to there, but from now to then. It was exploration into a future that would no longer be a consequence of our pasts. These men serving life sentences for serious crimes felt part of the small bands of people making these journeys, and they sensed they were bringing a perspective that was uniquely theirs but necessary to all the others. This sense, I think, caused them to hae some respect for me, in spite of the fact that I was merely one more among them—although I knew a bit more than they did about sketching a rough map of our explorations, and had an instinct for recognizing apparent harbors that were only the temptations of sirens. Neither I nor they, however, could give a detailed account of this new terrain. Sometimes I thought we were on solid ground and in a familiar region, when suddenly the ground would open up and I found myself, as in the con- �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 169 ventional dream, falling endlessly with nothing to grab onto. And then, just as suddenly, the scene would change, and I could see that we were in a bucolic valley and the sense of falliing had been an illusion. I constantly had to seek my bearings along with the men, and that made vivid the reality of our mutual dependence. Up to this point I had led the discussions, selected the texts from the Touchstones series, and designed the meeting format. But since our goal was for the core group to develop the skills necessary to lead discussions with other prisoners, I knew at some stage I would have to turn over the responsibility to them. I must say I kept postponing the step. I kept worrying that I hadn’t communicated enough to them—and this remained a concern despite my understanding that one cannot prepare for every eventuality in any complex activity, let alone in a genuine discussion, which, if properly engaged in, changes from moment to moment with a life of its own. Nonetheless, I also recognized that these were merely excuses I was using in order to avoid surrendering control, and I was finally able to overcome my resistance because of what the prisoners were able to do. We were approaching the stage of the program in which the group must begin to observe and judge itself. In all the programs I have developed, the text, the experience of the participants, and the dynamical issues arising in the process all interpenetrate and echo one another. To prepare the way for self-judgment and self-criticism of the group we first discussed a worksheet that asked the men questions about how they judged others on first meeting them. They were asked if they did so at first glance by clothing, by posture, or by eye-contact. In a prison, judging correctly at first meeting is very important: one needs to be able to distinguish between a newcomer who poses a threat and one who does not. Two men sharply disagreed on the best way to make such judgments. Idrus asserted it was by the person’s posture, whereas Eddie focused on the eyes as the most revealing trait. This exchange went on for a few minutes, and we could see Eddie becoming increasingly impatient. Idrus was wearing dark glasses and Eddie, annoyed, finally said what he had been thinking: “What’s behind those glasses?” In response Idrus tensed, started to rise, but then remained seated and replied. “You’ve known me here for twenty years and you’ve never seen that.” The moment was explosive and I quickly moved to the text �170 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW for that day to re-establish control. They reconsidered this issue of self-observation and self-judgment by discussing two self-portraits of Rembrandt, one in which he concentrates on his eyes, and another in which he elaborates his clothing while the eyes are in almost impentrable darkness. The discussion got past that moment of tension to consider how Rembrandt had changed the manner in which he depicted himself. The next week, Idrus—the prisoner who had shaded his eyes for twenty years—came to the session without his dark glasses. We were all stunned. All of us spoke haltingly as the session began, hardly able to absorb the momentousness of his action. He had taken such a monumental step that I felt I should follow suit. I immediately changed what I had planned for the session, and resolved that I would surrender control to the group the following week. To begin that process immediately, I decided to explore with them what we would discuss in the next session; that is, I began encouraging them to think through the issues involved in leading a group. A discussion leader always comes to a session with a goal. The goal can be a topic that is essential for the group discuss, or a problem the group must overcome—such as dominance by a few—or an opportunity for the group’s development, or a part of the text that seems particularly important. The leader might well have to surrender this goal immediately if it becomes clear that the group will not go along with it, or that they are ready for a different goal. In this case it was I, the group’s leader, who was finally ready for something more significant. After almost a year of hesitation, I was finally ready to collaborate with them, to surrender control. I therefore asked them to consider what topic we as a group should discuss. For an hour they suggested various subjects but the main one was “What is God?” Some claimed that this was far too personal and sensitive too discuss, others claimed that the group was capable of attempting it. Some then claimed it wouldn’t be a discussion where one might change one’s mind. Instead they would simply state their opinions, indifferent to what the others might say. But in spite of their reservations, they were willing to attempt it. At the end of the session we chose a text that we could use to focus our exploration, a selection in a Touchstones volume: the story of the sacrifice of Isaac from the book of Genesis. The session �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 171 had been so penetrating in examining what constituted a discussion, what role texts can play in channeling the exploration, and how to avoid having it turn into an empty ping-pong match of quotations and scattered opinions, that I also decided the next session for the first time would be led by one of the prisoners. I could have chosen any of the group, but Michael volunteered. A thirty-five-year-old prisoner, he had been serving a life sentence since the age of fourteen when he was sentenced as an incorrigible offender. Michael began quietly. He asked: “What sort of God would make such a request?” There was silence for a few moments and then first Eddie and then Thomas and then Lee all plunged into the discussion to shed light on the mystery of God’s purposes. For ninety minutes, Michael led a discussion on the difference between sacrifice and murder and the role of God in our lives with a group of men all of whom had either committed murder or were at least convicted of it. And they identified even more closely with Abraham. As another of the prinsoners, Vaughn, pointed out, “We here must constantly ask ourselves just what Abraham must have asked himself during that three-day trip to Mt. Moriah: why me, God, why me?” Though there was a text, it was impossible to tell whether this was a textual or nontextual discussion. They had finally achieved that intermediate point in which the distinction breaks down. The following week we spent a good part of the session discussing what had occurred and whether their expectations were satisfied. Had it been possible to discuss these subjects or were they simply presenting monologues? Everyone agreed that their worst fears had not materialized. In fact, the discussion was a great surprise even to those who expected that we would be able to pursue it. As one of the men said, “It was like a wheel, it just moved round and round.” These men were discussing the issue most personal to them—the murder of another human being. Yet they had the discipline to depersonalize their own experience and allow others to participate in a discussion. They could surrender control of what was most intimate, and yet at the same time they never made it an abstract discussion. They were able to fuse a textual exploration with one in which their own experience lent credibility to their comments. The session on the sacrifice of Isaac was a decisive moment for the group. It was a great success, far greater than I or they or anyone �172 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW could have imagined. They felt that with some advance preparation one of them had been able to conduct a session. It was in fact a session on a topic—what is God?—that most felt they wouldn’t be able to handle. But even more, it was a discussion of the very crime for which they were serving life sentences. The discussion was thoughtful and probing, without self-pity and without avoidance of self-examination. Once we began this process we decided to continue. The next week we decided we would have another leader and would go in rotation until each of the nine men had practiced with this group. This was a major step. I also thought it was better to allow the leader to know in advance and for him to be able to select the text and the approach. The next volunteer was Vaughn, who had played a very strong role in the last discussion. Michael, who had led the discussion, had the best sense of how to keep himself out of the way. I knew others would have more difficulty. It is always a challenge to lead a group. Leading has little to do with whether you enjoy discussions yourself. In fact often the worst leaders are precisely those who want to be participants. However, there is no one model for conducting a discussion. One has to discern one’s strengths and determine how to use them in the new environment. Vaughn’s great strength as a participant would in fact, I expected, cause him problems as a leader. There was great seriousness and intensity in Vaughn. In a discussion he often took the group to new levels by his passionate thinking about a problem. In the Abraham discussion, when the discussion was becoming fragmented, Vaughn focused it on what we all knew we should talk about. He imagined Abraham during those three days journeying with Isaac. He uttered what everyone in the group was asking about Abraham and about themselves, “God, why me, why me?” It was Vaughn who could suddenly transform a meandering route into one of deep engagement. As one prisoner at a different prison said of a discussion on the Iliad, at some point it left the streets of Troy for those of Baltimore. Vaughn could effect that translation too. But this very power could also cause problems. It is wonderful when a participant deepens a discussion. But when a leader does it, the group can become dependent on his enthusiasm or it can become defensive and even go into opposition. A leader must show that he respects others and feels that the issues they have raised �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 173 are serious. Vaughn, however, was not generally attentive to the needs of others in the group. He was not vain at all, but simply so engaged by the question or topic that he would lose a sense of where the others in the group were in their thinking. Each of the men had different kinds of issues they would have to face as leaders, but Vaughn’s was one of the most difficult. He would have to subordinate his own ideas and help others to bring out theirs. He would have to surrender control of the content and focus on his responsibility to others. If anyone had to learn service it was he. My difficulty at the time was that I had to let him choose the text. What he selected startled me, and and was even more troubling than the fact that he would lead the discussion. It was a piece by an eighteenth-century ex-slave about what owning slaves does to the slave owner. In one sense it was potentially useful because it at least took a perspective that the group would not immediately relate to, but would have to infer. But because it touched so directly on the topic of slavery, it seemed beyond the ability of this group—much more so than the question about God. I was amazed that this was the text chosen, yet I had resolved that I would do nothing to change it. They had to learn to select texts for a specific group at a specific time in their evolution and this was at least a start. And I had to learn to surrender my position and become a participant in the group. Though I was convinced that the discussion would fail, I hoped we could analyze it afterward in order at least to decide why it failed. The analysis would present an opportunity to explore the role of texts and how one selects them. I decided I would sit next to Vaughan, thinking that I might be able to control, at least to some extent, how much he spoke. Though the previous week had been so disciplined, this discussion collapsed within moments. The first question took us far from the text into a dispute about why white people enslaved black people. All the issues surrounding enslavement and abuse came up immediately, and the group could hardly sustain any exchange at all. Within minutes I sensed that we were near an abyss. The few white men in the room tried to speak, but were not taken seriously. Some got up and left the circle, angry at what was happening. Most eventually returned and sat down again, however, since there was no place else for them to go. Even the others began to attack one another. All the alliances that had �174 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW developed over time broke down. I felt I had no idea where we were going, no idea whether the group could hold together for the hour or whether I would have to break it off if they allowed me. At that moment I was certain that all the effort of the past year had been wasted, and the apparent progress had been an illusion. The session became electric when a prisoner nicknamed “Shaka” said that in 1975 he was born a slave in Baltimore and his life would be devoted to becoming free. I remained silent, unable to speak after my one contribution was ignored. After an hour, Vaughn suddenly broke off the conversation, saying we had to move on. I was relieved that we had all survived this experience, and was ready to pack up and depart feeling that I had failed in this entire effort. But before I could close out the session, in a very steady voice Vaughn asked each person to reflect on the activities of the previous hour—what were the strong and weak points, was it a discussion, was it a success or a disaster, and how could it have been improved? I was startled both at what Vaughn had attempted at this stage and also at how the men responded. They were very circumspect and considerate in their comments. Both the white prisoners and the black prisoners spoke calmly about what had transpired, and they were even able to discuss the reason why some had felt compelled to leave the circle. At the end of the main discussion I hadn’t expected that we could ever revive the discipline they had attained the previous week. But during the analytical conversation everything changed. The men began to reflect on other aspects of the issue once they no longer felt that they were expected to defend their respective races. After about fifteen minutes during which they considered how Vaughn had conducted the session, someone abruptly broadened the issue. Stuttering, Lee asked whether anyone had ever tried to enslave someone in the prison, or even whether that had happened during the discussion. There was a long silence and I could see many moving nervously in their chairs. Finally Thomas acknowledged both. And within moments, as if finally given the freedom to speak openly, all entered the discussion as if they were no longer just the victims but also the perpetrators. They began to describe the complexity of their emotions as slave owners. They recounted how when they first enslaved someone on the tiers they felt a power and sense of victory. �REFLECTIONS | ZEIDERMAN 175 They no longer felt imprisoned but human again. But then they began to feel the enslaved person to be a burden. Instead, only the free prisoners interested them. Their slaves were servile, willing to say or do anything they felt would ease their lot. These men here, all of whom were acknowledging themselves as slavers, wanted respect. They said they didn’t want it from their slaves but from others—from one another. All felt that the moment they enslaved someone his respect was worthless and their own self-respect diminished. And others would not respect them for such pointless conquests. After their first moment of euphoria, they said they felt debased and less human. And they began acting that way. It was through reflecting on themselves and their discussion that the text Vaughn had chosen was finally explored. As I drove back to Annapolis that evening, I finally had occasion to reflect on what I had just experienced. In the prison I had encountered the genuine reality of a critical section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit—the section on Lordship and Bondage. Unlike the obscure and illusive abstractions in the Phenomenology, the prisoners had actually lived through the failures described so speculatively by Hegel. They too, as Hegel points out about all of us, felt the deep and fundamental urge to be recognized as human, to be acknowledged as beings who were different from the rats and insects that populated their world. And they struggled for this even in their most heinous acts. These men, enslaved by their past and by their world, used others in their attempts to break free; they tried to display their humanity through acts of conquest; they were willing to die in order to assert themselves as lords over a cell block or over a part of the yard. And in the moment of success, in the moment of attaining complete control over a space and its inhabitants, they acknowledged feeling their sense of themselves slipping away into emptiness. In addition, the very men whose submission and recognition was meant to guarantee their own mastery and control showed to them the futility of seeking that recognition. By succumbing, the vanquished prisoners showed that they couldn’t appreciate what the victor truly was, and therefore couldn’t offer genuine acknowledgement and recognition. And so the victors began to recognize themselves as slaves even in their moment of conquest. In Hegel’s story of the progress of human consciousness toward complete self-awareness, the master who conquers is a dead end. The story continues through the trials and struggles of the slave. And it is �176 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW self-discipline that points the way to Hegel’s all too joyous conclusion at the end of what he called the path of despair. Here too was despair, here in these yards and in the echoing corridors—and yet these men had showed a self-discipline that I hadn’t expected of them. They had gone farther than I could have imagined, farther than I could go myself. They no longer needed a text to mediate themselves. For a brief hour, they had raged about their pain and anger and humiliation, and then, in a remarkable display of self-awareness, they reflected objectively on their own strengths and weaknesses. Though the road they had taken was not directed toward Hegel’s auspicious culmination of history, their exercise of self-discipline had nonetheless revealed the path to the self. As Shaka—who considered himself a slave even though he had been born in 1975—said, it was in these discussions that he found his voice for the first time. These men had attained more than anyone could give them, something that any act of bestowal would itself destroy. These men had to find their own voices. They had to surrender the idioms of their age and class and race and gender, and for the first time risk hearing themselves. Together they had to break free from the prison that, as Eddie pointed out, they and I and all others inhabit. These prisoners thanked the discussions for making that possible. Perhaps that was true, but it was also true that they had created the discussions. The discussions weren’t there waiting for them. And suddenly I realized what it meant for me to surrender control. The most that I had been able to do was to set the stage for acts of courage that I could admire, but might never have the privilege to display. I left the prison realizing that for a brief moment I had seen, in men confined to cells for their entire lives, a degeree of mutual respect and recognition—of freedom—that the rest of us rarely achieve. �177 POETRY The Love-Song of the Agoraphobic Elliott Zuckerman O sing a song of standing alone on the steppes of central Asia and celebrate when thinly dressed the stark surrounding white of arctic ice. Tell me these are Patagonian seas and I’ll sing louder. Have you noticed that the deck-chairs tame the ship-board by cutting off the terrible full circle? Every market-place is emptiness. I cannot count the ears of the endless rows in the Iowa of my imagination. �178 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �REVIEWS 179 Henry Kissinger on China: The Dangerous Illusion of “Realist” Foreign Policy A Review of Henry Kissinger’s On China. New York: Penguin, 2011. 608 pages, $49.95. Joseph A. Bosco Henry Kissinger, an avid student and admirer of the “realist” statecraft of Machiavelli, Metternich, and Mao, is viewed (not least by himself) as the archetypical practitioner of Realpolitik in America’s foreign policy establishment. His latest memoir, On China, describes how he and Richard Nixon established American relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1971-72, after nearly a quarter-century of mutual isolation, suspicion, and hostility. He touts the China opening as demonstrating the putative success of their “pragmatic” and “non-ideological” approach, and he makes the case with his customary erudition, aplomb, and Churchillian use of the English language. The book is also a richly detailed account of the personal and sometimes philosophical interactions among the four key players: Nixon, Kissinger, Mao Zedong, and Zhou-En-lai. In an earlier book, Kissinger wrote that the China initiative “marked America’s return to the world of Realpolitik.”1 Despite China’s horrific human rights record and aggressive behavior since the Communists took power in 1949, Washington sought rapprochement, convinced that it was “central to the establishment of a peaceful international order and transcended America’s reservations about China’s radical governance.”2 Kissinger can justifiably claim at least partial results in one important objective of the strategy—relations with Moscow: “[T]he Nixon Administration managed to create a major incentive for Soviet moderation” that led to a brief period of detente and a series of strategic arms control agreements,3 though it Joseph A. Bosco served as China country desk officer in the office of the Secretary of Defense, 2005-2006, and previously taught graduate seminars on China-Taiwan-U.S. relations at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. �180 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW was soon followed by one of the most fraught periods in Soviet-U.S. relations. But pursuit of the other immediate goal sought by the NixonKissinger diplomacy—China’s cooperation in terminating the Vietnam War on “honorable terms” for America—ended in ignominious failure. “We made the withdrawal of our military forces from Taiwan conditional on the settlement of the Vietnam war.”4 Kissinger blames the outcome in Vietnam on Congress’s unwillingness to enforce the Paris Peace Treaty. He says that he and Nixon foresaw Hanoi’s “massive violations” of the Treaty, but he signed it nevertheless because, if necessary to ensure compliance, the use of air power to enforce the agreement was never ruled out, either in the minds of members of the Nixon Administration or in its public pronouncements.5 Obviously, Hanoi was not deterred by the administration’s warnings that “we will not tolerate violations of the Agreement.”6 As North Vietnam’s main army forces poured over the 17th Parallel into the South, the Treaty collapsed along with South Vietnam. Kissinger earned a Nobel Peace Prize for having negotiated the agreement along with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, who declined the Prize. Hardheaded realism requires that the overall China engagement policy be examined over the long-term. Did it attain the peaceful international order Kissinger described as its goal? In this regard, the results of Kissinger’s Realpolitik with China—which Nixon enthusiastically endorsed but also regarded as a “strategic gamble”—may well be judged as one of the greatest miscalculations in American diplomatic history. Kissinger, of course, does not see it this way. He seems still to revel in the momentous negotiations that shook the world, even though its aftershocks grow increasingly ominous as time goes by. The Shanghai Communiqué, drafted by Kissinger and Zhou En-lai, was the seminal document in the new Sino-U.S. relationship. It clearly stated the premise of the U.S. position: “[I]mproving communications between countries that have different ideologies . . . lessen[s] the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding.”7 Kissinger looks back with satisfaction over the ensuing four warfree decades, during which he continued to play influential roles— often simultaneously—as a successful commercial entrepreneur in �REVIEWS | BOSCO 181 China and as an unofficial strategic adviser to both the American and Chinese governments. His personal longevity, intellectual vigor, and ongoing involvement in international affairs have enabled him to consult on an intimate basis with each of the four men who have led China since the creation of the People’s Republic (and now with Xi Jinping, the designated fifth-generation leader), as well as with the eight American presidents who have largely carried out Kissinger’s policies. “Despite occasional tensions . . . [i]n the forty years since [the Communiqué] was signed, neither China nor the United States has allowed the issue [of human rights] to interrupt the momentum of their relationship.”8 Yet during that period the United States and China have experienced their third Taiwan Strait Crisis; several dangerous clashes at sea; the EP-3 incident; two separate nuclear threats against American cities by Chinese generals; Beijing’s undermining of American objectives on nonproliferation, on North Korea, and on a range of rogue state issues; and China’s creation of an alternative development model that violates international standards of accountability, transparency, and good governance. Kissinger’s massive volume does not do justice to these events, where it mentions them at all. To demonstrate how far U.S.-China relations have progressed since the historic opening, Kissinger writes: “Nixon had to overcome a legacy of twenty years of American foreign policy based on the assumption that China would use every opportunity to weaken the United States and to expel it from Asia.”9 He gives short shrift, however, to China’s contemporary demands, backed by their historically unprecedented military strength, that the U.S. curtail its activities in international waters like the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea. He sees Chinese “triumphalist” rhetoric as unreflective of official Chinese policy and merely a hypothetical danger. At a recent meeting with South Korea’s defense minister, which occurred too late for inclusion in On China, the chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s general staff, General Chen Bingde “issued an unusual and caustic tirade against . . . America’s hegemonic attitudes toward other countries.”10 Such Chinese accusations are not unusual, never having disappeared despite Kissinger’s rosy assessment of the achievements of the Shanghai Communiqué. Given the longevity of such Chinese views of Washington’s motives, coupled with China’s economic and military surge, it is no wonder that, thirty years after his historic opening, �182 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Nixon worried, “We may have created a Frankenstein.”11 Kissinger, however, remains untroubled over his role in establishing and perpetuating the framework for U.S.-China relations, and unconcerned about what that undertaking has produced. James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011 that China now presents “the greatest mortal threat” to the United States.12 On China, together with the author’s extensive promotional interviews for the book, may well be Kissinger’s last concerted attempt to establish a favorable historical record for the landmark oopening to China. It is certainly a vigorous defense of Realpolitik in the crucible of U.S.-China relations. But even on its own realist terms the book ultimately fails in its mission of vindication. This is partly because the story is not over and indeed is worsening as China’s economic and military power continue to grow. But the evidence of long-term strategic failure is now sufficient to conclude that Nixon’s strategic gamble has already failed—nearly a half-century after the opening, the two powers should not still be seriously contemplating scenarios for going to war with each other. But we are. The issue that had always stymied Sino-U.S. relations until the Nixon-Kissinger overture was the status of Taiwan. As Kissinger approvingly recalls, Washington initially lost interest in Taiwan after Mao’s Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949, during which the U.S. remained on the sidelines. “Having conceded the mainland to Communist control and whatever geopolitical impact this might have, it made no sense to resist Communist attempts to occupy Taiwan.”13 Secretary of State Dean Acheson and General Douglas MacArthur effectively reflected that thinking in late 1949 and early 1950, when they publicly delineated U.S. strategic interests in Asia and excluded both Taiwan and South Korea from America’s security perimeter. In his book, Kissinger criticizes Acheson’s National Press Club statement in January, 1950: “To the extent deterrence requires clarity about a country’s intention, Acheson’s speech missed the mark.”14 Actually, Acheson was, if anything, too clear in indicating, as MacArthur had done a month earlier, that Washington did not intend to use military force to defend Taiwan or South Korea. No wonder, then, that Kim Il-sung, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong thought they had a U.S. green �REVIEWS | BOSCO 183 light to pursue aggressive unification. But after North Korea’s attack on South Korea converted hypothetical danger to stark reality, a shocked foreign policy establishment changed its perception of the Asian Communist threat: “When American policymakers came faceto-face with an actual Communist invasion, they ignored their policy papers.”15 President Truman mobilized a United Nations defense of South Korea and sent the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent a Chinese attack there, frustrating Mao’s openly stated intentions to do just that. As Kissinger put it regarding the Korean War, “The United States did not expect the invasion; China did not expect the reaction.”16 After the war ended in a military and negotiated stalemate, President Eisenhower signed Mutual Defense Treaties with both South Korea and Taiwan in 1954. The U.S. military presence maintained the peace for the next decade and a half. Nevertheless, Kissinger expresses disdain for the sterile Sino-U.S. impasse over the island’s status that kept the two governments isolated from each other during that period: “China would discuss no other subject until the United States agreed to withdraw from Taiwan and the United States would not talk about withdrawing from Taiwan until China had renounced the use of force to solve the Taiwan question.”17 At that point Nixon and Kissinger entered the scene wielding the sword of Realpolitik. They cut the Gordian knot—simply acceding to China’s position. Washington informed Beijing that the Seventh Fleet—the primary obstacle to a Chinese attack on Taiwan—was leaving the Taiwan Strait forthwith and all American forces would be withdrawn from Taiwan in stages. The fact that these commitments were made even before the start of the official Sino-U.S. dialogue violated one of the Nixon-Kissinger realist admonitions against making advance concessions and appearing overly eager to please. “We have a tendency to apply our standards to others in negotiations. We like to pay in advance to show our good will, but in foreign policy you never get paid for services already rendered.”18 As Nixon instructed his adviser, “We cannot be too forthcoming in terms of what America will do [by saying] we’ll withdraw, and we’ll do this, and that, and the other thing.”19 But U.S. actions had already conveyed the impression that Washington craved the rapprochement far more than did Beijing. Any fair-minded realist would have to say that this impression weakened American negotiating lan- �184 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW guage, strategic clarity, and deterrence in perpetuity. As Kissinger takes justifiable pride in noting repeatedly, seven subsequent administrations have followed the Nixon-Kissinger approach. For more than four decades, consequently, Beijing has taken full advantage of that Western indulgence, deriving the benefits from the international system while enjoying wide latitude in its domestic and international behavior. Kissinger has presented confusing, and even contradictory, accounts of the origin of the Sino-American “understanding” on Taiwan established during Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao. In On China, he writes: “[A]fter decades of mutual recrimination over Taiwan, the subject in effect did not come up” except for some sarcastic banter about Chiang Kai-shek.20 A few pages later, he reaffirms that “Mao had omitted any substantive reference to Taiwan.”21 To bolster this point, Kissinger reports his own conversation with Mao a year after the Nixon meeting: “[T]o remove any element of threat Mao explicitly delinked the issue of Taiwan from the overall U.S.-China relationship.”22 Although Mao warned that he did not believe China and Taiwan would be able to effect a peaceful transition,23 as far as China-U.S. relations were concerned, “Mao made his principal point—that there were no time pressures of any kind.”24 Mao also told him, “I say that we can do without Taiwan for the time being, and let it come after one hundred years.”25 Kissinger explains that Mao actually had two principal points of equal importance: First, “that Beijing would not foreclose its option to use force over Taiwan—and indeed expected to have to use force someday.”26 Second, “for the time being at least, Mao was putting off this day.”27 Kissinger’s account of the Mao-Nixon the discussion in On China is consistent with Nixon’s own description of the meeting in his 1978 memoir.28 Inexplicably, however, Kissinger told the story quite differently in two books he wrote between Nixon’s Memoirs and his own On China. In 1979 and again 1994, Kissinger put Mao’s talk of delay in Taiwan’s demise not in a one-on-one meeting with him, but in Mao’s meeting with Nixon, at which Kissinger was also present: “[T]he Chinese leader wasted no time in assuring the President that China would not use force against Taiwan: “We can do without them for the time being, and let it come after 100 years.’”29 In these earlier accounts, Kissinger saw Mao’s statement to the President as a mani- �REVIEWS | BOSCO 185 festation of large-minded statesmanship: “Mao asked for no reciprocity for the assurance America had been seeking for twenty years.”30 Whichever version is accurate, Kissinger’s perception that Mao was making a major unilateral concession is astoundingly innocent. Nixon and Kissinger had already given Mao the quid for his quo—a commitment to withdraw U.S. forces on and near Taiwan. Indeed, they had already given Mao much more. Kissinger remarks that “Nixon and his advisers . . . deemed diplomatic contact with China essential” and, as early as 1969, had publicly committed the United States to defend China’s independence against a Soviet attack—a unique security guarantee from an American president to a hostile Communist government.31 Moreover, Kissinger did not even seem to regard Taiwan as a strategic bargaining chip. He once expressed bemused incredulity to Mao that China would wait so long to take Taiwan: “Not a hundred years,” he remarked. Mao responded: “It is hard to say. Five years, ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s hard to say.”32 Despite the shifting target dates, Mao’s comments about Taiwan consistently made clear that China would use force to take it: “[W]e are going to fight for it.”33 So, Nixon and Kissinger, the two hardheaded practitioners of Realpolitik, knowingly traded a concrete action China wanted—permanent U.S. withdrawal from Taiwan—for a vague and temporary expression of the action Washington had sought—China’s commitment not to use force against Taiwan. It is worth noting that on none of the occasions when Mao affirmed China’s intention to attack Taiwan did Kissinger raise any question or objection. Nor did he suggest that the United States would feel compelled to defend Taiwan on the basis of its “interest in a peaceful settlement” as stated in the Shanghai Communiqué. Nixon, Kissinger, Mao, and Zhou, who might be called the Gang of Four Realists, all understood that American public opinion and the U.S. Congress would not tolerate abandonment of Taiwan to Communist China at that time. After a decent interval, however—in Nixon’s expected second term—the deed would be done.34 China would get its “full meal.” While Nixon shared wholeheartedly in that original Realpolitik cleverness, his view significantly evolved as Taiwan itself moved from dictatorship to democracy; unlike Kissinger, he concluded that democratic Taiwan is now permanently divorced from Communist China. (See discussion below.) On China suffers from surprising historical inaccuracies and glar- �186 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ing omissions on some pivotal events in China-U.S. relations. Kissinger recounts the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, which began in July 1995 when China fired missiles toward Taiwan to protest a U.S. visit by Taiwan’s appointed president, Lee Teng-hui. China then conducted military exercises in the Strait during the period leading up to Taiwan’s parliamentary elections in December. Chinese officials, clearly intent on avoiding North Korea’s 1950 miscalculation, put the crucial question directly to their American counterparts during a November visit of Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye: How would the U.S. respond if China attacked Taiwan? Here was an ideal opportunity for supposedly realist Washington to provide the strategic clarity and deterrent message Kissinger found lacking in Acheson’s Press Club speech. But Nye, even as he cited that earlier Korean experience, answered equivocally: “We don’t know and you don’t know; it would depend on the circumstances.”35 Understandably wary of signaling an Acheson-style green light, Nye erred in failing to red-light China’s ambitions by a plain commitment to Taiwan’s defense. Instead, he gave China a yellow light—what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity”—and it worked for that moment as China decided to proceed with caution for the time being. When asked the same question by American interviewers weeks later, Defense Secretary William Perry enthusiastically adopted Nye’s statement, and it has been Washington’s official stance ever since. Curiously this pivotal incident does not appear in On China, and neither Nye nor Perry is mentioned in the book. Equally surprising is Kissinger’s failure to note the extraordinary threat conveyed by a Chinese general to an American scholar at that time: “You care more about Los Angeles than about Taiwan.”36 Within a month of Nye’s statement, the Nimitz carrier group passed through the Strait—the first such transit in the 23 years since Nixon had removed the Seventh Fleet. After China protested, Washington explained that this passage was merely a weather diversion, not a warning or a signal of commitment to Taiwan’s defense— thereby undermining the impact of “the most significant American show of force directed at China since the 1971 rapprochement.”37 Kissinger fails to note the missed deterrent opportunity for the United States: having sent the ships through the Strait, it could have reminded Beijing matter-of-factly that no U.S. explanation or Chinese indul- �REVIEWS | BOSCO 187 gence was required for the exercise of America’s freedom of navigation rights in international waters.38 Kissinger’s account also misstates the date and context of the Nimitz Taiwan Straight passage. He places it not in December 1995, when it actually occurred, but three months later in March 1996, prior to Taiwan’s first presidential election, when China tested the U.S. again by resuming its missile firings across the Strait. On that second occasion in March, President Clinton deployed both the Nimitz and the Independence to the area. But when Beijing threatened a “sea of fire” if the ships entered the Strait, they changed course and avoided the Strait. As a result, Washington’s attempt to signal deterrence was trumped by Beijing’s message of counter-deterrence. This compounded the garbled strategic signals in December. A former senior U.S. official who had been in office at the time later described the 1995-96 confrontations as the Clinton administration’s “own Cuban missile crisis,” and said they had “stared into the abyss.”39 Kissinger uses similar language to describe the crisis: “Approaching the precipice, both Washington and Beijing recoiled.”40 But his failure to note the mismanaged U.S. messaging during this critical period is surprising given his lifelong career focus on the roles of ambiguity and clarity in international diplomacy generally and in the famously complex and nuanced U.S.-China relationship in particular.41 Nor does he remark on the significant lessons China learned from the tense episode. According to subsequent Defense Department reports on China’s military power, after 1996 Beijing resolved to develop the capacity to deter or delay U.S. intervention in any future Taiwan crisis. It has done so by deploying a formidable arsenal of “area denial” and “anti-access” weapons, including advanced attack submarines and the world’s first ship-killing ballistic missiles. Kissinger takes no notice of these ominous developments. Nor does he mention the existence of the congressionally mandated Pentagon reports on China’s dramatic military advances.42 On China also ignores President George W. Bush’s abortive attempt in 2001 to restore the clarity of America’s commitment to Taiwan’s security that prevailed from 1950 until the Nixon opening to China in 1972. The president said he would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan now that it had become a democracy.43 Shocked China experts within and outside the administration scrambled to walk that �188 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW statement back, restoring the ambiguity of the earlier, presumably safer policy. But it was the attacks of September 11, 2001 that put the Taiwan issue on the back burner as Washington managed to convince itself that Beijing was now on the same side with the U.S. in the war on terrorism, counter-proliferation, and even controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Notwithstanding Kissinger’s omissions and historical errors, On China offers an illuminating account of the similarities and differences between Kissinger and Nixon on China policy. The two clearly agreed on the compromises and ambiguities that enabled the China opening. They also agreed that their successors should continue the engagement policy because abandoning it would entail seriously adverse consequences. They parted company, however, over the future of Taiwan and the attendant prospects for Sino-U.S. conflict. Nixon recalled how “the Shanghai Communiqué negotiated by Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai brilliantly bridged the differences between the two governments.”44 But he also wrote: Realistic reappraisals of U.S. relations with Taiwan, and of the relations between the governments in Beijing and Taipei, are overdue. . . . The situation has changed dramatically since then. . . . China and Taiwan publicly have irreconcilable differences. The separation is permanent politically, but they are in bed together economically.45 He advocated that the two sides simply accept their mutual dependency, and he also recommended that the United States strongly support Taiwan’s membership in international economic organizations. He exhorted Washington to “begin extending to Taiwan government officials the diplomatic courtesies that the leaders of one of the world’s major economic powers deserve.”46 And he expressed optimism for a long-term peaceful outcome: “The Chinese will not launch a military attack against Taiwan as long as Beijing knows such an attack would jeopardize their relations with the United States.”47 Kissinger assesses the situation differently. He still believes, as Nixon did, that the “ambiguous formula” he inserted in the Shanghai Communiqué was masterful: “ambiguity is sometimes the lifeblood of diplomacy.”48 Unlike Nixon, however, Kissinger believes that �REVIEWS | BOSCO 189 China will use force against Taiwan unless it accepts “peaceful reunification through peaceful means,” as Premier Wen Jiabao put it to President Bush in December 2003.49 But Kissinger recalls a 2001 conversation with President Jiang Zemin, in which he mentioned the possibility of military action against Taiwan. Kissinger took the remark seriously enough that he “felt obliged to reply to this threat of force” by saying, “In a military confrontation between the U.S. and China, even those of us who would be heartbroken would be obliged to support our own country.”50 Kissinger did not predict that the U.S. would in fact defend Taiwan, and he makes clear in his book that he doubts it will: “The crucial competition between the United States and China is more likely to be economic and social than military.”51 Given the state of Sino-U.S. economic interdependence and the dramatic increase in China’s military power, it is unlikely Kissinger would find a U.S. defense of Taiwan more palatable today than it was in 1949, when the PLA was a lot weaker. This is why he has publicly urged Taiwan to exercise the “peaceful” option and come to terms with Beijing before China feels compelled to resort to force. This is also the reason Kissinger warns Washington about continued arms sales to Taiwan: “It would be dangerous to equate [China’s] acquiescence to circumstance with agreement for the indefinite future.”52 Nixon believed that war over Taiwan could be avoided by self-interested Chinese selfrestraint; Kissinger believes that peace can be assured only if Taiwan and the United States accept Taiwan’s unification with China— thereby consummating the deal he made with Zhou En-lai in 1972. “[The] series of ambiguities [that] sustained much of normalization for forty years . . . cannot do so indefinitely.”53 It may be that Kissinger has fallen victim to the ancient realist principles he admires in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, teachings that anticipate Realpolitik in emphasizing “subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage.”54 This sort of approach involves “building a dominant political and psychological position, such that the outcome of a conflict becomes a foregone conclusion,”55 for “strategy resolves itself into a psychological contest” that sometimes requires “subterfuge and misinformation.”56 Like Sun Tzu, “Mao believed in the objective impact of ideological, and above all, psychological factors.”57 Mao and Zhou applied these principles adeptly in their interactions with Nixon and Kissinger, and their suc- �190 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cessors have continued the tradition. For example, despite his dissatisfaction with Washington’s continued arms sales to Taiwan, Deng Xiaoping skillfully managed his relations with Washington so that, as Kissinger concedes, “the People’s Republic achieved another decade of American assistance as it built its economic and military power.”58 Kissinger also uses On China to warn against too much emphasis on China’s human rights record. Once called “the American Metternich,” Kissinger espouses the realist position that national interest must be based on seeing the world as it is, not as we would like it to be, and certainly not with an over-emphasis on human rights and democratic values (which he calls crusading moralism) important as they are to America’s national identity. The best way to influence China on human rights, he informed Fareed Zakaria in a recent televised interview, is to leave it to himself and a few others who have earned the trust and confidence of China over the years and can broach the subject in private rather than embarrassing its leaders in public. But the record of the past forty years reveals that his realist approach has proved to be decidedly unrealistic. That is because, contrary to Kissinger’s teaching, the counterpoint to realism is not always idealism or excessive morality. Clearheaded pursuit of the national interest can also be clouded by sentimentality, wishful thinking, illusion, grandiosity, even self-delusion. Kissinger long ago convinced himself that he and Chinese leaders shared a hard-nosed pragmatism based on mutual selfinterest. “I could not have encountered a group of interlocutors more receptive to Nixon’s style of diplomacy than the Chinese leaders.”59 He was comfortable in his assumption that the Chinese perceived their own self-interest as he believes he would have seen it if he were in their place. So he constantly projected onto Beijing his views of their self-interest. It is a variation of a phenomenon Kissinger often decries: American diplomats sometimes contracting what has been called clientitis. They become the policy captives of the countries to which they are posted and end up advocating that government’s views to Washington instead of the reverse. But Kissinger, with characteristic intellectual complexity, takes clientitis to a new level. He sympathetically presents to his American audience not merely the official Chinese position, but also his own imaginary conception of what the Chinese position would be if they were as rational as he is. Kissinger has written that in “our opening to China . . . [o]ur objective was to purge our for- �REVIEWS | BOSCO 191 eign policy of all sentimentality.”60 It may be that he and Nixon only replaced one form of sentimentality with their own, though Nixon, unlike Kissinger, apparently recovered his perspective enough to predict a future Taiwan free of Chinese Communist domination. Some passages in On China suggest Kissinger’s knowing psychological susceptibility to China’s advances. Kissinger fully recognizes how “Chinese statesmen historically have excelled at using hospitality, ceremony, and carefully cultivated personal relationships as tools of statecraft.”61 His chapter on the history of China’s relations with the outside world contains an interesting passage from the Han Dynasty: “For those who come to surrender, the emperor [should] show them favor [and] personally serve them wine and food so as to corrupt their mind.”62 A few hundred pages later, Kissinger describes the lavish banquets his Chinese hosts bestowed on him—and includes in his book a photograph showing Zhou En-lai using his chopsticks to place food on Kissinger’s plate. Whether Kissinger has been beguiled and seduced by a series of Chinese leaders, or has merely invested so much of his life in vindicating the original flawed Sino-U.S. understanding that he can no longer deviate from his own orthodoxy, the consequences are the same. Or perhaps the explanation for Kissinger’s vulnerability to Chinese influence is more geostrategic and less psychological. Intellectually and professionally, Kissinger’s, and Nixon’s, strong anti-Soviet background doubtless predisposed them to align the United States with China, Moscow’s chief adversary at the time. (“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”) Kissinger probably exaggerated his own neutrality when he described the debate within official national security and foreign policy circles over which way American policy should tilt. He recalls that there were “Slavophiles,” “Sinophiles,” and those who advocated Realpolitik. “Not surprisingly,” he writes, “I was on the side of the Realpolitikers.”63 Richard Nixon’s seminal thinking on the need to open relations with China was set forth in his October 1967 article in Foreign Affairs, in which he wrote: “[W]e simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates, and threaten its neighbors.”64 When, in 1994, Kissinger reviewed the consequences of his approach to China, he concluded that “[t]he certitudes of physical threat and hostile ideology characteristic of the Cold War are gone.”65 But �192 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW three years earlier, Deng Xiaoping—supposedly the un-Mao, who had already ordered China’s military to “shed some blood”66 in Tiananmen Square—gave fair warning of what lay ahead for the world: “hide our capacities and bide our time.”67 Given the present state of Sino-U.S. relations, the danger of conflict over Taiwan, North Korea, the South China Sea, Beijing’s essentially subversive role on proliferation and third world governance, and a myriad of other issues, it is fair to ask: Who are the true realists? As he again surveyed China-U.S. relations recently in the context of increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and elsewhere, Kissinger warned: “Care must be taken lest both sides analyze themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies.”68 The problem is that there has been too little reflection and fresh thinking in the West regarding Communist China’s long-term motives. We are now being forced, belatedly, to reexamine long-held premises and assumptions. Kissinger’s On China provides abundant evidence of the reasons why reassessment is needed—now more than ever. NOTES 1. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994), 724. 2. Henry Kissinger, On China, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), 447. 3. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 719. 4. Kissinger, On China, 249. 5. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 696. 6. Ibid. 7. Joint Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America, February 28, 1972, reprinted in Richard Nixon, Speeches, Writings, Documents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 225. 8. Kissinger, On China, 272. 9. Ibid., 216. 10. Miles Yu, “Inside China,” The Washington Times, July 20, 2011. 11. William Safire, “The Biggest Vote,” The New York Times, May 18, 2000. 12. Testimony of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, before the Senate Intelligence Committee, March 10, 2011. 13. Kissinger, On China, 119. 14. Ibid., 125. �REVIEWS | BOSCO 193 15. Ibid., 129. 16. Ibid., 132. 17. Ibid., 159. 18. The Diane Rehm Show, Interview with Henry Kissinger, WAMU-FM, April 7, 1994. Emphasis added. 19. Kissinger, On China, 266. 20. Ibid., 258. 21 Ibid., 279. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., emphasis added. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 280. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 561-564. 29. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 1062; and Diplomacy, 727. Emphasis added). 30. Ibid. 31. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 723-724. 32. Kissinger, On China, 307. 33. Ibid. 34. Kissinger, On China, 271. “[Nixon’s] intention, he affirmed, was to complete the normalization process in his second term.” 35. Joseph Nye, The Boston Globe, February 7, 1996, 6. 36. William Perry, The New York Times, January 24, 1996, 1. 37. Ibid., 476. 38. After China complained about a Strait transit by the Kitty Hawk in 2007, Admiral Timothy Keating, the Pacific Commander, replied: “We don’t need China’s permission to go through the Taiwan Straits. It is international water. We will exercise our free right of passage whenever and wherever we choose to.” “Sino-American Showdown in Taiwan Strait: Chinese Navy Confronted USS Kitty Hawk,” Global Research, January 16, 2008. Kissinger does not mention the incident. 39. Off-the-record Washington speech by a former U.S. official. 40. Kissinger, On China, 477. 41. Kissinger is decidedly ambiguous on the role of ambiguity in statecraft, at least as it is practiced by others. Critical of Acheson’s lack of deterrent �194 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW clarity in 1950, he takes great pride in his own “one China” formulation in the Shanghai Communiqué, which could be a model of ambiguity as “the lifeblood of diplomacy.” But then he criticizes President Reagan’s Third Communiqué on Taiwan arms sales because it “is quite ambiguous, hence a difficult roadmap for the future.” Kissinger, On China, 383. 42. See, e.g., Annual Report to Congress: The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, 2005, Office of the Secretary of Defense. 43. David E. Sanger, “U.S. Would Defend Taiwan, Bush Says,” The New York Times, April 26, 2001. 44. Richard Nixon, Beyond Peace (New York: Random House, 1994), 133. 45. Ibid., 134. Emphasis added. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Kissinger, On China, 356. 49. Ibid., 492. 50. Ibid., 484. 51. Ibid., 525. 52. Ibid., 385. 53. Ibid., 356. To Chinese readers of Kissinger’s book, the title words On China may look very much like “One China.” 54. Ibid., 23. 55. Ibid., 26. 56. Ibid., 29. 57. Ibid., 101. 58. Ibid., 386. 59. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 726. 60. Kissinger, White House Years, 191. 61. Kissinger, On China, 237. 62. Ibid., 21. Emphasis added. 63. Kissinger, White House Years, 182. 64. Richard Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs, 46.1 (1967): 121. 65. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 835. 66. The New York Times, June 4, 2010, 1. 67. “Deng Initiates New Policy ‘Guiding Principle,’” FBIS-CHI-91-215, quoted in Kissinger, On China, 438. 68. “Avoiding a U.S.-China Cold War,” Henry A. Kissinger, The Washington Post, January 14, 2011. See also “Our Fraught Place with China,” Joseph A. Bosco, The Weekly Standard, January 21, 2011. �195 REVIEWS Everything is One A Review of Eva Brann’s The Logos of Heraclitus: The First Philosopher of the West on Its Most Interesting Term. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2011. 160 pages, $16.95. David Carl The Greeks had but one word, logos, for both speech and reasoning; not that they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reasoning without speech; and the act of reasoning they called syllogism, which signifieth summing up the consequences of one saying to another. —Hobbes, Leviathan I.iv.14 What is the relationship between what we say and what we think, or how we think? In her new book Eva Brann demonstrates that these questions are among the oldest (and most interesting) questions taken up by Western philosophy, and that they find their origin in the Logos of Heraclitus. This Logos, however, is not initially something spoken, but something heard, and much hinges on the content and the nature of Heraclitus’s hearing. What Heraclitus heard was the Logos, for the Logos speaks (is a Speaker) and the philosopher is one who hears. Heraclitus is “that aboriginal listener to the Logos” (87).* But this is the beginning of the mystery, not its solution; and teasing out the implications, the ambiguities (or ambivalencies), the paradoxes and possibilities of what the Logos says is the primary task of Ms. Brann’s book. How exactly did he hear what the Logos said? To whom or what was he listening? How did he learn to hear so well? And how will he share, across the centuries, the timeless truth of what he heard? Brann begins her account of Heraclitean hearing by introducing us, by means of an analysis of Raphael’s School of Athens, to the figDavid Carl is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. * Page numbers in parentheses refer to Eva Brann’s Heraclitus. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 196 ure of Heraclitus, and briefly relates the history of logos, as distinct from the Heraclitean Logos. She then turns her attention, over the course of four closely reasoned pages, to a detailed consideration of a two-line fragment from Heraclitus’s lost treatise known as On Nature, D-K 50:1 To those hearing not me but the Saying, to say the same is the Wise Thing: Everything [is] One. (16) Through consideration of etymological detail informed by an imaginative intimacy with the history of Western philosophy and literature, an understanding of this fragment emerges which highlights the stakes of Heraclitus’s hearing: the Logos is a “Wise Thing,” and it is wise for us to have knowledge of it “since it governs the relation of all things to everything” (19). As we will see, the key word in this understanding is “relation.” Seeing as Hearing In the next sections of her book, Brann leads her reader towards an appreciation of how the Logos both embodies and reveals the unity “of all things to everything.” She first shows us that Heraclitus is particularly interested in the within and without of the cosmos, and that he looks within in order to understand the without: “no one has ever listened harder to the Logos within!” (87). This is not an unconscious mixing of metaphors: this looking that is a form of listening is part of the essential doubleness of Heraclitus’s thinking—a doubleness which is as apparent in his form and style as it is in the content of his writing. Brann’s discussion of fragmentation (“his inherent fragmentariness entails a certain philosophical completeness” [93]), metaphor, and Heraclitean punning is illuminating in this regard. Twenty-five hundred years after Heraclitus composed the writings we know as his Fragments, Wallace Stevens observed that “[t]he world about us would be desolate except for the world within us,”2 and “it is a violence from within that protects us from a violence from without.”3 Brann shows us that this salutary tension between the within and the without, together with Stevens’ notion of violence, is essential to the way Heraclitus listens to the Logos. Indeed, as we will see, salutary tension is at the heart of Heraclitus’s understanding of the cosmos. His hearing will constantly merge with metaphorical forms of see- �REVIEWS | CARL 197 ing, for Heraclitus pays a great deal of attention to the physical world around him. (“[O]f what there is sight, hearing, learning—these I honor especially” [75].4) Moreover, the Logos he hears “is not audible to the ears but to the soul” (76), nor is the cosmic Fire he sees visible to the physical eye. For Heraclitus the eye and the ear are both metaphors for forms of knowing, namely, listening and seeing. There is deliberate, salutary tension in a mixed metaphor, and the harmony at the core of Heraclitus’s view of nature is driven by tension—the kind of tension that goes into stringing a bow or tuning a lyre. This is why Heraclitus says that “[a]ll things come to be by strife” (106).5 Because of this strife, wrestling is another illuminating metaphor in Heraclitus’s “tautly vital, twangingly alive, strainingly static cosmos”—a cosmos “locked in inimical embraces” that displays “a mode of being that is a harsh, ever-unfulfilled striving” (90). On the way toward understanding how Heraclitean harmony (“there is a Unity relating Everything and All Things” [18]) arises out of this notion of strife and tension, Brann treats us to insightful observations about Heraclitus’s relationships with Aristotle, Parmenides, Pythagoras and the Milesian “proto-physicists”; she discusses the importance of metaphor and ratio (“the Greek name for ratios is logoi, and logoi are the cosmic unifying relations” [124]); she interprets Heraclitus’s notion of Fire (“that pervasive quasi-material that allows all the elements to enter into quantitative ratio-relations with each other” [44]); and she delves into the etymological details of Heraclitus’s Greek in a revealing and delightful way that is free of pedantic stodginess. Ratios and Fire are both ways of putting things into relation with one another. Relation “bonds two terms without merging them” (38), and this is the key to understanding Heraclitus’s notion of the Logos. Brann’s claim is a radical one, startling and yet compelling: she suggests that Heraclitus not only pondered what made “the multifarious world one” (perhaps an inevitable question for a philosopher), but also went on to posit that The Logos (as distinct from logos) was “all at once the relater of all relations, beyond and within them, a maker of the world-order and himself that order, a world governor, and also the world—a doer, a sayer, and perhaps himself a listener” (42). Thus Brann reveals the extreme possibilities of a Heraclitean “world-order,” an order that is coherent and unified—a (contentiously) harmonious and beautiful order—but also mysterious and enigmatic, for “non- �198 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sensory logoi govern the sensory world” (43). It is consequently an order that demands a careful listening. But how do we listen to the non-sensory? By developing the faculty that is capable of hearing what Thinking itself has to say, both to us and about itself. At this point Heraclitus sounds like something of a mystic. But Brann’s book grounds Heraclitus’s thinking so firmly and compellingly in the context of musical ratio, chemistry, and physics that the potential vagaries of mysticism are firmly left behind (“I don’t think so ultimately uncompromising a philosophical physics ever again comes on the scene” [89]). More importantly, Brann shows us how Heraclitus’s thought transcends such distinctions as “mystic/rationalist” or “poet/philosopher” by taking us behind the screen of such divisions. “One : Everything” [21] is the ultimate expression of the Heraclitean philosophy. Heraclitus speaks to us from a time before the distinctions between philosophy, science, and religion had been so starkly delineated. For Heraclitus, investigating the cosmos was the work of an entire human being, and understanding it required an understanding of how “One : Everything” makes sense. This understanding requires us to grasp the relationship between the human and divine as well as between man and nature. Thus Brann’s book ranges through discussions of painting, sculpture, music, mathematics, theology, poetry, philosophy, and physics to reveal the prismatic aspect of Heraclitus’s thought. It is not mysticism, but a way of thinking that precedes the division between mysticism and rationalism. It is not science, but a mode of inquiry that antedates the schism between science and philosophy. Fire Not surprisingly, in Brann’s account Fire is the key to the Heraclitean system. What is surprising is how coherent a picture of the cosmos Brann reveals behind the enigmatic darkness of Heraclitus’s fragments. Aristotle may have called him, “the obscure one,” but for Brann the Heraclitean view is unified and eminently comprehensible because it is rational. And because it is rational, it is measurable. The measurability of everything is at the heart of Brann’s radical interpretation of Heraclitean unity, and it is Fire which makes this possible: “Fire enables the Logos to inform the cosmos with the most determinate relationality thinkable, that expressed in number-ratios” (63). For �REVIEWS | CARL 199 a long-time reader of Heraclitus, this claim hits like a stunning revelation. Suddenly the possibility of a coherent Heraclitean system emerging from those “darkly oracular sayings” (68)—sayings that Socrates claimed it would require a Delian diver to understand6— seems not only possible, but positively inevitable. Through her discussion of ratio and measure Brann carries us down to the bottom of Heraclitus’s dark sea, and she reveals the hidden treasures buried there. Brann’s account of the Heraclitean notion of fire has something in common with the following lines from Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia: Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne.7 Browne would have agreed with Brann’s description of fire’s double nature “as being one element among elements and as acting like a principle through them all” (69). Again we see in “One : Everything” a union of poetic imagery and suggestiveness with a deep philosophic insight into the nature and workings of the cosmos. Other revelatory (and controversial) statements in Brann’s book include the claims that he is the first philosopher in the West as well as the first physicist (that is, the first to give an account of the conservation of matter); that he is the “discoverer of transcendence” (99); that scholars have deformed a central aspect of Heraclitus’s thought be replacing the ratio aspect of his thinking with various forms of the copula “is,” thereby misunderstanding the importance of relation to the Logos; and that he is not the infamous and perplexing philosopher of flux many of us have long considered him to be—especially those of us who formed an early impression of Heraclitus from our encounters with Nietzsche. Tension vs. Flux Brann’s argument that Heraclitus is not a relativist is easy enough to accept. That he is also not the enigmatic philosopher of flux, however, �200 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is a more disconcerting, but equally well-supported thesis of Brann’s book. Brann does not resolve all of Heraclitus’s “paradoxes and contradictions” (68), nor would she care to; for paradoxes are “the expressions precisely adequate to his world-order” (86). Moreover, “Heraclitus speaks paradoxically because that is how the world is” (88). Paradox is a form of verbal and logical tension—and tension, for Heraclitus, is the source of harmony. Tension is “Heraclitus’s most remarkable physical notion” (78), and this notion replaces the more familiar notion of Heraclitus’s flux. It is tension that makes the fundamental ratio “One : Everything” cohere. Brann explores the idea of this unifying tension through discussions of war and wrestling, music and harmony, punning, paradox, and metaphor. In a consideration of the way in which Heraclitus uses metaphor (helpfully set out in contrast to the way Homer uses metaphor), Brann observes that “Heraclitean aphorisms are meant to be unsettling” (71)—but not therefore unintelligible. Unlike Homer’s often consolatory or comforting metaphors, Heraclitus employs metaphors that highlight the “antagonistic opposition” (72) of his terms. Understanding how Heraclitus’s metaphors express this antagonistic opposition helps us to comprehend the role that tension-dependent harmony plays in the overall ratio-based ordering of the cosmos. (The famous image of stringing the bow and the lyre in D-K 51is a perfect example of this sort of metaphor.) The cosmic ordering based on the ratio “One : Everything” is the touchstone to which Brann’s book constantly returns. However far her reasoning or examples wander, she always comes back to this fundamental way of understanding how tension holds the Heraclitean account of the cosmos together, and how the “pervasive mutuality of force is the principle of oneness—of coexistence in a force-community” (79). “The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.”8 And at times the book does wander far, but it is a wonder-full wandering. Brann’s book, divided into five sections of unequal lengths, considers the figure of Heraclitus, the history of logos, Heraclitus’s unique Logos, the afterlife of the Logos, and the Soul of Heraclitus. Along the way, and especially in the “afterlife” section, there are brief �REVIEWS | CARL 201 but fruitfully provocative accounts of Euclid, Homer, John the Evangelist, Nicholas of Cusa, Descartes, Galileo, Newton (she calls Newton’s Third Law “the dynamic formulation of Heraclitus’s world” [79]), wrestling, war, Hegel, Baudelaire, Heidegger, the coining of money, logic, Force, matter, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Zoroaster, Plotinus, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, co-author of The Federalist James Madison. Brann’s claim that Madison’s theory of faction (developed in The Federalist, No. 10) is Heraclitean and that therefore “the Founders’ classical liberalism . . . honors the Heracliteanism of the world” (121) may be the most delightfully audacious moment in the book. Yet she presents her case with such calmly reasoned grace that even her most spectacular suggestions seem obvious. It had never occurred to me, before reading Brann’s book, that there was such a thing as “the Heracliteanism of the world,” and certainly not that it found expression in the Founding Fathers’ notion of liberalism. But her argument presents us with convincing reasons for both hypotheses. In the “afterlife” chapter, Brann considers not so much the disciples of Heraclitus as those figures who have contributed to the ongoing development of the Heraclitean Logos, figures like Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Madison. I would like to briefly consider another such figure here—an author who may never have read a word of Heraclitus and yet whose work seems to express in twentieth-century terms the “Heracliteanism of the world” that Brann reveals in the works of earlier writers and thinkers. The connection with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was suggested to me by a footnote in which Brann says that Heraclitus was one who “declined to travel—except within himself” (151). I was reminded of a passage from Pessoa’s mysterious prose work The Book of Disquiet. Pessoa refers to himself as a “nomad in my self-awareness”9 and exhorts his reader to be “the Columbus of your soul.”10 And he also wrote of the Logos: “there are also, in prose, gestural subtleties carried out by great actor, the Word, which rhythmically transforms into its bodily substance the impalpable mystery of the universe.”11 Pessoa’s “great actor” is a descendant of Heraclitus’s Logos, performing the Heraclitean act of transforming “impalpable mystery” into “bodily substance.” Even the fundamental ratio “One : Everything” finds expression in Pessoa’s writing: �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 202 And so, in order to feel oneself being purely Oneself, each must be in a relationship with all–absolutely all–other beings, and with each in the most profound relationship possible. Now, the most profound relationship possible is that of identity. Therefore, in order to feel oneself being purely Oneself, each must feel itself being all the others, absolutely consubstantiated with all the others.12 Reading this passage in light of Brann’s emphasis on relationality as the key to understanding Heraclitus’s view of the cosmos one is reminded of D-K 10: “Out of everything one and out of one everything” (56). One and/or Many One of the most intriguing parts of Brann’s book is her account of the relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus—a relationship that will be characterized by tension, and thus ultimately be more Heraclitean in its nature than Parmenidean. These thinkers are usually understood as presenting us with a clear choice: being or becoming. Brann’s reading is more nuanced, and if her book deprives us of the romantic notion of Heraclitus as the wild philosopher of chaos and flux and the bête noire of formalists, systematizers and the methodologically hidebound (“the picture of Heraclitus as the philosopher of ultimate instability, of radical mutability, is just ludicrous” [100)]), then she gives us something much richer in return. By rejecting the picture of Heraclitus as “a fluxist all the way down” (102) and as a “philosophical whirling dervish” (104), Brann allows his thinking to enter into provocative relation with that of Parmenides. Brann places Heraclitus and Parmenides “into a time-and space-indifferent dialectic” (102). While Heraclitus will appeal to those who “are gripped by the strife-locked unity of the physical cosmos” (102) his view is nevertheless no longer presented as an either/or alternative to Parmenidean being. Instead Brann poses for us what may well constitute the most interesting question of Western philosophy: What is the relation between Logos and Being? Tracing the forms that this question has taken in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics over the past 2,500 years would be a massive undertaking, but Brann opens the question up for us in a few pages, starting with the provocative claim that “Being is largely mute sub- �REVIEWS | CARL 203 stance, Logos mostly talkative relationality” (103). Brann finds common ground for Heraclitus and Parmenides in the claim that “they both see the same, a Whole, an All, a One, and search out its nature” (104). The nature of this “One” is different for each of them, but the fact that they are both intent on searching out the nature of what is and how it is unites them in a common philosophic endeavor. Whether what is is Being itself or the tension-unifying Logos (“the Logos works in self-opposing ways” [106]) is a millennia-old philosophical question. By analyzing brief passages from the two writers and focusing on their uses of pan, “all,” and panta, “everything,” Brann reintroduces her reader to the timeless immediacy of philosophical investigation. Soul Throughout her book, Brann reveals Heraclitus as psychologist, philosopher, poet, proto-chemist, and physicist (“the first modern scientist” [46]). In the unity of these various modes of inquiry the fundamental ratio of the Logos, “One : Everything,” is embodied in his own work. Brann constantly revisits Heraclitus from the different perspectives that characterize his work: the human side, the cosmic side, and the divine overview that unifies the immanent and transcendent aspects of the first two perspectives. The final chapter of The Logos of Heraclitus sums up, steps back, and takes a swing at what, along with Logos and Being, may be the most perplexing of Western philosophic categories—that of Soul. Brann’s distinction between logos—what, at the human level, is “the more or less thoughtful utterance of our mind and its mindfulness”—and Logos—“which is divine but perhaps not a nameable deity” and which “governs and pilots the cosmos” (123)—reminds us that in terms of the ordered relations that constitute and govern the cosmos it is the Logos “as cosmic fire” that makes sense of the “One : Everything” relation, even when it comes to understanding the relation between the human and the divine. Even here some form of rigorous measurement is possible. At the end of her book, Brann returns to her thesis that “Logos is both nature and its language, and it expresses itself in measures” (125). All ratios are forms of measurement, and measurement is an essentially scientific way of approaching the cosmos. She raises the �204 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW question that has been looming since we first heard of Heraclitus’s enigmatic hearing: “how does Heraclitus himself come to know and understand this language?” (126). In exploring this question, Brann suggests an answer to the question, “What is the soul?” Her answer begins with D-K 101: “I searched myself.” Heraclitus’s searching ranges across the dual realms that Stevens referred to as “the world about us” and “the world within us,” because for Heraclitus there is no understanding that does not encompass and unify these worlds. There can be no distinction between outer and inner; harmony requires tension, but not chaos; unity requires conflict, but not dissolution. “Heraclitus walks the ways of his soul, which are boundless,” and Brann is our guide on this exploration of “the never-ending ways of an enormously capacious inner place” (126). She offers us a conception of the soul as “a mirror of the cosmos”; yet the journey she leads us through remains mathematical and grounded in measurement (“this world soul is a concatenation of compounded ratios” [127]), so that it avoids the abyss of vague mysticism. There is no flabbiness in this inner journey. If Heraclitus is to remain a mystical thinker he will have to do so on the most rigorous of terms, and only by unifying mysticism with a scientific account of the cosmos—another unifying tension in Heraclitus’s thought. Personal Knowing Heraclitus’s accomplishment—the most radical form of fulfilling the Delphic injunction to “know thyself”—is open to anyone. Unlike Parmenides, he was not specially chosen to be a unique human passenger in a god’s chariot. Heraclitus’s conveyance is not a magic carpet; it is rigorous introspection aimed both at self-knowledge as a form of cosmic awareness and at cosmic understanding as a form of self-knowing. This is serious thoughtfulness, engaged, sustained, and maintained. Thoughtfulness by means of the Logos is available to anyone, as Heraclitus says in D-K 113: “Common to everyone is thinking.” Brann points out the pun on xynon, “common,” and xyn nooi, “with mind,” that appears in several of Heraclitus’s fragments (129-30). In D-K 107, he excludes only those with “barbarian souls” from participation in this common cognition, for they are “the speechless souls of those who are incapable of hearing and agreeing with the Logos and of employing logoi, rational expressions” (76). �REVIEWS | CARL 205 Brann’s investigation of Heraclitus is witty, personal, insightful, and scholarly; but she remains on guard against the pitfalls of traditional academic scholarship. She is right to interpret D-K 40 as saying that “heaps of learning lead to knowing everything and nothing. It drowns out the Logos” (27). And she is also right to approach Heraclitus as she does: as a fellow eavesdropper and co-conspirator in his investigations rather than as a stuffy academic parading out an impressive knowledge of Greek grammar and the Western tradition to show us how much she has read. Brann’s book does not drown out the Logos; it strives to clear a space for its greater resonances. Her take on Heraclitus is a personal one, and therefore an intimate and revealing one. The Logos of Heraclitus shows us by example how to be “keenly and extensively observant” (27), and leaves us, as inspired and excited readers, to determine for ourselves the quality and nature of what we see and what we hear. There is an overarching perspective from which “human beings have the life of divinity within them” (136). “Gods may always have some touch of mortality in their nature and humans may become immortal in time” (82). This is the most inclusive perspective that Brann reveals to the reader, a perspective from which the paradox of fathoming man’s relation to the divine and the relation of divinity to the human are equally puzzling, and equally necessary to our own fullest self-understanding. Attaining this perspective is the task of the Heraclitean philosopher, the person determined to understand how “everything is one.” But Brann does not rest content with mere understanding. The final fragment to which she turns her attention completes the bridge between saying (a form of the logos) and doing (a form of being). “What does it mean to do true things?” she asks (138). This is the note on which Brann chooses to end her book, the note that completes the hearing of Heraclitus, who learned how to listen to the cosmos. But he learned to listen in order to do what? That question remains to be taken up by the reader. NOTES 1. The fragments of Heraclitus’s text, which survive mostly in the form of quotations in the works of later authors, were compiled and numbered in Die Fragmente der Vorskratiker, translated by Hermann Diels, edited by Walter Kranz, Vol. I (Berlin: Weidman, 1903; reprint of 6th ed., Munich: Weidman, �206 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 1992). This book has become the standard text for citing the fragments, which are usually referred to by “D-K number”; for instance, the passage cited here is known as D-K 50. 2. Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1942), 169. 3. Ibid., 36. 4. This is Brann’s translation of D-K 55. 5. Brann’s translation of D-K 8. 6. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925; reprint with an introduction by Herbert Strainge Long, 1972), II.22. 7. Thomas Browne, Hydrotaphia, Urne-Buriall; or, A Brief Discourse on the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk (London: Henry Brome, 1658), 80-81. 8. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2001), 112. 9. Pessoa, Disquiet, 101. 10. Ibid., 400. 11. Ibid., 198. 12. Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished, translated by Edwin Honig (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 30. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2012 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T.H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Carey, James Kalkavage, Peter Seeger, Judith Thoms, Hollis Zeiderman, Howard Bosco, Joseph A. Carl, David Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Volume 53, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2012. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_53_No_2_Spring_2012 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3eb8b1bcb38fca8ae796ea7c8622ad13.pdf cfae69e54457114ee2840db478a5c6c0 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 54, Number 1 (Fall 2012) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2012 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �Contents Essays & Lectures The Dispassionate Study of the Passions ..............................1 Eva Brann On Biblical Style .................................................................17 Tod Linafelt What is the Surface Area of a Hedgehog?...........................45 Barry Mazur Some Reflections on Darwin and C. S. Peirce ....................87 Curtis Wilson and Chaninah Maschler Poem The Laws of Physics .........................................................124 Marlene Benjamin �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �ESSAYS & LECTURES 1 The Dispassionate Study of the Passions Eva Brann Plato’s dialogue Gorgias ends with a long speech culminating in a rousing cry by an aroused Socrates. He is speaking to Gorgias’s student Callicles about his swaggering opinionatedness and their common uneducatedness. The words he uses are neanieusthai, ‟to act like a youth,” to behave like a kid, and apaideusia, ‟lack of teaching,” ignorance. And then he concludes with a condemnation of Callicles’s whole ‟way of life”—tropos tou biou—‟to which you summon me, believing in it”—hōi su pisteuōn eme parakaleis. esti gar oudenos axios, ō Kallikleis—‟For it is worth nothing, Callicles!” My fine 1922 edition of the Gorgias by the classicist Otto Apelt rightly translates the address O Kallikleis, jingling in the Gorgian manner with parakaleis, as ‟My Callicles,” for there is a curious, straining intimacy in Socrates’s peroration.1 The rest is silence. It is a favorite question of mine to ask our freshmen at St. John’s College, who all read this dialogue, what happened that night at home, when Callicles was, perhaps, by himself. Now some of you may have heard of the late Seth Bemardete, a student of Leo Strauss and a brilliant classicist at New York University. In our youth we traveled together, and Seth once imparted to me the following wild conjecture. ‟Plato,” it was said, was a nickname given to him because of his broad shoulders.2 His real name was Aristocles: Callicles, Aristocles—he of noble fame, he of good fame; kalos Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was presented to the graduate students of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America on March 30, 2012. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW k’agathos was the Greek way of denominating what Chaucer calls ‟a verray parfit gentil knicht,” a good and noble knight, a perfect gentleman.3 So Plato represents himself in this dialogue as a noble yet rudely unregenerate youth in his moment before conversion, a conversion accomplished by a usually imperturbable Socrates impassioned to speak, for once, extendedly and hotly. Do I believe this clever combination of clues? Not really. Plato was, after all, of good family and a writer of tragedies before Socrates captivated him, and the swaggering surly youth Callicles has little of the high-bred, suave poet about him, a poet who was, moreover, probably already philosophically involved when he met Socrates.4 Nonetheless, this anecdote about a conjecture seems to me thought-provoking. Here, for once, Plato permits us to see the spectacle of rational Socrates in a passion, un-ironic, touched to the quick—surely this is not a mere mean anger at being dissed by a Gorgiastic know-it-all. Many of you are already teachers, though perhaps young in comparison to Plato (b. 427 B.C.E.) when he wrote the Gorgias (c. 387 B.C.E.). He was probably forty, and his Socrates (b. 470) was probably about the same age at the dramatic date of this dialogue (shortly after 429, the year of Pericles’s death, which is mentioned as a recent event in 503c). You will have experienced the unbalancing sense that the stakes are high and souls are to be pierced and that passion, or an exhibition of it, is in order. It is, to be sure, a wonderful question about the nature of passion whether deliberate demonstrativeness or disciplined reticence, either in the speaker or the listener, does more to nourish it or to dampen it, and how spontaneity and artfulness play into the effect. But we do know that Aristotle believed Socrates’s display in the Gorgias was effective. He tells of a Corinthian farmer who was inspired by his reading of the dialogue to leave his vineyard to its own devices, to join the Platonic circle, and henceforth to make his soul the ‟seedbed,” that is, the seminar, of Plato’s philosophy.5 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 The Gorgias is, therefore, a good reference for beginning to talk about the affects as an object of study. Not merely because it documents, so to speak, that people concerned with the soul have in fact plenty of temperament—be it sober Socrates or meek Jesus (e.g., Matt. 21:12, Jesus wreaking havoc in the temple)—and that they don’t leave their affect at the entrance to their inquiries or preachings. I don’t, of course, mean the little negative furies that Socrates calls ‟eristic,” the eruptions of the contentious desire to win arguments, but I’m thinking of a large positive passion. So this is where I zero in on my particular problem for this talk. I have read my way through a tiny fraction of the huge mass of contemporary writing on the emotions. I’ve come away with the cumulative—documentable—impression that there is a thoroughgoing misapprehension about a putative pagan rationalism and a supposed Western tradition for which it is held responsible and which breaks out with insidious virulence in the Enlightenment. This view owes something, I suppose, to Nietzsche’s brilliantly skewed portrait of the ‟despotic logician,” Socrates, the monster with the ‟one, great Cyclopean eye,” in whom “the lovely madness of artistic enthusiasm never glowed.”6 The attribution of monocular Cyclopeanism—i.e., vision without depth, carrying with it the charge of despotic sobriety—implies thought unravished by beauty. All this imputed to a man who thought that our soul contained a world that we could recover by going within,7 and believed that true poetry requires a Dionysiac frenzy inspired by the Muses, one cognate in kind to the philosophical longing for beauty!8 All this ascribed to a man who, attending a drinking party, bathed for once and wearing shoes, slyly paints a verbal picture of Eros that is in fact a self-portrait—Socrates looking at himself from a distance and recognizing the unwashed and unshod god!9 So much for the picture of Socrates the rationalist. And something similar holds for Aristotle the intellectualist. His great work, the founding book of institutionalizable philosophy (since it pre-sets the problems to be solved in Meta- �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW physics III), begins with an appetite, a root passion, which, in the form of the desire to know, is humanly universal and culminates in a passionate portrait of the ultimate object of appetition. This ultimate object is a divinity that attracts, without returning, love—an object that satisfies, that fulfills, by its mere actuality, by its unadulterated energeia (Metaphysics II; XII.7), as in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94: Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, unmoved . . . except that the pure energeia of the divinity is the very opposite of the practically complete inertia of those unaffectable human objects of attraction, these beautiful but hyletic lumps of mere resistance that the speaker of the poem is excoriating. Would it be too much to claim that this is the difference between the philosophical Greeks and the God-regarding Hebrews, more significant than Homer’s anthropomorphic polytheism, which is in any case more characteristic of the poets and the people than of the philosophers? I mean the lack of reciprocity between adoring human and worshipped divinity: The Socratic forms are great powers (Sophist 247e), but even when they come on the comic stage in visible shape—which they do in Aristophanes’s Clouds where they appear as wordily nebulous beings, as shaped mists—they don’t do a thing for their summoning worshipper, Socrates. In fact they abandon him to possible suffocation in his thinkaterion—the play leaves this uncomic outcome open—and exit satisfied with their ‟temperate” performance (Clouds 269, 1509). The Aristotelian divinity, Nous, is similarly unresponsive, an object of uninvolved attraction. The God of the Jews, on the other hand, is beneficently or banefully involved with his people, and when a certain Jewish sect grows into a great religion, He becomes caring outreach itself, namely, Love (e.g., Exodus 20:1-6, I John 4:8, 16). Why am I dwelling first on the pagans and on the Chris- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 tians in talking to you about the study of the passions, when the contemporary writers on the emotions simply drown out these earlier voices by their volume? It’s not that I have much faith in the explanatory power of chronology or in those longitudinal studies by which a genetic history is attributed to ideas, and which tend to develop more arcane information than illuminating depth. I can think of a half-dozen reasons for my distrust, which there is no time to set out at the podium, though we might talk about the implied historicism of such studies in the next few days. Moreover, it is probably less necessary at a Catholic university than at any other to try to induce respect for the tradition. There is, however, a particular way in which I think that emotion studies should begin with, or pick up at some point, the great ancient and medieval works—of the latter, above all, Thomas’s ‟Treatise on the Passions,” which he placed in the very center of the Summa Theologiae, for this monk knew—God knows how—everything about human passion. I think these pre-modern works should be studied for their shock value, for the news they contain for us. Such a reading, a reading that places them not in the bygone superseded past but in a recalcitrantly unfashionable present, requires a difficult and never quite achievable art, one that graduate students should certainly be eager to acquire: first, the art of summing up, with some credibility, what a philosopher is really and at bottom about (I don’t mean ‟all about,” a hand-waving locution, but the compact gist of his intention); and second, the art of discerning how the particular part on which you mean to focus is, or fails to be, properly derivative from that central intention. Then, opposing gist to gist and consequence to consequence, there will emerge a coherent and discussable schema both of the general notions that preoccupy the denizens of modernity willy-nilly and of the sophisticated twists that studious scholars and trendy intellectual elites have given them. Approached in this way, emotion studies seem to me as necessary to our self-understanding as any subject can be—necessary to us as human beings with a contem- �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW porary affectivity. So now let me give you some, perhaps vulnerably sweeping, observations about more recent emotional studies, particularly in English-speaking lands. The groundbreaking works for us were English; I will name Errol Bedford (1956)10 and Anthony Kenny (1963).11 But the American father of this field is Robert Solomon with his book The Passions (1976).12 The Solomonic beginning and its consequences are full of oddities. (I am avoiding the harsher term ‟self-contradictions.”) The thesis of the book is ‟to return the passions to the central and defining role,” snatched from them by Socrates, and ‟to limit the pretensions of ‘objectivity’ and self-demeaning reason that have exclusively ruled Western philosophy, religion, and science” since his days.13 Well, I guess we’ve read different works of Western philosophy. But now comes a surprise. How will this salvation from two and a half millennia of despotic rationalism be achieved? We must recognize that ‟an emotion is a judgment.”14 Of course, this dictum runs into difficulties concerning the meaning of non-rational judgments. Indeed, Solomon eventually accepted that his claim is actually a cognitive theory. As such, he says rightly, it has ‟become the touch-stone of all philosophical theorizing about emotions.” He could, in any case, hardly escape this cognitivist denomination, since it turns out that we become responsible for our emotions by adopting this very theory of cognitive emotion. For as the theory works its way into our unconscious volitions, it will become true, and our emotions will indeed be as much in our control as our judgments;15 so control is what it’s—after all— about. The Stoics are the moderns among the ancients. Their cognitive theories, the first truly representational theories, are more future-fraught than any others in antiquity that I know of; they dominate modernity until Heidegger’s Being and Time. The Stoics are hard to study, because the deepest of them, belonging to the so-called Early Stoa, exist only in fragments. But we have an extended text on Stoic passion �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 theory, the third and fourth books Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. Some of you, who have read the work, will recognize that the modern dictum ‟an emotion is a judgment” is pure Neostoicism. Neostoicism has, in fact, dominated modern emotion studies. One major work in this vein is Martha Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (2001).16 But how strange! The Stoics meant to reduce emotions to mistakes, to diseases, to pathologies, of judgment. An emotion is a false appraisal, a perturbed opinion about what matters: an ‟upheaval of thought.” It is a deep and complex theory underwritten by the Stoics’ fearless physicalism, their notion of a material substratum, the pneuma, on whose ground the psychic capacities can morph into one another. But there is no question that, taken summarily, rationality trumps affect. How odd, then, that modem theories so largely save the emotions from rationalism by rationalizing them. And I’ll list associated oddities. First is the pervasive fear for the emotions, the sense that we moderns have suppressed and demeaned them, that they need saving. What teacher of the young (as scholars by and large are) or observers of the world (as some of them may be) could possibly think that that was what was troubling the nations, cities, neighborhoods! Second is a curtailed sense of thought in the West. I think I’ve given some prime examples of the interpenetration of thought and affect, even of the primacy of appetition in the human soul in antiquity. When the ancients fight the passions it is because they are so alive, experientially alive, to the meaning of the word pathos, ‟suffering,” and the effect of its licensed reign, its invited tyranny. It is really, I think, a modern idea of emotion that is at work here, among our contemporaries, one which pits its softness against hard reason. Inherited Enlightenment terminology indeed conveys this sense that our passions are attenuated, all but quelled by reason. The pivotal figure here is Hume. In his Treatise of Human Nature, the term ‟passion” begins to be displaced by �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ‟emotion.” He uses both, mostly interchangeably. But emotion is the word of the future. Solomon’s book is entitled The Passions, but the key word inside is ‟emotions.” Your own conference called for papers on ‟Emotion.” ‟Emotion” derives from e-movere, Latin for ‟to move out.” The significance of this substitution of emotion for passion is powerful. Ancient pathos, passion, was an affect emanating from an object; the object elicited the responsive affect, from the outside in. Modern emotion comes from inside out; it emphasizes expression; subject prevails over object. It is the Romantic worm eating its way out of the Enlightened apple. At the same time, the non-affective, the rational part of the subject becomes mere reason. Hume, famously, says: ‟Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”17 He can say that because Humean and enlightened reason is not deeply affective, not driven by love, and so its relation to emotion may indeed be one of subservience, standoff, or finally, enmity. I need hardly add that with this transformation of the appetitive, longing, loving, intellect into manipulative, instrumental, willful rationality, philosophy loses its proper meaning and becomes a profession. My brush here is broad, but, I think, it has some good overlap with the case. So my second oddity is the severely foreshortened view of the capabilities of passionate thought. Now a third curious notion, the oddest one of all: the unreflective launching of an enterprise which is, on the face of it, like embarking on a destroyer with the idea of going swimming. The vessel of war displaces, cleaves, churns up the element, but, absent a shipwreck, the sailor stays dry. So the student of emotion banishes perturbations, analyzes wholes, whips up terminology, and, unless melancholy seizes him, sails high and dry over the billowing depths of feeling, with much solid bulkhead keeping him from immersion in the element to be apprehended. This not very elegant simile is just a way of expressing my surprise at the fact that emotion stud- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 ies tend to precipitate themselves into a dispassionate subject without much thought about how such a subject can come to be—about how emotion can be subjected to thought without being denatured in the process. Here, incidentally, lies, it seems to me, the best reason why cognitive scientists, and those philosophers who like to be on solid ground, are by and large physicalists and might well regard the Stoics as their avatars.18 What matter-and-itsmotions has in its favor in emotion studies is that in this spatial form the different motions of the mind appear not to occlude each other; spatio-temporal events, laid our in extension and sequence, have patency. However, since cognitive brain studies, including the emotion research, depend on prior conceptualization and introspective protocols, it is hard to think of them as independent of a philosophical phenomenology. Therefore, in the unavoidable preparatory philosophical exploration, the perplexity of thinking about feeling remains a vexing one, the more so since it appears to me to be a variant of the greatest quandary, now and always: How is thinking about any form of our consciousness even conceivable? How is it—or is it, indeed—that thought about awareness does not collapse into a union, as does ‟thinking of thinking,” the noēsis noēseōs of the Nous?19 How can we know that thought about itself or its fellow internalities does not transform its object out of its true being? Just this latter eventuality makes emotion studies problematic. Study does have its own affect, one of the most interesting in the list of feelings, namely, interest itself. The word—from interesse, ‟to be in the midst of”—signifies what student parlance calls ‟being into it.”20 To study is to bring to bear received learning and native analytic and combinatory capacities on a determinate object. If study is of a high quality, it is preceded and accompanied by its opposite, leisure—free time for meditating or musing, during which original questions rise up and take shape. But the business itself focuses on problems such as Aristotle first �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 10 set for himself and left for his successors. Nowadays it’s the dissertation advisor’s job. Now all the questions become formulated as demands for reasoning, and under reasoning all things turn to reason—as under studious production all thinking turns to footnoted paper-writing. It is indeed curious that this fact is not more of a perplexity to students of the emotions. Yet on second thought, it is perhaps not so surprising that emotion studies seem so desiccated—perhaps they are not really more so than serious scholarship ever must be. Robert Browning has his lovingly respectful students sing at the “Grammarian’s Funeral”: Learned we found him. Yea, but we found him bald, too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: ‟Time to taste life,” another would have said, ‟Up with the curtain!” This man said rather, ‟Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text, Still there’s the comment.” Here is the picture of interest raised to the pitch of passion. There is a sort of pure, dry, professional love (Browning’s grammarian’s passion was for Greek syntax, the particles in particular) that can capture the loving admiration of students. I know this from my own student days. But I doubt that it suits philosophy, and, in particular, philosophizing about the emotions. Here another poem expresses our condition more aptly: Wordsworth’s ‟The Tables Turned.” It begins: Up! up! my Friend and quit your books; and this is its seventh verse: Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— We murder to dissect. To be sure, there are now less intrusive ways of getting inside Nature. Yet the conceptualizing of feeling will ever and always be an abstraction in the basic sense—a removal, a drawing away, from life. And in respect to the affects, this sort of abstraction is doubly dubious. For in ordinary abstraction, the concept incarnate in concrete things is, by a specifically human cognitive operation, separated off from them. But it is simply a premature, a prejudicial notion that the affects ‟stand under” (to use Kantian diction) abstractable concepts in the same way as do things. It might follow that to view as problematic the dispassionate, studious study of the affects—be they impositions from without or stirrings from within—is a sine qua non for beginning rightly. I think it does follow. There are early bonuses. I’ll give you in turn a suspicion, a conjecture, and a figure. The suspicion is that we really are partite beings, so that our affective and our thinking capacities are terminally distinct, structurally and dynamically heterogeneous. The conjecture is that it is this very disjunction in their being which makes possible their conjunction in thought and action, their effective complementarity. Here I’ve written a sentence that I don’t even quite understand as I’m reading it to you, and yet I have some faith in it. Finally, my figure is that our affective capacities lie deeper in our nature than our reflective powers. To be sure, neuroscientists also say that certain brain structures expressly subserving the emotions are located deeper within the brain and appeared early in evolutionary history, but that is not dispositive: What is biologically primitive might, after all, not be humanly primary. What I mean, rather, is that affectivity has a certain abysmal, incomprehensible character that makes it feel—I don’t know how else to put it—submersed; affects touch us (‟to feel” is related to the Latin palpare, to pat) in intimate, that is, ‟innermost” regions, �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW while articulable thought-activity intends, ‟stretches toward,” emerges, towards comprehension of objects. We might be constitutionally bipolar, extended between emotional depth and thoughtful height. Perhaps an original question might be formulated from this figure. It is something we could discuss later, if you like. Wordsworth’s lines imply that the murderous dissection is performed on a lovely, living object. I must tell you that emotion studies sometimes—too often—read as if they were carried out on a latex-injected corpse that suffers every cut with supine springiness. This is, as I’ve tried to show, a partly inevitable result of making affectivity a ‟subject,” a thing lying still under thought, literally ‟thrown under” its wheels. Nonetheless, I feel tempted, by way of an ending, to say how I think we can mitigate the dilemma, for if we can’t think about our feelings, we’ll come apart. I’ll try to be practical. First, then, you can’t study emotions at even the kindliest advisor’s prompting. They are a subject that requires experiential urgency, some pressure for the relief of confusion. In brief, you not only have to be a feeling being—as are we all—but also a being enticingly oppressed by the enigma of emotionality, the arcanum of affectivity. Some topics are well approached in the brisk spirit of pleasurable problem-solving. Not this one, I think. Second, listen to what Socrates says in the Apology. He does not say, as is often reported, that ‟the unexamined life is not worth living.” What he really says is, I think, something stronger: that such a life is ‟not livable for a human being,” ou biōtos anthrōpōi (38a), is not a possible life, not a lived life. That is what the -tos ending of biōtos signifies: ‟livable or lived.” He means, I think, that experiences, passions among them, that are not internally re-viewed, introspectively re-lived, are in effect unlived—an unexamined experience is not yours. A nice corroborating illustration comes in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, whose hero—meant to be a paradigm of simple humanity—engages in an introspective discipline he calls regieren, “ruling, regulating,”—in short, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 digesting, appropriating his affects and images.21 For as experimental emotion research requires protocols drawn from inner experience, so conceptual emotion studies cannot do without introspection. And unlike egocentric self-analysis, which is a spontaneous sport, disciplined self-inspection is an art learned by practice. So now I seem to have contravened everything I’ve just said, which was that feeling is choked by thinking. Here, then, is my last attempt at being practical about our problem as students: how to keep feeling before ourselves while bringing thought to bear on it. Or, more learnedly put: how to turn what is, regarded in itself, the most subjective element of our being, perhaps our very subjectivity itself, into an object. (I will get myself into a word muddle here, unless I remind you that before the eighteenth century “subject” meant just what we now call “object”—for example, the being that arouses passion, and we still use it in this way, as in “the subject to be studied.” But by means of an inversion that is only partial, “subject” is now used for the host of the emotion rather than for its object, and “subjective” signifies a feature of emotional affect.) Deliverance from the quandary of objectifying the essentially subjective seems to me to come from our great representational faculty, the imagination. Mental images are summoned by feeling, arouse feeling and are, famously, affect-fraught, feeling-laden. There are those who deny that we have analogue images before an inner eye, but they are in retreat. The cognitive scientist Stephen Kosslyn (the prime defender of mental analogue images),22 lay persons in general, and most students of the imagination are convinced by their own inner experience of imaginative vision and its affectivity—and what claim could possibly override such personal, one might say, eye-witness knowledge? (I might add here that the very latest neuroscience seems, though incidentally, to clinch the argument for mental visuality; mental images are directly machine-retrievable.23) These affect-laden sights can indeed be held in mind, and thinking can turn to them, play over them, study them. So, it seems to me, emotion studies require an imaginative life. Here is a practical consequence: Your profession requires you to read �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW scholarly articles, but your mission needs you to read works of fiction, particularly novels. For these not only stock your minds with visualizable scenes of passion on which to dwell while you think, they also school you in the adequately expressive diction with which to articulate what you discovered. For, my fellow students, if you speak of feeling either in flabbily pretentious or technically formalizing diction, your papers will be worth— well, next to nothing. NOTES 1. Platons Dialog Gorgias, ed. Otto Apelt (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1922), 166. This is the very end of the dialogue, at 527e. 2. Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 243. 3. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Middle-English edition, Prologue, l. 72 (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005), 5. 4. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book III, Chapter 5, “Plato,” trans. R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library 184 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925). 5. This anecdote is found in a fragment from Themistius in the so-called Akademie-Ausgabe of Aristotle’s works edited for the Prussian Academy of Sciences by Immanuel Bekker (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1870), 1484b. The fragment is translated in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 12 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 24. The story is translated in its original context in Robert J. Penella, The Private Orations of Themistius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 122. 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, section 14: “das eine große Zyklopenauge des Sokrates . . . in dem nie der holde Wahnsinn künstlerischer Begeisterung geglüht hat.” 7. Plato, Meno, 81c. 8. Plato, Phaedrus, 245a, 249d. 9. Plato, Symposium 203d. 10. Errol Bedford, “Emotions,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LVII (1956-57), 281-304. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 15 11. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963). 12. Robert Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1976). 13. Solomon, The Passions, xiv. 14. Ibid., 185. 15. Ibid., 188ff. 16. Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 17. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), 2.3.3. Emphasis added. 18. See, for example, Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (New York: Harcourt, 2003), 275. 19. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 9. 20. See Silvan Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, 4 vols. (New York: Springer, 2008), Volume I, Chapter 10, “Interest–Excitement,” 185202. 21. In Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Chapter 6, “Of the City of God and of Evil Deliverance.” 22. See, for example, Stephen Kosslyn, Image and Brain: The Resolution of the Imagery Debate (Boston: MIT Press, 1996). 23. Francisco Pereira et al., “Generating text from functional brain images,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 5 (August, 2011): Article 72. �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �ESSAYS & LECTURES 17 On Biblical Style Tod Linafelt The western tradition has not focused much attention on the literary style of the Bible. Although it is true that the classical literary critic Longinus (or “Pseudo-Longinus”), writing in the first century C.E., makes a brief but famous reference to the opening lines of Genesis in his treatise On the Sublime,1 the context for the reference is his treatment of “greatness of thought” rather than any strictly literary qualities. More typical of pre-modern literary attitudes toward the Bible is Augustine’s judgment that biblical literature exhibits “the lowest of linguistic style” (humillimum genus loquendi), and had seemed to him, before his conversion, “unworthy of comparison with the majesty of Cicero.”2 Of course, readers have not traditionally gone to the Bible in search of literary artfulness but rather for its religious value—that is, primarily as a source for theology or for ethics. For Augustine, as for so many religious readers after him, the Bible’s theological truths and ethical teachings won out over its literary art or lack thereof.3 But the fact is that the Bible—and my concern here is more particularly with the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament—presents to the reader distinctly literary narrative and poetic works that both demand and reward expressly literary attention. Not only can we speak about the literary style of the Bible, then, but we can and ought to speak more precisely about its narrative style or poetic style, since biblical narrative and biblical poetry each work with a very different set of conventions and techniques—with different Tod Linafelt is professor of biblical literature in the Theology Department at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW literary toolkits, we might say. Reading the Bible “as literature,” then, means more than just close reading, as it is often understood. It also means becoming familiar with and attending to the distinctive and specific workings of narrative texts and poetic texts. It seems clear that the ancient authors were very much aware of the differing conventions and possibilities associated with narrative and with poetry, respectively, and that their audiences would have responded differently to these two primary literary forms. The better we understand these forms, the better readers we will be. I. ANCIENT HEBREW NARRATIVE One must admit that Augustine was not entirely wrong. It is hard to deny that from a certain angle the Bible is among the most “unliterary” works of literature that we have. Working as it does with a very limited vocabulary and often repeating a word several times rather than resorting to synonyms, biblical Hebrew narrative exhibits a style that can seem simple, even primitive, in comparison with the classics of world literature. (Things are very different with biblical poetry, as we will see below.) Its syntax too seems rudimentary to modern ears, linking clause after clause with a simple “and” (what the linguists call parataxis) that reveals little about their syntactical relation, instead of using complex sentences with subordinate clauses (hypotaxis). Notice, for example, the dogged repetition of “face” and the run-on syntax in the following very literal translation of Genesis 32:21 (where Jacob is sending ahead of him a very large gift to his estranged brother Esau, in hopes that Esau will be placated over Jacob’s earlier stealing of his blessing): “For he said, ‘Let me cover his face with the gift that goes before my face and after I look upon his face perhaps he will lift up my face.’” Although modern translations tend to obscure these features, even in translation �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 19 one is bound to notice the paucity of metaphorical description, the brevity of dialogue, the lack of reference to the interior lives of characters, the limited use of figural perspective, and not least the jarring concreteness with which God is sometimes imagined to be involved in human history. Many of these features are elements of biblical literature’s economy of style, or essential terseness. We may compare, for example, Homer’s use of sometimes startling metaphors in describing a scene with the practice of biblical authors (all of whom are essentially anonymous), who by and large avoid such elaborate figurative language. Contrast this description in the Iliad (16.480-85, Fagles’ translation) of the death of a single, obscure Trojan charioteer: Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone, ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot-rail, hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea, some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook4 with the blunt recounting in Genesis 34 of the massacre of an entire city by two of Jacob’s sons: “Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city unawares, and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword” (Gen 34:25-6). This brief passage is typical of the tendency in biblical narrative to avoid description of any sort, metaphorical or otherwise. The principle applies, with some exceptions of course, not only to physical description—so that we are rarely told what either objects or people look like—but also, and more importantly, to the inner lives, thoughts, and motivations of characters in the narratives. It would be a mistake, however, to take this economy of style as an indicator of the Bible’s essential sim- �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW plicity or primitiveness as a work of literature. In fact, it is primarily this terseness that lends biblical narrative its distinctive complexity as literature. In beginning to think about the workings of biblical narrative one could do no better than to read Erich Auerbach’s “Odysseus’ Scar,” the opening chapter of his book Mimesis, in which he compares biblical narrative style with Homeric epic style.5 Auerbach offers the first and best modern articulation of how the austere terseness of biblical narrative is not just the absence of style but is in fact a distinctive and profound literary mode in its own right. Auerbach describes Homeric style as being “of the foreground,” whereas biblical narratives are by contrast “fraught with background.” In other words, in the Iliad and the Odyssey both objects and persons tend to be fully described and illuminated, with essential attributes and aspects—from physical descriptions to the thoughts and motivations of characters—there in the foreground for the reader to apprehend. But with biblical narrative such details are, for the most part, kept in the background and are not directly available to the reader. So, as noted above, we are very rarely given physical descriptions of either objects or people in the biblical narrative.6 What do Adam and Eve look like? We do not know. Abraham? Sarah? Moses? We do not know. As Auerbach puts it in his comments on Genesis 22, where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, it is unthinkable that the servants, the landscape, the implements of sacrifice should be described or praised, as one might expect in Homer: “they are servingmen, ass, wood, and knife, and nothing else, without an epithet.”7 Occasionally a certain quality is ascribed to some person or object: we are told that Eve perceives that the tree of knowledge is “a delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6), and likewise we are told that Joseph is “handsome and good-looking” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 21 (Gen. 39:6). But as a rule such minimal notations are given only when necessary to introduce some element that is important to the development of the plot. In the present cases the attractiveness of the tree of knowledge leads, of course, to the eating of its fruit (But what kind of fruit? We are not told, the long tradition of the apple notwithstanding), and Joseph’s attractiveness leads, in the next verse, to the sexual aggression of Potiphar’s wife, and thus indirectly to Joseph’s imprisonment. And even here one notices that we are not told what it is that makes the fruit lovely to look at or what exactly makes Joseph so beautiful. Beyond a lack of physical description in the biblical stories, descriptions of personal qualities are also largely absent. That is, characterization is rarely explicit, but rather must be teased out of the narrative based on what characters do and say (on action and dialogue, in other words, rather than on direct evaluation by the narrator). The presentation of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25 illustrates this nicely. We are told that Esau is “a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field” (v. 27), but the essential characterization of Esau as impulsive and unreflective, indeed almost animal-like, is conveyed by action and dialogue. Thus, coming in from the field to discover that his brother Jacob has prepared a stew, Esau inarticulately blurts out, “Let me eat some of that red, red stuff, for I am famished” (v. 30). Robert Alter notes that Esau “cannot even come up with the ordinary Hebrew word for stew (nazid) and instead points to the bubbling pot impatiently as (literally) ‘this red red.’”8 And then, after agreeing to trade his birthright to Jacob in exchange for some of the stew, Esau’s impetuous, action-oriented character is suggested by the “rapid-fire chain of verbs”: “and he ate and he drank and he rose and he went off.”9 The character of Esau is starkly contrasted in the story with the character of Jacob. If Esau is �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW all instinct and action, Jacob is all calculation and deliberateness. The stew is prepared and waiting for the return of Esau from the field, and one cannot fail to notice the businesslike manner in which Jacob first suggests, and then demands formal confirmation of, the trading of the birthright: “And Jacob said, ‘Sell now your birthright to me.’ And Esau said, ‘Look, I am at the point of death, so why do I need a birthright?’ And Jacob said, ‘Swear to me now’” (vv. 31-33). These initial thumbnail characterizations of Esau and Jacob will be fleshed-out further two chapters later, in Genesis 27, where the blind Isaac is deceived into bestowing his blessing on Jacob rather than the intended son Esau. The elaborate ruse carried out by Jacob with the invaluable help of his mother Rebekah, in which he impersonates Esau, confirms his calculating ambition even as it adds outright deceit to his resume of character traits. Jacob will become a consummate trickster as the story proceeds—though he will also, as an elderly man, be tricked by his own sons (ch. 37)—but he is never actually described by the narrator as tricky or deceptive, in the way that Odysseus is described repeatedly in terms of his resourcefulness or Achilles in terms of his rage, for example, but instead has his character revealed by what he says and what he does. Esau, for his part, will play a lesser role in the narrative that follows, although his reappearance in Chapter 33 is striking and in some ways unexpected, but both his inarticulateness and his utter lack of calculation are revealed by his response upon hearing that Jacob has stolen his blessing: “he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and he said to his father, ‘Bless me, me also, Father’” (v. 34); and again, a few verses later, “‘Do you have but one blessing my father? Bless me, me also, Father.’ And Esau lifted up his voice and wept” (v. 38). By not directly revealing the qualities of character of the actors in the narrative, the narrator �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 23 puts the onus of interpretation on the readers, who must work out on their own—albeit with hints given—what they think of these characters. To repeat, this is not the absence of characterization, but is a certain mode of characterization, and in fact a fairly complex mode at that. We may best see the complexity of this mode of characterization, and indeed of the Bible’s economy of style more generally, when it comes to the inner lives of the characters. Readers are often used to having access in one form or another to the thoughts, feeling, and motivations of the characters about whom they read. Again, Auerbach on Homer: “With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it. Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but it seldom takes place wordlessly.”10 And so, for instance, the tragic death of Hector at the hands of Achilles near the end of the Iliad (in book 22) has devoted to it, in the Greek, fourteen lines of lament by Hector’s father, seven lines by his mother, and fully forty lines by his wife Andromache. We may compare this with the brief notations of grief in biblical narrative. On the death of Sarah: “And Sarah died at KiriathArba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her” (Gen. 23:2). On the death of Moses: “And the Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended” (Deut. 34:8). One might object that since both Sarah and Moses had lived long and fruitful lives their deaths lack the tragedy of noble Hector being cut down in his prime over the affairs of his less-than-noble brother Paris, so that their deaths inspire less intense expressions of mourning. But even with more obviously tragic deaths we �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW see in biblical narrative the restraint of the narrator, who acknowledges the grief of the survivors but refrains from allowing them full expression of it. We noted above, for example, Jacob’s response to what he takes to be evidence of the death of his young, beloved son Joseph: “A vicious beast has devoured him, Joseph torn to shreds!” (Gen. 37:33). In a scene that seems intended to characterize Jacob as an extravagant mourner, the narrator goes on to describe Jacob as rending his clothes and donning sackcloth and refusing to be comforted by his other children: “‘No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.’ Thus his father bewailed him” (37:35). Yet even here the few scant lines in Hebrew do not come close to matching the sixty lines of direct lament over the death of Hector, not to mention the extended scene in Book 24 of the Iliad where Hector’s father Priam goes to the tent of Achilles to beg for the return of his son’s much-abused corpse. Consider also the notoriously ambiguous story in Leviticus 10 of the burning Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. The reader is told that the two young priests brought “strange fire” or “alien fire” (‘esh zara) before the Lord, “and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord” (10:2). Moses very quickly offers a sort of cryptic theodicy, cast in verse form, in the face of the shocking event: “This is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘Through those near me I will show myself holy / and before all the people I will be glorified’” (10:3). No more laconic response could be imagined, both to the death of the young men and to Moses’ extemporaneous theologizing, than that attributed to Aaron: “And Aaron was silent.” Surely we are to imagine Aaron’s grief as real and deep—indeed, a few verses later Moses forbids Aaron and his other sons to go through the public rituals of mourning while they are conse- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 25 crated for service in the temple (10:6-7)—and yet all we are given is his silence. Unless one imagines this silence to indicate a complacent assent to what has just been witnessed, the narrator gives us, to borrow from Auerbach again, “a glimpse of unplumbed depths.” It is, in short, a silence that is “fraught with background,” a silence that demands interpretation on the part of the reader. Is Aaron feeling pure shock? Overwhelming sadness? Anger at God? Confusion or despair? Is his silence a rejection of Moses’ statement of God’s intent? And if so, on what basis? The fact is that we are given no access whatsoever into the inner life of Aaron, and because we do not know what he is thinking we also do not know what motivates his silence. It is with regard to this latter issue, the question of character motivation, that we may see the importance of recognizing the distinctively terse mode of biblical narration. As I noted above in considering the story of Jacob and Esau, the narrator reveals very little about the inner lives of characters, instead reporting mainly action and dialogue, what the characters do and what they say. If we are given little or no access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters about whom we read, then it follows that the motivation behind what they do and say is also largely obscure. The importance of this obscurity of motivation can scarcely be overstated for any literary reading biblical narrative, since it more than anything else is what gives the literature its profound complexity as it forces the reader to negotiate the many possible ways of imagining the characters’ inner lives. Let me try to justify this claim with reference to the literature itself. A classic example of the ambiguity of character motivation in the Bible may be seen in Genesis 22. In a story that has never failed to engage the imagination of interpreters ancient and modern, God commands Abraham to take his son �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Although a few chapters earlier we have seen Abraham challenge the justness of God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, here Abraham says nothing in response. Instead, there is the narrator’s terse report: “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him” (vv. 3-4). Abraham’s silent obedience here is often taken to be motivated by an untroubled and unquestioning faith in God, which, depending on one’s perspective, may be seen positively as an expression of ultimate piety, or negatively as an expression of unfeeling religious fanaticism. But both interpretations fail to recognize the fundamental literary convention of the refusal of access to the inner lives of characters. The fact that we are not told of Abraham’s inner, emotional response to the demand that he slaughter his son does not mean that he has no inner, emotional response. Surely we are to imagine that he does, but rather than describing it for us or allowing Abraham to give voice to it the narrator leaves us guessing as to what that response might be and thus also as to his motivation for his actions. Now, it is possible to fill that gap left by the narrator with an inner calm that reflects absolute faith, but it is equally possible to imagine that Abraham is feeling anger, disbelief, and even disgust. (With God for demanding the slaughter? With himself for not protesting?) And however one fills the gap of Abraham’s inner life initially, surely it is complicated by Isaac’s calling out to him in v. 7, “Father!” and by the plaintive question that follows, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” It is precisely because we do not know what Abraham is thinking or feeling that his brief response to Isaac’s question (“God will see to the lamb for the offering �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 27 my son,” v. 8) takes on a deeply ironic double meaning. On the one hand, it may be read as a ruse, if not an outright lie, to deflect any suspicions that may be dawning on the son; on the other hand, it may be read as a straightforward statement of faith that a sheep will indeed be provided. It may even be the case here that the author makes use of the ambiguities of Hebrew’s seemingly rudimentary syntax in order to signal the potential irony to the attentive reader. For there is no punctuation in the Hebrew text and one may also construe the syntax to mean: “God will see to the lamb for the offering: namely, my son.” To go back to Abraham’s initial response to Isaac, we may see how what at first instance looks like wooden repetition may in fact be a subtly modulated use of a key word or theme. When God first calls out to Abraham to begin the episode, Abraham’s response is “Here I am”; when Isaac calls in the middle of the episode, on the way to the place of sacrifice, Abraham’s response is, once again, “Here I am, my son”; and when, at the climactic moment when the knife is raised over the boy, the angel of Lord calls out “Abraham, Abraham!” (22:11) his response is again “Here I am.” In each case the single Hebrew word hinneni, “here I am” or “behold me,” is repeated by Abraham. To substitute a synonym for the sake of variety, as for example the JPS Tanakh does in translating the second occurrence as “Yes, my son,” is to lose a concrete expression of what is certainly a central theme for the story, namely the anguished tension between the demands of God and the ethical demands of another human being (Abraham’s own child no less!). Surely every ethical impulse demands that Abraham not kill his son, and yet precisely this is what God demands that he do. He responds “Here I am” to both God and Isaac, and yet he cannot be fully “there,” fully present, to both equally. It is only with the third, very �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW late, repetition of “Here I am” that the tension is resolved and Abraham is no longer caught between these opposing demands on his loyalty. One might say that Abraham’s threefold response provides the underlying armature for the story, marking in a classically Aristotelian way the beginning, the middle, and the end. Although the single word hinneni is literally repeated each time, it acquires a new depth of meaning—and certainly a new tone—with each repetition. And to the end of the story it remains the case that we are never quite sure what Abraham is thinking as he first travels in silence, then responds to his son, then binds and raises the knife, and finally sacrifices the ram instead. If we do not know what motivates Abraham in Genesis 22, it is also the case that we do not know what motivates Isaac to make his enquiry as to the whereabouts of the sheep or what he is thinking as his father binds him and lays him on the makeshift altar. But by this point we are not surprised by this fact, since we have begun to see that the biblical authors make use of this convention in order to allow for depth of character and depth of meaning. It is perhaps somewhat more surprising to note that this convention applies to God too, who is, after all, a character in these narratives as well, and so the literary art of biblical narrative has distinct theological implications. What motivates God to demand the sacrifice of Isaac? The narrator refuses to tell us, though for any reader, religious or not, this must certainly be a compelling question. We are told that “God tested Abraham” (22:1); but this does not give us an answer to our question. The sense of the word “test” (Hebrew nissah) is something like “trial” or “ordeal,” and so God decides to put Abraham through an ordeal, presumably to test his mettle. (A comparison with the opening chapters of Job is apt.) But why, and to what end? Is it to find out how strong Abraham is under pressure? To see �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 29 whether he values his son more than he values God? Does God genuinely learn something new about Abraham, about humanity, or about God’s self through this test? (“Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son” [22:12].) Without knowing what motivates God or what God is thinking as the knife is raised, we cannot finally even know whether Abraham has passed or failed the test. Most readers assume that he has passed, but a few have dared to suggest that God wanted not blind obedience from Abraham but bold resistance—after all, such resistance was honored when Abraham argued on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah—and that in failing to argue with God, Abraham failed to show the strength of character that God hoped to see.11 This reading may seem to go against the grain of the narrative, especially in light of 22:16-17: “By myself have I sworn, said the LORD, for because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son: That in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is on the sea shore.” But the fact that such a reading is nonetheless possible—if only just—witnesses to the profound but productive ambiguity of Hebrew literary style, which exploits to great effect its distinctive economy of style. There is very much more that could be said about the literary art of Hebrew narrative, especially about the patterns or structures that authors and editors have used to construct both individual stories and larger blocks of material, but before moving to consider poetry, I want to point out one final way in which the literary and the theological are bound together. I mentioned at the beginning of this essay the jarring concreteness with which God is sometimes imagined in the Bible as active in the world: God walks in the garden of Eden and enjoys the evening breeze; God shows up at the tent of �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Sarah and Abraham to promise them offspring; God destroys Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea; God inscribes with God’s own hand the tablets of the covenant at Sinai; and in the final, poignant scene of the Torah at the end of Deuteronomy, God buries Moses after allowing him a vision of the promised land that he is not finally to enter. But if the Hebrew literary imagination is relentlessly concrete in its workings, including its imaginings of God, it does not follow that it is without craft or nuance. In fact, divine agency and human agency are almost always imagined in these narratives as being inextricably but ambiguously bound together in such a way that neither agency is autonomous or effective in and of itself.12 And so, God announces to Rebekah in Genesis 25 that the elder of her twins (Esau) will serve the younger (Jacob); but two chapters later, when the time has come to deliver the blessing to the proper son, God has apparently left the matter to Rebekah to work out, which she does with great effectiveness (see ch. 27). In Genesis 50, Joseph may declare to his brothers, who had sold him into slavery thirteen chapters and many years earlier, that “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good”; but the story also suggests that it is largely his own wits and talent, rather than any supernatural intervention, that allows him to survive and prosper in Egypt. Even in the Exodus story, where God’s salvific power seems more tangible than anywhere in the Bible, the divine plan requires human agents for implementation. And so, after a flurry of first-person active verbs by which the Lord resolves to liberate Israel from slavery (“I have seen . . . , I have heard . . . , I have come down to rescue . . . , I will bring them up [3:7-8]), God shifts unexpectedly to the second person, saying to Moses, “And now, go and I will send you to Pharaoh, and you will bring my people the Israelites out of �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 31 Egypt” (3:10). Moses quite naturally responds, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” God’s answer is telling with regard to the interdependence of divine and human agency: “I will be with you” (v. 12). Who is it that liberates Israel—God or Moses? It is both. But even that answer is too simple, since the liberation of Israel requires not only the cooperation of God and Moses but of Israel as well. Thus, Moses dutifully announces to the enslaved Israelites God’s plan to liberate them, which is again stated in a surge of first-person verbs: “I will take you out . . . , I will rescue you from bondage . . . , I will take you . . . , I will be your God . . . , I will bring you to the land I promised” (Ex. 6:6-8). The response? “They did not heed Moses because their spirits had been crushed by cruel slavery.” The point would seem to be a sociological one: that the people cannot be liberated before they are ready, and after generations of bondage and hard labor it will take more than promises to get them ready. Only after seeing the very real power of Pharaoh broken by repeated plagues are the Israelites able to summon the energy to come out of Egypt. Pharoah himself is also a locus for this fundamental tension—in this case it is paradoxical—between divine sovereignty and human agency. On the one hand, God claims responsibility for “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart so that he refuses to allow Israel to leave (Ex. 7:3; 14:4); but on the other hand, Pharaoh is said by the narrator to have hardened his own heart (8:11, 28). At other times a passive voice is used, so that Pharaoh’s heart “was hardened” or “became hard” (7:14; 8:15; 9:4)—thereby leaving the agency behind the hardening unclear. This shifting of agency allows the narrative to retain a sense of God’s sovereign activity in history, while at the same time affirming the moral culpability of Pharaoh, whose repeated failure to fulfill his promise of free- �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ing the Israelites represents rather realistically the psychology of a tyrant. Logically, we readers may want to know, Which was it? Did God harden Pharaoh’s heart, or did Pharaoh harden his own heart? But the story refuses to settle the question, giving us a “both/and” that reflects a pronounced trend in biblical narrative to render not only the inner lives of both humans and God, but also creation and history itself, as unfathomably complex and finally unresolvable mysteries. II. ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” Emily Dickinson once wrote, “I know that is poetry.”13 Dickinson was, of course, somewhat more than averagely tuned in to the effects of poetry. In truth, poetry—even great poetry—often fails to take the top of one’s head off, and even sometimes goes unrecognized as poetry. There is no more striking example of this than the Bible, which contains a distinctive body of poetry that has been, for two thousand years, only rarely and inconsistently represented on the page in the form of verse rather than prose. Though some passages are lined out in the ancient and medieval manuscript traditions, these include not only ones that we would now recognize as poetry but also lists of names that are clearly not poetry (in the same way that the phonebook is not poetry just because it is lined out). And printed Bibles from Guttenberg on, until the twentieth century, represent most of the poetic sections of the Bible as blocks of text indistinguishable from prose. The question of whether biblical poetry even exists has been around since ancient times, and it has been exacerbated by the fact that our primary models for what counts as poetry are drawn from the highly metrical verse found in classical literature. Already in the first century C.E., Jewish intellectuals like Philo and Josephus, feeling the need to defend their cultural heritage in terms of Greek and Roman ideals, went �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 33 looking for iambs and hexameters in the Torah. And they were followed in this task by later Christian writers such as Origen (in the early third century) and Jerome (in the fourth and fifth centuries), who also assumed that if poetry existed in the Bible then it must exist in metrical form. The search for meter in biblical literature has been revived on occasion in the modern period as well, but it has never amounted to much, for the simple fact that ancient Hebrew verse is not metrical. This lack of conformity to classical standards—as well as to virtually all poetry in the West until the nineteenth century—has no doubt been a major factor in the tradition’s lack of appreciation for biblical poetry, but so has the Bible’s status as religious literature. Attention to literary form has been a low priority for interpreters of the Bible, eager as they have been to move to the content or the meaning of any given passage. There has been very little allowance in biblical interpretation for the possibility that, as Wallace Stevens puts it, “poetry is the subject of the poem.”14 A major breakthrough in understanding biblical poetry came with Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, first delivered in association with Lowth’s chair in poetry at Oxford and then published in 1753. Lowth’s most lasting contribution, for good and ill, was his identification of parallelismus membrorum, or parallelism of lines, as the primary structuring principle of ancient Hebrew verse. “Things for the most part shall answer to things, and words to words,” Lowth writes, “as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure.”15 From Psalm 114, for example: The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. Or from the Song of Songs: Love is strong as death, jealousy harsh as the grave. �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Notice how “mountains” matches “hills,” and how “rams” matches “lambs.” And notice the strict parallelism of “love//jealousy,” “strong//harsh,” and “death//grave.” Lowth admitted that many lines of biblical poetry did not display the same equivalence of terms that we see here, but nonetheless the recognition that lineation was based on the matching of two or three short lines in a couplet or triplet form, which did not depend on meter, opened the way for more sustained attention to such poetry as poetry, rather than just repetitioussounding prose. For 200 years after Lowth nearly all attention to biblical verse was on this phenomenon of parallelism, and most especially semantic parallelism (or parallelism of meaning), which too often was reduced to the idea that the second or third line in a couplet or a triplet simply restates the basic idea from the first line. But recent scholarship has shown that the relationship between lines is more intricate and more interesting than this. Adele Berlin, Michael O’Connor, F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp and others have shown that that parallelism involves not only semantic features but also grammatical, syntactical, and phonological patterns (generally not apparent in translation), and that there are complex syntactical constraints that underlie the ancient Hebrew poetic line, which are not in the end reducible to “parallelism.”16 Moreover, Robert Alter and James Kugel have shown that even when the relationship between lines looks to be semantically parallel at first glance, there is often a subtle dynamism in which the second line moves beyond the language or imagery in the first by making it more concrete, more specific, more intense, or more emotionally heightened.17 Thus, in the matched lines quoted above from the Song of Songs: jealousy is a more specific emotion associated with love; harsh heightens and intensifies the connotation of strong; and the grave serves as a �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 35 concrete symbol of death. Beyond the question of line structure, however, the cluster of other features that typify biblical verse has mostly been overlooked by scholarship of recent decades. But one can get a much richer sense of the distinctive workings of biblical poetic style by recognizing these features—features that can be seen more clearly when compared with the workings of biblical prose narrative. As we saw above, ancient Hebrew authors developed a prose style that was especially suited for narrative (or storytelling) and that prefigured in important respects the style and techniques of both modern novelistic fiction and history-writing. Virtually all other long narratives in the ancient world—from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Babylonian Enuma Elish to the Canaanite epics to the Iliad and the Odyssey—take the form of verse, reflecting the oral origins of the epic genre. By casting their stories in the form of prose, biblical authors pioneered a “writerly” form of narrative that did not depend on the rhythms of oral poetry and that allowed for the development of a genuine third-person narrator, whose voice could be distinguished from the direct discourse attributed to characters within the narrative. It also allowed for a depth-of-consciousness and an opaqueness in its literary characters, so that, as we saw above, readers are seldom told what characters are thinking or feeling at any given moment, even though it is often vitally important to characterization and to plot development. Stylistically, however, biblical poetry works very differently. There are in the first place the formal differences that mark the poetry as verse (instead of prose): not only lineation, but also a compressed syntax that tends to drop particles and pronouns in order to achieve the conciseness of the poetic line. (Unfortunately, such syntactical structures are mostly invisible in translation.) And biblical poetry is, to borrow �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Terry Eagleton’s vague but appropriate characterization of poetry in general, much more “verbally inventive” than biblical prose narrative.18 The terse, straightforward style of biblical narrative means that it tends to avoid elevated diction or figurative language. But the poetry is filled with figurative language, from the mostly conventional imagery found in the psalms, for example, to the more inventive imagination of the book of Job, to the double entendres of the Song of Songs. Thus, the troubled fate of the psalmist is, often as not, imagined in terms of “the pit” that threatens to swallow or “the flood” that threatens to overwhelm; and God is imagined as a “rock,” a “fortress,” or a “shield.” As the suffering Job imagines blotting out the day of his birth, he both personifies and eroticizes it, imagining night longing for day which, in his counterfactual curse, never arrives: Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it long for light in vain, and never behold the eyelids of morning. (Job 3:9) Later, Job imagines God’s enmity toward him in terms of the ancient grudge between God-as-creator and the chaotic force of the personified Sea: Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me? (7:12) Answering Job, thirty chapters later, God returns to this image, but redefines and re-personifies the chaotic Sea not as an enemy combatant but as an infant to be nurtured: Who is it that contained the Sea as it emerged bursting from the womb?— when I clothed it in clouds, and swaddled it with darkness. (38:8-9) The Song of Songs, erotic poetry set in the alternating voices of two young lovers, prefers a lush, bodily-based array of �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 37 metaphors. For example, the male voice proclaims: Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies. (4:5) Or this, from the female voice: Like an apple tree found in the forest is my beloved among the youths; I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. (2:3) If line structure and other formal markers are enough to establish the presence of verse in the Bible, they still do not tell us much about its use or function. Again, a comparison with biblical prose is instructive, since one of the most striking features of biblical poetry is that it is relentlessly nonnarrative. Once ancient Hebrew culture had developed the flexible prose form that gets used for recounting stories, both long (e.g., Genesis, 1 and 2 Samuel) and short (e.g., the books of Ruth and Esther), it seems that verse was reserved for more specialized, highly rhetorical uses. For example, the prophets are most often represented as casting their messages in poetic form. Note the parallelism and figurative language in, for example, Amos’ well-known cri de coeur, Let justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. (5:24) This familiar parallel structure is combined with hyperbole and a striking visual imagination (both very much lacking in biblical narrative, though common in the ancient epic tradition)19 in the prophet Isaiah’s utopian vision of the future: The wolf shall live with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. (11:6) Verse also seems to have been the preferred form in ancient Hebrew, as in so many languages, for the aphorism—the �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW pithy and often didactic observation on the nature of the world—which, like poetry more generally, aims for a maximum of meaning in a minimum of words. The book of Proverbs is filled with such aphorisms in verse form, such as, A soft answer turns away wrath; a harsh word increases anger. (15:1) For more skeptical versions of such aphorisms, one can turn to the book of Ecclesiastes, as in All streams run to the sea, but the sea is never filled . . . The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. (1:7) or With much wisdom comes much grief; to increase knowledge is to increase sorrow. (1:18) But one of the most interesting uses of biblical verse is as an early form of what will later go by the name of “lyric poetry,” that intensely subjective, non-narrative and non-dramatic form that has dominated modern poetry at least since Wordsworth. This early form of lyric foregrounds two final characteristics of biblical poetry, both of which further distinguish it from biblical prose narrative. First, biblical poetry is invariably presented as direct discourse, the first-person voice of a speaking subject (a precursor of the modern “lyric I”). Again, ancient Hebrew narrative separates the third-person narrator from the dialogue spoken by characters, which is grammatically marked (by expressive forms and deictics, to use the technical terms) as direct discourse, whereas the narrator’s voice is not.20 Biblical poetry is also marked in this way; it is, in other words, always presented as if it were dialogue. So, for example, the biblical narrator will never be represented as speaking in poetry, but characters can be, as in �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 39 the deathbed blessing of Jacob near the end of the book of Genesis or the Song of Deborah in the book of Judges. The second way that biblical lyric poetry distinguishes itself from narrative is in its willingness to give access to the inner lives of its speakers. If biblical narrative trades in opaqueness of characterization, biblical poetry fairly revels in the exposure of subjectivity. When biblical authors wanted to convey feeling or thought, they resorted to verse form. Obvious examples of this formal preference include poetic books like the Psalms and the Song of Songs, where the expression of passion, whether despairing or joyful, is common. We find also in narrative contexts briefer poetic insets that serve to express or intensify emotion. Take, for example, Jacob’s reaction to the bloodied robe of Joseph, which as Alter has pointed out is rendered as a perfect couplet of Hebrew poetry: hayya ra’ah ‘akhalathu / tarof toraf yosef (“A vicious beast has devoured him, / torn, torn is Joseph!”).21 The book of Job serves as an example on a much larger scale. It begins in the narrative mode and gives precious little insight into Job’s thoughts or feelings. But when the story moves to Job’s anguished death wish (“Blot out the day of my birth, / and the night that announced, ‘A man-child is conceived’”), narrative gives way to the passionate but finely modulated poetic form of chapter 3, followed by many chapters in verse containing Job’s impassioned defense of his integrity.22 T. S. Eliot’s pronouncement that “when we are considering poetry we must consider it primarily as poetry and not another thing” might seem like a truism, but it’s a sentiment that sometimes needs repeating.23 This is especially true when it comes to considering the poetry of the Bible, which has so often been treated precisely as “another thing”—traditionally as theology or as ethics, but more recently, under the guise �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of literary criticism, as narrative. By the latter, I mean that even in recent “literary approaches” to the Bible, critics often look for things like plot or characterization in biblical poetry, categories more appropriate to narrative texts. But biblical poetry is, in both the simplest and the most complicated ways, poetry. To consider a biblical poem as poetry is to pay attention to its line structure, to its status as direct discourse, to the sort of speaking voice it presents, to its diction and imagery, and to its willingness to express inner thought and emotion as biblical narrative rarely does. It is, in other words, to attend not only to what the poem means but also to how it means. NOTES 1. Longinus, On Sublimity, trans. D. A. Russell, in Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations, ed. D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 470: “Similarly, the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man—for he understood and expressed God’s power in accordance with its worth—writes at the beginning of his Laws: ‘God said’—now what?—‘Let there be light,’ and there was light; ‘Let there be earth,’ and there was earth.” 2. Confessions, VI.v and III.v, respectively. 3. So for example, C. S. Lewis, The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version (London: The Athlone Press, 1950), 4: “There is a certain sense in which ‘the Bible as literature’ does not exist. It is a collection of books so widely different in period, kind, language, and aesthetic value, that no common criticism can be passed on them. In uniting these heterogeneous texts the Church was not guided by literary principles, and the literary critic might regard their inclusion between the same boards as a theological and historical accident irrelevant to his own branch of study.” It is not as clear as Lewis suggests that literary principles played no role in the formation of the biblical canon; but even if one conceded the point that does not mean that literary qualities are absent from the Bible, as this essay endeavors to show. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LINAFELT 41 4. Homer, Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1991), 426. 5. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (trans. Willard R. Trask; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 3-23. 6. This contrasts with non-narrative cultic or liturgical prose texts where, for example, we are given quite detailed descriptions of the tabernacle and its furnishings; see, e.g., Exodus 25-27. 7. Ibid., 9. 8. Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 129. 9. Ibid., 131-32. 10. Auerbach, Mimesis, 6. 11. Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (New York: Summit, 1976), 93-94; Danna Fewell and David Gunn, Gender, Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 52-54. 12. In a related vein, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic, 1981), 33-34, who writes of the dialectic between “God’s will” and “human freedom.” For Alter, the “refractory nature” of human freedom is imagined primarily as working against God’s will, whereas to my mind that is not always the case. 13. Emily Dickinson, Letter 342a (to Thomas Wentworth Higginson), in Selected Letters (ed. Thomas H. Johnson; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 208. 14. Wallace Stevens, The Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems (New York: Knopf, 1937), 22. 15. Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, translated from the Latin by G. Gregory (London: Thomas Tegg, 1839), 205. 16. M. O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980); Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, “Poetry, Hebrew,” New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006). �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 17. James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and its History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic, 1985). 18. Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 25. 19. This visual quality is what Aristotle might refer to as enargeia (Poetics 1455a; Rhetoric 1410b) or “vividness.” So also Demetrius, On Style, 209220. On enargeia in classical poetry, see Egbert J. Bakker, “Mimesis as Performance: Rereading Auerbach’s First Chapter,” Poetics Today 20:1 (1993), 11-26, who ties it to the nature of orally performed epic; also Andrew Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). On vividness in epic poetry more generally, see Suzanne Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); and in classical history writing Andrew D. Walker, “Enargeia and the Spectator in Greek Historiography,” Transactions of the American Philological Associaton 123 (1993): 353-377. This quality of vividness, present also in biblical Hebrew poetry, is largely absent in biblical Hebrew narrative. 20. On this phenomenon, see Robert Kawashima, Biblical Narrative and the Death of the Rhapsode (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), ch. 3. 21. Alter, Genesis, 215. 22. Chapters 1 and 2 and then 42:7-17 of the book of Job take the form of prose narrative, but the long central section of the book in 3:1-42:6 is in verse form. Modern scholarship has mostly taken this as an indication of different authors (though recent years have seen a rethinking of this), without recognizing that the shift in literary form can be understood as motivated by the differing literary resources offered by Hebrew prose and Hebrew poetry. By convention, verse form allows the necessary access to Job’s inner life in a way that prose does not, and it also allows for the sometimes extravagant figurative language that we find in the poetic section of the book. 23. T. S. Eliot, Preface to the second edition of The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1928), viii. ��44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �ESSAYS & LECTURES 45 What is the Surface Area of a Hedgehog? Barry Mazur Well, I don’t know the answer to the question of the title and no hedgehog will be harmed, or even mentioned again, until the very end of my lecture. Eva Brann suggested tonight’s lecture might address the question, What is area? I’m delighted to do this, and I’m delighted to be here, and to be among people—you, the St. John’s community—with whom it will be such a pleasure to contemplate this question. In this lecture I’ll discuss the concepts of • area—how it is familiar to us, and how when we push it to the limit we get some surprises; • length—since, at least at first impression it is a more primitive “prior” concept— seemingly simpler than area; • proportion—crucial to the understanding of both length and area; • invariance—as a way of characterizing length and area; • quadrature—as a crucial “format” for expressing profound area relationships in geometry. And I’ll conclude by alluding to Archimedes’ wonderful “mechanical method” in which he transmutes the problem of computing area into the problem of computing something akin to weight1 and thereby achieves the quadrature of the Prof. Barry Mazur is the Gerhard Gade University Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. This was the annual Steiner Lecture, delivered on Friday 30 September 2011 at St. John’s College in Annapolis. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 46 parabola. This offers us a glimpse of the power of analogy, and the use of the thought-experiment as already practiced in ancient mathematics.2 It also gives us the opportunity to touch in passing on broader issues in mathematical thought such as analogy, heuristic, paradox, invariance, and something I’ll call characterization (a version of axiomatization). 1. AREA AS FAMILIAR We all know what the word area signifies. It often refers to a territorial cordon, as in restricted area or hard-hat area or even area studies. It sometimes comes as a number, but always with a unit attached, such as square miles, square feet, square inches, acres, or if it’s a bed area you’re interested in, you can ask for it to be King-size or Queen-size, or a size of lesser nobility. Fig. 1 If you want to approximate the area of the enclosed shape in Fig. 1 on a grid with a mesh of one-foot by one-foot squares, you might count the number of one-square-foot patches that �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 47 comprise a union of squares that completely cover the figure (in the above case it is 81) and count the number of onesquare-foot patches that the figure covers completely (in the above case it is 39). Then you know that the area of the figure in units of square feet is squeezed between these two numbers; that is, the area is smaller than the first number (or equal to it), and bigger than the second. In the above case, we would have 81 square feet ≥ area of figure ≥ 39 square feet. If you want a better estimate, do the same thing with oneinch by one-inch squares. If any of us were asked to calculate the square-footage of this auditorium we’d come up with some figure or other, confident that we could refine it to any degree accuracy required. And you may be painfully aware of the area of your dorm room. So, what else is there to say? Fig. 2 2. HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT COMPARING AREAS? I’m not very good. Here’s an example. The area of the two shaded triangles in Fig. 2 are equal. �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW I know this thanks to Proposition 37 of Book I of Euclid’s Elements. All of you either know that proposition now, or will after your freshman year. This is the proposition that says that triangles with the same base and height have the same area. Proposition 37 of Book I will be a recurring theme in my lecture; it is a marvelous piece of mathematics that demonstrates many things, including the maxim that to be profound and to be elementary are not mutually exclusive virtues. But if I simply compared those figures visually—without either explicitly remembering or somehow “internalizing” Euclid’s proposition—I would probably grossly underestimate (if that’s a possible phrase) the area of the spiky triangle in comparison with the seemingly fat one. In a sense, then, Euclid’s proposition–embedded in my central nervous system as it is—has improved (a tiny bit, not much) my ability to make off-the-cuff judgments and rough comparisons. Our native intuition, combined with a data bank of geometric experiences, determines our effectiveness in making judgments about all sorts of attributes belonging to objects that we see. I’m guessing that our eyeball comparisons are more reliable in relation to straight-line lengths than in relation to curved lengths,3 and much more reliable than our ability to estimate area and volume, given the variety of possible configurations. In teaching Euclid’s Elements, one often emphasizes “logical thinking” as the great benefit that students take away from learning geometry. But I also see a type of pre-logical—if I can call it that—or intuition-enriching benefit as well. This is hard to pinpoint, but it comes out as a general sharpening of faculties in regard to thinking about, guessing about, negotiating, comparing, and relating geometric objects. Such a benefit is very different from the other valuable reward just mentioned—that is, being able to actually argue the proof of Proposition 37 of Book I by making the elegant construction shown in Fig. 3. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 49 Fig. 3 To continue our review of how good our intuitions are, let’s pass to a slightly deeper basic geometric comparison authored by Archimedes that astonishes me now just as it must have astonished Archimedes’ contemporaries. We will get into this in more depth later on,4 but consider the following striking way of recreating the area of any circle: the area of any circle is equal to the area of a right-angle triangle defined by the property that the two of its sides making the right angle have lengths equal to the radius of the circle, and to the length of the circumference of the circle, respectively. (Fig. 4) Fig. 4 �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Here, as in the previous example, I “see” it not visually (if this can be said), but only with the help of my memory of its proof. (I will say more about this below). Let us push a bit further. The two examples we’ve just reviewed are examples of nicely enclosed, finite figures. We are even poorer in intuition when faced with planar figures (no matter how smooth and simple their boundaries seem to be) that “asymptote” off to infinity. It may be quite difficult, even if given long chunks of such a shape, to extrapolate and guess by eyeball alone whether it extends out to a figure with infinite area or finite area. For example, consider Fig. 5, which was drawn as accurately as possible. I wonder whether you can guess if the area bounded by the blue curve or the pink curve has finite area. My point is that there’s no reason why you should be able to do it no matter what talents of visual acuity you may possess. Fig. 5 But, just in case you are wondering, if you continued tracing the curved regions ad infinitum in the manner smoothly begun by the sketch—meaning that the pink curve is the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 51 graph of the function y = 1/x and the blue curve is the graph of the function y = 1/x2—then the (infinite) red-bounded region happens to have infinite area while the (infinite) bluebounded region has finite area. As a side issue, many calculus students are amazed to find that if you “construct” an infinite “trumpet” by rotating the red curve of the above figure around the x-axis, then its surface area is infinite, even though the volume it subsumes is finite. To put it in colloquial, but misleading, terms: you can fill this trumpet with a finite amount of paint, but you need an infinite amount of paint to paint it. This phenomenon illuminates much, especially for people who know calculus, and could be the subject of a question following the lecture. But I won’t dwell on this; I mention it as a hint that there are things to dwell on here. 3. PUSHING TO THE LIMIT You might wonder what is to be gained by asking questions about infinite area versus finite area, or by considering the concept of area in various extreme contexts. Mathematics often does that sort of thing: it is a useful strategy to examine a concept when it is brought to its limit, in the hope that the strains inflicted on the concept will reveal important facets of it that would be hidden in less stressful situations. If you push a concept to its extreme border, you may see things that would otherwise be overlooked if you remain in the comfortable zones. For example, you can learn what its precise borders are. Some of the most beautiful mathematics—and the deepest—has emerged by seeking the extremes. The issue we have just addressed, areas of infinitely extended regions, can be broadened, for it raises the question: exactly how many subsets of the plane deserve to have a �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 52 well-defined area? Do all subsets have a reasonable notion of area? 4. AREA AS PARADOXICAL To get the blood circulating, let’s contemplate something that is evidently impossible: Can you (1) take a square S in the Euclidean plane, cut it (say, with a scissors) into four pieces A, B, C, D of equal area—so no two of these pieces overlap, and the four of them cover the square? In standard notation:5 S = A ! B ! C ! D; (2) and now can you throw away two of the pieces (say C and D) and move the other two (A and B) around by Euclidean motions to get congruent shapes Aʹ, Bʹ in the plane so that these two pieces cover the exact same square again, i.e., S = Aʹ ! Bʹ ? The answer, of course, is No, you can’t do this. Certainly not �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 53 if the concept of area has the properties that we expect to have. By “properties” I’m referring to these two self-evident axioms: (1) the area of a union of non-overlapping figures is the sum of the areas of each of the figures; and (2) the area of a figure is preserved under Euclidean motion. For if you could do this, then our two formulas for S displayed above will give contradictory answers to the question, What is the area of S? With this in mind, consider the following strange fact about spherical rather than Euclidean geometry. Let S be the surface of a ball (that is, what mathematicians call the twodimensional sphere). There is a way of separating S into four sets A, B, C, D, no two of which overlap, such that each of these sets are—in an evident sense—congruent to any of the others. (This means that, for example, there is a way of rotating the sphere that brings A precisely to the position that B occupied (before that rotation)—and similarly, there are ways of rotating the sphere to bring A to B and to C and to D. Nevertheless, you can throw two of them away (say, C and D) and find a way of rotating the sphere so that A is brought to a set A′ and a (different) way of rotating the sphere so that B is sent to a set B′ and these maneuvers have the strange property that A′ and B′ together cover the sphere; i.e., S = A′ ! B′. This is called the Banach-Tarski Paradox. Despite first appearances this is not actually a paradox although there is indeed a subtlety lurking in the way in which I worded things.6 It is merely a para-dox, that is: something contrary to expected opinion. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 54 I brought this apparent paradox up not to confuse you but rather to point out, at the very outset, that • even though area is a concept we tend to feel perfectly at home with, to get closer to its essence is to appreciate more keenly its complexity, and so • in our discussion about area we had better start from the very beginning, by noting that • despite its reputation for having what are called “proper foundations,” mathematics doesn’t seem to have a “beginning.” 5. LENGTH IN EVERYDAY LIFE Nevertheless, let’s begin with something seemingly a bit simpler than area: plain old lengths of straight line-segments. I say “seemingly” because as often happens in mathematics, the simpler-seeming concept (in this case, length) contains, in a more visible form, lots of the essential aspects of its complicated companions (e.g., area and volume). We all know what is meant when someone says “a ten foot pole.” This is a relative statement, comparing the pole to some foot-long ruler, and claiming that we can lay ten copies of our measuring device onto the pole, covering it completely with no overspill or overlap. Usually, of course, the speaker of this phrase has something on his mind other than this length-measuring thought-experiment. In slight contrast, when we are told that the circumference of this cup is eight inches long and we want to verify this directly, we must set aside our rigid, calibrated, ruler and use something like a tape-measure, wrapping it around the rim of the cup.7 Of course, there is also a well-known indirect way of verifying this measurement which starts by using our rigid ruler to calculate the diameter of the cup—but this indirection already involves a certain amount of mathematical �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 55 experience with π. In even greater contrast, when we are told that the star cluster NGC 1929 within the Large Magellanic Cloud (a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way shown in Fig. 68) is 179, 000 light-years away from us, other measuring devices are required, and—given relativistic issues—what distance means is already a subtle business. Fig. 6 6. EQUALITY [OF LENGTH] IN EUCLID The concept length occurs—in a somewhat cryptic form— early in the Elements. It appears as mēkos in the definition of line (Def. 2): A line is breadthless length. The concept reappears as diastēma (translated often as distance but meaning, more specifically, interval or gap) as �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW something of a surprise. Euclid slips it into the discussion in Book I in the definition of circle (Def. 15), which is described as—and I’ll put it in modern vocabulary—a figure bounded by a curve the points of which are equidistant from a given point. Thanks to this definition and the ability we have—given to us by Postulate 3—of drawing a circle with any center and any radius, we can begin to construct many line segments that, in Euclid’s terms, are “equal” (meaning, are of equal length). Even better, we are supplied with tools for establishing equality. Euclid wastes no time making use of these tools: the very first proposition (Proposition 1 of Book I, see Fig. 79) goes straight to the task of constructing, on any line segment, an equilateral triangle, that is, a triangle in which all three sides are “equal.” And we’re off and running, at least as far as understanding equality of length goes. On the facing page you see it in its full glory, ending with a triumphant hoper edei poiēsai—i.e., “as was to be constructed.” When later mathematics takes on the issue of length, things proceed quite differently from the way Euclid proceeded. Modern mathematics throws a spotlight on transformations in a way that ancient mathematics did not. Nowadays, as we introduce a new concept or new type of structure, often—at the same time—we make explicit the types of transformations or mappings between exemplars of this structure that we are willing to consider (or rather, that we are willing to allow). These allowed transformations are the ones that respect the inner coherence of the structure we are studying. In Euclidean geometry, the allowed transformations are the mappings of the Euclidean plane onto itself that preserve the notion of congruence. They consist of rotations about points in the plane, translations, and also those �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 57 �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 58 transformations that can be viewed as the composition of a “flip,” (that is, a symmetry about some straight line) with a translation or rotation. In one of the modern formats, the concept of Euclidean length and the collection of the allowed transformations of Euclidean geometry are yoked concepts, working in tandem: • The allowed transformations are precisely those transformations that preserve length of all line-segments, while • two line-segments have equal length if and only if there are allowed transformations bringing any one of them onto the other. In effect, these notions—“length between points in Euclidean geometry” and “the transformations that preserve Euclidean geometry”—are yoked, chicken-and-egg style, in that each can be used to begin the discussion and characterize (that is, explicitly determine) the other. Think of it this way: We could invoke each of these concepts to provide the vocabulary for a system of axioms in a geometry, and the other concept would then be one of the many features of that geometry. You can have length as your basic concept and stipulate the transformations that preserve your geometry to be those that preserve length, or you may start with the stipulation of transformations of your geometry and derive length as one of its invariants—in effect, deriving the entire geometry from its group of symmetries. (The second viewpoint represents a celebrated shift of emphasis, known as the Erlangen Program.) But there is also an important difference of mood between “axiomatization,” which sets up a theory starting from one direction or the other, and presenting things in a balanced way, where each concept “characterizes” the other. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 59 7. PROPORTIONS Length is, at bottom, a relative concept: that is to say, “length compared to what?” is a bona fide question. What are the units? Inches? Feet? Miles?10 That is, when we deal with length, we are dealing—unavoidably—with a proportion.11 This puts us in the mood of Euclid’s Book V, a work that deals exclusively with proportions among magnitudes. Say we are interested in the length of our ten-foot pole P. We compare it to our one-foot ruler F, we might emphasize the proportional aspect of length by recording the answer symbolically this way: (*) P : F “=” 10 : 1 I’ve put quotation-marks around the equality sign to emphasize that it is indeed a serious abbreviation of thought, turning what began as an analogy (P is to F as 10 is to 1) into an equality (the relationship that P has to F is the relationship that 10 has to 1)—turning an as into a straight is. This is a curious transition. The older notation for equality sign in quotation marks is a double-colon, (**) P : F :: 10 : 1, capturing equally well, I believe, the “as” aspect of the relationship. That a proportion of lengths is interpretable as a proportion of numbers may well be self-evident, but that it is an interpretation is worth bearing in mind. The legacy of the Pythagoreans offers us yet another interpretation for the versatile notion of a proportion of lengths: As the length is to the length, So the heard tone is to the heard tone. After this discussion it is safe to remove the quotation marks in formula (*) displayed above, and write �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 60 P/F = 10/1. We thereby see arithmetic in geometry (that is, by going from left to right in the above equation). In other words, we have an “arithmetic” (of proportions of straight line segments) that mirrors “ordinary” arithmetic (of ratios of numbers). For example, you can add proportions of lengths of line segments: A· − − − − − − ·B· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·C D· − − − − − − ·E AB/DE + BC/DE = AC/DE and multiply proportions of lengths of line segments: A· − − − − − − ·B C· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·D E· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·F AB/CD × CD/EF = AB/EF and we have a natural interpretation of inequalities between these proportions. These behave formally “just like fractions,” as the notation indicates, and we have a veritable algebra of geometrical proportions. 8. COMMON MEASURES, AND UNCOMMON MEASURES All this makes perfect, and natural, sense and conforms to the most elementary basic ideas we have about arithmetic as long as we treat proportions of lengths that “admit a common measure.” That is, imagine that you are given two intervals, A· − − − − − − ·B C· − − − − − − − − − − − − ·D �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 61 and you know that there is a certain unit measure, say given by another interval EF, E· − − ·F such that AB and CD are measured by (whole) number multiples of EF. For example, say AB is seventeen EFs long and CD is four hundred ninety one EFs long; so we may write: AB/EF = 17/1 and CD/EF = 491/1. We then say that EF is a common measure for the line segments AB and CD. And, in this particular case, we then comfortably write AB/CD = 17/491. But the fun, as I think you all know, is already there at the very outset of geometry for one of the most fundamental of geometric proportions—that between the diagonal and the side of a square the diagonal AC / the side AB —was shown to have no common measure,12 and nevertheless the proportion AC/AB (alias √2/1) was still regarded as a genuine object of study, with the consequence that it forced us— by the analogy between proportions of lengths and proportions of numbers—to extend our very idea of what it means to be a number. It is worth thinking about what it means for geometry �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to guide us in our evolving concept of number. For all this is a beginning of one of the great analogies, arithmetic ↔ geometry, in which each profoundly influences the other. This type of thinking goes against a view held by Aristotle (a view often referred to as purity), namely: We cannot, in demonstrating, pass from one genus to another. We cannot, for instance, prove geometrical truths by arithmetic.13 9. THE UBIQUITY OF “ANALOGY” IN MATHEMATICAL THOUGHT In the previous section we have been working through the idea that straight line segments stand in relation to each other “just as” numerical quantities stand in relation to each other; that is, we are now faced with—as we’ve mentioned—one of the primordial analogies between geometry and arithmetic. That this “just as” relation is an analogy and not a direct equality takes some convincing. A curious phenomenon occurs with many mathematical analogies once they get embedded in our thought. If A is seen to be analogous to something else, B, there is the impetus to think of A and B as, somehow, special cases of, or aspects of, a single more encompassing C; and somehow to rethink the analogy as equality. This switch is a form, but not the only form, of abstraction that is indigenous to mathematical sensibility. Versatile switching of viewpoints is one of the reasons for the power of a mathematical frame of thought. This replacement of a pair of analogous contexts for a single encompassing context occurs so often that people with experience in mathematics have this type of thought engrained in them as second nature.14 As I mentioned, replacing the two parts of an analogy by a common generalized concept is powerful and occurs often �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 63 in mathematics, but in other contexts of thought it might seem a strange thing to do. One rarely does this kind of generalizing with analogies and metaphors that occur in literature: when thinking about the metaphorical comparison in Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? do we conceive of a more general entity that encompasses “thee” and “summer’s day” as instances? 10. LENGTH AND STRAIGHT LINE SEGMENTS You may have noticed that, although I’ve gone on at some length, I never defined straight line segment. Now, you can postpone talking about straight line segments if you phrase things in terms of distance. That is, for any two points P and Q on the Euclidean plane, if you have a notion of the distance between P and Q—denote it by dist(P, Q)—you can pick out the points on the straight line segment between P and Q as precisely those points X such that dist(P, Q) = dist(P, X) + dist(X, Q). But the ancients seem not to have defined straight line segment this way. Euclid’s definition (Def. 4 of Book I) is elegantly enigmatic: A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself. This is reminiscent of Plato’s definition of a straight line segment as “whatever has its middle in front of its end” (Parmenides 137e). Here, Plato seems to be taking his straight line segment up to his eye to view it as you would look through a telescope, noting that the only thing he sees is its endpoint. In effect, a straight line is a line of sight.15 A much later take on the matter defines a straight line segment with endpoints P and Q as the unique curve joining P and Q such that among all curves joining P and Q it is the one having �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 64 the shortest length.16 But to make sense of this you must know, at the very least, what it means for a curve to have a length. Hence . . . 11. LENGTHS OF SMOOTH CURVES Nowhere in Euclid’s Elements is the length of a curve that is not a straight line, or polygonal, segment discussed. The first nonpolygonal curve whose length was considered (in the texts that I know) is the circumference (called the perimeter) of a circle, as studied in Archimedes’s The measurement of the circle.17 And there the length of the circumference of a circle enters the mathematical discussion in the context of the elegant statement about area18 that we have already briefly discussed in Section 2. Here it is as Proposition 1 of Archimedes text: Proposition 1: Every circle is equal to a right-angled triangle, whose radius [R] is equal to one of the [sides] around the right angle while the perimeter [i.e., circumference T of the circle] is equal to the base [of the triangle]. This is proved by approximating the circle by a regular polygon with a large number of sides, and arguing appropriately. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 65 This is an amazing theorem, of course, but the more specific reason I’m mentioning it is that it exemplifies the general rule that the computation of the length of any curvy curve depends—perhaps very indirectly—on relating it to the length of approximating polygons. This is (quite directly) Archimedes’s method here. He makes use of a result about polygons analogous to Proposition 1, where the polygons in question will be made to approximate the circle. For a slightly more extensive sketch of Archimedes’s argument, see the Appendix, Section 20 below. 12. LENGTHS OF CRINKLY CURVES It has been said that there is no way to measure the length of the coastline of Scotland. It is just too crinkly, and the length you find yourself computing depends on how fine a grid of measurements you make—the result getting longer and longer as the measurements grow finer. Mathematicians can easily model such an effect, the most famous construction being something called the Koch snowflake. This is a closed curve obtained by taking the limit of an infinite sequence of crinkle-operations. Start with an equilateral triangle and on an interval one-third the size of each side construct a small equilateral triangle. Here are the first few stages: �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW At each stage you are faced with a longer curve, and in the limit, you have seemingly contained a curve within a finite region that is so crinkly so as to have—in effect—infinite length. 13. WHAT IS AREA? We’ll be interested primarily in the areas of figures in the Euclidean plane. Given our discussion of length it won’t be a surprise to learn that we will be dealing, again, with proportions; in this case, the proportion of (the area of) one figure to (the area of) another. Nor will it be much of a surprise to find that just as straight line segments played a fundamental role in all discussions of length, so too polygonal figures will play such a role in our treatment of area. Euclid is again very helpful here. The first time he discusses area, it is—in his vocabulary— parallelogramatic area: Proposition 34 of Book I tells us that the diagonal of a parallelogram bisects the (area of) the parallelogram. He fol- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 67 lows this up with the propositions (including the beautiful Proposition 37 I’ve alluded to already) stating that two triangles with the same base and height have the same area, as do two parallelograms with the same base and height. And once we have these tools, we are in good shape to deal with areas of polygonal figures. We can even go further, as we saw in Section 11 above with Archimedes’s proof that transforms the area of a circle into the area of a triangle by means of polygonal figures. (As I’ve said, we will discuss more in the Appendix, Section 20 below.) 14. AREA AS AN “INVARIANT” Here is an exercise: make a (short) list of “axioms” that (you guess) characterizes the concept of ratios of areas for a large class of (plane) figures. You’ll surely include a number of basic properties of the intuitive concept of area as hinted at in section 4 above. But let me start the game by insisting that one of your axioms be this: Axiom of Invariance under Euclidean motions: If A, B are a pair of plane figures for which you have defined the ratio area of A / area of B �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (or, for short, A/B) and if A′ is the image of the figure A under a Euclidean transformation, then we have the equality: area of A / area of B = area of A′ / area of B This is worth thinking about, but this is just a start, and note that in your personal “theory of area,” part of the chore is to make precise exactly what class of figures you are going to be assigning a well-defined area. This might be a bit of fodder for discussion following the lecture. This exercise was solved elegantly and in somewhat astounding generality before World War II by the Hungarian mathematician Alfréd Haar. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 69 15. SHEARS AND SIMILARITIES Given a well-working “theory of area,” certain properties will follow as consequences. For example, here are two basic features—two further invariance properties for the concept of area. (1) Shears By a horizontal shear transformation let’s mean a transformation of the Euclidean plane to itself that keeps every horizontal line in place, but moves it by a translation that is dependent on the “height” of that line above the x-axis. That is, for any point (x, y) in the plane it keeps the y-coordinate fixed but allows the x coordinate to change by a rule: x ↦ x + F(y) where F(y) is some civilized (e.g., continuous) function of y. This type of motion of the plane keeps all lines parallel to the x-axis intact, but translates them by different amounts depending on their height. By a general shear transformation let’s mean an analogous transformation, but with respect to lines parallel to any fixed line: the line needn’t be the x-axis. The area of figures is preserved by shears! Now we’ve actually seen examples of this in our previous discussion: think of Proposition 37 of Book I of Euclid’s Elements. One way of revisiting the content of Proposition 37 is to note that any two triangles with the same base and same height can be brought one to another by a shear. The three-dimensional version of this (where the question is about volume rather than area) is sometimes referred to as Cavalieri’s Principle, and is illustrated, for example, by the following picture, where Cavalieri’s Principle would state that the two stacks of coins on the next page occupy the same volume. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 70 (2) The behavior of area under similarity transformations. If • A and A′ are in the class of figures for which you have defined the ratio area of A / area of A′ and if • P, Q are points in the figure A with P′, Q′ the corresponding points in the similar figure A′, then the square of the ratio length of PQ / length of P′Q′ is equal to the ratio area of A / area of A′ This square relation tells us that we are dealing with a twodimensional concept.19 Dimensionality as a concept opens up a host of marvelous questions to explore, not the least of which is the grand idea, initially due to Hausdorff, that the full range of possible geometric figures admits a continuous gamut of dimensions— not just dimensions 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . That such strange figures possessing non-whole-number dimensions may have some bearing on questions in the nat- �71 ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR ural sciences, economics, and finance—let alone pure mathematics—is the energy behind Benoît Mandelbrot’s wellknown fractals.20 16. I NVARIANCE AS FEATURE ; I NVARIANCE AS CHARAC - TERIZATION I have been alluding to the invariance properties of length and of area. Here is a summary and comparison. Euclidean Length and the collection of Euclidean motions suit each other’s needs perfectly: • The (Euclidean) concept of length is invariant under the Euclidean motions (i.e., translation, rotations, symmetries about straight lines, and compositions of these). That is, these transformations preserve Euclidean distance. • Any distance relation between points that satisfies certain natural axioms and that is invariant under any Euclidean motion is (after appropriate rescaling of its values) equal to the (Euclidean) concept of length. • Moreover, any transformation that preserves length between any two points in the plane is a Euclidean motion. In contrast to length, the invariance properties of (Euclidean) concept of area is stranger: • The (Euclidean) concept of area is invariant under Euclidean motions, of course— but it is also invariant under a much greater collection of transformations. For example, any of the shear transformations we have discussed in the previous section (Section 15) preserves area. • But as for characterizing this concept by invariance properties, things go the other way: area is characterized (up to a mere change of scale) by its invariance under translations alone—that’s all the invariance you need invoke to pinpoint this concept! �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW It is quite fitting, then, that Euclid inserts his Proposition 37 in Book I, very early in his discussion of area: the proposition is, of course, a critical tool in establishing the simplest arguments regarding area—but from a modern perspective, it also points to one of the deep properties of the concept visà-vis invariance: there is a huge collection of transformations—far more of them than just Euclidean motions—that preserve area. 17. CLASSICAL QUADRATURE PROBLEMS The phrase quadrature of . . . loosely refers to the problem of finding the area of . . . , which usually means expressing— as some simple numerical ratio—the proportion of the area of one figure to another figure.21 First, here is a simple example related to Euclid’s Proposition 37 in Book I of the Elements that we discussed earlier, and whose proof can be found by putting together propositions in Book I of Euclid’s Elements:22 Proposition: Let P be a parallelogram and T a triangle, such that P and T have the same base and the same height. Then P : T = 2 : 1. This proposition follows the format of what I’ll call a “Classical Quadrature Problem,” which I want to mean to be a statement that the proportion of areas (or lengths, or volumes) of two geometric figures, all described entirely in clear general geometric terms,23 is equal to a specific numerical ratio. There are quite a number of classical problems that fit this mold, that is, problems expressing the proportion of the areas of two figures, or volumes of two solids (described in general terms) in terms of specific rational numbers. For example, Proposition 10 of Book XII of Euclid’s Elements tell �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 73 us that the ratio of the volume of a cone to a cylinder that have the same base and the same height is 1 : 3. This “1 : 3” reoccurs as the ratio of the volume of a conical solid built on any base to the cylindrical solid built on the same base, and of the same height. The earliest text I know that “explains” the “1 : 3” in this more general context is Arithmetica Infinitorum by John Wallis, who did his work before the full-fledged invention of Calculus; for the people who know Calculus, this is an exercise.24 As with much of Archimedes’s work there are stories that surround it. In one of his treatises,25 Archimedes showed that the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of the cylinder that circumscribes it is 2 : 3. and according to legend, this being his favorite result, he had it engraved as a sculpture for his tomb. The most intriguing, and thorny, of the ratios of elementary areas or volumes are the proportion relating the area of �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a circle to that of the square that circumscribes it, and the proportion relating the volume of a sphere to that of the volume of the cube that circumscribes it. The story of the many attempts to understand these ratios leads us in interesting directions. For example, Hippocrates of Chios in his attempt to square the circle studied classical quadrature problems relating the areas of lunes (which are figures consisting of the outer portion of a small circle when superimposed on a larger one, as in the figure below26) to areas of triangles constructed in relation to those lunes. He proves, for example, that the area of the lune (defined as the region between E and F in the figure above) is equal to the area of the triangle ABO. His results, however, go significantly beyond this.27 18. WEIGHING AREA A famous example of a classical quadrature problem is Archimedes’s “Quadrature of the parabola” and this is dealt with in not one, but two of his treatises in quite different ways: • Propositions 14-16 of The quadrature of the parabola, and • Proposition 1 of The Method. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 75 The aim is to “find” the area of a segment of a parabola bounded by a chord. We know, of course, that this means finding a proportion between the red area of the above kind of figure and the area of some other figure. This problem is especially illuminating in that Archimedes offers two approaches to it. The method in The quadrature of the parabola is via exhaustion, i.e., approximation by polygons—which is a method similar to the one we have already seen in the Measurement of the circle. This actually does prove what he wants. But the more curious method is the one that he himself refers to as a mechanical method—a mode of reasoning to which he does not give the full authority of proof: it’s an example of a heuristic28—perhaps the first example of such a not-quite-a-proof of which we have any record. A major tool Archimedes uses in this heuristic is his famous “law of the lever,”29 which proclaims that if weights W and w are placed on the plank that is the lever, at opposite sides of the fulcrum but at distances D and d from the fulcrum respectively, then the lever will balance if and only if D·w=d·W �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “Now what in the world does this have to do with area?” you might ask. The answer is that Archimedes is engaged here in an ingenious thought-experiment, where the rules of the game are dictated by some basic physical truths, and the link to area (he will also treat volume problems this way as well) is by a profound analogy. In the figure below, imagine the point K as the fulcrum of a lever. The plank of the lever is the line segment HK. Archimedes will construct a triangle FAC deployed onto the plank as shown, and will be weighing (yes, weighing) the parabolic segment P by weighing in a laminar manner each line in the parabolic segment parallel to the diameter of the parabola against corresponding lines in the triangle FAC placed at an appropriate distance (at H) on the other side of the fulcrum. Archimedes is thinking that you can view the parabolic segment and triangle as swept through by a continuum of line segments, and the area of these figures is somehow distributed as slivers dependent on the varying lengths of these line segments. So he uses his “law of the lever” to find the balance, thereby concluding his heuristic argument. We can discuss this at greater length after the lecture if you like, but here—a bit more slowly—is a recap of what I’ve just said, broken up into the steps that Archimedes uses. In the figure below, which is taken from one of the diagrams for Proposition 1 in the traditional text for The Method, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 77 the chord is AC and the parabolic arc we are to study is the curve bounded by A and C. We are interested in the area of the parabolic segment—let us call it P. Specifically, P is that region bounded by that chord AC and the parabolic segment that joins with it. For this task, the figure will give us all the constructions necessary. (1) The lever and fulcrum: We are going to weigh things and balance thing so we need some apparatus. Don’t mind that it is on a slant; but the straight line through C and K is going to be our lever, and K will be our fulcrum. (2) The tangent line: We draw the line CF through C tangent to our parabolic arc at C (I’ll say what F is in a moment). (3) Let D be the bisector of AC and construct a straight line through D parallel to the diameter of the parabola. (Para- �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW bolas do have well defined “diameters.” In simple English, if we draw the full parabola, rather than the piece of it as occurs in the above figure, the diameter is that straight line piercing the parabola around which the parabola is symmetric: in other words, flipping about the diameter preserves the parabola.) This straight line will intersect CF at a point that we’ll call E, and the parabolic arc at a point B. So we can call the line ED. (4) The basic triangle: Draw the lines AB and BC to form the basic triangle ABC (which I’ll also call T). (5) Note that T sits neatly in the parabolic segment P. Clearly the area of P is bigger than that of T, but how much bigger? The upshot of this proposition, after Archimedes finishes proving it, is that we get an exact relationship, namely, P : T :: 4 : 3. (6) Laminating by lines parallel to the diameter: The line ED is parallel to the diameter. In the figure above, you find a couple of other labeled lines parallel to the diameter: MO, and FA. What Archimedes wants to do is to think of the family of all lines that are parallel to the diameter and how they slice the figure as they sweep across it. (Think of them as forming a moving family). We will refer to any member of that family (and there are finitely many of them!) as a laminar slice. In a moment we will be slicing two figures by the lines of this family. (7) The big triangle: This is FAC, built with edges the line FA parallel to the diameter and the chord AC. Simple geometry shows that FAC : T = 4. So, thinking of the formula above, we want to prove that P : FAC = 1 : 3. (8) Weighing slices on the balance beam: Archimedes hangs the big triangle FAC from its center of gravity, W, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 79 on the balance bar HK, as indicated in the figure. He then considers laminar slices of it, comparing them to laminar slices (by the same line parallel to the diameter) of the parabolic segment ABC. He proves that to put each laminar slice of the big triangle FAC in equilibrium with the corresponding slice of the parabolic segment ABC you have to “hang” the laminar slice of the parabolic segment ABC at the point H on the other side of the fulcrum. This uses, of course, his law of the lever. (9) Weighing the figures themselves: He then says that he has hung the parabolic segment at point H and the big triangle at point W and, again, the law of the lever gives the proportions of their areas. There is a great amount of geometry that one can learn by considering this result. First, note that we do indeed have here an example of what I described as a “classical quadrature problem” in that (a) we specified each of our figures merely by generic prescriptions (take any parabolic, and cut it with any chord, etc.), and (b) we asserted that the proportions of these figures are given by a fixed rational ratio (4:3). That alone deserves thought. You might wonder: how many other interesting generic geometric proportions can one come up with that have a fixed rational ratio? Or, perhaps, a fixed ratio involving, say, surds?30 What is gripping here is how we, using Calculus, could immediately convert into a genuine theorem what Archimedes does with his “method,” and how a dyed-in-the-wool Euclidean could also come to terms with this by offering an appropriate menu of axioms and common notions. Each of these revisions of Archimedes’s work—via Calculus, or via appropriate axioms—would have the effect of reframing Archimedes’s mechanical analogy by encompassing it with �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW something non-analogical that has, perhaps, the authority to explain more. And yet for me, the lesson offered by The Method lies—to return to the issue of purity I mentioned previously in Section 7 above—in the unconstrained impurity of the ideas behind it. The Method works on the strength of a correctly guiding, but nevertheless difficult to justify, analogy combining previously disparate intuitions that had originated in somewhat different domains—the experience one has with a certain weighing apparatus and the intuition one has via Euclidean geometry. This type of thinking (working with profound analogies and relating them to, or turning them into, equalities) is today, as it was in Archimedes’s time, the source of much of the most powerful mathematics. 19. HEDGEHOGS AGAIN We have largely talked about areas of figures in the plane, except for our excursion in the spherical geometry with the Banach-Tarsky Paradox. This deserves more discussion, which I hope will happen in the upcoming conversation period. 20. APPENDIX: SKETCH OF A PROOF OF ARCHIMEDES’ MEASUREMENT OF THE CIRCLE. To describe Archimedes’s argument succinctly, we need some vocabulary. Define the radius of a regular polygon to be the length of a line interval that is obtained by dropping a perpendicular to any side of the polygon from the center N of the regular polygon. Define the perimeter (or circumference) of a polygon to be the length of its perimeter, i.e., the sum of the lengths of the sides of the polygon. If the polygon is a regular M-gon, then the circumference is M times the length of any side. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 81 Here is “my” version of Proposition 1 for regular polygons,31 which is analogous to Archimedes’s Proposition 1 for circles: Archimedes’s Proposition 1 adapted to regular polygons: The area subsumed by a regular polygon is equal to the area subsumed by a right-angled triangle for which the two right-angle sides are of lengths equal to the radius and the circumference (respectively) of the polygon. In contrast to the actual Proposition 1 of the Measurement of the Circle, this “polygon-version” of Archimedes’s Proposition 1 is now nicely within the scope of Euclidean vocabulary; its proof is within the scope of Euclid as well. Some comments: (1) Both this “polygon-version” and Archimedes’s Proposition 1 deal with a right-angled triangle whose base is �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 82 the circumference and whose height is the radius of the figure to which this triangle is being compared. One could rephrase these propositions by omitting the requirement that the triangle be right-angled. (2) A visual proof of this polygonal proposition can be effected simply by cutting and “straightening out to a line” the perimeter of the polygon, and then arguing that this paper-doll figure has the same area as the triangle displayed below.32 (In the figure below we illustrate this with a 3-gon, otherwise known as a triangle, which produces, when cut-and straightened-out, the three triangles in a line labeled A,B,C. Each of these triangles have the same area as the three triangles that make up the large triangle in the lower figure, which has as base the perimeter and as height the radius.) This relies only the fact that the area of a triangle depends only on its base and height. NOTES 1. Since you read Archimedes’s On the equilibrium of planes in Freshman Laboratory, this may not come as a complete surprise. 2. I am grateful to Paul Van Koughnett who drew most of the figures, and to Paul Dry for helpful and incisive comments about early drafts of these notes. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 83 3. Straight-limbed geometry; In her arts’ ingeny Our wits were sharp and keen. From “Mark Antony,” a poem by John Cleveland (1613-1658). See The Best Poems of the English language: From Chaucer through Robert Frost, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 154-55. 4. A sketch of its proof is in the Appendix, Section 20 below. 5. The ∪ (“cup”) notation means “union.” That is, if X and Y are sets, then X ∪ Y is the set whose members are either members of X or members of Y or members of both X and Y. 6. For people who are familiar with group theory, a fairly complete description of what is going can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox. 7. A delightful book that discusses calculations of this sort, and of more theoretical sorts, is John Bryant and Chris Sangwin, How Round is Your Circle? Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.) 8. The composite image in Fig. 6 was created by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray component was produced by NASA/CXC/U.Mich./ S.Oey; the Infrared component by NASA/JPL, and the optical component by ESO/WFI/2.2-m. 9. Fig. 7 is drawn from Euclid’s Element of Geometry, an edition of the Greek text with new English translation by Richard Fitzpatrick (Austin: Richard Fitzpatrick, 2007), 8. 10. Two cowboys: A: “My ranch is so big I can ride Old Paint from morning to night and still not cover it.” B: “I know exactly how you feel. My horse is like that too!” 11. This issue is taken up by Kant from a slant perspective. (That’s typical for Kant.) In Book I, Sections 25 and 26 of The Critique of Judgment, in discussing what he calls the mathematical sublime, he points out that in comprehending in our imagination a specific magnitude (say, this pole is ten feet long) one is engaging in two acts, of different natures: there is the mathematical one of counting a number of feet (and comprehending that act of counting) and then there is the essentially aesthetic one of comprehending—or internalizing in some way or other—what a foot is. From Kant’s perspective, then, considering a proportion, per se, is an act that extracts the purely mathematical aspect of “comprehension of a magni- �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tude” from the underlying, and otherwise unavoidable, aesthetic aspect: comprehending the unit. Of course, it is the latter that interests him. 12. At least if we insist that both intervals be measured by a whole number of multiples of the chosen “common measure.” 13. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 75a29-75b12. 14. Here is an important example of this that originated over a century ago, and is everywhere to be seen in modern mathematics: numbers are analogous to functions. There are whole branches of mathematics where these concepts are treated as not merely analogous, but as particular exemplars of a larger encompassing concept. 15. See, for example, the marvelous essay on this subject in Euclid: The Thirteen Books of the Elements, ed. Thomas Heath, 3 vols. (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 165-69. 16. This property distinguishes straight line segments as geodesics in modern terminology. 17. For source material, various translations, commentary, and more related texts, please go to: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k53966 (which is on the “Teaching” page of my web site). 18. That the ratio of the area of a circle to the length of its circumference is a simple expression in terms of its radius is what is behind the beauty of Proposition 1. This is a phenomenon that proliferates in higher dimensions; e.g., the ratio of the volume of a sphere to its surface area is, similarly, a simple expression in terms of its radius. This is worth pondering. 19. But neither of the above “invariance properties” need be, nor should be, included as axioms, for they will follow from your list of axioms (if you’ve formulated them correctly). 20. See Benoît Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982). 21. Quadrature is the basic topic in the oldest existent Greek text, that of Hippocrates of Chios. 22. Or better, by doing it yourself. 23. This is admittedly a bit vague, but I hope the examples convey the kind of problem I’m referring to. 24. Hint: ∫ x2 dx = ⅓ x3 when evaluated over the interval 0 to x. 25. On the Sphere and Cylinder I. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | MAZUR 85 26. This figure can be found online at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Lune.svg 27. I think that there are truly interesting (entirely mathematical, not historical) issues that lurk in this, and it is one of my plans to understand it in depth. 28. This is especially fitting since it comes from the pen of the celebrated shouter of “Eureka,” which derives from the same root. 29. There is an extensive earlier tradition of discussion about equilibrium and disequilibrium on a balance, and on the action of levers of all sorts. For example, this observation from Part Seven of Aristotle’s On the motion of animals: “A small change occurring at the center makes great and numerous changes at the circumference, just as by shifting the rudder a hair’s breadth you get a wide deviation at the prow.” I want to thank Jean de Groot for conversations about this; I look forward to her forthcoming commentary on Aristotle’s Mechanics. There is also, to be sure, an extensive later tradition on this topic— notably, Ernst Mach’s marvelous critique of the “law” itself, in the Introduction and first few chapters of his wonderful book The Science of Mechanics (Chicago and London: Open Court, 1919.) 30. That is, square roots. This is not an idle question. 31. I say “my” version because, even though it is—in my opinion—implicitly invoked in Archimedes’s text, it isn’t dwelt on. 32. I’m thankful to Jim Carlson for this suggestion. �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �87 ESSAYS & LECTURES Some Reflections on Darwin and C.S. Peirce Curtis Wilson and Chaninah Maschler Introduction On a Saturday morning in the mid-1950s, I attended a St. John’s faculty seminar on a selected reading from Darwin’s Origin of Species. What chiefly remains in memory is an overall impression: the discussion was halting and desultory, failing to get airborne. In those days the available edition of the Origin was the sixth and last (1872); compared with the first edition of 1859, it suffers from excessive backing and filling, Darwin’s attempts to answer his critics. Yet, even had our text been from the sprightlier first edition, I doubt our discussion would have got off the ground. After one spell of silence a senior tutor spoke up to ask: Isn’t it [Darwin’s theory] just a hypothesis? The implication, I thought, was: Can’t we just ignore the whole idea? The short answer to that second question is: we can’t, because Darwin’s theory is the grand working hypothesis (yes, it’s a hypothesis!) of biologists everywhere, and as aspirant generalists at St. John’s, we need to seek out its meaning. The search can be exhilarating as well as disquieting. Major features of Darwin’s theory are contained in his phrase “descent with modification through natural selection.” The descent of present-day organisms from organisms of preCurtis Wilson was a long-time tutor, and twice Dean, at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Sadly, he passed away on 24 August 2012, shortly after this article was completed. Chanina Maschler is tutor emerita at St. John’s College in Annapolis. The Introduction, in the form of first-person reminiscences, was written by Mr. Wilson. Part 1 is by Ms. Maschler. The last three parts were worked out by the two authors jointly. �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ceding generations is obvious; Darwin requires us to keep this fact in focus. The offspring inherit traits from their parents, but some variation occurs. Since far more offspring are produced than can survive and reproduce, the variants best suited to surviving and reproducing are the ones that win out. Relative to a given environment, the surviving form will be better adapted than the forms that failed. Darwin saw this process as leading to diversification of kinds, or speciation, as indicated by the title of his book, On the Origin of Species.1 Darwin opened his first notebook on “Transmutation of Species” in July, 1837. In a sustained effort of thought from 1837 to 1844, he constructed the theory. The empirical evidence consisted chiefly of the biological specimens that he had observed and collected during his tour as naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle, from Dec. 27, 1831 to Oct. 2, 1836. (This voyage was sent out to chart the coasts of South America and determine longitudes round the globe; taking along a naturalist was an after-thought of the captain’s.) At the beginning of the Beagle voyage, Darwin was a few weeks short of his twenty-third birthday. So far in his life he had had no clear goal. Enrolled in medical school at age sixteen in Edinburgh, he dropped out, unable to endure seeing patients in pain. His father (a physician, skeptical in religion) then sent him to Cambridge with the idea that he might fit himself out to become a country parson, but young Darwin found the course of study uninteresting. He completed the A.B. degree, but later acknowledged that his time at Cambridge was mostly wasted. A chance by-product of it was a friendship with John S. Henslow, the professor of botany. Henslow it was who arranged Darwin’s being offered the post of naturalist on the Beagle. Darwin’s father flatly rejected the idea at first, but Josiah Wedgewood, young Darwin’s maternal uncle, persuaded him to change his mind. In hindsight, we can say that young Darwin was ad- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 89 mirably suited to his new post. From boyhood he had been a persistent collector of a variety of objects, from stamps to beetles. As a naturalist he would prove to have an unstoppable drive toward theoretical understanding, seeking to connect the dots between his numerous observations. The voyage of the Beagle, proceeding first to the coasts of South America and the nearby islands, could not have been more aptly planned to yield observations supporting the theory that he would develop. The observations were chiefly of three types.2 Fossils from South America were found to be closely related to living fauna of that continent, rather than to contemporaneous fossils from elsewhere. Animals of the different climatic zones of South America were related to each other rather than to animals of the same climatic zones on other continents. Faunas of nearby islands (Falkland, Galapagos) were closely related to those of the nearest mainland; and on different islands of the same island group were closely related. These observations could be accounted for on Darwin’s theory; on the opposing theory of fixed species they remained unintelligible. But why the uproar over Darwin’s Origin, and why does it still today produce uneasiness? It is not merely that it appears contrary to the creation story in Genesis. As John Dewey put it in 1910:3 That the publication of the Origin of Species marked an epoch in the development of the natural sciences is well known to the layman. That the combination of the very words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion. More recently Ernst Mayr has characterized Darwin’s new way of thinking as “population thinking,” and the mode of thinking prevalent earlier as “typological thinking”: Typological thinking, no doubt, had its roots in the earliest efforts of primitive man to classify the bewildering diversity of nature into categories. The eidos of Plato is the formal philosophical codification of this form of thinking. According to it, there are a limited number of fixed, unchangeable “ideas” underlying the observed variability, with the eidos (idea) being the only thing that is fixed and real, while the observed variability has no more reality than the shadows of an object on a cave wall. . . . The assumptions of population thinking are diametrically opposed to those of the typologist. The populationist stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world. What is true for the human species—that no two individuals are alike—is equally true for all other species of animals and plants. . . . All organisms and organic phenomena are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind of organic entities, form populations, of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation. Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality. The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and of the typologist are precisely the opposite. For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion, while for the populationist, the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking at nature could be more different.4 Mayr’s abruptly nominalist “take” on the nature of species is not required by Darwin’s theory, nor do all biolo- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 91 gists espouse it.5 One thing the theory does require is a new attention to individual differences. Species may result from processes that are fundamentally statistical, and yet be real. For young Darwin, gentleman naturalist, noting individual differences came naturally. His curiosity about connections may also have been natural to him, but he developed it into a powerful drive toward unifying theory. Before coming to St. John’s in 1948, I had taken undergraduate courses in zoology and embryology in which Darwin’s theory was referred to; I accepted the theory as established. An occasion for reading Darwin’s Origin had not arisen. On becoming a St. John’s tutor, I immersed myself chiefly in problems of the laboratory on the side of physical science, to which my interests inclined me and for which my more recent graduate studies in the history of science to some degree prepared me. In multiple ways, during my early years at St. John’s, I took my cue from Jacob Klein. My admiration for him was unbounded. I respected him for his scholarly knowledge, shrewdness, and sharp discernment. It was he who drew the College community out of its 1948-49 leadership crisis and communal slough of despond in the wake of Barr’s and Buchanan’s departure, and he did so single-handedly and spiritedly. During his deanship (1949-1958), he gave the College a new lease on life, a new stability, and an incentive to move forward: testing, selecting, and improving the Program. Our debt to him is incalculable. As dean, Mr. Klein in the opening lecture each year undertook to address the question of what we were doing here, what liberal education was. It was with trepidation, he told us, that he addressed this question. Typically, his lecture took a Platonic turn, as when he described the metastrophē, or turning round, of the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic. The �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW former prisoner had to be brought to recognize that the shadows he had previously taken for truth were in fact only images of conventional images. Getting at the truth was a matter of penetrating beyond that scrim of images. During the academic year 1954-55 I was co-leader with Mr. Klein (“Jasha” as we tutors called him) of a senior seminar. On one evening the assignment was from Darwin’s Origin—this was perhaps the only place in the program where Darwin’s theory was addressed in those days. I recall nothing of the discussion, but at its end Jasha asked the students: Did they consider Darwin’s book important to their lives? One after another they replied with a decisive “No!”—a flood of denial. Though failing to lodge a protest, I thought the indifference to Darwin a mistake, and I was disappointed by Jasha’s standoffishness with respect to it. My opinion was reinforced in conversations I had at the time with Allen Clark, a Ford Foundation intern at the College in the years 1954-56.6 Clark had done graduate studies at Harvard on American pragmatism, reading widely in the writings of C.S. Peirce, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the Harvard-educated Spanish émigré George Santayana. He was especially attracted to the writings of Peirce, who had been both a working scientist and a close student of philosophy, and had set himself to making philosophical sense of natural science. Peirce had embraced Darwin’s theory and interpreted it. Attempting to catch up with Clark in philosophy, I began reading such writings of Peirce as were readily available. These were two collections of essays, the earliest assembled by Morris R. Cohen under the title Chance, Love, and Logic, and a later one due to Justus Buchler, The Philosophy of Peirce. There were also the six volumes of The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, published by Harvard Uni- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 93 versity Press in 1931-35 under the editorship of Hartshorne and Weiss, but these were formidable, leaving the inquirer puzzled as to where to get a leg up or a handhold. My enthusiasm for Peirce was challenged one summer evening in the later 1950s. During an informal discussion of a Peirce essay at Jasha’s home, Jasha took exception to Peirce’s “Monism,” the doctrine that the world is made of a single stuff. Jasha saw this doctrine as contradicted by the intentionality of human thought. What was that? The doctrine had been put forward by the Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano in 1874.7 According to Brentano, to think is to think of or about something. Analogously, to fear or hope entails that there are objects (Jasha sometimes called them “targets”) of these modes of consciousness. Their objects need not be existents in the empirical world. I can think of a unicorn, or imagine riding like Harry Potter on a broom stick, or fear an imagined bogeyman in a closet. Brentano therefore spoke of “intentional inexistence,” meaning that such an object is somehow contained in the thought (cogitatio à la Descartes!) of which it is the object. Brentano sought to make Intentionality definitive of the mental. He concluded that mind, because of its intentionality, is irreducible to the physical. Edmund Husserl, one of Jasha’s teachers, had been a student of Brentano. For Husserl, Brentano’s idea of intentionality became the basis of a new science which he called Phenomenology. Husserl followed Brentano in treating intentionality as coextensive with the mental, and in asserting the impossibility of a naturalistic explanation of intentional acts. Jasha’s rejection of Peirce’s Monism, I am guessing, stemmed from his acceptance, at least in part, of Husserlian philosophy.8 Jasha may have been unaware that what he regarded as �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Peirce’s Ontological Monism was an application of the maxim Do not block the road of inquiry. Dualism, as Peirce saw it, drew a line in the sand; naturalistic explanations were guaranteed to be impossible beyond this line. The line in the sand inevitably becomes a dare. But I was still far in those days from understanding how the various parts of Peirce’s thinking held together—or failed to. A major difficulty with the Cohen and Buchler collections and with The Collected Papers was that they did not present Peirce’s papers in their order of composition. The editors did not sufficiently appreciate that Peirce’s ideas developed over time. Throughout his life, Peirce’s thought (like science as he understood it) was a work in progress.9 When he died in 1914 he had not completed any single major work. During his last active decade, however, he succeeded in resolving certain major difficulties in his earlier philosophizing. A chronological edition of his work—published papers, lectures, and unpublished notes and correspondence—has now been undertaken by Indiana University Press. Of these post-1950 developments I was made aware only recently. And their full import did not dawn on me until encountering a book by the Chairman of the Board of Advisers to the Peirce Edition Project, Thomas Short. It is Peirce’s Theory of Signs.10 Parts 1 and 2 of our essay provide an account of Peirce’s pragmatism and of his progress from Kantian idealism to scientific realism. In Parts 3 and 4, with the help of Short’s analysis, we shall indicate how Peirce accounts naturalistically for the emergence of intentionality and conscious purposefulness in the course of evolution. Part 1. Peirce and Pragmatism Peirce is the man through whom the word “pragmatism” enters upon the world scene as a philosophic term. According �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 95 to his own recollection,11 confirmed by the report of his friend William James,12 this happened in the early 1870s, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, amongst a group of young Harvard men, who used to meet for philosophical discussion. Later in the 1870s the opinions Peirce had defended viva voce were issued in print in two articles, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make our Ideas Clear” (1878).13 The first of these two essays prefigured what Peirce would in the course of a life-time come to say about science as an enterprise of ongoing inquiry rather than a collection of upshots of investigation.14 The second was sent into the world, as the title indicates, as advice on how to go about gaining greater intellectual control over one’s ideas than is furnished by the ability correctly to apply, or even verbally to define them. The advice runs as follows: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conceptions to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” Note that the first person plural is out front. Also, that conceiving remains irreducible! Peirce never became a full-time professor. Not even at Johns Hopkins, where John Dewey was briefly a student in his logic class. But just about every major American author in professional philosophy—William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, C.I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars—acknowledges being profoundly indebted to Peirce’s teachings, pragmatism being one of these. Pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts. All pragmatists of whatsoever stripe will cordially assent to that statement. As to the ulterior and indirect effects of practicing the pragmatistic method, that is quite another affair.15 �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Some of the Cambridge friends whom Peirce initially persuaded to try bringing a laboratory scientist’s “let’s try it and see” approach to bear on the study of “hard words,” particularly those used in metaphysics, suggested that he call what he was offering “practicism” or “practicalism.” No, Peirce responded, he had learned philosophy from Kant, and in Kant the terms praktisch and pragmatisch were “as far apart as the poles.”16 Praktisch belongs to the region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can make sure of solid ground under his feet. Pragmatisch expresses a relation to some definite human purpose. “Now quite the most striking feature of the new theory [is] its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and human purpose.”17 Here are two more statements of what pragmatism amounts to: I understand pragmatism to be a method of ascertaining the meanings, not of all ideas, but only of what I call “intellectual concepts,” that is to say, of those upon the structure of which arguments concerning objective fact may hinge. Had the light which, as things are, excites in us the sensation of blue, always excited the sense of red, and vice versa, however great a difference that might have made in our feelings, it could have made none in the force of any argument. In this respect, the qualities of hard and soft strikingly contrast with those of red and blue. . . . My pragmatism, having nothing to do with qualities of feeling, permits me to hold that the predication of such a quality is just what it seems, and has nothing to do with anything else. . . . Intellectual concepts, however, the only sign-burdens that are properly denominated “concepts”—essentially carry some implication concerning the general behavior either of some conscious being or of some inanimate object, and so convey more, not merely than any feeling, but more too than any existential fact, namely, the “would-acts” of habitual behavior; and no agglomeration of actual happenings can ever completely fill up the meaning of a “would be.”18 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 97 Again, Pragmaticism19 consists in holding that the purport of any concept is its conceived bearing upon our conduct. How, then, does the Past bear upon conduct? The answer is selfevident: whenever we set out to do anything, we “go upon,” we base our conduct on facts already known, and for these we can only draw upon our memory. It is true that we may institute a new investigation for the purpose; but its discoveries will only become applicable to conduct after they have been made and reduced to a memorial maxim. In short, the Past is the sole storehouse of all our knowledge. When we say that we know that some state of things exists, we mean that it used to exist, whether just long enough for the news to reach the brain and be retransmitted to tongue or pen or longer ago. . . . How does the Future bear upon conduct? The answer is that future facts are the only facts that we can, in a measure, control. . . . What is the bearing of the Present instant upon conduct? . . . There is no time in the Present for any inference at all, least of all for inference concerning that very instant. Consequently the present object must be an external object, if there be any objective reference in it. The attitude of the present is either conative or perceptive.20 Part 2. Peirce’s Transition from an Initial Idealism to Scientific Realism As Peirce has told us, he learned philosophy from Kant. Yet from the start there was one Kantian doctrine he could not stomach: the doctrine of “things-in-themselves” (Dinge an sich) somehow standing behind the objects we meet with in experience—inaccessible beings of which, Kant says, we must always remain ignorant. In papers of the late 1860s, Peirce insisted that all of our cognitions are signs, and that each sign refers to a previous sign: At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that is, of cognitions which have been logically de- �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW rived by induction and hypothesis from previous cognitions which are less general, less distinct, and of which we have a less lively consciousness. These in their turn have been derived from others still less general, less distinct, and less vivid; and so on back to the ideal first, which is quite singular and quite out of consciousness. The ideal first is the particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist as such.21 According to Peirce at this stage, all thoughts are of one or another degree of generality, each referring to an earlier thought, and none immediately to its object. Only if a cognition were immediately of its object, could it be certain, hence an intuition. Our lack of intuition, as thus argued by Peirce, was his initial ground for rejecting Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum. The real, as Peirce conceived it at this time, was an ideal limit to a series of thoughts, a limit to be reached in the future: The real . . . is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits.22 Peirce here conceived all conceiving as in an infinite sequence of thoughts, stretching backward toward the non-existent thing-in-itself (an external limit) and forward toward the real, to be achieved at some future time (a limit located within the thought sequence). A consequence was that any individual, considered as an “it” other than the universals true of it, is unreal. With this consequence of his late-1860s theory of knowledge, Peirce was uncomfortable. If the aim is to get outside one’s head and find a purchase on reality, it is indeed disastrous.23 Peirce at last found a way out in his “The Fixation of Belief” of 1877: �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 99 To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by nothing human, but by some external permanency—by something on which our thinking has no effect. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis . . . is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular law. . . .24 In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), Peirce combined the hypothesis of real things on which our thinking has no effect with his earlier notion of indefinite progress toward human knowledge of the real: Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. . . . The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.25 In the years 1879-1884, Peirce was a part-time lecturer in logic at the Johns Hopkins University, and he and his students O.H. Mitchell and Christine Ladd-Franklin (independently of Frege in Germany) introduced quantifiers into predicate logic and the logic of relations. Thus the familiar universal and particular propositions of Aristotelian logic, “All S is P,” “Some S is P,” come to be replaced by (x)(Sx ⊃ Px) [read: For all x, if x is S, then x is P], and (Ǝ x) (Sx·Px) [read: There is an x such that x is S and x is P], where we have used a notation now standard. Note that the “x” denotes an individual in whatever universe of discourse, fictional or real, we have entered upon, without any presumption that the essence of this individual is known to us. In relational logic, which is needed for mathematics, indices are crucial for representing dyadic, triadic, n-adic relations, e.g., �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Rxy (read: x bears the relation R to y). All our thinking, according to Peirce in the 1880s and later, is laced with indexical elements, tying discourse to the world we’re in. The index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” Like such words as “here,” “now,” “this,” it directs the mind to the object denoted. The discovery of the nature and indispensability of indices led to a vast extension of Peirce’s understanding of signs and significance (the science of semeiotic he was seeking to build). An index is anything that compels or channels attention in a particular direction. The act of attention responding to an index does not have to be a component of a thought. For instance a driver, on seeing a stoplight go red, may brake automatically without thinking; he thus interprets the red light as a command. Therefore the effect of a sign, in triggering an interpretation, need not be a thought; it can be an action or a feeling. The extension of semeiotic to nonhuman interpreters is now in the offing, as will become apparent in Part 4 below. At the same time, Peirce has burst out of the closed-in idealism of his earlier theory of knowledge. The result is what we may call Scientific Realism. Part 3. Anisotropic Processes Just twelve years after the first copies of Origin of Species landed in the U.S.A., Peirce wrote: Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing had been done in a widely different branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to say what the movements of any particular molecule of a gas would be on a certain hypothesis regarding the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell [had been able, eight years before the publication of Darwin’s immortal work], by the application of the doctrine of prob- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 101 abilities, to predict that in the long run such and such a proportion of the molecules would, under the given circumstances, acquire such and such velocities; that there would take place, every second, such and such a number of collisions, etc.; and from these propositions [they] were able to deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard to their heat relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable to say what the operation of variation and natural selection in any individual case will be, demonstrates that in the long run they will adapt animals to their circumstances.26 Thus Peirce took explanation in both statistical mechanics and Darwinian natural selection to be statistical. He meant, Short argues, irreducibly statistical, and not mechanistic.27 Analyzed logically, a mechanistic explanation starts from a particular disposition of certain bodies at some time, and by applying general laws of mechanics, gravitation, chemistry, electromagnetism, or other general theory, derives the particular disposition of these bodies at a later time. “Particular” here is opposed to “general.” The explanations of Celestial Mechanics are of this kind. The celestial mechanician, starting from the positions and velocities of the bodies in the solar system at one instant, and assuming gravitational theory, computes the positions and velocities of these bodies at a later instant. If we should propose to ourselves a similar calculation for molecules of a gas confined in a container, we would find it impracticable. The number of molecules is too large (in a cubic centimeter of gas at one atmosphere of pressure and 0°C. that number is about 2.7 × 1019, or 27 quintillion). Ascertaining the positions and velocities of all these molecules at a specified “initial” instant is humanly impossible. Moreover, the motions are not governed by a single law like gravitation, but involve collisions of the molecules with each other and the walls of the container; these introduce discontinuities that are difficult to take into account. �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW But the crucial conclusion is this: even if such a computation were possible, it would not yield the conclusion for which statistical mechanics argues. Statistical mechanics seeks to establish that notably non-uniform distributions of molecules in the gas will in time be replaced by a more uniform distribution, with reduction in the spread of velocities amongst the molecules. The statistical argument invokes probability. How to understand probability in this context is by no means settled, and we shall give only a rough indication of the type of solution that is believed necessary.28 Consider a system of n molecules of gas contained in a volume V. Let V be divided into a large number m of equal cells, m being less than n (if n is in quintillions, m could be in the millions or billions). If the molecules were distributed with perfect uniformity throughout V, then each cell would contain n/m molecules. This distribution is a particular microstate—an extremely special one, hence unlikely. We would expect that, in most imaginable distributions, the numbers of molecules in different cells would be different. To take this likelihood into account, consider microstates in which the number of molecules in all cells falls within the range n/m ± e, where e is much less than n/m. Let the class of all microstates thus characterized be called C, and let the complementary class, or class of all microstates in which the number of molecules in some cells falls outside the range n/m ± e, be called Cʹ′. In the work of the earlier theorists, distinguishable microstates compatible with the overall energy of the gas were assigned equal probabilities, since no reason presented itself for assigning different probabilities to different microstates. Later theorists sought grounds other than “equal ignorance” for assigning probabilities to microstates. Whatever the mode of assigning probabilities, the outcome must show the gas �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 103 progressing from less uniform to more uniform distributions, both spatially and with respect to the spread of velocities. For that is the empirical result: a quantity of gas under high pressure, when let into an evacuated chamber, spreads out through the chamber and is soon more homogeneously distributed, with a uniform temperature and pressure lower than the original temperature and pressure. The Second Law of Thermodynamics extends this kind of reasoning to all natural systems. It says that in any closed system the processes have a direction: they progress toward greater homogeneity and reduced capacity to do mechanical work.29 For processes that are directional in time, Short uses the term anisotropic (a-privative + iso, “equal” + tropos, “direction”). Anisotropic processes are defined by the type toward which they progress. We shall see that there are anisotropic processes other than those that instantiate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. All such processes, however, differ from mechanical processes, which proceed from a particular configuration to a particular configuration. Whether the universe is a closed system we do not know, but everywhere in the observable world we see the effects of the Second Law, the “degradation of energy.” Nevertheless, we also see that new forms of order, though improbable, sometimes emerge. They are produced in open systems that absorb energy from, and discard unused matter and energy to, the environment. Ilya Prigogine has described such forms of order, calling them “dissipative systems.”30 Locally, in the newly created form, the second law appears to be violated, but if account is taken of the exhausted fuel and other waste materials ejected to the environment, the second law is found to hold. Higher forms of order come to be at the expense of a decrease in order elsewhere, an increase in homogeneity and a lessened capacity to produce novelty. �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The first coming-to-be of living forms in the universe presumably occurred in the manner of Prigogine’s “dissipative systems.” Such is the hypothesis generally accepted by scientists today. Living systems differ from the cases studied by Prigogine in their greater complexity and in having the capacity to self-replicate. In 1953 the graduate student S.L. Miller under the guidance of H.C. Urey circulated a mixture of methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen through a liquid water solution, and elsewhere in the apparatus continuously passed an electrical discharge through the vaporous mixture. After several days the water solution changed color, and was found to contain a mixture of amino acids, the essential constituents of proteins. Since then, most if not all of the essential building-blocks of proteins, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids have been produced under conditions similar to those obtaining when the Earth was young (the atmosphere needs to be free of oxidizing agents such as oxygen). The sequences of conditions and chemical pathways by which these building-blocks may have been assembled into a living cell remain matters of speculation. Darwin’s evolutionary theory, taking the existence of living things as given, goes on to show how, chiefly but not solely by means of natural selection,31 biological evolution can occur. Our little word “can” here goes to signal what Nicholas Maistrellis calls “the highly theoretical, and even speculative character” of Origin chapter 4, dedicated to expounding that and how Natural Selection “works.” We should not expect a series of examples of natural selection designed to win us over to his theory on purely empirical grounds. Even if Darwin had wanted to proceed in that way, he could not have done so, for such examples do not exist—or at least were not known to Darwin. . . . Notice that all the examples of natural selection in this chapter are, as Darwin repeatedly acknowledges, imaginary ones.32 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 105 Contemporary readers of Darwin have sometimes become so blasé about the shocking idea that order may emerge out of disorder that they don’t notice how subtle, complex, and distributed the over-all argument of Origin is. We have found C. Kenneth Waters’ “The arguments in the Origin of Species,” along with the other essays included in Part 1: Darwin’s Theorizing of The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, particularly conducive to waking us up. Peirce wrote, in A Guess at the Riddle (1887): Whether the part played by natural selection and the survival of the fittest in the production of species be large or small, there remains little doubt that the Darwinian theory indicates a real cause, which tends to adapt animal and vegetable forms to their environment. A remarkable feature of it is that it shows how merely fortuitous variations of individuals together with merely fortuitous mishaps to them would, under the action of heredity, result, not in mere irregularity, nor even in statistical constancy, but in indefinite progress toward a better adaptation of means to ends.33 A little later in this same manuscript Peirce sums up the basic idea of Darwinian selection as follows: There are just three factors in the process of natural selection; to wit: 1st, the principle of individual variation or sporting; 2nd, the principle of hereditary transmission . . . ; and 3rd, the principle of elimination of unfavorable characters.34 Darwin and Peirce lacked the benefit of a workable theory of inheritance. Nothing like our genetics was available to them. We today single out genetic make-up as the causally significant locale of “sporting,” And Peirce’s phrase, “elimination of unfavorable characters,” is replaced in more recent neo-Darwinian formulations by the phrase “relative reproductive success,” meaning, the having of more numerous off- �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW spring. The process is statistical: If one variant of a species has more numerous offspring than do others, and if in addition these offspring survive to reproduce, the original variant, possessed of one or more genetic alleles (alternative forms of a gene), is more successful in propagating its genome to later generations. The hypothesis of Natural Selection confers little in the way of predictive power. Its chief value is to provide a posthoc explanation of what has occurred. For example, visual acuity is crucial to the survival of both predators and prey. Evidently predators are better off with eyes in the front of their heads as they pursue prey, and potential prey are better off with eyes on the sides of their heads to detect predators coming from any quarter. Another example: Flowers evolved as a device by which plants induce animals to transport their pollen (hence sperm) to the egg cells. The evolutionarily older plants had been pollinated by the wind. The more attractive the plants were to an insect, the more frequently they would be visited and the more seeds they would produce. Any chance variation that made the visits more frequent or made pollination more efficient offered immediate advantages.35 We can only guess at the detailed processes by which such adaptations have been brought about. What Darwin gives us is a heuristic for research, not a set of biological laws.36 Partly on this account, because Darwinian explanation does not fit the model of explanation in mechanics, it has taken a long time before philosophers of science became willing to award a comparable degree of intellectual dignity to Darwinian as to Galilean and Newtonian science. The books listed in the Bibliography appended to Maistrellis’s Selections help overcome the physics envy that stands in the way of appreciating Darwin. Particularly helpful have been Sober’s persevering �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 107 efforts to clarify and show the interconnections amongst the fundamental concepts of Fitness, Function, Adaptation, and Selection, while steadily reminding us of the ineliminably probabilistic character of most of the theorizing of modern evolutionary biology. One of Sober’s helps into the saddle is his distinction between selection for and selection of: Selection-for is a causal concept. To say that there is selection for trait T in a population means that having T causes organisms to survive and reproduce better (so having the alternative(s) to T that are present in the population causes organisms to survive and reproduce worse). In contrast, to say that there is selection of trait T just means that individuals with T have a higher average fitness than do individuals who lack T.37 Here is an illustration of the contrasting terms being put to use: Worms improve the soil, but that does not mean that their digestive systems are adaptations for soil improvement; rather, the worm gut evolved to help individual worms survive and reproduce. The benefit that the ecosystem receives is a fortuitous benefit—a useful side-effect unrelated to what caused the trait to evolve. The gut’s ability to extract nutrition for individual worms is what the gut is an adaptation for.38 To balance our earlier quotation from Maistrellis stressing the not strictly empirically encountered character of Darwin’s examples in his chapter about natural selection-at-work, notice that Sober feels quite comfortable about urging against the philosopher Jerry Fodor, a critic of Darwinism, that “biologists often think they have excellent evidence for saying that agricultural pests experienced selection for DDT resistance, [or] that there has been selection for dark coloration in moths.”39 Short adopts Sober’s selection of/selection for contrast �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW and, integrating it with Peircian ideas of explanation by final causes, adapts it to new uses. The context is as follows. He asks us to distinguish four kinds of physical process: Mechanical processes that proceed from one particular configuration to another and are reversible. The processes described by statistical dynamics, which are anisotropic and result in an increase in entropy and disorder. The non-equilibrium processes studied by Prigogine, which are also anisotropic, but produce open systems that have increased order and diminished entropy. The dissipative structures can sustain themselves in the given environment for a time. Living things, we assume, are of this kind—complex open systems that metabolize and have an apparatus for replicating themselves. With living things, a third sort of anisotropic process comes into play: Natural Selection, the selection of characteristics for types of effect that conduce to reproductive success.40 Given living things and their struggle for existence, given heritable variability, given phenotypic features that in a given state-of-its-world enhance a creature’s relative chance of producing fertile offspring, a new kind of directional process comes into being, natural selection. And with it, the possibility of purpose comes on the scene. Not that anything is a purpose or has a purpose in biological evolution before the actual occurrence of a mutation that happens to be selectively retained because of some advantage that it confers. Only at that time, that is, when a feature is selected for its effect, does the effect, say visual acuity, become a purpose. There was no purpose “visual acuity” or “adaptedness” or “survival” hanging around waiting for an opportunity. But once eyes with adjustable lenses become a feature of mammals, then it would only be mechanicalist prejudice that could keep us from saying that eyes exist for the purpose of seeing.41 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 109 Sober’s polar terms selection of/selection for are perhaps worked harder and a little differently than they were previously: It is because lenses and focusing increase visual acuity that genetic mutations resulting in lenses and focusing were retained in subsequent generations; in fact, that happened in independent lines of animal evolution. The selection in those cases was for the visual acuity and of concrete structures (or the genes that determine them) that improved visual acuity in specific ways. . . . The of/for distinction is relative to the level of analysis, but the object of ‘for’ is always an abstract type and the object of ‘of ’ is always something genetic or genetically determined, hence concrete. . . . As the type selected-for is essential to explanation by natural selection, such explanation is like anisotropic explanation in statistical mechanics [in that] both explain actual phenomena by the types they exemplify. Hence it is not mechanistic. . . . It is qua adaptation—hence in that aspect—that [an adaptive feature, say S] is explained by natural selection. S could also be explained, had we knowledge enough, as a product of a complicated series of mechanical events. But, then, S’s enhancing reproductive success would seem a surprising coincidence, a bit of biological luck. S’s being an adaptation would not be explained.42 The “aptness” of organisms is one of the facts of life that the Darwinian program of explanation seeks to account for. Having had some success in this explanatory endeavor, we easily forget that there is no guarantee that evolution will bring about an increase in complexity or intelligence or other quality that we admire. Overstatement here, Short warns us, is common, and disastrous.43 Notice too that natural selection was not itself selected, and therefore does not have a purpose. It just occurs. �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Part 4. The Emergence of Intentionality and Conscious Purposes Cleverly joining Peircean reasoning to the more recent formulations of neo-Darwinian theory, Short’s Theory sketches a narrative that strives to make intelligible the eventual emergence of the possibility of deliberately produced tools and self-controlled action out of advantageous anatomy and biologically useful animal behavior. Here one must go slow and notice that it is as the world comes to hold new kinds of entity that new kinds of explanation become applicable.44 Short is not reducing biological explanation to chemical explanation. Nor will he assimilate human discourse to animal signaling.45 The last three chapters of his book are given over to exploring the implications of applying Peirce’s ideas of sign-action (= semeiosis) to distinctively human language, thought, and life. But unless we work from the bottom up, there is no explaining of emergents. “Working from the bottom up” means for Short that he must develop so general an account of Peirce’s semiotic triad Sign-Object-Interpretant that it will be applicable both to infra-human sign-interpretation—end-directed animal responses to stimuli—and, duly amplified, to distinctively human life and thought. For Short, this behaviorist interlude is in the service of Peirce’s Synechism:46 If successful in his defense of Peirce’s ways, he will have warded off both Cartesian dualism and Reductionism.47 Among social animals, group behavior is determined by mechanisms that cause one individual to respond to another. A forager bee, for instance, having located nectar, returns to the hive and there exhibits what look like dances. The bees in the hive react to these dances as signaling the direction and distance in which the nectar will be found. Ethologists have instructed us that there is an immense variety of animal be- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 111 haviors that operate as though they were intended as communicative signs. By what criteria one determines the intendedness of a bird- or monkey-cry the emission of which tends to result in fellow-birds or fellow-monkeys reacting with behavior that makes sense for the creatures in question (e.g., escaping in an appropriate way from a certain kind of predator, or overcoming reluctance to approach more closely) has been a topic for ethological investigation. But every parent is familiar with the fact that infant wailing and screaming is not, in the earlier phases of its life, an expression of the infant’s intention to rouse its protectors. Yet when the infant is a little older its jealous brother may justly complain: “She is not crying for a reason. She’s crying for a purpose!” We have deliberately introduced the word “intend” in its ordinary sense before returning to the topic of intentionality in Brentano’s scholastic and technical sense. (Unhappiness about the lack of a non-dualist treatment of Intentionality was what initially motivated our exploration of Short’s book on Peirce’s semeiotics.) Unlike many semioticians, Short follows in Peirce’s footsteps by beginning with interpretive behavior, not with the sending of signs.48 This permits him to take off from responses. For instance: The deer does not flee the sudden noise that startled it, but a predator; for it is to evade a predator that the deer flees. The instinct to flee is based on an experienced correlation of sudden noises to predators; the correlation is weak, but, unless the deer is near starvation, it is better for it to risk losing a meal than to risk being one. If no predator is there, the deer’s flight is a mistake, albeit justified. Mistaken or not, the flight interprets the noise as a sign of a predator. A response is not merely an effect if it can be mistaken. It ranks as an interpretation. In what manner and measure this idea of mistake is available to infra-human animals is a hard question. When the dog �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that was, in some human observer’s estimation, “barking up the wrong tree,” corrects itself and, redirecting its bark to the neighboring tree, glimpses the spot where the cat in fact now is, does the dog think to itself, “Now I’ve got it right”? Consider two other examples of interpretive responses, both reported by the ethologist Niko Tinbergen: male sticklebacks, during the breeding season, tend to adopt a “threat posture” toward potential rivals. When the opponent does not flee . . . the owner of the territory . . . points its head down and, standing vertically in the water, makes some jerky movements as if it were going to bore its snout into the sand. Often it erects one or both ventral fins.49 Tinbergen’s Plate I is a photo of a Stickleback exhibiting this posture to its own reflection in a mirror! We know this fish is making a mistake. Does he? Lorenz reports . . . an incident which demonstrates the power of [some varieties of Cichlid] to distinguish between food and their young. Many Cichlids carry the young back, at dusk, to a kind of bedroom, a pit they have dug in the bottom. Once Lorenz, together with some of his students, watched a male collecting its young for this purpose. When it had just snapped up a young one, it eyed a particularly tempting little worm. It stopped, looked at the worm for several seconds, and seemed to hesitate. Then, after these seconds of “hard thinking,” it spat out the young, took up the worm and swallowed it, and then picked up its young one again and carried it home. The observers could not help applauding.50 The antelope that fled from a lion that wasn’t there, the stickleback that threatened a rival that wasn’t there, did they interpret something heard, something seen, as to-be-run-from, to-be-ousted? Their behaviors, while in error in the particular cases, were appropriate. And this holds true whether or not these individual animals “knew what they were doing.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 113 Something like this is, we take it, what Short meant when he wrote: 51 The purposefulness of interpretation accounts for the significance of that which is interpretable. In particular, as that which has a purpose may fail of its purpose, the purposefulness of interpretations accounts for the possibility that what is signified is not. Because what is signified might not be, significance exemplifies Brentano’s idea of intentionality, which he defined as having an “inexistent object,” i.e., an object that is an object independently of its existing. Brentano asserted that intentionality is unique to human mentality, but the argument of [Short’s] book is that sign-interpretation occurs independently of conscious thought and, hence, that Peirce’s semeiotic applies to phenomena well beyond human mentality. Thus it provides for a naturalistic explanation of the mind. But that is possible only if purposefulness can occur without consciousness. Peirce’s doctrine of final causation c. 1902 provides a defense of that assumption. For it identifies causation with selection for types of possible outcome, regardless of whether that selection is conscious. And it does so consistently with modern physics and biology.52 But the question that arose when we considered the dog that eventually managed to bark at the cat is still with us: The dog, in our judgment and in fact, “corrected itself.” And we know that learning, in the sense of an individual’s behavior being shaped “for the better” by its experience, is a constituent of the lives of very many (all?) animals. But did the dog know that it corrected itself? Consider Lorenz’s much applauded Cichlid father, which had its worm and its baby too. Mustn’t it have had some sort of “inner representation” of the alternative courses of conduct between which it chose? We seem at last to have reached the question of when and how conscious purpose, planning, and self-control emerge. Short’s entire book, not just the chapter bearing the name “Semeiosis and the Mental,” is in pursuit of it. Given that �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 114 Peirce regarded thought to be internalized discourse, and that an individual’s power of discourse is a skill that could not have been acquired had that individual’s “instinct to acquire the art” (as Darwin put it) not been activated in the course of apprenticeship to speakers, Short and Peirce are clearly right that “the capacity to think for oneself and to act in despite of society is . . . social in origin.” He adds: “Individual autonomy and varied personality are further examples of the irreducibility of new realities to their preconditions.”53 Among such “new realities” are not only new means to accomplish existing purposes but also new purposes. Because Short, under Peirce’s tutelage, is wholehearted about accepting the Reality of purpose and purposiveness and is unembarrassed about following Darwin in naturalizing man, his investigation of how purpose can and has become “emancipated” from biology has real content.54 Conclusion We have seen that, according to Peirce, both statistical mechanics and Darwinian natural selection entail anisotropic processes, defined by the type of result they lead to. The “population thinking” that Darwin and later biologists introduced into biology was aimed at accounting for the emergence of biological types or species. The new thinking differed from the typological thinking of pre-Darwinian times in that the types or species arose in time. Among the virtues of Short’s presentation of Peirce is that he gives a sufficiently detailed description of Peirce’s Categories (in Ch.3) for readers to be supplied with opportunity to become persuaded that Peirce’s trinitarian categorial scheme accommodates Individuals and Kinds as mutually irreducible. Here is, however, not the place to exhibit or argue the point. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 115 Why was the reception of Darwin at St. John’s so lukewarm in earlier days? The theoretical physicist’s impatience with fussy descriptive details such as are dwelt on in Origin (and must be by natural historians) was probably a contributing factor; and one that would have been exacerbated if the assigned selection from Origin was pedagogically haphazard. But vague apprehensions about the moral and philosophical import of Darwin’s theory may have contributed more heavily to avoiding serious intellectual engagement with it. Darwin himself anticipated this reaction. He explains (in the Introduction to Descent of Man) that it was in order not to stand in the way of the reading public’s making fair trial of his general views that he allowed himself just one tiny paragraph, on the final pages of Origin, that makes direct mention of man: In the distant future . . . psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. Twelve years later, in Descent of Man, the scope of Darwin’s intellectual ambition is made manifest. In Ch.3 he takes on Kant: “Duty . . . whence thy original?” . . . As far as I know, no one has approached [this great question] exclusively from the side of natural history. So “approaching it,” Darwin writes: The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.55 His plan is to show how, granted the rest of our mental at- �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tributes and the world’s make-up, the human species does better with than it would without morality. Otherwise morality (sense of duty, conscience) and the instruments for its acquisition and maintenance could not have become “selected.” But isn’t there something topsy-turvy about an explanation that subordinates, as means, something better, namely a creature competent to have a sense of duty, to an end less good, namely, mere comparative fitness for producing fertile offspring? The complaint, we urge, limps, because it fails to register that when something is fruitful and multiplies or fails to, it is as a creature possessed of certain attributes that it does so. Darwin freely ascribes sociability, intelligence, and emotions (sympathy, jealousy, ennui, curiosity, courage, maternal affection, and so forth) to, for instance, domestic animals.56 Nevertheless, he reserves morality for human beings: As we cannot distinguish between motives, we rank all actions of a certain class as moral, when they are performed by a moral being. A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past or future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity; therefore when a monkey faces danger to rescue its comrade, or takes charge of an orphan monkey, we do not call its conduct moral. . . . It cannot be maintained that the social instincts are ordinarily stronger in man than, . . . for instance, the instinct of self-preservation, hunger, lust. . . . Why, then, does man regret . . . and why does he further feel he ought to regret his conduct? . . . Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection. . . . Whilst the mother bird is feeding or brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the migratory; but . . . at last, at a moment when her young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them. When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory instinct ceases to act, what an agony of remorse each bird would feel if, being endowed with great mental activity, she could not prevent the image continually passing before her �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 117 mind of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from cold and hunger. At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse. . . . But after their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are contrasted with the ever enduring social instincts, retribution will surely come. Man will then feel dissatisfied with himself, and will resolve with more or less force to act differently for the future. This is conscience; for conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction which, if weak, we call regret, and if severe remorse.57 Darwin seems to have come upon Aristotle late in life and recognized a soul-mate in him. He would, we believe, have been in delighted agreement upon reading Aristotle’s observation in History of Animals, Book 1, 488b24, that we are the only creatures capable of deliberating (bouleutikon): Many animals have the power of memory, and can be trained, but the only one that can recall past events at will (dunatai anamimnēskesthai) is man. Where are we then? Conscience, says Darwin in the opening sentence of Descent of Man, Ch.3, is the chief mark of distinction of the human race. Conscience cannot come into existence or operate without the power of recollection. The power of recollection (though no texts come to mind where anyone of our three authors says this expressly) depends upon the power to learn and employ not just a communicative medium but an articulate language.58 Beings of this sort, Peirce the logician will come to argue ever more strenuously as he ages, are capable of acting not just in a motivated way, but in accordance with an ideal: Every action has a motive; but an ideal only belongs to a line of conduct which is deliberate. To say that conduct is deliberate implies that each action, or each important action, is reviewed by the actor and that his judgment is passed upon it, as to whether he wishes his future conduct �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 118 to be like that or not. His ideal is the kind of conduct which attracts him upon review. His self-criticism followed by a more or less conscious resolution that in its turn excites a determination of his habit, will, with the aid of sequelae, modify a future action; but it will not generally be a moving cause to action.59 Permit us to conclude with an anecdote. A recent movie presented a small group of adults with the situation of a male high-school teacher accepting seduction by one of his beautiful girl-students. Ever intent on discussing la difference, one of the men in the group of movie watchers asked “Do you blame the teacher?” “Yes,” was the answer, “because although it may indeed be true that it is harder for young men than for young women to resist sexual arousal, the teacher knowingly entered upon a profession that he could foresee would present him with such situations as he was now in. He should, taking advantage of the human power of imagination, have rehearsed inwardly how he would act if the world presented him with an opportunity that he should turn down.”60 With Peirce’s help, and instructed by Short, we hope to have shown in this essay that nothing in Darwin interferes with acknowledging the emergence of organisms competent to entertain and criticize ideals. This is the kind of organism we human beings are. NOTES 1. According to Ernst Mayr in his One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), what later authors think and speak of as “Darwin’s Theory” is a combination of four or five strands—evolution as such, common descent, multiplication of species, gradualism, and natural selection. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 119 2. See Ernst Mayr’s Introduction to Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), xii. 3. John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt, 1910). 4. Ernst Mayr in Evolution and Anthropology (Washington: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), 2; also given in Mayr’s Introduction to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile, xix-xx. 5. See Elliott Sober, “Evolution, population thinking, and essentialism,” Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Elliott Sober, (Boston: MIT Press, 2001). 6. In the seminar described at the beginning of this essay, Clark was the sole participant to speak up in defense of Darwin’s theory. 7. In his book Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1874). 8. Jasha spoke with admiration of Husserl’s repeated efforts to start all over again from the beginning, in formulating the archai of philosophy. Husserl’s notion of sedimentation in the sciences—our tendency to take earlier achievements for granted—was a theme that Jasha took up in his studies of the origins of algebra and of the work of Galileo. Seeking to understand Jasha’s Husserlian antecedents, I read a good deal of Husserl during the years I was reading Peirce. A lecture I gave in September, 1959, was based on Husserl’s Erfahrung und Urteil. 9. The importance of this fact was first established by Murray Murphey, in The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961.) 10. Thomas L. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs (Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 2007). I was introduced to this book by Chaninah Maschler. 11. The Essential Peirce, edited by the Peirce Edition Project, 2 Vols. (Bloomingdale, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998), Vol. 2, 400. In further references to this publication will be abbreviated to EP. 12. Ibid., 516. 13. These articles are reprinted in EP, Vol. 1, 109-123, 124-141. 14. Thomas L. Short, in a forthcoming second book about Peirce, gives a detailed defense of this Peircean understanding of the sciences. 15. EP, Vol. 2, 400. Italics added. 16. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, “Of the Canon of Pure �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Reason,” A800 = B828 ff. Kant there explains, “By the practical I mean everything that is possible through freedom.” 17. EP, Vol. 2, 333. 18. Ibid., 401. 19. Peirce eventually (as here) made the name of the -ism ugly, “to keep it safe from being kidnapped.” Consider what Peirce writes about how his thinking does or doesn’t differ from that of William James, EP, Vol. 2, 421. 20. EP, Vol. 2, 358f. For a lucid brief description of Peirce’s later “subjunctive” version of pragmatism, one which acknowledges that “modern science . . . is practice engaged in for the sake of theory,” see Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 173, second paragraph. 21. EP, Vol. 1, 52. 22. Ibid. 23. For other difficulties with his theory in the 1860s, see Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, ch. 2. 24. EP, Vol. 1, 120. 25. EP, Vol. 1, 138-139. 26. EP, Vol. 1, “The Fixation of Belief,” 111; for the square bracketed emendations, see ibid., 377. 27. Cf. EP, Vol. 1, 289f. 28. See Paul Ehrenfest and Tatyana Ehrenfest, The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics (New York: Dover, 1958.) 29. Cf. EP, Vol. 1, 221. 30. Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980). See also Stuart A. Kauffman, “Antichaos and Adaptation,” in Scientific American, August 1991, 78-84. 31. See the concluding sentence of the potent last paragraph of Darwin’s Introduction to On the Origin of Species. Gould and Lewontin, in their famous protest against unrestrained Adaptationism (“The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme,” in Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Elliott Sober, [Boston: MIT Press, 2001]), cite this sentence and add an approving reference to George. J. Romanes’s essay “The Darwinism of Darwin, and of the Post-Darwinian Schools” (in The Monist 6:1 [1895], 1-27). Romanes would join Gould and Lewontin when they write: “We should cherish [Darwin’s] consistent attitude of pluralism in attempting to ex- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 121 plain Nature’s complexity” (82). 32. Selections from Darwin’s The Origin of Species: The Shape of the Argument, ed., Nicholas Maistrellis (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2009), 43. 33. EP, Vol 1, 200. For a correction of this overly cheerful scenario of inevitable progress see, e.g., Elliott Sober, “Selection-for: What Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini Got Wrong,” 11. This essay is available on the internet at the following URL: http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/Fodor%20and%20Piatelli-Palermini%20april%209%202010.pdf 34. EP, Vol. 1, 272. Cf. Darwin, On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile, 127. 35. Helena Curtis, Biology (New York: Worth, 1979). 36. Equally important, perhaps, is the inspiration of Darwin’s intellectual attitude—omni-observant, persevering, sober—to which Maistrellis calls attention. 37. Elliott Sober, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984). 38. The example stems from Williams via Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, “Adaptation and Natural Selection Revisited,” in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24 (February 2011), 462-8. In this article, the authors are “revisiting” George C. Williams’s book on adaptation in order to make sure the world knows that the book was a landmark in the development of evolutionary theory. 39. Elliott Sober, “Fodor’s Bubbe Meise Against Darwinism,” in Mind and Language 23 (February 2008), 43. (Bubbe meise is Yiddish for “old wives’ tale.”) This article is also available on the internet at the following URL: http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/fodor's%20bubbe%20meise%20published.pdf 40. When Herbert Spencer attempted to explain evolution on mechanical principles, Peirce countered that the endeavor was illogical. See EP, Vol. 1, 289. Among Peirce’s arguments was this: the law of conservation of energy implies that all operations governed by mechanical laws are reversible. Whence follows the corollary that growth is not explicable by those laws, even though they are not violated in the process of growth. 41. Private communication from Thomas Short, March 19, 2012. 42. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 130. Italics in last sentence added. 43. Ibid., 145 �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 44. Ibid., 144-145. 45. As Allen Clark wrote in a manuscript never published (“The Contributions of Charles S. Peirce to Value Theory,” 4), “No philosopher . . . would be less inclined than Peirce to minimize the tremendous importance of the transformation that occurs when inquiry [or any other adaptive behavior] rises from the unconscious to the conscious level. For it is at this second stage that man transcends the animal faculty of merely responding to naturally given signs, those perceptual clues furnished by nature; he begins to make signs, and to respond to signs of his own making, and thus learns to provoke his own responses.” 46. “Synechism is Peirce’s doctrine that human mentality is continuous with the rest of nature,” writes Thomas Short in his exchange with the critics of his book, “Response,” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (Fall 2007), 666. 47. Ibid. Dewey’s essay of 1896, “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (Psychological Review 3 [July, 1896], 357-370) is offered in the same, perhaps Hegel-inspired, spirit of synechism. (This article is available on the internet at the following URL: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm.) But a more instructive comparison would be between Thomas Short’s account of Peirce and the life-long work of James J. Gibson, for instance, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1979.). 48. See Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 156f. 49. Niko Tinbergen, Social Behavior of Animals, Methuen’s Monographs on Biological Subjects, Vol. 1 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1953), 9. 50. Ibid., 45. The following anecdote of Darwin’s in his chapter comparing the mental powers of lower animals with human mental powers seems to be to the same effect: “Mr. Colquhoun winged two wild ducks, which fell on the opposite sides of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird.” Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 48. 51. Further clarifying remarks on Intentionality are given by Short in Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 174-177. 52. Elliott Sober, “Fodor’s Bubbe Meise Against Darwinism,” 669. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER 123 53. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 147. 54. Ibid., 148. 55. Darwin, Descent of Man, 71. 56. See Charles Darwin’s 1872 book Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, ed. Paul Ekman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 57. Darwin, Descent of Man, Ch.3, 88-91. 58. Ibid., Ch.2, 54. 59. EP, Vol. 2, 377. Survey the Index to EP, Vol. 2 under “self-control.” 60. The answer is inspired by Peirce’s report of his childhood memory of his younger brother’s having prepped himself in imagination for preventing the spread of a small fire. See EP, Vol. 2, 413. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 124 The Laws of Physics Marlene Benjamin In Memoriam People say that the Laws of Physics Are immutable, Beyond the reach of hopes and dreams, Immune to wishes, And entirely indifferent to desire. They say that the Laws of Physics Are as solid in their abstractness as the materials Whose movements they describe, Whose broad encompassing axioms Place with near precision all heavenly bodies, All rocks and debris, All breathing creatures—even us, With all our singularity— Within the vastness of this complicated And wholly relational world, Measuring all places with a confidence In basic principles (as if some genius had bestowed upon them personality) The rest of us admire but so rarely can attain. There is beauty in the Laws of Physics, The beauty and elegance of those simple Euclidean equations I struggled over long ago, The amazing loveliness of a singularly striking accomplishment. Marlene Benjamin is Associate Professor Emerita at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and now lives in California. She is currently working on a book entitled The Catastrophic Self: Philosophy, Memoir, and Medical Trauma. �POEM 125 And yet this question haunts us: Why should we not believe as Greeks believed? Why should we not believe That what we now call myths are really legends, Embellished, we agree, yet legends nonetheless . . . Why should we not have the confidence with which the Greeks were blessed, And take some tales of ordinary people, whose lives were touched By strange and unexpected happenings, as legends of our own, So that the Laws of Physics or Biology Or of all the Natural Philosophies Were not, as we believe, constraining, But rather showed us ourselves as god-like, Whose dreams inscribe upon the world what pleases us, Able, like Athena, come full blown out of Zeus’s head To enact the Laws of Physics to suit ourselves? Then would you come walking back To family and friends, But especially, most especially, to wife and daughter; All your molecules and atoms shaped perfectly again Into your singularly recognizable form, Striding purposefully and with that grin of yours And, as on any ordinary day, There would you be, Arriving home, Whole and un-bloodied, Back into the life you should be living still. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 125 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2012 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T.H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Linafelt, Tod Mazur, Barry Wilson, Curtis Maschler, Chaninah Benjamin, Marlene Description An account of the resource Volume 54, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2012. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_54_No_1_Fall_2012 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/37ae1325ae9e9534961318755394ec8b.pdf 446d12a2b4a638d4e9e47fbd12eea994 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 54, Number 2 (Spring 2013) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2013 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. ��Contents Essays & Lectures Unbecoming Conduct in the Reign of Tiberius ....................1 According to Tacitus David Appleby Dionysus: The Therapeutic Mask .......................................35 Richard B. Carter Fields, Particles, and Being .................................................57 Dylan Casey Miracles and Belief .............................................................89 Joseph Cohen The Question of Questions ...............................................115 Michael W. Grenke Review The Rehabilitation of Spiritedness ....................................135 Book Review of Gary Borjesson’s Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs. Eva Brann ��1 ESSAYS & LECTURES Unbecoming Conduct in the Reign of Tiberius According to Tacitus David Appleby Besides, there is a great difference between doing what one does not approve of and feigning approval of what one does: the one is the part of a weak man, but the other belongs only to the habits of a valet. —De Tocqueville1 1. INTRODUCTION One of the few positive characteristics Tacitus attributed to Tiberius was an interest in public moderation: the proper, the decorous, and the fitting. A memorable example occurs in 22 AD, a year of peace abroad but anxiety in Rome about possible measures to curb rampant luxury. Aware of the princeps’ old fashioned frugality, and in view of widespread neglect of the existing sumptuary law, the senate simply referred the matter to Tiberius. He had often remarked in private that attempting to limit these excessive appetites might not be worth the indecency (indecorum) of trying and failing, or succeeding through coercive measures and bringing great men into dishonor and ill-repute (ignominiam et infamiam). He answered the senate in a letter decrying shameful luxury: vast houses and domestic retinues, rich furnishings and ornament, foppish attire for men, exotic gems for women, over-the-top banquets. All were symptoms of an illness of the soul, one that harms the state even as it ruins great families. “May decency (pudor) change us for the better—the poor because they must; the wealthy because they have had enough.”2 The Annales make it clear that self-interest, ambition, and David Appleby is a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW vice led Tiberius to present himself as an enemy of unbecoming conduct. By contrast, Tacitus’s own concern for decorum was deep and sincere. The obligation to speak and behave with dignity and seemliness, with the attendant imperative to avoid unbecoming conduct, was a principle of his moral and social world-view. I shall argue that one of his greatest objections to the new regime under the Caesars was that it created a climate in which members of the senatorial order, Roman society’s natural leaders, were induced to behave in disreputable ways. When the public arena in Rome became a sort of theater in which great men routinely presented themselves in ways that were false, unworthy, and ridiculous, not only individuals and their families were disgraced, but the whole class was placed in an unflattering light. In Tacitus’s judgment, this was one of the most unforgiveable effects of the tyranny. Why did Tacitus take such an interest in seemliness? Two main reasons present themselves, the first more obvious than the second. In the first place, Tacitus was keenly aware of style and its effect upon readers. As we shall see, an important aspect of decorous speech and behavior was paying attention to how others perceive one’s words, gestures, and facial expression. Educated Romans knew that identifying what is seemly involves anticipating how one’s interlocutors will perceive one’s words and appearance. As annalist, historian, biographer and ethnographer, Tacitus represented reality in a highly personal and even idiosyncratic manner. But his words seem always to have been chosen for their likely impact upon readers. He created the effects that he sought through vivid description, asymmetrical construction, oblique narration, and epigrammatic brevity, disposing readers not only to behold the spectacle in a certain light, but to judge along with the author. Anticipated impact upon his reader seems to dictate word choice, sentence structure, and narrative strategy. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 3 What he described—wars and mutinies, plots and murders, above all the gloomy sense of impending dread under the Julio-Claudians—is memorable in large part because of the way he described it.3 His arresting style tends to obscure the second reason for his interest in seemliness, namely his practical experience as magistrate and orator. The son of a senatorial family in southern Gaul or northern Italy, Tacitus belonged to a privileged social order whose members felt entitled to honor their ancestors by exercising authority and generally playing the leading roles in affairs of state. Along with this came an obligation to present oneself in word, gesture, and deed in conformity with one’s social standing. With this innate sense of duty and appropriateness, he began an official career under Vespasian (r. 69-79), continued it during the difficult reign of Domitian (r. 81-96), and in 97 became consul under Nerva (r. 96-98). Under Trajan (r. 98-117), Tacitus delivered an important funeral oration, joined his friend Pliny the younger in a high profile prosecution, and served as proconsular governor of Asia. He was known as an impressive speaker, and around the year 100 he published a treatise on style and various sorts of oratory. In short, as man of action no less than as man of letters, Tacitus was attuned to appearance and how one is perceived. 2 DECORUM Before investigating seemliness in the Annales, it is worth considering the idea in the tradition within which Tacitus worked and in the pages of one of his distinguished Roman predecessors. The noun decorum refers in the first place to the beauty or pleasing appearance of a thing or person; it applies secondarily to non-visual beauty, elegance, charm, and distinction; and then it opens onto other things that are appropriate, seemly, and fitting in ways that attract honor and approval. Like to prepon, its Greek counterpart, decorum is �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW hard to render consistently with one word in English because of its range of aesthetic, histrionic, forensic, and moral meanings. In the rhetorical tradition to prepon had been a principle since Aristotle and Theophrastus, and by the time of Quintilian (d. ca.100) decorum applied to invention, style, arrangement, and delivery. Quintilian owed an immediate debt to Cicero (106-43 BC) whose remark in De oratore that “by action the body talks, so it is all the more necessary to make it agree with the thought”4 bears some relation to the subject at hand. Cicero’s expansive account of decorum as a moral concept in Book I of his De officiis helps us to approach the intellectual milieu of the Annales; for Tacitus, while not himself a Ciceronian, still wrote for, and belonged to, a class that understood itself as embodying the urbanity and standards of conduct that Cicero assumed as normative.5 The discussion of what is honorable that occurs in Book I of De officiis includes a consideration of the four cardinal virtues as the source of all moral goodness, and hence the source of all that is honorable.6 Decorum and the duties it entails spring from the broader virtue of moderation.7 Decorum consists in thinking, saying, and doing what one should, and in appearing to be as morally well ordered as one is. Since the decorous is neither deficient nor excessive, it reflects moderation, and this is understood not only with respect to particular objects or actions, but as the overall balance, order, and harmony of the soul, and as the beauty of the life of one who enjoys such moral equilibrium. Cicero presents decorum as the outward manifestation of the soul’s integrity, the moral analogue of physical beauty.8 Decorum is thus the perceptible aspect of moral goodness; every act of moral rectitude, whether in thought, word, or deed, reveals some element of propriety. Just as the beauty of the body reflects bodily health, decorum reflects moral virtue.9 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 5 Cicero also emphasizes the social aspect of decorum: the good person’s speech, actions, and appearance make his moral virtue discernible to others; and the good person has modesty (verecundia)—that is, he shows consideration for the sensibilities of others. Much of the discussion of decorum in De officiis aims at instilling in the reader a greater awareness of the impression he makes upon others. Cicero explains that playwrights have just this aspect of decorum in mind when they craft words and actions to express the qualities of a particular role (persona).10 The audience knows the characters in the play only by what it can infer from their words, expressions, gestures, and deeds. As a sort of playwright outside the theater, nature assigns us the parts (personae) of consistency, moderation, and self-control, but also teaches us to have respect for others and to attend to how we appear to them. Once again comparing decorum to physical beauty, Cicero says that just as the order and symmetry of the limbs of a body attract the eye and please the viewer, decorum, which illuminates the whole life, is an order, consistency, and moderation of every word and deed that attracts the approval of the people among whom we live.11 According to Cicero, the duties associated with propriety are rooted in nature. This means, in the first instance, submitting the appetites to the control of reason, especially in one’s pastimes, joking, and pleasures. One thereby avoids the vulgarity and sensuality of an uncontrolled, irrational, or bestial life, and instead lives with the self-control and steadiness appropriate to man’s rational nature.12 These are fundamental matters of decency, but are not the only duties associated with propriety. Specifying these other duties is hard, not only because propriety is assessed with respect to circumstance, occasion, and context, but because it is also inextricably linked to one’s personality and character. Cicero explains that nature clothes �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW each of us in two roles (personae), one common and universal, the other individual and proper to each. Our common human role provides us with our dignity as rational beings, our moral goodness, and thus our decorum; we must use our rationality to control our appetites and observe at least minimal standards of decency and consideration.13 The particular role that nature has assigned each one of us accounts for the other duties associated with propriety. Just as one person differs from another in bodily size and physical constitution, so too we find diversity of manner, temperament, and aptitude. While harmless in themselves, these differences have to be taken into account when determining what is fitting and proper for each person. Cicero explains that, within the limits set by universal human nature, the gentleman will attend carefully to his own particular nature in order to determine what is proper and seemly: “nos studia nostra nostrae naturae regula metiamur.”14 On the other hand, just as nothing is so becoming as to find the way of life suited to one’s own nature and then to follow it in a steadfast and consistent way, the inconsistency of a moral lightweight is highly indecorous.15 Decorum of the sort Cicero described stayed on the minds of educated Romans during the principate. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (d. 65), for example, pictured the happy life of the self-consistent man in terms reminiscent of Cicero’s account.16 Again, the correspondence of the younger Pliny shows that in its general outline Cicero’s view of decorum was still influential during the lifetime of Tacitus. Although these letters adhere to a different formality than that of the philosophical manual or discourse that Cicero and Seneca had written, the elements of upper-class seemliness nevertheless appear frequently.17 3 PRINCEPS AS TONE-SETTER Like Cicero, Tacitus was aware of decorum and its social di- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 7 mension, and like him Tacitus accepted it as a principle of civilized conduct. But as moralist and political philosopher, Cicero concerned himself with action as it should be, with theory more than practice. As historian, Tacitus reported how people actually behaved, which in many cases fell far short of the norms and ideals of the theorist. Perhaps there had once been a time when prominent citizens had conformed to standards of decency and comportment rooted in nature and discovered by reason. What Tacitus saw in his own generation, and what he could learn of the reign of Tiberius, however, was that the princeps himself more and more became the axial pole of decorum; that is, the place that Cicero had attributed to nature and reason in determining the criteria of decorous behavior, Tacitus found, in practice, had been taken over by the princeps himself. This is not to say that Tacitus knew nothing of nature as norm, or of reason as the guide to understanding nature. Indeed, as we shall see, the men he praised had moral strength and good character consistent with, if not explicitly related to, natural law. But for many prominent Romans the preponderance of the first citizen eclipsed any view of a natural standard. For them it seemed more expedient to conform themselves to his perspective and his way of doing things than to an abstract ideal of natural virtue. The reason they used to determine their behavior was the prudence involved in first trying to discern the expectations of the princeps and then attuning themselves accordingly. The princeps came to set the standard of decorous behavior because of the character of the regime. Force and political inequality lay at the root of the principate, but its day-to-day aspect was the tone set by the princeps himself. Augustus himself had established the pattern of effective autocracy tacitly juxtaposed with republican institutions and the semblance of liberty for the senatorial elite. He took the lead in matters �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of public behavior, holding or declining certain magistracies and official posts, nominating friends as candidates for others. Sometimes setting the tone meant giving direct advice and instructions, but more often it involved modeling this or that behavior, enacting or showing how things were to be done. The poetry of Virgil and the histories of Livy reflect the classicizing and patriotic outlook of Augustus and his circle. So do buildings and statues like the Ara Pacis and the Augustus of Prima Porta.18 Even Augustus’s epitaph, which he composed for himself, has a calm tone, evokes a sense of its author’s modesty, and presents an image of strength in service of the common good.19 Noble Romans accommodated themselves as best they could to the example or standard of the first man. As Tacitus puts it, “with political equality gone, everyone looked to the commands of the princeps.”20 They did this for various reasons. Tacitus is aware that people often unconsciously emulate their superiors, and sometimes this urge to get into line (amor aemulandi) is more effective than the threat of punishment in promoting conformity of mores and behavior.21 Other people realized that the new social and political order presented opportunities for advancement or enrichment to those who could adapt properly. But apprehension and outright fear were more important incentives to conformity. Augustus had dealt harshly with his opponents in the civil war and afterwards, and from the outset it was evident that Tiberius was not a man to cross if one could avoid it. But how was one to avoid crossing him? Conformity was bound to be difficult insofar as the standard to which people sought to conform kept shifting. A mutable standard of propriety was to some extent endemic to the new regime. Always in the principate there was disparity between appearance and reality, between the appearance of liberty of a republic restored by the first citizen and the fact of one man’s hege- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 9 mony.22 The norm of behavior always tended to oscillate between the image of liberty and the reality of domination, because such oscillation reflected the nature of the regime itself. A princeps whose public character was affable, fair, and steady might minimize this oscillation and thereby make it easier for others to attune themselves. He would moderate his own speech and behavior in ways the leading men could decipher and respond to with as much dignity as the circumstances of the autocracy would allow. But a weaker princeps might not. Whether Tacitus judged Augustus to be a better ruler, less tyrannous than Tiberius, is not clear. There are signs that he viewed the regime’s founder with irony and skepticism.23 But at least Augustus had presented a consistent figure and a steady face. This made it possible to live with the new order and its master. According to Tacitus, life was more difficult under Tiberius because of the dissonance between his public mask and his real thoughts and intentions. Tacitus’s censure and disapproval of Tiberius are open, though at first somewhat muted, for he mentions that the tyranny emerged in stages, as the man’s character gradually showed itself. Before the death of Tiberius’s son Drusus in 23, business had been conducted in the senate, where there was still some free discussion. The princeps himself had discouraged flattery, and tried to make sure that offices and magistracies went only to those whose birth, merit, and distinction made them worthy. Taxes and provincial administration were handled equitably. After 23, with Drusus out of the way, Sejanus, Tiberius’s sinister lieutenant, gained greater influence, with the consequence that moderate policies were dropped, and Tiberius eventually withdrew from the city.24 Another turning point came in 29 at the death of the Augusta, Tiberius’s mother. Livia, who had been a match for her smooth and voluble second husband, Augustus, was also �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW equal to the secretiveness and dissimulation of her son. She had exercised a moderating influence upon Tiberius and Sejanus, but once she was dead, they openly took action against those they perceived to be enemies of the government.25 The depth of Tiberius’s corruption may have become more apparent over the years, but all along he had been hard to deal with because he was cryptic and obscure, cruel and vindictive. Even before he assumed overall power, he was secretive and prone to dissemble. When Augustus grew old and ill, speculation as to his successor quickly brought Tiberius into consideration. He had the maturity and the military experience necessary to rule but suffered from the congenital arrogance of the Claudian family, and “many signs of a cruel character broke out, try though he might to control them.” His time spent on Rhodes, which was called retirement but was in fact exile, had been filled with anger, deceit, and hidden passions.26 The first notable deed of Tiberius’s principate was one of violence and deception. He ordered the murder of Postumus Agrippa, grandson of Augustus and possible rival for supreme power, and then pretended his father had commanded it.27 In his treatment of the senate and the magistrates Tiberius was also hard to read. Immediately after the death of Augustus, he acted “as though the republic still existed and as though he was doubtful about taking up command: even the edict by which he summoned the senators to assemble was issued in virtue of the tribunician power that he had accepted from Augustus. The words of the edict were few and very modest.”28 But in sharp contrast to the edict and his apparent concern for republicanism were his actions. He had armed guards at the court, soldiers in the forum, soldiers in the senate house; he sent letters to the army as a veteran leader would, and never showed hesitation except when he spoke �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 11 in the senate.29 Tacitus reports that the main cause of Tiberius’s fear was the thought that his nephew, Germanicus, who commanded a large army and was extremely popular at home, might prefer to have rule instead of just waiting for it. Also, Tiberius wanted to make it seem that he had been called and chosen by the state rather than forced on it through his mother’s ambition in getting Augustus to adopt him. Tacitus adds that it later became known that Tiberius pretended to hesitate in order to ferret out the intentions of the senators, carefully remembering what he took to be their expressions of hostility so that he could eventually exact revenge.30 At times it seemed that Tiberius was reserved and cryptic because he suspected treachery. Certainly he had enemies, some open, others camouflaged. Germanicus, Agrippina, and their supporters he considered rivals, and mistrusted.31 Augustus was said to have given Tiberius a list of men to watch.32 In public or private, he was capable of receiving insult with apparent equanimity, but he did not forget a slight, storing up his anger even over a period of years.33 Sejanus knew Tiberius’s suspicious and credulous (suspicionum et credendi temeritas) character, and after the princeps’ withdrawal to the island of Caprae in 28 he supplied information carefully selected to arouse and channel it.34 People even wondered about the quality of the relationship between Tiberius and his mother, which looked amicable on the surface but which included unmistakable indications of bitterness.35 Misdirection was a tactic for Tiberius, as, for instance, in 16 when he showed favor and friendship to Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus, who had been denounced privately for treasonous plotting. In private conversation with Libo, “Tiberius could have halted all his words and deeds, but he preferred to know them.”36 But in the sequel the utility of concealment was less apparent. Once Libo came to trial before the Senate, �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW he directed supplications to Tiberius who listened with a blank expression, and Tiberius read out the charges and names of the accusers in a moderate tone of voice that seemed neither to minimize nor exaggerate the charges.37 At other times, shame caused Tiberius to avoid the public gaze. Tacitus reports that Tiberius’s son Drusus led a life of frivolity—theater and arena by day, banquets by night—pursuing the pleasures often sought by young men. His father, by contrast, kept to himself and led a joyless life of dark watchfulness and malevolent undertakings.38 Tacitus suspects that Tiberius withdrew permanently from Rome in 26 not only because of the influence of Sejanus and an aversion to his mother, but to lead his vicious and licentious life in secret.39 Quite aside from their utility, however, opacity and concealment seemed to suit Tiberius. He prized dissimulation as his own greatest virtue, clinging to it all his life.40 He projected his personal preference for secrecy onto the divine when in 15 he rejected a proposal to open the Sibylline books to seek guidance in responding to recent destructive flooding of the Tiber.41 He habitually mingled jest and earnestness,42 and routinely spoke in euphemisms.43 Only shock or crisis provoked outbursts of frankness, and these could be dangerous, as when anger toward personal enemies caused lapses in his prudent moderation.44 Even when advanced age and illness brought him close to death, Tiberius pretended (simulans) to be healthy, and Tacitus remarks that dissimulation (dissimulatio) was the last power to leave him.45 Although the speeches of Tiberius often carried a double meaning,46 sometimes they were simply inscrutable. After the funeral of Augustus, his address to the senate was so uncertain and ambiguous that his intended meaning was impossible to understand.47 Again, in 20, at the trial for treason, magic, and adultery of Lepida from the illustrious gens Aemilia, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 13 Tiberius “mixed signs of anger and clemency,” and intervened in the proceedings in ways that some considered nonautocratic, but others saw as prejudicial to the defendant. Lepida was condemned and exiled.48 Doubt often enshrouded the real thoughts and feelings of Tiberius, but it must have been apparent to all that he was watching. The more they looked to him for clues of his expectations, the more they were aware of being under scrutiny. He and his friends and informers attended to their words and actions, their gestures and appearances. He watched the senators carefully, twisting their words and facial expressions into criminal significance, and storing them away in his memory, as was mentioned earlier.49 Even at a distance Tiberius was informed not only about the actions of important men, but about their appearance and comportment. While Germanicus toured Egypt, word reached Tiberius of the manner of his dress and behavior, that it was disagreeably informal and Hellenic, comparable to that of Scipio Africanus while he was in Sicily.50 Thus, finding themselves under scrutiny, those around him sought to make sense of Tiberius’s thoughts and desires so as to conform themselves to his expectations. 4. VARIETIES OF CONFORMITY People who came into contact with Tiberius behaved in ways that reflected not only the opacity of the princeps but also their own fear, ambition, corruption, and sometimes even moral strength. That is, in most—but not all—cases their words and comportment mirrored not a Ciceronian standard of nature and reason but their more or less accurate reading of how best to save themselves, or how best to profit in the prevailing climate. Here I shall survey the main varieties of conformity as Tacitus presents them. Those who were most like Tiberius accommodated themselves best to him. Men like the astrologer Thrasyllus51 un- �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW derstood him, and so were able to conform their behavior to his expectations. It is no accident that the two people Tacitus presents as most successfully attuning themselves to him were the villainous Lucius Aelius Sejanus and Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. Sejanus was an equestrian whom Tiberius appointed commander of the Praetorian Guard and then came to depend upon to carry out his policies in the Senate, especially after retiring to the island of Capreae. To Sejanus alone Tiberius disclosed his secret designs in an unguarded way. Decent outwardly, inwardly Sejanus was consumed with lust for power.52 He hounded the adherents of Agrippina in a series of treason trials, but his hope to marry into the imperial family came to nothing, and he was eventually purged for aiming at the principate itself. Ominously, it was Gaius, or Caligula as he was called, the grandson and terrible successor of Tiberius, who came to mirror the mood and even the words of Tiberius more closely than any other person Tacitus mentions.53 His reign began with the murder of Tiberius. Those who were not like Tiberius, or less like him, found life challenging. Most conformed in more or less indecorous and shameful ways. Some went beyond disgrace to the active commission of crimes. Some refused to conform and usually perished before their time. A few managed to serve and lead public careers worthy of their ancestors almost as though the free republic still existed. All experienced a public discourse that was “narrow and slippery under a princeps who feared liberty but hated flattery.”54 From the outset many dishonored themselves by composing their appearance and words in false, and therefore indecorous, ways. When the news arrived in Rome that Augustus was dead and Tiberius in charge, “consuls, senators, and knights rushed headlong into servitude; the more noble were also more false and hasty, with expression carefully arranged �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 15 to appear neither happy at the death of the princeps nor sad at the accession, they mingled tears and joy, lament and flattery.”55 People tried to read the meaning behind Tiberius’s words, and then to articulate responses that mirrored well enough— but not too clearly—what the listener thought Tiberius was getting at. The results were always dishonorable, sometimes absurd, and occasionally dangerous. In 14, after the funeral of Augustus, Tiberius ostentatiously refused the leading role. The senators, who were afraid to show that they saw he wanted to be asked and to be persuaded to accept power, poured out tearful prayers to him, reaching toward the gods, the statue of Augustus, Tiberius’s knees. Declining to bear the whole burden of government, Tiberius expressed a willingness to accept whatever part was entrusted to him. Gaius Asinius Gallus then made the mistake of asking what part of the government Tiberius wished to be given. Tiberius registered his annoyance with a dark look and protracted silence, but then reiterated his preference to be excused altogether, and said he refused to pick and choose. Gallus tried to smooth over his blunder, saying that he had only tried to get Tiberius to acknowledge that rule could not really be divided at all. This and further flattery failed to allay Tiberius’s irritation with Gallus, who was also the object of hostility for having married Tiberius’s ex-wife, Vipsania.56 Flattery took the form of undeserved civil or military honors.57 An ironic example occurred in 29 when, seeking a remedy in flattery (remedium adulationis) for the fear generated by the wave of treason trials, the senators voted to erect altars to Mercy and Friendship, the latter flanked by statues of Tiberius and Sejanus.58 Flattery often shaped elections, as in the year 21, when Tiberius recommended two men to the senate for consideration as governor of Africa, one a distinguished noble, the �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW other the uncle of Sejanus. It was assumed that the latter was the approved candidate. While both men begged to be excused, Sejanus’s uncle was less convincing, and a chorus of flatterers urged him to accept.59 Flattery also led men beyond disgrace into active wrongdoing. In the year 22, the new consul, Decimus Haterius Agrippa, proposed death as the fitting punishment for the equestrian author of scurrilous verses about Tiberius’s son, Drusus. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus countered by proposing a lesser sentence better proportioned to the offense. All but one of the senators, Gaius Rubellius Blandus, supported Haterius, and the equestrian was immediately put to death. Tiberius rebuked the senate, but with enough ambiguity not to preclude similar punishments in future. Lepidus and Blandus had been unable to prevent shameful adulation from becoming outright injustice.60 Although at first it seemed a means of attaining safety, flattery quickly became equivocal, for in an environment of corrupt mores, express servility could be dangerous by its presence as well as its absence.61 This fact may have intensified the search for new strategies to protect the frightened, and new strategies of advancement for the ambitious. Servitude rapidly assumed the colors of liberty. In the year 14, when Marcus Valerius Messalla Messallinus proposed in the senate that the oath of allegiance to the new princeps be repeated annually, Tiberius asked him to acknowledge that he had not put him up to that proposal. Messalla said that when it came to public business, he would express his own thoughts, no matter who took offense. The historian’s terse judgment is that this was the only sort of flattery left.62 Again, in 22, Lucius Ennius, an equestrian, found himself before the senate charged with treason for melting down a silver statue of the princeps. In response to Tiberius’s inter- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 17 cession on behalf of the accused, Gaius Ateius Capito made a show of independence, urging that the senate’s power of judgment ought not be diminished, and pointing out that the offense had serious public implications, even if Tiberius was willing to overlook the injury to himself personally. Tacitus remarks that Capito’s behavior was all the more infamous because, as a civil and religious jurist of note, he dishonored these arts as well as himself.63 Shameful displays of independence became competitive. In 16, the senators Gaius Asinius Gallus and Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso disagreed over whether the senate should conduct business during the absence of Tiberius. Piso claimed the “speciem libertatis” by asserting that it would be worthy of the republic that senators and equestrians could continue their official work even in the absence of the princeps. Gallus answered that nothing would be more illustrious or worthy of the Roman people than to do business only in the presence and under the eyes of Caesar. Tiberius listened in silence to these undignified invocations of the dignity of the state. No action was taken.64 Unbecoming conduct grew worse. Just as the treacherous path of public discourse led great men to competitive adulatory assertions of liberty, so too did compliance and obsequiousness gradually degenerate into wickedness, as members of the aristocracy turned informer.65 A remarkable instance occurred in 16, when Firmius Catus, a senator eager for advancement, and Lucius Fulcinius Trio, a well-known prosecutor who hoped to increase his notoriety, brought Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus to trial for conspiracy against the princeps. The charges were trumped up; Libo’s consultations of astrologers and necromancers were inept and pathetic, not threatening. But Trio presented the matter as “res magna et atrox,” and by the time the case came before the senate, Catus and Trio had been joined by �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Fonteius Agrippa and Gaius Vibius Serenus. Libo anticipated the guilty verdict by taking his own life. His property went as reward to the accusers, along with the rank of extraordinary praetor to those of the senatorial order.66 Libo’s posthumous condemnation triggered a flurry of sycophantic proposals and resolutions in the senate. Tacitus omits nothing: Cotta Messalinus moved that the image of Libo be barred from the funeral processions of his descendants; Cnaeus Cornelius Lentulus proposed that no Scribonianus should bear the cognomen of Drusus; Lucius Pomponius Flaccus suggested that days be set aside for public thanksgiving; Lucius Munatius Plancus, Gaius Asinius Gallus, Marcus Papius Mutilus and Lucius Apronius voted thank-offerings to Jupiter, Mars, and Concord, and they moved that 13 September—the date of Libo’s death—should be a public holiday. Two astrologers were executed, and the senate ordered that the rest be expelled from Italy. The historian’s explicit purpose in cataloguing all this is to make known how early the public disgrace began.67 Some of the doings of spies, informers and accusers were ludicrously outrageous. In 28, four senators hoping for advancement sought to please Sejanus by prosecuting an illustrious equestrian friend of Germanicus, Titius Sabinus, ostensibly on charges of treason, but really because of the enmity between Sejanus and Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus. Tacitus records the names of the four, and explains how one of them, Latinius Latiaris, lured Sabinus into his confidence and induced him to complain about Sejanus and Tiberius. To strengthen their case, the others hid between the roof and the ceiling with their ears pressed to holes and cracks while Latiaris conversed with Sabinus in the room below about recent hardships. Then in a letter to Tiberius, the four detailed their findings as well as their disgraceful (dedecus) ploy. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 19 This was material better suited to the comedian or satirist than to the historian, but the unfortunate truth was that the main actors were among the most prominent members of the senatorial order. Sabinus was immediately condemned and put to death. Tacitus reports this event’s chilling effect upon public life: fear emptied the roads and squares; conversation ceased even among friends; people eyed the very walls and ceiling with suspicion; it was assumed that Tiberius was tightening the noose on Agrippina and her son.68 Since they were entitled to claim a part of the property of those condemned for treason, accusers had strong incentive to file charges. The grotesque results went beyond injustice to impiety, as son accused father and brother sister.69 The senate was filled with informers; friends turned against one another; no place, public or private, was safe for open conversation. It was like a plague in the city.70 Those foolish or honest enough to speak their minds were at risk, as Agrippina discovered. After the poisoning of Drusus, son of Tiberius, there was widespread but secret rejoicing at the prospect of one of Germanicus’s sons eventually succeeding Tiberius. While the senate and people “concealed their joy with expressions of sorrow,” Agrippina, widow of Germanicus, concealed her hope less effectively, and thereby brought down a quicker ruin, when Sejanus, who had planned the murder of Drusus and had imperial ambitions for himself, was able to point to Agrippina’s hope and her popularity in order to intensify Livia’s animosity toward the sons of Germanicus.71 It seems likely that the brutal Sejanus would have targeted these boys whether or not their mother had disguised her thoughts more effectively. But according to the historian her failures to dissemble and conceal her true thoughts at least hastened (adceleravere) their destruction. Another example of the high cost of open expression is the outspoken and independent-minded Lucius Calpurnius �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Piso. He openly registered his disgust with the corruption and aggressive tactics of prosecutors, and was bold enough to bring charges against a protégée of Livia. Although he announced his withdrawal from public affairs and resolved to leave the city, he apparently did not leave, and a few years later was charged with treason. Piso’s timely death, whether by suicide or natural causes, prevented the case from coming to court.72 In the year 25, the historian Aulus Cremutius Cordus faced the senate charged with treason for praising the assassins of Julius Caesar in his own Annales. Because his accusers were minions of Sejanus, and judging by the grim expression (trux vultus) of Tiberius, the outcome of the case was not in doubt. Knowing that death was near, Cremutius defended himself with dignity, calmly adducing examples from the Roman tradition of legitimate free expression. Cremutius was allowed to starve himself to death. The senate voted to have his books burned.73 Because Tacitus’s Annales contain many examples of the danger of openness and candor, we suspect irony when he reports candor going unpunished. In the wake of Sejanus’s fall, the backlash that engulfed his associates prompted most people to pretend they had not been his friends. But the equestrian Marcus Terentius was unapologetic. He had been the friend of Sejanus, who was himself the friend of Caesar; it was more fitting for an equestrian to obey than to challenge the policies of his superiors; and his friendship with Sejanus had ended when Tiberius’s did. Terentius escaped punishment. His accusers suffered exile or execution. Tacitus cannot have missed the irony that the only person saved by telling the truth in a brave speech (constantia orationis) was an associate of Sejanus.74 Although he admired their refusal to accommodate themselves to the expectations and tone set by the autocrat, Tacitus �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 21 did not give his highest praise to those who courted death through outspoken opposition. Whether what bothered Tacitus about these men was the jarring quality of their extreme dissonance or their failure to benefit the state in a more sustained way, he did not say. But it is clear that he reserved his highest admiration for those who managed to have dignified and honorable public careers despite the princeps. Doing so under Tiberius was very difficult—but not impossible. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was praised as dignified and wise because he so often managed to reduce the harm done by flatterers, and because he possessed enough moderation to stay on working terms with Tiberius. His case even led Tacitus to wonder whether fate and chance of birth control men’s destinies, or whether their own decisions allow some men to find a safe course between dangerous insubordination and ugly servility.75 In 17, Marcus Furius Camillus, the proconsular governor of Africa, revived his family’s ancient reputation for military glory (decus militiae) by defeating the Numidian leader Tacfarinus. Tiberius praised him in the senate, and he was voted an honorary triumph which he lived to enjoy, Tacitus comments, because of his modest behavior.76 We read of some others who also lived in a manner worthy of their great family and died peacefully.77 In the Annales, references to distinguished men in the reign of Tiberius who managed to avoid the extremes of base conformity and perilous honesty but still have careers of public service are few and not presented in much detail. To see clearly portrayed the career and record of the sort of man Tacitus most admired, one may turn to his own father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40-93), about whom Tacitus composed a Vita.78 The son of a senator from Gallia Narbonensis (the modern Provence), he had an impressive administrative and military career. His extensive military campaigns in Britain �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW occurred during the reign of the tyrannical Domitian (81-96), and Tacitus admired his ability to distinguish himself on behalf of the state without incurring the lethal wrath of the princeps.79 When confronting the notoriously hot-headed Domitian in person, Agricola softened him with his prudence and moderation, and refrained from seeking renown and a swift end by open defiance and the useless assertion of liberty.80 “Let those who habitually admire disobedience know that even under bad rulers there are great men, and that a decent regard for authority, if backed by hard work and military toughness, is even more praiseworthy than the death-seeking perilous course, of no use to the state, through which some became famous.”81 In short, Tacitus praised Agricola for his noble public service under difficult circumstances. Avoiding both craven compliance and ostentatious martyrdom, Agricola played his part with a seemliness worthy of his forebears. He might have lived longer but could not have lived better.82 5. CONCLUSION With few exceptions, then, the Tiberian books of the Annales are as somber as the reign they chronicle. Tacitus was aware of this, and expressed regret over the tedious character of the ills he catalogued,83 and in general over the narrow and inglorious scope of his project (in arto et ingloriosus labor).84 The times he chronicled were infected and dirty with servility (infecta et adulatione sordida). But the historian had a moral purpose, to record the virtue of those who had measured up, and the disgrace of those who had fallen so short of the dignity of their family and order. The wicked might be deterred by the certainty of posthumous infamy.85 Even when the books of historians are burned, it is folly to imagine that the power of today can snuff out the memory of the future. Quite the reverse, for repressed thought grows in prestige, and conquerors, together with those who behave as brutally as con- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 23 querors, only achieve dishonor (dedecus) for themselves and renown for their victims.86 Besides its moral aim, Tacitus mentioned one other value of the work. Admitting that the dossier of minor events centered on the princeps makes tedious reading, Tacitus insisted that such a history is useful for examining “matters that seem trivial at first glance, from which the movements of great things often arise.”87 Here, the modern reader might anticipate a reference to patterns of group behavior that set in motion impersonal and potentially disruptive social forces. Persistent dishonorable behavior of the leading men might bring their entire order into disrepute. In turn, questions about the possible disjunction between reality and appearance in the leading order could easily provoke tremors of doubt about social hierarchy. In such a scenario, decorum would be not only a matter of the self-respect of a few score senators, it would also ultimately be linked to something elemental and tectonic in Roman society itself. Whether Tacitus thought along these lines is not clear. But he wrote that, since the balanced and mixed form of government is seldom found in practice, and is short-lived even when it is found, the prudent man will familiarize himself with the leading actors in whatever form of government happens to prevail currently: the rule of the best men, of the many, or, as in Tacitus’s time, of the autocrat. For most people, the best way to learn how to behave effectively and honorably is to study the experience of others.88 Half a century ago Ronald Syme remarked that as “a form of government the principate was essentially equivocal, and the nobilitas was called to play a false role therein, forfeiting power but ostensibly retaining honour and prestige.”89 False the part might have been, but at least under a morally and psychologically steady princeps one could play it with some dignity. As de Tocqueville saw, weakness might compel one �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to play a false part, but one who feigns approval of that false part is truly base. Under Tiberius, however, the quest for security or advancement led men to guess at, and conform to, his desires and expectations. They gradually attuned themselves to a standard far removed from any persona nature might assign or reason discern. It was Tacitus’s somber genius to recognize that the danger of such attunement was that a man might become the person he pretended to be, thereby confirming the contemptuous judgment of Tiberius himself that the senators were “men fit to be slaves.”90 NOTES 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 246. For their helpful comments on drafts of this essay, I am grateful to Bob Haynie, John Goyette, and Meghan Parker. I dedicate the article to Mark Morford, my teacher and friend. 2. Cornelii Taciti Annalium ab excessu divi Augusti libri, ed. C. D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906), 119-120. (Hereafter abbreviated Annales.) For comments on Tacitus’s views within the context of Roman thought about luxury, see Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 67-70. See also Annales, 92-95 for Tiberius’s statement about decorous and moderate public mourning. 3. As Ronald Syme put it, “men and dynasties pass, but style abides.” Ronald Syme, Tacitus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), Vol. 2, 624. Still worthwhile for understanding Tacitus’s literary strategies are Einar Löfstedt, “On the Style of Tacitus,” Journal of Roman Studies 38 (1948): 1-8, and Uwe Rademacher, Die Bildkunst des Tacitus (Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1975). Francesca Santoro L’Hoir, Tragedy, Rhetoric, and the Historiography of Tacitus’ Annales (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006) draws attention to the influence of Greek drama upon Tacitus. 4. Cicero, De oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 349 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1942), 178: “Est enim actio quasi sermo corporis, quo magis menti congruens esse debet.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 25 5. That Tacitus wrote for “elite males of senatorial and equestrian status,” is demonstrated in S. H. Rutledge, “Trajan and Tacitus’ Audience: Reader Reception of Annals 1-2,” Ramus 27.1 (1998): 141. 6. Cicero’s view of decorum occupies a place within a longer moral tradition that reached back at least as far as Panaetius of Rhodes (second century BC), whose own treatise, On Duty, was a main source for Cicero’s De officiis. See the editorial introduction to Cicero: On Duties, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), xix-xxi. 7. Cicero, De officiis, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 30 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1913), 182. 8. Cicero, De officiis, 14-16. 9. Cicero, De officiis, 98. 10. Cicero, De officiis, 97; see also Cicero, De oratore, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 348 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1942), 378, for another example of the convergence of theatrical and oratorical decorum. 11. Cicero, De officiis, 100. 12. Cicero, De officiis, 102-108. Still illuminating for a discussion of Cicero’s place within the history of doctrines of natural law is Felix Flückiger, Geschichte des Naturrechtes: Altertum und Frühmittelalter (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1954), 221-238. 13. Cicero, De officiis, 108. 14. “We may judge our activities by the measure of our own nature.” Cicero, De officiis, 112. In connection with discerning what is right for oneself, Cicero mentions two more personae that we must play, one imposed by chance or circumstance, the other a matter of our own choice. See De officiis, 116-118; and for discussion see Christopher Gill, “Personhood and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero, De Officiis 1,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6 (1988): 169-199. 15. Cicero, De officiis, 122 and 126-128. 16. Seneca, Letter 120 in Epistola, trans. Richard M. Gummere, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 77 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1925), 386 and 388. On this passage within a larger context see Christopher Gill, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163. See also Seneca, De constantia sapientis, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 214 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1928), 102 and 104. �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 17. Pliny praises those who manifest constantia, dignitas, verecundia, or decor in word, deed and appearance; his disapproval attaches to their opposites. For a careful study of the letters see Stanley Hoffer, The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1999). 18. See Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988). 19. See Res gestae divi Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, ed. P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 34-36. 20. Tacitus, Annales, 3: “omnes exuta aequalitate iussa principis aspectare.” 21. Tacitus, Annales, 121: “obsequium inde in principem et aemulandi amor validior quam poena ex legibus et metus.” 22. Two examples from the reign of Tiberius should suffice to illustrate a characteristic that Tacitus attributes to the regime as a whole. When Tiberius speaks of free elections open to men of talent, Tacitus (Annales, 47) comments: “speciosa verbis, re inania aut subdola, quantoque maiore libertatis imagine tegebantur, tanto eruptura ad infensius servitium” (“things attractive in speech, but in fact meaningless or deceptive, and the more they were represented in the figure of freedom, the more they were preparing to break out into more dangerous subjection”). In a different context, Tacitus remarks (Annales, 122): “Sed Tiberius, vim principatus sibi firmans, imaginem antiquitatis senatui praebebat postulata provinciarum ad disquisitionem patrum mittendo.” (“But Tiberius, while establishing the power of the principate in himself, was keeping up the image of the old senate by sending the demands of the provinces to be dealt with by the senators.”) 23. For evidence and discussion see Syme, Tacitus, Vol. 1, 397-416. 24. Tacitus, Annales, 135-136. Note the turning point that occurs with the words “Tiberio mutati in deterius principatus initium ille annus attulit” (“that year brought for Tiberius the beginning of the principate’s change for the worse”) and “donec morte Drusi verterentur” (“until things changed with the death of Drusus”). 25. Tacitus, Annales, 177: “Ceterum ex eo praerupta iam et urgens dominatio” (“But from that point on there was precipitate and acute despotism”). For another statement of the gradual disclosure of Tiberius’s real character, see Annales, 211. 26. Tacitus, Annales, 3: “sed vetere atque insita Claudiae familiae super- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 27 bia, multaque indicia saevitiae, quamquam premantur, erumpere. . . ; ne iis quidem annis quibus Rhodi specie secessus exul egerit aliud quam iram et simulationem et secretas libidines meditatum” (“but the old and innate arrogance of the Claudian family, together with many indications of cruelness, although repressed, burst forth. . . ; not even during the years he passed in exile on Rhodes under the cover of retirement was he meditating anything but anger and dissimulation and concealed lust”). Even Augustus acknowledged objectionable irregularities in Tiberius’s deportment, dress, and habits; see Annales, 8: “Etenim Augustus paucis ante annis, cum Tiberio tribuniciam potestatem a patribus rursum postularet, quamquam honora oratione, quaedam de habitu cultuque et institutis eius ieceret quae velut excusando exprobraret.” (“Even Augustus a few years earlier, when he was once again requesting from the senators the tribunician power for Tiberius, although speaking approvingly, let fall certain indications about his attitude, dress, and manners of which he disapproved, even though he was excusing them.”) 27. Tacitus, Annales, 4: “Nihil de ea re Tiberius apud senatum disseruit: patris iussa simulabat.” (“Tiberius discussed nothing of this with the senate: he pretended it was the father’s command.”) Again, for the murder of Sempronius Graccus in 14 Tiberius tried to shift blame from himself onto the proconsul of Africa. See Annales, 31: “Quidam non Roma eos milites, sed ab L. Asprenate pro consule Africae missos tradidere auctore Tiberio, qui famam caedis posse in Asprenatem verti frustra speraverat.” (“Some have said that these soldiers were not sent from Rome, but by L. Asprenas, proconsul of Africa, at the urging of Tiberius, who had hoped in vain that the blame for the murder could be pinned on Asprenas.”) 28. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “. . . tamquam vetere re publica et ambiguus imperandi: ne edictum quidem, quo patres in curiam vocabat, nisi tribuniciae potestatis praescriptione posuit sub Augusto acceptae. Verba edicti fuere pauca et sensu permodesto.” 29. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “nusquam cunctabundus nisi cum in senatu loqueretur” (“never hesitant except when he was speaking in the senate”). 30. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “Postea cognitum est ad introspiciendas etiam procerum voluntates inductam dubitationem: nam verba vultus in crimen detorquens recondebat.” (“Afterwards it was recognized that the hesitation was also put on in order to observe the intentions of the leaders: for, twisting a look, he would store up insults.”) 31. For example, Tacitus, Annales, 36 and 40-41. 32. Tacitus, Annales, 10. �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 33. Tacitus, Annales, 144, in relation to the slight of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, several years earlier: “Quae in praesens Tiberius civiliter habuit: sed in animo revolvente iras, etiam si impetus offensionis languerat, memoria valebat.” (“And at the time, Tiberius took these things courteously: but in his mind, which ruminated over resentments, the memory was intense, even if its initial force had dissipated.”) 34. Tacitus, Annales, 170. 35. Tacitus, Annales, 125. 36. Tacitus, Annales, 60: “Atque interim Libonem ornat praetura, convictibus adhibet, non vultu alienatus, non verbis commotior (adeo iram condiderat); cunctaque eius dicta factaque, cum prohibere posset, scire malebat.” (“And meanwhile he granted Libo the praetorship, invited him often to parties, neither unfriendly in his appearance nor excited in speech [so completely he had concealed his anger]; and Tiberius could have halted all his words and deeds, but he preferred to know them.”) 37. Tacitus, Annales, 60: “Mox libellos et auctores recitat Caesar ita moderans ne lenire neve asperare criminia videretur.” (“Next Caesar read out the complaints and the accusors, controlling himself so that he seemed neither to soften nor harshen the charges.”) 38. Tacitus, Annales, 112: “Solus et nullis voluptatibus avocatus maestam vigilantiam et malas curas exerceret.” (“Alone and withdrawn from all pleasures he was engaged in gloomy vigilance and wicked plans.”) 39. Tacitus, Annales, 165 and 170. 40. Annales, 173: “Nullam aeque Tiberius, ut rebatur, ex virtutibus suis quam dissimulationem diligebat: eo aegrius accepit recludi quae premeret.” (“Tiberius, so he thought, liked none of his virtues as much as dissimulation: all the more angrily, then, he took the disclosing of the things he concealed.”) 41. Tacitus, Annales, 44: “Renuit Tiberius, perinde divina humanaque obtegens.” (“Tiberius refused, thus keeping hidden both things divine and things human.”) 42. Tacitus, Annales, 181: “Tiberius tamen, ludibria seriis permiscere solitus.” (“Tiberius, however, customarily mixed jests with serious matters.”) 43. Tacitus, Annales, 143: “Proprium id Tiberio fuit scelera nuper reperta priscis verbis obtegere.” (“It was characteristic of Tiberius to cover over recently invented crimes with long venerated formulas.”) 44. Tacitus, Annales, 15: “Haec audita quamquam abstrusum et tristissima �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 29 quaeque maxime occultantem Tiberium perpulere.” (“These things coming to his attention impressed him deeply, although he remained reserved and kept secret everything that was very sorrowful.”); see also Annales, 44, where Tiberius gets angry enough to break his customary taciturnity, and Annales, 128: “prudens moderandi, si propria ira non impelleretur” (“skilled at observing moderation, if his own anger was not incited”). 45. Tacitus, Annales, 208: “in patientia firmitudinem simulans” (“in suffering simulating good health”) and 210: “Iam Tiberium corpus, iam vires, nondum dissimulatio deserebat.” (Now his body was forsaking Tiberius, now his strength, but not yet the power of dissimulation.”) 46. Tacitus, Annales, 30: “magis in speciem verbis adornata quam ut penitus sentire crederetur” (“more embellished with words for show than so that he might be believed to feel it in his inmost heart”). 47. Tacitus, Annales, 9: “Plus in oratione tali dignitatis quam fidei erat; Tiberioque etiam in rebus quas non occuleret, seu natura sive adsuetudine, suspensa semper et obscura verba: tunc vero nitenti ut sensus suos penitus abderet, in incertum et ambiguum magis implicabantur.” (“There was more grandeur in this sort of speech than credibility; either by nature or by custom, halting and unintelligible language was Tiberius’s style even in things he was not trying to hide: but then, when he was striving to conceal his meaning entirely, it got even more wrapped up in uncertainty and obscurity.”) 48. Tacitus, Annales,103: “Haud facile quis dispexerit illa in cognitione mentem principis: adeo vertit ac miscuit irae et clementiae signa.” (“It was not easy for anyone to discern the mind of the princeps at this trial: so much did he interchange and mingle the signs of anger and clemency.”) Also “Quod alii civile rebantur . . . quidam ad saevitiam trahebant.” (“What some thought considerate . . . others took for cruelty.”) 49. See note 30. 50. Tacitus, Annales, 78: “Tiberius cultu habituque eius lenibus verbis perstricto . . . increpuit.” (“Tiberius remonstrated a bit in mild terms about his bearing and attire.”) 51. Tacitus, Annales, 192. Although Tiberius believed Thrasyllus was a true oracle, Tacitus presents his real skill as that of reading Tiberius. 52. Tacitus, Annales, 132: “Mox Tiberium variis artibus devinxit adeo ut obscurum adversum alios sibi uni incautum intectumque efficeret.” (“Soon he subdued Tiberius by various means, so much so that he made him—so covert toward others—open and sincere with himself alone.”) �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Also, “palam compositus pudor, intus summa apiscendi libido” (“outwardly all propriety, inwardly the greatest lust for acquisition”). 53. Tacitus, Annales, 192: “Qualem diem Tiberius induisset, pari habitu, haud multum distantibus verbis.” (“Whatever humor Tiberius put on, his attitude was the same, and his speech not very different”). See also Annales, 207 for the observation that Gaius had learned dissimulation through contact with Tiberius. 54. Tacitus, Annales, 91: “Angusta et lubrica oratio sub principe qui libertatem metuebat adulationem oderat.” 55. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “Ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques. quanto quis inlustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes, vultuque composito ne laeti excessu principis neu tristiores primordio, lacrimas gaudium, questus adulationem miscebant.” For another example of false mourning, see the public response to the death of Tiberius’s son, Drusus, in the year 23, Annales, 138-139: “Senatus populusque habitum ac voces dolentum simulatione magis quam libens induebat, domumque Germanici revirescere occulti laetabantur.” (“The senate and the people put on the attitude and the tone of mourners insincerely rather than willingly, and they rejoiced secretly that the house of Germanicus was reviving.”) 56. Tacitus, Annales, 9-10. 57. Tacitus, Annales, 116: “Dolabella Cornelius dum antire ceteros parat absurdam in adulationem progressus.” (“Dolabella Cornelius, while trying to outdo the others, went forward with a ludicrous bit of flattery.”) Quintius Haterius gained infamy in 22 (Annales, 122) through a “most disgustingly servile” proposal that the senate’s resolution honoring Drusus should be recorded in gold letters. The same Haterius had narrowly escaped death in 14 (Annales, 10) when, shamefully groveling, he accidentally tackled Tiberius. In 34 (Annales, 195), the senate voted thanks to Tiberius for allowing Agrippina to die in exile instead of having her strangled. 58. Tacitus, Annales, 175. 59. Tacitus, Annales, 111. 60. Tacitus, Annales, 117-118. 61. Tacitus, Annales, 142: “[adulatio], quae moribus corruptis perinde anceps, si nulla et ubi nimia est” (“flattery, which, when mores have been ruined, is just as dangerous when there is none and when there is too much”). 62. Tacitus, Annales, 8: “Ea sola species adulandi supererat.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 31 63. Tacitus, Annales, 128-129. 64. Tacitus, Annales, 64. Tacitus presents Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso as standing up to Tiberius at Annales, 44, not so much because of republican sentiments as from a sense of his own worthiness to rule. That insubordination ran in the family; see Annales, 69. As for Gallus, Tacitus records another public disagreement with Tiberius that, perhaps inadvertently, penetrated to the very heart of rule (Annales, 64): “Eam sententiam altius penetrare et arcana imperii temptari.” (“This motion penetrated more deeply and made an attempt at the secrets of the imperium.”) Tiberius, however, managed to turn this to his own advantage. 65. Tacitus, Annales, 126: “Paulatim dehinc ab indecoris ad infesta transgrediebantur.” (“After this they gradually passed over from shameful deeds to outrageous ones.”) 66. Tacitus, Annales, 60-61. 67. Tacitus, Annales, 62: “Quorum auctoritates adulationesque rettuli ut sciretur vetus id in re publica malum.” (“I have reported the motions and the flatteries of these men so that this old evil in the state might be recognized.”) 68. Tacitus, Annales, 171-173. 69. Tacitus, Annales, 147 and 149. See also Annales, 149, where it emerges that even the property of those who anticipate a guilty verdict by suicide is subject to confiscation and division among the accusers. Also at Annales, 170, there is an accusation within an extended family. 70. Tacitus, Annales, 184. 71. Tacitus, Annales, 138-139; see note 55 above, which comments on the hypocrisy of the many. The rest of this chapter discusses Sejanus’s effort to magnify Livia’s hatred. In another instance during the year 32, Tacitus records that a mother was condemned and executed for weeping for her executed son (Annales, 186). 72. Tacitus, Annales, 144. 73. Tacitus, Annales, 151-152. 74. Tacitus, Annales, 185-186. 75. Tacitus, Annales, 143-144: “Hunc ego Lepidum temporibus illis gravem et sapientem virum fuisse comperior: nam pleraque ab saevis adulationibus aliorum in melius flexit. neque tamen temperamenti egebat, cum aequabili auctoritate et gratia apud Tiberium viguerit. unde dubitare cogor fato et sorte nascendi, ut cetera, ita principium inclinatio in hos, �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW offensio in illos, an sit aliquid in nostris consiliis liceatque inter abruptum contumaciam et deforme obsequium pergere iter ambitione ac periculis vacuum.” (“I am convinced that this Lepidus was a serious and wise man for those times: for he turned very many things arising from the cruel flatteries of others to better effect. Nor did he lack moderation, since he retained steady influence and esteem with Tiberius. Hence I am compelled to doubt whether, as with other things, the favor of leading men toward some and their disfavor toward others is from the fate and chance of birth, or whether it is something within our own purvue, and one has the freedom to pursue a course between severe autonomy and base servility that is also free from dangers.”). His obituary in the year 34 (see Annales, 196), praises his moderation and wisdom, presenting him as a worthy member of a family rich in good citizens (“genus fecundum bonorum civium”). 76. Tacitus, Annales, 74: “Quod Camillo ob modestiam vitae impune fuit.” (“And this was safe for Camillus because of his unassuming conduct in life.”) 77. Tacitus, Annales, 167, mentions Marcus Asinius Agrippa, a man “claris maioribus quam vetustis vitaque non degener” (“with distinguished rather than ancient ancestors, and not ignoble in his way of life”), who died in 27. 78. Tacitus, Cornelii Taciti de vita Iulii Agricolae liber (hereafter abbreviated as De vita Agricolae), ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Ogilvie, in Cornelii Taciti Opera Minora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 79. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 29: “Ceterum uti militare nomen, grave inter otiosos, aliis virtutibus temperaret, tranquillitatem atque otium penitus hausit, cultu modicus, sermone facilis, uno aut altero amicorum comitatus, adeo ut plerique, quibus magnos viros per ambitionem aestimare mos est, viso aspectoque Agricola quaererent famam, pauci interpretarentur.” (“Moreover, to moderate his military renown—which is imposing for civilians—with other virtues, he yielded completely to tranquility and leisure, dressing simply, conversing affably, accompanied by just one or two friends, so much so that most people, whose custom is to judge great men by their ostentation, having seen Agricola and scrutinized him, would wonder about his good repute, but few could comprehend it.”) 80. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 30: “Domitiani vero natura praeceps in iram, et quo obscurior, eo inrevocabilior, moderatione tamen prudentiaque Agricolae leniebatur, quia non contumacia neque inani iactatione libertatis famam fatumque provocabat.” (“Now Domitian’s nature was inclined to �ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY 33 anger—and the more disguised, the more implacable—nevertheless it was mollified by the guidance and judgment of Agricola, because he did not provoke public opinion or fate by arrogance and empty displays of personal liberty.”) 81. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 30: “Sciant, quibus moris est inlicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus magnos viros esse, obsequiumque ac modestiam, si industria ac vigor adsint, eo laudis excedere, quo plerique per abrupta, sed in nullum rei publicae usum ambitiosa morte inclaruerunt.” 82. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 31: “Et ipse quidem, quamquam medio in spatio integrae aetatis ereptus, quantum ad gloriam, longissimum aevum peregit. Quippe et vera bona, quae in virtutibus sita sunt, impleverat, et consulari ac triumphalibus ornamentis praedito quid aliud adstruere fortuna poterat?” (“And he indeed, although snatched away at the midpoint of a complete life, he completed the longest possible course of life in regard to honor. Since, in fact, he had acquired the real goods which depend on virtues, what else could fortune add to someone who had received the distinctions of the consulship and several military triumphs?”) 83. Tacitus, Annales, 185. 84. Tacitus, Annales, 149-150. 85. Tacitus, Annales, 126. 86. Tacitus, Annales, 152: “Quo magis socordiam eorum inridere libet qui praesenti potentia credunt extingui posse etiam sequentis aevi memoriam. nam contra punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, neque aliud externi reges aut qui eadem saevitia usi sunt nisi dedecus sibi atque illis gloriam peperere.” (“One is disposed to laugh all the more at the folly of those who believe that, using their present power, they can extinguish the memory of the following generation. For on the contrary, when natural superiority is penalized, its influence flares up, and foreign kings or those who have acted with the same sort of cruelty have generated nothing but dishonor for themselves and renown for the others.”) 87. Tacitus, Annales, 150: “illa primo aspectu levia ex quis magnarum saepe rerum motus oriuntur.” 88. Tacitus, Annales,150. 89. Syme, Tacitus, Vol. 2, 573. 90. Tacitus, Annales, 126: “homines ad servitutem paratos.” �34 �ESSAYS & LECTURES 35 Dionysus: The Therapeutic Mask Richard B. Carter Part I Myths in General and the Myth of Dionysus in Particular One of the best accounts of the essence of myth occurs in Jacob Klein’s unpublished explanation of Aristotle’s concept of coming-to-be, or generation. In relation to Nature’s great cycles—the seasons, birth and death, and the like—Klein writes: The old myths tell this story over and over again. In fact, genesis is the very soul of any myth. To understand the world, the story of its genesis has to be told. To understand the gods, the study of their genesis has to be told. Cosmogony and Theogony are the primary subjects of any myth. To understand properly any event in human life, or character of a people or a city, this event and this character has always to be related, it seems, to its mythical origins. To tell the myth of something means to tell how this something came to be. An enterprise of this kind does not make much sense unless one relates everything ultimately to beginnings, which make any genesis possible. These are precisely the mythical origins. They contain, of necessity, these two elements: the Male and the Female. And however distant the sobriety of Aristotle is from the exuberance of those ancient tales, still the same aspect of the world as a chain or as cycles of generation dominates his thought.1 In accordance with Klein’s account, I intend to uncover the thing itself of which the myths tell the origins, keeping in Richard Burnett Carter is now retired from over forty years of teaching as a professor of philosophy. He has written on Descartes’s invention of mechanistic medicine, and has recently published several novels as well as a book explaining key terms in the language of Zen. �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW mind that the Greek word for the plot of any story or play was the word mythos. The principal mythical roles of Dionysus are these:2 He is the patron deity of the theater and the god of drunken revel. He is also the god of manic possession of women, who under his influence, butchered baby animals and their own infants while suckling the young of deer and lions, wore poisonous snakes around their waists under their clothing to prevent men from raping them while they lay senseless in the wake of their mad mountain revels. He was also known as dendrites—tree-like—and indeed we find representations of him as a post with a mask tied to it. In a different key, one ancient source tells us that Dionysus was identical with Hades, claiming that Dionysus is both the god of the dead and the god in whose honor processions of drunken revelers carry huge leather phalluses and sing filthy songs.3 Comparing the various collections of myths, we find eight distinct elements that describe the conception, birth, death, resurrection, and subsequent deeds of Dionysus. 1. He was the child of Zeus and the mortal Semele, a princess of the royal house of Thebes. Semele was destroyed when she looked at Zeus in his full glory, and, as she was being consumed in the flames, Zeus rescued the fetus from his mother’s womb and inserted it into his own leg, where the child was nurtured and came to term. According to this myth, Dionysus is thus twice-born—once from the womb of his mortal mother, Semele, and again from the leg of his divine father, Zeus. 2. After Dionysus was born the second time, Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera, set Titans upon the newborn babe, who tore it into countless fragments. The pieces were subsequently gathered together, �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER reassembled, and resuscitated by the Titan, Rhea, the mother of the newer gods. 3. Dionysus was then reared on Mt. Nysa by nymphs, among whom were three of special note: Erato, Bromie, and Bacche. He cultivated wine there, and then he subsequently traveled around the world teaching people how to plant vines and make wine. When people opposed his missionary efforts, his punishments were ghastly—for instance, he flayed some alive. For a period during these travels he was driven mad by the ever-jealous Hera, but he then regained his sanity. 4. Known as Bromius after the nymph Bromie who raised him on Mount Nysa, he led a large band of women through Asia and around the Mediterranean basin spreading vine-culture, winemaking, and wine-drinking. His attendants then were called Bacchae after his nurse-nymph, Bacche. Lycurgus, the king of Edonia, resisted the proselytizing of Dionysus. They fought, and the king drove Dionysus into the sea. Lycurgus then killed many of the Bacchae with an ox-goad. The vengeful Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad, so that he mistook his son for a grapevine, killed him with a pruning knife, and then pruned off his ears and nose. Lycurgus himself was later torn apart by wild horses. 5. Dionysus eventually made his way to his mother’s city, Thebes. There, King Pentheus, his uncle, rejected him. For this insult, he was torn limb from limb by the Bacchae. His head was ripped from his body his own mother, Agave, who had joined with nearly all the Theban women in 37 �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW following Dionysus into the mountains. 6. When women rejected the worship of Dionysus, their punishment was to be driven into delirium, so that they would tear their own nursing children limb from limb. Sometimes they would even devour the dismembered corpses, not recognizing the parts as belonging to their own infants. 7. One myth tells us that Dionysus married Ariadne of Crete after she had been abandoned by Theseus of Athens. 8. Other women who rejected his worship seem to have been punished by being made to kill and devour their own babies; but, when they repented, and when their menfolk and their kings accepted Dionysian worship, these women joined his joyful band of singers and dancers who continued to rend asunder fully grown lions and oxen and deer in the mountains where they held their revels. They are sometimes pictured as suckling the young of all these animals, and even the young of poisonous snakes. This is enough to show that Dionysus is something of a protean figure. From the evidence of the myths, Dionysus was the god of wine and the god of the dead, of spring growth and of magic possession. He acquired other characteristics after the main myths had been created. For instance, he seems to have become the god of theater by association with the satyrs who worshipped him, and who were also thought to be the originators of play-acting. Homer imputes diametrically opposed qualities to Dionysus, calling him both “raging” (mainomenoio, Iliad 6.132) and “joy of mortals” (charma brotoisin, 14.325). Dionysus had his own oracle at Delphi, who was considered just as important as the oracle �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 39 of Apollo. Indeed, the Dionysian oracle may have been the original oracle of Delphi: Plutarch, himself a priest at Delphi, says that the oracle speaks mainomonoi stomati, with raging mouth, and this reference to Homer’s “raging” may indicate that Dionysus is the divine power behind the oracle’s pronouncements. If we recall Klein’s notion that myths are always about beginnings, this almost bewildering list of different attributes accruing to Dionysus forces us to ask, With the genesis of what in particular—that is, with the very first “pre-historic beginnings” of what—are the myths of Dionysus concerned? Modern attempts to address such questions are characteristically anthropological in nature. Ultimately, this viewpoint will not be sufficient to help us understand the originary significance of Dionysus. To show this, let me begin the investigation by explaining some of the things that Dionysus did not represent. Part II What Dionysus was not In his Dionysus: Myth and Cult,4 Walter Otto critiques what seem to be the two principal schools of interpreting ancient myths in relatively modern times: the anthropological school and the philological school. The first group uses the methodologies developed by academic anthropology starting in the late nineteenth century. The second group is comprised of literary analysts who are also classics scholars. We can gain some insight into what Dionysus is not by listening to Otto’s criticism. Discussing one of the leaders of the philological school, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf,5 Otto says: His attacks on the views and methods of the “anthropologists” were so sharp and, indeed, frequently so bitterly scornful that we had the right to expect to find in his own �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW presentation an entirely different answer to the basic questions involved. But we were disappointed. It became clear that the philological school, for which he could speak as a legitimate representative, actually agrees completely—in all its crucial points—with its opponents. Both apply the biological concept of evolution in exactly the same way.6 Otto then goes on to explain what he means by the expression, “the biological concept of evolution.” Just as biology thought it was justified in believing that a line of constant development leads from the lowest to the highest organisms, so these two schools also place so-called “simple” concepts at the beginning of an evolution of religious thought out of which are to grow, through gradual change, the forms which the great deities assume at their peak. To be sure, in the course of time biology itself had to become a little more modest and had to acknowledge sudden new creations where it had formerly seen only continuous processes. Yet this is not the crucial objection to the methods used in our study of religion. When biology talked of evolution, it always put an organism at the beginning—an organism which still had to have, in every instance, no matter how simple it was thought to be, the main characteristic of an organism: it had to be a self-established whole. Only that which is alive is capable of developing. But in the dialectic advanced by the study of religion, evolution does not proceed from a simple form of life to a more complex and higher form but from the Lifeless to the Alive. For the elements of faith which this study considers primal are nothing but conceptual systems from which life is completely lacking.7 Otto then gives a striking example of the character of the sort of thinking he is criticizing, in which the analysts attempt to base a vital religious belief on an empty concept: �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER In origin, the god Hermes is supposed to have been nothing more than a protector, and the stone pillars and heaps of stones in front of farm houses point to his presence. But all the features which define his character—the paradox of his guiding and his leading astray, the sudden giving and taking away, the wisdom and cunning, the spirit of propitious love, the witchery of twilight, the weirdness of night and death—this diverse whole, which is inexhaustible and yet nowhere denies the unity of its being, is supposed to be only a complex of ideas which had gradually developed from the way of life of the worshippers, from their wishes and inclinations, ideas enriched by the love of story telling. For the primal and solely true belief, there is left, according to Wilamowitz, only the thought of a protecting and helping god, in short, the idea of an X which lends assistance but which has no other properties except, perhaps, the power necessary for help. At the beginning of the process called evolution there is, then, a mere Nothingness, and the concept of evolution has consequently lost its meaning. For, a god like the one assumed here has no real substance, and that which has no essence is nothing. . . . That which should be respected as the most sacred object of belief turns out to be “not there” the first time it is tested, and the objection which Wilamowitz himself raised against Usener’s8 theory—“no man prays to a concept”—applies to Wilamowitz’s theory as well. . . . As for the “Vegetation Deity,” the “Death God,” and similar generalities into which we now like to dissipate living deities as if we had in them the primal concepts of religious consciousness—these too are nothing but lifeless ideas. How could they ever have fulfilled the demands of devotion, lifted up the spirit, elicited the powerful forms of cultus? No life proceeds from a concept, and if the great forms of the gods, which could motivate the creative spirit of a culture of highest genius, 41 �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW are to be understood historically, then there would be no more unproductive application imaginable than this.9 One final quotation from Otto reveals the reason why the philological and anthropological approaches are insufficient for understanding the essence of a god or for entering the realm in which such a being has its life: [O]ur fragmented, mechanistic thinking knows nothing of such realms of Being, nothing of their unity. How, then, could it understand their divinity? It examines belief in deity with an astounding naiveté, dissipating its forms only to place them together again artificially to fit the pattern of a historical process. . . . That it is suspiciously like our dynamic way of thought is a serious charge against it.10 In short, human begins are not so constructed, nor have they ever been so constructed, that they could worship anything like the pallid verbal constructs described as deities by the anthropological school and the philological school. The essence of Dionysus is not an empty concept. Part III What Dionysus might have been to some of his ancient followers The evolutionary, synthetic approaches used by modern physics and biology does not and cannot explain the belief in deities who are almost always characterized by a large number of mutually contradictory powers. Otto insists that it is precisely the inability of an evolutionary view of religion to construct a deity with numerous conflicting powers that most strongly justifies rejecting the evolutionary accounts of the anthropological and philological schools of interpreting religion. How could the same primary concept, such as a power signified by a pile of rocks on the roadside, grow into �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 43 a great god by the gradual addition of powers that were mutually contradictory to one another? On what grounds could a people choose to relate contradictory elements in order to construct a synthetic whole? To Otto, the most outstanding evidence that the ancients believed in gods as truly existing substances of some sort—rather than as unconsciously synthesized psychological projections of fears and hopes—was precisely that one and the same deity did have so many conflicting powers. The Hermes of the ancients did not grow into Hermes gradually. On the contrary, there first had to be a belief in a single, truly existent deity. Only an existing deity could be the ground a diverse collection of mutually conflicting attributes. Hermes was not built up out of his many different qualities; rather, he was the vessel into which the attributes could be poured, the container that could hold a true mixture of the attributes within its substantial unity. But what are we to think about these different, often contradictory, powers and attributes? Are they merely different facets of one and the same god, as though the divinity were a gem that revealed different colors depending of the angle of the incident light? Is Dionysus the baby-killer merely another manifestation of the same Dionysus who is also the giver of joy to mortals? If so, it would seem to follow that the ultimate meaning of baby-killer is identical to the ultimate meaning of giver of joy to mortals. And this would seem to mean that Dionysus was conceived by his most fervent votaries as being both of these identically in his inmost essence. In the context of psychological anthropology, the consequence of these considerations would imply that the human psyche is constructed in such a way that it takes deep delight in the most ghastly of butcheries; that the horrifying rituals of child-murder answer a deep need in the human soul; and that this need is at root identical with the tender love of �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a mother for her child. But is this true? Are nurturing and destroying really only “symbolic” expressions of a single underlying unity? If so, then the absence or presence of such manifestations are must be merely different modes of expression, different symbolic representations of an essence in which there is no fundamental distinction. In this view, however, the issue of whether one mode of expression or another comes to the fore becomes merely a cultural and historical matter, not a psychological or anthropological one, since the structure of the psyche is not reflected in the mode of expression. The appearance of different symbols is purely relative to time and place. Moreover, this view of symbolic expression does not address the question, Does every in the psyche have its own particular expression? Or are we to think that one and the same thing in the psyche can have distinctly different symbolic expressions? If so, we find ourselves committed to an anthropology in which all the expressions of inner drives or impulses would be theoretically reducible to a single drive or impulse. Inasmuch as Otto appears to hold this view of symbolic relativism—for he never even raises this rather obvious problem—it seems that he may have agreed fundamentally with the cultural anthropologists he attacked so forcefully. In any case, the approaches of the philologists and the anthropologists are insufficient for us. Let us begin, instead, by approaching the myths directly. Since drunkenness is deeply associated with the cult of Dionysus, we will begin our own analysis of this question by asking about the relationship between drinking and the worship of Dionysus. Part IV Dionysus and drunkenness Different levels of intoxication give rise to different degrees �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 45 of visual impairment. The sober person sees things clearly. Moderate inebriation leads to distorted vision. In this condition, a person sees just what he sees when sober, but with all sorts of errors, such as double vision and shaky vision. Extreme intoxication, however, induces delusions. In this condition, a person sees things that are not there, experiences hallucinations, and falls into delirium. Delirium, the result of extreme drunkenness, was Dionysus’s punishment for the women who refused to worship him. His proper votaries, however, were only moderately drunk, and in this state, liberated a bit from the strictures of sobriety, they were lighthearted and joyful. It might seem at first glance that moderate drunkenness is a mean between sobriety and delirium, but this is not the case. Delirium withdraws a person entirely from the world of shared experience that characterizes sobriety and moderate intoxication. Hence, moderate drunkenness is not a mean between the two extremes: on the contrary, it groups itself together with its cousin sobriety. Nevertheless, we tend place people into one of three categories in relation to their state of inebriation: the sober, the moderately drunk, and the delirious. Now what if we ask, How drunk must a worshipper of Dionysus be in order to perceive one and the same god as being both a baby-killer and a bringer of joy to mortals? Attitudes toward this question would differ depending on the category of the person hearing it. The sober, for whom the contradiction is anathema, would think that only a delirious person could imagine such blasphemies. The delirious, for whom the contradiction is not a difficulty, would think that only a blind person could raise such a doubt. And the moderately drunk—who have loosened the bonds of sobriety enough to entertain the question but, not being delirious, have �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW not settled the matter—would be regarded negatively by both the other groups. The sober person regards even the moderately drunk person as addled for not keeping the distinctions clear, whereas the delirious person regards him as cloddish for breaking up an obvious unity. Thus, the moderately drunk seem to be opposed in different ways to the other two groups. To the moderately drunk, on the other hand, both of the other groups appear to be delirious: the sober because in their literalness they can make nothing of anything; the delirious because in their associative fugue they make anything of nothing at all. Both extremes are mistaken in not making the right things of the right things. The attitude of the moderately drunk, therefore, is open to the possibility of transformation, to the possibility that distinctions might become unities or vice versa. Hence the importance in the cult of Dionysus of the image of the serpent, which remains what it is although it continually sheds its own form. But does this idea come too close to imputing to the votaries of Dionysus the empty abstraction of the philologists and anthropologists, namely, the idea that Dionysus is the single, constant entity underlying the many symbolic manifestations he throws off, just as the snake is the single, constant entity underlying the many skins it throws off? Part V The Masks of Dionysus Fortunately, another Dionysus steps forward to block this line of thought. Dionysus of the theater was surely a master of images, and so he certainly knew what any child dressing up in costume knows—that the essence of an image is to present itself as just what it is not. The serpent’s shed skins need not be interpreted as different manifestations thrown off by a single, constant entity; they could instead be the remnants of what the serpent is not. Of course, this would mean that each �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 47 skin showed the serpent as what it was not even while the serpent was wearing it. Or, translating this idea into the realm of theater, the different aspects of Dionysus, each one an image left behind after a transformation, are just so many masks, just so many presentations of what he is not. If this is the case, then one of the central teachings of the cult of Dionysus must be this: To unmask is not to know. Dionysus’s different masks, then, cannot be merely disguises. They cannot be coverings worn by a single, self-same being of false fronts intended to hide the identity of a single, self-same being from onlookers. And yet, isn’t that what masks are? Perhaps not. Perhaps we need to think more radically about the concept of a mask. Masks are essentially superficial. They belong in the realm of externalities, of surfaces, of things-as-they-present themselves. Curiously enough, this makes them similar to solid bodies, which likewise manifest themselves to us as “all surface.” If we carve away the surface of a wooden block, for instance, we reveal a new solid that presents itself to us in a new way. But the new solid was not “contained by” the original one, except perhaps in a metaphorical sense. This point may be easier to grasp by means of a negative example. A box with another box fitting snugly inside it is not a solid. That is why there is room in it for the second box. Solids, on the contrary, do not have space for containment within them, and thus they cannot contain other solids. Nor do they contain some sort of originary object that remains the same through every alteration of surface. Each solid has only one surface, each surface is the surface of only one solid, and two different solids have two different surfaces. Similarly, each mask, because of its essential superficiality, cannot mask another mask, let alone some originary object that remains the same through every change of mask. The multiple masks of Dionysus, then, cannot be thought �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of as containing one another; they are not a set of nested boxes in which the outermost box conceals those within. Each mask presents itself as a distinctly different thing with an identity of its own, just as the carved wooden block presents itself as distinctly different from the block from which it was carved. Nor do his masks contain some originary being that remains the same through transformations of the masks, any more than solids contain originary objects. Consequently, the masks of Dionysus are not disguises: nothing is concealed within them, neither other masks nor an originary being. So trying to penetrate his masks in order to unmask a wearer is clearly a pointless task. It may not be quite so clear at this point that this task is also perilous. Part VI Masks, Shame, Orgies, and Horror If we continue to view a mask as a sort of disguise, we continue to think of it as a sort of magic shield of invisibility, a ring of Gyges. Wearing a mask as a disguise seems to be a way of hiding one’s identity, of concealing what one really is with a surface that presents what one really is not. The wearer of a disguise seems unaccountable for his actions, and hence free to do things that he would be ashamed to acknowledge in his own person. But since, as we have seen, a mask is not in fact a disguise, we should expect that the attempt to hide one’s identity with a mask should fail, should show itself as impossible in some way. And so it does: the unaccountable masked person is not at all the same as the unmasked person. The one does things that the other will not do. The one has shame, the other does not. It is simply a mistake to think that the masked person is somehow identical with the unmasked one. Looking aside from this error for the time being, however, we can see that the notion of a mask understood as a disguise raises the issue of shame, and this brings us to another central aspect of Dionysus and of his cult: the orgy. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 49 The word orgy comes from the Greek orgia, which is related to the word ergon, a deed, a task, or something accomplished. In classical usage, an orgy is not a celebration of wildly licentious sexual abandon—this meaning appears in English only in the seventeenth century—but rather an enjoined task, specifically of a religious character. It refers to religious rites such as the rites of Demeter, of Orpheus, and, most frequently, the rites of Dionysus. An orgiastic act, then, is like that part of a religious service in which every word and gesture of the officiating priest is ordained by preset ritual—as opposed to, say, a sermon, in which the officiating minister can speak in his own name. Another example of an orgiastic act in classical times was the presentation of a play by actors, in which the speeches had been ordained by the play’s author and—as we know was the case with the actors of Dionysus’s theater—the masks worn by the actors were ordained by tradition. The orgies of the cult-worshippers of Dionysus dramatize—that is, act out in prescribed word and deed—the great myths of the deity. The drama is portrayed by masked actors who are precisely what their masks show them to be, and who can be so because all their speeches and actions are prescribed to be exactly the speeches and actions belonging to the mask. Conversely, at the same time, the actors’ masks are precisely the surfaces appropriate to them in their character as worshippers of Dionysus in the orgiastic performance. And this relationship is very strict: thus, no single actor presents two different characters with the same mask or the same character with two different masks. (If the latter should happen, as with Oedipus before and after he blinds himself, it indicates that the character has changed radically.) These characteristics of orgiastic performance teach us about the nature of Dionysus, the god of play-acting. His �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW manifestations, on the one hand, as the god of baby-killing and, on the other hand, as the god who brings joy to mortals must not be understood as two different masks of the selfsame deity. The dreadful mask of the baby-killer, the amiable mask of the joy-giver—these indicate simply that masks exist. They do not reveal any persisting entity behind the masks. Moreover, the plays that embody the orgiastic tradition tell us that our insistence on trying to unmask the nonexistent entity behind the mask is not just pointless, but dangerous. And indeed, that is what we should expect, since all attempts to put mistaken beliefs into practice can only meet with tragic consequences. In the plays, the raving characters represent those who try to unmask others. Agave— who claimed that Semele had become pregnant with Dionysus by a mortal rather than by Zeus—attempted to unmask Semele as a liar. Pentheus—who was certain that the rites of Dionysus were wild, unsanctioned, and licentious rather than prescribed religious performances—tried to unmask Dionysus himself. Their delirium is a symptom, as we saw earlier, that they have left the realm of shared experience. The proper votaries of Dionysus do not rave; madness belongs to those who are outside communal awareness, and thus outside of the celebration—as Euripides saw so clearly. And the punishment for the attempt to unmask is terrible: first, it leads to raving, since the person making the attempt is trying the impossible, namely, to make something out of nothing by reducing two different masks to expressions of one nonexistent entity; second the raving leads to self-destruction as the person tries to act on the basis of delusion. Thus Agave is led to dismember her own son and Pentheus is compelled to dive headlong into the bevy of Bacchae who will tear him apart. The attempt to unmask comes to grief, because unmasking is impossible. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 51 This is what the myths of Dionysus are trying to tell us: We human beings are masked. The baby-killer is a mask just as much as the nurse or mother is a mask. If the nurse or mother mask is transformed into the baby-killer mask, this is not because the bloodier mask is another version of the more pleasing one, and certainly not because it is the true being concealed by the pleasing mask. On the contrary, the bloody mask is the consequence of trying to unmask at all. The attempt to unmask is the cause of the bloody mask that is found “underneath” the pleasant mask. The lesson of the dreadful myths of Dionysus is that, as we tear off our masks, each successive mask will be a bloodier, more horrifying result of the attempt to tear off the previous mask. On this view, Otto was right inasmuch as he thought that the various contradictory aspects of Dionysus point toward a sort of unity, but he was wrong in believing this unity to be a substance of some kind. The masks of Dionysus point toward a unity in the sense that they show us the self-same process repeating itself in the successively more horrifying masks that come into being from each previous attempt to unmask. We can relate this insight to our daily lives in this way: In contemporary terms, we describe the attempt to unmask in various ways—to “find ourselves,” to “act on our true feelings,” to “be our authentic selves,” and so on. The myths of Dionysus teach us, however, that we are masked actors in an orgiastic performance. The grief we suffer for rejecting this insight, and for trying to unmask ourselves in spite of it, is that we flay our own faces in the attempt to unmask ourselves. By tearing off our mask, we rend the flesh, leaving a bloody layer of pulp that had previously been protected by the mask. The original face, the mask, was not disguising the horror that appears after removal; the horror comes into existence only as a result of the attempt to unmask. �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Part VII The therapeutic mask In what we have said up to this point, there are some indications that moderate drunkenness, with its openness to transformation, might be preferable to the anti-Dionysian literalness of absolute sobriety and the anti-Dionysian madness of delirium. What does this tell us about everyday existence? What might be the analogue of moderate drunkenness in our daily lives? What would it mean to live in such a way that we are neither utterly sober nor intoxicated to the point of delusion? Here we will benefit from two other aspects of the deity we are studying: Dionysus as the god of marvels and Dionysus as the god of the dead. As the patron of theater, Dionysus is the god of the marvelous, the miraculous, and the wonderful. He is in the first instance, then, the patron of comedy, the genre in which a marvelous turn of events—such as the appearance of a deus ex machina or an unexpected savior or a startling revelation—brings about a change from imminent bad fortune to good fortune. This last consideration also shows the link between comedy and tragedy: if the marvel does not occur, imminent bad fortune comes to pass. And this too is wonderful in a different way: we wonder why the marvel did not occur, why the bad fortune was not averted, why the suffering had to be. Dionysus is in the second instance, then, also the patron of tragedy. For the moment, we are going to set aside Dionysus as the patron of comedy and tragedy to investigate yet another side of the god. As we saw very early on, Dionysus was also identified with Hades, the god of the dead, and was worshipped by drunken revelers carrying leather phalluses while singing lewd songs. The connections among the ghosts of the dead, leather phalluses, and filthy songs will reveal one more �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 53 aspect of Dionysus to us, which will, in combination with Dionysus’s role as the god of theater, teach us the final lesson that can be drawn from the myths of Dionysus. We begin by asking, What do the leather phalluses and filthy songs have to do with the worship of the god of the dead? We know from many sources that in Athens in early spring, during the month Anthesterion, a three-day festival of flowers included two days of Dionysian merry-making followed by a third day, called the Chutroi, the feast of pots, a festival of the dead at the end of which ghosts were exhorted to leave the city.11 But, during this very somber third day, comedies—represented in parade as outsized phalluses and dirty songs—were presented. It appears that the Athenians regarded theater performance as suitable either for entertaining the benevolent ghosts, or for distracting the malevolent ghosts, who walked abroad during the festival. In either case, Dionysus the god of theater was the appropriate deity for laying ghosts to rest. Dionysus thus begins to come to light as the god of rest, as the deity who blesses leisure. And this is not very surprising. After all, are not drinking and theater both acts of leisure? Perhaps the most all-encompassing of Dionysus’s aspects is that he is the god of leisure. But leisure presupposes trust. No one can rest comfortably without trusting in a multitude of protective guardians and helpers, from family members to neighbors to policemen to public service providers to soldiers. When we are made to question this trust—when one of these protective figures violates our trust—our sense of complacency is disturbed, and our ability to experience leisure evaporates. Violation of trust is, therefore, the supreme sin. It undermines the faith that humans need to feel safe in their own lives. Perhaps this is why Dante, in the Divine Comedy, places Brutus, Cassius, and �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Judas—exemplars of treachery—in the gnashing jaws of Satan himself—also a traitor—at the heart of Hell, which is the Christian version of Hades. If violation of trust is the destruction of faith and the leisure that depends on it, Dionysus the god of leisure must be opposed in all ways to treachery. He must be the guardian of guardianship and of all forms of protective care. Indeed, the female worshippers of Dionysus were called by the honorific title tithēnai, that is, nurses. The worship of Dionysus involves nurture and guardianship, without which leisure is impossible. As we said, theater is also a leisure activity. Hence we should also expect it to relate in some way to nurture and guardianship. This relationship is found in the realm of sight: theater cultivates and civilizes vision for sake of increasing trust, and thus securing leisure. The epitome of self-involved vision is solitary dreaming. In our dreams we are drawn into a self-contained world into which intrude only phantoms from our shared, waking life. Theater borrows these intruders, as it were, and introduces them to the companions of our shared life for their approval or disapproval. Theater civilizes our dreams by teaching us to distinguish between things that belong only to our solitary reverie and those that belong to our shared life with others. In doing so, it transforms our selfcontained consciousness into shared, civil consciousness. This civil consciousness is conscience. Conscienceless theater is anti-theater. Conscienceless theater tries to undo the transformation of our dreams by tearing off what seems to be their civil mask, and recklessly presenting our solitary consciousness to the prying eyes of strangers. Conscienceless, unmasking, theater is pornographic theater. It demands of its spectators that they publicly unmask and share all their dreams—the more private the better. But we have seen the consequences of the attempt to unmask, and those conse- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CARTER 55 quences can be expected to occur if unmasking theater is not checked: waking life will become a nightmare. Dionysus the god of theater reminds us that conscience, the mask of consciousness, is also its nurturer and its guardian. Dionysus is, therefore, the guardian deity of civilized consciousness. His dual realm is the underworld of solitary dreaming together with the portion of it that can be seen in civil consciousness. Human beings see the light of day only when they are masked. It is only as masked that we humans see the true light of day. Unmasked, we live in nightmare. Without our masks, we are as insubstantial as dreams; we are phantoms whose thinness is proved by the fact that they cannot withstand the light of day. Ultimately, then, the mask of Dionysus is the mask of conscience, the mask that allows some of our dreaming visions to be seen communally in the light of day. Dionysus, finally, is the god of that which is properly visible, the god of the properly shared, the god of civility. NOTES 1. Unfortunately, the source of this quotation—most probably one of Klein’s many lectures delivered at St. John’s College—is not known. 2. The stories of the Greek Gods are described in exhaustive detail in Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols. (New York: Penguin, 1960). 3. Heraclitus, Fragment 15. See Heraclitus, Fragments: A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 17. 4. Walter Otto, Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus (Klostermann: Frankfurt am Main, 1933). References in these notes will be to the English translation by Robert B. Palmer, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965). 5. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf (1848-1931) was an expert on the literature of ancient Greece. He championed the notion that surviving an- �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cient manuscripts, besides being objects of literary history, could also be mined for biographical, political, and general historical information. 6. Otto, Dionysus, 8. 7. Otto, Dionysus, 8-9. 8. Hermann Usener (1834-1905) was a philologist and historian of religion, and a teacher of Wilamowitz. The statement made here seems to be Wilamowitz’s version of something Usener used to say, not a quotation from a publication. 9. Otto, Dionysus, 9-11. 10. Otto, Dionysus, 11. 11. See, for instance, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.15, and Aristophanes, Acharnians, 1076. �ESSAYS & LECTURES 57 Fields and Particles and Being Dylan Casey 1 Introduction Particles and fields, broadly speaking, describe two basic accounts of what the world is made of. The particle is the quintessential ball, grain of sand, or individual. It contains the notion of individuation—the very criterion of distinguishing this from that. The field is an expanse, a continuous entity that occupies space, has shape, contour, and variation, but these qualities are always reflected back onto the field itself. The rolling, wheat-covered hills comprise a field. These two options correspond to two claims about the world in general: that it is discrete, like particles, or continuous, like fields. As with all good arguments, there are respectable proponents on both sides, each offering a little twist on the common theme. For example, Lucretius, on the face of it, is a particle guy. Accordingly, he writes: All nature, then, as it is in itself, consists of two things; for there are bodies and the void in which they are located and through which they move in different directions.1 The world is full of a variety of fundamental particles zipping around in an otherwise empty container, colliding with one another making all that we see. I should mention that there is the possibility of intrinsic self-motion—the swerve—of these particles (or at least one of them) in addition to the motion imparted by collisions, but that would lead to a different lecture. Dylan Casey is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was originally delivered on 22 April 2011 as part of Mr. Casey’s tenure as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Modern Thought. It has been modified slightly for publication. �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Newton, more or less, is also a particle guy. For him, light is corpuscular—a view that might be considered prescient given the photonic understanding of light that appeared over two centuries following his work. The action-at-a-distance interpretation of his gravitational theory also implies a particle view of the world in which each particle acts on the others, not just through collision, but also directly and instantaneously. In the end, action at a distance is a refinement of the Lucretian world of colliding particles to account for remote actions like magnetism and gravity. I should note that Newton had grave misgivings about action at a distance: That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.2 Roughly in the field camp, Descartes gives us the plenum. He insists that the world be full and continuous. There are no essential entities, but rather amorphous extension combined with swirling vortices. Descartes expected the world to be a self-contained whole—motion and extension together— though he might have conceded that the ball needs to start rolling at some point. Also standing in the field camp, in his own way, is Leibniz. His world is full as well, but his monads are discrete, essential entities colliding in a motion ultimately governed from the outside by God. While agreeing with Descartes about the necessary fullness of the world, Leibniz takes issue with Descartes’s inability to account for individuation. The monads go some way toward keeping the notion of individual entities in a full world. Obviously, the preceding accounts are just sketches of the ideas of the authors. And I do not intend to give the impres- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 59 sion that all particle views and all field views are the same. They’re not. But all particle views emphasize certain features and address certain questions in common, as do all field views. For the particle guys, the emphasis is on distinction and difference. Their ultimate standpoint is that there must be, somewhere, essential differences that are ineradicable, maybe even eternal. There is something naturally attractive about this view. One of the manifest features of the world is the distinction between this and that. The individuation that underlies the simple act of counting presumes boundaries between things as a precondition for counting them. Furthermore, we break up individual things into smaller individuals all the time, and many of them have natural boundaries. Like a ball or a grain of sand, such things maintain their integrity over time. Extrapolating to smaller pieces and to elementary particles is a straightforward exercise of the intellect: the smallest things ought to embody (or even exemplify) the distinctions that are manifest to us everyday. If individuation is a common feature of particle views, then the void is a common problem. The void seems to be an amorphous nothing that functions as a container for everything that exists—and, of course, speaking of nothing is difficult. Similarly, the genuine separation of individual entities that characterizes particle theories gives rise to the problem of action at a distance. There are certainly phenomena, like magnetism, in which it is difficult to explain how separated individuals interact with one another when action between those individuals isn’t easily attributable to simple collision. If you dispense with the void, you are left asking what fills it up. For the field guys like Descartes and Leibniz, the emphasis is on wholeness and continuity—on the fullness and completeness of the universe. This emphasis on oneness doesn’t seem incidental. Rather, it seems fundamental to scientific activity to assume a whole with respect to which measure- �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ments are made. For measuring to work at all, one needs a whole. Once the whole is assumed, however, the problem of distinction and identity is ever-present. One is left wondering about the cause of differences between individuals, or questioning whether such differences aren’t necessarily illusions. This is particularly true of Leibniz. By filling the universe with monads, he creates the appearance of individuality that is characteristic of the particle view. Since the monads fill the world, it seems that it might be possible to sidestep the void. But in the end, the monads form a whole in which their independence is utterly illusory. Rather, each monad is a mirror of the whole universe through its internal connection with everything else in the universe. Here is an image of a physical system that highlights these problems and tensions: two conducting spheres, each hanging from a string, each holding some net negative charge. Since like charges repel and the two spheres are relatively close to one another, they push each other away. We can tell this is happening because the strings from which the spheres hang are neither parallel nor plumb, but angled away from each other. If we push on one of the spheres, we see the other move away, and if we move one sphere around, the other moves as well. Now this is not an everyday sort of observation. We don’t usually have charged spheres hanging around near us. But, it isn’t difficult to arrange and, nowadays, isn’t likely to surprise many people. It’s so easy, in fact, that we do very similar demonstrations in our Junior Laboratory classes with pith balls hanging from threads. An initial account of this phenomenon might go like this: charges exert electromagnetic force on each other and, since the charges are confined to the spheres, that force overcomes the uniform downward tendency of the spheres due to gravitation. The relative angle of the strings reflects the net force acting on the spheres. This system of hanging charged bodies incorporates the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 61 most important questions about fields and particles, about wholes and parts, about the continuous and the discrete. What is happening between these spheres? This is, in short, the field question. Second, how do I understand these spheres themselves? This is, in short, the particle question. 2 Classical Fields Although Descartes and Leibniz laid the foundations for field theory with their emphasis on continuity and the fullness of the universe, it was the work of Michael Faraday that marked the beginning of our modern notion of the field. During his research into the nature of electricity and magnetism, he coined the term field to refer to the interstitial action between charged parts of matter and between magnetized parts of matter. In his experiments he had located and measured charges, confirmed the discreteness of charge, and demonstrated that changing magnetic forces induce electric currents in nearby wires. These electric and magnetic forces could penetrate matter and persist in a vacuum. The effects of charges on one another, as well as the effects of magnetism and electromagnetic induction, seemed like instances of action at a distance, and all of them could be described by contemporary mathematical formulations. Faraday didn’t buy it. For him, something had to travel between the charges and between the magnetic poles. Ultimately, the world had to be full, and action couldn’t happen without touching. Although one might call this a metaphysical predisposition on Faraday’s part, he nevertheless searched tirelessly for the smoking gun that would reveal the presence of a field as the medium through which separated pieces of charged matter could touch. First of all, he considered the time required for electrical action to occur as evidence of the presence of a field. Using a very long wire, he could measure how long it took for electricity to travel through a circuit. The �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW fact that such action was measurably non-instantaneous revealed that there was a moment when the action of one charged particle was “emitted” but not yet felt by another charge. If the whole long electrical interaction takes any time at all, the smallest communication of action must also take time. At some moment, therefore, the action was somewhere in between the two charges. For Faraday, this amounted to direct evidence against an action-at-a-distance account of electrical and magnetic force. The action between the charges must be contained within a field, within a continuous entity that was not confined by a particle of matter. The action of one charge on another had to occur through time and through space, of course, but it needn’t itself be particle-like in nature. By hypothesizing the existence of the field, Faraday imagined a new type of substance in the world. In holding this view, Faraday put himself at odds with a well established camp of believers in action at a distance who denied the necessity of a continuity of action from here to there. In their minds, each bit of charge acted directly on every other bit of charge. This notion was similar to Newton's account of gravity, in which each bit of matter exerted an instantaneous gravitational pull on every other bit of matter, with the strength of that force decreasing as the square of the distance between the bits. (As an aside—and this probably reveals my own disposition on the subject—I would note that the sensitivity to distance in action-at-a-distance theories is puzzling at the outset, if action is supposed to take place entirely between one particle and another. How do the particles sense the distance between them in order to regulate the force? Even if the information took no time to propagate, which creates a new problem concerning instantaneous transmission of anything, this sort of action at a distance still requires a radical sensitivity of each part to the global arrangement. It cannot be the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 63 case that the action is determined by only the two bits in which we happen to be interested; each part must know where every other part is within a larger context. In a funny way, action at a distance presumes a radical wholeness of all things due to the instantaneous activity of the putative parts upon each other.) Faraday’s field idea reaches fruition in James Clerk Maxwell’s reformulation that is eventually embodied in his equations for the electromagnetic field. Maxwell adds mathematical clarity and refinement to Faraday’s initial notions of the field. Among his greatest clarifications was rendering Faraday’s field as a mathematical quantity whose value depends upon spatial locations. This is how the field is continuous: it has a value at all points in space. Temperature is a good and typical example of a field. Each point in the room has a temperature and the mathematical function in three spatial directions that describes the temperature is called the temperature field. Maxwell’s account of electromagnetism invokes electrical and magnetic fields that persist throughout all space. If we return to our two hanging charged spheres, Maxwell would say that there is an electrostatic field—electrostatic because we don’t have to account for any magnetism in this system—between the two spheres and that the field is described by a field strength at each point between the spheres. It’s worth noting that the mathematical form of an electrostatic field is richer and more complicated than a temperature field. For instance, the electrostatic field is represented mathematically at each point in between the spheres by three components corresponding to the field strength in each of three spatial directions. And each of those components depends on three coordinates of position as well. That makes it what is called a vector field, but it’s still a field, which is to say, an extended whole in between two things. (The simpler temperature field would be called a scalar field, since each point is �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW represented by a number and not a vector.) Following Maxwell, we can refine the system of our hanging spheres in this way: The spheres are aggregates of charge and the force between them is the action of a connecting electromagnetic field. Each charge is the source of an electromagnetic field that pushes the other. In this way of seeing things, the world consists of particles floating on an ether sea in which the motions of the particles touch off waves of force that act on other particles. This, in large part, is the ontology of classical fields: there are, on the one hand, particles that are sources and recipients of disturbance, and, on the other hand, fields which communicate the disturbance between the sources. And one of the most amazing aspects of Maxwell’s theory is the consequence that these disturbances become the manifestation of light. Light itself is revealed as electromagnetic action born out of the motion of charges. This unifying character of the field, its ability to communicate action between charges, was a wonder to Maxwell. Here is just a taste of his enthusiasm from his article “On Action at a Distance”: The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the medium receives the impulses of these vibrations; and after carrying them in its immense bosom for three years, delivers them in due course, regular order, and full tale into the spectroscope of Mr. Huggins, at Tulse Hill.3 Now stipulating a field as a new kind of entity that acts as the mediator of action between particles doesn’t settle the discreteness/continuity problem. What is a field anyway? Is �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 65 it like water connecting one shore to another in such a way that the waves from a dropped stone lap upon the other side, dislodging stones there? This is exactly the sort of image that comes to mind when we think about point charges moving in the continuous field that propagates vibrations at the speed of light. If this is the case, then what is the field made of? Does it have parts, as water surely does? Is it composed of particles? If it is, what holds those particles together? Some of these questions arise from the very notion of extension. It is difficult to see how any extended thing can exist without being made up of “sub-things.” Any successful account of things will need to address these questions about extension and its sub-structure. On the other hand, what is a particle? Where are its boundaries? How is it distinguished from the force field of which it is the source? Where would one cross from charge to field? These questions of crossing and transformation from one thing to another are at the root of discreteness, difference, and individuality. Looking for an elementary particle is looking for a fundamental “this” that is clearly distinguishable from some different “that.” Behind all these questions lurk the nagging problems I mentioned at the outset: the problems associated with the attempt to come to terms with the distinctions between continuity and discreteness. A satisfying understanding of fields and particles ought to reveal some resolution of the tensions between these two accounts of world. To obviate the need for the void, we need a full universe. To articulate identity, we need ways of isolating individuals from the whole while maintaining connections so that we still have a whole. Maxwell’s field theory is looks like marbles and goo: the particles—the marbles—are point sources of mass and charge; the field—the goo—sticks all the particles together, communicating their separate actions to one another. �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 3 Quantum Field Theory While Faraday and Maxwell pioneered the notion of the field, its ultimate expression is found in modern quantum field theory, which represents our best current account of the structure of all matter. This account is called the Standard Model. If the name evokes for you a simultaneous sense of elevation and dreariness, you feel much the same way as most particle physicists, for whom the Standard Model is both a triumph and an affliction. In the Standard Model, the world contains elementary particles like electrons, neutrinos, and up quarks, which interact with one another by means of four forces: the electromagnetic force, which holds together everything from atoms to asteroids, and is the mediator of all chemical interactions; the strong force, which holds together the nuclei of atoms; the weak force, which doesn’t hold together anything, but mediates some forms of radioactive decay; and the gravitational force, which holds together planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, and so on. Gravitation doesn’t really fit in the Standard Model very well right now. This is regarded as an acceptable dilemma, because particle physicists still need jobs in this struggling economy. The Standard Model contains sub-theories associated with each of the forces. The part dealing only with electromagnetism is called QED, an acronym for “quantum electrodynamics.” The part dealing with the strong force is called QCD, for “quantum chromodynamics.” The part dealing with the weak force is an extension of QED called the “electroweak” theory. All of these are quantum field theories and anytime you hear or read things like “quark,” “lepton,” “QED,” “W and Z Boson,” or “Higgs Boson” you’ve wandered into the land of quantum field theory. It is completely uncontroversial that quantum field theories are the most successful accounts ever devised about the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 67 structure of the world. By “successful” I simply mean that they are the most precise accounts verified by experiment. Calculations of phenomena based on the Standard Model agree more closely with our best measurements than any other physical theories that we have. The best example of this is the value of something called “the fine-structure constant,” which is a number that characterizes the strength of electromagnetic interactions. The quantum-theoretical value of this number agrees with the physical measurement to 10 decimal places—better than one part in one billion. As an experimentalist, I would like to point out that it is a pretty wicked measurement that has an uncertainty of one part in a billion! Now, quantum field theory is kind of a crazy thing to try to cover in my remaining time. To do so succinctly, I would have to present you with some challenging, but extremely beautiful mathematics. But rather than try your patience in that way, I’ll attempt to describe as much of the theory as I can in plain English. I’ve provided a short annotated bibliography for those of you who would like to study some of the details in more depth. For now, I’m going to try to present some of the salient points of quantum field theory and talk a bit about what it requires us to think about the world. So let’s begin with this question: What do we buy when we buy a quantum field theory? 3.1 Relativity and Quantum Mechanics First and foremost, quantum field theory is a complete synthesis of special relativity and quantum mechanics that attempts to account for the physics of the entire universe. Because it incorporates special relativity, quantum field theory is “relativistically invariant,” which means that all the results of all calculations remain unchanged under a Lorentz transformation. This tells us that two identical experiments will get the same results even if one lab was here on earth �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW while the other was hurtling through space at nearly the speed of light. A physicist would say “all the physics in two systems is the same regardless of the relative speed between them.” For our purposes, there are two salient consequences of this fact: 1. All positions and times are determined relative to each other. There is no absolute now and then, no absolute here and there. And there is no simultaneity. 2. Mass and motion are aspects of the same thing—energy. Mass and motion can be converted into each other and, together, they embody the total energy of the system. Energy rules. Quantum field theories also encapsulate all of the ideas of quantum mechanics. Maxwell’s account of a world of charges communicating motion through vibrations in a field fails miserably in its attempts to account for the structure of the atom. Quantum mechanics solves those problems, but it entails certain consequences. For one thing, fundamental quantities like energy and angular momentum are discrete, which means that they come in little units that are the smallest amounts possible; or, as the physicists say, these properties are quantized. For another thing, certain quantities, like position and momentum, don’t admit of being determined simultaneously. (This is the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). Third, the fundamental quantity in a quantum mechanical system is called a “state,” which has a configuration that depends upon how it is selected. And fourth, all predictions are made in terms of likelihoods and probabilities—not because we are making estimates about large numbers of objects like, for example, the number of molecules in a container of gas, but because nothing in the quantum world is determinate. Probability is intrinsic and goes all the way down to the states, which are themselves sums of a number of possibilities. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 69 3.2 The Lagrangian and Minimization In any serious discussion about quantum field theory you’ll very quickly run into the term “Lagrangian.” Joseph Louis Lagrange was an eighteenth-century mathematician who developed the calculus of variations, in which differential equations are solved by taking into account the possible constraints on the internal parameters to determine a global solution. In physics, the term “Lagrangian” refers to a mathematical relation describing the dynamics of a system. First, you write an equation that describes the internal dynamics of the system fully, and then you integrate it over the whole time during which the system is in motion, thus producing an expression for the total action of the system. If you then minimize that expression (that is, find the least possible action that the system could possibly have used to get from its starting state to its ending state), you produce a differential equation expressing that least possible action terms of the Lagrangian. Classical mechanics and electrodynamics can be formulated in terms of minimizing action in cases for which the Lagrangian can be identified as the difference between the system’s kinetic energy and its potential energy. As an example, consider the path of a projectile under the influence of gravity—a potato, perhaps, launched from a potato cannon. Such a contraption looks pretty much like a cannon made of PVC pipe. To load it, the potato is pushed down the muzzle to the edge of the firing chamber. Propulsion is provided by igniting aerosol hair spray in the combustion chamber using a sparking device. (I, myself, through trial and error, have found that Aquanet® provides the biggest kick per dose by far.) The kinetic energy of the potato is given by its mass and speed, the latter of which depends upon position and time. The potential energy of the potato is given by its mass, the constant force of gravity, and its height, which also depends upon position and time. The Lagrangian function �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW would be the difference between the function for kinetic energy and the function for potential energy. Now, in principle there are many possible paths between the starting point and the landing point for the potato, each with its own action. For instance, it could travel in a parabola. Or, it could fly up for a while and do a few loop-the-loops before landing. Each of these paths has an associated action given by adding up the difference between the kinetic energy and the potential energy at all the points along the path. In the end, the path corresponding to the physical path—the path actually traced out by the potato—is the one with the least total action. One can perform a similar calculation in classical electrodynamics considering the motion and configuration of charged spheres or even of electrons. Considering their total kinetic and potential energies, the principle of least action stipulates that their configurations and motions will always be such that the action is minimized. All of the dynamics of the system is contained in the Lagrangian, and all calculations regarding the system would ultimately go back to that Lagrangian. Minimizing the action allows us to pick out which arrangement of dynamics will be followed by actual physical objects. In quantum field theory, there are two important twists on this classical principle. First, the Lagrangian is not in any simple way the difference between the kinetic energy and the potential energy; it is mathematically much more complicated than that. Second, the dependent quantities are field configurations, not paths. In classical formulations the minimization of the action is obtained by considering different paths through spacetime, as in my potato example. In quantum field theory, the minimization is obtained by considering different field arrangements. I don't have time to say more about least action here. But I do want to emphasize that the Lagrangian is the key to the physics of any system. For instance, when physicists speak �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 71 of invariances under transformation (as they do in regard to special relativity), they are implicitly saying, “the Lagrangian doesn’t change under that transformation.” This amounts to the claim that the Lagrangian contains all possible information about the system. In other words, the Lagrangian “holds all the physics.” 3.3 Quantum Fields So, as a structural matter, when you buy quantum field theory, you are buying quantum mechanics, special relativity, and least-action principles formulated in terms of a Lagrangian function. Now for the fields. In quantum field theory, all of the fundamental entities are space-permeating fields which are themselves physically manifest as discrete quanta. These fields is not made of anything else. They are their own entities, just as the fields of Maxwell and Faraday were their own entities. The quanta of these fields are the so-called elementary particles, but the fields are prior to, and necessary for, the existence of the particles. The particles are resonances, modes of the field. Crudely put, the particles are vibrations. All quantum mechanical entities are vibrations. You can never touch a quantum field per se—it becomes manifest only when there is a discrete interaction. Bumping up against a quantum field means bumping up against a quantum of that field. Now there are two classes of fields—matter fields and interaction fields, the latter also known as force fields. A good example of an interaction field is the electromagnetic field, whose quanta are photons of light. A good example of a matter field is an electron field, whose quanta are—you guessed it—electrons. A less familiar example of an interaction field would be the strong nuclear field, whose quanta are gluons (eight of them) that connect to quark fields whose quanta are up and down quarks. The earlier image of the two charged spheres can be refined a bit to reflect these fields. In Maxwell’s case, each �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sphere is a bundle of charge and the force that angles the support strings is communicated by the electromagnetic field joining the charges. In the electron field, for instance, each sphere is rendered as an individual electron, itself a quantum of an electron field, and the electromagnetic force between the two electrons is rendered as a photon, the quantum of the electromagnetic field. The angle of the strings represents the exchange of photons between the electrons. Now, this is a bit of a conundrum, and you may well feel like I’ve pulled a fast one. It’s quantum field theory, after all, not quantum particle theory. How exactly did this particlerabbit get pulled out of that field-hat? The short answer (and really the long answer too) is that the particles and fields come together. In a quantum field, the quanta, the particles, are the manifestation of the fields. There is no getting around this stipulation in quantum field theory. The particles arise out of the quantization of the field. The field holds all the possibilities—that is to say, all the energy—for the particles. The particles are the manifestation of the field. In this way quantum field theory makes a choice that Maxwell’s field theory does not. Maxwell’s theory has point sources that are distinct from fields—charges that are independent of the forces between them. In quantum field theory there is no distinction of this sort between source and force. Both are rooted in continuous fields which become manifest as particles. There are a few features of quantum fields that are worth emphasizing: 1. The particle types associated with each field are the same everywhere. All electrons, for instance, are the same, because they are all quanta of the same field. 2. The field endures, but particles can come and go, transforming one into the other. There are constraints to the transformations, but, as a general rule, “anything that can happen, will happen.” As �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY in ordinary quantum mechanics, probabilities for transformations can be assigned, but any given transformation is undetermined. I can tell you the possible final states for the decay of a muon and on average how long it will take to decay, but I can't tell you when it will happen. No one can. The available possibilities for transformation increase dramatically with increased energy. As a typical example: colliding a high-speed (and therefore high-energy) electron and positron, one might easily end up with showers of particles containing ten pi mesons, a proton, and an antiproton.4 Together, those particles weigh thirty-thousand times more than the original electron and positron. So mass is not conserved, but rearranged with the available energy. This is a direct consequence of special relativity. Such a collision is also a genuine transformation. The particles that resulted from the collision of the electron and the positron just mentioned were not hidden inside the electron and the positron, just waiting to be unleashed by the force of the collision. The electron and positron disappear and the available energy in the fields becomes manifest as the particles of the final state. I also can’t tell you which final state particles will appear in a given collision any more than I can tell you when a muon will decay. The best I can do is outline the possibilities. A corollary is that impossible transformations don’t happen. For all experimental purposes, the muon is a heavy electron—all of its quantum numbers are the same as an electron, except that it’s two hundred times heavier. And, it spontaneously decays into an electron plus some other particles. 73 �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The electron never decays. It is the end of the line. The only account of this I know is that there is no where for the electron to go, because there is no smaller package in which energy prefers to manifest itself. 3. The quanta don’t constitute the field. The field is not made up of quanta. The electromagnetic field does not contain photons. It is not a bag of marbles, nor a stack of blocks. The field has its own motions, its own resonances, and these are photons of various energies. Physicists use the analogy of the vibrating string to try to explain this fact: Just as a vibrating string has its overlapping series of normal modes, the up quark, the down quark, and the Z boson are all resonances in an underlying, undulating field. 4. For quantum fields, all interactions are pointlike, occurring at a specific point in space-time and involving specific combinations of field quanta. In other words, all interactions are discrete. Every interaction is broken down into individual interactions between individual quanta. And these quanta are manifestations of the energy present in the underlying continuous field. 4 Interactions and Local Symmetry So, what’s the big picture? We have a world filled with fields, all of which are manifest only by particles, all interacting with one another. But what does “interaction” mean? How are these fields/particles related to their interactions? Considering this brings us to the notion of invariance, the notion that despite the appearance of change, things stay the same. Physicists apply invariances by insisting that “the physics” of a system doesn’t change under certain transformations. The use of invariances (and the related notion of conservation) has a �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 75 long history in physics, and in the sciences generally. One might consider the story of physics as the search for the true invariances within the world. This is the idea that Huygens leverages in “Motions of Colliding Bodies,” which we read here at St. John’s in the Junior Laboratory. In that work, Huygens considers two balls colliding with one another, and he works out the general kinematics of hard collisions. Here is the beginning of the proof of his first proposition. (I’ve made minor edits that obviate the mathematical proportions and variables): Figure from Proposition 1 of Huygens’s Motion of Colliding Bodies Imagine that a boat near a bank is carried along by the current, so close to the bank that a passenger standing in it can stretch out his hand to a friend standing on the bank. Let the passenger hold in his hands . . . two equal bodies . . . suspended on strings, and . . . by bringing together his two hands with equal motions, understood in relation to himself and the boat, until they touch, he thus makes the two balls collide with equal speeds. The balls, therefore, must necessarily rebound from their mutual contact with equal speeds . . . in relation to the passenger and the boat. Moreover, suppose that in the same time the boat is carried to the left with . . . the same speed with which the left hand . . . was carried toward the right. It is therefore clear that the passengers [left] hand has remained motionless in relation to the bank and to his friend, but that [his right hand], in relation to the same friend was moved with [double the] speed. . . . Therefore, if the friend on the bank is supposed to have grasped, with his own [right hand], the passengers [left hand], together with the end of the string which supports [one ball], but with his other [left hand] the passengers [right �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW hand], which holds the string from which [the other ball] hangs, it is apparent that while the passenger makes [the two] balls strike one another with a speed equal in relation to himself and the boat, the friend on the bank, in the same time, shoved [one ball against the other ball, one at rest and the other with a speed double that of the boat] in relation to the bank and to himself. And it is evident, however, that as for the passenger, who, as was said, makes the two balls move, it makes no difference that his friend on the bank has taken his hands and the ends of the strings, since he only accompanies their movement and doesn’t hinder them at all. For the same reason, the friend on the bank who makes [one ball] move toward the [motionless ball] is not disturbed at all by the fact that the passenger has joined hands with him.5 Huygens determines the laws of collision by requiring that the collision itself remain the same, even if it may seem different to different viewers. Even though different viewers would obtain different results for the speeds and directions of the colliding bodies, Huygens presumes that all such views would be ultimately commensurable, and that they could be transformed into one another if we know the parameters of the transformation. Indeed, this difference is plain, since the passenger on the boat moves his arms at the same speed, while his friend on the shore keeps one arm still and the other rushes along at twice the speed of the boat. The leverage Huygens has in this analysis is the presumption that the collision for the passenger and the collision for his shore-bound friend are one and the same; indeed, it certainly seems that there is only one collision, not two. Huygens reinforces our presumption about this by having them touch hands in such a way that the hands are in the same place, with the same motion, but neither pair disturbs the other. The difference in relative speed between the observers—that is, between the passenger and his friend on the shore—cannot make a genuine difference to the physical laws involved, because then there would be two collisions rather than one. Any distinction between the two observers must be accounted for by a trans- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 77 formation that may render the component details different, but must leave the collision alone. Huygens’s assumption of invariance preserves the identity of the collision as a single event, and this identity consists of a single interaction in a particular place at a particular time. The sort of leverage Huygens employs is very powerful and is used over and over in physics. As an intellectual activity, it presumes that, in some articulable way, the world is unchanging and that distinctions are variations that fill up that unchanging whole. This is sensible and reasonable. In fact, it is rational in an explicit way. The shapes of the parts and the distinctions among them are measured with respect to the whole. Physics articulates difference by means of ratio, that is, by means of comparison. One might well say that the root activity of all physics is the art of comparison: the physicist hunts for invariances in order to articulate distinctions that make a genuine difference. There are many sorts of invariances in physics. For instance, there is invariance with respect to translations in location or time. The criterion of such an invariance is that the equation describing the dynamics of the system, namely, the Lagrangian, is unchanged after some transformation. If we say, to give an example, “the physics of this system is invariant with respect to translations in location,” we mean that if any increment is added to the variable for location in the Lagrangian, when we work out the algebra, the new Lagrangian simplifies back into the original one. Now this kind of invariance has a very special consequence. If a Lagrangian has an invariance, there is an associated conserved quantity and vice versa. In other words, if the physics has an invariance something is conserved, and if something is conserved there is an invariance. So space-translation invariance (invariance with respect to increments in spatial locations, also called space-translation symmetry) implies conservation of momentum. Time-translation invariance �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW (invariance with respect to increments in time, also called time-translation symmetry) implies conservation of energy.6 The reverse is also true: momentum conservation implies space-translation symmetry and energy conservation implies time-translation symmetry. Conservation principles turn out, therefore, to indicate symmetries in the physical world. Momentum conservation points at a fundamental homogeneity in the universe: here and there aren’t different from the perspective of physical laws. Similarly, energy conservation indicates the same thing about time: now and then aren’t different from the standpoint of physical laws. These symmetries are not restricted to kinematical quantities, like momentum, associated with the motion of physical objects. They can also be associate with the state functions of quantum field objects; that is to say, there can be internal symmetries in the different quantum fields and in the particular quanta that belong to them. One such internal symmetry is called phase symmetry. In quantum mechanics, all the states of any system have an associated phase, because the mathematical descriptions of the states are very complex wave functions, and every wave has a phase. Now phase isn’t a very complicated idea; it’s just the marker of a repeating motion. Imagine sitting in a boat on a lake as a wave passes underneath, lifting and lowering the boat (and you with it) over and over. If you were next to a dock, you might go from looking at the barnacles under the dock while the boat is in the wave’s trough to looking over and across the dock at your neighbor’s yacht while the boat is riding at the wave’s crest. And you would repeat this up-and-down trip with every complete cycle of the wave beneath your boat. This repeated upand-down motion is circular in nature: you go up a certain height from trough to crest, then down again through the same distance, then up again, and so on. You could even track your relative position on the wave by marking out your position on the up and down cycle on the face of a clock, so that �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 79 one turn around the clock corresponds to one cycle of upand-down motion. Assigning your highest point above the dock to the twelve-o’clock mark, you’d descend to dock level at quarter past, bottom out at half past, ascend to dock level again at quarter to, and return to your highest point again when the hand returns to noon. (Notice that you can choose any point in the up-and-down motion to be the start of the phase. You can assign the twelve-o’clock mark to the lowest point of the motion, or to the point that is level with the dock if you wish. Your boat will always be back at the same place when the hand goes all the way around.) These points on the clock, as well as all those in between, mark your phase, which is the clock position that corresponds to your height at any moment within one cycle of the wave’s motion. Now consider your neighbor’s yacht on the other side of the dock. Assuming that the wave lifts your boat first, travels under the dock, and then lifts your neighbor’s boat, his boat will also rise and fall. And depending on the phase of each boat—that is, depending on the location of each boat in the wave’s cycle—the relative motion of the two boats will be different. If the boats are in phase, then both of them will go up and down together. If the boats are completely out of phase, and your boat will be at its highest point when your neighbor’s is at its lowest point. Quantum states are a bit like these boats, each moving up and down, each having its own phase, akin to a hand sweeping around the face of a clock. (As a technical matter, this phase is part of the complex number-value of a quantum mechanical wave function.) And, just as the starting point of the phase doesn’t matter for the boats, it also doesn’t matter for the quantum state. No measurement can reveal the absolute value of the phase. In the end, only differences in phase between systems can ever be revealed experimentally. This is akin to being able to know only the difference in the relative heights of your boat and your neighbor’s, but not being able �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to know his height or your height absolutely. (Presumably, this means that there is no reference point analogous to “sea level” in the world of quantum fields. On the other hand, we could be wrong in thinking that “sea level” is a useful reference point.) Now, let’s consider some possible symmetries associated with phase. One possibility would be to demand that physics doesn’t change if all the phases in the whole universe are modified by the same amount. This amounts to saying that the results of my experiments won’t change if every internal clock is modified by the same amount. Imagine moving all the start times for all the clocks by the same amount. (This is done mathematically by multiplying every state by the same value.) Such a property would be a global symmetry that reflected a global invariance. Global symmetry (or global invariance; we will use the terms interchangeably, since one implies the other) is good because it establishes a closed system. For instance, it would be very nice if charge were globally invariant: that would mean that charge is conserved, and that would be reflected in no net change of charge in the universe at all. Conversely, global invariance is bad because the closed system that it establishes is necessarily the entire universe, not just the one point in the universe where an interaction occurs. Global invariance over-constrains the physics by tying the activity of the system at any given point to the activities happening at all other points; it implies that every point in the universe is instantaneously sensitive to all the others. The problem with global invariance is that the arbitrariness of the phase for each state isn’t preserved; that is, it doesn’t allow me to arbitrarily decide where to start my phase clock. Under global invariance, I am able to set the clock arbitrarily for one state, but doing so fixes the phase for all other states—instantaneously, everywhere. This is just the kind of action at a distance to which Faraday objected, because it makes the entire the uni- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 81 verse one gigantic causal connection. A better alternative, which neither violates special relativity nor implies action at a distance, is local invariance or local symmetry. Mathematically, this means that the physics doesn’t change if states are modified depending on their position in space-time. On the one hand, local invariance is an even stronger restriction than global invariance, because we are requiring the physics to be the same regardless of location—something that global invariance does not require. On the other hand, local invariance liberates states from the tyranny of the whole universe, subjecting them instead to the less all-encompassing tyranny of their space-time locations. Being tied to conservation, invariance is a whole-defining or system-defining feature. Conserving momentum and energy, for instance, is a fundamental criterion for having a closed system at all. A ball rolling across a table slows down and stops due to friction. Such a system is non-conservative—the momentum at the beginning is not equal to the momentum at the end. Friction is like a sinkhole into which flows all the energy and momentum of the ball. In the end, non-conservative systems leak. The most basic ambition of fundamental physics is an account of the world with no leaking. Any description of a fundamental system will need to exhibit global invariance as a precondition for being satisfactory, but it’s really too coarse a requirement because it forces us to look at the whole universe every time we want to look at an interaction. Local invariance actually does more for us, because it implies integrity in the parts that make up the whole, and it requires a whole system at each space-time point. Now you don’t get local symmetry requirements for nothing; there are consequences to be met. To illustrate them, consider a single free electron. Such a particle would be one quantum of an electron field. It would be characterized by having a particular momentum and energy. As a quantum �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW state, this electron can have any phase at all—the hand on the clock can be at any location. Now, stipulating global phase invariance implies that the charge of this electron is conserved in the universe. And since my system has only one charge, my physics will be constrained always to have a total of one net charge in the universe. Now, if you go through the mathematics, you'll find that the Lagrangian for the free election, which determines its physics, won’t be invariant under a local phase transformation—that is, the physics won’t exhibit local symmetry. However, you can make the system be locally invariant by adding two terms to the Lagrangian, one term that corresponds to the electromagnetic field and its quantum, the photon, and another term that corresponds to the point coupling between the two fields. The upshot is that making phase locally invariant requires that there be both electrons and photons—and consequently both electron fields and electromagnetic fields—in the world, together with all their mutual interactions. This sort of local phase symmetry is the underlying feature of all the quantum field theories comprising the Standard Model. Indeed, each force is associated directly with an underlying local symmetry that individuates both the quanta of the matter fields and the quanta of the force fields and joins them in a local interaction. Local symmetry operates much like Huygens’s assumption that there is a single collision to which the parts can be related: the interactions among field quanta become the primary source of connection and unification. So the electron and photon always and only come together as a single interaction called a vertex. This example belongs to the theory of quantum electrodynamics—the oldest of the quantum field theories. The other parts of the Standard Model include different interactions. QCD has quark-gluon vertices, electroweak theory has neutrino-W boson vertices. Each kind of vertex is characteristic of the type of interaction. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 83 This move from global to local invariance makes quantum field theories philosophically satisfying in a way that older physical theories are not. As I’ve said, part of the problem with global invariance is that it smacks of action at a distance and feels like an imposed constraint. Such an invariance amounts to a box for the activity inside, a box that is affected in no way by the motions inside it. In this containerized world, the problems of relating parts and wholes never come up. Generating these boxes in order to gain leverage on understanding physical systems has long been a feature of fundamental physics. On the other hand, part of the intellectual trajectory of fundamental physics has been to search immediately for ways to remove external constraints once they have been characterized. This describes the reductionist activity of physics, epitomized by looking for new particles beneath the peeled-back skin of the current crop of fundamental particles. First there were molecules, then atoms, then electrons and nuclei, then protons and neutrons, and now there are quarks—and we’re just waiting for the next step down in size. Here lies the central difficulty of any kind of foundationalism: as we uncover the foundations we also experience the disquieting realization that the foundations must rest on something else. The solution to this problem, both physically and philosophically, is to sort out a whole that is internally constrained so as to allow individuation; to show how the internal characteristics serve to constrain the thing as a thing. This is the effect of local invariance. In this sort of foundation, there can be fundamental things that are not marble-like particles, but intrinsically active quantum mechanical states. Furthermore, any account of the fundamental things that includes individuation must also account for the way a connection is made to the rest of the world. Locally symmetric quantum field theories provide an example of an account in which the part maintains integrity while also being inextri- �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cably embedded within the whole. The solution in quantum field theory is that the individual parts must interact with one another in forming a dynamic whole. We see in quantum field theory the ontological reflection of the necessary characteristics of self-constraint: internal variability and the fundamental coexistence of things unified by their interactions. Indeed, in the end, the truly fundamental thing may in fact be the interaction. The structure of quantum field theories with local invariance provides individuation through local symmetry requirements, but requires interactions between localities if we are to preserve the invariances essential to wholeness. The invariances are conditions of intelligibility and conditions of individuation; there is no distinction possible without wholeness. Wholeness without distinction is possible, though completely amorphous. Individuation, however, isn’t possible without appealing to something within which the individual lies. Quantum field theories incorporate this relation into their very structure through local invariance.7 5 Things, fundamental and otherwise Are electrons and electron fields fundamental entities? Is one properly prior to the other? There are at least two ways to answer this question: an answer from within the account and answer from outside the account. Let’s try to answer from within the account first. The activity of science is generally very pragmatic, and the starting point is to assume the essential integrity of the objects at the scale under consideration. Thus, the fact that all the atoms and molecules in the baseball are constantly in motion does not bear on considering the baseball a thing that has its own properties—its own weight, shape, and so on. At this scale of examination, the baseball is the integral thing, the individuated thing, to which we pay attention. Why? The individuation of the baseball is, among other things, manifest by invariances �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 85 of its motion with respect to other things in the world. For the physicist (and the baseball player), the baseball’s collective motion individuates it. The physicist considers it a whole by ignoring the possibility that there may be tiny pieces flying off of it or being absorbed into it. If we looked at a larger scale, say the motion of the earth, we would ignore the motion of the baseball. Similarly, if we looked on a smaller scale, say the motion of an electron around a hydrogen atom attached to one of the organic molecules in the leather of the baseball, we would ignore the motion of the whole ball. This notion of scale and relative individuation is natural in physics, and is part of the pragmatic nature of the activity. And when I say that we ignore some of the motions, I don’t mean to imply that we are choosing to make some sort of approximation for the sake of convenience. I mean to say that ignoring such motions is the same as looking for the invariances that are the signs of actual things. So answering the question What is fundamental? from within quantum field theory yields this result: the fields and the quanta are certainly elementary, and priority is given to the fields, even though it is only as quanta that fields ever manifest themselves. Now let’s try to answer the question from outside of the account. Here we have to wonder whether the inside answer can’t be undermined by seeing the situation from a wider perspective. One way to adopt that perspective would be to revise the question slightly: Are fields and particles really fundamental—as in “at the bottom of things”—or will the unitary electron of today’s physicists become a composite like a water molecule for tomorrow’s physicists? To the extent that electrons are simply smaller that water molecules and are constituents in making, say, a hydrogen atom, it is natural to consider electrons elementary in comparison to hydrogen atoms. In some ways, it’s the same as saying that hydrogen atoms have electrons inside them, therefore �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW electrons must be more elementary than hydrogen atoms. On the other hand, the deep result of local symmetry in quantum field theory is that the constituents and their interactions are naturally and irrevocably coexistent as a condition for having a coherent whole. Such a whole is now a coherent activity of parts with internal invariances characteristic of those parts. This criterion applies to water molecules, baseballs, and oak trees as much as it does to electrons and photons, and this makes us wonder whether the electron is really fundamental in relation to the water molecule. The elementary bit of water doesn’t naturally seem to be an electron, but rather a water molecule. The action of the water arises out of the interactions of its constituent parts, each of which has its own activity— which is to say, a proper activity bound up with certain invariances. Furthermore, the characteristic sizes and distances of interactions within liquid water are given by the water molecule, not by the electrons that make up that molecule. Indeed, it isn’t at all clear that the integrity of the electron and the water molecule—the feature by which I individuate them from each other and call them different things—isn’t essentially the same. Each is a zone of stability surrounding amorphous activity. Distinction itself, particleness, arises out of this amorphous activity in the form of stability of activity characterized by an insensitivity to internal activity. The question of whether the electron has substructure in the way that an atom has substructure is, as my undergraduate advisor in physics said to me years ago, “a research project.” For now, the electron is a best candidate for a fundamental or elementary particle. But it cannot be regarded as a building block, as something subsisting by itself that can be stacked with others like it to construct something larger, like a brick. On the contrary, quantum field theory tells us that electrons are parts of a self-constrained world in which their individual existence always arises out of, and within, a whole. There is no “fundamental particle” apart from a “fundamental field.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | CASEY 87 NOTES 1. Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book I, lines 419-421. 2. Isaac Newton, letter to Richard Bently, 25 February 1693. 3. James Clerk Maxwell, “On Action at a Distance,” in The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W. D. Niven, 2 vols. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1890), Vol. 2, 322. 4. This particular numerical example is borrowed from the beginning of Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 5. The entire text is available online here: http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/texts/huygens/impact/huyimpct.html 6. This deep result is called Noether’s Theorem after the prolific German mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether (1882-1935). 7. For the experts: I know that I’ve left out renormalization and that it bears on the question of individuation. There is only so much I can fit into such a small space. Appendix: Annotated Bibliography for Further Reading I. J. R. Aitchison. “Nothing’s Plenty: The Vacuum in Quantum Field Theory.” Contemporary Physics 26 (1985): 333-391. A fine, detailed discussion of the vacuum in quantum field theory. P. W. Anderson. “More is Different.” Science 177 (1972): 393-396. A famous article arguing that fundamental structure doesn’t correspond to scale. Sunny Auyang. How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? London: Oxford University Press, 1995. A serious philosophical encounter with quantum field theory. William Berkson. Fields of Force: The Development of a World View from Faraday to Einstein. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. A history of the idea of the field, focussing on classical fields, with an attention to philosophical ideas. I. J. R. Aitchison and A. J. G Hey. Gauge Theories in Particle Physics: A Practical Introduction. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2012. A firstrate graduate-level quantum field theory text, focussed on the Standard Model. Robert B. Laughlin and David Pines. “The Theory of Everything.” Pro- �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (2000): 27-32. In line with P. W. Anderson’s article and containing many physical examples. Bruce Schumm. Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. A thoughtful, detailed presentation of the Standard Model, emphasizing symmetry issues. Steven Weinberg. “The Search for Unity: Notes for a History of Quantum Field Theory.” Daedalus 106.4 (1977):17-35. A excellent overview of the problems and solutions in QFT, set in a historical progression. Steven Weinberg. “Newtonianism, Reductionism, and the Art of Congressional Testimony.” Nature, 330 (1987):433-437. A discussion of what is meant by “fundamental physics.” Frank Wilczek. The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. New York: Basic Books, 2010. A popular science book, wellwritten, that emphasizes mass and QCD. The articles by Anderson, Laughlin and Pines, and Weinberg’s “Newtonianism” are all included in the recent collection Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, ed. Mark A. Bedau and Paul Humphreys. Boston: MIT Press, 2008. �ESSAYS & LECTURES 89 Miracles and Belief Joseph Cohen Is belief in miracles compatible with a scientific understanding of the world?1 The idea for this lecture grew out of a philosophy tutorial in which the assignment for one meeting was to read and discuss two philosophic arguments on the topic of miracles. They were the chapter entitled “Miracles” in Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (1687) and the chapter entitled “Of Miracles” in David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). I asked the class to consider whether the arguments of Spinoza and Hume constituted a refutation of the possibility of miracles, and if so, in what way such a refutation might affect a belief in divine providence, or religious belief in general. The students found these questions provocative and challenging, but were also troubled and perplexed by them. Why should the presumed impossibility of miracles occasion such difficulties? I propose this suggestion. Let us assume as an appropriate and accurate starting point that miracles are understood to be: (1) phenomena which are contrary to and cannot be explained by the established laws of nature; and (2) caused by the intentional acts of a Divine Agent. Since the existence of miracles implies the existence of a God who is their cause, an argument against the possibility Joseph Cohen is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was first delivered at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 30, 2010. It has been revised slightly for publication. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of miracles further implies either the non-existence of this God, or the absence in God of the attribute of providential care and concern for particular individuals or peoples. It is only by virtue of possessing this attribute that God would be presumed to produce the intentional acts called miracles. Therefore, to the extent that an argument against miracles is persuasive, this would diminish the degree of certainty of a belief in the existence of such a God or in God’s providential care and concern. Among the students who said they found persuasive and worthy of acceptance the two philosophic arguments against miracles, some volunteered that although they agreed that the arguments were persuasive, they did not want to or were not able to relinquish their belief in a providential God. Their feelings and their faith committed them to this belief. Their position seemed to be either that there was no real inconsistency in holding these apparently opposed convictions, or that the inconsistency didn’t bother them. The aim of this lecture is to explore further these questions and various responses to them. It has two parts: Part I: Spinoza and Hume, and Part II: C. S. Lewis and Francis Collins. Part I: Spinoza and Hume Spinoza To place Spinoza’s discussion of miracles (Chapter 6) in the context of the larger aims of his Treatise, it will be useful to comment briefly on what precedes that discussion. The peculiarly hyphenated title, Theological-Political Treatise, makes us wonder what the connection of theology and politics might be. On the title page, there is a subtitle that summarizes Spinoza’s overall aim: Containing some dissertations by which it is shown not only that the freedom of philosophizing can be granted while saving piety and the peace of the republic, but that it �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 91 cannot be removed unless along with that very piety and peace of the republic. The Treatise is thus presented as a work of political philosophy, whose aim is to show how freedom, piety and peace are necessarily interconnected within the framework of that form of political organization known as a republic. Its argument as a whole can be divided into two parts, the theological and the political. In order to achieve the aims of the political part, Spinoza must first confront and overcome the claims of the theologians and of the sacred texts from which they claim their authority. In the Preface, Spinoza reveals his motive for writing, describes and denounces the pervasive evils produced by superstition and prejudice, and sketches the main themes and plan of organization of the Treatise. The first sentence of the Preface, and hence of the Treatise, declares: If human beings could rule all their affairs with certain counsel, or if fortune were always favorable to them, they would not be bound by any superstition.2 With this, Spinoza launches a direct and sustained attack against superstition, exposing its causes and tracing its pernicious effects. Superstition has its roots in fear (or dread) and ignorance, joined with immoderate desires for the goods of fortune and the incapacity of human beings to control either the turns of fortune or their own desires for her favors. Being ignorant of the operation and order of Nature and fearful of supernatural powers, the people or their rulers place their trust in those who claim to be able to interpret, and possibly to control, the course of events, whether determined by fortune, or natural causes, or the will of the gods. Thus they seek guidance from seers or prophets. In this way, superstition becomes associated with prophecy and religion. Spinoza initially uses the examples of Alexander the �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Great and, closer to his own time, the empire of the Moslem Turks, to highlight the pervasive and pernicious effects of superstition. He then shifts the scene to the religious and political world dominated by Christianity. He declares he had often wondered that those “who boast that they profess the Christian religion—that is, love, gladness, peace, continence, and faith toward all” should engage in such bitter hatred and persecution of others. He finds “the cause of this evil” to be the abuses arising from the admixture of religious belief and political ambition, namely, the political abuse of religion and the religious abuse of politics. The Church has become an entrenched ecclesiastical and political institution concerned with accumulation of honors, privileges, and power, and “faith is now nothing else but credulity and prejudice.” Reason is despised as being by nature corrupt, and the free judgment of each person to discern the true and the false is impeded. Spinoza attacks this unholy theological-political admixture, which makes it “seem as though [it has] been intentionally devised for extinguishing the light of understanding.” He therefore resolved “to examine Scripture anew in a full and free spirit,” contriving a method of interpretation which would “admit nothing as its teaching which was not taught by it very clearly.”3 As indicated in the Preface, the plan of organization of the Treatise is keyed to a series of questions that guide the course of argument of the following twenty chapters. The questions pertaining to the chapter on miracles ask “whether miracles happen contrary to the order of nature, and whether they teach God’s existence and providence more certainly and more clearly than do the things we understand clearly and distinctly through their first causes.”4 How do human beings come to know “first causes”? Is there more than one source available by means of which knowledge can be acquired? In Chapter 1 (Prophesy) and Chapter 2 (Prophets), Spinoza begins to explicate his account �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 93 of natural knowledge as grounded in reason and experience, in contrast to knowledge claimed through prophecy or revelation as grounded in imagination and faith. Chapter 1 begins as follows: Prophecy, or Revelation, is certain knowledge (certa cognitio) of some matter revealed by God to human beings. A Prophet, moreover, is one who interprets the revealed things of God to those who are unable to have the certain knowledge of the matters revealed by God, and so can only embrace the matters being revealed by mere faith.5 (Emphasis added.) Drawing on this definition, Spinoza then claims, “it follows that natural knowledge can be called Prophecy (cognitionem naturalem prophetiam vocari posse). For the things we know by the natural light depend solely on knowledge of God and of his eternal decrees.”6 (Emphasis added.) What then, for Spinoza, is “natural knowledge”? How is it distinct from the “certain knowledge” which prophets may claim for themselves? And how does knowledge obtained by the natural light differ from the certain knowledge revealed by the prophetic light? He begins to answer these questions in remarks that take the form of an argument.7 1. “[N]atural knowledge is common to all human beings—for it depends on foundations common to all human beings.” 2. However, this kind of knowledge “is not well regarded by the vulgar [the multitudes], who are always panting after what is rare and alien to their nature . . . ; when they speak of prophetic knowledge, they want this [natural] knowledge excluded.” 3. Nevertheless natural knowledge “can be called divine (divina vocari potest), as can any other knowledge, whatever it may be . . . . Yet in respect �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of the certainty that natural knowledge (cognitionem naturalem) involves and the source from which it is derived (namely, God),” it is in no way inferior to prophetic knowledge (cognitione prophetica). 4. “Yet though natural science (scientia) is divine, its propagators still cannot be called Prophets.” For what the teachers of natural science impart to others can be grasped by them, not by faith alone, but with a certainty and entitlement equal to that of the teachers. 5. “[S]ince our mind . . . has the power to form some notions explaining the nature of things and teach the conduct of life, we can deservedly state that the mind’s nature . . . is the first cause of divine revelation.” 6. “[T]he idea and nature of God dictates everything we clearly and distinctly understand, not in words but in a far more excellent mode, which best agrees with the nature of the mind—as anyone who has tasted the certainty of understanding has without a doubt experienced within himself.” These six steps lead to Spinoza’s powerful conclusion: 7. “For everything is done through God’s power. Indeed, since Nature’s power is nothing but God’s power itself, it is certain that we do not understand God’s power to the extent that we are ignorant of natural causes.”8 In this last statement, Spinoza reveals his deepest and most comprehensive insight, namely, the fundamental unity of God and Nature. Although the phrase “God or Nature” is explicitly used in the preface to Part IV of Spinoza’s Ethics, the application of this insight runs through the Treatise and forms the constant backdrop for its unfolding argument.9 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 95 It is often debated whether Spinoza’s use of the phrase “God or Nature” is to be understood as a deification of Nature or as a naturalization of God. In either case, the term “supernatural” is drained of its meaning. For Spinoza the understanding and explanation of the phenomena of the world must be attained through the acquisition of natural knowledge alone. It is from this perspective that Spinoza’s philosophic position can be called Naturalism, in opposition to the theological point of view called Supernaturalism.10 Spinoza fully develops his naturalistic position in the Ethics. Its central teaching is that Man is necessarily a part of Nature, that striving (conatus)11 is the essence of Man, and that our supreme good and highest happiness can be attained by means of striving toward what he calls “the intellectual love of God.” In the light of what will be discussed later, Spinoza’s account of the active emotion (or affect) of intellectual love can be construed as among the “spiritual rewards” experienced by those who seek to understand the mind of God through understanding the system of Nature. In Chapter 3 of the Treatise Spinoza employs this “God or Nature” point of view when he restates the idea of God’s providence in terms of God’s direction, God’s external and internal help, God’s choosing, and fortune. He writes: By God’s direction, I understand the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or the chaining together of natural things. For . . . the universal laws of nature, in accordance with which everything comes to be and is determined, are nothing but God’s eternal decrees, which always involve eternal truth and necessity. Accordingly, whether we say that everything comes to be in accordance with the laws of nature, or that everything is ordered on the basis of God’s decree and direction, we are saying the same thing.12 Turning now to Spinoza’s analysis of miracles in Chapter 6, we see that the heart of the opposition between revealed and natural knowledge comes to light in the questions con- �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cerning what miracles are and whether they are possible.13 He begins his discussion by stating “the opinions and prejudices of the vulgar [i.e., the many] concerning nature and miracles.” He notes that the vulgar call divine any knowledge that surpasses their understanding, especially works of nature whose causes are unknown. These works of nature, of whose causes they are ignorant, are also called works of God or miracles. They believe that God’s existence, power, and providence are most clearly established if they imagine that God is the direct cause when something happens in nature which is contrary to their opinion of how nature works. This is because they assume that God and nature are two distinct powers, and that if one of these powers is responsible for an event, the power of the other must be excluded or suspended. So that “partly out of devotion and partly out of a desire to oppose those who cultivate natural science, they desire not to know the causes of things, and they think that those who seek to understand these so-called natural events deny God’s existence, or at least God’s providence.”14 Thus, in the vulgar view, a miracle is a providential act intended for human benefit to achieve a result that would be contrary to the ordinary operations and power of nature. Drawing on conclusions earlier established: (a) that the power of nature is the same as the power of God; (b) that the actions of God are eternal, necessary, and immutable; and (c) that God’s will is identical with God’s intellect, Spinoza argues that miracles are not possible within nature. Nor can miracles be understood as supernatural events directly referred to God’s providential intervention in nature’s established processes, for such an intervention by God would contradict the principle that God acts from the necessity of His own nature. Moreover, since nature’s power is nothing but God’s power, and God is understood to be infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, so also is nature’s power. Whatever may be the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 97 limits of nature’s power is the necessary consequence of its own laws. On this account, there is no way to distinguish the natural from the supernatural; there is no conceptual space outside of Nature in which a supernatural Divine Agent, intending to produce a miraculous intervention, could act. Spinoza’s argument can be summarized as follows. If God is a supernatural agent distinct from nature, and has created and established the laws of nature, then a contradiction would arise if God, acting from the necessity of His own nature, could act both according to and contrary to the laws of nature. If God’s fixed and unchangeable order of nature is suspended to accomplish a supernatural purpose, which is what the vulgar call a miracle, then the processes of nature are not fixed and unchangeable, and everything is subject to doubt, including God’s fixed nature and existence. Thus contrary to the vulgar view that miracles most clearly affirm the existence and power of God, Spinoza argues that the incoherence of their view undermines the conclusion they wish to establish; it is rather this vulgar view which leads to atheism.15 If, on the contrary, God is identical with nature, then there are not two distinct and opposed principles; miracles, therefore, could not be supernatural events, the cause of which is outside of and contrary to nature and reason. Further, if one nevertheless believes or supposes that there is a transcendent supernatural God distinct from the system of nature, and that such a God is utterly mysterious, hidden and unknowable, the consequence of this supposition is that human beings would not be able to distinguish the ordinary acts of nature from the so-called supernatural acts which are the cause of miracles. Neither the principle of causality nor any of the categories or aspects of human rationality could be supposed to apply to such an utterly unknowable Being. Spinoza therefore understands and defines a miracle to �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 98 be nothing else but an event whose natural cause cannot be explained by the person who narrates it or who believes the event to be supernatural and surpasses human understanding. The designation of an event as a miracle is merely a way of saying that we are ignorant of its cause, which, though presently unknown, may not be unknowable. Spinoza’s overall philosophical conclusions, the answer to the questions posed in the Preface, are: (a) God’s existence and providence cannot be known through miracles, but these conclusions are far better established and understood from the principle of the fixed and unchangeable order of nature; and (b) the very idea of a miracle “whether contrary to nature or above nature is a mere absurdity.”16 Hume17 In Section X of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “Of Miracles,” Hume is not directly concerned with the metaphysical question, Do miracles exist or are they conceivable within the order of Nature as a whole? Rather, he is concerned with the epistemological question, How can one know or prove that a particular event is a genuine miracle, and not merely the effect of excessive imagination, superstition, or wishful thinking? Necessarily involved in this epistemological question are certain assumptions about the nature of belief and about what it is reasonable for a person to believe. These assumptions involve the meaning and use of such concepts as evidence, proof, fact, probability and truth. In short, what is ultimately at issue in any discussion about the possibility of miracles is the concept of “rational belief.” In pursuing the inquiry into miracles, Hume wastes no time searching for a definition. It is already at hand. A miracle, he says “is a violation of the laws of Nature,” to which he adds that “as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 99 nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. . . . Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of Nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden. . . . But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof which is superior.”18 In a footnote to this paragraph, Hume refines and restates his definition: “a miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.” How does this condition, that the cause of the miracle be attributed to “a particular volition of the Deity,” affect our ability to know that the alleged miracle is genuine? The answer is provided in Part 2 of this Section where he states: Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be in this case, Almighty, it does not upon that account, become a bit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions in the course of nature.19 Thus Hume’s “direct and full proof” against the possibility of miracles is based on the well founded assumption of, and the belief in, the regularity and uniformity of nature and of its laws. This belief, in turn, is grounded in his philosophical analysis of human experience: he believes that we generate ideas and, within limits, acquire knowledge of nature by means of a sustained application of the methods of the experimental sciences. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In this same Section, Hume then proceeds to undermine any and all claims of reported miracles, even those whose pedigree is historically recent and bears the testimony of a large number of highly placed political and ecclesiastical figures. Having previously supposed that the testimony in favor of a miracle “may possibly amount to an entire proof,” he then retracts this supposition: “[I]t is easy to shew that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence.”20 To support this conclusion he offers a range of evidence based on experience and well established principles of human nature. He mentions such phenomena as self-delusion, a desire to deceive others, and the tendency of people to accept as fact what is “utterly absurd and miraculous.” The cause of this, he says, is that “the passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion,” gives rise to pleasurable affects. Hume is especially harsh in condemning those cases in which “the spirit of religion joins itself to the love of wonder.” In these circumstances, “human testimony . . . loses all pretensions to authority.” Citing various examples of “the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvelous,” he asks rhetorically whether it is not such passions which “incline the generality of mankind to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence and assurance, all religious miracles.”21 Although Hume has labored to undermine all rational belief in the possibility of miracles and in the veracity of those who testify to them, what finally is the purpose of his labors? He states that “the method of reasoning here delivered . . . may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason.” He believes, it seems, that it is a deep disservice to the Christian religion to defend it on those principles. To elim- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 101 inate the desire or the need to defend Christianity on rational grounds, he then asserts: “Our most holy religion is founded on Faith; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure.”22 In what is surely one of the most striking passages in the book, Hume ends his essay on miracles by commenting: Upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continuous miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.23 Given Hume’s disbelief in all claims of reported miracles, we may wonder: How can this concluding statement be construed to serve the interests of the Christian religion, or to be a defense of the Christian faith? Part II: C. S. Lewis and Francis Collins C. S. Lewis The arguments of both Spinoza and Hume against the possibility of miracles assumed a certain perspective regarding the knowledge of nature’s processes and the existence of its laws. This perspective has often been called naturalism. This means that explanations of all phenomena must be sought within the scope of natural knowledge as grounded in reason and experience, without recourse or appeal to explanations in terms of supernatural causes or agents. The knowledge thus obtained by adhering to the principles and methods of the sciences yields conclusions, in the form of provisional laws of nature, which are open to being tested, confirmed or disconfirmed, and corrected. The alternative to this naturalistic perspective can be �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW called supernaturalism. These are exactly the pair of terms used by C. S. Lewis in his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study.24 Lewis’s aims are to confront the reader with the choice between naturalism and supernaturalism, to show the limitations of the former and the superiority of the latter, and to lead the reader to adopt the particular form of supernaturalism supplied by Christianity. Regarding naturalism, he concedes that “if Naturalism is true, then we do know in advance that miracles are impossible: nothing can come into Nature from the outside because there is nothing outside to come in, Nature being everything.”25 Therefore, in order to provide an affirmative answer to the question of whether miracles can occur—that is, in order to show that miracles are indeed possible—Lewis says that he must first settle what he calls “the philosophical question.”26 Since the philosophical question at issue here is whether miracles can occur, and since miracles are not possible if naturalism is true, he must either show that naturalism is not true or he must argue that the opposite perspective— supernaturalism—is true. However, according to Lewis, an argument attempting to show the possibility of miracles cannot be based on experience or history or the examination of biblical texts. This is so because the evidence obtained from each of these sources “depends on the philosophical views which we have been holding before we even began to look at the evidence. The philosophical question must therefore come first.”27 Lewis’s general argument seems to be directed, initially at least, against those who reject the possibility of miracles because “we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.”28 Does Lewis himself think he can settle this “philosophical question” without any begging of the question? To avoid this �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 103 result, he would have to confront and overcome the position of those who accept the principles of naturalism as broadly interpreted and applied. In particular he would have to show that it is impossible for naturalism to fulfill its claim to provide the best and fullest explanation of the whole range of phenomena constituting human experience. Let us see whether he succeeds in this undertaking. Although different chapters of this book present various aspects of his position, his overall argument in behalf of the truth of supernaturalism seems to depend on at least the following premises or assumptions: 1. Nature is not the whole of reality. Rather it is merely a partial reality embedded within a higher supernatural reality which constitutes a total reality. Lewis agrees that “all reality must be interrelated and consistent.”29 To find the grounds of this interconnection between the partial and the total reality, one must go back to their common origin, the Creator God. With this supernatural assumption of a Creator God, plus the premise that this God might wish to intervene in or interrupt the order of Nature, miracles can occur.30 2. The system of Nature can only be partial. What it essentially lacks is the spiritual element contained in the Christian and Jewish doctrines which “have always been statements about spiritual reality.”31 What these doctrines mean is that “in addition to the physical or psychophysical universe known to the sciences, there exists an uncreated and unconditional reality which causes the universe to be, [and] this reality has a positive structure or constitution.”32 To distinguish the Christian from the Jewish understanding of the meaning of spiritual reality, he adds that this reality is described “though doubtless not completely, . . . in the �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW doctrine of the Trinity; and that this reality, at a definite point in time, entered the universe we know by becoming one of its own creatures.”33 3. In order to tell the story of Christianity, supernaturalism is necessary because it is the realm in which miracles find their being. In the Christian religion, “the Miracles, or at least some Miracles, are more closely bound up with the fabric of belief than in any other.”34 Further, miracles, after all, are “precisely those chapters in the great story [of Christianity] on which the plot turns. Death and resurrection are what the story is about.”35 4. To tell the Christian story, Lewis must also tell the story of mankind. But from what perspective should this story be told? To tell the story of Man is to give an account of Man’s nature. Nature and human nature are complex things, and as Lewis himself points out, “the kind of analysis which you make of any complex thing depends on the purpose you have in view.”36 Since his purpose is to give an affirmative answer to the question whether miracles are possible, the story of mankind must be told from the supernatural perspective. When we are considering Man as evidence for the fact that this spatio-temporal Nature is not the only thing in existence, the important distinction is between that part of Man which belongs to this spatio-temporal Nature and that which does not. . . . These two parts of a man may rightly be called natural and supernatural. . . . [T]his “Super-Natural” part is itself a created being—a thing called into existence by the Absolute Being and given by Him a certain character or “nature.”37 Thus, in order to argue for the truth of his Christian supernaturalism, Lewis assumes the very perspective according to which the concept of Nature is arbitrarily narrowed and �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 105 excluded from any connection to the moral or rational development of human beings. He thereby renders the naturalist perspective incapable of explaining the most basic features of human nature. Indeed, in the chapter entitled “Nature and Supernature,” he separates Reason from man’s nature and asserts that “rational thought is not part of the system of Nature.”38 He then adds that “human minds are not the only supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God. Each is an offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature.”39 In short, from the supernaturalist perspective, the existence of each human being having the capacity to reason is itself a miracle. Lewis himself has emphatically asserted the elementary logical point that “a proof which sets out by assuming the thing you have to prove is rubbish.”40 Does he think he has somehow avoided an enormous begging of the question? Francis Collins One strongly affected reader of C. S. Lewis is Francis Collins, who is currently the Director of the National Institutes of Health and previously the head of the Human Genome Project. In his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,41 Collins’s primary aim is to provide “the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and spiritual world views.”42 That these world views are often said to be in opposition is expressed by such phrases as “the ‘battle’ between science and religion”43 and “the conflicts between science and faith.”44 Note that, in presenting their opposition in these terms, Collins consistently and freely substitutes the words “religion” and “faith” for the word “spiritual,” thus treating these three terms as equivalent when set in opposition to “science.” �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In the introduction to his book, Collins poses the question whether “the scientific and spiritual world views are antithetical.” His own answer to this question is: No. Not for me. Quite the contrary. For me, the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.45 From this answer we see that at least in his own heart and mind the dichotomy of “science” on one side, and “religion,” “faith” and “the spiritual world” on the other is only apparent. But when he further says: “Science’s domain is to explore nature, God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a world not possible to explore with the tools and language of science,”46 the antithesis appears to harden. We now have on one side of the dichotomy Science and Nature, and on the other side Religion, Faith, Spirit, and God. Since in his own terms each side occupies a separate and distinct “domain,” it is not immediately evident how these two sides can come together. On the religious or spiritual side, the book is the personal story of Collins’s journey from atheism to wholehearted acceptance of the fundamental tenets of the Christian religion, with its mysteries and its miracles, all centering on the person of Jesus Christ: his Virgin Birth, his Divinity, his Death and Resurrection. On the side of science and nature, he discusses with elegance and insight, and with similarly wholehearted acceptance, the scientific view of the understanding of the natural world. He writes: Science is the only legitimate way to investigate the natural world. Whether probing the structure of the atom, the nature of the cosmos, or the DNA sequence of the human genome, the scientific method is the only reliable way to seek out the truth of natural events. Yes, experiments can fail spectacularly, interpretations of experiments can be misguided, and science can make mistakes. But the nature �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 107 of science is self-correcting. No major fallacy can long persist in the face of a progressive increase in knowledge.47 So the question continues: does Collins see and treat the two world views as essentially separate, distinct and antithetical, or is their opposition only apparent and capable of being harmonized? Although Collins undoubtedly has a great love of science and has attained a high level of achievement and satisfaction through the understanding of natural phenomena, that way of pursuing the truth is insufficient. For him “science is not the only way of knowing. The spiritual world view provides another way of finding truth.”48 But Collins also thinks that “each person must carry out his or her own search for spiritual truth.”49 What he desires for himself is a “way of seeking fellowship with God,” of being able “to communicate with Him.”50 What Collins also desires are answers to the questions that cannot be answered by science, the “eternal questions of human existence.” These are questions such as: Why did the universe come into being? and What is the meaning of human existence?51 But since these kinds of questions cannot be answered by science, one must go beyond science, go beyond the natural world and into the realm of supernaturalism and the transcendence of a creator God. Or as Collins puts it: As seekers, we may well discover from science many interesting answers to the question “How does life work?” What we cannot discover through science alone are the answers to the questions “Why is there life anyway?” and “Why am I here?”52 Collins finally finds the answer to such questions, including the question of the possibility of miracles, in the language of the Christian Bible, in the texts of the four gospels, the central figure of which is Jesus, the Christ. These texts revealed to him “the actual account of His life, . . . the eyewit- �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ness nature of the narratives, and the enormity of Christ’s claims and their consequences.”53 He writes: [I]f Christ really was the Son of God, as He explicitly claimed, then surely . . . He could suspend the laws of nature if He needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.54 In attempting to understand God’s purpose, Collins wrestled with impenetrable theological conundrums, and again found answers in the writings of C.S. Lewis. Through these writings, Collins was persuaded of spiritual truths the logic of which had previously seemed “like utter nonsense.”55 But now that he has become “a believer in God,”56 this logic seems to him compelling. Although Collins’s Language of God is wonderfully clear in explaining much of the reasoning and evidence supporting the scientific conclusions of cosmology and biology (as in Chapter 3, “The Origins of the Universe,” Chapter 4, “Life on Earth: Of Microbes and Man,” and Chapter 5, “Deciphering God’s Instruction Book: The Lessons of the Human Genome”), I find his language about “truth” to be at the least fuzzy and puzzling. On the one hand Collins speaks of faith as a “search for absolute truth,”57 and says that “each person must carry out his or her own search for spiritual truth.”58 Yet he praises the truth-gathering methods of science as “the only reliable way to seek out the truth of natural events” and asserts that “the nature of science is self-correcting.”59 So at least some claims regarding scientific truth, and the beliefs based on those claims, are thereby discovered to have been false. But if each person’s search for spiritual truth is a search for what most satisfies his or her longing for fellowship with the Divine, by what shared criteria can these private beliefs and spiritual truths be judged to be either true or false? Is the search for spiritual truth self-correcting in the same way and in the same sense as the search for scientific truth? �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 109 Perhaps what is called spiritual truth is a genuinely private matter, involving each person’s sense of the divine and of what constitutes an adequate relationship to the divine. No doubt such private thoughts and feelings are full of meaning which can be shared with other like-minded persons. It is evident, however, that not everyone needs a belief in miracles to achieve their sense of fellowship with the Divine. We have already noted the example of Spinoza, and we would certainly have to include other philosophers or scientists or seekers after truth who find their spiritual satisfaction within the horizons of a naturalistic world view without having to posit another level of reality called “supernatural.” Collins says that science and faith “fortify each other like two unshakable pillars, holding up a building called Truth.”60 But there are good reasons to think that (1) the logical ground on which each of these pillars stands is essentially different, and (2) the paths toward scientific truth and spiritual truth, as well as the human capacities required to pursue these, are not the same. Should we not conclude, therefore, that there is not one but two very different buildings called Truth, the foundations of which are laid in two separate realms in the landscape of the human mind? If, as Collins himself describes, there are two distinct world views, the scientific and the religious, and if each relies on its own conception and criteria regarding the truth, how is it possible, as he urges, to “seek to reclaim the solid ground of an intellectually and spiritually satisfying synthesis of all great truths?”61 (Emphasis in the original.) Recalling for a moment the theological-political theme, perhaps Collins’s desire for harmony can be understood in light of his role as a preeminent scientist who heads a national government agency. In this role one can understand that his goal is to bridge the deep divisions in this country concerning major biomedical issues such as stem cell research, cloning, and the search for genetic cures to a wide spectrum of dis- �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 110 eases, issues which often are polarized along both religious and political lines. It is this goal which is reflected in his “Final Word”: It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science and spirit. The war was never really necessary. Like so many earthly wars, this one has been initiated and intensified by extremists on both sides, sounding alarms that predict imminent ruin unless the other side is vanquished. Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible.62 In response to Collins’s “final word” on this problem, let us pose instead two “final questions.” First, how is it possible to harmonize the truth claims of religious believers and the truth claims of the scientific community without equivocating on the meaning of the term “truth”? And second, if a truth claim, in general, is understood to require a correspondence between what is said or thought and some assumed objective reality—call this the requirement of corresponding to reality—then how is it possible to establish with certitude that this requirement has been met? NOTES 1. This question is a narrowly formulated aspect of the larger perennial question of the relation of reason to faith. Three relatively recent books which argue for the compatibility of this relationship are: C.F. Delaney, ed., Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979); Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame, Indiana: University Notre Dame Press, 1983); and Joshua L Golding, Rationality and Religious Theism (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2003). 2. Preface, Paragraph 1, Sentence 1. In the following notes, all references to the Theological-Political Treatise (referred to as TTP from its Latin title Tractatus Theologico-Politicus) will be to Spinoza’s Theologico- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 111 Political Treatise, trans. Martin Yaffe (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Philosophical Library, 2004). Citations to the text will be in accordance with Yaffe’s system of citations explained on p. viii of that edition. For example, in a subsequent footnote, TTP, 1.1.1-2 refers to Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, Sentences 1 and 2. “P” preceding Arabic numerals refers to the Preface. 3. Partial summary of Spinoza, TTP, P.1.1 to P.5.l. 4. Spinoza, TTP, P.5.6. 5. Spinoza, TTP, 1.1.1-2. 6. Spinoza, TTP, 1.2.1-2. 7. The following statements numbered 1-6 summarize Spinoza’s sentences from TTP, 1.2.3 to 1.4.1. Statement number 7 quotes from TTP, 1.22.6. 8. In Chapter 2, Spinoza further distinguishes the certainty obtained through the natural light versus the certainty obtained through the prophetic light, finding the difference to be based on the prophets’ more vivid power of imagining. He argues that “since simple imagination does not of its own nature involve certainty, as every clear and distinct idea does . . . it follows that by itself prophecy cannot involve certainty.” (TTP, 2.3.1). What is required to obtain the certainty of clear and distinct ideas upon which natural knowledge is based is nothing other than the power of reasoning itself. 9. Earlier in the Ethics (Part I, Proposition 29) Spinoza had introduced the distinction between the active and passive expressions of Nature’s allcomprehensive dynamic system: natura naturans and natura naturata, translated as Nature naturing and Nature natured. 10. As we will see below, these are the terms of the dichotomy proposed by C. S. Lewis. 11. Conatus, translated as “striving” or “endeavor,” is Spinoza’s general term, which includes as aspects “will,” “appetite,” and “desire.” See, Ethics, Part III, Proposition 9, Scholium. 12. Spinoza, TTP, 3.3.1- 3. 13. Spinoza says that his treatment of this subject is explicitly philosophical; that is, his conclusions about miracles are drawn solely from the principles of nature and reason. This procedure contrasts with earlier chapters that treat of prophecy and prophets, which are theological matters, where he drew his conclusions from the text of Scripture alone. 14. Spinoza, TTP, 6.1.90-91. �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 15. Ibid., 6.1.34. 16. Ibid., 6.1.31, 35. 17. References will be to sections, parts and page numbers in David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Anthony Flew (Chicago: Open Court, 1988). It is noteworthy that both Spinoza and Hume—proponents of the philosophic point of view called Naturalism— also share a common ground of political principle. Each quotes and adopts the political ideal stated by Tacitus: “to be able to think what we please and say what we think” (Histories, I.1). For Spinoza, see TTP, P 5.18, and the content and title of Chapter 20: “It is shown that in a Free Republic each is permitted both to think what he wants and to say what he thinks.” For Hume, see A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Maral Subjects, in which the quotation from Tacitus serves as the epigraph both for Book I, “Of the Understanding,” and for Book II, “Of the Passions.” 18. Hume, Enquiry, X.l, p.148. 19. Ibid., X.2, p.164. 20. Ibid., X.2, p.150. 21. Ibid., X.2, pp. 151-52. 22. Ibid., X.2, p. 165. 23. Ibid., X.2, p. 166. 24. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). Lewis is also the author of many popular works of fiction such as The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), and The Chronicles of Narnia (seven volumes between 1950 and 1956). The greatest influence on Lewis’s fiction seems to have been the Scottish author George MacDonald, a preacher and Christian apologist, who was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, and fairy tales. When Lewis was sixteen, he chanced upon MacDonald’s most famous novel Phantastes and was enchanted by his prodigious imagination. The book was Lewis’s favorite, and he returned to it often throughout his life. See Michael White, C. S. Lewis: A Life (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2004), 103-104. 25. Lewis, Miracles, 14-15. 26. Ibid., 2. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 4. 29. Ibid., 96. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | COHEN 113 30. Ibid., 96-98. 31. Ibid., 124. 32. Ibid., 125. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 108. 35. Ibid., 157. 36. Ibid., 275. 37. Ibid., 276. 38. Ibid., 41. 39. Ibid., 43. 40. Ibid., 18. 41. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006). Francis Collins is connected to St. John's College by virtue of being the godson of Robert Bart, a long time tutor both in Annapolis and Santa Fe and also Dean of the College in Santa Fe. Collins was one of the speakers at the memorial service for Robert Bart held in McDowell Hall in Annapolis, February 3, 2001. In a personal communication, Collins wrote: “As I recall, I spoke about the remarkable role he played in my own education. He was my godfather, and no godfather ever took that role more seriously—he gave me many precious gifts as I was growing up, all of which had artistic, religious, or intellectual significance and led to deep conversations. . . . I also remember him assisting me with a particularly thorny calculus problem, and marveling that this sophisticated professor of humanities was also awfully good at integrating by parts. Such was the St. John’s way!" 42. Collins, The Language of God, 6. 43. Ibid., 4. See also 272: “The current battles between the scientific and spiritual worldviews need to be resolved.” 44. Ibid., 84. 45. Ibid., 3. 46. Ibid., 6. 47. Ibid., 228. 48. Ibid., 229. 49. Ibid., 225. 50. Ibid., 220. 51. Ibid., 6. 52. Ibid., 88. �114 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 53. Ibid., 221. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 223. 56. Ibid., 118. 57. Ibid., 227. See also 271: “Given the uncertain ethical grounding of the postmodernist era, which discounts the existence of absolute truth, ethics grounded on specific principles of faith can provide a certain foundational strength that may otherwise be lacking.” 58. Ibid., 221. 59. Ibid., 228. 60. Ibid., 210. 61. Ibid., 234. 62. Ibid., 233. For readers wanting to pursue a comprehensive critique of Collins’s book, see George Cunningham, Decoding the Language of God: Can a Scientist Really be a Believer? A Geneticist Responds to Francis Collins (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010). For readers wanting to pursue further the topic of Truth, see the recent collections of essays in Simon Blackburn and Keith Simmonds, eds. Truth, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Kurt Pritzl, ed., Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010). �ESSAYS & LECTURES 115 The Question of Questions Michael W. Grenke What is involved in really asking a question? What is the most important question a human being can ask? Tonight I want to try to consider, along with you, these two questions in the challenging and connected manner in which Martin Heidegger presents them, especially in his Introduction to Metaphysics. If we try to rise to Heidegger’s challenge of really asking these questions, then we face serious obstacles in our ordinary modes of living, thinking, and talking to one another. Heidegger characterizes us “modern” human beings as people “who scarcely respond, and then for the most part emptily, to the simplicity of the essential” (IM, 98).* But is not the essential that which is sought in all real questioning? And can a minimal and mostly empty response be what is appropriate to the object of real questioning? Later in his argument, when considering the standards of discourse exemplified in contemporary books and newspapers, Heidegger laments “the paralysis of all passion for questioning that has long been with us. The consequence of this paralysis is that all standards and perspectives have been confused and that most men have ceased to know where and between what the crucial decisions must be made” (IM, 143). Lest we too readily exempt ourselves and our community *Key to citations: IM = Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). BT = Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). Page numbers for Being and Time are keyed to the seventh German edition, noted marginally in the English translation. In some instances translations have been altered slightly for the sake of accuracy. Michael Grenke is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was originally delivered on 7 November 2008. �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW from these criticisms as though they are leveled only at “modern” men, not those who study great books, and only at the discourse found in books and periodicals that we do not allow ourselves to read here, we should consider what Heidegger calls “idle talk” in Being and Time. “Idle talk” is discourse that seeks to tone down the stakes of conversation and to keep the responses of the interlocutors within well-prescribed and familiar bounds. Instead of containing and conveying a “primary relationship-of-Being towards the being talked about” (BT, 168)—a relationship of the kind that might deeply excite or disturb the speaker and the listener, a relationship that might move a human being as much as the thing in question can move a human being—idle talk just passes words around in the fashion of gossip. The worst part is that it pretends to be real discourse, and in this pretending it hinders attempts at real discourse. Surrounded by such discourse that says very little while pretending to say all there is to say, the average understanding “will never be able to decide what has been drawn from primordial sources with a struggle and how much is just gossip” (BT, 169). Heidegger finds this idle talk that belongs to everyday average human life to be almost everywhere and to dominate almost everything about human discourse, both spoken and written. We should not pat ourselves too readily or casually on the back and blindly assume that this idle discourse goes on only outside our community or only on the weekends and never in our classrooms. Idle talk “discourages any new questioning and any confrontation” (BT, 169). But might not all real questioning be, in a way, new and confrontational? In order to try to get free from the realm of idle talk and really to ask questions, to question questions—die Fragen fragen, as the Germans say—we must try to situate ourselves in a realm of thinking and discourse that is not saturated with the sense, the assurance, that whatever is to come next will be comfortably like that which has already come before. Per- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 117 haps we can start to get a feeling for this in a slight observation of a feature of the text of the Introduction to Metaphysics that might tend to frustrate us with Heidegger, or even make us distrust him. The book asks a question in its very first paragraph, and it makes explicit the difficulty of really asking that question. A large portion of the discussion on the pages that follow is devoted to a discussion of that question and its asking. Nine pages in, Heidegger proclaims, “We have not even begun to ask the question itself” (IM, 9). If the reader’s patience has not worn thin after nine pages, it may be getting frayed at twenty-nine pages in, where Heidegger says, “We still know far too little about the process of questioning, and what we do know is far too crude” (IM, 29). In a way, the saga of really asking a question goes on throughout the entire book, all the way to the very end, where Heidegger suggests that real questioning may be a matter that takes a whole lifetime. I am not calling attention to these matters to complain about the way Heidegger seems to avoid or defer satisfaction of the desires he has aroused in his readers. The more generous and fruitful way to look at this, regardless of its accuracy, is to think that Heidegger is really making a high demand upon himself and upon his intended readers. He is not settling back into the easy and comforting conviction that he already knows how really to ask questions and that he already is asking real questions. What would it take for us to follow Heidegger’s example? In thinking about Heidegger’s challenge, I have been trying to ask myself whether I have ever been involved in real questioning myself, and I have been continually struck by how hard it is to make that a real question. Can you ask yourself in a real way, in way that does not presuppose an answer, in a way that does not let you shrug off, turn away from, or deny the question, whether in our classes—and especially in those most avowedly devoted to questions, our seminars—whether �118 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW any real questioning has been going on? I do not ask this question to satisfy any savage and lingering resentment you might have over a seminar gone wrong; rather I mean it to stir concern in you about your own questioning. The Question of Questions Now that you are stirred up, let us turn to a more detailed look at what Heidegger has to say about questions. A brief glimpse at Being and Time might help lay some groundwork. In the second section of the book, Heidegger begins the task of trying to “formulate”—or rather reformulate—the question of Being, the question that is the leading question of the whole work, and the question that Heidegger presents as the question that is first in rank. The reformulation of the question is undertaken explicitly to “revive” the question, to make it a matter of living concern again. In order to reformulate this question, Heidegger tries to “explain briefly what belongs to any question whatsoever” (BT, 5). The following scheme of three elements emerges: “Any question, as a question about something, has that which is asked about. But every question about something is somehow a questioning of something. So in addition to what is asked about, a question has that which is interrogated. . . . Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by the asking; this is what is really intended: with this the question reaches its goal” (BT, 5). In fitting his leading question into the scheme that belongs to any questioning, Heidegger announces that Being is what is asked about, even though Being is not a being, which is to say Being is not a thing like other things. He then announces that the meaning of Being is what is to be found out by the asking. And then he turns to the middle element of his scheme—“that which is interrogated.” Since Being is the Being of beings, the interrogation is to be directed at beings themselves. Perhaps because many beings would seem to be �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 119 rather unresponsive to interrogation, Heidegger notes, “When we come to what is to be interrogated, the question of Being requires that the right way of access to beings shall have been obtained and secured in advance” (BT, 6). Method matters, even if the motto of Heidegger’s phenomenal approach is “To the beings themselves!” “Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make one being—the questioning one—transparent in its own Being. The very asking of this question is one being’s mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about—namely, Being. This being which each of us himself is and which includes questioning as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term ‘Dasein’” (BT, 7). Dasein, “Being there,” is Heidegger’s technical term for the kind of being that is human being. Because human beings have a special relationship to Being, because they are beings that ask the question of Being, the rest of Heidegger’s Being and Time occupies itself with an analysis of the structure of human being. In the Author’s Preface to the seventh edition, Heidegger admits to the unfinished character of Being and Time. He admits that a promised second “half” of the book has not been delivered, and he says that the first half, which is the book as he has left it to us, would have to be newly presented if the question were to be carried further. Heidegger then suggests that in order to shed some light on this the reader should look at his Introduction to Metaphysics, published in the same year as the seventh edition of Being and Time. The beginning of Introduction to Metaphysics focuses attention on the fundamental question of metaphysics and on the difficulty of asking it. Individuals and peoples ask a good many questions in the course of their historical passage through time. They examine, explore, and test a good many things before they run into the question “Why are there beings rather than �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW nothing?” Many men never encounter this question, if by encounter we mean not merely to hear and read about it as an interrogative formulation but to ask the question, that it, to bring it about, to raise it, to feel oneself in the state of being compelled to this question (IM, 1). Although this is a somewhat different question than the leading question of Being and Time (IM,18-19), both are put forth as the fundamental question and as the question that is first in rank. Also because Heidegger asserts that the second clause of the question, “rather than nothing,” is not superfluous, and because it reveals that the scope of the question aims at the ground of beings (IM, 24), it is very close to being the question of being. Does what Heidegger says here at the beginning of Introduction to Metaphysics serve, then, to help us understand what he means in Being and Time when he calls human being the being that asks the question of Being? Also, what does this initial statement tell us about really asking this (or any) question? What does it mean to “encounter” a question if it does not mean to hear it or to read it? Heidegger’s gloss here on asking the question is that it involves bringing a question about, placing or “putting” the question, and finding oneself in the state of feeling the necessity for the question. This suggests that the asking of a question is very different from becoming aware of a question or from “finding” a question. The relationship of the questioner to the question is more intimate and more essential than the relationship of an uninterested, passive observer to an observed object. With respect to the fundamental question, Heidegger goes so far as to say “if this question is asked and if the act of questioning is really carried out, the content and the object of the question react inevitably on the act of questioning” (IM, 5). What is this reacting? Is it similar to what Heidegger means when he says in Being and Time that the being that asks the question of Being “gets its essential character from what is inquired about—namely Being”? Heideg- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 121 ger extends this thought here in Introduction to Metaphysics in the context of its fundamental question—“this question ‘why,’ this question as to the being as such in its entirety, goes beyond mere playing with words, provided we possess sufficient intellectual energy to make the question actually recoil into its ‘why,’ for it will not do so of its own accord” (IM, 5). Really asking this question means making the question recoil into its why. This questioning of the question searches for the grounds of the questioning itself. It asks “Why the why?” And in so doing, it turns its attention toward the being that questions. This “privileged question ‘why’ has its ground in a leap through which man thrusts away all the previous security, whether real or imagined, of his life. The question is asked only in this leap; it is the leap; without it there is no asking” (IM, 6). If this leap, without which there is no asking, involves thrusting away all the previous security of life, it may be objectively impossible to determine when such a leap has been made. “Let us be clear about this from the start: it can never be objectively determined whether anyone, whether we, really ask this question, that is, whether we make the leap, or never get beyond a verbal formula” (IM, 6). This might seem to mean we can never know whether a question has really been asked. But the sentence that follows this statement seems to point to history as the obstacle to our objective determination. “In a historical setting that does not recognize questioning as a fundamental human force, the question immediately loses its rank” (IM, 6). The paragraph that immediately follows would seem to be an example of such a historical setting. In that paragraph, Heidegger considers those who hold the Bible to be divine revelation and truth. For those believers, there would seem to be a clear and immediate answer to the question “Why are there beings rather than nothing?” They have this answer before the question is even asked. Heidegger says that such be- �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW lievers cannot really ask the question. “One who holds to such faith can in a way participate in the asking of our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequences of such a step. He will only be able to act ‘as if’” (IM, 7). Thus Heidegger seems to point to a situation in which he feels confident that the question is not really being asked. This is because he thinks he can recognize a “historical setting” where questioning is not recognized “as a fundamental human force”; rather, “[f]rom the standpoint of faith our question is ‘foolishness’” (IM, 7). Heidegger goes on to identify philosophy with this foolishness. He then says “Really to ask the question signifies a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy” (IM, 8). Is Heidegger going so far as to suggest that where there is no philosophy there is no real questioning? Would that in turn lead so far as to suggest that where there is faith there is no real questioning of anything? Does the need for philosophy constitute some part of the obstacle to the objective determination of whether a leap into real questioning has been made? For the historical is not the objective, the historical is subject to “its own law,” not the universal law. And Heidegger conceives of philosophy as historical, so that “there is no way of determining once and for all what the task of philosophy is” (IM, 8). What I have presented so far has followed, with some principle of selection, what Heidegger has to say about really asking questions in the beginning pages of Introduction to Metaphysics, up to page nine. You will recall that on page nine Heidegger announces that, “We have not even begun to ask the question itself.” What still stands in the way of our really asking a question (or the question)? What needs to be seen, done, or suffered? The question of questions dies down in the text for about �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 123 ten pages. Then it is resumed explicitly with a series of statements that might seem unnecessary. First Heidegger tells us that “questions and particularly fundamental questions do not just occur like stones and water. Questions are not found ready-made like shoes and clothes and books. Questions are, and are only as they are actually asked” (IM, 19). Heidegger seems to fear that we might not yet be thinking properly about questions. He feels the need to tell us questions are, that is they have some kind of being. And he feels the need to point out that questions do not have the kind of being that we might tend to ascribe either to natural beings (stones, water) or to artificial beings (shoes, clothes, books). This difference is amplified when Heidegger claims, “A leading into the asking of the fundamental questions is consequently not a going to something that lies and stands somewhere; no, this leading must first awaken and create the questioning” (IM, 19). What kind of being, then, should we think that questions have? Heidegger seems to think we might be tempted to think that questions have the kind of being belonging to a particular kind of sentence—the kind that ends with a question mark. So next he tells the reader, “To state the interrogative sentence, even in a tone of questioning, is not yet to question. To repeat the interrogative sentence several times in succession does not necessarily breathe life into the questioning” (IM, 20). Is the task, then, to breathe life into our interrogative statements? What can that mean? Heidegger makes it clear that this is not a rhetorical move that can be accomplished through repetition or through variation in tone. Heidegger next considers the experience of listening to a question. He points to a way in which one could mistake a question to be a mere assertion about the questioning state of the speaker. But if that is how you hear my question, then “you do not join me in questioning, nor do you question yourself. No sign of a questioning attitude or state of mind is awakened.” This consideration of what is involved in hearing �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a question as a question seems to reveal for Heidegger the questioning state of mind. “Such a state of mind consists in willing to know. Willing—that is no mere wishing or striving. Those who wish to know also seem to question, but they do not go beyond the stating of questions; they stop precisely where the question begins. To question is to will to know. He who wills, he who puts his whole existence into a will, is resolved. Resolve does not shift about; it does not shirk, but acts from out of the moment and never stops” (IM, 20-21). So a question is not a sentence uttered in the right tone, but a sentence uttered with the right (rather extreme) attitude or state of mind? It turns out that Heidegger also cuts off this notion that a question is a certain kind of sentence uttered with a certain kind of attitude. “So much the less will the interrogative sentence, even if it is uttered in an authentically questioning tone and even if the listener joins in the questioning, exhaustively reproduce the question. The questioning, which is still enclosed, wrapped up in words, remains to be unwrapped. The questioning attitude must clarify and secure itself in the process, it must be consolidated by training” (IM, 22). In the case just described, the questioning done by the speaker and shared in by the listener is not to be found wholly in the sentence uttered or in the tone in which it is uttered. The questioning would seem separable from the words; perhaps the questioning could be carried out with other words, or even without words. The questioning attitude seems not to be a thing of the moment, nor something finished and static. This attitude needs clarifying, securing, and consolidating. By what process or training might a questioning attitude be properly developed? That attitude is characterized by a resolved will to know. What that will aims to know is the truth. Under Heidegger’s analysis of the meaning of the word truth, truth is “unconcealment.” This is to be distinguished from thinking of truth as correspondence. And late in Introduction �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 125 to Metaphysics, Heidegger asserts, “Unconcealment occurs only when it is achieved by work” (IM, 191). Heidegger gives many examples of intellectual work on the intervening pages—especially in his laborious excursions into the primordial etymologies of important terms in Western thought— and one might profitably attempt to consider much of what he does in Introduction to Metaphysics as an attempt to begin training a questioning attitude. The Question of Questions Let us turn now to look at Heidegger’s claims as to which question is the most important question a human being can ask. “Important” is my term. Sometimes Heidegger says “fundamental,” or “first,” or “first in rank,” or “worthiest.” We can try to discipline our conception of the most important question by keeping in mind our observations regarding really asking a question—that questioning extends beyond specific verbal formulae and that a questioning attitude requires work and training,. The most important question is not an object sitting somewhere. I cannot sell you a map with which you can locate it in order to wonder at it. The most important question is not a sentence written on a page in some rare book, available to be read by anyone who can afford to purchase the book. I give you the most important question now as Heidegger expresses it as a sentence. But to hear it properly, we must not get too caught up in its wrappings. “The question ‘Why are there beings rather than nothing?’ is first in rank for us first because it is the most farreaching, second because it is the deepest, and finally because it is the most fundamental of all questions” (IM, 2). Heidegger explains that this question is the most far reaching, the widest, because it “confines itself to no particular being” and thus “takes in everything” (IM, 2). The question is the deepest because it “aims at the ground of what is insofar as it is” (IM, 3). It “penetrates to the ‘underlying’ realms and indeed to the �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW very last of them, to the limit” (IM, 3). This question is the most fundamental question because “it breaks open the ground for all authentic questions and thus is at the origin of all of them” (IM, 6). From the standpoint of really asking questions, the asking of this question stands out as special. “For through this questioning the being as a whole is for the first time opened up as such with a view to its possible ground, and in the act of questioning it is kept open” (IM, 4). This statement about the fundamentality of this question—that it opens up a ground of possibility and keeps that possibility open—might also be taken as a statement about what it means really to ask this question. Does really asking a question always involve asking fundamental questions? This might explain Heidegger’s big claim that “Our question is the question of all authentic questions, i.e., of all self-questioning questions, and whether consciously or not it is necessarily implicit in every question. No questioning and accordingly no single scientific ‘problem’ can be fully intelligible if it does not include, i.e., ask, the question of all questions” (IM, 6). Pretty quickly, however, Heidegger finds an obstacle to his pursuit of this question of questions and to his claims about its importance. Heidegger finds he must confront a long intellectual tradition that has found Being “unfindable, almost like nothing” (IM, 35). Heidegger cites Nietzsche’s claim that the highest concepts, “like Being,” are the “last cloudy smoke of evaporating reality” (IM, 35). as both the final expression and the culmination of this tradition, which holds being to be an error, a mere word, empty of meaning. Heidegger feels the need to confront Nietzsche, and through him the tradition, because if Nietzsche is right, “the only possible consequence would be to abandon the question” (IM, 35). In order to respond to Nietzsche’s claim, Heidegger sets out to show that the word being does have meaning. Heidegger gives a series of examples of ways we mean being when �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 127 we use the word “is.” We say “God is.” “The earth is.” “The lecture is in the auditorium.” This man is from Swabia.” “The cup is of silver.” “The peasant is to the fields.” “The book is mine.” “He is of death.” “Red is the port side.” “There is famine in Russia.” “The enemy is in retreat.” “The plant louse is in the vineyard.” “The dog is in the garden.” “Over all the summits, there is rest” (IM, 89). Heidegger observes that in each of these cases the word “is” is meant differently. “God is”; i.e., he is really present. “The earth is”; i.e., we experience and believe it to be permanently there. “The lecture is in the auditorium”; i.e., it takes place. “The man is from Swabia”; i.e., he comes from there. “The cup is of silver”; i.e., it is made of . . . . “The peasant is to the fields”; he has gone to the fields and is staying there. “The book is mine”; i.e., it belongs to me. “He is of death”; i.e., he succumbed to death. “Red is the port side”; i.e., it stands for port. “The dog is in the garden”; i.e., he is running around in the garden. “Over all the summits, there is rest”; that is to say??? (IM, 90). (There is no account given of the famine, the retreat, or the infestation.) Heidegger gets a bit confused by the last example and tries out a number of meanings, without being satisfied by any of his own suggestions. This occurs perhaps, Heidegger suggests, because the last example is a bit of poetry written by Goethe in pencil on a window frame. Be that as it may, what Heidegger claims to have shown with these examples is that “the ‘is’ in our discourse manifests a rich diversity of meanings” (IM, 91). This rich diversity is possible because the word “being” is empty in the sense of being indeterminate enough to encompass all the various meanings Heidegger presents in all his examples. But the word “being” is not empty in the sense that what is meant in each particular example is quite determinate and distinct (except perhaps for the case of the quotation from Goethe). So Heidegger claims �128 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW this evidence proves that being is not an empty word. “If being thus represents what is most unique and determinate, the word “being” cannot be empty . . . . There is no such thing as an empty word; at most a word is worn out, though still filled with meaning” (IM, 79). In replying to Nietzsche, Heidegger has been moved to consider the kind of understanding of being to which human beings already and always lay claim whenever they use the word “is,” or any of its other inflectional forms. Heidegger finds in this usage a word that is at once unique and determinate and indeterminate. Might this revelation about the ways in which the word “being” is meant not suggest that being is a realm uniquely suited to a questioning unwrapped from words and a questioning attitude in need of development? Questioning is the authentic and proper and only way of appreciating that which, by its supreme rank, holds our existence in its power. Hence no question is more worthy of being asked than the question of our understanding of being, unless it be the question of being itself. The more authentic our questioning, the more immediately and steadfastly we dwell on the most questionable of all questions—namely, the circumstance that we understand being quite indefinitely and yet with supreme definiteness (IM, 83). Is there a kind of fit between the mode of being that belongs to human beings, the questioning beings, and the determinate indeterminacy with which being manifests itself? Is the human relation to being more than the merely “happy” accident that we happen to ask the question of being? As the questioning being, is human being a fit mirror for being itself? I find it suggestive that Heidegger notes in passing in Being and Time that “the idea of Being in general is just as far from being ‘simple’ as is the Being of Dasein” (BT, 196). Human Being and Questioning I feel like I have been holding my usual critical judgment in �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 129 abeyance in much of what I have said so far. I have done this in order to try to think Heidegger’s thought as genuinely as I can on its own terms. That entails the abandonment of much of our traditional sense of evidentiary criteria. For Heidegger claims to be thinking about and writing about matters that are more fundamental than our traditional notions of truth as correspondence, and more fundamental than our idea of argument as a progression of inferences that follow one another according to the rules of logic. As Heidegger suggests, “Perhaps the whole body of logic . . . is grounded in a very definite answer to the question about the being” (IM, 25). But still, isn’t Heidegger wrong about Nietzsche? Isn’t he misstating the main point of Nietzsche’s claim? When Heidegger cites Nietzsche as saying that the highest concepts, including Being, are “last cloudy smoke of evaporating reality,” Heidegger is referring to a passage in section 4 of Twilight of the Idols, called “Reason in Philosophy.” Being is not mentioned in section 4, but is discussed in the following section as a concept that is derived by means of abstraction from the concept of the I involved in willing. In section 4, the highest concepts are not said to be empty, rather they are said to be emptiest. Therefore Heidegger’s overcoming of Nietzsche by means of proving that being is not an empty word is no real overcoming at all. Moreover, Heidegger’s treatment of this passage seems to be silent about Nietzsche’s main point, which is that the so-called highest concepts are actually the last concepts, not the first; they are derivative concepts, not first things. To address Nietzsche’s real point, Heidegger would have to try to show that Being is available to human beings in some primary—I am tempted to say “direct”—experience and that this primary experience contains the kind of rich diversity that, as Heidegger demonstrates, belongs to our use of the word “being.” I do not think Heidegger tries to show this by means of argument, although at times he seems to claim that it is the case; it may be, in fact, that Hei- �130 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW degger would claim that such a primary experience of being could never be shown in argument. How would Heidegger respond, then, to the claim that he got Nietzsche wrong? One possible type of response might be found in a passage where Heidegger raises the complaint on the reader’s behalf that Heidegger himself is misreading Parmenides. Heidegger admits that “our interpretation of the fragment must appear to be an arbitrary distortion. We are accused of reading into it things that an ‘exact interpretation’ can never determine. This is true” (IM, 176). Heidegger does not leave the matter at a rather matter-of-fact “Very well, you caught me.” Instead, he turns the complaint about his own inaccuracy, his own making things up, into an opportunity to transform the criteria of truth. He asks, “Which interpretation is the true one, the one which simply takes over a perspective into which it has fallen, because this perspective, this line of sight, presents itself as familiar and self-evident; or the interpretation which questions the customary perspective from top to bottom, because conceivably—and indeed actually—this line of sight does not lead to what is in need of being seen” (IM, 176). Whether we should find this a slippery and discreditable evasion of intellectual integrity, or an example of a very serious way to maintain intellectual integrity, or something in between, I shall leave for you to ponder. Rather than trying to resolve the matter, I will instead point out the way in which Heidegger’s response to the question of the intrusion of his own creativity into his interpretations of the texts connects to the way in which he thinks about really asking questions. Immediately after suggesting that his creative interpretation has a right to be considered “true” interpretation, Heidegger directly connects true interpretation to questioning—“to give up the familiar and go back to an interpretation that is also a questioning is a leap. In order to leap one has to take a proper run. It is the run that decides everything; for it implies that �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 131 we ourselves really ask the questions and in these questions first create perspectives” (IM, 176). But how does really asking questions “create” and how are “we ourselves” really involved? In Being and Time, Heidegger presents the kind of being of human beings that he calls Dasein as always having its own “there.” One might say crudely that a human being is its own “there” and makes its own “there” but also makes a “there” for other kinds of beings. Heidegger suggests in one early passage of Introduction to Metaphysics that the way a human being both is itself and is a “there” is transformed by real questioning. “In this questioning we seem to belong entirely to ourselves. Yet it is this questioning that moves us into the open, provided that in questioning it transform itself (which all true questioning does), and cast a new space over everything and into everything” (IM, 29-30). The human “there” is not some kind of cloud of spatiality and temporality that follows each of us around as we go about our day, like the personal clouds of gloom one sometimes sees in comic strips. Rather, Heidegger presents the human “there” as the projection of a human being’s own self onto the given possibilities of a particular historical circumstance. Usually this projection of self is not a human being’s genuine self, but the projection of a universal, non-individuated self that belongs to the kind of average way of being human that gives rise to “idle talk.” But it looks like Heidegger wants to suggest that when questions are really asked, the questioner projects a self that is really his own. The projection of one’s own self involves a more intense set of possibilities of relating to beings than the projection of just “someone.” Heidegger locates the most intense human relations to beings in what he calls the primordial. In a way, Heidegger seems to use the intensity of human affective relations to beings as the measuring stick of the primordiality of those relations. Intensity seems to become the measure of the truth. This would seem to lead philosophers to seek the �132 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW intensity found in the primordial. Thus Heidegger claims, “The ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself” (BT, 220). Note here that Heidegger does not say philosophers try to “find” the force of the most elemental words, rather they try to “preserve” that force. Why is philosophy, which, as we saw earlier, is associated with really asking questions, also burdened with the task of preserving the force of primordial modes of expression? For Heidegger, it is because every human experience, however seemingly inactive, is some kind of human doing, that is, a projection onto a possibility. It is possibilities that emerge into the truth as unconcealment; but whatever force or power is available in such possibilities is only available in the form of some human action, and this very action depletes the possibility’s original intensity. “A beginning can never directly preserve its full momentum; the only possible way to preserve its force is to repeat, to draw once again more deeply than ever from its source. And it is only by thoughtful repetition that we can deal appropriately with the beginning and the breakdown of truth” (IM, 191). The repetition of a possibility is always an act, and in order to access again the original affective intensity of that possibility, the “repetition” cannot be exactly the same act. Remember, real questioning is not to be achieved through the repetition of an interrogative sentence. This idea about the nature of the repetition of possibilities, then, is the defense of Heidegger’s creative, “inexact” interpretations. This idea also seems to guide his sense of what is involved in really asking questions. “Men can retain basic truths of such magnitude only by raising them constantly to a still more original unfolding; not merely by applying them and invoking their authority” (IM, 145). It is perhaps a corollary of this idea that “in principle, philosoph- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | GRENKE 133 ical questions are never dealt with as though we might someday cast them aside” (IM, 42). These considerations may also help us to understand the rather cryptic statement that very nearly ends Introduction to Metaphysics: “To know how to question means to know how to wait, even a whole lifetime” (IM, 206). Waiting is not just sitting there. Waiting has to be a dynamic passivity. Waiting must mean a creative holding-open of the humanly affective and ontologically revelatory potential in possibilities. Questioning, then, becomes repeating those possibilities again and again, each time differently. ***** Whatever we might now think of Heidegger as I have presented him—whether we think he is an untrustworthy interpreter, whether we think he fails to give us sufficient argumentative proof, whether we think he lacks sobriety and has a dangerous proclivity toward the extreme, whether we think what we know about his biography says all that need be said—must we not agree that his thinking about questions helps us to think about questions? If we can agree on that much, then I want to pose one last question: Does what Heidegger shows us make us want really to ask questions? We do not have to ask the fundamental question. We do not have to ask any question in a real manner. Nothing urgent or practical pushes us to it. “To be sure, the things in the world, the beings, are in no way affected by our asking of the question ‘Why are there beings rather than nothing?’ Whether we ask it or not, the planets move in their orbits, the sap of life flows through plant and animal” (IM, 5). But if the other things that we always find alongside us in the world do not make us want really to ask questions, what does? Has Heidegger managed somehow to convey to us a questioning attitude? And if we do find ourselves wanting really to ask questions, can we ask ourselves why we want to do so? �134 �REVIEW 135 The Rehabilitation of Spiritedness Gary Borjesson, Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2012, x + 251 pages. $14.95. Book Review by Eva Brann This book is a delight to read and a profit to ponder. It is a dog story, a human story, a lesson book (for dog owners), and a philosophical meditation (for anyone). It is learned, but lightly so, and it has a powerful thesis gently imparted. I loved it, but my credentials for reviewing it are even better than that: I don't like dogs. They slobber, shed and speak not a word of English—none of which facts is denied in this account of friendship between dogs and humans. (In my defense: among the alogoi, the wordless, I do feel friendly toward dolphins, who luckily live in another element, and toward babies, who are both incarnations of potential rationality and cute—for which the animal ethologist’s term is “care-soliciting.”) Moreover, I have no idea whether Gary Borjesson’s fundamental claim is true: that real—not in-a-mannerof-speaking—friendship between dog and human is possible. My old friend Ray Coppinger, a dog evolutionist and breeder (he found the Jack Russell terrier that inhabits the Assistant Dean’s office at St. John’s College in Annapolis), whose expertise figures in this book, thinks otherwise. He once said to me that attributing friendly feelings rather than self-serving instincts to dogs is pure “anthropomorphizing.” So I’m starting out severely objective in several respects. Yet I’m captivated by the author’s account of his life with the two dogs who are the principals in this story, Kestra and Aktis. His claims rest on acutely attuned and prolonged observation of his own dogs, and, peripherally, other people’s dogs. This affectionate attention is at once trust- and doubt-inspiring. It makes an enchant- �136 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ing story, but it might also be self-confirming, producing the illusions of mutual love. For example, his dogs often smile at him, though I’ve read that animals with fangs don’t smile, that the evolutionary origin of the human smile is the wolfish snarl. So I’m one of the author’s acknowledged dog-skeptics—or rather, one half of me is. With the other half, I’m totally persuaded that the friendship view is the better hypothesis for dog, man, and world. For not only is it a more coherent and a more friendly universe if the friendship hypothesis proves out, but it is also a more interesting world, since this position rests on postulates that modulate some current reductionist dogmas concerning beast and man, both in themselves and together. There are thought-provoking lessons here both for intra-species and inter-species relations. Gary Borjesson’s philosophical reading continually underwrites and illuminates his meditations. Sometimes it’s almost as if this dog-and-man tale came into its own as a corroboration of Aristotle’s, Plato’s, and Hegel’s insights into animate nature—especially Aristotle’s. Thus the epigraph to the second chapter, on the spirit of friendship, is part of a passage taken from Aristotle’s Politics. Let me quote the whole, which I’ve always found puzzling, but which becomes very satisfactorily clear in this book: Spirit (thumos) is what makes friendliness. For it is the very power of the soul by which we feel friendship. And here’s the sign: Spirit, when it feels slighted, is roused more against intimates and friends than strangers (Politics, 1327b40-41). And Aristotle mentions the Guardians, Plato’s warriors in the Republic, who are friendly to those they know and savage to those they don’t know, and whose nature Socrates compares—here’s serendipity!—to that of a noble young dog (Republic, 375a-376b). Spirit, spiritedness, passionate temperament, as a middle and mediating aspect of the human soul, is a Socratic discovery. Sometimes it is obedient to reason, sometimes it in turn masters lust; these latter are respectively the highest and lowest parts of our soul. Why should spirit be the enabler of friendship? It is a working postulate of Borjesson’s book that Aristotle is simply right: spiritedness is the condition of friendship. The argumentation is of the �REVIEW | BRANN 137 best sort, the sort that starts in a variety of quarters, but from which all roads lead to Athens: The high road, however, connecting spiritedness to friendship, is the desire to be recognized, attended to, praised, and the corresponding recoil is the shame of being misconstrued, ignored, or disrespected. By the intra-species hypothesis, dogs have spirit; it might even count as an oblique proof that some dogs have a lot and others but little, and even the latter have a sense of injury. One of the pleasures of this book is the interweaving of dog anecdotes and human reflection, and the principal subjects of the often poignant stories— never shaggy—are Gary Borjesson’s own two dogs. Kestra is sweet-tempered, a little passive, and, for all her lovableness, a little unkeen, but even she has an acute sense of her trust in her master being betrayed. If, then, people and dogs have common ground of a higher order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. For the author is far from committing the philosophical solecism of attributing reason to dogs. Spirit, however, is, just as Aristotle says, where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a work in progress, and so it is if one of the friends is a dog. This book is full of observations about friendship—discerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotle’s books on friendship (Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8-9). One of those borrowed observations is that “the point of being friends is to charm each other”; I love that, because I once long ago phrased it similarly to myself, sailing the Aegean with a friend: “The motor of friendship is mutual delight.” It doesn’t have Aristotle’s gravity, but he would not repudiate it. Applied to dogs, it does, however, imply that what Aristotle considers the highest kind of friendship— that of beings of intellect in increasingly deep, mutually satisfying conversation—is not a necessary option (and indeed not available) to a dog/man pair of friends. And that indefeasible fact means that friendship as a work in progress takes on a very different shape for this inter-species pair. Here the work of friendship is obedience training, where man is �138 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW master, dog subject! As the title of the book declares, dogs, the good ones, are willing. Not that they are called good because they like to obey, but they obey because they are good. They have in them that which can listen—“obey,” from Latin ob-audire, means “to listen and really to hear.” That is just what Socrates thinks of spiritedness: It is pride able to listen to reason. They are, one might say, a-rationally rational. They understand, and so they accept the superiority of their masters. Here is where Gary Borjesson’s book becomes topical and controversial. The second part of his title is “Reluctant Masters.” He analyzes out this component of our modernity: the reluctance to act with authority, to accept the charge of mastery, be it in childrearing or dog-training. The result of this abashment—often moralizing—in the face of asserting the control of superior reason is spoilage: spoiled children, ruined dogs. The book is full of funny and sad examples; some are reports of outrage expressed by spectators watching the book’s author at work being a master. One result of the failure of rational mastery is loss of dignity on both sides, and with it, of equality. For, at its best, friendship is mutual and so a relation of peers. Some of the most poignant passages of the book are about mutuality, the balanced equality of dog and human in the territory of spiritedness. Indeed, in the controlled competition that characterizes the play between these two spirited animals from different species, the dog often wins—to the man’s delight. The result of mastery accepted is an equality at once properly delimited and invaluable. Aristotle, one last time, says that happiness is the soul fulfillingly at work in accordance with its own goodness (Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a13-16). The willing master of this book really means to train his dog to happiness. He (or she—the author’s favorite dog trainer is Vicki Hearne) teaches the young dog to obey, first as parents habituate a child, by gentle and consistent compulsion, even fear. That training produces the inner control that in us is called self-determination, freedom. Within these bounds the dog has scope to fulfill his dog-nature as a competitive pursuer and predator of minor wild life and as a cooperative playfellow of humans and �REVIEW | BRANN 139 dogs. The descriptions of these play-episodes induce sympathetic joy. I’ll now take it on faith, the writer’s faith, that dogs, domesticated wolves, may be happy under—no, may be made happy by— human mastery. But that humans, uncircumventably the masters of domesticated nature, can be exhilaratingly happy, and also better, more thoughtful, and more just in their friendly companionship with dogs—that’s proven beyond doubt by this lovely book. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2013 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T.H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Appleby, David Carter, Richard B. Casey, Dylan Cohen, Joseph Grenke, Michael W. Description An account of the resource Volume 54, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2013. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_54_No_2_Spring_2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a7a955d179c2ddd970df9e334e615396.pdf 3418c82c26f49cb2fce20f0f1ea8bf53 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 55.1 (Fall 2013) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2013 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. ��Contents Essays & Lectures Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized? The Political Implications of Ralph Waldo Emerson’sTranscendental Spiritualism .............1 Bryan-Paul Frost “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 ..................40 David Levine Special Section: Justice Editor’s Note .....................................................................................70 The Actual Intention of Plato’s Dialogues on on Justice and Statesmanship .......................................................71 Eva Brann Reflections on Justice in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov..............................................................80 Chester Burke Peaceniks and Warmongers: The Disunity of Virtue in Plato’s Statesman......................................................................89 Peter Kalkavage Raskolnikov’s Redemption ...............................................................99 Nicholas Maistrellis Justice in Plato’s Statesman ............................................................110 Eric Salem Reviews Getting to Know Kierkegaard Better Book Review of Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. ..............119 James Carey Plato’s Political Polyphony Book Review of Plato: Statesman,translated by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. .........................134 Gregory Recco �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW �Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized? The Political Implications of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendental Spiritualism Bryan-Paul Frost It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James. But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism—a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world. . . . If this narrative sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them. . . . A recent Pew Forum report on how Americans mix and match theology found that many self-professed Christians hold beliefs about the “spiritual energy” of trees and mountains that would fit right in among the indigo-tinged Na’Vi. As usual, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming. —Ross Douthat, “Heaven and Nature,” New York Times, December 2009 In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville delivered a blunt verdict on the increasing popularity, in democratic countries, of pantheism: “Among the different systems with whose aid philosophy Bryan-Paul Frost is the Elias “Bo” Ackal, Jr./BORSF Endowed Professor of Political Science and adjunct professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me one of the most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries; all who remain enamored of the genuine greatness of man should unite and do combat against it.” For a writer whose moderation and nonpartisanship are well known, these remarks are a heavy indictment indeed. Why did Tocqueville believe that pantheism is both so alluring and so debilitating to democratic peoples? And whom precisely did he blame for the seduction? The second of these questions is easier to answer. Tocqueville singles out the Germans and the French for introducing pantheism into philosophy and literature, respectively. The editors of one of the most recent translations of Democracy in America indicate that Tocqueville probably has in mind philosophers such as Leibnitz, Fichte, and Hegel, on the one side, and writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine and Edgar Quinet, on the other side.1 Since Tocqueville found the democratic urge to be particularly strong in the United States, one is naturally led to wonder whether there might not be some American authors whose writings exhibit the same worrisome tendencies. This paper will enlarge on Tocqueville’s critique by studying an American essayist who, probably unwittingly, revealed in more concrete detail the full extent of Tocqueville’s fears about pantheism: Ralph Waldo Emerson. At first glance, Emerson seems an unlikely mark for such a charge. After all, in such inspirational essays as “Self-Reliance,” he seems to champion “human individuality” and greatness, and is a severe critic of majority tyranny, intellectual apathy, and the slavish pursuit of wealth and reputation—all of which Tocqueville too denounced as unhealthy extremes to which democracy is prone. On the other hand, Emerson was also a founding member of, and chief spokesperson for, the American Transcendentalist movement, and his religious convictions had strong strains of Neoplatonic and pantheistic spiritualism. Emerson’s transcendentalism had no little impact on his political and ethical writings: indeed, his unique brand of spontaneity, intuition, and creativity was based upon an individual hearkening to the voice of God within him, a God that permeated all nature and with the aid of whom one sought to act in conformity with one’s unique calling. Emerson’s thought, it �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 3 turns out, despite its apparent support for individual greatness, rests on spiritual principles that eventually corrode, and ultimately undermine, both genuine human nobility and healthy democratic ethics. In what follows, we will attempt to uncover the political implications and effects of Emerson’s spiritualism—a spiritualism whose basic tenets, as the preceding epigraph makes clear, are still very influential today. Easy Answers, Unmoored Souls: The Debilitating Effects of Pantheism and Fatalism Tocqueville’s brief treatment of pantheism (DA 2.1.7, 425–26) occurs as part of his discussion of the “Influence of Democracy on Intellectual Movement in the United States.” The purpose of this section is to articulate how the mind of a democratic people is influenced and shaped by democracy itself. This is an especially important topic in relation to democracy; for, as Tocqueville points out earlier in the book, democrats rely only on their own reason when judging or evaluating, and not on such factors as age, experience, tradition, class, and so on—precisely because, as egalitarians, they bow to no superior authority (DA 2.1.1, 403–4). One might say this about the philosophic method of Americans, who closely follow Cartesian precepts, Tocqueville says, without ever having read Descartes themselves: in America, Je pense, donc je suis means “I am the only one who can be relied upon to judge things which are of concern to me.” Of course, Tocqueville knows that democrats are not all equally capable of making wise and informed decisions on their own, and they will thus turn to sources of authority and intellectual devices that will not offend their pride or undermine their fundamental belief in equality. In fact, Tocqueville argues, democrats turn to an anonymous but omnipresent public opinion to supply convenient answers and ready-made beliefs. He identifies the source of this behavior in what he calls “the theory of equality applied to intellects”: “The moral empire of the majority is founded in part on the idea that there is more enlightenment and wisdom in many men united than in one alone” (DA 1.2.7, 236). Indeed, democrats are particularly susceptible to rely on and trust public opin- �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ion inasmuch as egalitarianism isolates and atomizes individuals from one another; consequently, to go against public opinion leaves one feeling small, feeble, and helpless (DA 2.1.2, 408–9). Moreover, Tocqueville explains why democrats have a tendency for general ideas and over-simplifications: these tools make thinking and judging easier, even if they inevitably compromise accuracy. This ease in thinking passes for skill, and so, overlooking the sloppiness introduced by generalities, democratic peoples become prouder of their intelligence even as they become lazier in their thinking (DA 2.1.3 and 4, 411–16). Tocqueville notes, however, that there is at least one area in which dogmatic or fixed opinions and general ideas are salutary for democratic peoples, namely, in matters of religion. Religion provides the necessary counterweight to the ill effects of individual isolation or atomization and love of material pleasure—the twin dangers to which democrats are most prone. By raising one’s mind to the heavens, and by inculcating duties to one’s fellows, religion imposes obligations and responsibilities that are contrary to the desires democrats would likely pursue if left to themselves (DA 2.1.5, 417–19). It is in this context that Tocqueville turns to pantheism, and in this context it appears to be the culmination of his critique of democratic thought. Democrats are attracted to pantheism for two principal reasons. In the first place, pantheism feeds the democratic prejudice to reject all traditional sources of authority and rely exclusively on one’s own reason. As everyone is part of the same, undifferentiated whole (God included!), no claim to superiority or authority can hold: human particularity or individuality is obliterated in universal homogeneity. But it is precisely the elimination of particularity or individuality that, while being so attractive to democrats, is also so dangerous. Democrats are further atomized and enfeebled as everyone is swallowed up in the whole, which encompasses all Being. As Tocqueville explains: “As conditions become more equal and each man in particular becomes more like all the others, weaker and smaller, one gets used to no longer viewing citizens so as to consider only the people; one forgets individuals so as to think �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 5 only of the species” (DA 2.1.7, 426). We are, quite literally, withdrawn into our own little world, and this leaves democrats all the more susceptible to the crushing and deadening weight of public opinion: indeed, public opinion might become ever more despotic as pantheism takes hold, for there is nothing—not even God Himself—that can stand as a bulwark against its dictates and demands. To use language Tocqueville will use later in part 2 of the same Volume (DA 2.2.2, 482: “On Individualism in Democratic Countries”): while democracy fosters the creation of atomized and isolated individuals, pantheism then eliminates the particularity of the individuals thus created. In the second place, pantheism appeals to the desire for unity, general ideas, and single-minded explanations—indeed, it satisfies this desire as no other religious or philosophic doctrine can. By reducing all Being—God and man, visible and invisible, change and continuity—into a single whole, which alone is eternal and true and real, democrats generate remarkably crisp, easy, and pleasing answers when it comes to those first questions about human existence which trouble the soul (cf. DA 2.1.5, 418). By the same token, however, this easy solution has deleterious effects on the (already limited) intellectual capacity of democratic peoples: pantheism “nourishes the haughtiness and flatters the laziness of their minds” (DA 2.1.7, 426) in the same way as all general ideas do. But pantheism is more problematic than this. By collapsing the material and immaterial world into a single whole, pantheism inadvertently collapses, or even eliminates, the tension between the duties and obligations we owe to others and to heaven, on the one hand, and the earthly desire for material well-being and pleasure, on the other hand. Tocqueville is hardly so sanguine as to believe that this tension could ever be overcome. He cautions religions that they should neither try to uproot the desire for well-being (the implication is that this desire is generally stronger than the desires proper to religion) nor try to provoke unnecessary conflicts with generally accepted public opinions. Nevertheless, by keeping this tension alive and well, democratic society is able to enjoy the salutary effects of religion and avoid the spiritual degradation to which �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW democracy is prone. In sum, pantheism both exacerbates the worst effects of what Tocqueville describes as “individualism” and undermines the salutary effects of religion on a democratic people. One peculiar aspect of Tocqueville’s discussion is that it is not quite clear whether pantheism is a philosophic doctrine or a religious system, or both, or neither. Tocqueville describes pantheism as both a “doctrine” and a “system,” and in the latter case, he once indirectly implies that it is a “philosophic system.” He never states, however, that it is a “religious” doctrine or system. Nonetheless, Tocqueville also seems to oppose pantheism to philosophy per se, as when he says that the “Germans introduce [pantheism] into philosophy,” and that “[a]mong the different systems with whose aid philosophy seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me one of the most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries” (DA 2.1.7, 425–26). Could it be that pantheism is a sort of secular religion, a sort of middle ground between Christianity and atheism? And if this is true, then would not the growing strength of pantheism be one indication that a people are moving away from religion properly speaking? In this respect, it is important to note that Tocqueville concludes the chapter preceding his discussion of pantheism, “On the Progress of Catholicism in the United States,” with this prediction: It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of the human intellect to want to reconcile contrary principles and to buy peace at the expense of logic. Therefore there always have been and always will be men who, after having submitted some of their religious beliefs to an authority, want to spare several others and let their minds float at random between obedience and freedom. But I am brought to believe that the number of these will be smaller in democratic than in other centuries and that our descendants will tend more and more to be divided into only two parts, those leaving Christianity entirely and others entering into the bosom of the Roman Church (DA 2.1.6, 425). To the extent that pantheism is not a religion—to the extent that pantheism signifies the near absence of true religious conviction—then a people embracing pantheism will be prone to moral and political �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 7 servitude, as Tocqueville tried to show a bit earlier in the text. When religion is destroyed in a people, doubt takes hold of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each becomes accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about matters that most interest those like him and himself; one defends one’s opinions badly or abandons them, and as one despairs of being able to resolve by oneself the greatest problems that human destiny presents, one is reduced, like a coward, to not thinking about them at all. Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude. Not only does it then happen that they allow their freedom to be taken away, but often they give it over. When authority in the matter of religion no longer exists, nor in the matter of politics, men are soon frightened at the aspect of this limitless independence. This perpetual agitation of all things makes them restive and fatigues them. As everything is moving in the world of the intellect, they want at least that all be firm and stable in the material order; and as they are no longer able to recapture their former beliefs, they give themselves a master (DA 2.1.5, 418). Since pantheism appears to loosen religious sentiment, the widespread acceptance of this “doctrine” among a democratic people might well indicate that they are becoming enervated and susceptible to bondage in the form of political salvation. Thus, although Tocqueville claims that new religions cannot be easily established in democratic times (for no one is willing to submit to an “intellectual authority” which is “outside of and above humanity” [DA 2.1.2, 408]), pantheism can be established, precisely because the source of its belief is not outside of humanity, but within it, and because it is not really a religion as Tocqueville understands the term. We can round off our consideration of Tocqueville’s ideas about the effects of democracy on the thought of its citizens by looking briefly at his discussion of the tendencies of democratic �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW historians, a topic he said he would discuss at the beginning of the chapter on pantheism. Democratic historians, he says, are prone to underestimate or ignore the role of particular causes—that is “great men”—in the course of history. He finds the root of this tendency in democracy itself. When . . . all citizens are independent of one another, and each of them is weak, one finds none who exert a very great or above all a very lasting power over the mass. At first sight, individuals seem absolutely powerless over it, and one would say that society advances all by itself—by the free and spontaneous concourse of all the men who compose it (DA 2.1.20, 470). Historians who adopt this attitude tend to think that history has a sort of inevitable motion that cannot be regulated by human agency. When any trace of the action of individuals on nations is lost, it often happens that one sees the world moving without discovering its motor. As it becomes very difficult to perceive and analyze the reasons that, acting separately on the will of each citizen, in the end produce the movement of the people, one is tempted to believe that this movement is not voluntary and that, without knowing it, societies obey a superior, dominating force (DA 2.1.20, 471). Such a force seems nearly impossible to resist, and belief in it leads first to the conclusion that human freedom is illusory, and then to the deduction that individuals are not responsible even for their own actions, let alone for the actions of their nation. Even if one should discover on earth the general fact that directs the particular wills of all individuals, that does not save human freedom. A cause vast enough to be applied to millions of men at once and strong enough to incline all together in the same direction easily seems irresistible; after having seen that one yields to it, one is quite close to believing that one cannot resist it (DA 2.1.20, 471). If the notion of such an irresistible force were to gain widespread �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 9 currency in the thought of a democratic people, society would simply grind to a halt due to the general belief that no one is strong enough to take any action that matters, any action that can push back against the tide of history. The very possibility of human greatness would fade out, because the freedom that nourishes that possibility would no longer present itself to the mind. Historians who live in democratic times, therefore, not only deny to a few citizens the power to act on the destiny of a people, they also take away from peoples themselves the ability to modify their own fate, and they subject them either to an inflexible providence or to a sort of blind fatality. . . . If this doctrine of fatality, which has so many attractions for those who write history in democratic times, passed from writers to their readers, thus penetrating the entire mass of citizens and taking hold of the public mind, one can foresee that it would soon paralyze the movement of the new societies (DA 2.1.20, 471–72). In summary: Tocqueville understood that living in democratic times could lead to modes of thought that would be highly detrimental, both for the freedom of the individual and for the freedom of the whole people. In particular, the doctrines of pantheism and fatalism dispose people to subservience: the first because it enhances individualism and weakens the moral force of religion; the second because it eliminates the feeling that the individual has any agency in, or responsibility for, the course taken by events. If Tocqueville is right, then anything that assists the spread of pantheism and fatalism will present a danger to democratic societies. Emerson’s Transcendental Spiritualism In order to understand the political implications of Emerson’s spiritualism, and to see if that understanding leads to precisely the consequences that Tocqueville feared, it is first necessary to lay out Emerson’s views on transcendentalism, in particular, and on Christianity, in general. Our effort here will be focused on showing that Emerson’s spiritualism is remarkably similar to Tocqueville’s pantheism. �10 Transcendentalism THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Although Emerson is often referred to as one of the principal innovators of American Transcendentalism, in his essay “The Transcendentalist” (1843), he denies that transcendentalism is a new or original school of thought. In fact, he says, the roots of transcendentalism—which he also calls idealism—are as old as thinking itself, and it is one of only two modes of thinking. As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that his way of thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense, admits their coherency, their use and beauty, and then asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance that things are as his senses represent them. But I, he says, affirm facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts which are of the same nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt; facts which in their first appearance to us assume a native superiority to material facts, degrading these into a language by which the first are to be spoken; facts which it only needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist (RE 81).2 Whereas a materialist (e.g., John Locke) acknowledges the independent existence of an external world accessible through sense impression and confirmed through experience, a transcendentalist or idealist (e.g., Immanuel Kant) privileges his own consciousness �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 11 and intuition, arguing that the “external world” is mental or spiritual, and is only apprehended or revealed through an individual, self-conscious mind. The transcendentalist does not dispute that objects are perceived by the senses; rather, he questions whether sense perception is an accurate, complete, and final representation of the object in itself. After arguing that the materialist’s confidence in the solidity of facts and figures is ill founded, Emerson makes the following comparison: In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure from the external world, and esteems a man as one product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance. The materialist respects sensible masses, Society, Government, social art and luxury, every establishment, every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of space, or amount of objects, every social action. The idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical, namely the rank which things themselves take in his consciousness; not at all the size or appearance. Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history, are only subjective phenomena. . . . His thought—that is the Universe. His experience inclines him to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid Unknown Centre of him (RE 82–83). While Emerson’s transcendentalist appears at first glance to be wholly sovereign and self-determined, he is also open to influences or forces from without—albeit influences of a certain sort: The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures onthe spirit than its own (RE 84). In order to develop a more detailed image of the transcendentalist, we must attempt to concretize Emerson’s elliptical remarks about “spirituality.” What—or who—is this “Universe” which “beckons and calls” the transcendentalist from inactivity “to work,” which issues him the “highest command,” and with which he seeks some sort of “union” (RE 91 and 95)? Emerson refers to this deity or highest principle in a variety of ways with no discernable difference in meaning: in the essay “The Over-Soul” (1841) alone, he uses the terms “Unity,” “Over-Soul,” “the eternal ONE,” “Highest Law,” “Supreme Mind,” “Maker,” “Divine mind,” “Omniscience,” and “God” quite interchangeably. All of these terms seem to refer to a transcendent spiritual force that permeates and animates all existence—both human and non-human nature, organic and inorganic—and that binds and unites everything together in a pure and sublime oneness or wholeness. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one (RE 237). Every individual is contained within this whole, and although the ultimate source of both our being and the whole is unknown or hidden, before its power our soul is laid bare and we are revealed for who we are. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his character and not from his tongue (RE 237). 13 Our communion with and access to this deity is through our own soul, which Emerson states is neither an “organ,” nor a “function,” nor a “faculty”: the soul is the unpossessed and unpossessable “background of our being” which transcends time and space. If a man is the “facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide,” the soul would be a light shining from within or behind this facade, illuminating all and giving direction to our will and intellect; and when we allow the soul to “have its way through us,” intellect becomes genius, will virtue, and affection becomes love (RE 238–39). The perception and disclosure of truth in and through the soul—“an influx of the Divine mind into our mind”—is what Emerson calls “revelation.” Although revelation varies in both its intensity and character—from the transfiguring to the tepid, from the prophetic to the prosaic—all persons have the capacity to be so moved, and all persons who are so moved belong to the same general class of individuals, whether they be a Socrates or a St. Paul. One reason for this vast resemblance among “prophets” is that the “nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the absolute law” (RE 243–44). Unfortunately, the precise content of this law is not articulated—indeed, it cannot and should not be articulated. Revelation does not occur through words, nor does it respond to our questions. Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul the understanding seeks to find �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do and who shall be their company, adding names and dates and places. But we must pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive; it is really no answer to the questions you ask. . . . Men ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associated. Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of these, never made the separation of the idea of duration from the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. . . . These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a question of things (RE 244–45). We must apparently rest content with Emerson’s assurances that, if we “forego all low curiosity” and live in the infinite present of today, these questions will somehow be answered or resolved through the silent workings of the soul. The key to existence is an almost child-like innocence, simplicity, and authenticity, complete honesty with oneself and with others, utter openness to the OverSoul and consequently all creation through it; being insincere, sophistic, or double in any way indicates disharmony in the soul and distance from God. These remarks naturally raise the question as to whether Emerson’s deity is a caring or providential being. To begin with, in what sense would one pray to this entity? Certainly, Emerson does not understand prayer in any ordinary or traditional sense. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 15 He describes his notion of prayer in “Self-Reliance”: In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends (RE 147–48). Those who pray or beg to attain some selfish end (material goods or worldly success) falsely assume a separation between themselves and the divine; those who express regret or recite creeds display an “infirmity” of the will or intellect (RE 148). Properly speaking, prayer is the act of a healthy, self-reliant individual contemplating or celebrating the existence of God within his soul, and it can be manifested in the simplest actions. Nonetheless, Emerson’s deity is more than a transcendent spirit animating existence, for he also affirms that God the “Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things” (RE 242–43). This supreme creator, however, is not the God of the Old Testament, but the divine mind or soul of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists: the world is an emanation or overflow from the divine mind; all creation is contained within this whole, and all the variety in nature is encompassed within this unity (RE 18ff., 118–19, 252ff., 293). Although the divine maker can apparently choose to inspire specific individuals, and although �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW he sent Jesus into the world (albeit not in the sense of his being the son of God), God does not perform miracles in any ordinary or traditional sense of the word. Christianity’s moral doctrines and not its miracles are what move Emerson to belief, and the attempt to convert others through miracles is a spiritual abomination: genuine conversion comes through genuine instruction, and this is strictly a matter of free internal acceptance, without any external compulsion whatsoever (RE 67–69, 106–8, 237). The greatest miracle of all would seem to be the shattering and transfiguring beauty of the universe as well as the immutable natural laws that govern its operation. At all events, whatever the precise character of this personal and mystic union with the Over-Soul, it seems ecstatic, ineffable, and utterly compelling; it is much more a matter of the heart than the intellect; and it does not rely on traditions, institutions, and rituals. Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. . . . Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely, that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men’s devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own (RE 248–49). Although much more could certainly be said about Emerson’s transcendentalism, it seems clear from this overview that, at least from Tocqueville’s perspective, Emerson’s “religious” system or doc- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 17 trine exhibits precisely those characteristics Tocqueville had described about pantheism: the material and immaterial world is encompassed in an undifferentiated unity or whole to which we are inextricably and inexplicably linked. Having briefly discussed Emerson’s transcendentalism, let us now turn to the question of whether it exhibits some of the dangerous characteristics that Tocqueville feared. Does Emerson’s spiritualism, for example, nourish “the haughtiness” and flatter “the laziness” of our minds in the same way that all general ideas do? A strong indication is Emerson’s doubt, in “The Over-Soul,” about whether everyday language can capture the deity’s essence: Every man’s words who speaks from that life must sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold! their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law (RE 237–38). Clearly, Emerson thinks that language, unaided by divine inspiration, cannot convey divine insights. In fact, he suggests in the Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 that the very attempt to communicate religion has an inherently corrupting effect. Historical Christianity, for example, has fallen away, he says, from the true message of Jesus. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love (RE 68). �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Similarly, in “Self-Reliance” (1841) he also faults “all philosophy” in its attempt to inquire into the divine source of such entities as life, being, justice, and the soul. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed (RE 141–42). It would seem that certain subjects are off-limits to philosophical speculation because to communicate one’s findings profanes the subject matter and is thus a sacrilege. Ultimately, Emerson’s religious understanding might be ineffable or untranslatable because it rests on an entirely individual, and therefore inherently subjective, communion or experience. Emerson’s religious system or doctrine is sweepingly comprehensive, but he relieves us from having to think about its specifics by cutting off all philosophic discussion. Thus Emerson forces his spiritual ideas to be extremely simple and general. But it is precisely this generality which, while appealing to lazy minds, also leaves people without any real answers to those fundamental questions of human existence that Tocqueville sees as critical in religious dogma. Without answers to those questions, democratic intellects expose themselves to all sorts of dangers. Although Emerson claims that questions concerning the immortality of the soul, providence, and the afterlife are not properly asked of, or answered by, his deity, Tocqueville has warned us that the democratic soul will become enervated or even paralyzed over time by seeking answers to all these deep questions, and then become ripe for political and moral enslavement. Indeed, one wonders whether Tocqueville would even consider �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 19 Emerson’s spirituality to be a religion at all inasmuch as it refuses to provide answers about primary questions. At the very least, by collapsing the tension between the material and immaterial world, Emerson seems to have undermined what Tocqueville sees as the salutary effect of religion on a democratic ethos, namely, promoting duties to others and limiting the unbridled pursuit of wealth. Of course, there is nothing in Emerson’s spiritualism that encourages the opposite tendencies, and Emerson says on more than one occasion that the mere pursuit of wealth is slavish. Nevertheless, absent any sort of “divine sanction” or “divine punishment” to deter those who might be tempted to forego their obligations to others, one wonders how Emerson’s transcendentalism, over the long run, could fully support a healthy democratic ethos when democratic passions run so clearly in the opposite direction. Unitarian Christianity This assessment of Emerson’s spiritualism needs some amplification. After all, Emerson was (however briefly) a Unitarian minister, and therefore his rather “unorthodox” transcendentalism must be understood in the context of his more “orthodox” Christianity. Certainly any complete account of Emerson’s religiosity must give due weight to his understanding of Christ and Christianity; but, as we shall see, even when this is taken into account, it is difficult to reach conclusions that differ much from our previous assessment. Let us begin with Emerson’s sermon called “The Lord’s Supper,” delivered on Sunday 9 September 1832, in which Emerson argues that a close reading of the New Testament indicates Jesus never intended the Eucharist to become a permanent institutional ritual of the Church; and even if he did intend it, the ritual is actually harmful to the genuine religious sentiment Jesus intended to instill (RE 99–109).3 But even aside from these claims, Emerson finds the most persuasive case against the Eucharist in the aversion which he has to the symbolism of the bread and the wine, which he refers to as “the elements”: Passing other objections, I come to this, that the use of the elements, however suitable to the people and the modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW foreign and unsuited to affect us. Whatever long usage and strong association may have done in some individuals to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by symbolical actions. Most men find the bread and wine no aid to devotion, and to some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another. The statement of this objection leads me to say that I think this difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight. It is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. It is my own objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed that it was enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated making permanent this mode of commemoration, every way agreeable to an Eastern mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should not adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as more effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration (RE 106–7). Because every religious ritual has the potential to impinge upon the autonomy and independence of the soul—upon its freedom to choose the manner and method of worship—no ritual or form can ever be declared inviolate and sacrosanct. Freedom is the essence of this faith [i.e., Christianity]. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitable- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 21 ness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us (RE 108). To hold onto outmoded rituals is to betray the very purpose of Christ’s crucifixion, for Jesus was sent to deliver mankind from religions in which ritual forms are more important than personal transformation. That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols and ordinances. The Jewish was a religion of forms; it was all body, it had no life, and the Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows (RE 108). In the end, Emerson himself will judge the worthiness of all traditional ceremonies, conventions, and customs—even those that Jesus might have specifically ordained. Emerson’s departure from the traditional institutions and doctrines of Christianity is even more pronounced in his Harvard Divinity School Address, in which he identifies two fundamental errors in the administration of the Christian church. He describes the first in this way: It [historical Christianity] has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with expressions which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking (RE 68). �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The Church’s obsession with the personality of Jesus distorts and vulgarizes his teaching by claiming that he was the son of God. Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age, ‘This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.’ The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes (RE 67–68). The Church fails to understand that Jesus was a prophet not because he was divine, but because he alone saw the divinity of all men. 4 The second great error of the Church is a consequence of the first: by regarding Jesus and his message as an historical figure who established the religion in the far distant past, the living spirit is extinguished from present worship. By failing to make the soul in all its glory the foundation of religious instruction, contemporary preachers (unintentionally, to be sure) smother the joyous temperament in their congregations that characterizes genuine piety. This, in turn, corrodes the faith of the nation as a whole. Rehearsed rather than inspired, doctrinaire rather than personal, formal rather than uplifting, monotone rather than celebratory, “historical Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the ex- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 23 ploration of the moral nature of man” (RE 73). Emerson offers his auditors a vivid sampler of the sorts of “moral” subjects whose absence in American churches causes people to think twice about participating in public worship: In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to leave all and follow—father and mother, house and land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these August laws of moral being so pronounced as to fill my ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and passion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands—so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird, and the breath of flowers. But now the priest’s Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is done (RE 71). The power and the beauty that Emerson demands from vital religion are missing from most modern Christianity. What does Emerson recommend to repair this situation? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason—to-day, pasteboard and filigree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW remedy to their deformity is first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul (RE 77–78). Emerson thus does not advocate the creation of “new rites and forms” but the spiritual reinvigoration of those forms already at hand. As for the current generation of preachers, they must stride forward in a spirit of fierce independence from all traditional authority, maintain the most rigid personal integrity and virtue, and be open to the sublime wonder and limitless potential in man— which is the true gospel of Christ, and is as alive today as ever (RE 75–78). Emerson’s views were so unorthodox that many of the faculty members at Harvard publicly denounced the speech. He was not invited back to speak at his alma mater for some thirty years. Two features of Emerson’s heterodox Unitarianism are particularly significant in the context of the questions we are pursuing. First, his absolute reliance on his own judgment exemplifies the practice he recommends to everyone: the individual alone is the sole judge in matters of religious doctrine and form. What the individual determines to be satisfactory is necessarily so, and that judgment is sufficient in itself. Second, Jesus’s fundamental message, according to Emerson, fully supports transcendentalism (and, we maintain, pantheism): we are to find and worship the god within all of us. What sort of religious reform could proceed from Emerson’s appeals? He may have wanted spiritual revival within the Church, but achieving that revival on his terms would require the rejection of so many aspects of traditional, orthodox Christianity that one wonders just what sort of “church” would remain. All things considered, Emerson’s iconoclastic Unitarian Christianity imparts a unique flavor to his pantheistic spiritualism, but since it remains pantheism at bottom, it still promotes the dangerous effects that Tocqueville feared. The Individual as Supreme Lawgiver The foregoing discussion has concentrated on the first aspect of the Tocquevillian critique of Emerson’s spiritualism—how its generality and simplicity flatters the democratic intellect. We must now ask about the second aspect: What effect does Emerson’s spir- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 25 itualism have on individuality and the capacity of individuals to remain free? We approach this question by examining Emerson’s teaching about the source of individual actions and judgments— especially moral and ethical judgments. Throughout his writings, Emerson insists that the transcendentalist is a self-legislating individual: there is no law or commandment that is unconditionally binding upon him. And there is no institution—no government, no church, no society—that is worthy of his respect and allegiance unless, as is said in “The Transcendentalist,” it “reiterates the law of his mind” (RE 83). The transcendentalist’s conduct is not governed by deliberation or experience, but by intuition, spontaneity, and trusting one’s instincts—even, it seems, when one can give no rational account of them. Only spontaneous action—which is receptive to and motivated by the prompting of the divine voice within—is genuinely obedient to God. By becoming the channel through which the divine makes itself manifest, we shed all gross vanity and pretension while simultaneously solidifying and strengthening our own character. A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and love—a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound its creatures our hands are glued to our sides, or they beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. Why need you choose so painfully your place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible right for you that precludes the need of balance and �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. Then you put all gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the measure of right, of truth, of beauty (RE 176). By keeping our soul open to the ebb and flow of the Over-Soul, we will be made privy to the truth; we will become genuinely moral by attentively listening to the poetry of our own heart, which is itself a reflection of the poetry of the universe and its animating spirit. Emerson replaces the ancient injunction “know thyself” with “trust thyself,” because the latter contains or is the means to the former (RE 133). Emerson’s celebration of individual intuition, integrity, and spontaneity is stated perhaps nowhere more succinctly and powerfully than in his most famous and inspirational essay, “Self-Reliance” (1841). Like Moses, Plato, and Milton, we must learn to heed the flash of genius when it ignites within us, trusting, almost child-like, that God has a purpose in our work and that divinity does not traffic in counterfeit forms. But if God urges us to listen to our heart, society does not, and the more we become accustomed to the ways of the world, the more our native light of genius grows dim (RE 132–34). Two problems arise from this tension between God and society: conformity and consistency. Regarding conformity, he considers it nearly impossible to resist: [T]he discontent of the multitude [is] more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment (RE 137–38). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 27 Regarding consistency, Emerson downplays its importance, and argues that sincerity, over the long run, will exhibit its own logic and integrity: “Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing” (RE 139). Emerson highlights these two problems because they, more than anything else, undermine the self-trust necessary to act spontaneously or instinctively. Self-trust is the source of all spontaneous and ingenious action. The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? . . . The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism (RE 141–42). To those who might argue that overstressing individual self-reliance in this way could well have injurious effects on society’s necessarily collaborative structures—such as government and the family—and could delude a person into committing atrocities in the name of “intuition” and “spontaneity,” Emerson’s response in this essay is unaccommodating: So be it. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested—“But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he (RE 135). Emerson holds that we must give expression to the unique incarnation of the divine within us. We must not continue to be the predictable herd animals that we are at present: conformity—not self-reliance—is the real threat to a vibrant political and civic life. Indeed, ignoring the divine voice within us, since it is the sacred source of all life and wisdom, is true atheism and impiety. Self-reliance thus turns out to be God-reliance—if by “God” is meant the divine voice within as you interpret it (RE 141–45). It is here, with all probability, that Tocqueville would find the most dangerous implications of Emerson’s spiritualism: he forthrightly rejects any moral guidance that comes from without and demands that individuals judge for themselves. Of course, it is precisely this celebration of individual autonomy that causes many to classify Emerson as a staunch “individualist”—not in Tocqueville’s derogatory sense as applied to someone withdrawn into himself, but in the complimentary sense of someone who, opposing mass opinion and fashionable trends, stakes out his own ground. Emerson is certainly aware, as we have seen, of the force exerted on the individual by majority opinion. But he does not believe, as Tocqueville does, that individuals left to be their own moral legislators and lawgivers become atomized and isolated in society, leaving them more susceptible to the tyrannizing and homogenizing effects of public opinion. To Emerson’s mind, individuals must rely on themselves rather than on traditional sources of authority if they �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 29 are going to be genuinely moral and have the strength to withstand mass opinion. Notwithstanding Emerson’s contagious optimism, one question persists throughout his discussion of the individual as judge and executor of his own laws: How does one distinguish between inspiration and madness? Even if we are all part of a greater whole, what standard can be employed to determine whether someone has correctly “received” and spontaneously acted upon the moral law? Why could someone not simply claim that his subjective experience points to an entirely different philosophical system than Emerson’s? How would Emerson refute such a claim? In the first place, Emerson suggests that everyone knows the truth of what he is saying in the depths of his own heart. If we would be honest with ourselves, if we would return to our better thoughts and listen intently to the sublime whisperings of the soul, we would understand as he understands, and act authentically as he acts authentically. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing (RE 146). In the second place, Emerson refers several times to a moral sense or sentiment in all men which commands and forbids actions, and which is rooted in or is coextensive with the Divine Mind. But while Emerson acknowledges the existence of a conscience, it neither seems to be in command, nor are its laws capable of articulation. For Emerson, the moral universe is accessible by all of us subjectively, but it cannot be formulated into any sort of objective ethical code: �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish. The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own remorse. The moral traits which are all globed into every virtuous act and thought—in speech we must sever, and describe or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars (RE 64). And finally, in the third place, Emerson claims that spontaneous action is so compelling that its example almost compels imitation: by being law unto oneself, one becomes a universal legislator. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong (RE 331). If this is true, however, it is hard to square with Emerson’s insistence on autonomy. How can individuals be true to themselves by following someone else’s law? If the law were universal, then it would make sense to follow the example of a virtuous person. But this contradicts Emerson’s belief in the individual divine voice that speaks to each person uniquely. By having us be our own lawgivers, by asserting that “[o]ur spontaneous action is always the best” (RE 264), is Emerson not unwittingly advocating indulgence in our worst passions? In the essay called “Circles,” he tries to defend himself against this charge: �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 31 And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God! I am not careful to justify myself. . . . But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back (RE 260). This very convenient disavowal of setting an example sidesteps the effect of Emerson’s teaching on others; he does not want to take responsibility for the behavior that might be unleashed or justified by his doctrine of self-legislation. Not everyone’s spontaneous impulses and private intuitions would lead to the sort of fortunate and moderate choices that Emerson seems to make. If we return now to Tocqueville’s democratic man seeking moral guidance in an egalitarian society, we see that Emerson has nothing to offer him. The evaporation of human individuality in the Over-Soul, the directionless invocation to look to one’s own inner divinity, and the refusal to take responsibility for one’s example in the world all leave democratic man in the lurch. It is no wonder that he turns to public opinion for moral guidance. The Ambiguity of Politics One way to temper the debilitating effects of majority opinion, in particular, and the spiritual trajectory of the principle of equality, in general, is through political activity. Over and over again, Tocqueville shows us how civic engagement at the local level can help to cure the ills to which democracy is prone. In respect to the particular issues of this essay, civic participation and institutions help to prevent our slide into individualism. We are unable to withdraw �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW into our own world of family and friends when we must take part in various community activities. Civic engagement also tempers our rage for general ideas: when we are practically engaged, we see the necessary limitations of such ideas. Emerson, however, in many ways discourages political activity—and perhaps necessarily so. The rapturous inner life of the transcendentalist likely makes all political activity seem paltry and pale. In “The Transcendentalist,” Emerson observes that these individuals are both solitary and lonely. They are solitary because nothing that society can offer appeals to them: whether it is popular entertainment or commercial competition, they see most of what excites society as little more than drudgery and thoroughly degrading in comparison to their talents. They are lonely because the human fellowship they seek is so acute and fervent that few persons could satisfy or endure the demands of such a relationship: tolerating neither frivolity nor hypocrisy, they are seen by most persons as rude, shallow, or simply ridiculous (RE 87–90). But if Emerson’s transcendentalist is indifferent toward such things as the accumulation of riches and wealth, so too is he indifferent toward politics in almost all its manifestations. From the great political debates of the day to the building of empires to the prospect of rule, the transcendentalist finds little in this petty arena to tempt him from his solitude. But their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw them from the conversation, but from the labors of the world; they are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. . . . What you call your fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters (RE 90). Emerson does not deny that there are great and holy causes—albeit far fewer than most imagine—but by the time a potentially worth- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 33 while cause reaches the political arena, it has been prepackaged and predigested for public consumption. Since the transcendentalist attitude is a blanket critique of political life, Emerson rightly concludes that this outlook will strike society as threatening. The disdainful aloofness from the world of those who hold such beliefs, together with their willingness to abjure the public burdens that make community possible, seem like a direct accusation of society; and society will not remain indifferent, but will retaliate against this challenge to what it holds dear. But despite the fact that society treats these individuals as outcasts, and despite the fact they seem to perform no useful occupation, Emerson insists that they are the moral touchstones by which to judge whether “the points of our spiritual compass” are true. Society therefore has an interest in them and a duty to “behold them with what charity it can” (RE 95). To the extent that Emerson hopes to improve American society, he directs his appeals for moral reform at the individual and not the group: there is little or no salvation through political activity unless the individual himself has first been spiritually transformed. In the essay “New England Reformers” (1844), he points out two problems in attempting the former before or without the latter. First, all political reforms tend to be partial: I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the indication of growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy, and that it is feeling its own profound truth and is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish; and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses (RE 406–7). In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike in one place and in another—wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth it shall abrogate that old condition, law, or school in which it stands, before the law of its own mind (RE 408). Emerson here disparages piecemeal efforts at social change as futile or misguided given the enormity of the task. By contrast, “a just and heroic soul” will be able to abolish the old condition through the force of his character and actions in the here and now. Second, reformers overestimate the power of associations or numbers. Groups are no better or worse than the individuals who make them up, and unhealthy individuals make unhealthy groups: indeed, the more united and efficacious a group is politically, the more it will require its members to compromise their unique individuality, forcing out those of superior talent (RE 407–10). These new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may easily be questioned whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have energy will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world, to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the strong; and whether the members will not necessarily be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot enter it without some compromise. Friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race, banded for some catholic object; yes, excellent; but remember that no society can �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 35 ever be so large as one man. He, in his friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one (RE 408–9). Thus, Emerson’s aim is not political but private, an attempt to unify our presently disharmonious souls. “The problem of restoring to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption of the soul” (RE 38). “This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man” (RE 55–56). How this domestication will occur without radical political changes (e.g., in the education system [cf. RE 410–11]) is not clear. In sum, it would seem that Emerson’s rapturous spiritualism casts a long shadow over politics and political activity: civic engagement is neither an Aristotelian fulfillment of our nature nor a Tocquevillean means to maintain its health. A Corrective to Democratic Historians In conclusion, it is necessary to point out that there is at least one area where Emerson’s philosophy is in harmony with Tocqueville’s, namely, in his deep appreciation for the power of great individuals and individual action. In his essay on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, or in his address commemorating the anniversary of the end of slavery in the British West Indies, one does not read about immutable and unseen forces propelling men ahead on the unstoppable current of history. In this respect, at least, Emerson’s celebration of the individual is the same as Tocqueville’s. Nonetheless, this celebration of individual initiative and independence is coupled with yet another potentially worrisome aspect of Emerson’s writings. Just as he conceives the individual as the standard in judging the rectitude of an action and the worth of an institution, so too he conceives of the new American nation as a standard in judging its own needs. America must emancipate itself from the tyrannizing effects of a slavish veneration of the “mind �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of the Past” (RE 46)—especially Europe’s aristocratic past—in all its incarnations: history, philosophy, art, architecture, and literature. Although this call for originality can already be seen in the opening paragraph of Emerson’s first book Nature (1836), perhaps the most stirring expression of this sentiment is his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa address, “The American Scholar” (1837), which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence” (RE 3, 846). The moment some form of the past is declared perfect or inviolate, then the present generation will atrophy and cease thinking and creating—it will become a satellite of the past rather than its own solar system. The genius of an age is lost when it passively accepts the dogmas of the past and does not actively seize upon and articulate its own creative principles: “The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized [sic] now for two hundred years” (RE 47). Indeed, we must not subordinate our own thinking to the thinking found in books: Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must—when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we may speak (RE 48). Books should be used to guide the scholar back to the light of his own inspirations. Emerson is not rejecting the past outright. His frequent praise of past philosophers and authors and poets demonstrates this. Instead, he wants to challenge what he calls the backward—that is, conservative—tendency of all institutions to defend some ancient authority and to use this as an excuse for not moving forward. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they—let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates (RE 47). 37 The past must come alive for the present and speak to its concerns and circumstances. If it fails to do this, then it need not be studied and must not be revered. Discard the relics of the past or reanimate them—if Greece or Rome or Constantinople or Paris or London do not speak to us, we need not worry: someone or something else will (RE 115–17, 120, 130–31, 140, 150–51, 272–73). Emerson sees some encouraging signs of intellectual liberation in the growing prevalence of “the near, the low, the common” as a new subject of literature (RE 57). He saw that contemporary writers and artists were beginning to expand the range of their interest beyond traditional high subjects to include the more mundane: The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign—is it not?—of new vigor when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger referred to the like �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW cause by which light undulates and poets sing; and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumberroom, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench (RE 57–58). Because the lowest objects are bursting with the same sublime soul as the highest, they can be made the focal point of a literary and spiritual renaissance appropriate for this new era and new nation. At the end of the day, Emerson applauds the fact that the same egalitarian political movements, which both raised the “lowest class in the state” and gave new dignity and respect to the “individual,” are now fostering an appropriate egalitarian literature (RE 43, 57–58). Emerson here reveals what Matthew Arnold calls his remarkable “persistent optimism” (RE 846) in the potential of each and every individual to become a fully realized human being: he repeatedly affirms that all men have “sublime thoughts” (RE 76); that all possess a “native nobleness” (RE 242); that all are wise; that all are latent prophets; that all have the potential greatness of George Washington and Julius Caesar; that all carry within a “miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History” (RE 267). Even genius is less a matter of innate ability and more a matter of art and arrangement, and of giving free reign to the divine, which is in all of us (RE 411ff.). As Henry David Thoreau rightly said in his journals about his friend: “In his world every man would be a poet, Love would reign, Beauty would take place, Man and Nature would harmonize” (RE 847). We are left to wonder, however, whether Emerson’s suspicions of the past, coupled with his new emphasis on “the near, the low, the common” in literature will, over time, help to sustain his celebration of genuine human greatness, or eventually undermine and distort it in a predictable but unhealthy democratic fashion. NOTES 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 425–26, hereafter cited in the text as DA, followed by volume, part, chapter, and page number. In general, I have used this translation �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST 39 throughout, although I have checked it against the French original for accuracy. See also the four-volume, bilingual, historical-critical edition of the same, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). 2. References to Emerson’s works are from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library, 2000), hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as RE. All emphasized words in quotes are contained in the original. For details on his life and times, readers may consult with profit Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson: A Biography (New York: Viking Press, 1981). 3. Emerson was ordained as the Unitarian pastor of the Second Church of Boston in 1829. In June 1832, his grave reservations concerning the sacrament of communion reached a crescendo, and he asked the Church if he might stop administering it in its present form. After considering his petition, the members of the Church were unable to grant it. Because Emerson would “do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart” (RE 109), he judged it best to resign as pastor, and he stated his reasons for doing so to the congregation in the sermon we are about to discuss. Although Emerson continued to give sermons to various churches throughout his life, his service at the Second Church was his first and last appointment as a permanent pastor. 4. Emerson also suggests the likely cause of this error. It was only natural that a soul as “great and rich” as Jesus’s, falling among a “simple” people, was bound to overwhelm them. They were thus not able to see that Jesus’s true message was that they needed to discover and make manifest the gift of God in their own soul and not that Jesus was the son of God Himself (RE 69). Given the simplicity of the “primitive Church,” Emerson is very hesitant to adopt any of its doctrines or practices. The early Christians not only refused to shed their “Jewish prejudices” but they were rarely enlightened by the example of Christ himself. Emerson thus concludes that “[o]n every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgment more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages” (RE 105). �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 40 “At the Very Center of the Plenitude”:1 Goethe’s Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century;2 Or, How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe From the General Sickness of his Age We have failed to restore to the human spirit its ancient right to come face to face with nature. —Goethe3 Nature has become the fundamental word that designates essential relations . . . to beings. —Heidegger4 Goethe teaches courage . . . that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the fainthearted. —Emerson5 1. Incidental Thoughts, Fruitful 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 next week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well known but who, from his own point of view, is of equal, if not greater consequence,6 the Goethe who spent his life studying nature—botany, zoology, geology, meteorology, theory of color—and is known, in this regard, for his work in morphology. 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, my own curious invention. The first is “Goethe’s Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century.” 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 previDavid Lawrence Levine is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This lecture was originally presented as the annual Dean’s Lecture to open the thirty-seventh academic year at the Santa Fe campus. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 41 ous 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.”7 Similarly the second subtitle, “How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe from the General Sickness of his 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 will have a chance to see that his life’s 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.8 For Goethe the study of nature 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. Goethe’s thinking, though philosophical, is not systematic, 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 discovered 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 corners 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 necessarily insignificant thoughts.9 Not unlike flotsam and jetsam, thoughts appear throughout our day. Are these daily musings ‘distractions of the moment’ or ‘disclosures of moment’? Such irrepressible thoughtfulness and imagination gives added dimension to the thin linearity of time. A day punctuated by the wondrous, sparked by light, is not just another day. Daily discovery is meat not spice, nourishment, not just flavoring. And its joy is invigorating. The mundane is thereby 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 posterity per- �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sonal conversations he had with his world famous employer during the last nine years of his life. These are intermittently and imperfectly recorded, often self-conscious, sometimes seem contrived, and are frequently 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-year reflections and regrets about his youthful writings, plans for the reconstruction of the local theater that had burned down, conversations 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, says the following: “Apart from Goethe’s [own] writings, and in particular Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, the best German book there is, what is there really of German prose literature that it would be worthwhile to read over and over again?”10 “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 by such exaggerated praise? Perhaps what is remarkable is not the book per se, but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its ultimate literary value—the book is not on our program—but the attempt to record a life that is in no way ordinary? Indeed, even through Eckermann’s eyes we glimpse new possibilities for a human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibility rarely seen. We glimpse a paradigm of a fully engaged, ever creative, wholesome fecundity. In short, we see philosophy as a way of being in the world, not as a book bound between leather covers. 2. “Everything Nowadays is Ultra” 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 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 43 come to be lived in their lifetime: Everything nowadays is ultra, [he writes] everything is being transcended continually in thought as well as in action. No one knows himself any longer; no one can grasp the element in which he lives 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 rapidity 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 over-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 will be the last of an epoch that will not soon return.”11 According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our way 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. “Everything nowadays is ultra”: As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, what was coming to characterize human life—and thereby change the face and depth of human experience—was the speed (die Voloziferishe) at which life was lived, a hitherto unheard of, dizzying and disorienting pace such that young people—but not only—could only be caught up in “the whirl 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 delay between an event and its hearing. “It’s as if we were right there.” A leisurely walk is replaced by a carriage ride, thereafter by a train ride, then a jet plane, and now by . . . a transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The wait for “news” from the pony express, a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues to shrink. Our e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 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 present and that at maximum speed?”12 This matter of life’s ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for Goethe. “The greatest misfortune [Unheil] of our time,” he says elsewhere, “which let’s no thing come to fruition, is that one moment consumes the next.”13 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, specifically those things that take time, for example, those that require slow assimilation and acclimation, above all human learning and experience. It takes time away from thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness. For time and leisure (skolē) are the proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care. We hear too that our thought processes are affected: “everything is transcended in thought [as well as in action].” We have somehow been made to think differently. We live at a new level of abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple, obvious, primary world, such that we no longer even understand “the element in which we live.” What could this mean? And most curious of all, Goethe says “No one knows himself any 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 you have managed to take due note of everything, you have lost your self.”14 Are we not always the same no matter our circumstances? Education too is thereby affected. It is suggested that we might even become “over-educated,” mis-educated, that education itself has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: “For almost a century now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men engaged in them.”15 Rather than distinction, we have mediocrity; rather than a high culture, we have an ordinary one. What then of the rewards of “perspective,” “balance” and “excellence” once thought the outcome of an ennobling education? The “whirl of the times” has only accelerated many, many fold �45 ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE since 1825. The author could not possibly have envisioned the pace at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first hearing, one might be inclined to take the above observations as the grumbling of a man seeing the world pass him by (empty biographism). We might, however, also take this as notice to think better about the character of our lives in our ultra-ultra world. 3. “The General Sickness of the Age” Life is our lot rather than reflection. —Goethe16 Goethe’s exclamation that “nowadays . . . no one knows himself any longer” clearly needs further consideration. How could this be? Don’t we know ourselves? Throughout the modern disciplines—the physical sciences, history, even poetry and literature—was a growing trend, evident to Goethe, to what he called “subjectivity.” Juniors and seniors will remember, in the Discourse on Method, Descartes’s identification of the “ego” as the primordial truth about which we alone can be immediately “certain.” The immediate evidence of this self-intuition then provides the standard of truth for all else, now thought true only if “clearly and distinctly” conceivable to us. Odd though this may sound, this new self-certainty leads to our world being reconceived as “the external world,” about which we can now have only a small measure of certainty and that of its radically stripped down mathematical qualities. To be sure, this made a “modern science” of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new definition and sense of self that was problematic.17 This excessively polarized and reduced view of the ego as “subject”—understood as standing “over against”18 some bare objective world—is what Goethe meant by “subjectivity:” polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior world, and thereby alienated from any sense of world in which it could feel itself integrated or at home.19 For Goethe the consequences of this influential (nay, fateful) redefinition of self are nowhere better seen than in his own vocation, poetry. We have all heard the caricature of the modern “romantic” poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret, whose only truth is his inner pain. But for Goethe there is, unfor- �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tunately, an element of truth to be found therein: He observes: “All the poets [today] write as if they were ill and the whole world were a lazaretto [leper colony]. They 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 poetry.”20 “I attach no value to [such] poems.”21 From Goethe’s perspective, “whoever descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half a being,”22 and being half will discover there limited resources for creativity. “A subjective nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at last ruined by mannerism [that is, excessive affectation],”23 he notes regretfully. “Such people look at once within; they are so occupied by what is revolving in themselves, [that] they are like a man in passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without seeing them.”24 With reduced openness to the world around them, they have become “blind with seeing eyes.” This excessive onesidedness, and consequent risk of self-absorption, Goethe named “the general sickness of the present age [heutigen Zeit],”25 and led Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: “What is Classical is healthy; what is Romantic is sick.”26 Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive, foundationless, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest selves. Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the divide where, for all our efforts to think about each separately, subject and object were being ever more pulled apart. This experiential breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is overpolarized—when the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the world is diminished as external, even foreign, barren res extensa—both subject and object are diminished for want of their natural correlate. If I may indulge in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man standing between two horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—for the sake of health27—he had everything he could handle to keep himself and the world whole.28 Goethe himself thus resisted being “caught up in his time;” he was not a “romantic.” As he said, “my tendencies were opposed to those of my time, which were wholly subjective; while in my �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 47 objective efforts, I stood alone to my disadvantage.”29 His “objective efforts”? How could he resist the subjective tendency? 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. —Aristotle30 Surprising though it may 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, not to mention giving him “the most wonderful moments of his life.”31 So, what is nature?—OK, a simpler question.—What is a plant? Which grammatical form best names its being, a noun or a verb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static state or an activity alive with change, something that has grown or some process of growth?32 Clearly we need to name both—form that is also in the process of self-formation. “Growth is the point of life.”33 For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak, aspen, pinõn, 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, fructifying plant. Hence we name it one thing—a mallow—despite all these various stages and differing formal manifestations.34 But it is not only this individual plant that is before us, so is the species “mallow,” and even 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 life as such, despite the dizzying fact that they take infinitely many and wondrously different shapes. Sumac, aspen, mallow are in “inner essence” still “plants.”35 What is needed in this view is to identify the unifying principle at work (not “underlying”) in each and every form at whatever stage of growth and complexity they might be. But how to do so? And how �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to find a language that captures this universally active principle of forms forming themselves? To do so Goethe had to depart radically from his contemporaries and from their analytical 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 who has paid a little attention to plant growth. . . .”36 This means that we, ordinary human beings, still have access to a realm of primary significance, one not to be diminished as “pre-scientific,” if what is meant thereby is “pre-insightful.” Rather we, you and me, have deep access into what is before us.37 Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning, we may on the contrary be closing ourselves off from this primary level of our experience. He often referred to a passage in one of his early plays to illustrate this eclipse of experience by theory: [A]s 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 who can neither see nor hear, through sheer learning and hypothesis. Such people look at once within; they are so [pre-] occupied by what is revolving in themselves, that they 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 by anything. . . . It is just because we carry about with us a great apparatus of philosophy and hypothesis, that we spoil all.38 “Like a man in passion”: Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold of our minds, preventing us from seeing what might otherwise be evident and thereby preventing us from attending to our primary experience.39 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 [modern] concern, isn’t nature any longer,” he says.40 Extraordinary! �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 49 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 any approach wherein wholes are but “by-products”41 of uncoordinated, underlying, isolated forces and elements (“matter in the void”). Looking at things in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—analytical ways of thinking stumble in the face of the Humpty Dumpty problem: how to put the whole back together again.42 If we begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the wholeness of things, the integral reality, remains a secondary phenomenon, a mystery, if not an accident.43 Here too we’ve become “blind with seeing eyes.” Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes’s famous experiment with the wax at the end of Meditations II. There Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wax near a burning candle, whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, texture and shape (i.e. primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses all its original properties but res extensa, mere extension (though this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring us to see what is “elemental” (if not fundamental). Descartes then proceeds to claim that by “an act of intuition of reason” he—and we—would know this transmogrified, charred lump in front of us to be the same thing as before his infernal experiment. He asks, who would not so conclude thus? (Aristotle, for one) Well . . . if that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax, who would concur with Descartes that what remains is the same as what was put to the flame?44 The analytical flame dissociates or separates what originally was together. It “kills.” So this method.45 The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but, the living whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before Descartes is “the same” only if life and death are not different, and if form is not an active principle but a derivative by-product. With this “lethal generality”46 we lose—and lose sight of—“the spirit of the whole,” as Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as well that the modern approach—subjectively predisposed to take �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the objects of our experience in such a reduced way—loses its claim to “objectivity.”47 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. —Goethe48 Goethe thus sought “another way,” in order, as he said, “to restore to the human spirit, its ancient right to come face to face with nature.” 49 He asks: “What does all our communion with 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?”50 Thus “phenomena once and for all must be removed from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture] chamber [Marterkammer],” he said, “and [be] submitted [rather] to the jury of [common human understanding].”51 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 knowingly52—to reclaim nature as our home-world. “If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless multiplicity, atomization and complexity of the modern natural sciences,” he says, “and get back to the realm of simplicity, we must always consider [this] question: how would Plato [or any non-modern] have reacted to nature, fundamentally one unity as it still is, how would he have viewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?”53 We need to remove what “now” stands in the way.54 We need somehow to shuck off our modern predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted55 and see our world, rather, as one might whose vision was �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 51 not so refracted. But how? Mindful that “the first stages of a discovery leave their mark on the course of knowledge,”56 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 otherwise than we’ve been brought to conceive. “In nature,” he said, “we never see anything isolated: everything is in connection with something.”57 Any account, then, of our experience must begin here with the unity and interrelatedness of all things. Herein lays Goethe’s unified field theory: “I abide by what is simple and comprehensive,” he says.58 (This he also calls his “stubborn realism.”59) As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind— clarity, breadth of survey, attention to manifest differences—is the pre-requisite to any genuine openness. In the garden, along a path, in the laboratory, we need first to see the things themselves, to recognize the ways and means that the plant [or whatever our object] uses,”60 “to follow it carefully through all its transitions,”61 in short, “to follow as carefully as possible in the footsteps of nature.”62 “In the process,” he says, “we become familiar with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point of view everything gradually falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to reason through words and hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception [Anschauung] through phenomena.63” 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.64 (Here have we a model of openness and extreme care that will serve us well, not only in the laboratory, but throughout our work at the college.) Given this, given observation that is undertaken with a “truly sympathetic interest,”65 a remarkable transformation can then begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted passage from the Introduction to his Outline of a 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 �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW without any theoretical context. . . . This demand is odd because it is useless to simply look at something. Every act of looking [naturally] turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection, every act of reflection into the making of associations: thus it is that we theorize every time we look carefully at the world. The ability to do this with clarity of mind, with self-knowledge, in a free way, 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 [modern scientific] abstraction.66 Nature converses with us. Like any organic transition, thought is the natural and continuous outgrowth of its prior condition, the fruit of concrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a higher integration through “the practical and self-distilling processes of common human understanding.”67 “We theorize every time we look carefully at the world.” When we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it carefully and reproduce it in our mind’s eye [he reflects, then] we can say we have an intuitive perception [Anschauung] of it in the truest and highest sense. We can [rightfully] say 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 every observation, in every discourse.68 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. True 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 subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not reversed, and a kind of renewed originality is returned to human experience, widening and opening our purview69, whereby we might be thought once again to come “face to face” with nature. Our ancient right is thereby restored. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 53 6. The Original World . . . the sublime tranquility which surrounds us when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature, vast and eloquent. —Goethe70 A living thing cannot be measured by something external to itself. —Goethe71 This reunion of observer and world—we should say union—is possible because of a unique human faculty—one out-rightly denied72 or at least overlooked by other modern thinkers—but to which Goethe again and again returns our attention. As we read: “When we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it carefully 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 capacity for concrete, summary “intuition,” intuitive perception, Anschauung, is our faculty for experiential wholes wherein the actively unifying principles at work in the world manifest themselves. Deny it and we have no wholes. They are not deduced, inferred, or synthesized. We do not have to go beyond or behind73 the phenomena to see these at work. These are made known to us at the level of our primary experience. We “see” them. There’s a famous story: At a meeting of the Society for Scientific Research in Jena there was a “fortunate 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 whereby the natural plenitude of plant life might be accounted for. His “idea” was, he admits, “the strangest creature in the world,”74 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,75 the original or originary plant.76 Schiller’s first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in particular his indebtedness to Kant. “This is not an observation from experience,” he said, “This is an idea.”77 Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he saw. He was disin- �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW clined—as we may be—to grant that this was anything but a “regulative idea” constructed by reason to help it organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the phenomenal array of plant forms. It was merely an idea, merely “subjective.” For him and for Kant, it couldn’t be anything more, as in their view phenomena are themselves constituted by 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 I may rejoice that I have ideas without knowing it, 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 Ur-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.78 He wonders: “Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?” He thus insisted that he could see with his eyes something to which others seem to have become blind.79 (Despite this fundamental 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 intermaxillary bone, the missing link that allowed zoologists to connect man and ape anatomically. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see most clearly the point of origination of his thinking concerning Urphenomena: The distinction between man and animal long eluded discovery. Ultimately it was believed that the definitive difference between ape and man lay 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 full energies to �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE the study of osteology, for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of every form is preserved conclusively and for all time. 80 55 The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the history of successive generational transformations is preserved and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form. Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate phylogeny, so more generally can any such morphological account. This “pregnancy”81 of the present form allows of a new kind of thinking to uncover the Ur-principle at work, a reverse thinking that “traces the phenomena [back] to their [empirical] origins.”82 (This is the first methodological principle of the new science of morphology83). In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle, now also called an “archetype”: “an anatomical archetype will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all animals as potential, one which will guide us to an orderly description of each animal.”84 The Ur-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out of which the whole polymorphic metamorphosis issues. “All is leaf.” As such these are not ideas in the usual sense of Plato or Kant, neither separate nor abstract. Rather they are like ideas in enabling us to give an account of the unifying principles at the origin of the plenitude. They are like ideas, as well, in that they might serve as a kind of “formula” providing a way to generate new forms— if only in imagination.85 The “derivation”86 is not of hypothetical but real possibilities. Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying the manifold fruitfulness of nature, here however “the secret of the creation and organization” of the family of forms. (He sometimes called it entelechy.87) Thus whatever the family of phenomena—botany, osteology, geology, meteorology, color—Ur-phenomena emerge. We come to see the unifying principle, the spirit “that dictates the role of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through immanent law.” From this “empirical summit,88” all things can be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos,89 integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended. �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Therefore when you pick up Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants to read, or any of his other writings on nature, do not close yourselves off when hearing its foreign language, rather attempt to hear its new voice and direction for the understanding of nature, “the element in which we live.” Whether, indeed, Goethe has bequeathed us a fruitful path by means of which our ancient right might be restored or whether it is but a false portal, is for each of us to determine for ourselves. 7. Against Self-knowledge Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious. —Goethe90 Where are we, then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be learned about ourselves from this “other way of studying nature”? As we’ve seen there are two unities that are reestablished by Goethe’s way of thinking: there’s the unity of wholes that had been fragmented, and the unity of observer and world that had been alienated. Let us think more about the latter. This unity of observer 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 divorce of the “ego” from its world in modern thought, it is understandable, then, that to Goethe “no one knows himself any longer.” This led him to his famous—if at first shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: “I must admit,” he said, “that I have long been suspicious of the great and important sounding task: ‘know-thyself.’ This has always seemed to me a deception practiced by a secret order of priests who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands, to divert attention from activity in the outer world to some false inner speculation.”91 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 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 57 ourselves beyond ourselves. “Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals—to the world around him ,92” he stresses, and thus “the human being knows himself only insofar as he knows the world; he perceives the world only in himself and himself only in the world.”93 This brings to mind his earlier observation: “Whoever descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half a being;” this thought was then completed with “let him find . . . a world . . . and he will become whole.”94 In short, that we might be drawn out of our overly self-polarized existence, we need to reestablish ourselves once again as worldly beings, fully engaged with and in our natural correlate “the outer world.” Thus he answers the question “How can we learn self-knowledge?” in this way: “Never by taking thought but rather by action.”95 This reply should not surprise us, for it was our history that our very attempts to think about ourselves and the world brought us to this unnatural polarization. Thus it is “activity in the outer world” alone that is necessary to restore a balanced polarity and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe’s own “objective activity”: Without my attempts in natural science, 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 closely observe 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, always serious; always severe . . . the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her, she despises; and only to the apt, the pure and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.96 Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were thought the fruit of introspection and the study 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 beings as they self-critically open themselves up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage, “For almost a century now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men engaged in them;” comes to mind. It is followed by: �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW “it is a real piece of good fortune that nature intervened, drew the essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a true humanitarianism from its side.”97 The study of nature can thus be a liberating study, freeing us from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness wherein we, once again, can open ourselves to our fullest possibilities. In this way, the study of nature is properly a liberal art. 8. The Grand Attempt Where do we meet an original nature? Where is the man with strength to be true, and to show himself as he is? —Goethe98 Finally, certain questions emerged earlier about our modern 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 leisure? 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 a footing “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 selfinvolvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And how are we to educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modern 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 fruit 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? By way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last time. Toward the end of his life (1889), he himself tried to capture in one of his aphorisms “the European event” that was Goethe. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 59 This distillation lives up to his well-known boast that he “wrote whole books in one sentence,”99 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 return to nature, through a going-up to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.—He bore within him its strongest instincts: sentimentality, nature-idolatry, the anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary. . . . 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 aspired to was totality; he strove against separation of reason, sensuality, feeling, will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism by 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 reverence 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 joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality 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.—100 Those who’ve read more widely 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 �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 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 moderns have a hard choice before us: between disaffection and engagement, between cynicism101 and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to affirm life, to say YES!102 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. And we ask you tonight “to place yourselves within life,” to seek out what is primary and original and, daring to speak the language of discovery, to speak “poetically.103” And we ask you tonight to “make time” for thoughtfulness, that you transform the mundane with the joys of daily discovery, that your life be rich and your days not ordinary ones. One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until Goethe’s last days (that is, into his eighty-third year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well. Thank you. NOTES 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, #337; also #664 (hereafter MR). Given as the annual Friday night “Dean’s Lecture” to open the thirty-seventh academic year at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. See MR #864. This talk is a further development of work begun in 1986 (see Levine, “The Political Philosophy of Nature, A Preface to Goethe’s Human Sciences,” (hereafter Political Philosophy) Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 11 [1986]: 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Löwith, and all three who introduced me to the depth of Goethe’s thinking; my debt to them continues. For the ambiguity and greatness of Goethe’s “grand attempt,” see Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, trans. John Ox- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 61 enford, (London: E. P. Dent, 1951 [1850]) (hereafter ECK), October 20, 1828. 2. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Hammondworth: Penguin, 1968 [1889]) (hereafter TI), 102. 3. “Analysis and Synthesis” (hereafter AS), in Goethe, Scientific Studies, (hereafter SS), ed. and trans. Douglas Miller, Vol. 12 of Goethe: The Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 48. The publication of this collection of Goethe’s disparate scientific works has provided a new occasion for further reflection about his “grand attempt.” 4. Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) (hereafter Phusis), 183. 5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” in Representative Men (New York: Marsilio, 1995 [1850]), 195. 6. ECK January 4, 1824, May 2, 1824, February 18 and 19, 1829. 7. ECK February 26, 1824. 8. ECK March 1, 1830. 9. Outline of a Theory of Color (hereafter OTC), in SS, #743; see also note 21. 10. Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” in Human all too Human, A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdate (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1986) Vol. II, Part II, #109, 336. 11. Letter to Zelter, June 7, 1825; in Löwith, Karl, “The Historical Background of European Nihilism,” “The Fate of Progress,” Nature, History, and Existentialism, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History (Evanston, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966) 4, 156-7; From Hegel to Nietzsche, the Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 27-8, 177-181 (hereafter HN); also MR #480. 12. MR #474. 13. MR #479. 14. MR #770. 15. HN, 226. 16. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61. �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 17. The ego or modern self is doubtful of all but bare existence, where even the externality, the worldness of the world, is in question. 18. For an interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polarity, see Heidegger, Phusis, 188. 19. A modern irony: man is least at home in a world of his own conception. 20. ECK September 24, 1827. 21. ECK September 18, 1823. By contrast, all of Goethe’s poetry was insistently “occasional,” that is objectively motivated: “The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never want for occasions for poems. But they must be occasioned [poems] [Gelegenheitsgedichte]: that is to say, reality [Wirklichkeit] must give both impulse and material. A particular event becomes universal and poetic by the very circumstance that it is treated by a poet. All my poems are occasioned poems, suggested by real life, and having therein a firm foundation.” A radically different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January 29, 1826 and MR ##337, 393, 119. 22. MR #935. 23. ECK January 29, 1826: also MR #1119. 24. ECK May18.24. 25. ECK January 29, 1826. 26. MR #1031; ECK May 2.1829. 27 .A comparison with Nietzsche is appropriate here. 28. ECK March, 14, 1830; also December 21, 1831; and “Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase” (hereafter ITP), in SS, 39. 29. ECK April 14, 1824; also “The Content Prefaced,” (hereafter CP) in On Morphology, SS, 67, and HN, 6-7. 30. On the Parts of Animals, I.v. 645a16, 19-27. 31. Fortunate Encounter (hereafter FE), SS, 18. 32. “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], especially 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 frequently and fittingly make use of [another] word Bildung �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 63 [formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is in process of production as well.” “The Purpose Set Forth,” in On Morphology, SS, 63. 33. ITP, 40. 34. CP,. 69; also Eric Heller, “Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth,” in The Disinherited Mind (hereafter Heller) (New York: Meridian, 1959), 10. 35. Metamorphosis of Plants (hereafter MoP), in SS, 60, 67. 36. MoP, 76. 37. OTC #743. 38. ECK May 18, 1824; also January 17, 1830. 39. This is the “modern 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 wordsmiths and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses as well; see also Hegel, “Preface,” Phenomenology of Spirit, trans, A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), #33, 19-20: “In modern 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.” 40. MR #1364. 41. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, II. 42. “These attempts at division also produce many adverse effects when carried to an extreme. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its component parts, but from these parts it will be impossible to restore it and bring it back to life.” See “The Purpose Set Forth,” in SS, 63. The natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the analytical dissolution or decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger’s characterization that the original “atomic bomb” is to be found here in our modern analytical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, parts and particles. See Martin Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poety, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstader (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 168. 43. And thus the diminished reality of those who think that a home is bricks and mortar, and humans their chemical makeup. 44. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, II, AT, 19-34. How someone could even think this is worth further thought. 45. A science that had given up trying to explain our experience was simply incomprehensible—not to mention infuriating—to one so firmly �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW rooted in the actual (“at the very center of the plenitude”). “The Extent to Which the Idea ‘Beauty Is Perfection in Combination with Freedom’ May be Applied to Living Organisms,” in SS, 22; also ECK September 2, 1830; see also Goethe’s longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their tendency to substitute secondary for primary phenomena; OTC ##176, 718. 46. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61. 47. In this regard one might want to compare Goethe’s and Nietzsche’s respective attempts to “stave off the nihilistic consequences of modern science” See David Lawrence Levine, “A World of Worldless Truths, An Invitation to Philosophy” (hereafter Worldless Truths)in The Envisioned Life: Essays in Honor of Eva Brann (Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2008), 163. 48. OTC #158. 49. AS, 48. 50. ECK September 2, 1830; also Heller, 16. 51. MR #430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not “common sense”); cf. “Empirical Observation and Science,” (hereafter EOS) SS, 25. 52. “Naively”: see Levine, Political Philosophy, 163-78. 53. MR #664; also ECK January 29, 1826: “People always talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except that it says, turn your attention to the real world.”; see also OTC #358. Yet as we shall see Goethe is not an ancient but seeks to carve out a middle position between ancient and modern science. While there is deep agreement with Aristotle about our experience of nature in terms of wholes, there is disagreement about what is eternal. In making form eternal, Aristotle, he said, was prone to “precipitousness.” By contrast, for him it is the process, not the form, which abides. “Everything is in flux of continual motion.” 54. “There is no worse mistake in physics or any science than to treat secondary things as basic and . . . to seek an explanation for the basic things in secondary ones” (OTC #718). It’s as if we were “to enter a palace by the side door” and thereafter base our description of the whole on our first, one-sided impression. See “General Observation” (hereafter GO), SS, 42 and OTC, 160); also, #177, 716 and its application to the “grievous” Newtonian error at #176. 55. See Heidegger, Phusis: “The act of self-unfolding emergence is inherently a going-back-into-itself. This kind of becoming present is phusis. But it must not be thought of as a kind of built-in ‘motor’ that drives something, nor as an ‘organizer’ on hand somewhere, directing the thing. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 65 Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion that phuseidetermined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easily and spontaneously does this idea suggest itself that it has become normative for the interpretation of living 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 purely modern, mechanistic teleological concept, according to which ‘growing things’ are interpreted as artifacts that make themselves. Even the word and concept ‘plant’ takes what grows as something ‘planted,’ something sown and cultivated” (195), and “But is not phusis then misunderstood as some sort of self-making artifact? Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the only possible interpretation of phusis, namely, as a kind of techne? This almost seems to be the case, because modern metaphysics, in the impressive terms of . . . Kant, conceives of ‘nature’ as a ‘technique’ such that this ‘technique’ that constitutes the essence of nature provides the metaphysical ground for the possibility, or even the necessity, of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology” (220). 56. GO, 42. 57. ECK May 12, 1825; also AS, 48. 58. ECK April 11, 1827. 59. FE p. 20. 60. “The Influence of Modern Philosophy,” (hereafter IMP) in SS, 28. 61. MoP #77. 62. MoP #84. 63. OTC #175. 64. EOS, 25. 65. OTC #665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl’s phenomenological approach, in particular in “The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject” [hereafter EMOS], in SS, 16, and IALO, 22, where the rigor and thoroughness of something like “eidetic variation” seems to be proposed. The question is living form: “We cannot find enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception to avoid killing it when we analyze 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. �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 66. “Preface,” OTC,. 159. We’ve taken the liberty to add the specification “modern 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). For Goethe, as for Hegel, this tendency is consequential and reckless. See note 52. 67. EOS, 25. 68. “Polarity,” in SS, 155; OTC #175; Letter to Herder, May 17, 1778 (in Heller, 10). 69. OTC #732 (“expanded empiricism”). 70. “On Granite,” in SS, 132. 71. “A Study Based on Spinoza,” in SS, 8. 72. Despite Kant’s denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, Goethe found a window of opportunity. He wrote that Kant had “a roguishly ironic way of working: at times he seemed 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: “We can . . . think [of a kind of] understanding which [unlike our discursive one is] . . . intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, i.e. from the whole to the parts. . . . It is here not at all requisite to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible, but only that we are led to the idea of it—which too contains no contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding, which has need of images (intellectus ectypus) and to the contingency of its constitution.” However, Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion: “Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?” he wonders. “Impelled from the start by an inner need, I had striven unconsciously and incessantly 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 further to prevent me from boldly embarking on this ‘adventure of reason’ (as the sage of Konigsberg himself called it).” “Judgment through Intuitive Perception” (hereafter JIP), in SS, 31-2; also EMOS, 11-17. Cf. Kant’s “aesthetic normal idea” in Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, §17. 73. OTC #177; if we deny this faculty of intuitive perception we have no real wholes. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 67 74. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787: “I am very close to discovering the secret of the creation and organization of plants. . . . The crucial point from which everything else must needs spring. . . . The Urpflanze is to be the strangest creature in the world. . . . After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to invent plants ad infinitum, which will all be consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity. And the same law will be applicable to everything alive” (Heller, 10). Also OTC #175, “Polarity,” in SS, 155. 75. Urpflanze is often translated as “symbolic plant.” While this rendering might be helpful if we keep a strictly 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 literary device. Rather it seeks to embody the manifold fruitfulness of nature “in potential” (“Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with Osteology” (hereafter GICA), in SS, 118). 76. “All is leaf.” MoP #119; OTC #120. 77. FE, 20; ECK November 14, 1823. 78. Letters to Schiller, February 10, 14, 1787 (in Heller, 20). 79. Hegel too—who otherwise 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 nevertheless failed to see the Urpflanze as anything but an abstracted archetype (See Hegel, The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984], 681-711; HN, 11). 80. CP, 68-9. And we read in the Metamorphosis of Plants of the calyx that it “betrays its composite origins in its more or less deep incisions or divisions.” 81. ITP, 41. 82. OTC, 166. This may sound like ‘deconstruction,’ yet we would have to consider whether it represents a true break with analytical thinking, as Goethe seeks to do here. 83. CP, 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 family: “In the process I was soon obliged to postulate a prototype against which all mammals could be compared as to points of agreement and divergence. As I had earlier sought out the archetypal plant I now aspired to find the archetypal animal; in essence the concept or idea of the animal.” �68 84. GICA, 118. THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 85. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787; OTC #175; “Polarity,” 155. 86. ITP, 41 (“ . . . my whole method relies on derivation”). 87. 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 creative adaptation on the part of active wholes becomes “random selection.” See note 51. My thanks to John Cornell for his helping me think this through. 88. OTC, #720. 89. OTC, #109. 90. MR #504. 91. ITP, 39. Also “If we take the significant dictum ‘know thyself’ and consider it, we mustn’t interpret it from an ascetical standpoint. It does not by any means signify the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our modern hypochondriacs, humorists, and ‘Heautotimorumenoi’ [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch what you are doing so that you come to realize where you stand vis-à-vis your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological selftorture; any capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone (MR, #657).” He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the subjective sciences and psychologies that are heir to the fateful alienation, if not divorce, of the ego from the world. 92. ECK April 10, 1829. 93. ITP, 39. 94. MR #935; the whole passage reads “let him find a girl or a world, no matter which, and he will become whole.” This is typical (see Eric Heller, “Goethe in Marienbad,” in The Poet’s Self and The Poem, (London: Athione Press, 1976). 95. MR #442 (“Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re like.”); also ##770, 935; ECK January 29, 1826. 96. ECK February 13, 1829. 97. HN, 226; also ECK October 18, 1827: In a conversation with Hegel about the potential for modern sophistry of the “dialectic disease,” Goethe says: “Let us only hope that these intellectual arts and dexterities are not frequently misused, and employed to make the false true and the true false. . . . The study of nature preserves me from such a disease. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | LEVINE 69 For here we have to deal with the infinitely and eternally true, which throws off as incapable everyone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment and observation of his subject. I am also certain that many a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the study of nature.” 98. ECK January 2, 1824; also March 12, 1828. 99. TI, #51. 100. Ibid., #49; cf. MR #864. 101. ECK January 2, 1824; letter to Zelter, June 18, 1831 (in HN, 27). 102. See also ECK January 24, 1825, October 12, 1825; February 1, 1827; October 18, 1827; February 12, 1827; MR ##191 and 1121. See Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, passim. This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed he was envious of this, for it was not available to him. See “Afterword: Goethe and Nietzsche,” in Levine, Worldless Truths, 163-65. 103. “A More Intense Chemical Activity in Primordial Matter,” SS, 137. �THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW 70 Special Section: Justice Editor’s Note In November of 2012, O. Carter Snead, Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School and Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, invited five tutors from St. John’s College in Annapolis to speak at the Center’s thirteenth annual fall conference entitled The Crowning Glory of the Virtures: Exploring the Many Facets of Justice. The following five papers were delivered on a panel session, together with a sixth: “The Relevance of Lay Views on Punishment to Criminal Justice” by Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt Law School. A greatly expanded version of the paper was published the following month: Christopher Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, “Putting Desert in its Place,” 65 Stanford Law Review 77 (January 2013). The article can be accessed online at the following URL: http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/sites/default/files/ Slobogin-65-Stan-L-Rev-77.pdf �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE The Actual Intention of Plato’s Dialogues on Justice and Statesmanship Eva Brann 71 Cicero famously said of Socrates that he was the one who brought philosophy down from heaven to earth. This must be some other Socrates than the one of the Platonic dialogues, perhaps Xenophon’s of the Memorabilia. After all, even the comic Socrates of Aristophanes’s Clouds is a meteorologist, a watcher of the heavens, though he does it hoisted up in a basket, butt up. Of course, he is a sky watcher, since that is where the vaporous and loquacious Clouds—Aristophanes’s comic version of the Forms—are to be found. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that Socrates connected earthly matters, such as politics, to the invisible heavens, the realm of the forms. There are three Platonic dialogues overtly and extendedly concerned with politics. The first, the second longest of all the dialogues, is the Republic, in Greek Politeia. It bears the subtitle, added in antiquity, “On the Just.” The second is the Statesman, in Greek Politikos; its ancient subtitle was “On Kingship.” And the third, the Laws, Nomoi in Greek, subtitled “On Legislation,” is by far the longest. In the Republic Socrates is both narrator and main interlocutor. In the Statesman he is the originating occasion of the dialogue but not a participant. He sits it out as an auditor, perhaps at times somewhat skeptical; the leading speaker is a visitor, or stranger, from Elea, Parmenides’s hometown. Finally, the Laws don’t even take place in Athens but in Crete, and Socrates doesn’t appear at all, though there is an anonymous visitor, a stranger from Athens. Who doubts that the Laws is a work of practical politics, in fact the mother of constitutions? As the Athenian says: “Our logos . . . is of cities, and frameworks and law-giving” (678a). Perhaps we might even say that the farther Socrates is from a dialogue the more it is merely earthly. When I speak, in my title for this brief talk, about “The Actual Intention” of the first two of these dialogues, I imply that in them �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW all is not as it seems. Here is Rousseau’s opinion of the Republic, taken from the first book of his Émile: “Those who judge books merely by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education ever written.” And, indeed, the central books of the ten that comprise the Republic are taken up with the ontology, the philosophical framework, that must underlie education, and with the ensuing education itself. To be sure, the education discussed is that of the philosopher kings who will found and maintain that best Politeia, the civic framework with which the Republic is concerned (473c). And yet again, neither this civic framework for the best city, which will be superintended by the philosopher kings, nor its justice is actually the intended topic of the Republic. For recall that this city is devised as a model writ large of the soul (368d), a model from which we can conveniently read off the nature of individual, internal justice. The book we call the Republic rests on are two tremendous assumptions: One is that political frameworks—not only the best but even more strikingly the worst—are analogous to, enlarged projections of, the soul. And the other, even prior one, is that the soul ought to be our first topic of inquiry, and it is only on the way to it that we discover political ideals: Psychology absolutely precedes Politics; Souls make States. Thus it would be a fair argument to say that the particular political justice which is generally understood to be the peculiar contribution of the Republic is, in fact, a civic construction meant in the first instance to incorporate a notion appropriate to internal, psychic justice. For the three castes of the best city are delineated in such a way that the famous definition of justice as “doing one’s own business,” which falls out from the community’s constitution, is applicable to the soul as Socrates conceives it. In other words, the just city is built from the first to be an enlarged soul. Let me outline how Socrates makes it work. These castes are functionally defined, each by its own specific task within the city. Moreover, they form a hierarchy of command and responsibility such that any one caste’s transgression is in fact rebellion, factional strife. Such internal dissension is, however, nearly the worst fate— as any Greek knew or should have learned in the course of the �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN 73 Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.82)— that could befall a political community, because it is the prelude to tyranny. To reiterate: for Socrates, the maladjusted and dysfunctional soul is the antecedent cause of political evil. It is to me an unresolved problem whether Socrates was in politics the anti-egalitarian he is sometimes accused of having been. In his demeanor, and what matters more, his conversations, he seems as populist as possible, not much impressed by smart young aristocrats about to go to the bad, like Critias, Charmides and Alcibiades; moreover, in the Republic he says of a democracy that it’s “handy for searching out a politeia” (577d)—which happens to be what he himself is doing right then, down in the city’s most democratic district, its harbor. The solution to the problem depends on how we look at the kallipolis, the “fair city” that he’s found or made: Is it and its justice a serious political proposal, on a par in earnestness with Aristotle’s Politics in antiquity or Locke’s, Montesquieu’s, and Rousseau’s works at the beginning of modernity? In view of the motive for the constitution of Socrates’s city, that is a reasonable question. To lend my exposition some specificity let me give you the briefest reminder of the model city, both as best and as paradigmatic for the soul—and let me once more anticipate the result: The human soul too will be a hierarchy of functional parts, and it too will sport the virtues displayed by the city, now operating in individual human beings much as they did in the community. At the bottom of the city’s castes, then, are the craftsmen and tradesmen whose business it is to perform their particular work well and profitably, and to attend just to those assignments and no other. Beyond that, they are pretty free and prosperous, and thus satisfied. They are without a specific caste virtue other than competence, for they are driven by appetite rather than character. But they are the class for the particular operation of the most encompassing virtue, justice. Justice is the virtue of the part and the whole, of each part doing its own thing and thereby preserving the integrity of the whole. (Temperance is another non-specific virtue, that of agreeableness in the sense that each caste is accepting of its position in the hierarchy.) �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The middle caste consists of the warriors who guard the city, and it is the training ground of kings. This caste is defined by their spiritedness, and it is the locus of honor, the source of a soldier’s satisfaction through danger. These warriors do have a particular virtue, courage. The ruling caste is comprised of the philosopher kings, whose virtue is wisdom and in whom the intellectual part, thoughtfulness, dominates. Their satisfaction is the highest; their happiness is subject to interruption by the duties of governing. This hardship is, however, alleviated by their affection for the young they teach— and by a more selfish fact: that the city is essentially set up to protect philosophizing, one of quite a few signs that all is not as it seems in this Republic. There are certainly some other odd, even bizarre, aspects to be observed in this political device. Its strict hierarchy of command is inverted in respect to prosperity; the lowest caste, the craftsmen and merchants are the rich ones, the warriors are allowed no wealth. At the end of the books on the construction and the deconstruction of this city, we’re told outright that it is “a model laid up in heaven” for anyone to look at who “wishes to found himself; he’ll practice its politics only and no other” (592b; italics mine). In other words, we really have all along been participating in soulconstruction rather than city-construction. But oddest is the notion that the governors of this “fair city,” the philosopher kings, don’t want to rule it—indeed, this reluctance is a criterion of fitness. In fact, the education is set up so as to cancel political ambition—indeed, to capture the love of future kings for another realm, to alienate them from the earthly city. For they are to have a carefully graduated program of learning, elevating them beyond the world of appearances into the world of forms, the world of pure trans-earthly being. That’s why Cicero’s dictum that I began with—about Socrates bringing philosophy down for the heavens to the earth—sounds so, well, inept. In particular, the study that is the capstone of the education, that levers the learner into this world of being and drags him out of the terrestrial slime, is dialectic (531 ff.), of which more in a moment. Now for Socrates—to the astonishment and disgust of a �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN 75 practical statesman like Jefferson, who waded contemptuously through the “whimsies” and “nonsense” of the Republic (to Adams, July 15, 1814) – the study of supra-worldly forms, of beings, is the proper foundation for government. This is especially the case insofar as statesmanship is concerned with the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom. For obviously, to properly locate these in the city, in the civic community, it is necessary to know them. But to know them is not a matter of empirical research but of dialectical (that is, ontological) inquiry, a matter of the study of beings as beings, the study of Being itself. So the education does, after all, have a political purpose—if we agree that ethics, the inculcation and preservation of virtue, is the end of the polis and its politikoi, the civic community and its statesmen. I do not think any contemporary citizen, attached to our Madisonian tradition, can really agree—nor wholly disagree—and that is one of the many reasons why the Republic is indispensable to political inquiry. For it raises the question of justice in this original way: Is justice in the sense of the Republic, as the proper adjustment of the faculties of the soul—in particular the ready subordination of the lower parts to reason—the condition for political unity and civic peace? From this question falls out a whole slew of problems: Can we commit ourselves to a psychology of faculties such as those involved in the Socratic psychic constitution? And if so, is the adjustment of the functions and their subordination to reason a persuasive analysis of psychological soundness? And if so, does it follow that the adjustment is a political—or even a social—task? And if so, can a democracy produce government wise enough to accomplish these psychic adjustments, to induce virtue? Before going on to the Statesman, I want to return to Rousseau: Is the real business of the Republic indeed education, rather than politics? Socrates never says so explicitly, nor can he, since the program there presented is not just an education for leadership loosely speaking, but very specifically the education of kings— and, as Socrates makes very clear, of queens (540c). It is an education very specifically geared to the Republic’s polis—although it will, amazingly, become the general model of higher, liberal education, lasting until the middle of the last century. �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Nevertheless, I think Rousseau is right. Indeed, some aspects of this “fair city” have been politically and socially realized: the equality of men and women and (to some extent) the community of marriage partners and children. But by and large it has remained, blessedly, “a pattern laid up in heaven,” for it has its repulsive aspects. Its educational program, on the other hand, has, as I said, cast loose and become viable even in a democracy, because what is nowadays called its elitism is not an intellectually integral part of this kind of learning. In fact, the college where my two translation partners and I teach, St. John’s College, is a remarkably close incarnation of it, and it revels in its intellectual egalitarianism. That is one more element in an argument that political justice is not the actually intended topic of the Republic. So now to the dialogue called The Statesman, a conversation to which Socrates only listens. Here, at one point, things become startlingly explicit. Near the very middle of the conversation the stranger makes an announcement under the form of a rhetorical question asked in that throwaway tone that alerts the reader of dialogues to a crucial turn. It concerns the ostensible search for the true statesman. “Has it been proposed,” he asks, “for the sake of this man himself rather than for our becoming more dialectical about all things” (285d)? And the answer is: plainly for learning to think dialectically. We thought we were learning about governing well; it turns out we are involved in a logical training exercise using a universally applicable technique—dialectic, the expertise of dividing and collecting subjects by terms. Socrates is, once more, not a participant in this conversation, and this dialectic is not quite his dialectic. His dialectic was a way by which apt students, through being questioned cleverly and answering carefully, had their opinions, their mere assumptions about the way things are, demolished and then reconstituted, so that they might be led up into a solid knowledge of the true sources of these things. It was, in short, an ascending way of learning. The stranger’s dialectic is a method that works the other way around. From a tacitly assumed overview of the whole, the accomplished dialectician makes divisions (diaireseis). When he has arrived at what will in later time (when this method has turned �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN 77 into the technique of classification) be called the “lowest species,” he goes back up, making a collection of terms. These add up to a definition. Many of our students begin by thinking that that is what Socrates does when he philosophizes—he makes definitions. Of course a collection of terms is not what Socrates looks for when he asks, say, the question, “What is justice?”—but it is a preparation for an answer. Is definition-making, however, what the Elean Stranger believes to be the profitable end product of the dialectic for which the statesman is only an example? No, nothing so unsubtle, as I’ll try to show in a minute. Not that this more subtle use of division is likely to have satisfied the auditing Socrates. We three translators of the Statesman express this sense of his skepticism by our assignment of the last speech of the dialogue. Someone says: “Most beautifully . . . you’ve completed for us the kingly man, stranger, and the statesman.” Now the stranger’s interlocutor in the Statesman is a young man who is also called Socrates. There is some question among scholars whether the older or the younger Socrates speaks this valedictory line. We thought our Socrates, the older one, couldn’t have thought it, and so he didn’t say it. Here is what the stranger does with the dialectical art of division. First, the whole dialogue is a composition of divisions. To see its handsome design, that of a tapestry, it is helpful to work through its dialectical episodes and the way they are sewn together, like the pieces of a figured robe. The beauties of this dialogue are not imaginatively visual but logically structural; this text is a texture. But this cloaklike characteristic is not just a stylistic formalism. It signals that this new dialectic is a craft that produces practical results. Its physical exemplification, and the great metaphor of the dialogue, is weaving, cloak-making in particular. And making intertwined, protective, enveloping compositions turns out to be the royal art, the discerning and composing craft of the statesman. This is no transcendentally derived wisdom, but a technical expertise. For the subject of the Statesman, as contrasted with the Republic, is unambiguously political; it is concerned with human herds. However, from the vantage point of the king of �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW crowds, of herds, the internal relations disposing the soul of an individual human being, which are the concern of the Republic, recede; they lie below the royal oversight. And with that distance diminishes the interest in justice, which was, after all, the right relation of the soul’s parts. So justice is indeed no big concern of the statesman, be it of the man or of the dialogue named after him. So the statesman, who is, thus, not a philosopher king but an expert ruler, sees each soul from afar as displaying one permanent characteristic. My colleague Peter Kalkavage will point out the exceedingly interesting consequences for statesmanship of what he discerns and what, again as a consequence, true statesmanship must be. It is, its royal denomination notwithstanding, an expertise much closer, I think, to our idea of politics than the philosophical rule of the Republic. Then what happens to the stranger’s startling claim, with which I began my remarks on the Statesman? How can the dialogue’s real purpose be an exercise in dialectic when it will be shown to be so precise and practical a doctrine about managing multitudes? Well, the Statesman is neatly reflexive. It is, one might say, a self-reentrant dialogue. For by relentless dialectical division the stranger establishes the precise location of the statesman in the whole economy of crafts and sciences, materials and products, regimes and rulers, virtues and vices. And in the course of doing that, he is indeed also giving a lesson in the method of division to young Socrates. It may even be that his teaching actually has more effect on a finer young man who is also present, a second silent listener, one of old Socrates’s two favorite partners in inquiry, namely Theaetetus (the other being Glaucon in the Republic). Then here’s the denouement: The art of dialectic, the ability to distinguish perspicaciously the parts of any subject, an art for which weaving is a very precise figure, is the true statesman’s expertise. Statesmanship, then, is the craft of setting up a civic framework, a loom upon which the citizens of various temperaments, here the warp and woof, are interwoven into a cloaklike �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BRANN 79 texture, which represents at once the body politic and its protective cover, as if to say that a well-interlaced citizenry will wrap itself in its own constitution for security. On this conclusion old Socrates may, after all, have smiled. For among the Greeks weaving is always a women’s art, and that women might match men as rulers is a teaching of his Republic. So ends the Statesman, a dialogue that sets forth a doctrine of governing which requires an expertise for which participation in the dialogue is itself the training. �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Reflections on Justice in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov Chester Burke The last book of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is entitled “A Judicial Error” because Dmitri Karamazov, the eldest Karamazov brother, is incorrectly found guilty of murdering his father Fyodor. Nearly all the spectators in the packed courtroom are stunned by the verdict, despite the fact that most of them had assumed that Dmitri had indeed committed the murder. Only his brother Alyosha, his recently captivated love Grushenka, and his other brother Ivan are certain of Dmitri’s evidence—Alyosha, because of the innocence on Dmitri’s face when he said he hadn’t done the deed; Grushenka, because “Dmitri isn’t the sort of man who would lie” (683);* and Ivan, despite his loathing of Dmitri, because he visits Fyodor’s illegitimate son Smerdyakov the night before the trial and forces him to confess to the murder. Later that night, Smerkdyakov commits suicide. Ivan’s testimony becomes worthless when, suffering from brain fever, he goes mad on the witness stand, claiming that the only witness to this stunning revelation is the Devil. The first chapter of this final book is entitled “The Fatal Day.” In the paragraph that concludes the previous chapter, Alyosha says to himself, “Yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s testimony; but he will go and testify . . . God will win!” (655) Having heard these three powerful words, “God will win,” the reader is thrown into the human drama, that is, the trial. How can the truth emerge from such a gigantic public spectacle, in which every one of the participants has entered with his private opinions and passions? Dostoevsky characterizes the spectators, standing “in a closely packed lump, shoulder to shoulder” (657), as having been * Page references are to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2002). �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE 81 enflamed by impatience. The women favor Dmitri’s acquittal and the men, many of whom have been personally insulted by Dmitri, wish to see him punished. The prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, trembles at having to oppose a famous Petersburg defense attorney, whom he feels has overshadowed him since their younger days in Petersburg. He believes that everything is at stake in this trial, both for himself and for Russia. Fetyukovich, the famous defense attorney, exudes an air of confidence. The reader may feel a little uneasy when Dostoevsky describes his eyes as small and inexpressive: “his physiognomy had something sharply birdlike about it, which was striking” (660-61). The material evidence with which the reader is so familiar, wrenched from its living context, is on display in the middle of the courtroom. The prosecutor, known for (and sometimes ridiculed for) his passion for psychology, puts together an account that seems to make sense of all the facts, even though the defense attorney, having digested the situation with astonishing rapidity, is able to discredit many of the witnesses. Readers take delight in this passage, because they have previous knowledge of these witnesses and the ugliness of their souls. The prosecutor tells the compelling story of Dmitri finishing “a poem” (717) that culminates in the murder of his father, the stealing of 3,000 rubles, and running off madly to find his lover Grushenka, only to relinquish her to a man who abused her as a young girl. The defense attorney then accuses the prosecutor of writing his own novel, of being a psychological poet whose psychology is two-pronged and therefore equally capable of proving a given statement of fact and its opposite. He masterfully shows that only the totality of the facts— and not a single one of them in isolation—speak against his client. Though he claims to demonstrate the limitations of psychology, the defense attorney is in fact a far better psychologist than the prosecutor. He argues persuasively that there was no money, no robbery, and no murder—at least no murder committed by Dmitri. Seeing far deeper into Smerdyakov’s soul than most, the defense attorney gives good reasons why Smerdyakov could have killed his natural father. �82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Only the reader has the privilege of having witnessed Dmitri, filled with loathing in front of his hateful father, pulling out a brass pestle from his pocket—and then not using it. Why didn’t Dmitri kill his father? “God was watching over me then,” Dmitri used to say afterwards. This is another reference to a divine intervention that seems to have no place in a court of justice. (Recall Alyosha’s “God will win!”) Due to Fetyukovich’s skill in destroying each part of the whole accusation, there is, however, a reasonable chance that Dmitri will either be released or at worst given minimal punishment. But in the chapter entitled “A Sudden Catastrophe,” Dmitri’s spurned lover Katya, ready to sacrifice her honor for his brother Ivan, who has just been carried out of the court suffering an attack of brain fever, comes forward with a letter from Dmitri that she has been withholding. She presumably intends to use the letter to save Dmitri, despite the fact that he has stolen 3,000 rubles from her—the entirety of which she thinks he has spent in a single drunken binge with her rival Grushenka that night before the murder. In this letter, written just two days before the murder, Dmitri says that he will get hold of the money he has stolen from her, even if he has to rob and kill his father to do so. The reader knows that Katya asked Dmitri to send these 3,000 rubles to a relative in Moscow, though she fully believed at the time that he would spend the entire sum on Gurschenka. Two other facts must be remembered: 1) before the events of the novel, Dmitri lent Katya 5,000 rubles to cover up a financial indiscretion committed by her father; 2) Dmitri (who did not in fact steal the 3,000 rubles from his father) spent only half of Katya’s 3,000 rubles during his wild night with Grushenka. He retained the rest in a packet tied around his chest, uncertain whether to return the unspent half to Katya (thus removing half of his disgrace), or to keep it for the opportunity of running off with Grushenka. It is only natural that the reader should be confused by the intricate adding and subtracting of monetary sums. Dostoevsky, always in need of money himself, deftly uses sums of money to show how human beings struggle to regulate equality, honor, pride, and justice among themselves. �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE 83 But back to the letter. This suddenly revealed document, an apparent blueprint of the murder, gives “mathematical significance” (619) to the prosecutor’s case. And though the words “mathematical significance” are a clear signal to readers of Dostoevsky that whatever is certain in this way is certainly not true, it is equally certain that a jury will be very unlikely to yield a verdict of not guilty in the face of such evidence. Aware of the difficulty of achieving a verdict of not guilty, and despite having just produced his own “demonstration” that there was no money, robbery, or murder, Fetyukovich (whose name in Russian suggests the words “jerk, drip, sourpuss”) addresses the jury, changing his tone and his approach: “I have it in my heart to speak out something more to you, for I also sense a great struggle in your hearts and minds. . . Forgive my speaking of your hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end.” “I do not renounce one iota of what I have just said, but suppose I did, suppose for a moment that I, too, agreed with the prosecution that my unfortunate client stained his hands with his father’s blood” (741). This begins the second part of Fetyukovich’s summary to the jury. Dostoevsky entitles the chapter “An Adulterer of Thought,” without any comment on this astonishing title. Since the corpse of a father is the only fact in the case that could speak against his client, Fetyukovich tries to show that Fyodor was not at all a father. He masterfully summarizes the most poignant scenes in the novel in order to paint Fyodor in the worst possible light. He shows why it would have been completely natural for Dmitri to have beaten and killed his father (who is in truth not a father) with the fatal pestle (which the reader knows was not even the real murder weapon) without intention or premeditation. “Such a murder is not a murder. Such a murder is not a parricide, either. Such a murder can be considered parricide only out of prejudice” (747). The attorney then invokes a passage from the gospel according to Matthew, and compares Dmitri’s plight to that of Christ. The most terrible punishment, but the only one by which Dmitri’s soul will be saved, would be for the jury to overwhelm him with mercy. Only then would �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Dmitiri— horrified by his deed—which, according to the defense attorney’s earlier argument, Dmitri had not done)—realize that he was guilty before all people. Fetyukovich “adulterates thought” by fabricating a dangerous novel (“novel upon novel,” shouts the prosecutor [748]), a concoction that is all the more wicked because it is a false image of Father Zosima’s teaching. And, more important, it is the opposite of what Dostoevsky has spent his whole life attempting to articulate. Only the prosecutor, “breathless, inarticulate, confused” and “shaking with emotion” (748), has the courage to respond. Of course his response will receive no sympathy from the mass of spectators, especially the mothers and fathers, who have amazingly enough become enraptured by the words of the adulterer. Though the prosecutor is vain and beaten down by a failed life, though his superficial psychology prevents him from understanding the motives and actions of the human beings right in front of him, he knows with certainty that one cannot kill and not kill at the same time, that one cannot praise and immortalize a man who murders his father, and that a false image of Christ and religion have been fabricated by his talented competitor. The reader is easily irritated by the just response of this pathetic man (the prosecutor will himself die soon after the trial) to a powerful and dangerous speech that is arguing for a new understanding of human justice, one that includes a notion of mercy which could only be found in God or in the heart of an individual human being. I have pointed out that Dmitri, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney have all been accused of acting out novels. By his subtle but powerful use of chapter titles, Dostoevsky himself takes the harshest stance toward the defense attorney. The Russian word for “adulterer” (or “fornicator”) is a variation of the word for “lover.” Fetyukovich, who claims to be able to feel “invisible threads that bind the defense attorney and the jury together,” whom everyone, including himself, expects to pull off some kind of miracle by proving Dmitri innocent when he is guilty, ends up by “proving” Dmitri guilty when in truth he is innocent. His call to regenerate not only Dmitri but also Russia herself is met with rapture and enthusiastic weeping among the spectators, and the reader too is likely to be �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE 85 sympathetic. When he pleads with the jury to show mercy to Dmitri even if he did kill his father, he shows himself not to be a seeker of truth but to be unjust—indeed, an adulterer of thought. He is unjust because he portrays Christ as an enlightened and compassionate liberal rather than the Son of God, who died in order to save human beings from the power of sin. We can detest Fyodor Karamazov in the depths of our souls. We can pity the children that he brought into the world. We can wish that he were dead and wonder why such a man is alive. But we cannot excuse the man who killed him. That man, Smerdyakov, hangs himself from a nail on his wall with a brief note saying that he alone is responsible for his own death. This extreme isolation is what Dostoevsky sees as the dreadful future of a world that denies God. Instead of hanging an icon or image of God on the wall, we will end up destroying ourselves. Dostoevsky the novelist, committed to real justice and truth, cannot allow the jury to be won over by this adultery of thought, even though what results is a momentary injustice in a court of law. By entitling the next chapter “Our Peasants Stood Up for Themselves,” he shows that he is pleased that the peasants (who comprise half of the jury) are not seduced by this highest and ultimately most dangerous form of seduction. Though their verdict was incorrect, the peasants understood a deeper truth and rightly stood up for it. Their hearts rejected false novels. But the real novel ends several months after Dmitri receives his sentence. It ends with the burial of a ten-year old schoolboy, Ilyusha. Dmitri had gravely insulted Ilyusha’s father, a retired and drunken officer known as the Captain, by dragging him out of a tavern and across town, pulling him by his wispy beard. Desperate to provide for his family—his wife and older daughter are crippled and ill—the Captain was employed by Fyodor, assisting him in shady financial dealings. One of them was to buy up Dmitri’s promissory notes so as to bring him to financial disgrace. Seeing his father publicly humiliated, the young Ilyusha begged Dmitri to forgive his father, “rushing up to everyone asking them to defend him, but everyone laughed” (192). When Ilyusha’s schoolmates heard about the incident they teased him mercilessly. The next day �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW he angrily threw stones at them, but he himself received a great blow to the chest. He came down with a fever, and died two days after Dmitri was sentenced for the murder he did not commit. Given Dostoevsky’s masterful juxtaposition of scenes and events, it would be easy to connect Dmitri’s punishment with the death of this young boy. As the proud and angry Katya says to Alyosha, “Dmitri committed a rash and unjust act, a very ugly act” (193). She commissions Alyosha to give a large sum of money to the Captain in recompense for this act. The attempt at justice (in truth Katya, herself recently injured by Dmitri, considers herself a fellow sufferer) does not work at first. The Captain initially takes the money, imagining a way out of abject poverty for himself and his miserable family. But suddenly, shaking and tearful, flings down the money at Alyosha’s feet. He will eventually take not only this money, but much more from the generous, though proud, Katya. But his son will nonetheless die and the doctors will not be able to cure his family. It was not unlikely that the previously consumptive Ilyushka’s life would have been short. But that is not the point. All of us are continually doing harm to our fellow human beings. While it does not seem possible that any system of justice could regulate the damages, we humans are always trafficking amongst one another, exchanging goods and money in an attempt to achieve some kind of fairness. “Each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all” (289). This puzzling statement, lying powerfully in the background of the novel, is said repeatedly by Father Zosima throughout the novel. I have tried to show that Fetyukovich’s version is a dangerous adulteration of this claim. Dmitri, Ivan, Smerdyakov, and even Alyosha can be held responsible for the death of their father. Yet only one human being killed Fyodor and it is the responsibility of the legal system to find and punish that human being. Dmitri had previously thrown his father to the floor and brutally kicked him, suspecting that Fyodor was hiding Grushenka from him. Though drunk, he had written the damning letter. Ivan had tacitly given Smerdyakov permission to kill Fyodor by leaving town on the day of the murder; even worse, he had spent �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | BURKE 87 much of the night before his departure listening for sounds in the house, unconsciously anticipating and desiring that someone would come and kill his dreadful father. Alyosha, distracted by the death of his hero Zosima, and overwhelmed with grief by the dishonor of Zosima’s rotting corpse, had forgotten to keep in contact with Dmitri. But Smerdyakov, having spent his entire life serving a family whose members he despised—except for Ivan, whose respect he craved—understood the character of these Karamazovs, at least in its baser aspects. He was able to set up a scenario in which it would be possible for him to kill Fyodor, who trusted him, and then steal the 3,000 rubles for which Dmitri had claimed he would risk all. With this money, Smerdyakov imagined that he could start a new life. And only Ivan could get Smerdyakov to confess—Ivan, who, though he hated bitterly both his father Fyodor and his brother Dmitri, had a conscience deeper than he himself knew. During their conversation about the murder, Smerdyakov comes to understand the emptiness and dishonesty of Ivan’s thoughts, though he understands nothing of Ivan’s heart. And in that understanding about his former idol, he gives up on life, which had never offered him anything but pain and misery. Smerdyakov—far cleverer and wiser than even the most observant reader could suspect— sees that Ivan is more like his father than any of the brothers. The chain of responsibility is endless. Grushenka says in court, “It all happened because of me” (682)—claiming responsibility both for Fyodor’s and Dmitri’s falling in love with her. Shortly thereafter, she says of Katerina, who had tried to charm her out of loving Dmitri, “She is the cause of everything” (683). And at the time of Dmitri’s arrest, Grushenka, hearing that Dmitri had supposedly killed his father, had cried, “I am the guilty one, first and foremost, I am the guilty one!” (457) But everyone gets the problem of justice wrong, precisely because it is impossible to see clearly into the heart of another human being. Father Zosima immediately understands the danger looming before the Karamazov family in the first chapters of the novel. That is why he bows before Dmitri and encourages Alyosha to look after him. But Zosima cannot control the outcomes stemming from human nature. He can only preach “active love”—a �88 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW difficult and profound concept derserving of another talk—and he can pray. While I do not claim that the following is a solution to the problem of human justice, I’d like to end this talk with a quotation from Father Zosima: If it were not for Christ’s Church, indeed there would be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing and no punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a mechanical one . . . , which only chafes the heart in most cases, but a real punishment, the only frightening and appeasing punishment which lies in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience (64). �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE Peaceniks and Warmongers: The Disunity of Virtue in Plato’s Statesman Peter Kalkavage 89 I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, in Plato’s Statesman. Perhaps at risk as well is the wholeness of logos or discourse. Plato’s mysterious stranger from Elea delights in division. In the Sophist he uses the method of dividing genera or kinds to pin down the elusive professor of wisdom. In the Statesman he uses this same method, with some modifications, to show the genuine statesman and king “naked and alone by himself” (304a). But the stranger isn’t all about logic. Like Socrates, he enjoys images of all sorts and regularly avails himself of their curious power to illuminate. In the Statesman, soon after the great myth about reversed becoming, the stranger announces the need for paradigms in inquiry. He tells young Socrates that they would do well in their search if they came up with a paradigm that would, in its small and humble way, help to reveal the magisterial form, the eidos, of the true king (277d). This paradigm, as we soon hear, is weaving (279b). Politics is the master-art that weaves together all the other arts in the city and bends them to its high purpose. But it is not until late in the dialogue, almost at the end, that the precise meaning of the paradigm is explained. The true statesman, we discover, knows how to interweave courageous and moderate types of souls. To use the language of the paradigm, he combines the warp or hard woollen threads, which resemble courageous natures, with the woof or soft threads, which resemble moderate natures. Properly combined, these human threads produce “the web of statesmanly action” (311B). This web is the wisely constituted polis—the beautiful end of politics conceived as a productive art. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW But the path to this beautiful end requires an account that the stranger calls “somewhat astonishing”—astonishing because it proceeds from the view that virtue is not a happy unity, in which different portions of virtue are “friendly” to one another, as the many say and as Socrates suggests in other dialogues. On the contrary, virtue has within it, and seems even to be defined by, a war between courage and moderation. The stranger is unsparing in his formulation. The two virtues, he says, “have a deep-seated enmity toward one another and maintain an oppositional faction in many of the things that are” (306b). The stranger, we must note, does not ask Socrates’ question: What is virtue? Instead, he posits an opposition between two forms of virtue. This opposition, more than anything else in the dialogue, defines the political art. To illustrate his point, the stranger urges young Socrates to consider the two forms (eidē) that come to light when we praise things for their beauty—various doings and makings, whether of bodies or of souls (306c). We praise things that manifest “keenness and swiftness.” These can be the things themselves or their images— the swift movement of a runner, for example, or a vase painting depicting such a runner. The name for what underlies such praise is andreia, “courage” or “manliness.” This is the form we are admiring when we praise the keen and the swift. But we also praise what the stranger calls “the gentle form of generation.” We praise as beautiful those actions and thoughts that are quiet, modulated, slow, and careful. The name for this form is orderliness or composure, kosmiotēs (307b) It refers to moderation as the virtue of keeping things measured and undisturbed. We think of things like a smooth transition in a piece of music or a soothing tone of voice. To sum up, we are thoroughly contradictory in our praise of beauty. We praise as beautiful those things that have a manly look, and we also praise the look that is opposed to manliness. Furthermore, we blame as ugly both what is opposed to manliness and what is opposed to the opposite of manliness, that is, what is opposed to moderation. We do all this, we should note, not because we are inept but because beauty itself is self-opposed. Shifting now from things that display opposed virtues to the very natures of courage and moderation, the stranger refers to these �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE 91 as “looks [ideas] destined . . . to be split apart in hostile faction.” He then turns to the people who have these natures in their souls, not by choice or upbringing but by nature (307b-c). Faction is here described as a feud between warring families. Members of each family judge the beautiful and the good solely in terms of their family virtue, and hate members of the other family simply because they are in the other family. This love of Same and hate of Other blinds each family to the common, if problematic, eidos of virtue that both families share. Each family, by virtue of its virtue, is blind to the virtue and beauty of the other. As a consequence, members of neither family really know their own virtue, since they do not know why and in what manner their characteristic virtue is beautiful and good. Because of this blindness and the mutual hate it engenders, the two families, though they live in cities, may be said to occupy, in Hobbes’s phrase, a pre-political “state of nature” with respect to virtue. As if this situation weren’t bad enough, the stranger goes on to say that the family feud between noble types is child’s play compared with the disease that is “the most hateful of all for cities” (307d). It is here that the stranger shows why the two forms of virtue, and the two opposed types of soul, constitute the central problem of politics. Indeed, he demonstrates the urgent need of the political art in the Reign of Zeus, the era in which the world has been abandoned by its divine shepherd and guide. The stranger gives a devastating portrait of what happens to cities that fall prey to the ethos of peace at any cost. He refers, paradoxically, to the eros for composure (307e)—the only appearance of this word in the dialogue—as if to say: “Look at these people, young Socrates. To themselves they seem all calm and reserved, but in fact they have a disordered desire for order. Why, they are as crazy as a man in love!” Perhaps there is also the suggestion that eros, for the stranger, is to be associated with what is soft or tender rather than with the sort of tough love that Diotima describes in the Symposium (203c-e). In any case, because of their unmeasured love of order, these people slip unwittingly into an unwarlike condition and raise their children to be similarly unwarlike. The condition spreads through the city like an infection and becomes �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW more virulent with each generation. Since unmixed moderation cannot accommodate itself to the aggression of an enemy, cannot rouse citizens to display a decisive and manly spirit when this is needed, the city eventually loses its freedom and becomes enslaved. The very same result awaits the macho city that wants war at any cost and is driven by thymos, spiritedness, rather than eros. The rage for courage leads citizens and rulers to be constantly tensing up their cities for opportunities to display what they wrongly take to be the whole of virtue. Before too long, the city that idolizes courage eventually picks a fight with the wrong adversary, an enemy it can’t vanquish, and so is vanquished in turn. Like the peace-loving city, the war-driven city ends in destruction and slavery (308a). Now we normally think of faction, stasis, as the strife between two parties within a single city. But the stranger’s view in the present context is very different. The political problem par excellence is, for him, not violent heterogeneity (for example, champions of oligarchy vs. champions of democracy) but virtuous homogeneity, the idolatry of one of two opposed virtues, either courage or moderation. To be sure, there is faction in its usual sense within the form of virtue. This is the eidetic situation, known only to the philosophic statesman. But the real-life political problem occurs when the two naturally opposed virtues are not simultaneously present. Hence, as the stranger sees it, the devastating political outcome of the principle “likes attract and opposites repel” is enacted on the stage of inter-polis relations, when a city suffers destruction at the hands of another city rather than from internal discord. The stranger is surely not unaware of the evils of faction in this latter sense—the horrors, for example, that Thucydides describes in the case of Corcyra (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 3.82). But for the stranger this is not the central political problem, which has its source in the eidetic opposition between the beautifully tough and the beautifully gentle that pervades “many of the things that are.” The problem is not vice, or human nature simply, or intense disagreement over which regime is best, but virtue, which is by nature turned against itself. �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE 93 We might try to make sense of the stranger’s unsettling account by citing Aristotle’s distinction between natural and ethical virtue, the latter being guided by the intellectual virtue of phronēsis or practical wisdom, which allows the virtuous individual to avoid excess and deficiency by perceiving the mean (Nichomachean Ethics, 6.13). This is helpful to an extent, but it takes the sting out of the stranger’s insight into why virtue is a problem. The stranger would no doubt agree with Aristotle’s opinion that virtuous dispositions, when left to themselves, are dangerous, and that they need practical wisdom in order to be reliable virtues. But far more important to the stranger is the primordial dyad of courage and moderation—the dyad that defines the task of the political art. That task is not how to interweave a multiplicity of virtues in order to make them one but how to unite two naturally opposed virtues so that they may complement rather than repel one another and contribute their distinctive powers to the political web. These are toughness and flexibility, quickness and caution, forcefulness and grace. It is tempting to say that the problem of politics, for the stranger, is that of knowing how to interweave the male and the female forms of ethical beauty. It is true that each virtue, by the stranger’s account, must apply to both men and women. How else could one trait come to dominate a city’s population through marriage and procreation? Nevertheless, the manliness of courage strongly suggests as its correlate the femininity of moderation. If we admit this sexual distinction in the case of the two virtues, it becomes interesting, to say the least, that the paradigm for political wisdom in the dialogue is the feminine art of weaving. This may be Plato’s way of showing that, of the two opposed virtues, moderation, as the love of order and peace, is closer than courage to justice and wisdom. It may also show Plato’s philosophic preference for music over gymnastic, since weaving engages in deft material harmonization. In good statesmanship, as in philosophy, grace trumps force to become the greatest force of all. This is true even for our tough-minded, methodically rigorous stranger, who tells young Socrates that the statesman and good lawgiver knows how to instil right opinions in others “by the muse of kingship” (309d). �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW The stranger proceeds to outline the education and nurture that will generate the needful thing—the artful synthesis of virtuous opposites in a coherent political whole. This whole, this web, in order to be beautiful, requires beautiful threads that have been previously prepared by means of a subsidiary art. Statesmanship, like all compositional art, is elitist: only the best materials will do. And so, there must be an artful way to determine who is fit for an ethical-political education, and who is not. This consists in observing children at play in order to see which ones show signs of a virtuous disposition, whether of courage or moderation. The stranger lays special emphasis on those who prove to be uneducable. He describes them as “violently driven off course by a bad nature into godlessness and arrogance and injustice” (308E-309A). The political art, here seen in its harsh and decisive aspect, casts them out “by punishing them with death penalties and exiles and the greatest dishonors.” And those who “wallow in ignorance and much baseness” are put into the class of slaves. The stranger at this point explicitly connects the union of manly and moderate natures with the intertwining of warp and woof (309b), in effect closing the paradigm-web he began to weave earlier in the dialogue. The city, in order to be a durable garment suited to the protection of all those it embraces, needs both kinds of human threads: the hard and the soft. This unity of opposites requires a two-tiered system of civic education that produces two sorts of “bonds”—one higher, one lower. The higher bond is said to be divine, since it applies to the part of the soul that is “eternalborn,” the part that thinks and holds opinions. The lower, human bond is marriage, which applies to what the stranger calls “the animal-born part,” that is, the part of the soul that has to do with bodily desire. The bonds are produced successively: first the higher, then the lower. Once the higher bond of right opinion is in place, the stranger asserts, the lower one isn’t difficult to bring about (310a). This optimism presupposes that the divine bond is strong enough to overcome the greatest of all human drives—the erotic attraction that human beings have for one another and that connects them, as we hear in the Symposium, with the striving for immortality (207a). �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE- 95 The higher tier of the educational process aims at inculcating “genuinely true and also steadfast opinions about beautiful and just and good things” (309c). These opinions are implanted in both types of noble individuals. In other words, the inculcation of “one opinion about what’s beautiful and just and good” supersedes the idolatry of a single virtue and overcomes the natural impulse to welcome one’s like and shun one’s unlike. Moderate and courageous individuals will share the opinion that it is good for the city that they mingle, and bad if they don’t. In other words, they will learn to respect, if not love, a virtue higher than either courage or moderation—the virtue of justice. They will believe that they and their respective virtues are threads that must be woven together to form the political web. I note in passing that the education the stranger describes is based entirely on the cultivation of habits and right opinion. There is no philosophic education for guardians, no turning of the soul from becoming to being, as there is in the Republic. The stranger’s version of a city in speech may be the work of a philosophic statesman, but it does not appear that this statesman, though possessing kingly science, is in fact a king in this city. The stranger dwells on how the higher sort of education, which aims at the divine bond, tempers the excess in the two opposed virtues. If a manly individual takes hold of true opinions about what is good and beautiful and just, he will “grow tame and in this way be most willing to commune with just things.” Without these opinions, he will degenerate into a beast (309e). Similarly, the order-loving individual who holds these same true opinions will become “genuinely moderate and intelligent,” and the one who doesn’t will rightly be called simpleminded or foolish. The establishment of these true opinions takes place through laws and customs that apply only to those naturally suited for an ethical education. This education, the stranger asserts, is the “drug” prescribed by the ever-vigilant art of politics. It is the antidote for onesided virtue. At last we reach the stranger’s account of marriage, the “human bond” implanted by the political art. This bond, though lower than the other, is crucial, since the city’s continuance and well-being �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW depend on procreation through sexual union. We should recall that it is not courage and moderation per se that bring about political downfall but rather the gradual build-up and concentration of a single virtue through sexual generation over the course of time. As the stranger approaches his culminating definition, he gets down to the nitty-gritty of why people marry. He dismisses those who marry for wealth or power and focuses on those whose care is family and children. These are the people who marry, or who arrange the marriages of their sons and daughters, for the serious (if wrong) reason that they always choose partners who are of their own family when it comes to virtue and eschew members of the opposite family. The political art counteracts this error, goes against nature, by compelling members of each “family” to overcome their natural repugnance for the other and to marry against type. This will prevent the spread of a single trait by producing hybrids that combine both virtuous types. The stranger does not say what home life will be like for married opposites, nor does he care. The only thing that matters, from a political standpoint, is that the virtues are mixed rather than kept separate. Of course, genesis in the Reign of Zeus is unpredictable: there will always be children whose nature reduplicates that of, say, a courageous mother rather than a moderate father. And so, the political art must exercise perpetual vigilance and continually oversee marriage and sexual union. The war on nature must go on. The needful union of opposed virtues must be enforced at the highest level of the city—that of the rulers. The stranger acknowledges that it is possible for one individual to have both virtues (311a). The monarchic city must choose this sort of individual as its supervisor. If more than one ruler is required—if the city is aristocratic—then the ruling class must have both kinds of virtuous individuals. The reason is that moderate rulers are cautious, just, and conservative, but they lack, the stranger says, the needful acuity and vigor, which would be supplied by the courageous among the ruling class. The stranger ends his “astonishing account” of virtue on a negative note: “And it’s impossible for all things having to do with cities to turn out beautifully in private and in public when �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | KALKAVAGE 97 these characters [courage and moderation] aren’t present as a pair” (311b). Only one thing remains: the final definition of the web that is produced by the true statesman’s knowledge. Will this web, as the stranger glowingly describes it, ever be woven in deed as it is in speech? From the stranger’s perspective, it does not matter. The goal was to define statesmanship solely in terms of the statesman’s knowledge or science, apart from whether he actually rules, founds, reforms, or advises (259b). What, then, does the statesman know? Not, it seems, how to lead individuals to virtue, but how to temper the virtue they already have by nature. The statesman’s wisdom is the wisdom of defence. That is why the stranger tends to dwell more on bad things to be avoided and feared than on good things to be sought and aspired to. Politics is a defensive art. It is embodied in the web that ends the dialogue. Strange to say, when we finally find the statesman “naked and alone,” he turns out to be a maker of garments, which earlier in the dialogue were placed in the class of defences (279c280a). He is the maker of the web that is both the body politic and the political cloak that defends the otherwise naked city from its enemies, the virtuous from their monomania and wrong marriages, and all its inhabitants from exposure and need. Perhaps most of all, the political web protects the city from the ravages and uncertainties of time. A good garment is one that wears well. It must protect us from seasonal extremes. The same is true of the political garment, which must defend the city not only during the winter of war and its discontents but also during the summer of peace, prosperity, and inattention. In Plato’s Statesman, politics appears in its true light only when it is seen in the context of the stranger’s cosmic myth about the Reign of Kronos and the Reign of Zeus. The myth compels us to judge the tension-riddled, endangered life we have now by contrasting it with an earlier peaceful life that ended in disappearance rather than old age and death, that had no sex or sexual desire, and that needed neither politics nor clothes. The myth discloses what is most needful for beleaguered humanity in this our Reign of Zeus—the era that depends on the god-like statesman and shepherd �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW because it can no longer depend on a kindly nature and a caretaking god. I suspect that the world for the stranger is, like virtue, fundamentally incoherent. Strictly speaking, there is no kosmos, no permanent world-order that grounds the inherent goodness of the virtues. Instead there are two opposed cosmic eras, two opposed directions of becoming, and two opposed forms of human life and human nature. In the Reign of Zeus—that is, in the realm of politics—the “condition of ancient disharmony,” the tendency toward degenerateness that is woven into the very constitution of the world on account of its bodily being, asserts itself (273c). That is why we need the Promethean powers of method and art—to make order where there is no order. In the Statesman—one of Plato’s fascinating experiments in post-Socratic philosophy—Plato tempts us to consider the grounds and implications of this modern-sounding world-view. �ESSAYS & LECTURES Raskolnikov’s Redemption Nicholas Maistrellis 99 The narrative of Crime and Punishment is very straightforward. An impoverished university student named Raskolnikov plans and commits a murder. The murder accidently turns into a double murder. There follows a sequence of incidents and conversations that reveal the turmoil this act causes in the soul of the criminal. Through two conversations with a young prostitute named Sonya the murderer finally confesses his crime, first to her and then to the authorities. Finally there is an epilogue in which we are told that Raskolnikov is sentenced to a period of imprisonment in Siberia. Sonya follows him to Siberia. Remarkable things happen to him there. Of all the four great novels of Dostoevsky–Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov—it is only in this one that Dostoevsky creates a sustained dialectic with the interior life of one and only one character. Crime, on the other hand, is a theme in all the novels, but it’s only in this one that Dostoevsky focuses single-mindedly on unfolding the nature of crime, together with its causes and effects in the human soul. This makes it particularly relevant to the theme of this conference. However, Dostoevsky is not as interested in criminal justice as he is in the effects of crime, first on the soul of the criminal, and finally, on the whole human community. This doesn’t mean that he ignores justice. In fact, the question of Raskolnikov’s debt to society occupies a large part of the book, especially in the interrogation of Raskolnikov by Porfiry Petrovitch, the investigating detective who suspects very early in the book that Raskolnikov is the murderer, and in the conversations with Sonya, the prostitute who befriends Raskolnikov. Considerations of justice are a dialectical moment in the unfolding of crime, and not the highest moment. By “dialectical moment” I mean that the claims of justice are gathered up and form part of the transformation of the redeemed criminal. These dialectical moments cannot be the highest moment of the transformation. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Now, the claims of justice could be said to be satisfied when the criminal is punished. But Dostoevsky is not interested in punishment as retribution. He thinks it is ineffective. He is interested in punishment only in so far as the demand for it arises in the criminal himself, and results in his redemption. The highest moment is when the criminal acknowledges his crime and asks for forgiveness from the whole human community. Thus, Dostoevsky’s treatment is “psychological,” if it is clear that by psychology one does not mean a putative science of the soul, but an attempt to get to know another human being. In his notebooks on Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky makes the extraordinary claim that it is the crime itself that makes Raskolnikov a moral being. “His moral development begins from the crime itself; the possibility of such questions arises which would not have existed previously.”1 It is impossible in a short paper to do more than give a sketch of this theme, and even this sketch will focus on only a few incidents. Let me begin with Dostoevsky’s account of crime. The commission of a crime, for him, is a sign that the criminal has separated himself from his fellow human beings. It is not the crime that separates the criminal, but some transformation in his soul which causes him to focus his attention entirely on himself. Such transformations are hard to discern. Often, even those closest to the criminal are puzzled about what is going on. Even the criminal himself is not fully aware of what is moving him. He becomes surprised at his own behavior. I think this is Dostoevsky’s reason for believing that ordinary punishment is useless in reforming the criminal. Since the criminal has separated himself from society, he feels that the power of society is arbitrary and that the freedom he has given himself precisely by his separation from his fellows makes retribution merely another act of violence equivalent to his own. He both resents the power of society and despises it. Redemption cannot come from actions done to the criminal; it has to arise in his own soul. The whole novel takes place over the span of two weeks, and the crime occurs at the end of Part I, about three days into the action. In the days leading up to the crime, Raskolnikov has stopped going out. He has stopped seeing his friend Razhumikin, and has �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS 101 stopped communicating with his mother and sister. He has also stopped tutoring students. He has no income. He hasn’t paid his rent for a long time. He spends most of his time sleeping in his room—a horrible garret. He eats only when Natashya, the caretaker, brings him something. He is withdrawing from the world. On the very first page of the novel, the narrator says, “He was so immersed in himself, and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady, but of meeting anyone at all.”2 Very soon, however, we are introduced to an ambiguity in Raskolnikov. At the beginning of the second chapter of Part I, we are told that he “was not used to crowds. . . . But now something suddenly drew him to people.”3 This is the first indication of the doubleness in Raskolnikov’s soul. He separates himself from others, but he cannot do it with his whole soul. Later we will learn that it is this doubleness that makes redemption possible. The sequence of events in Part I leading up to the murder is very important to Dostoevsky’s dialectic, so I will take some time going over them. On the first day, Raskolnikov wakes up, goes out, and almost immediately visits the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, whom he is planning to murder. He pretends he wants to pawn something. Dostoevsky carefully reveals to us Alyona’s poisonous, grasping character. This visit is a rehearsal of the murder, so the murder is committed twice in his soul. He assures himself of the rightness of what he is planning by reminding himself of Alyona’s wickedness. By this he shows the conventional side of his character, which he despises. He then decides that he wants to be with people, and decides to go to the tavern. There he enters into conversation with Marmeladov, a civil servant and a drunkard who is deliberately destroying his own life and his family’s life. Raskolnikov helps bring him home and meets his consumptive wife and hungry children. Marmeladov is the father of Sonya, the fourteenyear-old prostitute with whom Raskolnikov falls in love. When he departs, Raskolnikov leaves behind, without saying anything, most of his money. The narrator makes it clear that Raskolnikov’s own generosity at this moment is unintelligible to him. He returns home and goes to sleep. The next morning, he is given a letter from his mother that re- �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW counts in great detail her numerous trials, including the decision by his sister to marry someone despicable in order to escape poverty. While reading the letter, the narrator tells us, his face was wet with tears, but when he finishes, “it was pale, twisted convulsively, and a heavy bilious, spiteful smile wandered over his lips.”4 Raskolnikov returns to wandering around town, and he encounters a drunk girl whose disheveled clothing had clearly been thrown on her by those who had made use of her before turning her out on the street. She is being followed by a middle-aged, welldressed man whose intentions are obvious. Raskolnikov’s first impulse is to help her. He yells at the man, and calls to a nearby police officer for assistance. He gives the officer some money for a taxi to bring the girl home when they find where she lives. The narrator then tells us, “At that moment it was as if something stung Raskolnikov, as if he had been turned about in an instant.” He immediately says to the police officer, “Forget it! What do you care? Leave her alone. Let him have fun. . . . What is it to you?”5 Raskolnikov now identifies with the presumed violator. He then continues his frantic pilgrimage through St. Petersburg, and finally collapses in complete exhaustion under some bushes, where he falls asleep. He dreams a terrible dream: He is a boy walking with his father and they witness a peasant beating his horse to death, accompanied by cheers from the crowd. He tries to stop the peasant, but he cannot. He asks his father to explain, but he only replies that it is none of their business. When Raskolnikov wakes up, he exclaims, “Thank God it was only a dream!” followed almost immediately by “God! But can it be, can it be that I will really take an axe and hit her on the head and smash her skull . . . slip in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal, and tremble, and hide, all covered with blood . . . with the axe . . . Lord, can it be?”6 He has now identified himself not with the helpless witness of the slaughter but with both the murderer and the victim, and he is horrified. He continues walking and inadvertently discovers by means of an overheard conversation that Alyona’s sister Lizaveta will not be in their apartment at a certain time on the next day. He takes this as a kind of presentiment, and the narrator tells us, “He was not reasoning about anything, and was totally unable to reason; �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS 103 but suddenly felt with his whole being that he no longer had any freedom either of mind or of will, and that everything had been suddenly and finally decided.”7 On the next day, the third day, he kills Alyona with an ax. Unfortunately, Lizaveta comes home unexpectedly, and he has to kill her too. He hurriedly and inexpertly steals some things and returns to his apartment. He falls asleep again. He sleeps for a very long time. This is the account of Raskolnikov’s actions before, during, and after the crime. The main thing I want to point out is Raskolnikov’s extraordinary ambivalence: he affirms the crime and yet is horrified by it. He rejects human contact and yet seeks it. He weeps for his mother and sister, yet he is filled with spite, and so on. He cannot affirm anything in himself whole-heartedly. Dostoevsky has structured the crime quite deliberately. In the first place, he makes Alyona an unsympathetic victim. She is greedy and selfish, and looks it. He does not want our confrontation with the issue of crime to be sentimentalized by feelings of pity for the victim. On the other hand, Lizaveta is a sympathetic character. We find that, although simple-minded, she is kind. In fact, she is friendly with Sonya. Raskolnikov murders her purely for the sake of concealment. So the disunity in Raskolnikov is mirrored in the victims. Also, it is essential to the narrative that there is no evidence against Raskolnikov. Through an improbable series of circumstances, and in spite of his own blunders, Raskolnikov escapes undetected from a building filled with people, and manages to hide what he stole before he is searched. Dostoevsky makes it clear that all this is purely by chance, and even in spite of Raskolnikov doing things that could make it more likely that he would be suspected. Dostoevsky has, in fact, constructed something like a controlled experiment in which all variables except for the feelings and reactions of the criminal are controlled. If Raskolnikov is to be found out, it would have to be by some action of his own. We are ready now to consider the crime from Raskolnikov’s point of view. He initially gives two reasons for the crime: first, he needs the money to advance his career; second, he needs the money to help his mother and sister. He understands both to be humani- �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW tarian reasons. He is a very able man, and if he could advance his career, he could do valuable work for mankind. He is a very able man, and if he could advance his career, he could help his mother and sister—and especially, he could prevent the unfortunate marriage of his sister, which she is clearly undertaking for financial reasons. Contrasted with this is the fact that Alyona is a terrible person, who not only has done nothing good for anyone but, in fact, has done untold harm. Her death would be a blessing. Underlying these reasons is the idea that for the sake of humanity higher human beings can transgress ordinary moral and civil laws. In fact, Raskolnikov accepts the idea that great men do this all the time. His recurrent example is Napoleon. In fact, Raskolnikov apparently wrote an essay, which had been published, on this theme. Dostoevsky does not give his readers the opportunity to read it. Up to this point in Raskolnikov’s internal dialectic, he considers himself a great man like Napoleon or Isaac Newton, a superior person who needs to sacrifice ordinary conventions for some higher good. But the conduct of the crime continually speaks against this. The theft was botched because he didn’t take the time to find the large cache of money in the apartment. He hides and keeps the money and jewels he did manage to steal, ostensibly because it would be too dangerous to spend the money or sell the jewels, but it is clear that its presence horrifies Raskolnikov because it reminds him of what he did. It becomes increasingly clear that the reasons given for the crime do not come close to revealing what is in his soul, or what he thinks is in his soul. This comes out most decisively in what he says to Sonya during their second conversation: “I tormented myself for so many days: would Napoleon have gone ahead or not? It means I must already have felt clearly that I was not Napoleon . . . . I endured all, all the torment of this babble, Sonya, and I longed to shake it all off my back: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone. I didn’t want to lie about it even to myself! It was not to help my mother that I killed—nonsense! I did not kill so that, having acquired means and power, I could become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS killed—killed for myself alone—and whether I would later become anyone’s benefactor, or would spend my life like a spider, catching everyone in my web and sucking the life-sap out of everyone, should at that moment have made no difference to me! . . . And it was not the money above all that I wanted when I killed, Sonya; not the money so much as something else. . . . I know all this now. . . . Understand me: perhaps, continuing on that same path, I would never again repeat that murder. There was something else I wanted to know; something else was nudging my arm. I wanted to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like all the rest, or a man? Would I be able to step over or not! Would I dare to reach down and take, or not? Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right—” “To kill? The right to kill?” Sonya clasped her hands.8 105 What did Raskolnikov mean here when he says that he committed the crime entirely for himself? The question of freedom was very important to Dostoevsky, and especially the claim that the only way for a human being to affirm his freedom is through the commission of a crime for its own sake. It is present in one way or another in all four of his major works. Think, for example, of Nikolai Stavrogin in Demons. Dostoevsky takes this idea very seriously, and, in fact, affirms its truth in some way. It is freedom that Raskolnikov is seeking, First, he is seeking freedom from the bounds of social conventions, and also, most importantly, from what he considers his own sentimental tendencies. This is why he has to separate himself off from other human beings, why this separation is the source of crime. I do not believe that Dostoevsky is saying that all criminals have motives exactly like those of Raskolnikov, but I do think that some separation from mankind is at work in all criminals. Dostoevsky is particularly interested in exploring what happens when someone tries to do this deliberately. After he commits the murder, Raskolnikov is still torn, but now the stakes are much higher than before. Now he has to see if he has the fortitude to affirm his crime, not as a project, but as his deed. This affirmation would be the sign that he was in fact a superior being, a free man, and not an ordinary �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW criminal. But he discovers very quickly that he cannot affirm his crime as he wishes. Sentimental regrets plague him. He becomes ill, and experiences an almost overwhelming desire to confess. It is this desire to confess which that exposes him to the interest of the police. He now begins to feel regret for what he has done, but this is not the regret the reader might expect. He does not regret that he has done something wrong; he regrets that he cannot wholeheartedly affirm his crime. Of course, there is a part of him that does regret the crime profoundly, that knows that he has done a terrible thing; but it takes the the entire rest of the book for Raskolnikov to acknowledge that this other part is truly himself, and not internalized convention. The doubleness we have seen in Raskolnikov’s behavior is now revealed as a doubleness within himself. Through our own ambivalence, which is revealed to us as we read, Dostoevsky shows us that this doubleness is not peculiar to Raskolnikov, but is true of us as well. The novel proper ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, once to Sonya, and once to the police. He has two conversations with Sonya: the first is a rehearsal of his confession; the second is his actual confession. This behavior mirrors the commission of the murder. The confession to the police also has a doubleness about it. He goes to the police station to confess, but at the last moment runs out of the station. When he sees Sonya looking at him from the street, he returns to the police station and confesses. The novel ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, but the motive for it ambiguous. Is Raskolnikov finally filled with true remorse and the desire for repentance, or is he confessing because he has failed to live up to his own view of the murder and himself? Is he simply acknowledging his failure to affirm his crime? The novel inclines us to the latter account, but it is hard to be sure. In the Epilogue (which, by the way, does not appear at all in Dostoevsky’s notebooks), we are told the Raskolnikov was sentenced to eight years hard labor in Siberia. Dostoevsky makes it clear that both spirits in Raskolnikov are still at war during his imprisonment. The narrator tells us that Raskolnikov was suffering not from remorse at the crime he committed, but from “wounded pride” at the fact that he had to confess in order to find “some peace �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS 107 for himself.”9 But this was not repentance. “He did not repent of his crime.”10 By the end of the Epilogue, however, he does repent. How does this happen? I only have time here to give a bare sketch of this transformation. The first and most fundamental element of the change is his love for Sonya. This love began almost from the moment he first met her. This love was not intelligible to him. In fact, it annoys him, and he tries to get rid of it, but it is clear, whether he likes it or not, that she is what ties him to life itself. In Siberia, she becomes indispensible to him. A second element in the change arises after an extraordinary experience he undergoes while in Siberia. He discovers that all his fellow prisoners, who have had much harder lives than he, love life. “He looked at his fellow convicts and was amazed at how they, too, all loved life, how they valued it! It precisely seemed to him that in prison they loved and valued it even more, cherished it even more than in freedom.”11 This experience, combined with his realization of the depth of Sonya’s love, brought about his transformation. Retributive punishment did nothing to heal his soul; but the experience of living with dangerous, desperate men who nevertheless loved life made him whole again. This experience makes him realize the meaning of the murders he committed: they were acts against life itself, and thus against all human beings. In some wholly mysterious way, this experience allows him to discover the love of life in himself. Let me end with a brief epilogue: a story of retribution and penance related by my friend and colleague, Howard Zeiderman, in an essay about the educational work he has been doing the last fifteen years with prisoners at the maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland. A group of prisoners were discussing a drawing as a text: The text was a drawing by Kathe Kolwitz, Prisoners Listening to Music. The three prisoners depicted are skeletal, with hollow eyes—and all seemingly gripped by something. The session was not going very well and I regretted trying to use a text that connected too vividly with their situation. A number of the younger �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW members were clearly repulsed by the drawing. When I asked why a few who spoke often were silent, Larry answered. “It’s scary looking at them. I don’t want that to be me.” As he finished, another prisoner, Craig, a man almost seventy years old who first served time more than fifty years before, laughed. “You don’t understand nothing. They’re not dying. They’re gettin’ past their hungers. It’s the music that makes them pure—like angels. Listen—when I was young down south we had a chaplain. Every day he would play music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn’t listen to it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes a song would last a long time, no words. But then we started to love it. We would listen like in the picture, and we’d remember things. And we’d cry. Sometimes you could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest would cry too. We were all together in it. But then he retired and a new chaplain came. He was different. He wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the case workers. They would ask us questions about ourselves and make us go to classes, programs. They were working on us and the music ended. It was different. It was them against us.” Correction, as Craig sensed, is entirely different from penance.12 NOTES Fyodr Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967), 64. 1 Fyodr Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage, 1993), 3. 2 Ibid., 11. Ibid., 39. 5 Ibid., 49. 6 Ibid., 59. 7 Ibid., 62. 8 Ibid., 419 9 Ibid., 543. 3 4 �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | MAISTRELLIS 10 11 Ibid., 544. Ibid., 545. 109 Howard Zeiderman, “Caged Explorers: The Hunger for Control,” The St. John’s Review 53.2 (2012): 157. 12 �110 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Justice in Plato’s Statesman Eric Salem Ordinary politicians love to talk about justice, and to go on—and on—about all the just things they have done, are doing, or mean to do in the future. We see it all the time—just turn on the television, especially in an election year. But what about the genuine article, the true politikos, the statesman who possesses genuine political science and who practices or could practice the genuine political art? What role does justice play in such a man’s thinking and doing and speaking? A selective glance at our tradition suggests that justice plays a very large role indeed. Consider, for instance, our own founding documents—certainly works of statesmanship of a very high order. The Constitution bluntly proclaims in its preamble that one of its purposes is to “establish justice.” And the Declaration declares, among other things, that governments exist for the sake of justice—that “governments are instituted among men to secure” the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Or consider the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s prolegomena to the Politics: his treatment of justice is longer by far than his treatment of any other virtue, and second in length only to his two-book treatment of friendship—a topic that, for Aristotle, is itself deeply intertwined with matters of justice and political life. Or to move a little closer to our chosen topic, consider the Republic, Plato’s most famous book about political affairs: all of Book I is devoted to justice, and the inquiry into the goodness of justice that begins in Book II is based on the assumption that an investigation of a well-constituted city is bound to come across justice—because well-ordered cities, like well-ordered souls, always contain it. In other words, all of these texts suggest that a fairly deep connection exists between politics and justice, and between thinking about justice and thinking about politics. Suppose, then, we turn as novice readers to Plato’s Statesman, which purports to be an inquiry into the nature of the statesman, �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM 111 the politikos, and the nature of his art or science, politikē. Given the sketch we have just seen, we might expect the dialogue to contain a series of acute reflections on the relation between justice and the true science of politics. We might even expect the Stranger from Elea to take up again the question that Socrates had wanted to pursue further at the end of Book I of the Republic, the “Socratic” question, “What is justice?” In fact we get nothing of the sort. We get a strange, vast myth about the cosmos; we get an extended—some might say over-extended—account of weaving and its attendant arts; we learn that men as herd-animals closely resemble pigs, on the one hand, and chickens, on the other. But we hear next to nothing about justice. To begin with, there is no extended discussion of justice in the Statesman—no discussion of what it is or whether it’s good or bad or anything else. As a matter of fact, justice-words, that is, words cognate with Greek word for justice, turn up only about thirty times in the entire dialogue. (In the Republic such words turn up more than two hundred times in Book I alone.) What’s more, only about half those appearances have the moral and political connotations that we ordinarily associate with the word “justice.” In fact the Greek word for justice, dikaiosunē, the word that is so central to Socrates’s inquiry in the Republic and Aristotle’s inquiry in the Ethics, does not appear in the Statesman at all. The word injustice does turn up, once, but it refers, not to a tendency in citizens that needs to be corrected, but to a disqualification for citizenship altogether. As for the remaining cases in the dialogue where justicewords are used with moral or political meaning, most are disappointingly conventional, while the most interesting or promising phrases appear to come out of nowhere. What are we to make of this peculiar state of affairs? Does the relative rarity of justice-words in the dialogue point to a deep divergence between the Stranger’s approach to politics and human affairs and the approach of Socrates? Do considerations of justice simply not play a major role in his thinking about politics? Do his interests lie elsewhere? Or, on the contrary, is the Stranger’s thinking about politics shaped by a distinct conception of justice, but one that leads him to employ the language of justice sparingly? �112 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In the end I want to suggest that the Stranger’s thinking about politics is in fact profoundly shaped by a certain conception of justice—a peculiar one, to be sure, but perhaps no more peculiar than the one Socrates lays out in the Republic, and perhaps not so very different from it either. But I mean to approach this conclusion in a rather roundabout way, by first considering seriously the possibility that the Stranger is just not very interested in justice and that his lack of interest is reflected in his thinking about the science of politics. My hope is that this indirect approach will force out into the light what is distinctive about his understanding. If the Stranger is not interested in justice, what is he interested in? Almost any page of the Statesman—or the Sophist—gives us the answer: the arts and sciences, including his own science or art of division. In the Phaedrus, Socrates calls himself a lover of collections and divisions, and elsewhere in the dialogues he makes constant use of analogies with the arts. But the Stranger goes much further: he seems to see the whole human world as an interconnected array of always-multiplying arts, the sorting out of which into their more or less natural divisions is one of the philosopher’s prime tasks. Angling and sophistry, louse-catching and generalship, doctoring and potion-making—all these arts and at least fifty more make their appearance somewhere in the Sophist or Statesman. The Stranger’s myth, his cosmic vision, helps us to understand this remarkable proliferation of arts and the Stranger’s acute interest in them. During the age of Saturn, we enjoyed a carefree life under the care of the gods. With no regimes and no families, we lived on the fruits that sprang spontaneously from trees and bushes, talked with the animals, slept naked on the grass and woke up every morning feeling just a little bit . . . younger. But that time is long past. This is the age of Zeus. The world has grown harsh, the gods have withdrawn, and we grow old. We have been left to our own devices, and those devices, the first fruits of our new-age thinking, are the arts. Men need food; the arts of agriculture and herding and hunting (including the art of angling) must be developed. Men need shelter from winter cold and summer sun, from the animals that no longer like us and from . . . other men. The arts of wall-making and house-building, shoe-making and armor-crafting, rug-making and �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM 113 wool-working must come on the scene. This list could go on: along with needs arise desires. Every need or desire demands a new art, and every new art demands a new sub-array of subordinate arts to provide materials to be worked up and tools to work with. Atop this dizzying array of arts is a kind of art of arts, an überart, if you will. For man the artisan is also man the herd animal, and the human herd, like all herds, needs to be tended and managed. This art or science of herd management as applied to the human herd is . . . statesmanship. Its task is neither simple nor easy. It must rule over the other arts and sciences, deciding which ones are to be learned and to what degree. To retain its purity of purpose, it must keep itself separate from the arts most akin to itself, the arts of persuasion and generalship and judging. Under certain circumstances it must engage in lawmaking. But its most difficult task has to do with the noblest natures under its sway. Just as nature left to itself, and permeated by the Other, seems to give rise to deception, and thus to sophistry (including the sophistry that masquerades as statesmanship), so too, human nature left to itself seems to give rise to two distinct and opposed temperaments: courageous natures and moderate natures. Left to themselves, these natures tend to separate from each other and, in the end, degenerate into self-destructive factions. To combat this most dangerous of threats, the statesman must become a master weaver, a webmaster of the spirit and of the body too; he must find ways to knit together the lives of the city’s noblest natures. For only thus can the city become and remain a self-bound, self-sufficient whole. This would seem to be a good time to ask what place, if any, justice has in this picture of politics and political life. The obvious answer seems to be: a place that is important, but rather small and decidedly subordinate. Human herd management would seem to differ from other forms of herd management in this: all herding involves giving commands, but members of the human herd, especially in the age of Zeus, seem to need explicit commands or prescriptions, explicit rules, to govern their communal life. These rules, which allow men in cities to get along with one another, constitute justice. Now from the point of view of citizens, especially artisan citizens going about their daily, commerce-driven lives, �114 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW such rules—we call them laws—might seem to be the most important manifestation of the political art. But they are in fact only an imperfect and secondary manifestation of that art, in part because they are riddled with imprecision, and in part because, as we have already seen, the first business and real work of the political art lies in the weaving together of courage and moderation. It would be a mistake, according to this account, to think of justice as a virtue, just as it would be a mistake to think of justice as something high, a criterion that the political art has to look up to as it goes about its business. Justice is nothing high or deep or fancy; it is nothing but the set of rules, invented by the statesman, that allow us to lead reasonably decent lives in an unfriendly world. Is this account of justice in the Statesman adequate? Does it, as we say, do justice to the Stranger’s view of justice? There are certainly a number of passages in the dialogue that lend credence to it. For instance, at one point the Stranger makes it very clear that the power of the judge is separate from, and sub-ordinate to, the art of the statesman. Then he asks if the judge has any power more far-reaching than, in matters pertaining to contracts, that of discerning the things ordained as both just and unjust by keeping in sight whatever is laid down as lawful and which it received from a law-giver king (305b). It looks here as if justice is simply identical to the legal, as it is defined by the law-giving king—that is, the statesman. This language of contracts also turns up a bit earlier, in the course of the Stranger’s critique of law and its lack of precision, when he speaks of those who “supervise the herds with respect to the just and their contracts with each other” (294e). Once again justice seems to be equated with the contractual obligations defined by the law—and the baseness involved in dealing with matters of justice, its distance from real statesmanly activity, is underscored by the re-introduction of the language of “herds.” The text of the Statesman also lends support to the thought that justice is not a virtue: there is no place in the dialogue where the Stranger states or even implies that it is the statesman’s task to instill justice or anything resembling �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM 115 justice in the souls of his citizens. The closest we get is the suggestion very near the end of the dialogue that moderate natures tend to be more just than courageous ones, but this does not seem to be a matter of education, and in any case, “just” in this context seems to mean “cautious and therefore inclined to follow the law.” The meaning of “just” here is perfectly compatible with passages that identify the just with the legal; it simply means “law-abiding.” Are we to conclude, then, that justice has no meaning in the Statesman other than a set of rules laid down by the statesman in his law-making capacity, and then turned over to a subordinate power? We might have to reach this conclusion were it not for a handful of odd passages where the Stranger seems to be pointing us in a different direction. Let me briefly go over three of them. In the first, the Stranger argues that rulers in “the correct regime” can do anything, including banishing and even killing inhabitants, “so long as they make it better from worse and preserve it as far as they’re able by using science and the just” (293d). In the second, which comes just as he is beginning his critique of law, the Stranger notes that law “could never, by having comprehended what’s most excellent and most just, command what’s best” (294a-b). And in the third, the Stranger claims that: there is no error for thoughtful rulers, whatever they do, so long as they guard one great thing, and, by at all times distributing to those in the city what’s most just with intellect and art, both are able to preserve them and make better men from worse as much as possible (297a-b). These passages share several features in common. In all of them, the just is linked to, and subordinated to, the good —either the good of the citizens or the good of the city. In addition, the just is paired with, or at least linked to, thought in some form—science in the first passage, comprehension in the second, and intellect and art in the third. Finally—and most important for the issue we are considering—in all three passages the just in these passages simply cannot be identified with what is lawful or what is defined by the law. In the first passage, the just seems to function as a �116 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW criterion or standard at least co-equal with science; according to the second, the just cannot be comprehended by law; and in the third, the just arises directly from intellect and art, without the mediation of law. Clearly then, justice or “the just” has more than one meaning in the Statesman and in the Stranger’s mind. But exactly what does it mean in this second set of passages? For instance, what does it mean in the peculiar phrase “science and the just”? We can’t look to the immediate context of the phrase for an answer. In all three passages the language of justice seems to come out of nowhere. To answer this question we need to take a step back. I mentioned earlier that there are a number of places in the Statesman where the language of justice is used with a meaning that is nonmoral and non-political. Let me add that, with one exception, which I’ll get to later, every appearance of this language before the “science and the just” passage falls into this category. Now in all of these earlier appearances, “just” and “justly” have a specific meaning and specific range: they are used to characterize speech or thought; and they refer to correctness or precision or aptness of thought or speech, as when we say, in English—as I did a little while ago—that we want to do justice to someone’s thought or that someone has gotten something “just right.” Now it is “precisely” this meaning of justice that I think we must import, and are meant to import, into the passages in question. The intellectual quality that the Stranger prizes most in his own science of division—the ability to divide well, to find a “part” that is also a “form” (262b263b)—is also the quality that defines or gives meaning to justice. Thus when the Stranger says that rulers in the “correct regime” must employ “science and the just,” “the just” is not being introduced here as an extraneous criterion that comes out of nowhere. It rather refers to the exactness or precision of application that is implicit in the very notion of science—in this case, the science of statesmanship. Or again, when the Stranger faults the law for failing to comprehend what’s most excellent and most just, he is simply faulting the law’s characteristic lack of precision: because laws are necessarily universal, they cannot help but miss what is best here and now and must be inexact in their attainment of it. It should �SPECIAL SECTION: JUSTICE | SALEM 117 come as no surprise, then, that the Stranger keeps referring to the “correct” or “most correct regime” where we would probably say “best regime”—the best regime is, for him, “precisely” the regime in which precision or correctness is the ruling principle. There is another way to formulate this thought in the language of the dialogue. At the very center of the Statesman there is an extended discussion of the art of measurement, and at the very center of that discussion, the Stranger introduces, without much explanation, the phrase “the precise itself.” Why? It turns out that the very existence of statesmanship—in fact the very existence of all the arts that generate something—rests on the existence of something called due measure. All the arts aim to achieve or produce some good. Sometimes they miss the mark: they fall short of or exceed their aims. But when they bring about the goods they aim at, they attain what the Stranger calls “due measure.” At such moments, when they get things just right, when they arrive at due measure, the precise itself is present. But what holds for the other arts holds for statesmanship as well. Whenever the statesman, aiming at the preservation or improvement of his city or its citizens, brings about this good, he attains due measure, and in attaining due measure, he participates in the precise itself. But if I am right in thinking that, in at least a select number of passages in the dialogue, the just coincides with what is correct or precise, then at such a moment the statesman can also be said to have achieved justice. To achieve the good is to achieve justice. This brings me to my final point. I want to bring what I have just said to bear on the most important activity of statesmanship: the weaving together of courage and moderation. I mentioned a little while ago that there is one passage early on in the dialogue where the language of justice is not used to refer to precision of thought. It occurs in the myth. Interestingly enough, precision is also mentioned but here refers to precision in the movement of the cosmos. The claim is that when the cosmos is first allowed to move on its own, it moves with precision, but over time, because of the bodily aspect of the cosmos, it gradually winds down. Everything beautiful in the cosmos comes from its composer, while everything “harsh and unjust” has its source in this “fellow nursling of �118 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW primeval nature” (273b-d). Of course this is a myth and we have to be careful about what we extract from it. Still, I cannot help but think that the Stranger is here positing something like a primal principle of disorder, a principle that is always at war with beauty, with precision of movement, with the very notion of a cosmos, that is, an ordered whole. That he associates this principle with harshness and injustice suggests that this principle is at work in the human world as well: the city is an attempt to found something like a human cosmos in the face of primal disorder, primal imprecision, primal injustice. The ordinary arts that ground ordinary life within cities are one aspect of this cosmos-formation. Each is an attempt to bring forth due measure within some specific context; each is an attempt to wrestle with its material’s resistance to being given proper form. But the greatest of such attempts is the effort of the statesman to bring forth due measure in and through his weaving together of courage and moderation. Justice in the primary sense, then, is not to be found in law-making or judging in accordance with law. Nor is it to be found in the accomplishing of this or that good thing for the city. It is found right here, in the overcoming of primal injustice, primal resistance to having a city at all. We might think of it this way: In the Sophist, the Stranger suggests that being is not rest, or motion, or some third thing. He suggests instead that being is the belonging together of rest and motion. But within the sphere of politics, courage corresponds to motion and rest to moderation. Where, then, and what is justice? It is not something present in the soul of the courageous man, nor something present in the soul of the moderate man. Nor is it some third thing hovering over the two. Instead, justice in the primary sense is present whenever the statesman, by thinking precisely and achieving due measure, keeps the primal dyad from falling asunder; it is there both in and as the belonging together, the being woven together, of courage and moderation. �REVIEWS Getting to Know Kierkegaard Better 119 A Review of Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. 244 pages, $36.00. James Carey On first looking into Kierkegaard, the student who has already read around in the history of philosophy or has limited his studies primarily to twentieth century philosophy, whether analytic or “continental,” is likely to find himself puzzled at several levels. He may have heard that Kierkegaard is both a Christian and an existentialist, even a founder of existentialism, and he might be interested to find out how one man can be both of these things at once. Or, doubting that one man could be both these things at once without being confused, he might be inclined to shrug him off. But then he may also have heard that Heidegger was profoundly influenced by Kierkegaard and that Wittgenstein declared him to be a “saint.” So he sets out to get a better sense of who Kierke-gaard is and what he is aiming at. After reading the first few pages of, say, Fear and Trembling, he comes quickly to recognize that he is in the presence of an original and incisive thinker. But he also encounters obscure arguments and formulations that seem more colorful than illuminating. And sooner or later he runs up against assertions about the relation of Socrates to Christianity that seem naïve at best, perverse at worse. He begins to suspect that Kierkegaard, for all his undeniable brilliance, is in full control of neither his intellect nor his imagination. After reading a relatively accessible book such as Philosophical Fragments he might turn to Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (the latter book four times the length of what it is advertised as a “postscript” to) in hopes of finding a resolution to some of the perplexities in which the former James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. �120 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW work left him. Instead, he finds himself by turns beguiled and exasperated by an art of writing that is both concentrated and ironic. He is not sure whether he is being led towards the truth or being manipulated. And if he has not done so sooner, he begins to wonder exactly what Kierkegaard intends by presenting some of his books, but then not all them, under pseudonyms, and in particular why one book is presented as written by Climacus and another by anti-Climacus. Can all Kierkegaard’s books be understood as expressing his own thoughts? Can any of them be understood as expressing his own thoughts? Not knowing how to find an answer to these and related questions, the student may decide at this point to postpone engaging with the full sweep of Kierkegaard’s project until later on, more or less indefinitely later on. Needless to say, not all who have struggled with Kierke-gaard at some stage of their studies fit the above profile. But some—I suspect quite a few—do fit it. After reading through one or two of Kierkegaard’s books and probing around in a few others, they will profit immensely by stepping back from his oeuvre and reading Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Those who have read a larger number of Kierkegaard’s books will profit immensely as well. I for one can say that there is a not a single question I have asked myself about Kierkegaard over the years that McCombs’s carefully argued and beautifully written book does not answer, clearly, comprehensively, and convincingly. The title of McCombs’s book expresses his general intention, which is to show that Kierkegaard is a rational thinker and that he employs paradox in the service of reason. What Kierkegaard calls “subjectivity” McCombs calls “paradoxical rationality.” The provocative conclusion of McCombs’s study is that paradoxical rationality reaches its perfection not in knowledge, either theoretical or practical, but in faith. In this review I will highlight only a few of the observations that McCombs makes en route to this conclusion. In Chapter 1, McCombs considers evidence in favor of the view the Kierkegaard is an irrationalist and then evidence in favor of the view that he is a rationalist. He argues, persuasively, that the preponderance of evidence is in favor of the latter view. When �REVIEWS | CAREY 121 Kierkegaard directly or through one of his pseudonymous authors affirms what he calls a contradiction, he means not a flat-our logical absurdity but rather “a tension or an unresolved opposition” (13).1 And, as Kierkegaard sees it, “when the believer has faith, the absurd is not absurd—faith transforms it” (22). Kierkegaard’s Climacus calls the Incarnation a contradiction. But, as McCombs points out, to show that such a thing is an irresolvable logical contradiction “one would need a thorough understanding of the essence of God and of temporal, finite human existence” (13). Kierkegaard is aware that this understanding is not at our disposal. The appearance of irrationality is only feigned by Kierkegaard. It is a pretense in the service of a pedagogical aim. “The human model for Kierkegaard’s incognito of irrationalism is Socrates. If Socrates ironically feigned ignorance in the service of knowledge, Kierkegaard ‘goes further’ and ironically feigns irrationality in the service of reason” (2). He “creates Climacus specifically to address and appeal to philosophical readers . . . in order to find such readers ‘where they are’ and to lead them to subjectivity” (5). Where philosophical readers “are” is not simply in their thinking but in their existing. There is, it should go without saying, more to existing than thinking. Near the conclusion of this chapter, McCombs offers a perceptive analysis of the limitations of Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling. This author attempts to show to philosophical readers who regard faith as a demotic substitute for knowledge, or as a station that gets aufgehoben on the way to absolute knowing, that genuine faith, as exemplified by Abraham, is in fact rare, awesome in the exact sense of the word, and more difficult to achieve than any knowledge we humans can attain or pretend to. But Kierkegaard also subtly leads his readers to see that Johannes de Silentio can, or rather will, only admire faith. He will not attempt it. Faith is a task—a task that Silentio evades (24). Faith is, moreover, not merely a task but “a difficult, dangerous, strenuous, and painful duty, and human beings will do virtually anything to evade such a duty” (30). In Fear and Trembling, “Kierkegaard first tries to get readers to admire the greatness of faith, and then breaks the distressing news to them that the faith �122 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that they admire is an absolute duty.” Kierkegaard has “constructed Fear and Trembling so ingeniously that interpretation of it unexpectedly and disconcertingly turns into self-examination” (31). In Chapter 2, McCombs argues that subjectivity or paradoxical rationality is, like all rationality, consistency. It is consistency not just of thought, however, but of the whole person. “To be subjective means consistently to relate oneself, the subject of thinking, to what one thinks. It is to think about life and action, most of all about one’s own life and action, and to strive to feel, will, and act consistently with one’s thoughts” (35). Not everyone who prides himself on the consistency of his thinking aims at this more comprehensive consistency. For example, a person who holds in his thinking that everything is determined—whether by the will of God, physical mechanism, or the apparent good—and that the future is thereby fixed, nonetheless deliberates and acts, as all human beings must, on the assumption that the future is not fixed and that how it turns out depends in some measure on one’s choices. Such a person is not wholly rational no matter how impressively his theory holds together qua theory merely.2 His speculative thinking, however consistent it may be in itself, is inconsistent with his practical thinking. Kierkegaard’s subjectivity is not so much the opposite of objectivity, an inner and private domain as distinct from an outer and public one, as it is the whole of rationality. Subjectivity comprehends objectivity as a part, assigning it its altogether legitimate, though limited, role within a properly integrated life of reason. Subjectivity, for Kierkegaard, is integrity. It is “Kierkegaard’s belief that thinking is unavoidably interested.”(37). Objective thinkers frequently claim to be disinterested. But they are wrong. For objectivity is not without an interest: speculative reason (which could be called, somewhat misleadingly, objective reason) is interested in the true, just as practical reason (which could be called, also somewhat misleadingly, subjective reason) is interested in the good. Pursuit of the true and pursuit of the good are two pursuits of one and the same reason.3 As McCombs later points out, interest derives from interesse, literally, “to be in between” (155). Human reason is in between the temporal and the eternal. It moves teleologically from the temporal toward �REVIEWS | CAREY 123 the eternal, as it moves teleologically from the conditioned toward the unconditioned and from the finite toward the infinite. Subjective thinkers have a better appreciation of the wholeness of reason, its teleological orientation toward both truth and goodness, than do objective thinkers. Kierkegaard suspects that many who take pride in their commitment to objectivity use the search for knowledge “as a way to delay or to evade ethical action” (45). He also thinks that, “because the human will is free, the rationality of human beings—his own included—is always precarious” (75). This is true of speculative reason no of less than of practical reason. McCombs speaks of the “shaky foundations” of logic and its “liability to perversion” (60). In my view, logic per se—certainly its indemonstrable but self-evident first principles, such as the principle of non-contradiction—is sound.4 But logical principles and rules of inference, unimpeachable in themselves, can be used to deduce questionable conclusions from questionable premises. In that way logic can assist one in rationalizing the satisfaction of certain desires that, unlike the desire for integrity in thought and action, are not intrinsic to reason and are often at odds with the telē of reason. “When these desires are threatened by the strenuous requirements of ethics, they fight back with astonishing cunning and sagacity, by co-opting the powers of logic for specious reasoning and self-deception” (60). And So McCombs rightly recommends “rectifying [not logic itself but] one’s use of logic” (65). In Chapter 3, McCombs distinguishes between traditional negative theology, which he understands to be primarily theoretical, and the negative theology of Climacus, which he understands to be primarily practical. “Climacus thinks that if anything has priority in salvation it is or would be love and not knowledge” (87).5 This chapter contains helpful accounts of the Kierkegaardian conceptions of resignation and guilt-consciousness, and of Kierkegaard’s arresting formulation that “to need God is a human being’s highest perfection” (88-89; on resignation see also 106). Of course, from the perspective of Christianity all human beings need God. The perfection of humanity consists then not in the need, simply, but in the recognition of the need and the follow-through on what it ultimately entails: “reverence, awe, adoration, worship, �124 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW or as Johannes de Silentio calls it, ‘fear and trembling’” (88-89). We naturally desire perfect happiness; but for Kierkegaard perfect happiness is “the good that is attained by absolutely venturing everything” (95), for it is “essentially uncertain” (98). McCombs concludes this chapter with a reflection on how Kierkegaard understands the relation between the good and one’s own good. There is no “tension” between them: “one most truly loves the good by loving one’s own good in the right way” (99).6 In Chapter 4, McCombs shows what Kierkegaard means by simplicity. It is “translating one’s understanding . . . immediately into action” (101). Just as McCombs discloses limitations, which Kierkegaard intends his readers to recognize, in Johannes de Silentio’s admiration, absent imitation, of faith, so he discloses limitations in Climacus’s conception of “hidden inwardness.” Climacus recognizes that there is something wrong with flaunting one’s efforts at becoming a Christian. But, McCombs notes, “going out of one’s way to look ‘just like everyone else’” while “being very different from most people in one’s heart” can stand in the way of “witnessing the truth and thus risking suffering and persecution” (112; cf. 117-118; 124). In Chapter 5, McCombs continues the critique of Climacus he initiated in Chapter 4, with the focus now on the limitations of indirect communication and its need to be complemented by direct communication. By expressing himself so obliquely and paradoxically, Climacus runs the risk of detaining the reader in the process of interpretation so that he fails to undertake the practical tasks that it is Climacus’s main intention to urge him toward. McCombs intends this chapter as a criticism of Climacus, not necessarily of Kierkegaard. But because “Kierkegaard never explicitly addresses some of the vices or weaknesses of indirect communication” (115), McCombs concedes that perhaps Kierkegaard “is not adequately aware of its pitfalls and shortcomings” (117). As the chapter progresses, criticisms of Kierkegaard himself come to replace criticisms of his pseudonymous author. Though Kierkegaard recognizes that his position is one of faith and not knowledge, his employment of indirect communication does not allow much room for serious confrontation with thoughtful criticisms of Christianity. McCombs goes so far as to express a con- �REVIEWS | CAREY 125 cern that if Kierkegaard not only does not know where the full truth about Christianity lies—and no believer can claim to know—but is actually wrong about where the full truth lies, he “bears responsibility for risking the ruination of many lives” (131). More direct, and less indirect, communication would go a long way toward reducing this risk. It would leave the reader greater freedom to make a responsible decision for or against faith, being more cognizant of both the case for and the case against, in light of the very little that we humans are actually capable of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt. In the first five chapters of his book McCombs occasionally speaks to some of the initially mystifying albeit intriguing things that Kierkegaard says about Socrates. In Chapter 6 and 7, and also in part of Chapter 8, he treats Kierkegaard’s interpretation of “the figure of Socrates” thematically. McCombs makes, I think, as wellinformed and cogent a case as can be made for the coherence of Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates. In Chapter 6, McCombs shows how and why Kierkegaard presents Socrates as embodying “climacean capacity,” which is the capacity “to be a climber over boundaries and a transgressor of limits” (134).7 “[T]he climacean capacity is a power of synthesizing an eternal, infinite, universal, and absolute ideal with or in the temporal, finite, particular, and relative aspects of oneself and one’s everyday life, which is to say that the climacean capacity is a capacity for subjectivity” (154). “Human beings seem to be finite, temporal, particular, and conditioned animals. And yet they also seem to be able to conceive, however inadequately, the infinite, the eternal, and the unconditioned.” (157).8 As Kierkegaard sees it, “Socratic ignorance is an essential component of faith and Christianity” (135). According to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the Philosophical Fragments misrepresents Socrates “as an objective thinker, whereas he was really a subjective thinker” (139). Climacus recognizes that “if one could not discover one’s incapacity before God, then neither could one exist as a being who attempts to live in time according to an eternal ideal” (147). “[T]he god is ‘present just as soon as the uncertainty of everything is thought infinitely’” (151). �126 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Whereas in Chapter 6 McCombs focuses on Kierke-gaard’s understanding of Socrates’s ascent, in Chapter 7 he focuses on Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates’s downfall. Kierkegaard finds this downfall expressed in a striking passage from the Phaedrus. There Socrates confesses that he does not know himself.9 And so he investigates himself rather than other things in order to find out whether he happens to be a monster (thērion) more multiply-twisted and lustful (epitethymenon) than Typhon or a gentler and simpler animal having by nature a share in a certain divine and non-arrogant (atyphon) allotment.10 As Kierkegaard interprets this passage from the Phaedrus, “‘he who believed that he knew himself’ becomes so perplexed that he cannot decide between utterly opposite self-interpretations.” This is the “downfall of the understanding.” Kierkegaard, through Climacus, suggests that Socrates actually willed this downfall (162-163). On first hearing, this suggestion sounds like Kierkegaardian hyperbole. But, if the will is the appetite of reason,11 then human reason is naturally propelled by its own appetite toward truth, including, paradoxically, the truth that human reason is not capable of answering all the questions it naturally proposes to itself.12 In the case at hand, Socrates’s will propels his reason toward selfknowledge; but the knowledge he attains is that he does not have complete self-knowledge. It is in this way that Socrates wills the downfall of his understanding. The will moves reason to the discovery and acknowledgment of its natural limits. This is not a merely negative development, however. For “to will the downfall of reason is to transform and perfect reason” (163). As McCombs writes in an earlier chapter, “[T]he power of reason comes to light in the act of becoming aware of its weakness” (69). This transformation and perfection is not of theoretical reason alone, but of practical reason as well (cf. 211).13 The standard interpretation of the downfall of reason is that it results in “an openness or receptivity to a divine revelation of truths that exceed the capacity of natural reason” (164). McCombs thinks that this interpretation is correct as far as it goes. But he thinks that it does not go far enough, for it places stress only on the theoretical consequences of the downfall. As McCombs argues, it has practical con- �REVIEWS | CAREY 127 sequences as well. “The thing that falls in the downfall of the understanding is the whole human capacity to achieve the highest human end—an eternal happiness, which includes not only joy, but wisdom and goodness as well. Consequently, the downfall is a disavowal of the pretentions that one can become good, wise, and joyful on one’s own, a rejection of the determination to rely only on oneself in striving for one’s highest end” (165). The disavowal of these pretensions results indeed in an openness to revelation. According to Christianity, there is a revelation of truths regarding action: how to become truly good through repentance, on the one hand, and through cultivating love of God and neighbor, on the other. And there is a revelation of truths regarding being as well: that God is a Trinity of persons, without the slightest compromise to his unity but as its perfection through the unqualified love that unites the three persons, and that one of these persons became incarnate in order to save us from sin and call us toward fuller and fuller participation, through love, in the divine nature.14 “[O]ne accepts revelation not in order to become a better philosopher but in order to become a better person” (165). It should be noted that Socrates’s qualification in the Phaedrus that he does not “yet” know himself implies that he has not simply given up on the possibility of attaining complete self-knowledge.15 Furthermore, any openness to revelation that he might have arrived at is, in the absence of actual revelation, an openness only to the possibility of revelation.16 But until and unless Socrates does attain complete self-knowledge, he cannot definitively know whether all so-called choice is merely a case of being determined by the apparent good, more precisely by the apparent best;17 or whether, instead, man is capable of radically free choice and self-determination, including the abuse of radically free choice and self-determination that is sin. The crucial issue, then, is whether Socrates has any inkling of sin. Though “Climacus claims that neither Socrates nor anyone else can be aware of sin without revelation” he nonetheless “portrays Socrates as suspecting his sinful condition” and “as suspecting that he is misrelated to the divine owing to Typhonic arrogance” (167-168; cf. 175). Plato surely expects the reader of the Phaedrus to remember that Typhon was, as �128 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW McCombs says, “an arrogant, violent, and defiant enemy of the gods.” Moreover, with his hundred heads, he was “presumably not even friendly to himself” (167). A monster like Typhon cannot be happy. We noted earlier that the interest of reason lies in its being between the temporal and the eternal, and that it moves teleologically from the temporal toward the eternal. According to Kierkegaard, it cannot reach its ultimate telos without supernatural assistance. This assistance becomes available only when the eternal, at its own initiative, becomes temporal “in the fullness of time.” In what Christians believe to be the historical event of the Incarnation, a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal is achieved in deed and not just in thought. The Incarnation is for Kierkegaard the paradox (146); it is the absolute paradox (219). Assuming both (1) that neither complete self-knowledge nor complete knowledge of the whole and its ground is humanly possible, and (2) that one has heard the Gospel of Christ, Kierkegaard thinks that only two responses to what one has heard are possible: faith, which is not knowledge,18 and offense, which is not doubt. Offense is “a delusion of rational autonomy”—deluded because human reason has limits and thus is not “self-sufficient.” Offense is “unhappy self-assertion”—unhappy because one asserts oneself on the basis of what one knows, deep down, is insufficient knowledge of oneself. In the human being there are “two elements in tension with one another: a desire for happiness and a desire for autonomy or selfsufficiency.” These elements are incompatible, and “one or the other of them must fall. Faith . . . is the downfall of the desire for self-assertion, while offense is the downfall of the desire for happiness” (176-177). In Chapter 8, McCombs further explores the consequences of Kierkegaard’s conviction that there are no “public demonstrations of the answers to certain crucial questions: Is there a personal God who created and maintains the world? Does a human being have an immortal soul? Is there a best life for human beings?” (184) If by “public demonstrations” Kierkegaard means rationally accessible demonstrations, it can be countered that there are such demonstrations, pro and contra, on these and related matters, particularly in �REVIEWS | CAREY 129 medieval theology and in the reaction of modern philosophy against medieval theology. There has indeed never been universal acceptance of either theological or anti-theological arguments. But then there has also never been universal acceptance, not even by the greatest minds, of many philosophical arguments, such as, for example, the divergent arguments regarding the scope of human knowledge (think of Hume and Hegel), the relation of acts of thought to the objects of thought (think of Plato and Husserl), the relationship between the good and the pleasant (think of Kant and Mill), and the authority of reason (think of Aristotle and Heidegger). It is likely that there is no “public demonstration” on these matters because the public is insufficiently perceptive to follow the arguments. In considering a disagreement between great philosophers, say, the disagreement between Locke and Leibniz on how much our knowledge arises from the senses, one has to consider the possibility that one of the two thinkers penetrated closer to the root of the matter than did the other. It seems improbable that there will ever be universal acceptance of most philosophical and theological demonstrations. But that does not mean that these demonstrations are not rationally accessible. That theological and philosophical demonstrations are so controverted might not be due solely to different capacities for clear thinking. McCombs highlights Kierkegaard’s conviction that character cannot be easily separated from the quest for knowledge. “[D]esires, fears, emotions, actions, and habits have an influence on what and how a person thinks, or on what a person can see, understand, know, or become aware of. In other words, some desires, habits, emotions, and actions are conducive to truth, and some are inimical to it” (192). McCombs illustrates this claim by referring to the limitations of Meno and Ivan Karamazov. “[T]he deep thinker must be a spiritual knight with the strength and courage to think terrible thoughts that others cannot endure to think” (193). One terrible thought, of course, is that, even if there is a first cause or ground of our finite existence, it takes no interest in us and how we live our lives. But an equally terrible thought is that we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we know this to be true when we do not, and cannot, know any such thing. Both terrible thoughts have to be explored. �130 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW McCombs writes, “It is hard to believe that a person who often lies to himself about his own actions and qualities, about the actions and qualities of other people, and about his social and personal relations to other people will be honest when he tries to answer the most important philosophical questions” (194; cf. 65). The examined life does not consist exclusively, or even primarily, in the reading and discussion of philosophical texts. Most of all it requires ongoing self-examination, including especially the examination of conscience that is needed to check the self-deception that is at the root of sin, including the sin of vanity, especially intellectual vanity (cf. 215). McCombs recognizes that not all intellectual endeavors are equally compromised by corrupt character. Corrupt character has little effect on “cognition of scientific, mathematical, and linguistic truths.” But corrupt character can pervert “cognition of human nature and the best life for human beings” (202). Anyone who is attempting to live a wholly rational life, whether he is a believer or a nonbeliever, stands under an obligation of ongoing and unrelenting self-scrutiny. On Kierkegaard’s understanding of the close connection between theory and practice, McCombs writes, “Seeing for oneself requires acting for oneself…by one’s own self-activity, at one’s own risk, and on one’s own responsibility. In short, autopsy requires autopraxy” (198). One gains humility, and thereby overcomes doubt through “the bitter method of trying to imitate Christ and failing” (215). Humility is notoriously misunderstood, and caricatured as well. McCombs corrects the common misunderstanding: “a meek and beaten-down milksop does not have the audacity to believe. . . . Honestly admitting one’s utter weakness before God takes the greatest human strength. . . . [O]nly heroes of the spirit have the audacity to believe . . . what pride cannot tolerate and therefore willfully ignores: namely, a supreme being to whom humans ought utterly to subordinate themselves” (215). In humility, self-transcendence overcomes irrational egoism and self-importance. Kierkegaard’s project, like Pascal’s and Dostoyevsky’s, is obviously based on the assumption that the existence of the Biblical �REVIEWS | CAREY 131 God cannot be definitively disproven. But some philosophers have advanced arguments, not subjective but objective arguments, aimed at definitively disproving the existence of God, especially as one who freely reveals himself. So a non-Kierkegaardian, but not anti-Kierkegaardian, task remains for the theologian. First to examine these arguments dispassionately to assess their cogency; and then, if they are found to be less than absolutely compelling, to expose their limitations. For if a man thinks—let us assume, thinks altogether innocently—that the concept of Christ as true God and true man, both together, is a logical contradiction, then exhorting him to imitate Christ is pointless. There is still a lot left for the theologian to do at the level of objectivity. McCombs ends his book by raising a question that some readers will have already asked themselves: has Kierkegaard merely conscripted Socrates into his project? McCombs answers in the negative. “[T]here are many passages in Plato’s dialogues in which Socrates professes ignorance, self-blame, suspicions of his own monstrosity, repentance, and in which he warns against a self-justifying egoism that undermines truth and justice. Together these passages seem to constitute a solid basis for a responsible interpretation of Socrates as a thinker who willed the downfall of his own understanding because he suspected something very like sin” (218). McCombs supports this answer with references to the telling texts. One might object that he has cherry picked the passages that support the Kierkegaardian interpretation of Socrates. But all interpretations of Plato that aim at taking the dialogic form of his teaching seriously have to come to terms with everything that is said and happens in the dialogues, including occasional observations of Socrates’s that do not fit with preconceived notions of what Platonism is supposed to be. The passages that McCombs cites in support of Kierkegaard’s Socrates are not more salutary and comforting than passages one might cite in support of someone else’s Socrates. On the contrary, they are among the most startling and disconcerting passages to be found in the entire Platonic corpus. It is the singular, though by no means the sole, merit of McCombs’s study that it forces many of us, just when we thought �132 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW that we, with the assistance of our teachers and our friends, might have finally gotten a relatively firm grasp of what Socrates is up to, to take a fresh look at the enigmatic figure through whom Plato presents his teaching. NOTES 1. Unless otherwise noted, numbers in parentheses after quotations refer to the pagination of The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard, even where the sentence quoted is Kierkegaard’s and not McCombs’s. 2. Determinism cannot be known, definitively and beyond the shadow of a doubt, to be true. As David Hume has shown, the proposition, “Every event has a cause,” is not an analytic judgment. It follows a fortiori that the proposition, “Every event has a cause outside itself,” which is the thesis of determinism, is not an analytic judgment. It can be denied without contradiction. The thesis of determinism is not self-evident; and any attempt to demonstrate it begs the question. 3. This is also the view of thinkers as different as Thomas Aquinas and Kant. 4. Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 71b20-35; 72a26-31; 72b19-2; 90b19-100b18; Metaphysics 1005b6-1006a10; 1011a7-13. 5. Kierkegaard seems here to be close to Gregory of Nyssa, who understands the supernatural end of man to consist not simply in a reposeful intellectual vision of God, but in infinite and yet unimpeded progress, progress in love especially. Gregory interprets the claim that we are called to become partakers of the divine nature (koinōnoi theias physeōs—2 Peter 1: 3-4) to imply theosis, i.e., becoming more and more like God. This goal, perfect love, can be infinitely approached by man, starting even in this life, but never attained once and for all, even in the next life. Perhaps surprisingly, Kant similarly understands immortality of the soul to consist in infinite progress. See Critique of Practical Reason Part 2, Bk. 2, Ch. 2, iv. 6. McCombs draws attention (199) to a remarkable statement made by the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws: “Truly the cause of all errors (aition . . . tōn pantōn hamartēmatōn) is in every case excessive friendship for oneself ” (731e3-5). If Plato is expressing his own thought here, it is not easy to see how he could have held, as some seem to think he held, that the good is essentially one’s own good, understood narrowly as one’s own sweet pleasure. �REVIEWS | CAREY 133 7. As McCombs notes (173), it is likely that Kierkegaard selected the pseudonym “Johannes Climacus” (Greek, Iōannēs tēs klimakos, literally, “John of the Ladder,” the name given to a twelfth century Christian monk and saint, who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent) with an eye on the “ladder of love” described in the Symposium. 8. Whatever share irrational animals have in the eternal, there is no reason to think that they conceive of the eternal, much less concern themselves about it. 9. Phaedrus 229e8. 10. Ibid., 229a3-a8. McCombs notes that the name Typhon can be translated “puffed up” (167). On the difficulty of complete self-knowledge, consider the qualifier eis dynamin at Philebus 63c3. 11. Aristotle, De Anima 432b5-8 and 433a8-31; Thomas Aquinas Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 30 q. 1 art. 3, ad 4. Summa Theologiae 1-2 q. 6, introd.; q. 8 art. 1, co.; q. 56 art. 5, ad 1; ibid., 3 q. 19 art. 2, co.; Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Book 1, Ch. 1, Theorem 3, Remark 1. 12. See the first sentence of the “First Preface” of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. 13. Here Kierkegaard parts ways with Kant. Consider the qualification in the sentence cited in the previous note: “in one [!] species of its cognition.” 14. Cf. note 5 above. 15. See pō at 229e8 and eti at 230a1. 16. An inability to refute, and hence a consequent openness to, even the bare possibility of revelation would situate the philosopher qua philosopher in an untenable position, at least according to Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953). 75. Cf. “Reason and Revelation” (appended to Heinrich Meier’s study, Leo Strauss and the Theological-Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006] 150, 176-177; “Progress or Return” (in Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997], 117, 131. On this crucial point, however much they otherwise differ, Strauss and Kierkegaard are in essential agreement: opposition to faith cannot consistently be based on an act of faith, or on anything resembling faith. 17. Gorgias 466e2; Meno 77d8-e3. 18. John 20:29. �134 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Plato’s Political Polyphony A Book Review of Plato: Statesman. Translated by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2012. vii + 166 pp. $10.95. Gregory Recco Continuing the work begun in their previous two translations of Plato,* Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem have now translated Plato’s Statesman. In addition to the translation, the volume includes an introduction, a glossary, an interpretive essay, and two appendices. The introduction situates the dialogue in the context of Plato’s works, both dramatically and conceptually, announcing its main themes and connecting it with other works—particularly its immediate dramatic predecessor, the Sophist, and its thematic siblings, the Republic and the Laws. The translation contains footnotes that provide pertinent literary or cultural background, references to other dialogues, and pointers to the attached glossary when particularly important words or ideas first appear. The glossary, like those in the earlier translations, is organized into meaning-clusters, groups of related or associated words that together make up one important conceptual unit of the dialogue. The selection and discussion of these words, then, constitutes a work of interpretation—or at least the preparation of material for such a work—and gives the translators a natural opportunity to discuss the rationale behind their English renderings of important Greek terms. After the glossary comes a substantial essay on the whole of Statesman, a thoughtful recapitulation and reflection that presents a systematic and thorough survey of questions raised in the dialogue. Finally, the appendices: the first *Plato: Phaedo (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1998) and Plato: Timaeus (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001). Gregory Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. �REVIEWS | RECCO 135 graphically presents an overview in word and image of the practice of weaving which forms the dialogue’s most densely intertwined “paradigm,” or model, of the work of statesmanship; the second unravels and graphically portrays the various heuristic “divisions” by which the Stranger investigated questions of definition in the Sophist and here seeks the politikos, or statesman. The translation is of very high quality—a fact that will likely not surprise readers of the team’s previous two efforts. To describe its excellence I must make some preparatory remarks about what a translation is, who Plato is, and how Plato ought to be translated. And I must discuss the particularities (or rather peculiarities) of the Statesman. The art of translation possesses, in a particularly pronounced degree, a feature that characterizes all arts: What directs the activity of artists is not their own wishes and ideas, but the necessities of the work to be done. Becoming the practitioner of an art involves a kind of surrender to something alien, namely, the determinacies of the product and the conditions of its production. In translation, this relinquishment of authority is especially evident in the very nature of the work, which consists of transplanting a thought that belongs to someone else from its native home into the foreign soil of another language while keeping it intact and alive. Because the translator does not create the being of that which he translates, his excellence consists in his ability to let the thought of another shine forth unimpeded and unaltered. Plato’s thought poses special challenges to the prospective translator, because the dialogue form in which it predominantly resides gives it a uniquely amorphous character unparalleled anywhere else in Western literature. Because of their polyphonic conversational style, the dialogues of Plato give no authoritative indication of how they are to be interpreted, no explicit endorsement of some message, so that it is quite difficult to say just what Plato’s thought actually is. Without some definite notion of how to deal with this difficulty, the choices and judgments that the translator must make run the risk of being severally ad hoc and, taken together, inconsistent. But in the dialogues themselves Plato is completely silent about this difficulty. Faced with this apparent �136 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW authorial dereliction, it is tempting to conclude with a kind of misplaced strictness that the phrase “Plato’s thought” signifies but does not refer, as Heraclitus nearly says of the oracle at Delphi. But this is the counsel of despair, and it leaves out the third leg of Heraclitus’s saying: the oracle, who does not speak, but gives sign, does not conceal. Something similar must be said of Plato. Even cursory comparison of the dialogues uncovers themes that recur with some frequency. Longer acquaintance reveals how generous Plato can be to the careful reader, who discovers that the cracks in the surface form a pattern, so to speak. The latter point deserves fuller and more literal articulation, both on its own terms and because it is so often overlooked—which leads to bad interpretation and consequently to bad translation. Many of the dialogues take on the outward form of a “Socratic” conversation, with one dialectically more experienced person taking the lead and questioning another in what seems to be a more or less directed way, so that the latter gradually takes on views suggested by the former. But the inner truth of the dialogues is that they are documents bearing witness to the event of thinking, paradoxically more akin to Thucydides’s record of a great event than to Hippocrates’s scientific investigation of the causes of sickness and health. The dialogues are not treatises of Socratic dogma thinly disguised as conversations, but more or less dramatized presentations of what it looks like to think. I say “dramatized” because, as I hinted above, that is where Plato’s artistry lies: this is his real work, which is also something like the work of a translator. Plato’s art is to show us the event of thinking, by dramatically portraying what it looks like when it happens among human beings, in both its grandeur and its modesty. To say that thinking is such and such, or has such and such characteristics, is perhaps a fairly idle and undemanding pursuit, but to show it—that is, to make manifest through a single instance the structure of intelligibility that informs it and gives it life—is an accomplishment of an exceedingly high order. Somehow the dialogue must both be a conversation and exhibit “conversationality.” Not surprisingly, the investigation of how conversing ought to take place in order to get at truth is one of those recurring themes that give the dialogues of �REVIEWS | RECCO 137 Plato their distinctive mark. But the exhibition of thinking as such occurs in several other, less immediate, ways. To note just one, briefly, let me point out the structure of errancy and return, or wandering and recapitulation. In the Statesman, as in the Sophist and so many other dialogues, the tentative answers given to the guiding questions are forever turning up inadequate, coming unmoored as they are jostled by fresh contenders that look no less promising, even if they, too, ultimately fall apart. This is especially evident in the bewildering multiplicity of “definitions” that fail, by the very fact of their being multiple, to hem in or pin down the sort of men being sought in these two dialogues. The various ways in which the dialogues can acquaint us with perplexity, and thus make us feel thought’s errancy, are probably familiar to many readers. No less important, however, is a dimension of thought that tends to belong less to the one questioned than to the one doing the questioning: to put a name to it, the dimension of redemption, of making up for what has gone wrong by noticing how it has gone wrong. The dialogues are chock-full of bad arguments, wrong turns, and dead ends. But these errors never just lie there. They stand out, and and were made to stand out by their author. Plato calls on us to respond more adequately than Socrates’s interlocutors and to consider how an attentive and active questioner might help things move forward from there. Giving us the opportunity to become better at thinking is a great gift that is squandered by dogmatic interpretations (and the translations founded on them), for they can see only the degree to which the things said in the dialogues do not form a very compelling body of theory, even as they tantalizingly hint at one. Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem understand quite well both this difficulty and other difficulties related to Plato’s portrayal of the drama of thinking; their understanding guides their choices and contributes greatly to the excellence of their translations. In general, Plato’s artistry exists on the level of style, in the nuances of diction and register, metaphor and allusion, that reveal the character behind the thought, and give us something further to think about when the resources of the argument turn out to be insufficient to answer all our questions. In the case of Socrates, this �138 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW is well known and acknowledged, though less so for his interlocutors: it is a commonplace to mock their “dialogue” as merely a series of more or less undifferentiated assents. The characters in Plato who are generally considered to be well drawn are usually the ones who disagree, and they are considered better drawn the more vehemently they disagree with Socrates (like Callicles and Thrasymachus). The Statesman has neither of these advantages: its main speaker is the somewhat opaque Stranger from Elea, and its main respondent is the somewhat colorless Young Socrates. Not a very promising circumstance for the translation that seeks to reveal a Plato who is a master of style. It is the particular excellence of this translation that it is able to show us a Plato who is at work in his accustomed ways even in these changed circumstances. The translation is above all else trustworthy. If a word or phrase jars (such as Socrates’s having “mixed it up” with Theaetetus on the previous day [258a]), consulting the Greek reassures (perhaps he is meant to sound relatively informal compared with the Stranger or perhaps he wants to recall the Stranger’s mixing of the eidē). Words whose polysemy is troublesome are rendered consistently, in a neutral and readable way that has no axe to grind. Instead of translating most replies as “Yes, Socrates,” the translators make the responses both differentiated and differentiable, an absolutely invaluable aid to the close reader who is keeping watch over the fitness of the interlocutor’s responses. The Stranger’s humor, which verges, it is no exaggeration to say, on aridity, appears in all its understated, deadpan glory. Picture the face of a very serious old man intoning these words: “The king at least is manifest to us as one who pastures a certain horn-shorn herd” (265d). Even when the syntax becomes tortuous, the translation remains not only readable, but even speakable. What is perhaps most impressive is that the translation’s readability does not come at the cost of overly interpretive (or inventive) construal. Heidegger said approvingly of Kant that he left obscure what is in itself obscure. In this rendering of the Statesman, it should be said that what is puzzling in the original remains so in translation, but because of what is said, not because of any obscurity in how it is said. The translation’s simultaneous readability and faithfulness (in the fullest sense of �REVIEWS | RECCO 139 that word), coupled with its generous and thoughtful supplementary materials, strongly recommend its use for classroom study by serious students, with or without some knowledge of the Greek. It should also be of interest to, and useable by, any sort of serious reader at all. In contrast to the translators’ earlier editions of the Phaedo and the Sophist, this one clearly distinguishes the functions of the Introduction and the Essay, placing the latter, appropriately, after the dialogue itself. The “Essay” pithily and unpretentiously raises questions that cut to the very heart of the dialogue, questions about the nature and possibility of rational politics, and questions about the very identity of philosophy. No mere “student edition,” this; the Plato scholar, too, will find much here that advances serious thinking. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Fall 2013 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T.H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Frost, Bryan-Paul Levine, David Burke, Chester Kalkavage, Peter Maistrellis, Nicholas Salem, Eric Carey, James Recco, Gregory Description An account of the resource Volume 55, Number 1 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Fall 2013. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_55_No_1_Fall_2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/eb111ed6134eabaaa040bc45f67a09a8.pdf 35704956a3e3eeb8b2a3c10f579a7103 PDF Text Text The St. John’s Review Volume 55.2 (Spring 2014) Editor William Pastille Editorial Board Eva T. H. Brann Frank Hunt Joe Sachs John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Elliott Zuckerman Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant Deziree Arnaiz The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President; Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. ©2014 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Desktop Publishing The St. John’s Communications Office Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml. ��Contents Essays & Lectures The Mutuality of Imagining and Thinking: On Dennis Sepper’s Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images ..................1 Eva Brann Similarity and Equality in Euclid and Apollonius ............................17 Michael N. Fried The Soul’s Choice of Life.................................................................41 Greg Recco Artistic Expression in Animals .........................................................61 Linda Wiener Poems Troy...................................................................................................82 Hannah Eagleson Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire...................................................................84 Peter Kalkavage The Second Sense .............................................................................88 Elliott Zuckerman Review To Save the Ideas Book Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea: An Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo ...................89 Eva Brann ��The Mutuality of Imagining and Thinking: On Dennis Sepper’s Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images1 Eva Brann When Professor Rosemann invited me to this colloquium—small in scale, but to my mind great in significance—I told him that I conceived my talk on Dennis Sepper’s newly published Understanding Imagination as a sort of book review, which earned me a wonderful possession, a copy of this magnum opus, as he called it, rightly. There cannot be even the hint of a wink in this appellation. It is indeed a magnum opus, magnificent, powerful, and copious. I want to address this last feature first, since it colors the reading of the book. This work takes its time. Since, to describe its thesis in a first approximation, there is no activity homo sapiens sapiens engages in as such that is not imaginative, Sepper ventures into all sorts of intellectual territory and calls on a variety of theories and concepts. The point is that instead of dropping names allusively and naming notions abbreviatedly he takes his time in explaining what he uses, and he does it so that a reader can follow. He needs the idea of a field. Do we all know off-hand what a field, formally speaking, is? 1. New York: Springer, 2013. This review-lecture was written for a colloquium held on October 30, 2013 in honor of the book by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, where Professor Sepper teaches. Eva Brann, tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, was invited to be the main speaker because Professor Sepper has had close relations to St. John’s, and because her book The World of the Imagination (Savage, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1991), is cited in Understanding Imagination as a sort of predecessor in the attempt to treat the imagination somewhat comprehensively and with due regard to the reflective tradition. �2 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Well, now we know. Is everyone interested in the imagination familiar with Saussurian linguistic theory? Well, a lucid exposition is given. Does that sane remainder among us who is convinced that opining without some grounding in the tradition of thought is like Chanticleer standing on top of a middenheap crowing, know exactly why, and how, to study texts of the past? Well, though I come from a school that deliberately resorts to that tradition as a treasury of texts, yet on reading Dennis Sepper’s first introductory chapter I felt better armed in what looks at the moment like a rear-guard action in its defense. Let me quickly inject here that I think this is a sufficiently winnable battle, that the last shall soon enough be first, and that books like this one will belong to the special forces of this fight. One element in its effectiveness is precisely that its generalities are highly and acutely specified. What I mean by that I’ll say before long, and I’ll even express some misgivings. But they are the queries and doubts of a reader who has been made to think hard. So let me begin my review of the content of Understanding Imagination by saying that the plenitude of notions introduced is lucidly organized. This book knows exactly where it’s going. The title announces the comprehensive topic of the book. (Topic, topos, topology, topography, I should say, are not casual but carefully expounded terms of the work.) This overarching topic is the imagination and its two aspects: the activity of imagining, and its product, images. First, the imagination is to be understood, that is, subjected to thinking. And anyone who has ever developed an interest in this topic will know that this endeavor opens a can of worms—particularly the problematic idea that one mental function can be applied to another, and the implied pseudo-traditional notion that the imagination is in fact a separable faculty. (I’ll explain “pseudo-traditional” in a moment.) The subtitle, then, implies that this understanding will yield the “reason of images.” Now believe it or not, the book itself contains an explication, applicable to this phrase, of genitives, objective and subjective. Thus “the reason of images” means both “what is the reason we have images, how and for what purpose they come about” (objective) and “the rationality belonging to images themselves, how images and logoi (reasons �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 3 and ratios) are identical” (subjective). The main title has a similar double meaning. The book will make good on both parts of the promise, to elucidate both the activity and the product of images— and, of course, these expositions will raise questions. The organization of so large a number of mental motions must, as I said, be lucid, and it is. I’ll first set it out summarily, then permit myself to pick out the particular aspects that got to me, and finally formulate some of the aforesaid queries. That’s as much as to say that this is a personal take on the book, but that way of proceeding needs no excuse in respect to this work. For the author himself has some keen observations bearing on the strenuous selfdenial of the impersonal approach, with which I have my own experience: Academic treatments of the inner life, driven by some misguided notion of objectivity (I don’t want to say, individual inadequacy) quite often read as if the scholar had mislaid his soul and excised his personal experience while writing on, say, the passions, the will, or the imagination. In these matters, our author might agree, taking it personally gains something even more valuable than objectivity—call it verity. I must say at this point what “taking it personally” shouldn’t mean. Dennis gives the most generous praise and acknowledgment to my own book, The World of the Imagination, which he clearly regards as a worthy predecessor to be worthily superseded. There’s no cause for grief in that. What better chance for an afterlife than to find a delimited place in the next, more global treatment? At the end, I’ll indicate briefly how the picture-making view of the imagination preferred in my book both accommodates itself and is recalcitrant to Dennis’s topology. Chapter 1 begins by giving shape to the questions that matter about the imagination: How do we come by the idea? Why is it important? And it promises answers. It then goes on to a critique of what Sepper calls “the occluded-occulted tradition” of sapient imagining. He mounts a fair attack on what one might call the canned version of the tradition, the “pseudo-tradition,” which is divorced from the subtleties of the actual texts and thus set up to miss the meaning. Here he produces a pointed answer to two questions: One, what killed the tradition? Answer: survey-type, textless �4 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW textbook accounts. And two, what have the original texts to give us? Answer: fresh, unstereotyped approaches to truth. Chapter 2 offers a five-line definition of the imagination, which is deliberately comprehensive and incidentally shows that good books are written back to front. My students tend to think, wrongly, I believe, that philosophy is about and ends in definitions. Yet it is a part of the intelligent plan of this book that it begins by focusing the mind on the topic by means of this definition. It is a risky and arresting strategy: risky because, unlike the Socratic initiation of a search by means of a definition that is at once popular and self-refuting, Sepper’s definition is at once demanding and conclusive; arresting because you can tell that it is new-old, not one of the going formulas, yet rooted in the intellectual tradition. His ultimate aim is, as I said, comprehensiveness, initiated by actually practicing imagining, by attending to the act. There are guided exercises asking you to determine such aspects as how much of imaginative remembering is reproduction, how much detail is present, etc. There is a first engagement with various approaches, such as psychologism, which regards knowledge as “what people in fact think” rather than “what objects actually are,” and works on the supposition that we have similar, naturally given, minds which have before them mental objects, and also posits that both the mind’s thinking and its objects are accessible to introspection. One can see that “having images”—pictures held in or before the mind—goes well with this school of thought. It is, however, afflicted with many quandaries. Its opponent, antipsychologism, argues that it is not from mental, thus subjective, objects that knowledge comes but from objective public objects, from logic, mathematics, the world. Internal objects are denied in favor of overt behavior; mental images, at least the claim that there are well-formed, stable mental pictures, are obvious targets of anti-psychologism. It, too, has its difficulties. Sepper gives notice that he will sail between these Clashing Rocks: A mental image must be somehow based both in its situation and its forming activity—must be both public and private. To escape falsifying fixations, we must reradicalize imagination, recover its roots, its ontology. Sepper proposes a guiding idea �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 5 that will avoid getting caught in the conventional commonplaces: a “topology” of the imagination. Chapter 3 could be said to set out the methodology of the book, but that would be falsifying Sepper’s enterprise, which is premethodological. I might describe it as putting to work, for all it’s worth, a well-found metaphor. Topos, the Greek word for “place,” has many spaces—physical territories supporting settled locales; reversely, mathematical fields constituted from the relations among its elements, its sites; topological space in which expansible shapes undergo transformations without tearing; and the index in which rhetorical “common-places,” in Greek, topoi, can be looked up. These are all versions of a “conceptual topology.” This rich notion is the notable discovery, or I should say, rediscovery of the book. Sepper finds that certain philosophers’ writings about imagination, when directly approached, in fact employed a conceptual topology all along. Here is a very preliminary description of the topological approach, as exercised by people who have some preparation: They have not acquired just a greater quantity of discrete ideas and their associations. They have cultivated new fields of imagination as such, as whole fields; they have learned to mark out special positions in the field; they have come to isolate (or section out) subfields and sometimes they learn how to relate the various fields to one another in a new entity or a new field (94). This much is already evident about a topological understanding of the imagination: It will see imagining as holistic, fluid, multilevelled—and all that to the second degree. I mean that the above is not only a description of the imagination but also of the understanding of imagination. For if the imagination is a “topography,” a placing-in-fields activity, so much the more must its understanding be a “topology,” an account of a topography. And conversely, if the approach is adequate in its metaphoricity—for “place” as primarily used and defined by Aristotle, is a phenomenon of extension—then so must the imagination be a power of metaphorical placing. But this is not Sepper’s explicit vocabulary; it is perhaps more an expression of my misgivings, which I’ll articulate at the end. �6 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Chapters 4 through 7 then do what is obviously next: give a reradicalized reading of the deepest philosophical texts bearing on the subject—Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant. Chapter 8, on post-Kantian treatments, displays what happens sooner or later to anyone who tries to trace the tradition of a topic chronologically. Eventually things fall apart into multifariousness; one is obliged to choose a few authors out of a multitude. Sepper concentrates on those, namely Wittgenstein (in his Tractatus) and Saussure, who exemplify an important consequence of his own heuristic, his topological device: that logos, far from being the antithesis of an image, is an image. To explain the assertion that the overlapping of language with imaging is implied in the topological approach, I must return to Chapter 3 to introduce Sepper’s notion of “biplanarity.” It refers to a sort of double sight by which one imaginative plane is simultaneously present with another, and the imaginer sees one in terms of the other. It is first mentioned as a sort of dissociation, such as happens when one distances oneself from the sense-filled experience of the world in order to see it as reason-resistant appearance, opposed to intelligible being, if one is Socratically inclined. Or reversely, if one tends to Husserlian phenomenology, then it is real existence that is “bracketed,” so that one may see the world as an analyzable phenomenon. Later this relation between the planes is called a projection. “Seeing-as” has in fact become a topos. So logos or reason and image or picture can live simultaneously on two planes while being, moreover, somehow projectible—that is, in some aspect isomorphic. I have some misgivings about this rather broad application of the notion of projection that I will offer later on. Now before going to those central chapters that revive the tradition and reradicalize the problem, let me just complete the sketch of the book’s organization. Chapter 9, the last chapter, presents the initial definition, now endowed with enough mental material to shed the term definition and to become a delimitation—a kinder, gentler, more inclusivesounding term. Like any thoughtful philosopher (there is, after all, the other kind), Sepper does not in fact highly value definitions, because they are too bare, and he says that they never deliver an �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 7 unpackable essence. Nonetheless his now much amplified delimitation does invite an analytic reading. I will sketch out what this reading yields, since that is the crux of the book, yet I know full well that I’m reversing Sepper’s deliberate expansion. But what else to do? Let me call it whetting your appetites. So: the imagination is an activity; one might say that the imagination is nothing but imagining. This identification does an end run around the “mental modularity” debate, which is concerned with the problem hinted at before: whether the mind has a multiplicity of distinct faculties or is a global activity. The imagination is neither a separate faculty nor an undiscriminable activity. This imagining is a third something, quite positive, quite specific. It acts evocatively, calls something forth, and that in a dual way: “abstractional” and “concretional.” Its evocative work produces on the one hand something drawn away from, abstracted from, detached from the original. But on the other hand, the emergent imaginative phenomenon has—this is my term now, (Sepper avoids it)—quasi-sensory characteristics, reminiscent of the embodied original insofar as that it is a concretion, a thickening, of features. The definition then goes on to specify this activity of imagining. First, it envisions imaginative fields of concern with a basically potential nature, in which the fixities of the sensory world become fluid. Second, it exploits this potentiality to allow the projection of field upon field, that is, of biplanarity. I have, of course, truncated this concluding exposition and so robbed it of its subtlety. The chapter then gathers in the topics that give the potential features form, actualize them, as it were, and so shape the field into a topography, an expression of the field’s potentials. Recall that these topoi or topics are figurative places, mental foci. Here are some examples: Imagining begins with “the emergence of appearance as appearance,” a formulation that implies “not as appearance of a stably real thing,” and which is, by reason of this divorce from reality, both initially placeable in the imaginative field and essentially evanescent. Fixing this appearance, giving it firmer shape is a further work of the imagination. A second topic is the image as inchoate, labile, and contextual. Contextuality in particular is a recurrent and crucial topic, since in its shiftiness it partly explains the mobile character of images, but �8 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW even more because context is placing, and placement is the necessary correlative of place. Further on, a topic zeroes in on imagining as abstracting from perception. One might say “abstraction from perception” is the preliminary activity that yields appearances as appearances, since perception is the sensing of things as things. But one can regard this abstraction from perception also in an opposite way: When the imagination strips the thing of its perceptual accidents it produces a rationalized image, one having the lucidity of reason—reason in image-shape. I think of diagrams and blueprints in connection with this. Nine such topoi are mentioned, features both of and in the field that have now become topics, subject-areas for future study and theorizing, and with these “areas” the book concludes. One stems from Sepper’s unapologetic acknowledgment that he has “cognitivized” the imagination and omitted the human depths of affectivity. He regards the future incorporation of these factors as plausible and predicts a complex inquiry. Another concern is the anthropological positioning of the imagination: How does the imagination fit into our humanity? Sepper suggests that Heidegger’s Being and Time might be translated into a more conventional philosophical anthropology, in which terms like attunement (Stimmung) might be put to use. Here I am driven to an aside: I would applaud this outcome, because if such a normalized derivation had been plausibly accomplished, that would imply what some of us suspect—that Heidegger’s original existential analytic is, after all, an ordinary ontic anthropology ratcheted up by fiat into an extraordinary ontology. Ontology is indeed another concern. Sepper’s envisions ontological explanations that are imaginative in the sense of being fieldto-field projections, one field being the explanatory, the other the explained field. A bonus is that this duality avoids destructive reductionism, since in the imaginative mode the field elucidated is not collapsed into the explaining field. Simultaneity of levels is maintained, and the object explained survives in its plane, unreduced to its explanatory elements in the underlying parallel plane. Finally an ethics of imagination is adumbrated. Sepper speaks of an ethos of imagination as the “inhabitable place of imagina- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 9 tion”—how we live in its fields. Such a way of life will develop an ethics that requires this way of life to be good. His book has shown that thinking and imagining are inseparable. The obsession with formal and procedural rationality and the relegation of imagination to the arts is disastrous in children’s education and, by implication, to adult practice: The only adequate way of developing rationality is to develop our ability to imagine comprehensively; we must start with ourselves, or we will inevitably fail our children and the future world (524). In leaping from the first three chapters to the last, I have hollowed out the nourishing marrow of Understanding Imagination, the “reradicalized” readings of imagination’s great philosophical texts. I would keep you here past lunch, dinner, and nightcap, if I attempted to fill the gap. Those interpretations are based on close and acute textual analyses, and they take their time. Instead I will try to say, briefly, in gist, what in each of the four philosophers to which Sepper gives a chapter is particularly germane to the delineation of the imagination just outlined. In this sketchy review I shall have to omit entirely the history-of-ideas glue that holds these philosophers steady in the context of a—putatively—coherent development. It is, incidentally, not clear to me what the actual order of discovery was: Did Sepper formulate his understanding of the imagination first and then discover previously occulted corroboration in the textual tradition, or was it the other way around, or both simultaneously? Maybe he will tell us later. I’m not sure whether this attempt to pinpoint the intention of an extended exposition, to find the crux of a highly textured lay-out, amounts to a subversion or a highlighting of Sepper’s work. Anyhow, I mean it for the latter and will try not to miss the point, but if Dennis says I did, I will gladly yield to correction. So, then: Chapter 4: Plato. The chapter intends a major correction of standard interpretations that downplay images in the dialogues. In fact, “for Plato reality is mimetic,” meaning that the levels of being are seen as a cascade of images along which the viewer rises and descends in inquiry. Moreover the image-beings produced by what I �10 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW might call “ontological imaging” are analogically connected, that is, by proportions constituted of logoi, ratios—as in the Divided Line of the Republic. So they can be said to be logos-involved (though I’m not sure that ratio-logos so readily translates into reason-logos). I also want to add that Plato calls the lowest human thought capacity eikasia, “image-recognition,” but then puts it to work throughout the realm of knowing, for the ascent of knowing is through recognizing images as images. Chapter 5: Aristotle. Next, the imagination is retrieved from a truncated conventional account of Aristotle’s On the Soul which suppresses two aspects—that imagination seems to be a sort of motion and that it is one aspect of intellection. The imagination’s motion is that of abstracting from the matter of the sensory object and locating the resulting appearance in the thinking, noetic part of the soul. There, as “intellectualized imagination” (Sepper’s term), it functions freely over a field of shifting conformations and contexts, over a topography. Here I want to add that Aristotle calls even the Divine Intellect a topos eidōn, a “place of forms,” and the very fact that this description is figurative (since the Intellect is beyond all place) may strengthen Sepper’s claim: thoughts and images are “concreted” in the highest reaches. Chapter 6: Descartes. Now the topological view of the imagination is refounded in modernity, though again conventional imagination-suppressing selectivity has obscured this fact. Descartes is a persistent practitioner of the imagination, particularly in the mathematization of physical nature. Imagination, however, is identified as an activity of the intellect, which is capable of “remotion,” of stepping back from its imagined figures to rethink them as purely intellectual existences. Thus intellect exceeds imagination so as to become, from beyond it, the source of its directed mobility, that is, the source of its biplanarity and field-topography. Chapter 7: Kant. Sepper precedes his exposition with an account of the post-Cartesian occultation of the imagination by rationalism and its revival within a new science of sensibility, aesthetics. To these developments Kant responds with a radical epistemology— an account, called “transcendental,” as yielding knowledge going beyond the only conscious material knowledge possible, an account �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 11 that traces experience to its root. This root is dual, a passively receptive sensibility “looked at” by intuition, and an actively constructive conceptuality “functioning” by understanding. The sensibility is again dual, consisting of transcendental, that is, hypersensory space and time. Spatiality and temporality are thus with us from the first, a priori. Into these notional receptacles flows— from somewhere—a sensory manifold, an unstructured matter. The imagination is a synthesizing power, a power of “placing together” disparate elements, both at the very origin and on several higher knowledge-producing levels of the soul. Thus imagination is, for the first time in philosophy, productive before it is reproductive. It is now knowledge-shaping rather than knowledge-aiding, as it was for Aristotle, for whom it presented to thought the sensible world without its matter. The first work of Kant’s transcendental imagination is that of informing the sense-manifold spatially and temporally, so that all sensation of the world comes to our consciousness “in” space and “in” time, extendedly and sequentially. Mathematics, then, is a product of another imaginative synthesis, which directs thinking to invoke, to inscribe, in space particular geometric figures, and also calls on time to develop them progressively. Of the several syntheses, the highest and deepest, most original, hence most mysterious, work of the imagination is done by a procedure that is called a schematism. It “puts together,” or rather infuses, the functions of the understanding, which is a rational power, with the space and time, the pure intuitions of the sensibility, which is a receptive mode. On the face of it, their disparateness would seem to preclude this miracle of involvement. But the imagination provides the ground of their union. One example: “Substance,” as a mere rational notion, is an empty concept. When time-informed it becomes the more concrete category of that which persists in time, a locus of underlying stability. There are further syntheses, those that produce the ascending ways consciousness deals with the representations before it: first, an “apprehension,” a mere awareness of a representation as an item; then, a “reproduction” of the representation as a memoryimage; finally, a “recognition” that by coming under concepts the representation is now stably settled in consciousness and fully ac- �12 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW quired by self-consciousness. So the Kantian imagination is an activity responsible for the togetherness of analytically disparate factors. It works at the roots of consciousness, to give it its basic constitution, and then over multiple and layered fields of knowing, by projections from the level of mere awareness to full self-consciousness. Sepper says that Kant, as the most consequential representative of the eclipsed tradition, “brought the . . . intelligible dynamism of imagining to a high point that was not exceeded even by the romantics”—which is saying a lot, and rightly. To summarize my summary: Plato introduces an ontological imagination, whose places are held together in a bond of logoi, ratios. Aristotle adds a psychological activity working at the crux of human knowing, between thing and soul. Descartes conceives an intellect that contains and directs the imagination; hence the dynamism of images—their mobility, responsiveness to context, and biplanarity—is not intrinsic to images but is the inspiriting work of the intellect. And Kant discovers a synthetic power merging sensibility and understanding, the two aspects of cognitive consciousness; this power originates at its unknowable root of the human subject and works at all its levels. These four philosophers anticipate in various degrees of prominence the two chief elements of Sepper’s analysis: the close linkage of reason with imagination and the shifting field-topography notion of mobile imagining. And they corroborate his respect for the tradition as a source of illumination. Now, to do my job as reviewer, I should subjoin some misgivings—and I do mean misgivings and queries, not criticisms and condemnations. First, then, I’ll articulate a sort of global unease about explanatory delineations like Sepper’s efforts that make the—surely heroic—attempt to capture the mobile multifariousness and closeup complexity of embodied beings, and particularly, of their mental life. In one of his many helpful footnotes he explains the mental motions of “abstracting” and “prescinding” (drawing off and cutting away), both of which are a kind of simplifying fixative; the imagination itself, as a cooperating power of understanding works �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 13 with these devices. If the project is to understand understanding imagination through a descriptive analysis that preserves the flexible richness of a participating power, a certain swampy doubletalk is the penalty. So for example, a key word, topos, carries, as I pointed out, the dual meaning of a given subject of inquiry fitted into a topology and of a placing function of the imagination producing a topography. And the imagination itself appears—indeed early Descartes is the predecessor here—in two forms. On the one hand, it is a general power of figurative reconception— whence its relation to human “creativity.” This human power is, of course, nothing like the divine creation of the Bible that makes a world out of chaos; it is rather a new perspective on an old situation or its reconfiguration. This general imagination is a Protean power. On the other hand, there is also the narrower power of producing and manipulating images; it is a rather specialized capability. I wonder if prescinding, cutting away, containing, would not be an authorial virtue here. But then again, if something, the imagination par excellence, is by nature duplicitous, perhaps its account must display intentional ambiguities and homonymous doublings—never mind Occam’s Razor and its injunction not to multiply explanatory entities. The second item is only a specification of the first. Certain notions don’t seem to lend themselves to clarity—for example, contextualization and fusion. A context, as Sepper fully appreciates, is logically definable by what is sometimes called an infinite judgment, as the indefinitely large negativity surrounding a place. So “contextualization” means putting a small island in a large ocean and calling that a placement. This misgiving, incidentally, reaches to all those unhelpful politico-socio-economico-psychological explanations: You can’t zero in on an apprehended “this” by means of too-big-to-know “that.” Something analogous goes for fusion, the togetherness of word and thought or thing and image. It doesn’t, incidentally, matter whether the cognitive union is to be of thought with a material object or with its matter-stripped image; their mutuality is, by the very reason of being a fact, a mystery, and it might be most incisive to call it that. Third, this mutuality or reciprocity of intellect and imagination �14 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW seems to me the mystery of mysteries, one attested to by the very variety of grappling devices proposed for their union, precisely because of their structural dissimilarity. All of Sepper’s four philosophers, however they may assimilate the intellect to its object—as, for example, when Aristotle analogizes sensing and intellection— at the end of their ruminations admit, either explicitly or implicitly, the existence of a non-sensing, imageless power of intellect. This shows, I think, that in those high reaches the intellect itself is an imageless power. How does a power which at its purest is placeless come to govern placements? These considerations make me wonder about the biplanar, fieldto-field-projecting imagination. It is, to begin with, a very congenial notion to me, this double-sight (for which Dennis kindly gives me credit), in which an image over- or underlies worldly events, lending them a resonance from other world-venues. Such are the Homeric similes of the Iliad that alleviate the excruciating concentration of the battlefield by overlaying it with a bonding analogy to the rest of the world, from the heavens to the household. But that template notion presupposes some articulated similarity, some isomorphism, and I have not quite understood on what basis Sepper’s fields are actually projectible onto one another, how they are homologous. For example, he says that there is something perverse in the claim that geometry is left behind in analytic, that is algebraic, geometry. And yet there is a powerful notion, set out recently in Burt Hopkins’s extended commentary on Jacob Klein’s work on the origin of algebra,2 that just this is the case. Symbolic mathematics casts loose from image-mathematics and thereby founds the very modernity Sepper is trying to reform, the world of abstract reckoning that has suppressed concrete imagining and has no structural relation to it and is simply not homologous with it. Another example is word-painting, the power of language to arouse mental images. No one knows just how words intend toward and reach the world, nor, therefore, how they instigate its images. So, it seems to me, the field of thinking and its articulation in words, 2. Burt Hopkins, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011). Jacob Klein was the third Dean of the New Program at St. John’s. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN 15 this field of logos, is not, at least not obviously, in the field-to-field relation to the imagination that the notion of a reasoning image requires—and yet I know that language often delineates pictures and passion usually infuses words. That brings me to a fourth and final query. Sepper quite intentionally barely touches the relation of imagining to phantasy, to painting, and to the passions. Might it not be that in relation to these the understanding of imagination requires different rubrics and emphases from those in Understanding Imagination? I’ll post brief surmises. Cognitively useful imaging is fed from the outside face, so to speak, of consciousness by the sensed world. Phantasy, by which I mean fiction, presents what-is-not, and so offers a re-presentation of no worldly original. No receptive taker-in of a fiction thinks of it as a re-arranged reality, a reality-collage. Should one not consider that there might be a conduit from the inside, for which the term “unconscious” is just an evasive makeshift? Although I am here in the company of soberly sane thinkers, I am nevertheless suggesting that one might seriously consider what the practitioners of poetry meant by the Muses, who live on Olympus and not in neuronal networks. The question here is, Whence comes imagining in its most life-enhancing aspect? When the visual arts are drawn into the inquiry, painting is apt to come front and center, because, if a painting is (as we pre-postmoderns tend to think) an externalization of a mental image (of course modified in its passage from quasi- to real space), then the embodied product might in turn throw light on that immaterial image. It might be that we are drawn to flat-medium imagery because it reminds us of our soul’s imagining—in its plane dimension (that is, lacking volume), in its immobility (or virtual mobility), and in what I’ll call its momentousness (its excerpting from the banal spatial and temporal context a moment of intensified significance). The question here is, Whence issues the imagination’s most poignant work? Even to ask that question is, to be sure, a surreptitious bit of special pleading on my part, since the answers I’ve just suggested are the ones given in my book. �16 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW And finally, when the imagination is properly related to the passions, from the devastating storms of erotic desire to the delicate atmospheres of esthetic feeling, might the imagination not appear in yet another capacity than that of abstracting from the round reality outside, or of receiving influxes from a ghostly source beyond? I mean the capacity to transmogrify the blind shapelessness of our most intimate psychic condition, our affectivity, into formed feeling—a phrase that surely describes some of our internal imagery. The question here would be whether the image as an effluvium of feeling is the same as or different from the cognitive, the art-producing, the Muse-inspired image. Thus the question of questions: Is the imagination—be it activity, capacity, power, faculty—one or many? Almost two and a half millennia, and we are still in medias res. Well, I seem to have talked myself into acknowledging that Dennis’s multiplication of entities may mirror the way things are. Thus Understanding Imagination is a wonderfully anticipatory waystation. So here, in conclusion, are my wishes for the book: First, that it gain influence enough to encourage a new round of broadly conceived image-inquiries aided by fresh, close attention to the great predecessors and perhaps some new, ingeniously devised, imagination-informed image-research. And then, that its call be heeded for a reform which I’ll put in my own words: There is in our world a strong strain of relentless reductionism and blind rationalism whose inevitable complements are mechanical creativity-mongering and thoughtless image-proliferation. One antidote, perhaps only topically applicable—but then positive good usually is local—would be a revivified attention to the reason of images. �17 Similarity and Equality in Euclid and Apollonius Michael N. Fried By Way of Introduction My subject today is the meaning of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius—and, by implication, in Greek mathematics generally during its climax in Hellenistic times. But before I actually begin, I want to say just a few words about history of mathematics and St. John’s College, and I would like to do so by telling a little story. I told this story the last time I spoke at St. John’s,1 but I would like to tell it again, for I still think about it and am still unsettled by it. Not long after I finished my doctorate, I was invited to Delphi for a meeting of historians of ancient mathematics—a small intimate group, only slightly larger than a St. John’s seminar. During one of the morning coffee breaks, Alexander Jones, the classicist and historian of Greek mathematics, casually asked how I felt having made the transition from a St. John’s way of thinking to a historian’s. Like a good seminar question, I was stunned by this, and I was not sure how to answer. This was mainly because I could not decide whether there really was a difference between a St. John’s way of thinking and the way of thinking of a historian of ideas, that is, whether it really was true I had made any kind of transition at all. With a kind of dullness until that moment, I had no trouble, on the one hand, claiming that in the work I was doing as a historian of Greek mathematics I was continuing what I had learned at St. John’s, and, on the other hand, feeling frustration, sometimes bordering on Michael N. Fried is Professor of Science and Technology Education at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. This lecture was delivered on July 31, 2013 at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. 1. At the conference Classical Mathematics and Its Transformation, held at the Annapolis campus in 2004. �18 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW resentment, at having to explain yet again how, despite its centering on texts mostly written long ago, the St. John’s approach was not historical. Jones’s question made me face the possibility that there might be a real contradiction here. Of course the reason it still preoccupies me is not because I am overly concerned about my identity as a Johnny, but because it raises the question of history altogether. Let me say just a word about this. When Alexander Jones contrasted the study of history with the St. John’s program he had in mind, I believe, a view of history, particularly the history of ideas, in which the thought of thinkers in the past is assumed to be conditioned by times and contexts; understanding Euclid or Apollonius must, in that view, always be mediated. The contrast with St. John’s may have been based on a mere caricature of the College where students deal with “eternal ideas” able to be grasped in an unmediated way. But there is another non-historical view of Euclid and Apollonius that involves assuming such authors can be read with no mediation beyond a good Greek lexicon, one that is related to that caricature version of St. John’s, while not, I hasten to add, the St. John’s way. It is that in which one comes to mathematics of the past through modern mathematical concepts and methods, as if the mathematicians of the past were merely writing about the same ideas in a different language—as John Edensor Littlewood famously said, like “fellows of another college.”2 Modern mathematical ideas, for those who approach ancient texts in this way, do not mediate a reading of the past, but only clarify what those older mathematicians were actually saying. Modern mathematical insight, on that view, becomes the key to historical insight. A historian like Jones could well see that same modern insight as obscuring what the mathematicians of the past understood. For Jones, what the older mathematicians were actually saying is what they did say in the body of texts they left behind. In order to recover the original meaning of those texts, if we can, one must read them attentively and with the thought that they were meant to be read. This unmediated reading of texts, I think, is not far from what one tries to do at St. John’s. The difficulty here is that having read the texts 2. Quoted in G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 81. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 19 one must nevertheless interpret them—and what it means to interpret can be interpreted in many ways! Here there can be deep divisions in outlook. It may be that Alexander Jones, as a historian of mathematics, is a historicist, that is, that he truly believes mathematics to be entirely a product of historical forces so that Greek mathematics, say, belongs immovably to its own time. In that case he would certainly see a divide between the way he relates to the past and the way one does at St. John’s. But whether he really is a historicist I do not know; I never asked him. Whatever the case, in approaching the history of mathematics, he must, as I must as well, begin at least with a working assumption that the mathematics of the past is different from that of the present. The subject of this lecture is not the idea of history, to use the title of R. G. Collingwood’s famous book,3 and so I shall have to risk your being left with the impression that this working assumption is only a kind of maxim. However, I do want to stress that it is in fact fundamental to the way a historian must come to the past. For example, in the chapter on historical experience in Michael Oakeshott’s Experience and Its Modes, the author distinguishes different kinds of past, of which one is the historical past, or, we might say, the historians’ past: The differentia [emphasis in the original] of the historical past lies in its very disparity from what is contemporary. The historian does not set out to discover a past where the same beliefs, the same actions, the same intentions obtain as those which occupy his own world. His business is to elucidate a past independent of the present, and he is never (as an historian) tempted to subsume past events under general rules. He is concerned with a particular past. It is true, of course, that the historian postulates a general similarity between the historical past and the present, because he assumes the possibility of understanding what belongs to the historical past. But his particular business lies, not with this bare and general similarity, but with the detailed dissimilarity of past and present. 3. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), which collects together the author’s works on his philosophy of history. �20 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW He is concerned with the past as past, and with each moment of the past in so far as it is unlike any other moment.4 As a position regarding the way one should come to the past rather than a position about how the past really is, this is not very different from a good rule for listening or reading well, as we try to do at St. John’s: you will listen better to what authors are trying to say if you do not assume you already know what they are saying—if you assume, rather, that they are saying something different from anything you have ever heard before. That said, we are creatures of the present; we cannot pretend the present does not affect us in any way. For this reason, it is at least useful, if not essential, to be cognizant of the present even while we are trying to find a very different past. So, while my purpose today is to try to clarify the notions of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius, I want to begin with a certain aspect of how we moderns tend to think about similarity and equality: I hope it will help to bring out the tremendous difference and even strangeness in the ways these notions were understood in classical times. Similarity and Equality in a Modern Context Let me begin with a problem someone gave to me sometime before my flight from Israel to Santa Fe (it is a long flight so it is always good to have a mathematics problem to work on in transit). The solution I will present is a modern one. Let A and B be given points and let C lie on a given circle. Let P be the centroid of triangle ABC. Find the locus of point P. Let E be the midpoint of AB. Then if EC is any line from E to a point C on the circle, EP:EC=1:3, since P is the centroid of triangle ACB. Hence, we may think of E as a center of similitude—a point from which the plane is dilated or contracted uniformly, that is, that the distance between points is enlarged or diminished by a fixed ratio (3:1 in this case). The locus PP′P″ is then the image of 4. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 106. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 21 circle CC′C″ via a contraction relative to E. Therefore, the locus PP′P″ is a circle having a radius 1/3 that of the given circle CC′C″. By the same argument, we can see that if C moved on any other shape, say, an ellipse or a square, the locus of P would also be an ellipse or a square 1/3 the dimensions of the original ellipse or square. �22 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In fact, it can be a completely arbitrary shape. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 23 In every case, the locus required is a shape similar to the original shape and 1/3 its dimensions. For our purposes, there are two things we should observe. The first is the form of the problem, the mere question of locus. What does it mean to “Find the locus of P”? The idea of locus, or in Greek, topos, is not an easy one. It would require a lecture of its own. Yet, it is related, I think, to my main subject, similarity and equality. I shall say a word about this later. The second thing to observe, putting the difficulties of locus aside, is my own way of answering the question, namely, “The locus required is a shape similar to the original shape” What allows me to speak so generally? Why is it that I need to know nothing about the original shape, none of its special properties? What allows me, a post-nineteenth century person, to speak of the similarity of a shape I know nothing about? The answer to this is that in solving the problem I only referred to a relation between EC, wherever C happens to be, and EP. More precisely, I took P as an image of C when the entire plane was contracted by a factor of 1/3 with respect to the point E. That ABC happened to be a triangle and that P was the centroid of ABC was really incidental. More importantly, in the original problem, the fact that the point C moved along a circle was incidental. I did not, even once, refer to a property of circles! The modern turn here is precisely to ignore any particular shape and give all of one’s attention to the space in which it is found. The contraction by 1/3 is of the space itself, the entire plane: everything in it will be contracted, shrunk, by a factor of 1/3, so whatever the shape, it will be the same, only smaller (and in another instance of course it could also be larger)—it is as if we make a change of scale. This kind of transformation of the plane is called a “dilation,” and, in general, we can speak about similarity in terms of a dilation combined with other transformations of the plane that preserve distances between points, translations, reflections, rotations (these are known as “isometries”).5 This centering on the space is crucial in almost every aspect of modern 5. In fact, it turns out to be enough to speak about reflections: translations and rotations can be defined in terms of combinations of reflections. �24 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW mathematics.6 And it is what links similarity and equality, or congruence. For since a dilation is determined by the factor of contraction or enlargement, one can speak of a unit dilation where the factor is 1. Congruence—and we shall have to confront the problem of congruence versus equality later—is only a special case of similarity, so that if two figures are congruent they are automatically similar as well. I want drive home the point that modern geometry is colored by its emphasis on space by quoting a nineteenth century geometer who is thought of as a classical geometer, that is, one whose work is not governed by algebraic ideas—and, indeed, he is considered one of the greatest geometers of nineteenth century. This is Jakob Steiner. One of the ideas Steiner developed (though he may not have invented it) was called the “center of similitude.” In the problem above, this is the point E, the point with respect to which we dilate the plane. Steiner speaks of this in more than one work; here is how he describes it in “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler Given a Fixed Circle with its Center”: If in a plane through any point E we draw rays (lines) in all directions EA1, EB1, EC1, . . . and by means of these rays, so connect with one another all points of the plane that to every point A1 on such a ray as EA1 corresponds another point A2 on the same ray; and indeed, under the condition that the distance of every two corresponding points from the point E, and EA1 and EA2, have throughout one and the same given ratio, as n1:n2, then such a system of correspondence is thereby brought about that the plane is 6. I think Jacob Klein put his finger on the same tendency when he wrote, “Descartes’s concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of extension with extension itself. Our present-day concept of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day Mathematics and Physics designate as ‘Euclidean Space’ the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of linesegments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system, a rational system, as we say nowadays. ‘Euclidean Space’ is by no means the domain of the figures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of Greek mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general character of the extendedness of those structures.” Jacob Klein, “The World of Physics and the ‘Natural’ World,” The St. John’s Review 28.1 (1981): 29. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 25 traversed twice. Or, we can also imagine that two planes, which may be called α and α′, lie one upon the other, while every point may be considered as belonging as well in one as in the other plane.7 Although Steiner will use the center of similitude specifically for circles, lines, and angles, his way of presenting it in terms of a transformation of the entire plane—or, as we would say, a mapping of one plane onto another—shows the generality of his conception. So, to reiterate the main point above, similarity can be a general notion for us since in our modern mathematics similarity refers to such an operation on the entire plane in which geometric figures live. And because we focus on the entire plane rather than the objects themselves, the particularity of the objects deemed similar becomes unimportant, as we have seen. It is in this way that the conception of similarity in Euclid and Apollonius (and, I would add, Archimedes as well) is profoundly different from that in modern, post-nineteenth-century mathematics.8 7. Jakob Steiner, “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler Given a Fixed Circle with its Center,” trans. M. E. Stark, ed. R. C. Archibald, Scripta Mathematica 4 (1948): 222. Steiner’s diagram is slightly different from the one included above, for there are a few more points he wants to emphasize beyond the mere definition. 8. For this reason, comments such as this from Jeremy Gray seem to me completely wrongheaded: “The Greek geometrical proofs worked because of assumptions made about the underlying space, which are reflected in the ideas of congruence, similarity, and parallelism.” (Jeremy Gray, Ideas of Space [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979], 29.) �26 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Similarity in Euclid and Apollonius In some ways, the radical departure of the modern conception of similarity from the classical Greek conception has everything do with how mathematicians like Euclid and Apollonius treated the plane itself. The plane, epipedon, in Greek geometry has, one might say, two expressions, 1) as an object, and 2) as a place. As an object, it can be considered in relation to other objects, for example, it may be inclined to another plane, or a line may be inclined to it. It may cut another figure, a parallelepiped as in Euclid, Elements XI.25 (“If a parallelepipedal solid be cut by a plane which is parallel to the opposite planes, then, as the base is to the base so will the solid be to the solid”), or as in Apollonius, Conics I.11-14 where the conic sections are produced by cutting a cone by a plane. Sometimes a plane is nearly identified with part of itself, as in the face of a solid figure (see for example, Elements XI, Definitions 9 and 10), in which case it becomes an object in a sense not much different from the way a triangle is an object. As a place, it is not something manipulated: it is there, and there are things in it—they can be manipulated, but it cannot.9 Thus in Elements I, Definition 8, “A plane angle is the inclination to one another of two lines in a plane (en epipedōi) which meet one another and do not lie in a straight line.” Again in Book XI, Proposition 1, “A part of a straight line cannot be in the plane of reference (en tōi hupokeimenōi epipedōi) and a part in a plane more elevated,” the plane is an immovable place. This phrase “the plane of reference,” or “the plane placed under,” as a place on which things may be situated, also appears in Apollonius’s Conics I.5210 where Apollonius constructs a parabola in a plane. Even though the plane is not the exclusive field of action here, as it is in Book I of the Elements, and may have a relation to other objects or be constructed, it is, nevertheless, unmanipulated in these contexts, a that-with-respect-to-which other things may be manipulated. It is also the place in which the similarity of figures 9. This idea is important in connection to Book IV of the Conics. See Michael Fried, Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, Book IV: Translation, Introduction, and Diagrams (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2002). 10. See, for example, Apollonii Pergaei quae Graece exstant cum commentariis antiquis, ed. I. L. Heiberg, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891), 160, line 15. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 27 is explored. Of course the plane is a place in which the similarity of figures is explored for the moderns as well; however, they do so by treating the plane as a place that is able to be manipulated, as if the place were an object. As such, it can also be compared to other planes, as we saw in the example from Jakob Steiner.11 To return to the main point, however, the upshot of the ancient view is that the similarity of figures must be a comparison of the figures themselves within a plane. One’s attention, therefore, must be sharply focused on the figures and their properties. The foundation of similarity rests in the look of geometrical figures. I use the word “look” intentionally; it is a fair translation of the Greek word eidos, which besides its well-known Platonic context has a mathematical meaning of “shape,” or “form” in the sense of “shape.” For example, in Euclid’s Data, Definition 3, we find the following explanation: “Rectilineal figures are said to be given in form (tōi eidei), if the angles are given one by one and the ratios of the sides to one another are given.”12 This definition is notable not only because of its resemblance to the definition of similarity in the Elements (see below), but also because it makes clear that “similar” is related to something the figures themselves possess,13 namely, their own look or form: for one figure to be similar (homoios) to another means that they are in possession of the same shape, the same form, the same look. The shape of a person may be different from the person, but the shape of a triangle is impossible to separate from what it is to be a triangle. In geometry, the shape of something depends on what that something is. There are, for this reason, as many criteria for similar figures as there are different kinds of shapes: this is why for the Greek mathematician there is no single governing rule for 11. See pp. 24-25 above. 12. Translation from Christian Marinus Taisbak, Euclid’s Data: The Importance of Being Given (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003), 115. Taisbak’s book contains a deep discussion of the idea of “givenness in form” and of Euclid’s Data generally. 13. In this connection, Taisbak points out, “The Elements compare triangles. The Data deals with individuals [emphasis in the original], and with the ‘knowledge’ we may have of such individual triangles, within the language of Givens.” (Taisbak, Euclid’s Data, 126-127.) �28 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW determining similarity. In the Elements, for example, we have the following different criteria for similarity: Elements III, Def. 11, Similar circular segments: “Similar segments of circles are those which contain equal angles or in which there are angles equal to one another.” Elements VI, Def. 1, Similar rectilineal figures: “Similar rectilineal figures are such that they have each of their angles equal and sides about the equal angles proportional.” Elements IX, Def. 9, Similar solid figures: “Similar solid figures are those contained by similar plane areas (epipedōn) equal in number.” Elements IX, Def. 24, Similar cones and cylinders: “Similar cones and cylinders are those of which the axes and diameters of the bases are proportional.” Add to these other definitions from Apollonius and Archimedes: Apollonius, Conics VI, Def. 2, Similar conic sections: “[S]imilar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are drawn in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the lengths they cut off from the axes from the vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the ratios to each other of the portions which the ordinates cut off from the axes are equal ratios.”14 Archimedes, Conoids and Spheroids, Introduction, Similar obtuse-angled conoids (i.e. hyperbolas of revolution): “Obtuse-angled conoids are called similar when the cones containing the conoids are similar.” Each of these definitions demands prior knowledge of the object to which the word “similar” is being applied; for example, one must know that the angles contained in a segment of a circle are all equal so that one can speak of the angle of the segment. The necessity of such prerequisite knowledge precludes a general definition of similarity: “similar” always awaits the particular geometrical entities which are to be similar—even ratio and 14. All translations of Books V-VII are from G. J. Toomer, Apollonius Conics Books V to VII: The Arabic Translation of the Lost Greek Original in the Version of the Banu Musa, 2 vols., (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 29 proportion is not fundamental, as the case of similar circular segments shows. And since “similar” for triangles is one thing and “similar” for conic sections something else, one could not ask whether some shape is similar to some other shape without first assuming that they are of the same type—a polygon, for example, or, again, a conic section.15 Thus, while Apollonius can ask whether or not a parabola is similar to a hyperbola or even an ellipse in Conics VI.14, the question remains strictly within the context of the similarity of conic sections for which there is a general definition. And when we look at that general definition, we see how deeply it is rooted in the foundations of conic sections developed in Book I of the Conics. Let us restate it: Similar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are drawn in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the lengths they cut off from the axes from the vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the ratios to each other of the portions which the ordinates cut off from the axes are equal ratios. 15. I am referring of course to “similarity” in its strict mathematical sense, as opposed to the use of “similar,” in a non-mathematical context, even within a mathematical work. For example, in the preface to his Phenomena, Euclid writes that “if a cone or cylinder be cut by a plane not parallel to the base, the resulting section is a section of an acute-angled cone which is similar to a shield (homoia thureōi).” (Euclidis Phaenomena et Scripta Musica, ed. Heinrich Menge and I. L. Heiberg [Leipzig: Teubner, 1916], 6.) �30 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW So, suppose ACD and PMN are two conic sections. Let AB and PQ be their respective axes, and let CEC′, DFD′, MRM′, NSN′ be drawn ordinatewise. Then ACD and PMN are similar if CC′:EA::MM′:RP and DD′:FA::NN′:SP whenever AE:PR::AF:PS. In order to follow this definition one must understand what an axis is and what lines drawn ordinatewise means—and, naturally, one must understand that every conic section has an axis, or, more generally, a diameter with respect to which lines may be drawn ordinatewise.16 Unlike the little problem with which I began the discussion, a proposition about similarity in Apollonius’s Conics must concern conic sections and their particular properties: Conics VI, the book which treats similarity (and equality) is, after all, a book about conic sections! As an easy example of how Apollonius uses the definition and how not only its formulation but also its use depends on the properties of conic sections, consider Conics VI.11, which proves that every parabola is similar to every other parabola. Here is a paraphrase of the proof. Suppose AB and GD are two parabolas, AK, GO are their axes, and AP, GR are their respective latera recta. 16. There are other definitions, notably one implied by Archimedes for the ellipse and hyperbola. If PQ and pq are the axes of, say, the two ellipses and AR is an arbitrary ordinate in the one while bs is an arbitrary ordinate in the other, Archimedes says that the two ellipses will be similar if it is true that: sq.AR:rectPR,RQ = sq.bs:rect.ps,sq Note that nothing is said about where R and s are on the respective axes. The condition is equivalent to Conics, VI.12, for this ratio is always that of the latus rectum to the transverse diameter, by Conics, I. 21. I might add that although Toomer calls this a definition, Archimedes does not: he simply states the fact that the conics will be similar if this is so—and that at the end of a proposition! (See Conoids and Spheroids, Proposition 14 ad fin., in T. L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897], 125.) In any case, like Apollonius’s definition of similarity, this condition of Archimedes is also tied closely to conic sections as opposed to any other kind of shape. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 31 Let AK:AP::GO:GR, and suppose Z and Q are arbitrary points on AK. Choose M and C so that they cut GO into segments having the same ratios as the corresponding segments defined by Z and Q. In parabola AB, draw EZI, HQS, BKT ordinatewise, that is perpendicular to AK since AK is an axis. Similarly, in GD, draw LMU, NCF, DOX ordinatewise. Now, by Conics I.11, BK and DO are mean proportionals between AP and AK and GR and GO, respectively (i.e., AP:BK::BK:AK and GR:DO::DO:GO) Therefore, BK:AK::DO:GO, so that BT:AK::DX:GO [since BT=2BK and DX=2DO]. Since AP:AK::GR:GO, AK:AQ::GO:GC, therefore, AP:AQ::GR:GC. Thus, repeating the argument used to prove BT:AK::DX:GO above, we can show also HS:AQ::NF:GC and, again, EI:AZ::LU:GM. And so Apollonius concludes: Therefore, the ratio of each of the lines BT, HS, EI, which are perpendiculars to the axis [AK], to the amounts which they cut off from the axis, namely, to AK, AQ AZ is equal, respectively, to the ratio of the lines DX, NF, LU, which are perpendiculars to the axis [GO], to the amounts which they cut off from the axis, namely OG, CG, MG. And the ratios of the segments cut off from one of the axes to the segments cut off from the other are equal. So section AB is similar to section GD. �32 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Again, what I wish to stress about this proof is not the details of the argument, but the mere fact of its appealing at every step to the specific properties of the parabola demonstrated in Conics I. Perhaps the most striking reflection of how the similarity of conic sections completely depends on the definition of conic sections, their geometric identity as the section of a cone, is the fact that book ends with a set of eight constructions involving the cone and locating conic sections within the cone, for example, “Given a cone and given a parabola, find a cone containing the parabola that is similar to the given cone” (Conics VI.31). Significantly, Book VI is the only book in the Conics, besides Book I, in which the cone appears explicitly. We need now to move on to the question of equality. For, remember, Conics VI is not just about similarity, but also about equality. Equality in Euclid and Apollonius As we noted above, with the modern view of similarity in which similarity relates to a transformation of the space in which objects are found, congruence becomes a completely derivative notion. And here I should say that moderns speak about congruence and not equality—and I think there is much to say about that—but more often than not the use of one or the other is a matter of convention. For example, when Hilbert comes to the axioms of congruence in his Foundations of Geometry he more than once uses the expression “kongruent oder gleich,” that is, “congruent or equal.” That it can be a matter of convention is an important aspect of the modern perspective. Greek mathematicians do have a special designation, “equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios); nevertheless, they do not have a separate term for the relation of “congruence.” We shall have to confront this combination “equal and similar” later, but for now suffice it to say that there are only two basic terms “equal” and “similar.” The difficulty of their relationship cannot be swept away. Thomas Heath’s treatment of this, for example, is quite unsatisfying. When Euclid uses the word “equal,” isos, in a manner corresponding to our notion of congruence, Heath just takes that to be the sense of the word, and when Euclid then uses it in a manner corresponding �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 33 to our notion of equal areas (Elements I.35), Heath says this is “equality in a new sense.”17 Nevertheless, Euclid does use the same word, isos. One cannot escape that. For Euclid at least, equality is a very general notion, and it is certainly one of principal themes of Book I of the Elements, if not the principal theme. As such, it is an idea that undergoes development in the book; one might say the book develops a kind of theory of equality. Let us consider briefly the overall direction of that development. The theory of equality is contained in the five Common Notions (koinai ennoiai) at the start of Book I of the Elements.18 These Common Notions are the following: 1. Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. 2. And if equal things be adjoined (prostethēi) to the same thing, the wholes are equal. 3. And if equals be removed from the same thing, the remainders are equal. 4. And things fitting (epharmozonta) on one another are equal to one another. 5. And the whole is greater than the part.19 Of these, the fourth provides the basic criterion, the basic test for equality: if one figure can be fitted exactly on top of another, then the figures are equal (isos). It makes its first appearance in proposition I.4, which states that two triangles will be equal if they have 17. T. L. Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, Vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1956), 327. 18. Heiberg mentions other common notions appearing in some manuscripts; for example, “If unequals be adjoined to unequals, the whole is unequal” and “Doubles of the same thing are equal to one another,” as well as, “Two lines do not contain a space.” Except for the last about two lines not containing a space—which, as Proclus himself seems to suggest, is odd fish among the others—all of these common notions, therefore, concern equality—and even that last common notion may be connected to the nature of coinciding. 19. My translation. �34 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW equal sides surrounding an equal angle. The entire demonstration, problematic though it may be, plays on Common Notion 4: equal lines are fitted on equal lines; the equal angle is fitted on the equal angle; this forces the one triangle to fit on the other, so that the two are equal. In fact, that equal lines can be fitted on equal lines and equal angles on equal angles is not truly an application of Common Notion 4, but its converse; however, with simple undivided objects like lines and angles, being equal and fitting on one another are treated as identical relations.20 And in this connection we must return to Book VI of the Conics for a moment. For Apollonius takes the criterion for equality provided by Common Notion 4 as the very definition of equality of conic sections: Conic sections which are called equal are those which can be fitted, one on another, so that the one does not exceed the other. Those which are said to be unequal are those for which that is not so. In the Elements, however, Euclid shows that the converse of Common Notion 4 cannot be assumed in all generality. It is here that the other Common Notions clarify why the criterion of “fitting on one another” is sufficient but not necessary for equality: in Elements I.35, Euclid shows that things can be equal without having the same shape, that is, without being able to fit on one on the other. Proposition I.35 states that “Parallelograms on the same base and in the same parallels are equal to one another.” Thus the proposition tells us that parallelograms such as ABCD and EBCF, which are clearly not the same shape, may, nevertheless be equal. It is instructive to look at Euclid’s proof of the proposition (in paraphrase): Since ABCD is a parallelogram, AD is equal to BC. For the same reason, EF is equal to BC. Whence also AD is equal EZ (by Common Notion 1); and DE is common; therefore, the whole AE is equal to the whole 20. See Michael N. Fried and Sabetai Unguru, Apollonius of Perga’s Conica: Text, Context, Subtext (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 228. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 35 DF (by Common Notion 2).21 But also AB is equal to DC. So the two lines EA, AB are equal to the two lines DF, DC, each to each. Also the angle contained by FDC is equal to the angle contained by EAB, the exterior to the interior. Therefore, the base EB is equal to the base FC and the triangle EAB is equal to the triangle FDC (by I.4 and, derivatively therefore, Common Notion 4]; let the common part DGE have been removed; therefore, the remaining trapezoid ABGD is equal to the remaining trapezoid EGCF (by Common Notion 3); let the common triangle BGC have been adjoined; the whole parallelogram ABCD is therefore equal to the whole parallelogram EBCF (by Common Notion 2). The parallelograms being on the same base and in the same parallels are, therefore, equal to one another. What we see in this proposition is no “new conception of equality,” as Heath says; on the contrary, what we see is that the Common Notions—which comprise, as I said, the theory of equality—begin from the basic notion of “fitting on one another” to show how equality applies also to shapes that do not fit on one another. It is an elaboration of equality, a spelling out of the theory, not a new kind of equality. Even Elements I.47, the “Pythagorean Theorem,” can be seen in this light, since it shows not only how one figure can equal another of a different shape, but also how one figure can equal two others of the same shape. 21. It is typical that Common Notions 2 and 3 are used when a single thing is removed from two equals. This assumes that anything that can be equal to something is always at least equal to itself. It is curious—and perhaps significant—that this fundamental fact is missing from the Common Notions. �36 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW And, I would argue, Book II continues this inquiry with its attention to how one or several rectangles may equal other rectangles. This elaboration of the idea of equality demonstrates how things can be equal even though they have far from the same shape. Conversely, things can be of the same shape and yet not be equal. Aristotle points this out, tellingly enough, in the section on motion and alteration in the Categories (15a, 30-33): “there are things that increase and are not thereby altered as well. For example, if a gnomon is added, a square is increased in its size but does not undergo alteration (ēuxētai men, alloioteron de ouden gegenētai). Thus, in both directions, equality of figures is not identical with sameness of shape. Equality cannot be subsumed under similarity and similarity under equality. Yet, equality has to do with shape in some way. It is rooted in shape inasmuch as superimposition is its basic test; and it can be used to probe shape, for example, in showing that a line through the center of an ellipse divides an ellipse into two equal halves (Conics VI.4 and 5). But, again, because equality does not necessarily mean sameness of shape, shape itself cannot be its main object. That main object of equality is similarity. Thus it is a kind of counterpoint between similarity and equality, rather than a logical dependence one way or another, that characterizes how these ideas appear in Apollonius and Euclid. Equal and similar The logical disconnection between equal and similar is particularly clear in the Conics, where propositions for similarity are kept separate from those on equality: one proposition will show when two �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 37 sections are equal and a different proposition later in the book will show when they are similar. Now we must return to the idea of “equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios) in Apollonius and Euclid, for here the two notions do come together. But it is a peculiar coming-together—not a logical joining, but only slightly more than a mere conjunction. This has the effect of forming a new term while leaving the independence of the original terms. There is “equal,” there is “similar,” and there is “equal and similar.” As a unit of meaning, Charles Mugler, in his dictionary of Greek mathematical terminology, notes a non-mathematical use of isos te kai homoios: he cites Thucydides’s account of the battle between Corinth and Corcyra over the fate of Epidamnus, in which Corinth at one point advertised Epidamnus as a colony where citizens would be “in perfect equality” (epi tēi isēi kai homoiai).22 The two words isos and homoios come together almost as mutual intensifiers. Greek mathematics does not use intensifiers—“really round,” “really straight,” “really parallel,” “really similar” don’t appear! Yet “equal and similar” does seem to have the sense of “equal in every way.” And this puts objects into a new class. Thus, in the Elements, “equal and similar” solid figures makes its appearance in Book XI, Definition 10 as an independent definition after the definition of similar solid figures quoted above: “Equal and similar solid figures are those contained by similar plane areas equal in number and in magnitude.” Euclid might have defined equal and similar solid figures as similar solid figures whose faces are not only similar but equal as well— that is, he might have subordinated “equal and similar solids” to “similar solids,” and, therefore, also have eliminated any need for a separate definition. Obviously there is a relationship between “similar solids” and “equal and similar solids,” but in Euclidean discourse it is a relationship between inhabitants of distinct categories. This understanding of “equal and similar” can also be seen in Book VI of Apollonius’s Conics. Proposition VI.16, for example, tells us that “Opposite sections are similar and equal.” The proof runs as follows: in Conics I.14, Apollonius proved that the latera recta of the opposite sections are equal; therefore, the figures of the 22. Charles Mugler, Dictionaire historique de la terminologie géométrique des Grecs (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958). �38 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW two opposite sections (the rectangle whose sides are the latus rectum and the transverse axis) are equal and also similar; therefore, by VI.2, the hyperbolas are equal (this is unmentioned in the text), and, by VI.12, they are similar. The proof is simple, but there is a subtlety. In proposition VI.2, Apollonius proved that “If the figures that are constructed on the transverse axes of hyperbolas or ellipses are equal and similar, then the sections [themselves] will be equal.” From this, as I said, it follows that the opposite sections are equal, which, by Appolonius’s definition (in contrast to Euclid’s Common Notion 4), means they may be fitted one on the other. It would seem then an immediate inference that they are also similar, that they have the same shape. But Apollonius says this only after VI.12, which shows that if the figures of hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar then the hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar, and what is more, he cites only VI.12 as his justification. Therefore, for Apollonius, to be equal—even when this means “able to be fit one on another,”—and to be similar are different relations: the assertion that the opposite sections are “equal and similar” demands proving that the distinction can be made. For us moderns, who see a logical connection between “equal” and similar,” saying “similar and equal” is understandable but redundant—like saying “rectangular and square.” Conclusion Let us then go over the ground again and see where we have arrived. The modern notion of a transformation of a plane ignores the particularity of a given object and acts only on the space within which it is placed. Such transformations can be chosen in many ways, but, for similarity, one can be chosen so that all distances between points in the original space can be dilated or contracted by a fixed ratio; the ratio, treated as a number, can be greater than 1, less than 1, or equal to 1. In this way, similarity and equality can be taken as concepts that are not fundamentally different, equality being the case when the fixed ratio happens to be 1. This way of approaching the subject of similarity and equality is foreign to the mathematics of Euclid and Apollonius because of its roots in specific geometric figures and their specific properties. Similarity in Greek geometry begins and ends in the sameness of shape. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | FRIED 39 Equality begins with the sameness of shape, with superimposition, but its special character, as seen explicitly in Euclid, is its ability to depart from the sameness of shape. In this way, similarity and equality are independent, so that recognizing a similarity, a sameness of shape, is a different process from recognizing an identity, even though the processes are tantalizingly close—should I say similar? Still, the two processes can meet, and when they do, they create a third notion, “equal and similar.” But, as I argued above, they create a third notion precisely because they are not joined in logical way—they are simply brought together. But this presents us with a difficulty. If similarity and equality are indeed independent notions, what then is Book VI of the Conics really about? It cannot be exclusively about shape, as I have thought in the past, because that, as I have argued, is the province of similarity, not of equality. So when Apollonius describes Book VI as a book about similarity and equality in the letter introducing the entire Conics, does he mean to say that it is simply about two unrelated or vaguely related topics? Perhaps. But I think there is more to it than that, chiefly for two reasons. The first is, as we have noted above, the reappearance of the cone in Book VI, drawing us back to conic sections as whole, definable objects. The second is the form of the definition of equality, which is, I believe, more problematic than similarity, as I have implied throughout this lecture. The difference between this definition and Euclid’s Common Notion 4 is found in its second phrase, “Those [conic sections] which are said to be unequal are those for which that is not so”—making superimposition the exclusive test of equality for conic sections. Thus, when Apollonius wants to show that sections, or segments of sections, are equal, he assumes typically that there is some point that does not coincide with a point on the section presumed equal, and then demonstrates that contradiction follows. What I would like to bring out is that equality has something to do with every point on the conic section. In this way, what links similarity23 and equality is their way of looking at a conic section, or a segment of a conic section, all at once. 23. In the Protagoras (331e), Plato has Protagoras make the remark, concerning justice and holiness, that we should not call things dissimilar just because there is one point of dissimilarity between them. Socrates replies, “I was surprised at this.” �40 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW This is the connection, I believe, in which the problem of similarity and equality is related to the idea of locus, which I mentioned in regard to the little problem with which I started. It too concerns not an arbitrary place, but a definite identifiable place, all of whose points have a certain property. It too, in other words, concerns in some way the whole of conic sections, but in a less direct way. There is no time, of course, to go into this in detail here, but I do want to make clear that as we approach an understanding of similarity and equality, it is likely we shall also approach an understanding of other fundamental notions in Greek mathematics. This, I might add as a final word, was the not the view of older historians of mathematics, such as H. G. Zeuthen (1839-1920). Zeuthen had no doubt that the modern point of view was Apollonius’s point of view, and on that basis wrote his expansive and deep work on the ancient theory of conic sections (Zeuthen, 1886), which set the tone of Apollonius scholarship for almost a century.24 He could brush Conics VI aside, saying that it was “of no great significance” in the attempt to understand the Greek theory of conic sections.25 I hope that the discussion here makes that statement moot, to the say the least. 24. H. G. Zeuthen, Die Lehre von den Kegelschnitten im Altertum (Kopenhagen: Höst und Sohn, 1886). 25. Zeuthen, 384. �41 The Soul’s Choice of Life Greg Recco Most dreams are forgotten, perhaps even before the night has passed. Others obtrude into daytime thought, even as their meaning remains obscure. They haunt us, and seem to promise a rare and precious revelation. Their coming insistently to mind implies a faint undertone of reproach, like hearing your name repeated on waking, before you are quite sure who you are. Such dreams seem to call from afar, and from where we stand, they can only seem alien. But we also suspect that we are the ones who are out of place, and that the dream is calling us back from our wandering. In this recollection of the unfamiliar, we sense dimly that we are tied to what is familiar by only a specious kinship, and that our true home lies elsewhere. This sort of strange appeal that calls us back from estrangement can occur not only in dreams or visions, but also in deliberately produced works of art such as poems, paintings, and stories. In refusing to make any ordinary sort of sense, they contradict our everyday understanding and invite us to speak along with them in something like a foreign tongue. The dialogues of Plato, in particular, contain many examples of images or tales of this sort, beguiling works of imagination that linger in memory on the far horizon of intelligibility. For those of us who read and talk together about Plato with some frequency, such tales or images have become part of the vocabulary of our thought—perhaps even a large part, just as loan-words can come to outnumber a language’s own stock of true-born names. Before moving on to our main theme, it will be worthwhile to reflect briefly on a familiar example—the image of the cave in the Republic—so that we can begin to meditate on how such images work and what they accomplish. Socrates asks his interlocutor Glaucon to imagine a cave in which people are chained in such a way as to be able to see only what is directly before them, the cave wall on which shadows are Greg Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This lecture was delivered in Annapolis on 12 November 2012. �42 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW projected by a fire above and behind them. Glaucon exclaims that these are “strange prisoners” (515a).1 “Like us,” Socrates replies. But then something odd happens. At the very moment when we might expect Socrates to offer the key by which to decipher these unfamiliar letters, he instead continues to speak in the language of the image. The prisoners are “like us,” he continues, “for do you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves or one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the wall facing them?” Now, this is not so strange a move as to pose an impossible task of interpretation, especially to someone who has thought about the image for some time. We might start with the idea that our ordinary efforts to know are wrongly oriented and thus largely unsuccessful, and from there move on to the idea that this concerns not only our attempts to know the world but even our self-knowledge and knowledge of others. That sounds about right. But we should try to imagine what Socrates’s reply would sound like to someone who had never heard the rest, to someone who has not had the time to think about it, to someone who does not know where Socrates is going. To this person, Socrates’s response must seem pretty nearly the opposite of the explanation that Glaucon’s remark implicitly requested. After hearing it, Glaucon would probably still say that the prisoners are strange, perhaps as a sort of polite way of saying that the man telling him about the prisoners is strange—and it would be hard to disagree. But whether or not Glaucon meant his remark as a reproach, and however strange Socrates’s speech is, its strangeness does not stem from some madness of his, some disordered state of his powers of thought or imagination. What is truly strange here is not the image to which he gives voice, but the situation it is intended to portray, namely, the fact that creatures destined for knowledge should spend their lives so unaware of, and so unwittingly cooperative with, the powerful impediments to knowing that characterize their situation. The proper way to hear Socrates’s response to Glaucon’s remark about the prisoners’ strangeness is thus affirmatively—not “the prisoners are not strange; they are like us,” but, “they are like 1. Translations throughout are lightly adapted from Allan Bloom’s The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 43 us, strange.” And his explanation is an explanation not of the prisoners’ likeness to us but of their strangeness; again, “do you suppose such men”—those described in the image—“would have seen anything of themselves or of each other than the shadows?” Given what Socrates is trying to accomplish, deflecting the question of likeness and going farther into the image may be the only way to make it work. The image presents important features of our epistemic situation that are normally difficult to discern, but that we can come to perceive if we take up an initially unfamiliar and awkward perspective, make it our own, and then turn this view back on what had previously gone unquestioned. In order to know, we must learn to speak strangely. With a few small, though significant, differences, this kind of change in understanding is what is aimed at by the final pages of the Republic, the so-called Myth of Er (614b-621b). It, too, is a fantastical story that represents in figurative form an important but overlooked dimension of our actual situation. Its fantastical character is not a product of wild genius, but arises from Plato’s rigorous attention to both the nature of human freedom and the difficulty of discerning it from within our ordinary perspective. In the case of the cave image our learned familiarity with it makes it relatively easy to put a name to what it is about; unlike Glaucon, we have read the Republic. And we get some more help from the fact that Socrates tells us outright what the image is meant to be an image of. “Make an image,” he says, “of our nature in its education and want of education” (514a). The Myth of Er, by contrast, is not presented as an image of anything at all. It is ostensibly the report of a man who returned from the dead to tell of what awaits souls after life. Socrates presents it as the completion of the dialogue’s investigation of justice, inasmuch as it gives an account of the good and bad that come from being just or unjust, not in this life, but after death. In this connection, the story is a fitting end for the dialogue, in that it recapitulates a theme first sounded very near the beginning. Cephalus reports that as a young man he scoffed at the stories of punishment in the afterlife, but old age has found him and his agemates more fearful of what is to come. They are looking back over �44 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW lives that contain perhaps no small measure of wrongdoing. Cephalus is thankful for his wealth, above all for the ability it gives him to conduct the costly private rituals of expiation that his fear has made seem prudent. Socrates’s return to this theme at the end of the dialogue, then, seems to endorse Cephalus’s anxious piety, at least in confirming that there is something to fear for those who have done wrong. But the story contains much more than is necessary for this purpose and, indeed, much that does not directly or obviously further it. Also, it is just very strange. Even with some degree of paraphrase, it will take a short while to recount it. So here it is. Upon his death, the soul of Er traveled along with other souls of the dead and came to a place where there were two openings in the earth and two in the sky, above and across from them. Between the pairs of openings sat judges, who directed the just to continue to the right and upward through the opening in the sky, and the unjust to go to the left and downward into the earth. Er himself they instructed to remain, observe, and report what he saw on his return to the world of the living. What he saw first was this: as some souls were going into the two openings indicated by the judges, other souls were coming out of the others, some up from earth, others down from the heavens. All those who had returned went off with delight to a nearby meadow, where they made camp and engaged in conversation. Those who had known each other in life greeted each other and asked what it was like in the other place. So they all told their stories, some lamenting and crying as they recalled all they had seen and undergone in the thousand-year journey beneath the earth, the others telling of the beauty of the sights and experiences above. In general, those who came from below the earth said they had received a tenfold punishment for each of their acts of injustice, once each hundred years, on the grounds that a human life was about a hundred years long. For acts of impiety towards the gods, the penalty was yet worse. Of one particularly terrible tyrant named Ardiaeus it was related that when his thousand years had passed and it was his turn to go up, he and other perpetrators of unholy deeds were rejected by the opening. Men standing nearby seized them, then bound them, flayed them, and dragged �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 45 them along the rough ground in the sight of the others, finally casting them into the pit of Tartarus, from which none return. Fear of being rejected by the opening and subjected to this torment was thus the last of the punishments for souls who had lived an unjust life. The rewards for justice were said to be the counterparts of these. On the eighth day, the souls who had returned were made to leave the meadow and continue their journey. In four days’ time, they came to a place from which they could see a sort of pillar of light stretched from above through all of heaven and earth, like a rainbow. This light was said to bind the earth and the heavens and be connected to a complex, interlocking arrangement of whorls forming a sort of spindle, which belongs to the goddess Ananke or Necessity. Her daughters, the Fates Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis, put their hands to the turning of these otherworldly whorls and were associated with the three dimensions of time: Atropos, she who cannot be turned, with the future, Clotho, the weaver, with the present, and Lachesis, the dispenser of lots, with the past. The souls were then brought before Lachesis. Her spokesman gathered up the lots and patterns of lives that lay in her lap, and then delivered the goddess’s message to the souls arrayed before him. He said: “This is the speech of Ananke’s maiden daughter, Lachesis: ‘Ephemeral souls, this is the beginning of another deathbringing cycle for the mortal race. A spirit shall not be allotted to you, but you shall choose a spirit. Let the holder of the first lot make the first choice of a life to which it shall be bound by Ananke. Virtue is without a master; as each honors her, it shall have more or less of her. The blame belongs to the chooser; the god is blameless.’” Then the lots were distributed to the souls and the patterns of lives were laid out on the ground before them, lives of all sorts— lives of animals and tyrants, lives of the famous and the obscure— and these lives far outnumbered the souls present. The spokesman continued: “Even for the one who comes forward last, if he chooses intelligently and lives earnestly, a life to be happy with has been laid out, and not a bad one. Let the first not be careless in his choice, nor the last disheartened.” �46 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Since the soul’s choice of life is my theme, let me quote without paraphrase the section that follows, which deals most directly with that choice. “And the first to choose came forward and immediately chose the greatest tyranny, and, because of folly and gluttony, chose without having considered everything adequately; and it escaped his notice that eating his own children and other evils were fated to be a part of that life. When he considered it at his leisure, he beat his breast and lamented the choice, not abiding by the spokesman’s forewarning. For he didn’t blame himself for the evils but chance, demons, and anything rather than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, having lived under an orderly constitution in his former life, partaking of virtue by habit, without philosophy. And, it may be said, not the least number of those who were caught in such circumstances came from heaven, because they were unpracticed in labors. But most of those who came from the earth, because they themselves had labored and had seen the labors of others, weren’t in a rush to make their choices. For just this reason, and because of the chance of the lot, there was an exchange of evils and goods for most of the souls.” “He said that this was a sight surely worth seeing: how each of the several souls chose a life. For it was pitiable, laughable, and wonderful to see. For the most part the choice was made according to the habit of their former life. He said he saw a soul that once belonged to Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred for womankind; because he died at their hands, he refused to be generated in and born of a woman. He saw Thamyras’s soul choosing the life of a nightingale. And he also saw a swan changing to the choice of a human life; other musical animals did the same thing. The soul that got the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was the soul of Telamonian Ajax, which shunned becoming a human being, for it remembered the judgment of arms. And after it was the soul of Agamemnon; it, too, hated humankind as a result of its sufferings and therefore changed to the life of an eagle. Atalanta’s soul had drawn one of the middle lots; it saw the great honors of an athletic man and couldn’t pass them by but took them. After this he saw that of Epieius, son of Panopeus, going into the nature of �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 47 an artisan woman. And far out among the last he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites, clothing itself as an ape. And by chance the soul of Odysseus had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose; from memory of its former labors, it had recovered from love of honor; it went around for a long time looking for the life of a private man who minds his own business; and with effort it found one lying somewhere, neglected by the others. It said when it saw this life that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first lot, and was delighted to choose it. And from the other beasts, similarly some went into human lives and into one another—the unjust changing into savage ones, the just into tame ones, and there were all kinds of mixtures.” So far the report of Er. Socrates interrupts his recounting it just once, to emphasize the supreme importance of this choice of a life and to point out that we really ought to devote all our energies to acquiring the art of making this choice well. His way of talking about what would make for a good choice is very interesting, and I will return to it near the end of this lecture. But for now, let us reflect on the many ways in which the story gives the attentive reader pause and does not simply supplement the dialogue’s account of what justice is and what effect it has on souls. The story, it must be said, does not do just what it was said to do. In the first place, it is worth reflecting on how extravagant the whole section on the souls’ choice of life is. The account was introduced and admitted on the pretext that it would supplement the dialogue’s account of the power that justice has in the soul without the assistance of reputation or other external benefits. Like other such familiar tales, it accomplishes this by adding to whatever uncertain external benefits justice and injustice might win in life and among humans, a certain and unerring exactitude in punishment and reward from the gods in a sort of life after life. So, one might reasonably inquire how this purpose is advanced at all by the elaborate account of the spindle of Necessity or the whole idea of souls choosing their next life, not to mention the many examples of particular choices made by souls famous and unknown. At most, one might argue that the fact that the lives for which the souls are being rewarded or punished were of their own choosing underscores �48 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW souls’ responsibility for their own justice or injustice, and thus shows that the rewards and punishments are deserved. Even according to this explanation, however, the wealth of detail concerning particular souls’ choices, as well as the cosmic backdrop, would be only so much ornament. But of all the reasons for taking the Myth of Er as a figure for something other than what it is said to be, the most compelling is the fact that the rewards and punishments pointedly do not have the character we might expect they ought to have: they are ineffectual or at least unfathomably obscure in their mechanism. That the rewards for a just life are ineffectual we learn from the example of the soul that draws the first lot and chooses its next life first. It had come from heaven, and apparently a thousand years’ worth of beautiful sights and enjoyment was not enough to persuade it of anything but its own fitness to be the biggest tyrant of all. Although it was happy enough to reach immediately for this life, it was also particularly resistant to taking responsibility for its own choice when it became clear that the life contained many evils. This kind of remorse over bad choices, Socrates’s summary indicates, was not uncommon among those who came down from the heavens. What of the others? Those who had toiled and suffered below the earth and had seen the toils and suffering of others were said to choose more carefully, and thus on the whole, we are told, there was an exchange of goods and evils for most souls. This might lead one to the conclusion that while the rewards do not promote the choice of justice, the punishments do. But several things undercut the confidence we might have in the efficacy of posthumous punishments: in particular, the fate of the incurable or unholy, the complete forgetfulness of the living, and above all the impossibility of adequately representing injustice to the unjust perspective. As for the first, there are those like Ardiaeus, for whose crimes, it seems, no finite punishment could be adequate, on the grounds that his soul was incurable, and possibly also because of the enormity of his crimes, which transcend the horizon of justice altogether, being not only unjust but also unholy. A second problem with the notion that the punishments of the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 49 afterlife are effective in curbing injustice lies in the fact that souls are made to drink from the river of Carelessness on the plain of Forgetfulness before continuing into the life they have chosen, and, as a result, forget everything. Those who have chosen a just life, being the majority of those who completed the underground passage, will go through it and then join those who make the heavenly passage. Now having forgotten their former labors, they are likely to choose hastily and with misplaced confidence in their ability to discern what is a good life. Interestingly, this “exchange of goods and evils” for most souls was already inscribed, so to speak, in the topography of the place of judgment: the opening that leads out of heaven is located above and opposite the one that leads into the earth, as the one that leads out of the earth lies below and opposite the opening that leads back into heaven. Forgetfulness and carelessness seem to guarantee that there will be a revolution not only of whorls, but also of souls. But forgetfulness and carelessness are not magical effects brought about by the eponymous plain and river. If punishment is the engine driving the motion of souls upwards and towards justice, then the beautiful sights and enjoyment found in the heavenly passage do no less to drive them down, towards injustice. This is precisely not the image of a world-order that uses rewards and punishments to produce justice with mechanical accuracy and inevitability, but the image of a world-order that strongly inclines souls towards an eternal and predictable alternation of good and bad. Why should this be the purpose of the cosmos? A third problem with the account is that it is difficult to see what the souls must be in order for their passage to be able to teach them anything. This difficulty is thrown into relief by a significant omission. Of the souls returning from beneath the earth, Socrates says: “They were punished for each injustice once every hundred years; taking this as the length of a human life, they could in this way pay off the penalty for the injustice ten times over. Thus, for example, if some men were causes of the death of many, either by betraying cities or armies and had reduced men to slavery, or were involved in any other wrongdoing”—and here I interrupt to note that just where one might hope to learn precisely how such acts are an- �50 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW swered in that other place, Socrates concludes simply, “they received for each of these things tenfold sufferings.” In other words, Socrates provides us with no specific information. Plato handles the issue of narration very deftly here, for he has Socrates preface this section with a warning about its incompleteness; Socrates says, “Now, to go through the many things would take a long time, Glaucon. But the chief thing is this,” and then proceeds with the summary I just read. But if the purpose of resorting to summary was to avoid trouble, then it is difficult to understand Socrates’s choice of examples. In the first place, the list of specific forms of injustice by itself leads one to expect a similarly specific list of punishments. Also, the fact that each “cycle” of punishments is calibrated to the length of an average human life supports the expectation that punishments will somehow correspond to, mirror, or just repeat in inverted form the particular wrongs one has done. But the examples of injustice Socrates in fact offers do not fulfill any of these expectations, for the important reason that the victims of these injustices are in each case many in number. If a man betrays an entire city, how can his single life (or a single afterlife) stand any chance of comprising the myriad injustices done to his fellow citizens? If he sold dozens into slavery, how could his life encompass suffering the same fate dozens of times? Even if somehow it could, it would also have to contain dozens of instances of the state of freedom that slavery destroys. And each of these would have to be in some way pristine, so that the evil that is enslavement could have its full effect on the soul being punished in this way—for enslaving one person twice is not the same as enslaving two different people. In general, then, it is unclear how a single life can have the evil it does to many represented to it effectively. One solution to this conundrum, of course, is to take one sort of evil to stand for all others, to serve as a kind of medium of exchange. Maybe pain could serve as such a punitive currency, repaying specific evils with generic badness. The extravagant punishment of the soul of Ardiaeus, however, serves both as an example of this sort of thinking and as a sign of its insufficiency. The punishment is not only of infinite duration; it is also unimaginably �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 51 intense, and the one being punished in this way does not in any way signal to us what his experience is. Now, it is possible, of course, that we hear nothing from the soul of Ardiaeus because there is no need. If his soul is incurable, perhaps his punishment is not for him but an example to others, and in order for him to serve as an example, all that matters is that they take his experience as an example, whatever he himself may think of it. Consistent with this interpretation is the presence of the guards who point out to the others why these souls are being singled out for such treatment; that is, it seems at least in part to be a show put on for their benefit. Also consistent with this view is the claim that what improves the judgment of those who make the underground passage is not just that they have labored and suffered themselves, but also that they have seen the labors and sufferings of others. Nonetheless, the absence of the directly suffering soul’s perspective on the single particular punishment reported to us underscores the problem, outlined by omission in the preceding passage, of how a soul’s evil can be represented to it—and this remains a problem. If the soul’s thousand-year journey below the earth is to teach it anything—as the improvement in its choice of life suggests it does—then the soul must somehow have the evils it engaged in as though they were something good presented to it as what they in fact are. But in order to recognize one’s own wrongdoing for what it is, the perpetrator must have a different perspective than was available to him during the act, and this kind of thoroughgoing change in perspective is, as we have learned, terribly difficult. In the cave image, it is represented as a turning around that can simultaneously be a passage from what is darker to what is brighter (that is, an actual improvement) and a passage from what is perceived clearly and comfortably to what is perceived only dimly and painfully (that is, an apparent worsening). Something else is needed: a trustworthy and trusted guide who can articulate what is happening to the soul being forcibly turned around in this way. In the end, pain by itself is too diffuse, too immediate, and too uncontextualized to bear the articulated meaning that would be necessary in order to effect this change, a fact that is perhaps hinted at by the punishment’s tenfold repetition. Even the torture of the souls �52 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW of the unholy, which might seem to stand on its own as an object lesson in the wages of wrongdoing, is supplemented in the story by agents standing by to explain it, which suggests that it cannot bear its meaning within itself on its own. In the case of both punishments and rewards, then, the report of Er sets up certain expectations or requirements that it then pointedly does not or cannot fulfill. The rewards for a just life, we feel, ought to reinforce the choice of justice, but instead they are presented as strongly correlated with the careless haste and entitled self-importance that lead to a bad choice of life. As for the punishments, while they are said to have the effect they ought to, still, the mechanism by which they are meant to accomplish this is markedly obscure, and inquiring more closely into it only makes the confusion more intense, particularly by directing attention to the source of the problem: the soul and its perception of, or perspective on, the good. If the myth’s self-presentation is at odds with its content, particularly in its central conceit, we have to turn elsewhere to discover its real import. One thing that is clear, as we have just seen, is that the story concerns the soul. Just what is the soul in this story? One phrase in the description of souls’ choice of lives incidentally brings to the fore one of the key features of the myth’s portrayal of the soul. Er saw “a soul that used to belong to Orpheus” choosing the life of a swan. The striking phrase “used to belong” underlines something that must be assumed in order for the story to work at all, and it does so compactly and forcefully. For the myth to work, a soul, whatever else it may be, cannot be identical with any named person. The name “Orpheus” must indicate the temporary composite of an otherwise anonymous soul with the singer’s life whose story we know from myth. Any name, then, must miss the soul and indicate only such a composite, even my name or yours. The possessive in the phrase “my soul” becomes particularly obscure. If I were to utter the words “my soul,” who would I be saying the soul belongs to, and what would I be taking myself to be that is distinct from my soul? Who or what is speaking when the words “my soul” are uttered? Whatever we might previously have thought it was, the story is now telling us that a soul is not �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 53 identical with a life or a person, since it precedes and outlives both. One possible source for this strange conception of the soul is the discussion of its immortality earlier in Book 10 (608d-612a). There, the question arises how the soul can be both immortal and capable of being at odds with itself. Self-opposition (of the sort examined in Book 4) is associated with being composite, and this, in turn, is associated with change and decay. A soul composed of parts, it seems, could only be mortal. Instead of investigating this dilemma, Socrates merely suggests that the view of soul that we have—and that he and his interlocutors have had throughout the whole of the dialogue—is like the view one would have of how a man looks if one were to see only the statue of him that had lain at the bottom of the sea for many years and become disfigured and covered with shells, seaweed, rocks and so forth, as in the case of the statue of Glaucus. The image more or less directly asserts that our embeddedness in body, change, and manyness has made our souls unrecognizable. This is an unpromising starting point, but Socrates remains confident and ventures the guess that the soul’s true nature is to be found by our looking to its philosophia, its love of wisdom. This recalls another account of the division of the soul that emerges from the yet earlier discussion of the terrible evils of tragic poetry in Book 10. This account divides the soul’s philosophical, calculating, law-abiding part, which suffers misfortune in silence and tranquility, from another part, which indulges in loud lamentation. The latter is itself indulged by writers of tragedies, who trick even the decent man into weeping immoderately at the misfortunes of another on the grounds that this is at least not selfpitying, and is only a kind of play (606a-b). The gist seems to be that the first part of the soul would do its work better without the second. Both accounts, then, solve the problem of manyness by making one part stand for the whole. Whatever the merits or faults of such a solution, we should consider that if the true identity of the soul should turn out to be only its rational part understood in this way, then the whole drama of existence—the stories of our lives as we commonly understand them—would be wholly irrelevant, composed entirely of a sort of encrustation of alien matter that only serves to obscure the soul from view. By themselves, on �54 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW this view, souls might essentially have nothing to do with lives. While these two prior discussions of soul seem relevant to the myth and are consonant with some aspects of its sharp distinctions between soul and person and between soul and life, they are at odds with others. Souls in the myth are not heartless calculating machines, but beings capable of feeling and expressing emotion. When the souls complete their respective journeys, they go off “with delight” to the meadow where they confer. When those who came from the underground passage recount what they have seen and undergone there, they cry and lament in recalling it. When these souls are nearing the exit and see some like the soul of Ardiaeus being rejected, they experience a great fear, which they note is only one among many they have suffered. In sum, then, the souls in the story respond emotively and expressively to their situation, even during this time when they are presumed to exist in separation from body and life. In addition to transitory affections such as a moment of fear, souls in the myth also have longer-standing dispositions or traits of character. The soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, bitterly recalls the judgment that granted the arms of the departed hero Achilles to Odysseus instead of to him, and so flees humanity. The souls of Orpheus and Agamemnon, in turn, make their choices of animal lives out of long-standing hatred, of women in the first case and of humanity in general in the second. In each case, these quasi-permanent states were crystallized, so to speak, by the trauma of their previous lives (the very ones we associate with their names, as if their souls had become those single lives). Their hatreds and resentment are very much not the passions of a moment, as they appear to have persisted unchanged and utterly undiminished throughout their millennial journeys. A final, most significant example of a state or characteristic of soul allowed by the myth is that of the soul of Odysseus, which “from memory of its former labors, . . . had recovered from love of honor.” Somehow, the soul as portrayed in the myth is capable of being affected by its life, and affected in such a way as to be able to learn, not just greedily carry forward the savor of bitter memory. In either case, however, what we see is that however distinct souls may be from lives, their �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 55 lives affect them. In light of this, perhaps it is time finally to turn directly to what the story must take a life to be. This is in one way the most straightforward and familiar element of the story; everyone knows what a life is, what it is composed of, why it is important, what makes it good or bad, and so forth. In another way, however, the central conceit of the myth of Er requires a life to be something that is almost impossible to understand. Recall that the life contains elements like wealth or poverty, good or bad birth, strength, beauty, political office or rule, and indeed everything that could characterize a life, or almost everything. For, as was explained, since the soul that lives the life must be changed by it, the life considered by itself does not contain an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul (taxis). If our question is what we ought to remove in thought from our usual conception of what a life is in order to arrive at an idea of the lives whose paradigms lie in the lap of Lachesis, the answer is both simple and perplexing: we must remove everything that soul is. As it has done in many places, the dialogue is once again causing a problem by treating a distinction as a separation. When Socrates manages to bring the conversation to a halt of this sort, he often turns to an image or example that retroactively modifies one of the discussion’s starting points. We could try the same, and instead of trying to proceed with delimitation or definition in the face of aporia, we might turn to an example of what the myth takes to be a life, which it obligingly provides. None of the lives is very extensively described, but the first example of a life that is chosen is among the fullest. The nameless soul that drew the first lot—which “participated in virtue out of habit, without philosophy” after living in “an ordered regime”— picked the life containing the biggest tyranny straightaway, “but it escaped its notice that eating his children and other evils accompanied this.” It escaped his notice. How strange. How can we understand this? Should we agree with the old song that “the large print giveth and the small print taketh away”?2 Do the events or elements of a life presented to choice differ in their prominence, such that some would count as the large print, and some as the small? And 2. Tom Waits, “Step Right Up” (Small Change, Asylum Records, 1976). �56 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW what would determine which appear more or less prominent? Just what is written or figured on the paradigms of lives in the lap of Lachesis? In the example just considered, the great tyranny looks good at first, but when the soul “considered the life at its leisure,” it discovered its evils, and was unhappy with its lot. In a way, this latter portrait of a life is familiar and cogent: a life containing an apparent good may of necessity also contain actual evils that counterbalance or even outweigh the apparent good. But in another way, this is an unsatisfactory way of talking about a life. It tries to mark the badness of the life that contains one sort of fact sometimes thought to be good (being a tyrant) by pointing out that it also contains another sort of fact, which is generally acknowledged to be bad (eating one’s children). The whole question of what makes a life good or bad has been reduced to the piecemeal evaluation of particulars, and the summation of such judgments, as in what is sometimes called a rubric. But we really ought to doubt this soul’s assessment of its chosen life, since we have already been told that it makes the choice affected by folly and gluttony. It could be so misguided as to be mistaken about which of the life’s elements is good and which bad. In fact, we have already been told in Book 9 that the worst possible eventuality for a soul that is tyrannically inclined is for it to become an actual tyrant. Conversely, it may be that something as horrible as eating his children is an appropriate accompaniment to the “large print” of his being a tyrant. But just inverting the assessment this foolish soul made of each of these facts does not really solve the deeper problem, of which the problem of the relative prominence of a life’s parts—its large and its small print—is just a symptom. The component elements of a life in the myth are subject to two seemingly contradictory demands: they must be “without an arrangement of soul,” and thus be somehow meaningless, and they must be capable of “leading” the soul to being just or unjust, and thus somehow have a meaning. As for the former term of the contradiction, given that there are good and bad among rich and poor alike, wealth, to pick one example, looks like the sort of thing that the Stoic Epictetus would �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 57 call indifferent, something that is of no importance when compared with the greater question of whether we are living well, and does not by itself answer the question. As for the latter, however, the soul that has learned the art of choosing lives well, Socrates says, will call lives good or bad depending on whether they “lead to virtue or vice.” But now we have to ask: how can events be said to “lead” to virtue or vice at all unless they have within them the germ of a sense, an incipient significance that is preserved in what it gives rise to? As in other similar cases, the commentary on the myth is quite relevant and helpful, if somewhat oblique. Socrates portrays in some detail the person who has acquired the art of choosing lives well. He says: “He will take into account all the things we have just mentioned and how in combination and separately they affect the virtue of a life. Thus he may know the effects, bad and good, of beauty mixed with poverty or wealth and accompanied by this or that habit of soul; and the effects of any particular mixture with one another of good and bad birth, private station and ruling office, strength and weakness, facility and difficulty in learning, and all such things that are connected with a soul by nature or are acquired. From all this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose— while looking off toward the nature of the soul—between the worse and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it to becoming more just” (618c-e). One of the most striking things in this passage, I think, is the intensity of its emphasis on combination. The possessor of the art of choosing lives is said to consider the elements of lives both “separately and in combination” but all the examples are of complex configurations. Here, then, is one way in which something can both have a meaning and not have it in itself: it can have its meaning in being combined with something else. Note that the myth helps us here. The composition of elements that makes up each life is not something chosen; the lives have already been assembled by the time the souls have to choose them. Rather, souls are to call lives good or bad on the basis of no element in them, but on the basis of what living such a life will work in the soul that lives it. That is, �58 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW what was being chosen (whether or not this escaped the choosers’ notice) was not an indifferently composed aggregate of particular life-events or features, but something whose value lies on another level. Another striking feature of the passage is how thoroughly confusing it makes the separation of life and soul that lies at the basis of the myth. In the first place, the possessor of the art is said to know about the effects of mixtures that include elements such as “this or that habit of soul.” This seems directly opposed to the claim that lives are without an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul. Including this feature does not in itself introduce an inconsistency; rather, it states the problem well: the soul that sets out to have wealth or any other good thing will be changed by its pursuit, so that there is no guarantee it will still want or be able to enjoy what it was pursuing by the time it gets it. The one who possesses the art would have to be able to predict what changes the living of a life would work in the soul. In short, what makes elements of a life part of a life that can be called good or bad is their connection with the soul that has to live that life—the suffering, rejoicing, experiencing, remembering, expressing, and thinking being. These powers are what lend to those events or conditions whatever sense they have. Here we see another way in which a life has a meaning, but not in itself; it has a meaning in and for a soul. To state the matter most generally, elements of a life are capable of having a meaning that is not in them because that’s just what it is to be an element of a life: to be a “Here” that is also, with all the weight Plotinus gives the word, a “There.” The seeming paradox is just the reality of our situation, and one that Plato has been carefully directing our attention to throughout the dialogue. We spend as much time as we do in this dialogue on the proper organization of an educational program not merely for the stated reason—that we need guardians who will be both harsh with the city’s enemies and gentle with its citizens. Rather, as the central books show and the final myth signifies, the deeper issue is that what is most immediately apparent is always somehow a distraction from the intelligible reality of what is. But the sensible is not merely something other than the intelligible: it is the region wherein the �ESSAYS & LECTURES | RECCO 59 intelligible shows itself; it is where we live. The small things matter. The ball I learn to catch may be little more than arbitrary mineral, vegetable, and animal products refashioned to the measure of a human hand, but the act of catching that this ball makes possible is an emblem and anticipation of all sorts of future forms of mastery. The little bumps and tussles of playground life are like so many prophetic utterances spoken to us in childhood that foretell adult life’s disappointments—its alliances and betrayals, its kindness and its savagery—and they foretell them with both the accuracy and the obscurity that are characteristic of an oracle. Our lives consist not in isolated events, but in pattern and paradigm, eidē on the move. This strange mode of being of the elements of our lives is a feature of the world of the myth of Er that also happens to be a feature of our world; it is the literally true thing at the center of a mass of figurative falsehoods, and around which the whole turns. It is the true thing that seems strange to us who have become strangers to it. The elements of lives can appear big or small, cruel twists of fate, or irrelevant impediments to powers we find we do not need to get by. We who live them do not experience ourselves as having chosen them. But reflecting on the image of our souls choosing our lives can awaken us from the dream-state in which we treat the meanings of our lives as beings, as ta onta, as things that always are, with no tincture of ambiguity or self-opposition, no dependence on perspective or interpretation, no horizon of possible transformation. On the contrary, we should recognize our lives in their truth: they are the materials—somehow both indifferent and essential—out of which souls weave the tissue of meaning they first put on and then inhabit; they are elements that stand to our souls and hearts as those other elements—earth, air, fire, and water—stand to the multifariously capable bodies of living beings of all kinds, their material support and flesh. When the elements of our bodies or lives fail us, we break, but when they cooperate, we succeed in being something they would not be on their own, something other and beyond. The myth tells us that we need to learn how to cooperate with these elements and their ways, so that we may make a good pas- �60 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW sage in this life and the next, and perhaps in the next after that. But what would make for a good passage? What should we hope for? A well-deserved reward? Or a suffering that makes the soul better? The beautiful sights and pleasant experiences that the myth sets up as a reward for a good life carry with them the same ambiguity as the goods of this life: many souls are not improved by them, but turn out worse. To answer the question, we might think of the soul that once belonged to Odysseus. Of this restless and clever soul, we were not told whether it had come down from heaven or up from the earth, only that memory of its former labors had cured it. Those labors could have been carried out on earth as part of the life we associate with Odysseus’s name—where he struggled to regain his home after long years in foreign lands, losing all his comrades—or they could have been performed as payment in that place beneath the earth, some days’ journey from the spindle of Necessity where lives are woven. Perhaps our hope and prayer should be the same as his could have been: may we all perform such labors, and remember them, and be cured of what ails us. �ESSAYS & LECTURES 61 Artistic Expression in Animals Linda Wiener I have three main goals in this lecture. The first, and most important, is to inspire you to be more open to and aware of the animals all around you. The second is to give some history of a fascinating debate on animal color and behavior that began in the early twentieth century in the United States; this will illustrate how difficult it is to elicit any sort of Truth from the phenomena of nature. The third is to persuade you that, at least some of the time, animals engage in artistic expression for its own sake. Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859,1 by far the most popular way of interpreting the appearance and behavior of organisms has been through the theory of natural selection. According to this theory, if a mutation appears in an animal and that mutation helps the animal survive and reproduce better than similar animals in their environment, the mutation and the animals that carry it will be preserved while others will eventually decline and die out. But ever since this theory was published there has been dissent. The most well known dissents are from religious objectors, however there have always been some scientists, naturalists, philosophers, and others who work intimately with plants and animals who accept the theory of evolution through natural selection, but believe that it is not sufficient to account for all the phenomena of nature. I am one of this latter group. In this lecture, I will use the lens of artistic expression in animals as a way of exploring this question. I begin with an example from bird song. I was at a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Linda Wiener is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This paper is adapted from a lecture delivered at the College’s Annapolis campus on September 6, 2013. The original lecture involved images and some video clips. This version makes do with some photographs, as well as links to images on the web. Be sure to open the links and look at the images while reading! 1. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, first edition (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2001. �62 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW given by the Santa Fe Community Orchestra at the Santa Fe Opera House in May, 2008. The opera house is covered on top, but open around the sides. At the very beginning of the third movement, a flock of house finches flew in and perched above the orchestra. One male joined in singing with the music in such a way that it seemed a part of the piece. He sang for most of the third movement and at the very end of that movement, when the orchestra plays four notes, the bird came in afterward, using the contact chirps of the species, and mimicked those last four notes. This is an example of a bird singing in his capacity as a musician. He shows that he knows something about music and can employ it appropriately outside its use for attracting mates and protecting territories. This propensity of a least some birds to sing outside the mating and nesting seasons was noted by Thoreau and more recently by David Rothenberg in his book Why Birds Sing.2 David is a philosopher and jazz clarinetist. He plays his clarinet with birds in aviaries and in the wild, sometimes with remarkable results. As with the bird at the opera house, some birds respond musically to his musical prompting. I particularly like a duet he participated in with a laughing thrush; it can be heard online.3 Rothenberg concludes that birds sing because they enjoy it. Other animals have been reported to respond to human music. I read that crickets will approach when they hear music and start singing. My own experiments with two species of crickets were inconclusive; they chirped so much it was hard to tell when they were responding to music and when they were chirping in their natural rhythms. I have been told stories of raccoons coming on stage during a concert. There is also record of a bear doing the same thing (Fig. 1). Moving on from music, probably the most famous artistic animals are the bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea. For instance, the satin bowerbird builds an oval shaped bower out of sticks and decorates it with mostly blue objects. This includes flowers, berries, and even human-made items like plastic drinking straws. Other species have differently shaped bowers and use different color 2. David Rothenberg, Why Birds Sing (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 3. http://www.whybirdssing.com �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 63 Fig. 1: Bear at concert4 schemes. The vogelkop bowerbird builds a conical bower and decorates mostly with red and orange objects.5 The females come around to check out the male bowers, the males dance for them, and then the female selects a male to mate with. She then goes off to build a nest and raises the young on her own. This is a classic example of what Darwin called “sexual selection” in his book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.6 In Darwin’s account, the females have aesthetic standards and whichever male best meets those standards is the one she chooses as a mate. Darwin thought sexual selection less rigorous than ordinary natural selection because it was not a life and death matter. Recently, Darwin's view of sexual selection has been revised. Now, the building, decorating, and dancing activities of the male are seen as direct reflections of the actual genetic quality of the males. The females are selecting the males not according to an aesthetic standard, but according to which are the most genetically fit. This brings sexual selection theory more in line with the classic theory of natural selection. 4. From Carl Marty, Northenaire’s Ginger and Her Woodland Orphans (Park Falls, Wisconsin: MacGregor Litho, 1953). 5. http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds 6. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Penguin, 2004). �64 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW A group of birds called the catbirds, in the same family as the bower birds, helps raise a few questions about this modern understanding. In the catbirds, the males and females cooperate to build the nest and rear the young; on average catbirds rear more offspring than the bowerbirds. An alternative explanation for bowerbird behavior is that the bower birds have “chosen” in some way to forgo their maximum reproductive potential in order to devote energy to the creation and appreciation of art. Closer to home, there are other collecting and decorating animals. The pack rat of the Southwestern states is one. They are beloved by archaeologists because they collect all sorts of things from their surroundings and store them in their nests. An ancient pack rat nest can tell scientists a lot about the sorts of things that were around at the time. Pack rats are also famous for being destructive when they choose to nest in your home or vehicle. Whenever I hear friends complain about a pack rat nest, I beg them for photographs. Pack rats have different preferences when constructing their nests. Sometimes, it is just a bunch of sticks and a few fabulous items they have collected. My friends Betsy and Jamie had a nest in their vehicle with a central white fluffy nest structure, then an attractive bed of greens with dried red chiles piled in the center (Fig. 2a). My friends Robert and Susan had a pack rat nest in their vehicle with a central grey fluffy nest structure surrounded by a variety of sticks, stems, and cholla cactus pads (Fig. 2b). Fig. 2a Photo by Jaimie Haskell Fig. 2b Photo by Robert Schlaer �65 ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER Another friend, Pam, tells this story about a pack rat nest she found in her truck. She was so mad when she saw the nest, she threw everything on the ground; when she came back some time later, it was all back in the truck. Not only that, it was back in just the way it had been before, with each major element, stems, sticks, and other items in exactly the same spot. This shows us that the nest isn’t just a bunch of stuff thrown around. The pack rat arranges her space to her own taste. Just as when someone messes up one of your rooms, you put it back to its original arrangement, so too does the pack rat. Let’s look at some domestic animals. I had three ferrets over a period of about nine years. They were all avid collectors. They had stashes of the stuff they collected; there was a main stash usually under and couch or in a cabinet, and smaller satellite stashes in various locations. I noticed that they went through periods of collecting. My ferret Fennel collected soft things like beanie babies and stuffed animals for a while and then switched to hard things like pill bottles and vials. They also had a sense of value. If they found something unusual, it would be hidden way in the back underneath other items in the stash, whereas a common object like a pencil would just be thrown in anywhere. My colleague Llyd Wells in Santa Fe has a ferret named Tomato who makes stashes. Tomato keeps a stash of mostly soft items in the closet in the bedroom (Fig. 3a) and another stash of mostly harder rubber items under the sink in the bathroom (Fig. 3b). Llyd will switch an item Fig. 3a Tomato’s bedroom stash Fig. 3b Tomato’s bathroom stash �66 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW out of one stash into the other and Tomato is quick to “correct” this. Tomato has organized her stashes and knows how they are supposed to be. If it seems like I am talking about ferret collecting in much the same way I might talk about human collecting, it is because I am. This brings up the bad word anthropomorphism. I am accused of projecting my own desires, intentions, and activities onto the ferrets. However, if I see an animal acting in much the same way I would in a similar situation, why shouldn't I, at least as a first step, assume that it is acting with similar desires and motivations? After all, the ferret, the pack rat, and me are all children of nature. We have all evolved on this earth; why should we be assumed to be so alien to one another? Here is one more example from our domestic animals. Robby is a dog who belongs to friends Jonathan and Barbara. He has a basket of stuffed animals and when his people are away he makes careful arrangements of them on the living room floor. A typical one has four evenly spaced animals in a straight line, with one off center (Fig. 4a). A slightly more complex arrangement has two of the same animals, in different colors, together. There are two animals, evenly spaced on either side of these two and then down from the ends, another animal on each side with different, but still even, spacing (Fig. 4b). Fig. 4a Robby’s animals, simple Fig. 4b Robby’s animals, complex Also typical of Robby’s work: the stuffed frog is in every arrange- �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 67 ment. This is definitely not the work of an animal just throwing things around because he is mad that his people are away. A few years ago on YouTube there was a doberman who made similar stuffed animal arrangements, though he went in more for circular patterns. Let me take a moment to recommend YouTube as a valuable source of information about animal behavior. Now that most people have small video cameras or cell phones with them all the time, an amazing variety of animal behavior has been recorded and put online. Behaviors that I would have been called crazy for reporting ten years ago are now accessible to everyone. And everyone can judge for themself. These collecting and decorating behaviors show us a range of possibilities in nature. They are essential to the reproductive biology of the bower birds and certainly serve a utilitarian function for them. For pack rats and ferrets these activities are typical of the species, but do not serve any essential functions that we know of. Robby the dog’s activities are not at all typical of the species, but such behavior pops up now and then among dogs. I have read of other cases in which one or a few animals engage in these kinds of activities, though, again, they are not typical of the species. There were a group of pigs7 who made arrangements out of shingles and dirt and even a wolverine who made arrangements of sticks in a chain link fence, left them up for a few days, and then made a new arrangement.8 I suggest that the musical, collecting, and decorating activities I have been chronicling are not always specifically evolved to serve mating rituals or other survival needs, but may be part of a much broader expressiveness in the natural world that can be turned to utilitarian functions, but need not be. When we look at invertebrates, it is a little harder to judge what they intend, because they are not so closely related to us. Let’s look at a few examples that might count as art for art’s sake. The decorator urchin collects various materials from the ocean floor and 7. Noel Perrin, Second Person Rural (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980). 8. Douglas Chadwick, The Wolverine Way (Ventura, California: Patagonia Books; 2010). 9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjaminbull/2844381114 �68 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW puts them on top of its spines. I have read that this is for camouflage, but the photos that I have seen do not support this; they are all highly visible.9 Harvester ants are common in the Southwestern United States. Their nests are covered with small stones and are famous as collecting sites for various materials that people want. Some are covered in crystals and sparkle in the sun. People know they are the place to go to find turquoise and beads. Paleontologists find small fossils from rodents on their nests, and scientists studying radioactive minerals go to their nests to find trinitite, the mineral formed from the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site in New Mexico.10 Garden spiders, also called writing spiders, build orb webs and decorate them with zig zag patterns that are different for each species.11 Henri Fabre, the great French entomologist, called these their “signature.” I had, until recently, not read any plausible accounts of their function. It turns out, however, that the silk in the “signature” is different from the web silk. It reflects ultraviolet light and may function to attract insects into the web. This is still untested, but does seem plausible. Even so, a further question is why the web is decorated in just this way. Why do such decorations seem more than is needed to fulfill the functions they serve? This is one of the main questions that David Rothenberg, the man who wrote Why Birds Sing, pursues in a more recent book called Survival of the Beautiful.12 Usually when we think about animals and art, we are not thinking about the arrangement of a pack rat’s nest or the beads on a harvester ant’s nest. We are thinking, rather, that animals are beautiful. Humans have long appropriated bird feathers and animal skins for our own adornment. I am an entomologist, and so I look at insects a lot. Consider this beetle (Fig. 5)—the highly ornamented form of the legs, the shape and texture of the thorax, the colors and patterns on the wing covers. It is a fantastic animal and only has to be put on a background and photographed to be easily seen as art. This is 10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mouser-nerdbot/5334689193 11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argiope_aurantia_web.jpg 12. David Rothenberg, Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 69 Fig. 5 “Coleoptera” by Jo Whaley one of the ideas behind a book, The Theater of Insects,13 that I collaborated on with photographer Jo Whaley. Other insect colors are understood as serving important protective functions. The great purple hairstreak, a butterfly I see in New Mexico, has prominent white polka dots set in a black background on its head and thorax, a bright orange abdomen, and iridescent scales on its wings.14 The top of the wings are a beautiful irridescent purple. The bold black, white, and orange colors are referred to as warning coloration. Insects that are poisonous such as the black and orange monarch butterfly, or dangerous like the yellowand-black-striped wasps and bees, have these kinds of color patterns. The theory is that predators such as birds learn to avoid these patterns and so the animals are protected. Also, insects that are neither poisonous nor dangerous may evolve these patterns to fool predators into refusing to eat them. The peacock spiders, a group of jumping spiders, have wonderful bright color patterns, and special flag-like structures on their second pair of legs.15 They do elaborate courtship dances for the females. This again seems like a classic example of sexual selection in that the colors, patterns, ornaments, and dancing serve an 13. Jo Whaley, Deborah Klochko, and Linda Wiener, The Theater of Insects (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008). 14. http://www.jeffpippen.com/butterflies/greatpurplehairstreak.htm 15. http://amazinglist.net/2013/02/the-peacock-spider-maratus-volans �70 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW essential function in attaining a mate. Consider, however, the radiolarians. They are one-celled animals that live in the ocean. They are an old lineage, existing for over 600 million years. They have an amazing variety of forms, ornaments, and textures that serve no known functions.16 It seems that as soon as there were animals, even just single-celled ones, there was already a tendency toward elaboration. Again, I suggest that such elaboration may be part of a basic expressive function of nature. Such appearances are not necessarily evolved to serve particular survival or reproductive functions. Hold that thought. Now I am going to turn to the debate I mentioned earlier. Abbott Thayer was a well known portrait painter in New England at the turn of the twentieth century. He was famous for portraits of women with angel’s wings. He was also famous for his theory of animal coloration. With his son Gerald, he published a book in 1909 called Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.17 I came across this book quite by accident about eight years ago and was enthralled by it. Contrary to the theory of his day, and also contrary to the theory of our day, the Thayers thought that all animal colors were concealing. The frontispiece of the book, a painting, shows a male peacock with his colorful tail concealed in the colorful leaves on the forest floor and his beautiful blue neck concealed against the sky (Fig. 6). This vantage would be from the point of view of a ground predator such as a fox. More plausible, perhaps, is his photographic plate of a grouse showing it concealed in its forest environment (Fig. 7). Almost everyone would agree that grouse are well concealed in the forests in which they live. But, Thayer goes further. He tells us that if you want to know what a forest looks like, you should not go around looking at forests because they will confuse you with their idiosyncracies. You should look at animals such as the grouse who must be concealed wherever they are in the forest. Thayer writes: 16. http://incrediblebeings.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/radiolarians-10species-2.jpg 17. Gerald Thayer and Abbott Thayer, Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (New York: MacMillan, 1909). �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 71 Fig. 6 Thayer plate of a grouse concealed in the forest Fig. 7 Thayer plate of a grouse concealed in the woods They are, in the best sense of the word, triumphs of art; and in a sense they are absolute, as human art can never be . . . There he will find it in epitome, painted and perfected by nature herself. Color and pattern, line and shading, all are true beyond the power of man to imitate, or even fully to discern.18 It was this insight that led Thayer to become the father of military camouflage. He went around trying to get the U. S. military 18. Thayer, 240. �72 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to adopt the idea. He failed, though the French military took him up on it. Now, of course, military camouflage is well established everywhere. Under the influence of this book, I was failing to see animals everywhere. Driving in the high plains along Route 285 in New Mexico in the early spring, I would think of Thayer’s claim that antelope are marked so as to be concealed on the patchy background of snow and bare soil.19 I would be thinking that there were hundreds of antelope out there, but that I could not see any of them. The problem with this construal is that in fact you can see them, especially if you are looking for them. One person who read Thayer’s book and was incensed by it was Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, he was so incensed that he published a 120-page rebuttal in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.20 Roosevelt writes: “It is impossible to go over page by page the really countless erroneous statements, wild guesses, and absurd interpretations of fact which the book contains.” He cuts the Thayers some slack because of their artistic temperaments, but finds their lack of knowledge inexcusable. As you may know, Roosevelt was famous as a big game hunter and could easily take the point of view of a predator. He was also an excellent naturalist and knew the names and habits of all the small birds and mammals that lived around him. Going back to the frontispiece, Roosevelt points out that if the peacock is indeed concealed in the forest environment, then the peahen—which is very differently colored—must be conspicuous in that environment. Here is a summary of some of his main objections: First, Roosevelt says that it is our eyes, and not the colors of the animals, that determine whether we will see them. He tells us that his native guides in Africa could often see animals he failed to pick out. Further, cover is more important in concealing animals than their colors, motion is also more important than colors, and besides, most predators hunt by scent and do not use their eyes until they are very 19. http://kenarcherphotos.com/p953706307/h1BF0CD15#h1bf0cd15 20. Theodore Roosevelt, "Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds and Mammals,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 30 (1911):119-239. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 73 close—and by then they already know the animal is there. All these objections have merit. In fact, Roosevelt almost, not quite, but almost, claims that all animals are conspicuously colored, the opposite of the Thayers’ claim. Before going on I want to relate an incident that happened while I was still very much under the influence of Thayer’s book. I was watching mallard ducks on a pond at sunset with my daughter. The speckled brown females were difficult to see wherever they were— on the bank, in a tree, or in the water. The males, which Thayer claims are concealingly colored in the pond environment, were very easy to see.21 We were watching a particular male swim across the pond, and at one point it suddenly and completely disappeared. That is, its white back matched the sparkly white water of the pond at sunset, its brown breast matched the reflection of a tree trunk in the water, and its green head matched the reflection of foliage in the water. It was so startling that I actually jumped. Then, a halfsecond or a second later, it swam out of that position and again could be easily seen. So, Thayer is only a little bit right when he claims that male mallards are concealed in their pond environment. For the most part they are not. However, a kind of secret was revealed through this experience. They seem somehow born of their environment. It was as if someone had taken a piece out of a jigsaw puzzle of a pond at sunset and turned it into a male mallard duck. One more important participant in this debate on animal coloration was John Burroughs, a naturalist and writer from New York state. He published an essay in 1908 entitled “Gay Plumes and Dull.”22 In it he takes up the topic of concealing coloration. He has his own set of objections to the theory. He points out that if concealing coloration were so important to animal survival, you would expect all animals in a given environment to be the same color, yet we see that they are not. Also, we would expect concealingly colored animals such as grouse to be more abundant than brightly col21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mclap/4366013629 22. John Burroughs, “Gay Plumes and Dull,” in Leaf and Tendril (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908). �74 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW ored animals such as male cardinals and pheasants, and we would expect the females of these last two species to be more abundant than the males. Yet, this is not what we see. From experience I can say that this is also the case with insects. Species with concealing colors are not more numerous as a rule than brightly colored ones. Burroughs writes: Whatever truth there may be in this theory of protective coloration, one has only to look about him to discover that it is a matter which Nature does not have very much at heart. She plays fast and loose with it on every hand. Now she seems to set great store by it, the next moment she discards it entirely.23 Burroughs accounts for the colors of the antelope and other animals like this: Things in nature blend and harmonize. One thing matches with another. . . . Arctic life will blend more or less with Arctic snows, tree animals will show greater variety in tint and form, plains animals will be dull of hue like the plains . . . through the law of natural assimilation, like begetting like, variety breeding variety.24 He reaches for a “law of natural assimilation” to explain this, and also reaches for another natural law to explain differences in coloration between males and females of the same species: His gay plumes are the badge of his masculinity . . . the riot and overflow of the male sexual principle.25 Females being generally more dull in hue partake in a more passive female principle of nature. Burroughs still feels that the appearances have not been fully accounted for. He goes further, speculating that: It is like the caprice of fashion . . . exaggerated plumes, fantastic colors, and monstrous beaks of many birds in both hemispheres have as little apparent utility, and seem 23. Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril, 61. 24. Ibid., 80. 25. Ibid., 95. �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 75 to be quite as much the result of caprice, as are any of the extreme fashions in dress among human beings.26 Even in the animal world, there is fashion. One man who takes up this theme, decades later, is Roger Caillois, a French philosopher who published a book in 1964 entitled The Mask of Medusa.27 Caillois was especially interested in the phenomenon of mimicry in the insect world. The dead leaf butterfly is a good exarnple.28 The undersides of the wings are a perfect mimic of a dead leaf, complete with leaf veins, fungal spots, and a broken stem. If this butterfly was immobile in leaves on a forest floor, you would never see it. However, it is not uncommon to see these insects outside of the environment where they would be concealed, as if they are, perhaps, showing off. Another spectacular mimetic caterpillar is Hemeroplanes triptolemus, found in Central America.29 It looks like a regular caterpillar when it is feeding on a branch, however in the last stage before it pupates, if disturbed, it turns upside down and comes at you looking for all the world like a tree viper, though the “eyes” are not real and cannot see. The theory is that birds or other predators think they are in the presence of an animal that is dangerous to them and are frightened away, instead of eating the caterpillar. It is thought that any caterpillar that deviates from the perfect mimetic form will be spotted and eaten by predators until, eventually, the most perfect mimics are “created” by this selective predation. Many butterflies and moths are known as snake mimics. The spicebush swallowtail, native to the United States, is one such caterpillar.30 To me, this caterpillar looks more like a friendly stuffed toy snake than a dangerous enemy. We need to wonder why it is that the first mimic is so perfect if this second one is an effective deterrent of predation. Adults may also be identified as snake 26. Ibid., 90. 27. Roger Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, tr. George Ordish (New York: C. N. Potter, 1964). 28. http://beastlyvirtues.blogspot.com/2013/03/fuxianhuia-who.html 29. http://madasamarinebiologist.com/post/16015203836/snake-mimiccatepillar 30. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/459859811920520201/ �76 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW mimics. Philip Howse, of Southampton University in England claims that the wing of the atlas moth is a cobra mimic.30 Look at a whole atlas moth.31 Again, we are led to wonder why, if birds are such astute and perceptive predators, they don’t know that cobras are five feet long and live in the rice paddies, not five inches long and hanging in the air. Caillois notes this “aimless delirium of perfection in nature,” and proposes that mimicry is an autonomous force in the world of biology that does not require utilitarian explanations. He goes further and also invokes, like Burroughs, a principle of fashion, connecting it with the phenomenon of mimicry: But in the case of man, fashion is also a phenomenon of mimicry, of an obscure contagion of fascination with a model which is imitated for no real reason.32 The plant hoppers are a group of sap-sucking insects that live on trees and shrubs. They have an astounding variety of forms.33 They may resemble wasps as one of the photos on the foregoing site sort of does. You can see the black and white stripes, the narrow “wasp waist,” and a variety of pointed projections that may deter a predator. Notice that the real body is underneath the wings. The whole “wasp” is a projection of the prothoracic segment. It is as if the plant hopper is wearing a mask or a costume. If we look at other plant hoppers, we will be impressed that many do not seem to be mimics at all. Their colors, shapes, and ornaments seem more like the work of a playful, creative imagination. So far, I have been referring to art as something like “the beautiful.” Now we are seeing, in the natural world, a different category of art, that of mask and costume, a category that has a wide variety of functions in the human world. Caillois was especially interested in an insect called the lantern bug (Fig. 8). They are related to the 30. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8082739/Butterflies-andmoths-mimic-snakes-and-foxes-to-fool-predators-claims-researcher.html 31. http://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-atlas-moth-chroniclesepisode-1.html 32. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 41. 33. http://femtasia.blogspot.com/2010/11/membracidae.html �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 77 Fig. 8 Lantern Bug34 tree hoppers and also live by sucking sap from trees. It is a Swiss army knife of a bug; the forewings mimic dead leaves, when they are lifted up there are two prominent eye spots. These are generally interpreted as looking like vertebrate eyes so that a potential predator, thinking it is in the presence of a larger predator that could be a danger to it, will be frightened away. Best of all, it has a large alligator mask above its real head. You can see the eyes, the nostrils, and the row of teeth. Again, we must question. Don’t the predators know that alligators are 6 feet long and live in the river, rather than an inch or so long and in a tree? Caillois compares the lantern bug to a human shaman. The dead leaf forewings are its cloak of invisibility which can be suddenly thrown off to reveal the conscious being who had been hidden. He writes: Where there was nothing, there is suddenly horror. The insect knows how to frighten; what is more it gives rise 34. James Duncan, Introduction to Entomology, Vol. 1 [Vol. 30 of The Naturalist’s Library, ed. Sir William Jardine] (Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, 1840), Plate 22. �78 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW to a particular kind of fear, an imaginary terror not corresponding to any real danger . . . working through the strange and fantastic.35 One further example of this phenomenon is the oleander hawkmoth caterpillar, Daphnis nerii.36 This caterpillar, when viewed from a certain angle, exhibits creepy glowing eyes that do not look like those of any animal, but evoke horror. They have the same kind of effect as eyes painted on a shield or the bow of a ship. This suggests that birds, monkeys and other predators may be susceptible to a kind of existential dread brought on by these false, staring eyes. The wide range of such costume- and mask-effects in insects mirrors the many uses of masks in human communities. There are masks to disguise, to camoflauge, to frighten, to take on the look and energies of another kind of creature—there are even masks just for play. If we go with Caillois’s thought, we can see that humans are not isolated from the rest of the natural world by our art, our mythology, our psychology. We belong to the world and can see aspects of these human features represented in the behavior, or printed on the actual anatomy, of other animals. I have been arguing that there is more going on in the world of biology than natural selection for the purposes of survival and reproduction. Especially today, when most thinking about evolution is connected with thinking about genes, we confine ourselves to a narrow range of interpretation of biological phenomena. As a result, we are continually underestimating the capacities of animals, and this underestimation takes place before there are any data. We are always tempted to read the capacities of animals off of their genes or anatomy and from the theory of natural selection. No matter how many times this is shown to be wrong-headed, these strategies are constantly invoked. Truly, it is not possible to know what an animal is capable of without actually observing its behavior for a long time under a variety of circumstances. It is assumed that bees have such tiny brains that they cannot do symbolic reasoning, but showing that they do somehow does not 35. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 104. 36. http://www.flickr.com/photos/77995220@N00/9398097107 �ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER 79 challenge the general principle. When we limit beforehand what we believe is possible, we often cannot see what is right in front of our eyes, or we fail to reflect about it at all because we have already sorted out the observed appearance or behavior into one of our preset categories. One thing is warning coloration, another is sexual selection, another is protective coloration—and we’re done. Not only do we fail to see, we lose a language that is adequate to the actual phenomena. We lose a sense of Nature with a capital “N,” a nature rife with potentiality and surprises, Nature as a principle of motion and change. Only the poets still use this sort of language with a good conscience. I’ve been using the lens of artistic expression in animals as a way to explore this issue. Here at the end, in the coda, I would like to switch to a different sort of example to illustrate this point. A few years ago there showed up on YouTube some footage of an elk, named Shooter, at the Pocatello Zoo in Idaho, saving a marmot from drowning in a water tank.37 There were two witnesses, a veterinarian and an educator. The whole event took about 15 minutes. The elk was pawing at the water and with his big unwieldy antlers, trying to get his head in the tank. Finally he lifted out the marmot, put it on the ground, and gently nudged it with his foot. In a little while the marmot shook itself and ran into its hole. It is wonderful footage. The odd thing to me was the narrative of the witnesses. Even as we are watching, they are explaining that elk don’t do this. They are all about survival. They speculate that it is only because Shooter lives in a zoo and has his needs met that he can develop more elaborate behavior. The scientist in me immediately asks how we know that elk don’t do this. Do we have dozens of examples of marmots squeaking in distress as they drown in mountain lakes while elk graze unconcernedly on the shore? We don’t really know as we only have one example of an elk confronted with this situation. Underlying the narrative is the view that elk behavior is generic and aimed only toward survival. I suggest that the elk and 37. http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=8211416 �80 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW the marmot, who after all live in the exact same place, know each other. This may be an act of individual friendship, not calling for any explanation at all in terms of natural selection. I hope I have stimulated you to look more carefully and think more widely when you observe animals. The world of animal appearance and behavior is wide and wonderful. The next step is for you to go outside and start looking around for yourself. ��82 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Troy Hannah Eagleson Eris You cannot even bite into it, Feel color burst in your mouth, Taste nectar on your tongue. Hard gold spinning down the table, Stopping talk, Clanging pitchers, Breaking glasses. Spilling wine On immortal gowns. Setting at war Beauty, wisdom, power Unleashing the bronze spear and gleaming chariot, The arrows’ iron, Drawing jagged lines. Eve had at least the momentary taste, Flavor widening her eyes, Fruit in her mouth In exchange for Eden lost. Troy fell for an apple no one tasted. �POEMS | EAGLESON Judgment Did Priam ever wonder, Why Paris? Like a filigree circlet, Looking fine enough, delicately wrought, But not much use in battle. Why not Hector, steady and strong, Brave and to be trusted? Why not honey-tongued Odysseus on the other side, Or fierce Agamemnon himself? Why should Paris be unlucky enough To stumble near the gods’ celebration, Fool enough to think he could judge Among beauty, wisdom, power? And who would choose beauty? What good is that, To managing a kingdom? Does it build the walls or feed the hungry? Does it grow the wheat or press the grapes? Does it strengthen the gates or make the wells run deeper? Who would have thought that epics begin Not with the bright spear or bronze helmet, Not even with the twist of golden hair, But with the slight prince Strayed to the wrong table, Making a fool’s choice? 83 �84 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire Translated by Peter Kalkavage The Swan (to Victor Hugo) I Andromache, I think of you! That little stream, Poor and gloomy mirror where once there shone so bright The tremendous majesty of your widow’s grief, That lying Simoïs that grew great through your tears,1 Impregnated at once my fertile memory, As I made my way across the new Carrousel. 2 Old Paris is no more (the form of one’s hometown Is quicker to change, alas! than a mortal’s heart); I see but in my mind that whole camp of makeshift huts, Those piles of capitals, rough-hewn, and column-shafts, The grass, the massive blocks turned green by standing pools, And shining in the panes the scattered bric-a-brac. There a menagerie at one time was spread out; There I saw, one morning, under skies cold and clear, At the hour when Work wakes, when street cleaners push A menacing storm into the silent air, A swan that had recently escaped from his cage, And, scraping the dry pavement with his webby feet, Was dragging his white plumage on the rugged ground. Near a waterless ditch, the beast, opening his beak, 1. In the Aeneid (III, 302), Andromache, now a refugee in Epirus, weeps for Hector near a “false” Simoïs, a river near Troy. 2. The Place du Carrousel, an area near the Louvre, underwent continual renovation in the 1850s. �POEMS | KALKAVAGE 85 Was nervously bathing his wings in the dust, And said, heart full of his beautiful native lake: “Water, when will you rain? Lightning, when will you roar?” I see this ill-starred wretch, a strange and fatal myth, Toward the heavens sometimes, like Man in Ovid’s poem,3 Toward the heavens ironic and cruelly blue, On his convulsive neck straining his thirsty head, As though he were addressing reproaches to God! II Paris changes! But nothing in my melancholy Has budged! New palaces and scaffoldings and blocks, Old quarters, all turns to allegory for me, And my precious memories are heavier than rocks. In front of that Louvre too an image weighs me down:4 I think of my great swan, with his gestures insane, Like people in exile, ludicrous and sublime, And gnawed by relentless desire! And then of you, Andromache, fallen from a great husband’s arms, Vile beast of the field, under Pyrrhus’s proud hand, Near a bodiless grave, bent over in a swoon; Hector’s widow, alas! and Helenus’s wife!5 I think of the negress, all consumptive and thin, Trudging in the mud, and searching with haggard eye For the now-absent palms of proud Africa’s land In the distance behind the immense wall of fog; 3. Metamorphoses I, 84-85: “All other animals look downward; Man,/ Alone, erect, can raise his face toward Heaven.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Rolfe Humphries [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960], 5.) 4. That Louvre, i.e., the Louvre before the reconstruction in 1852 that eliminated the old streets separating the Louvre from the Palace of the Tuileries. 5. After the fall of Troy, Andromache and Helenus (Priam’s son) became the slaves of Achilles’s son, Pyrrhus, who eventually let them marry (Aeneid III, 321-336). �86 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW Of whoever has lost what will never return— Ever, ever! Of those who sate themselves with tears And are suckled by Grief as by a good she-wolf! Of skin-and-bone orphans withering like flowers! And so, in the forest that inexiles my mind An old Memory sounds with full blast of the horn! I think of the sailors forgotten on an isle, Of captives, the vanquished! . . . and many others still! Fogs and Rains O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes steeped in mud, Sleepy-headed seasons! I love you and I praise you For enveloping thus both my heart and my brain With a vaporous shroud and a vague sort of tomb. On that vast open plain where the cold storm-wind plays, Where the weathercock rasps through the long drawn-out nights, My soul, even better than in spring’s tepid time, Will proceed to spread wide its great raven-black wings. Nothing is more sweet to the funereal heart, And on which for so long winter’s chill has come down, O seasons drenched in pallor, you queens of our clime, Than the unchanging look of your deathly-white gloom, —Lest it be, on a night without moon, two by two, To put sorrow to sleep on a perilous bed. �POEMS | KALKAVAGE 87 The Vampire You who, like a thrust of the knife, Entered inside my plaintive heart; You who, as mighty as a herd Of demons, came, adorned and mad, To make your bed and your domain Of my humiliated mind; —Obscene one, to whom I am bound Like the galley slave to his chain, Like the hard gambler to his game, Like the wretched sot to his bottle, Like the carrion to its vermin, —Accursèd, accursèd be you! I pleaded with the rapid blade To win my freedom back by force, And told the poison, schooled in guile, To come and aid my coward’s will. Alas! the poison and the blade Both held me in disdain and said: “You’re not worthy to be relieved From your accursèd servitude, Fool! —if from that empire of hers Our efforts would deliver you, Your kisses would resuscitate The cadaver of your vampire!” �POEMS | ZUCKERMAN The Second Sense Elliott Zuckerman Listen: In wind and water, the second sense records a message for the sixth Before our birth only a patch of reason moved the pulse Before the germ of anything like melody, maternal heartbeat set the meter’s pace In harmony the pulse ascends to the unheard. Though sound is left below, compatible numbers continue climbing That’s why the masters of man’s sound enthralled by breeze and shower and friendliness of field and leaf reiterate the triad tirelessly sustained beyond the call of need or taste The level field the rising cliff or tree are the co-ordinates of the soul In simple chords sustained beyond all reason one master celebrated greenery striding and hunched, hands clasped behind his back. 88 �REVIEW 89 To Save the Ideas A Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea: An Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. viii + 410 pages, $110. Eva Brann “To save the phenomena” of heavenly motions by undergirding them with rational, that is, mathematical, hypotheses—that is said to be the problem Plato set for astronomers in a passage from the Republic frequently referenced by Daniel Sherman.1 His own project is, as I understand it, the inverse one: to save the Platonic ideas by a new interpretation of the dialogues in the title of his book. It might be said to be the deeper and more difficult problem to solve—and just as enticing. But what, you may think, is the use of an inviting review, when you blanch at the price? This book, written by an alumnus of St. John’s (Annapolis, 1963) after a long teaching career and obviously much study and reflection, should be kept in mind by anyone of us who has more than a nostalgic interest in the Platonic dialogues; if you can’t afford it, you might persuade your local library to acquire it or get it for you on interlibrary loan. It is surely a book not to be overlooked in any serious study of the Platonic dialogues, not just the Republic and the Phaedo. But— in any responsible review there must be “buts,” and I’ll get them out of the way, the more uninhibitedly to do this huge work justice—its very volume raises some obstacles, thought-provoking enough to induce the following little prefatory meditation on voluminousness. There is an aphorism by Callimachus (third century BCE), the most famous librarian of the great ancient Library at Alexandria: mega biblion, mega kakon, which our wicked undergraduates at St. John’s used to translate: “A great book is a great evil.” What he actually meant is probably: “A long book is a big pain,” since he 1. Republic 528 ff. Simplicius (Commentary 2.43, 46) reports Plato’s challenge to the astronomers. �90 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW considered long epics to be antiquated. Having, on several occasions, inflicted such pain, I have come to think of book length as an independently significant factor. For one thing, it is involved with the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” literature—between a difficult, rebarbative original and its ancillary elucidation. There’s “learning’s crabbed text” and then “there’s the comment,” as Robert Browning says in “The Grammarian’s Funeral.” A primary text may be as long as it pleases, say, the roughly seven hundred pages of the Critique of Pure Reason or the nearly double that of War and Peace. But a secondary text, a commenting explication? Well, how can it help but be a good deal longer than the original? It is, after all, an explication or “unfolding,” an explanation or “planing-out,” an exposition or “setting-out,” an elucidation or “bringing-to-light.” Anything that is smoothed-out will be larger in bulk than it was in its original implicitness or self-entanglement. However, the length of an exegesis that “leads-out” of a textual complexity is a very real problem of human temporality. Even for willing learners, since ars longa, vita brevis, if the artfulness of the text is great and the commentator tries to be adequate to it, there is the risk of displacing it, because human life is always short on time. Moreover, while words clarify, wordiness obscures matters. To my mind this means that to make up for its preempting bulk, an interpretation has the obligation to be easier—and so, faster— to read, and the interpreter has the obligation to accordingly be willing to accept a loss of subtlety and depth. Although one might say that a great text is one long aphorism, being too brief for what it bears, surely the difference between a weighty text and its analysis is not merely that of succinctness and amplitude. In addition, an interpretation should willingly forego that mysterious penumbra of connotation and resonance which attends a great book and candidly admit that a great author’s scope is apt to exceed the interpreter’s perspective (not withstanding his—dubious—advantage of an added historical distance). To say it plainly: secondary writing has a smoothing function; to it shallowness is mandatory. So much here for one of its qualities; more about its quantity below. �REVIEW | BRANN 91 There is a now often deprecated notion behind the “primary/secondary” distinction which goes beyond that of “original/commentary,” namely, “great/not-so-great.” The one main mark of textual greatness is just this: exposition-proneness. Whatever spatial metaphor you may apply to the effort—illuminating the surface, delving into the depths, unrolling the convolutions—there is always more to be said about it. The exegete may be exhausted; the book never is. Put another way: A great book will contain many serendipities but few inadvertencies. (Even Homer nods, but rarely.) Thus the interpreter’s care is safely invested; there will be returns. I have slipped from “commentary” to “interpretation” because, while a commentary might be pretty innocent, hovering around the factual extrinsicalities of the text, interpretations get inside it and are fraught with potential culpability. First of these is inadequacy to the meaning of the text: To interpret well, you have to begin reading literally, attend to the letter of the text. Any willing student can be trained to do that. But then it gets complicated, especially for the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Who among the participants understands what Socrates is asking and what he himself is saying? What is Socrates’s intention? Where is Plato? Which words or suppressions bear the meaning of the conversation? In what sayings or silences is its locus of truth? The effort of cluing this out is very nearly simultaneous with the exposition of that truth or of its occlusion—here’s a version of that notorious “hermeneutic circle,” that the parts are known by the whole, but also, inversely, the whole by its parts.2 Inadequacy, lack of acuteness in construing the text from both ends, here vitiates the interpretation—but that is not at all the problem of Sherman’s book, and thus not my problem here. Second, the pedagogic ineffectiveness of interpretative commentary: I want to frame this aspect of secondary writing as a large problem, so to speak, that is little regarded—the problem of bulk. Having myself perpetrated several big books, I suppose I’m qualified. Here’s the problem: In writing of that sort there are levels of aboutness. At the bottom there is, once again, what the primary 2. The “hermeneutic” or interpretational art is named after the herald-god Hermes, one of whose offices it was to convey plainly the meaning of messages. �92 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW book literally says. On top of that (or wherever it’s to be located) there is the originating writer’s meaning—not that he failed in saying what he intended, but that he may have reached for a new language to convey his original notions, or that he may have suppressed complete articulation so as to involve the attentive reader. For most (no longer all) interpreters, it is an article of hermeneutic faith that there is such an implicit meaning, that its novel language often needs an interpreter, that the author’s intention is often not immediately obvious—and that they’re elected to open up the book to others’ view. So on top of that comes the secondary writer’s own understanding of the primary text, which any candid commentator will, by that little margin of modest doubt, know how to distinguish from its underlying template. And now, to top it off, there is a tertiary level, huge and growing: the more or less deviationist opinions of all the fellow interpreters, who each have different perspectives, reconcilable and irreconcilable. And in this perspectival fecundity lies the proof both of the primary text’s grander scope and of its human limitations. Secondary bulk is a real and present danger: smoothing turns into smothering. Oddly enough, there is a device for the self-neutralization of big secondary books: the Index. For original books, excerpted reading is a hermeneutic no-no, precisely because of the hermeneutic circle, because the clue to the whole may lie in any or all parts. Not so in interpretative commentaries, whose writer should not be out to piggy-back a masterpiece on the underlying text, but should help the user to check out names, find definitive passages, and follow up themes. Indices affirm the secondary writer’s modesty; a detailed index signifies the writer’s blanket permission to spot-read, to use the interpretation in thinking about the text thus served. Primary texts usually aren’t indexed to begin with. Soul, World, and Idea has an index, but I wish Lexington Books had invested in a more ample one. “Careful” unpacking, analysis, reading, is a phrase, the favorite one in Soul, World, and Idea, of hermeneutic virtue. Here’s the “but”: it leads to pertinent paraphrases of the text to be interpreted, together with commenting qualifications, modifications, cautious retractions—in short, to lengthiness. Add to this the dutiful inclu- �REVIEW | BRANN 93 sion, both in the text and in long footnotes, of tertiary commentary, in which the work comes to grips with, analyzes, critiques, or accepts a large number of contemporary interpretations by fellow scholars. Just as the careful reading often yields welcome insights (of which I’ll give an example a little below), the referencing of scholarship is often helpful. Instead of just citing names and numbers, Sherman actually reproduces arguments. But it nearly doubles the book’s length. I am, as they say, “conflicted” about both of these efforts: the written record of “careful reading” and the learned absorption of “scholarship.” Who can doubt the value of carefully thinking through a worthy text by engaging in extensive internal i-dotting or the propriety of responsively considering others’ understandings and making a mental note of their putative mistakes? But, then, isn’t it the next best step to allow the bulk—not the gist—of our own thinkings and others’ errors to pass away, unpublished, into forgetfulness? Treat them as ephemeral, and let them die within days of their birth (as do those eponymous ephemerids, the mayflies) and enter forgetfulness, there to become the soil of reflection. Shouldn’t philosophy be resolutely anti-cumulative, ever at the beginning? Absent a firm settlement of my misgivings about bulky writings and extensive sourcing, I take refuge in a very practical solution: at least to pay attention to what is near and dear, and certainly to the works of alumni. So let me start with a sample of insights Daniel Sherman’s book offers, combining close reading and responsiveness to scholarship (p. 165). An interesting issue is “the autonomy of philosophy” seen in personal terms, namely as the ability of ordinarily thoughtful human beings to withstand the social order. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, surmises that the categories imposed by the power structure are intractable because they are unconsciously involved in the very struggle to escape them; thus even the not-soconforming characters of the Republic respond to Socrates’s sedition with responses varying from “metaphysical fury,” through friendly doubt, to sullen withdrawal. Against this defeatism, Sherman pits his interpretation of Platonic discourse as being very awarely situated in medias res. Socrates indeed operates, albeit �94 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW quite consciously, in the context of the social setting and its implicit opinions. He employs dialogic practices to make these explicit and to ascend, starting from within the social and natural world, to the alternative realm of Ideas; the ideas are thus both continuous with and opposed to the given social context, hence in a tension of critique and acceptance with respect to ordinary meanings. One might say that Sherman saves the autonomy of thinking from circumstance by arguing that it is its very implication in the opinionenvironment of the world which, when brought to awareness, gives it its rightful claim to independent knowledge. (P. 165.) I’ve begun with this example, taken from the middle of the book, because it is typical of Sherman’s saving, composing, middle-ofthe-way responses to exaggeratedly alienating views of Plato’s project. Now it’s time to give a glimpse of the over-all structure of the book, chapter by chapter. Keep in mind that this is a dense exposition, consisting of four-hundred meticulously argued pages, so my summary will be skeletal indeed, and my queries will loom larger than they would were the detail not suppressed. The Introduction sets out the interrelation of cognizing soul, experienced world, and Sherman’s own conception of discourseembedded ideas, in the Republic and the Phaedo. He reviews the various values accorded by scholars to their dramatic aspect, from mere embellishment, through an attendant enactment of philosophical life to an inextricable involvement of action and argument. Jacob Klein3 was an early and vivid proponent of this third view, and Sherman recalls Klein’s influence on him in the warm appreciation of his Preface. In particular, Klein’s close-to-life reading of the dialogues is reflected in Sherman’s “most radical and challenging suggestion”: the ideas are not atemporal beings separated from the world but have a temporal, world-implicated dimension; consequently the Platonic account of ideal being can the better be the operative basis of a philosophic life of learning, teaching, talking. Images and image-making—and image-recognition, I would add—will be crucial in drawing the ideas into human cognition and moral activity. 3. Jacob Klein (1899-1978) was tutor (1938-69) and dean (1948-58) at St. John’s College, and teacher until his death. �REVIEW | BRANN 95 Chapter 1. The Interlocutor’s Request analyzes the problems posed to Socrates in the Republic by Plato’s two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus: to show that justice is an inherent good, hence a source of happiness. Here, I might comment, is a first occasion for Sherman’s “careful parsing”; he delves deep into the shallowness of Socrates’s talking partners. I think that approach, a dimension of the whole book, is a little hard on these young men, as well as the all-but-boys of the Phaedo. After all, they are there all night in the Republic and all day in the Phaedo, attentive and eager; they do about as well as would any of us. If I’d been there I wouldn’t have intruded my every mental reservation either, and, I think, that the same experience of a tacit critical descant that Plato asks of a reader, Socrates respects in his companions. We must supply knowing smiles, snickers, raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, just as in a St. John’s seminar. I think Socrates is more apt to bring out his present partners’ strengths than to expose their efforts to our cavils—if they’re young. To satisfy the brothers’ request Socrates sets up that problemfraught analogy between the offices of the castes of a well-constituted political community and the powers of the parts of the soul. Sherman’s thorough expository prose obscures a little—a dramatic hiccup would have helped—the arresting political assumption of this magnifying image, in which the individual psychology is said to be mirrored in the communal “constitution” (whence the Greek title Politeia, “Polity”): civic justice is understood as the image of psychic adjustment. The consideration of imaging becomes more urgent. Chapter 2. Discourse treats of the possibility of realizing a city so constituted. Recall here that Socrates in fact gives an unambiguous final answer: It makes no difference whether the ideal city will ever exist or is just a model laid up in heaven; the point is to practice our inner politics in its image—to use its politeia in turn as a model for constituting our own, individual, psychic balance (592b). However, Sherman introduces several levels on which the possibility question may play out. One condition for the existence of the just city is that a philosopher-king will turn up—and, I would add, before he arrives there must be �96 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW a pre-royal philosopher-founder—a proven unlikelihood, as is shown by Plato’s misadventures with Syracuse’s tyrant-dynasty, set out in his Letters. Therefore Sherman now reviews these royal philosophers’ nature and their education, and in preparation, the underlying characteristics of degrees of cognition and their objects. Thus the “digression of the central books” (p. 77) is justified. Some readers may recall that Rousseau saw the center of the Republic in these books. Whatever the title may imply, he says, it is really a treatise on education (Émile I) and, I might add, on the constitution of the soul and the beings of the world. Apparently, Sherman agrees (p. 137). However, he regards the application of the ontology (the account of Being) and its realization in a program of education as provisional, incomplete. The Phaedo is a necessary supplement. In any case, for him the prerequisite imaging of the ideal in discourse looms yet larger. Chapter 3. The Cave: Education and the Lack of It deals with the Image of the Cave (the venue of human life) and the Divided Line (the gradation of beings and the ascent of cognition). Sherman takes the cave to be the city and, in clever accord with the order of the Republic’s earlier books, where city precedes soul, but in reversal of Books VI-VII, where the enabling ontological line precedes the consequent civic cave, manages neatly to insinuate his main thesis, the implication of the Ideas in the human experience and knowledge of the world. A bonus is Sherman’s account and critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Cave Image as embodying a loss of openness to the direct presence of beings, a receptivity still retained by the Presocratics. Sherman shows that Heidegger himself actually appeals to the “ungrasped essence,” said to be deformed by discourse, an appeal that vitiates the purity of his cherished immediacy. Since Sherman himself supposes that beings come, so to speak, into Being only in thinking and its speech, he argues that Plato’s image-dynamics more adequately facilitates the sharing of Ideas between soul and world than does Heidegger’s hope of “unhiddenness.” Chapter 4. The Divided Line and Dynamic of Ascent gives a dynamic interpretation of the Divided Line, as an ascent and �REVIEW | BRANN 97 descent, turn and turn-about, of living thinking, whose motor, so to speak, is imaging: the Divided Line represents the cosmos, both its shifting appearances and its stable beings, as a top-down cascade of images and a bottom-up effort of imagerecognition.4 Sherman begins with the triple causation attributed to the Idea of the Good, which is off the line, “beyond Being.” It is a hyper-principle that brings things into being, allows them to flourish, and makes them knowable (as its image, the sun, causes birth, growth, and visibility). Sherman deals with a scholarly claim (Annas’s) that the Good is too impersonal and offers no human fulfillment thus: As the source of the world’s intelligibility it is surely good for human beings. I would add that the Good was in Plato’s “Unwritten Doctrines”5 named the One; thus it is a principle of unification, hence responsible for all human community, be it the civic union of politics or the private bond of friendship; that is why it is introduced in the Republic. There follows a close reading of the Line as a ladder of dialectic ascent, which cannot be thrown away—“a serious claim” (p. 134) moving toward Sherman’s interpretation of the Ideas as tied to psychic activity. The problem of images comes ever more front and center in a critique of one scholar’s (Patterson’s) analytic treatment of the sort of things the original Forms (Ideas) must be if worldly things are their images: The Form is what its name says it is, but not as having the qualities its namesake images possess. This makes more sense than you’d think (though like all analytic expla4. “Image-recognition,” which is the mode of ascent along the Divided Line, is Jacob Klein’s rectifying translation of eikasia, often understood as a mode of guessing, conjecturing (as by Sherman himself, p. 151). Thus the ability to distinguish between original and copy becomes the basic and pervasive ontological capacity. Images, the objects recognized by imagerecognition, the central problem of Plato’s Sophist, present a never-ending enticement to ontological reflection, some of which is being carried on in issues of this journal: Review of Eva Brann, The World of the Imagination (1991) by Dennis Sepper, The St. John’s Review 42.1 (1993): 1-19; review of Dennis Sepper, Understanding Imagination (2013) by Eva Brann in this issue, 1-16; and now this review of Sherman’s book. 5. Plato’s oral speculations, reported first by Aristotle. �98 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW nations it’s flatly clarifying rather than brightly illuminating): A Horse-Form is what a horse in truth is, but it’s not for riding. Sherman must object. Whatever this analysis of being a form means, it implies that forms, ideas, are quite separate in kind from their physical images; he is preparing to bring forward a way of understanding the (moderated) separateness of Ideas from Soul and World that requires their (ultimate) interdependence. The rest of the chapter concerns the soul’s different cognitive relations to the rising reality of the objects represented by the upright Line. Chapter 5. Education and the Mind’s Eye attends to Socrates’s filling in the lack of education in the Cave with the education for the philosophic rulers. Sherman dwells on the significance of Socrates’s beginning the program of study with arithmetic—not the technique of numerical calculation but the science of the nature of numbers.6 This science, beginning with the unit, the one that constitutes each of the unit-assemblages called arithmos, has special powers of philosophical levitation. The “one” that is the beginning of counting-up, of generating numbers, is, one might say, the inverted image of the One that is the principle of the unity of all that is, the Good: the least constituent mirrors the whole constitution. From the first study I pass directly—Sherman leaves no such lacuna—to the final one, dialectic, which dwells on the Ideas: “Dialectic, then, produces the image of discourse [my italics] as the song of reason of which the relations of Ideas as a harmony of the whole is the ultimate objective content” (p. 198). Sherman means this literally: the identity of Ideas is inseparable from the relations among them, and those relations are insubstantial, it would seem. By “insubstantial” I mean that normally relations emanate from and terminate in beings, 6. He takes his departure from Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992). Alumni of the St. John’s Program will recognize all the elements of Socrates’s program of learning, but will want to ponder the fact that we begin our mathematical studies with Euclid’s geometry, with shapes and magnitudes rather than with numbers and multitudes. I’d like to hear speculations about, and opinions of, this pedagogic reversal. �REVIEW | BRANN 99 which is why humans have to be somebody to relate to somebody. It’s not that existence as a mere node of relations is unthinkable, but rather that it’s demeaning. However, since the treatment of the objects of dialectic, the Ideas, is deliberately inexplicit in the Republic, it is in any case insufficient for a persuasive theory of ideal being, and that deficiency makes room for Sherman’s speculation. Chapters 6-8. The Phaedo’s Arguments for Immortality, The Problem of Wrong Beginnings, From Logos to Idea—these chapters bring in the Phaedo’s fuller account of the soul as capable of learning and its more direct treatment of the Ideas as necessary hypotheses; “image” and “separation” (chorismos) are the concepts to be further clarified (p. 211). In Chapter 6, the issue is whether the separation of the soul from the body that the Phaedo appears to propose, be it as a means of moral purification or as a condition of immortality, is to be taken literally or imagistically, whether it is logos or mythos (p. 221, though as it turns out logoi are also “images”). Sherman prepares for his denial of this separate existence of the soul and that of the Forms, whose separation is implicated in the immortality and thus in the separability of the soul, by arguing that if the reading of the text is properly dramatic, separation will always appear as “mythical” (p. 256), that is to say, figurative—and that the naive boys of the Phaedo are not up to the image-recognition required by Socrates’s myths. It is a little absurd to balk at a book’s bulk and then to ask for more. But, by concentrating on the boys’ inept literalism,7 an image-ontology, though projected in Chapter 7, is displaced by a critique of the interlocutor’s powers of image-recognition and interpretation. Such an ontology would, I think, give an account of two aspects of image-being: 1. whence comes the difference in plenitude of being that distinguishes an original from its image, that admixture of being and non-being which 7. I keep saying “boys.” Simmias and Cebes are neaniskoi (Phaedo 89a), adolescents with incipient whiskers or youths with first beards. To me they seem the age of freshman, boys and men in turn. �100 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW makes an image a mere image to the detriment of its dignity (as set out in Plato’s Sophist);8 and 2. what is that similarity, that admixture of sameness and difference, that connects an image to its original—a far more complex question. It is this second inquiry that would seem to me pertinent to Sherman’s central thesis, which will involve a right reading of imagistic logoi or rational mythoi. Here is how the philosophical problem of similitude presents itself to me: Can objects from realms that are conjoined by no exhibitable “isomorphism,” no structural identity, have an image-relation? How far can the ordinary word “image” be stretched, salva significatione, with its meaning being saved? But perhaps before ontology should come phenomenology, an account of the way imagining works and images appear.9 Sherman puts to use a long passage from Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (p. 236), a practice I like very much because good novelists are master-phenomenologists—it’s their métier. Marcel is enamored of a black-eyed woman, but every time he re-envisions her the memory presents her as blue-eyed—as he says, because she was a blonde. Perhaps, he perversely concludes, if her eyes had not been so strikingly, intensely black, he would not have been so particulièrement amoureux with her as blue-eyed. Sherman understands Proust’s passage—due notice being given to its perversity— to illuminate a kind of “recollection,” here of dredging up those image-memories from the soul in which the image of an object brings with it the image of a person, as in the Phaedo a lyre is associated with its owner, a beloved boy. His point is that this boyimage lacks observed detail; it is of a “total person,” and the details 8. Generally the original is distinguished by several primacies: in time, dimensionality, functionality, reality. Not so in representative art: A mound of two-dimensional, inedible, unreal apples, painted by Cezanne from a prior arrangement, is generally regarded with more respect (and certainly costs more) than a bag of Pink Ladies bought by anyone at the supermarket. That’s the valuation Socrates wants, on ontological grounds, to forestall in Republic X. 9. As Sherman comes near saying (p. 388). For if human discourse is image-making, then its interpretation is image-recognition (p. 391). �REVIEW | BRANN 101 may well be mistaken. But—here’s the difficulty—Marcel is not making a mistake. He knows, first and last, that the woman is black-eyed. He is engaging in deliberate perversity: the imaginative potentiation by willful modulation of an observed reality that is too opaquely positive for a languid sensibility. More simply put: Marcel rearranges reality on the slight excuse of blondness to make it his; so adjusted, it furnishes the object of his self-pleasingly repetitive daydreams (je repensai); you might call it bed-ridden love.10 I’ve picked on the Proust passage because Sherman infers from it a solution to the problem of similarity I posed just above: The picture does not look exactly like its original, but then neither does the lyre look like the young boy, yet we bridge this difficulty by our ability to respond to the image as image. The sense of both “like” and “unlike” is in fact multiple; it can be both in order of vivacity (picture vs. object) and visual resemblance (lyre-person). And this is true of relations of the non-visible of “resemblance” and recollection (p. 237). Sherman concludes that in the lyre-boy passage Plato is stressing the possibility of such non-similar resemblance (I’ve intentionally put it as a contradiction in terms), and that is what I want to question: When push comes to shove, how far up the ascent to Being can image-recognition take you without obscuring the very nature of the objects, the Ideas, which you want to attain?11 10. Proust’s way with love meets its refutation in a charming movie, It Happened in Brooklyn, a 1947 film directed by Richard Whorf, starring Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and Jimmy Durante. The Sinatra character takes his girl for granted, Lawford’s is really in love with her. Durante (Brooklyn’s wise man) tests Sinatra: What’s the color of her eyes? He dithers: perhaps blue? And so with other detail. Lawford knows on the instant: brown. Q.E.D.: True love is hyper-observant; in fact that’s its hallmark: acutely observational concentration. 11. Sherman has certainly considered, but apparently without consequence, the notion that for the highest thought, for noesis, the imagelogos might fail (p. 392, n. 1); but perhaps it is fairer to say that because he gives so much “a wider interpretation” of images and image-making, he considers the restriction overcome. �102 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In Chapter 8, From Logos to Idea, Sherman’s thesis is fully developed, once again with the aid of the Phaedo, where on his last day Socrates himself says more about the Ideas than anywhere else.12 Socrates recounts his taking refuge in the use of of logoi for looking at the truth of beings, lest his soul be blinded by sensory looking. To pursue this way Socrates has recourse to hypothesizing (literally, “sup-posing”), a way of proceeding by hypotheses, namely Ideas, such as the Beautiful Itself (Phaedo 100a ff.). Sherman observes helpfully that a Socratic hypothesis is not, as for us, a theory to be verified by being tested against experience, but the converse: experience derives such being and intelligibility as it has through some sort of presence in it of the forms (pp. 294-5). But to test (worldly) things against the (transcendental) idea means—and here I am not certain I follow (that is, understand rightly or, if I do, agree)—to test them against the “idea functioning as a logos” (ibid.). Moreover, it now turns out that “the hypotheses as the particular idea expressed as a dianoetic [discursive] logos is the idea at work,” and that this logos-idea is in fact to be verified, not to the detriment of the idea but to the logos which may have applied it wrongly by misclassifying the things of which it meant to give an account. This human action (praxis) is, then, “a verification of the idea as logos, that is to say, as a hypothesis which is an image of its idea” (p. 299; I’ve italicized the last clause). But Socrates has already said that his images are both deficient and not logoi: “for I don’t at all concede that somebody who looks into beings in accounts [logoi] looks at them in likenesses [images] to a greater extent than one who does so in actions” (Phaedo 100a)13— namely, does not look at them at all. 12. Along with his first appearance, as a boy in the Parmenides, so that they are shown to preoccupy him first and last as problems; the Socratic Ideas are ever works-in-progress. In the Symposium and the Phaedrus the vision of the Ideas is imaginatively consummated. 13. I’ve taken this rendering from Plato’s Phaedo, trans., with introduction and glossary by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998). We thought that “in actions” means something like “in sensory reality” (p. 14). My own sense, expressed elsewhere, is that the Phaedo’s blatantly unpersuasive arguments for the immortality of �REVIEW | BRANN 103 The clearest formulation of Sherman’s thesis I found is this: “The subjective form reflected in a logos must be seen as an image of the objective Idea: the form is a rational image” (p. 217). The soul’s ability to make and read “noetic images”14 is its very immortality, and the ideas it images are correspondingly eternal (p. 320). The logos-involved soul, that is, the form-informed soul and the ideas share an ontology because they are interdependent; “though something more than concepts, ideas do not have any real independent existence outside this human dialectical triad of world, soul and idea” (p. 387). And, as the logos-soul, the soul of the subjective form, is immortal and atemporal in the act of knowing in which it accepts the eternal idea, so, reciprocally, the objective ideas are timeless because they are congruent with the soul, not because of some otherworldly stability (ibid.). This account, if I have it correct, is certainly circular,15 which is no argument against it. The most invulnerable philosophical accounts are circular; they are ontological mirror images of the above-mentioned hermeneutic circle: Grounds “cause” consequences, consequences “confirm” grounds; inquiry requires pre-knowledge, knowledge comes from inquiry. But in this perfect mutuality of soul and idea, the outside third, the world (and the Idea of the Good that makes the world intelligible) have somehow dropped out; how are worldly things, which ideas were to serve both as causes (sources of existence) and as reasons (sources of intelligibility), actually involved in the triad? the soul are each occasions for Socrates’s formulating the questions he is leaving behind; he is handing on his forms as works-in-progress, as problems for future philosophy. 14. Sherman apparently identifies “rational” (dianoetic, discursive) and “noetic” (intellective, directly beheld); they are, however, different segments on the Divided Line. 15. While circularity—certainly no venial sin in secular argumentation— is excusable in philosophical discourse, equivocation is, except in deliberate, inspired double-speak (such as Socrates’s “invisible looks,” the Ideas) not so acceptable. I think some of my difficulties stem from subtle meaning-shifts in key words such as image, separation, soul, rationality— shifts away from common usage and also variations of use within the book. �104 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW There is surely much at stake here for those of us who have the sense that the explication of these matters might be, in all unhyperbolic sobriety, a matter of life and death. The reason is that, if we believe that philosophical reflection (even if only occasional) makes life more—and death less—real, this is an ever-present question: Are there supersensible realms for us but also beyond us, attainable but not just yet? And Sherman is surely speaking to just that question, but perhaps not altogether clearly. Chapter 9. Closing the Circle. Now Sherman “closes the circle” by returning to the Republic, to its last book. On the basis of his theory of thinking as primarily image-recognition, he defends Socrates’s condemnation of the imitative arts as practiced primarily by painters and also poets against various scholarly critiques: Socrates is not simply against the fine arts and their ways with reality, but he, in fact, has knowledge of a more veracious imagemaking and a more truth-telling myth-making (p. 349). So Sherman ends by recurring to the inadequacy of the conversation partners here, especially the vein of reward-seeking he discerns in Glaucon (which is, in accord with the pervasive human theme of the Republic, the happiness to be gotten from practicing justice even incognito). Finally he resumes his own hermeneutic preoccupation by interpreting in his own mode the final myth, the myth of Er, who returned from the Afterworld: It requires us “to see through our images to the invisible in this life” (p. 379).16 Although it is not Sherman’s modus scribendi to collect his theses in one place succinctly and crisply as he goes, the Conclusion does contain some summations, and therefore I may properly park my three main queries under its title, ready to withdraw them if I’ve misread the text. 16. That sounds just like our understanding in the Phaedo translation: the Socratic invitation to practice death in this life (61c ff.) intends us to rise in thought to the invisible realm here and now (and, of course, now and then). But we did not mean that the realm of invisibility is somehow subjective, that is, only equivocally objective, psychically objective, so to speak, or, on the other hand, that human beings come within actual sight of it—except perhaps Socrates in the several episodes mentioned in the dialogues, when he seems to be enraptured (e.g., Symposium 175b, 220c). �REVIEW | BRANN 105 1. This three-pronged question eventually arises in reading Platonic texts: Do the thirty-six dialogues form a somewhat organic corpus, are the dialogues parts of a whole, or is each dialogue its own dialectic universe, a conversational world of its own? In reading dialogues, we should, I have no doubt, begin with the latter supposition. But for a global interpretation it seems necessary to take notice of the ensemble. Sherman leaves the erotic dialogues, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, out of account, and in these (as well as in Plato’s Seventh Letter) the ascent to the Ideas is a work of love, the virtues are practiced to disencumber the soul from the world, the logos ceases as the soul comes within sight of the Ideas, and the sojourn with them has an ecstatic element. In fact, in the Symposium it is said explicitly of the paradigm form, Beauty, that it is “neither some logos nor some knowledge” (211a).17 So I think that Sherman’s sort of implication, his dialogical immanence, has to be balanced, reconciled—whatever—with the other-world separateness of the Ideas as desirable and distinct objects. And, to be sure, that is practically impossible within the constraints of “careful” dissection, scholarly respectability, and the effort to keep Plato plausible to contemporaries. For it requires a certain—rightly suspect—suspension of scrupulosity.18 2. I have misgivings about a Socratic (though not so much about a Platonic) ontology of the soul. To be sure, Socrates is a master of psychology, of the soul’s phenomenology. But it seems to me that in the Socratic dialogues, and so in Plato’s view of Socrates, the human soul hovers outside and around the structure of beings and Being. As Sherman flips the Socratic sequence of Divided Line and Cave, to give preeminence to the human context, so he seems to me to have flipped the Divided Line laterally, so to speak. Reading left to right, the four line segments representing objects of 17. However, the logos—not as thinking but as uttered language—is imaged, “as in a mirror,” namely, in sounds (Theaetetus 206d). 18. It is a fair question what role the very desire for a beautiful Beyond plays in making it plausible. One side might well say that such longing vitiates sober inquiry. The other may counter that, on the contrary, the desire is itself a testimonial to transcendence, since it is fed by veracious intimations. �106 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW knowledge come first, on the left side, together with their inherent kind of knowability. The four corresponding human capacities, including image-recognition, are appended in one sentence (Republic 513d) to the right—an afterthought, as it were. But Sherman gives them priority. Perhaps the thoughtful soul’s standing among beings remained a rousing enough problem in the Platonic Academy for Aristotle to center his own philosophy around its solution, achieved by setting up the unmovable moving divinity of his cosmos as Nous, “Thought” or “Intellect,” whose activity is noesis, “intellection,” the highest power for Socrates. Thus Aristotle made possible an integration of soul and being—and a soul-ontology. For now beings do not one-sidedly inform the soul, but intellect reciprocally moves the world into its own being, its fulfillment. But if it is the case that the soul for Socrates is not within but about being, then it may be difficult to make it the part-parent of the Ideas. And even if the soul is a being among beings, I don’t grasp just how the Ideas can be in their relation to it dependent and also in themselves independent, in short, how they can be both subjective and objective. I am all for paradoxes; I think our world is such that they are its most adequate type of speech—provided the inner nature of the beings that elicit them is first clearly worked out, so that paradoxical speech is summary speech, language that collects necessarily disparate insights. That is why I here conclude with queries rather than with counter-claims—because I’m not sure how the “both/and” is justified, what mental incongruities I must— and would willingly—entertain to get the good of the duality. 3. Now comes the more technical crux of these inquiries. Just how is logos imagistic? Out of the welter of uses for the word logos, let me choose the two most prominent ones: word (or noun) and rational discourse (or thoughtful speech). One word names, intends (how is unknown) numerous instances, distinct in time, place, or shape (morphe) and yet the same in some respect (or we would not have a natural inclination to use this logos collectively); that something “same” in all of them is what a logos picks out and names; it is Socrates’s form (idea). A word conveys (how is unknown) the idea without being in any normal sense a likeness: I think it is impossible to detect any image-function in this naming- �REVIEW | BRANN 107 logos without stretching the meaning out of all recognition. I shall say why. “Rational discourse” consists largely of propositions conveying meaning. Some of these sentences are descriptive and raise mental images (how is unknown), and such logoi are indeed image-making (Plato, Sophist 234c). Others, however, are not descriptive but dialectic or “dianoetic;” they “think through” the thought-structure of appearances and beings, and such logoi are only forcibly imagistic. To be sure, in the lower reaches, some logical arguments can indeed sometimes be represented in spatial diagrams19 (how is unknown), because the logic-diagrams image not the proposition but a mental image, a quasi-spatial corralling of class-members: Visualize “All bulls are bovines” as a herd of cattle, enclosed in a barbed-wire fence, which includes a round pen just for the uncastrated males; then erase the cattle and retain the spatial schematism. So, if, going from the second to the third part of the Divided Line, I recognize by the power of dianoetic (thoughtful) imagerecognition that a geometric sphere is the true, more being-replete original of a soccer ball (quite a feat, since to ordinary thoughtless image-recognition the ball is surely more real), it is not because the logos is an image but because it isn’t; it’s about images; it comprehends them. In other words, insights of image-recognition (eikasia) seem to be expressible in logoi, but they aren’t images.20 I have a suspicion why that is: The logos has a negative capability: not or non-, while images have no inherent negativity. They have the same thoroughgoing positivity as the spatial world. It takes words to dub any aspect or space, even emptiness, as a not-this or an absence. As I said, with Sherman I like to see the novelists bear me out: The fatal Marabar Cave, in Forster’s Passage to India (Ch. XIV), is the venue of negation in words, but in experience it is a resounding “boum”—for negation has no sensory image as such, and so propositions that are negated can’t be wordlessly imaged. 19. Such as Euler diagrams. 20. Sherman actually speaks mostly of image-making rather than imagerecognition. But I think the logos penetrates rather than produces images. The difficulty may be located just here: What, in Sherman’s view, is the work, what are the processes proper to logos? �108 THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW In sum, I’m not sure whether language intends, symbolizes, or represents,21 but it doesn’t seem to be at all isomorphic with sensible objects so as to image them. And when it comes to speech about the Forms, verbal, expressible thinking seems to fail, as Sherman’s helpful report of scholars’ battles, for example, with self-predication22 amply shows. **** These queries have been about Sherman’s unquestionably thought-arousing interpretation of the Republic and the Phaedo, or rather, about its philosophical consequences; indeed they are the very proof of its interest. But Sherman also has, besides the intention of doing the texts justice by reading them as conversations among differently inclined and diversely responsive human beings, a motive, a hoped-for effect, which his interpretation is to serve: to let us, with Socrates, “see ourselves as essentially engaging collectively in a discourse that brings us together rather than drives us apart” (p. 392). And that aim is beyond querying; what is an open question, one on whose terms Sherman’s opus focuses the mind, is this: Do we come closer to the way things are by recourse to the workinghypothesis of Ideas, unattainable in this life but informing the soul from beyond with expectant desire and responsive logoi? Or do we do better by means of Sherman’s thesis of a human rationality so inseparably involved with the Ideas that they are “not manifest” outside this union, within which they are interpretable “as essentially atemporal experience wholly in this 21. I half suspect that Sherman would answer my difficulty by saying that he has enlarged the meaning of “image” so as to mean representation, a way of re-presenting something, of recalling, of standing-for a thing, that requires no similarity. I think it would still be necessary to show how logos “represents.” The proper naming of logos’s relation to the things it is about is, I think, the perplexity of language. 22. For example is the Idea of Justice itself just? The problem is a version of the question raised in a note above: Is “similarity” reciprocal between an idea and its copy? I should say that to me philosophy becomes wonderful just when “rational speech” (actually a redundancy: logikos logos) fails, becomes para-doxical, “counter-credible.” �ESSAYS & LECTURES | 109 life” (p. 386)—as our experience, it seems, not as unequivocally separate Beings? Has Daniel Sherman saved the Ideas and if so, are they Socrates’s Ideas? I leave that question open. But he has surely done his part to see that the “myth was saved” (Republic, 621b) and is now before us to consider—just as Er did by not drinking of the River of Forgetting. � 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 <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 109 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/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, Spring 2014 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Pastille, William Brann, Eva T.H. Hunt, Frank Sachs, Joe Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Zuckerman, Elliott Arnaiz, Deziree Sachs, Joe Fried, Michael N. Recco, Gregory Wiener, Linda Eagleson, Hannah Kalkavage, Peter Description An account of the resource Volume 55, Number 2 of the The St. John's Review. Published in Spring 2014. 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource text Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 St_Johns_Review_Vol_55_No_2_Spring_2014 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68f3a583cf9504ada28f749bfce5ffd2.pdf a42e69f5025bff2259b3a06065dd6733 PDF Text Text ��������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A background for perplexity : some fundamentals of quantum theory Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given on September 26, 1986 by Hans von Briesen as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Von Briesen, Hans 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 1986-09-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Quantum theory Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 24000221 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6c7f82e571ffcf96787d017c33baadf5.pdf 42618419dc1d0557237d080b1c83af5d PDF Text Text �The College Cover: Marble statuette of Socrates (d. 399 B.C.). Copy of a Greek original of the fourth century B.C. In the British Museum. The College is a publication for friends of St. John's College and for those.who might become friends of the College, if they came to know it. Our aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our opinion, St. John's comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well placed beacon lights were needed bY American education it is. now. By pubiishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John's. (Ed.) Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: lV!ary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Editorial Consultant: James M. Tolbert Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan The College, part of The Bulletin series, is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. (Julius Rosenberg, Director) and Santa Fe, N. l\·!. (Frank McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Dr. Richard D. Vv'cigle. Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Entered as Second-class matter, February 18, 1949, at the Post Office at Annapolis, l\laryland. Additional entrv, Baltimore, l\iaryland. · Volume XI April 1969 Number l In the April Issue: A World I Never Made~ by John S. Kieffer A Reading of the Gettysburg Address, by Eva Brann · "How Is The Seminar?" by Michael Ossorgin. • The College and the Underprivileged, by Laurence Berns I 6 14 17 News On The Campuses .. 19 Alumni Activities . 23 �A World I Never Made* By JOHN S. KIEFFER In one of A. E. Housman's poems there is this couplet: I alone and sore afraid In a world I never made. James T. Farrell chose the second of these lines as the title for his Studs Lanigan trilogy. The note of self-p1ty and alienation is all too evident and seems to express what manv young people today are feeling. Yet the same disclaimer. about world making is found in Augustine's Confessions, and there it serves as a starting point for the saint's joyous search for the true maker of the world. Between these two extremes, of alienation and reconciliation , the dialectic of the liberal arts tradition tends to oscillate. That you were born into a world you never made goes without saving: all of us are. The lesson I draw from Farrell's trilogy is that though you did not make the world, you can, \Vithout half trying, n1ake a mess of 1~. The whine of self-pity separates the one who feels tlus way from the world, makes of him a passive object, and while he is being ground up by the world he never made he is in turn making it a messy place. How this sort of thing may happen becomes clear when you examine what. we mean by the world and what our relation to it is. We come into a world we never made, but we come into it as a part of it and not as an object set over against it. In the first and broadest sense, the word ~<world" means the physical universe. Far, then, from making a world, you are made by it. Whatever possibilities lie before you are conditioned by your phys1cal being as a human animal. Your bodies take nourishment from the physical el1\'ironinent and are subject to natural laws-gravitation, growth and decay, change of many kmds. As participants in natural processes men are not merely takers from a fixed surrounding; they give as well as take and so in some way contribute to the continual making of the world. \Ve are, all of us, as Plato saw with poetic vision, part of a greater animal, the cosmos. * Lecture gi\·cn by Dean Kieffer on the Annapolis campus, Septem- ber 20, 1968. The world that we come into and that we never made is a human world, presupposing the physical, of course, but transcending it. A way of seeing symbolically the meaning of the human world is to think of two of the most important events in the early life of newcomers to the world. These are the infant's first word and his first step. With these he is initiated into the world of man. They are the true beginnings of the liberal arts. 'A'ith speech the animal perceptions that have constituted his world are aiven meaning through names. \Vith steps and walking the child begins to interact with the spatial world, to count and to measure and to achieve balance and rhythm. Of itself, locomotion is characteristic of most animals. It becomes human and liberal in combination with speech. To be human, then, is to be able to give names to patches of experience, which we call things in the most general sense. Once the nascent human being finds that things have names, the world of his experience becomes intelligible. But already, in showing him that things have names, the world has played a trick on him. He is bound to think for a while that names are somehow innate in things and to confuse the thing and its name. Nevertheless, the great power of names is that it frees one from bondage to the immediate and the particular. The name unites diverse particulars under one heading and enables the child to see something as persisting through change. Thus he can have a sense of the identity of himself and the world. He. is also able to communicate with others and so enter into the world of men. With names, for the first time, a sense of the unknown arises, and its fascination draws him into ventures that extend his horizons, making the world a bigger place for him. One must supJohn S. K.iefler, classicist, tntor, retiring, Dean ( 19?2-1969) and former hesident ( 1947-1949) of St. Johns College, IS one of that srna11 band of tutors which preceded and remained with the new, i.e., traditional, program of liberal ~nts instituted at the Col1ege in 1937. Dean Kieffer received his B.A. and M.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from 111e Johns Hopkins University .. He ha~ be~ with the College since 1929. In 1964 the Johns B.opbns UmYemty 'Press published his Galen's Institutio Logica-English Translation, Introduction, and Commentary. 1 �The College pose that for animals there is no unknown as such. The world they live in is known in the mode of familiarity and to them nothing is unknown, but their world is a very restricted one. The fact that the unknown exists for men is expressed by Plato and Aristotle when they say that · philosophy begins in wonder. Capacity for language is the natural endowment by which the world makes the individual. As linguistic skill develops, the growing human being acquires his native bnguage, so called, and at first accepts the world that language reveals to him, partly trapped, as we have seen, ·by the easy confusion of word and thing. In the stricter sense, the liberal arts are the reflections on language, the conscious study and practice, in the light of great models, that come with schooling. It is this systematic study that frees a man from the tyranny of words, as Stuart Chase once called it, and allows him to pass from the stage of a slave to linguistic habit and become a master of his tongue. Although we are born into a world of language we never made, language as an art is one of the fundamental means of achieving freedom and participating in the ongoing making of the ever-changing world. The other branch of the liberal arts is mathematics. I have suggested that it is by walking that we enter into the mathematical world. Walking habituates us to counting and measuring. We find we have a different power over our world from the power that names give us. 'Nhereas by pointing and through names we can join with our fellows in understanding our world, through walking around in it we can come into close physical contact with its parts and gradually learn its shape and extent. Yet mathematics depends on language. Our counting and measuring, which we do by- moving around, must still be made intelligible through a set of names: the numbers with which we count, and the units with which we measure. The use of language gains something in return from mathematics. Counting and measurement are precise operations. Ordinary language is imprecise. The name, by virtue of ·its potential generality, does not correspond exactly with the thing it names. This is the starting point for metaphor and analogy, but it is also the source of fallacy and misjudgment. The names that assist the process of counting and measuring, however, force us into pre~ cision. The numbers by which we count are exactly what they are and stand in an order to each other. The units of measurement, too, must be fixed and exact. Thus in the mathematical sciences there is a corrective for the imprecision of language and a paradigm for precision in other subjects than mathematics. The faculties of the intellect and brain that give men the capacity to acquire the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic on the one hand and the arts of arithmetic and geometry on the other do not become actual without teaching and learning. In this respect they are different from the perhaps more fundamental faculty of sight. Man's 2 first awareness of the world is through his eyes and ears and the other senses, but it is only as the arts develop that he stops being an uncomprehending spectator, a detached observer, and becomes a participant with evergrowing awareness. The learning of the liberal arts, insofar as we as a college are concerned, is a reflective process and a combination of theory and practice, or, if you will, of science and art. We study the structure of language and of particular languages; we learn arithmetic and geometry in a systematic way. In acquiring the sciences of the liberal arts we are dealing with the reasons governing what we have been doing naturally since we learned to talk and listen, to walk around and feel the extent of our world. Along with the reflective understanding that our tutorials help us to develop we simultaneously practice the arts of the liberal understanding. We read and ponder and discuss; we observe, experiment, work problems. Liberal education, therefore, requires both reflection and participation, contemplation of the liberal structure of our world and participation in it, vicariously, perhaps, through reading but directly through the discipline of thinking and writing and talking. With the liberal arts men have shaped the world into which we are born and have recorded the work of those who have been the great shapers. It follows first, therefore, that every new human being in a world he never made is forced to conform to that world, on pain of losing his very humanity. A few years ago it was fashionable to ·decry "conformity" and to make a fetish of eccentricity. Nevertheless, conformity, in the sense I have described, is essential. As I have already pointed out, the liberal arts are dangerous and can mislead. Through men's lack of understanding of the nature of words in relation to things, it has come to pass that the world into which we come, the world made by previous generations, can and d<ies contain many illiberal elements, born of misconception and perpetuated by habit and indolence. On this basis objections to conformity are valid. Dissent has today taken the place of non-conformity as the slogan and rallying cry of the young. In any case, the consequences of defective exercises of the liberal arts in the past cry out for correction. It is, moreover, innate in the liberal arts that they do provide the means for correction of their former errors. As I was saying, you and everyone coming into the world must conform to the patterns of discourse and action created by previous generations if you are to become truly human. Only then, after you have learned those patterns and the opportunities they offer you for independent action and what is called now creativity, only then dare you question the conventional wisdom of your ancestors. But then you may; and any one of you who aspires to be a man and not a robot must exercise to the full your powers of creation and of persuasion for the achievement of your goals. �April 1969 But what ought these goals to be? Here I come to a new point of departure. The liberal arts I have been presenting are the instruments of acting as a man. They are the habits and rules by which you live in the human world both of intellect and of community. Being instruments, however, they are neutral to the ends for which they can be used. Not entirely, perhaps. It is hard to see how a man who can read well, and has read widely and thought deeply, could apply the liberal arts to nefarious ends. You need, however, look no further than Plato's dialogues to find in his portraits of the sophists examples of men who, in the common opinion at least, misused their liberal skills for selfish and unenlightened purposes. And they, the sophists, were in fact the first men to give · systematic study to the phenomena of language in all its aspects as a symbolic representation of reality. The question remains, to what goals do the liberal arts lead? This is to ask, in effect, what are the ends proper to human beings? A whole new question has arisen. Tradition gives us a choice of answers. To Plato and Aristotle the end is happiness, which itself is a concomitant of virtue and, more generally, the good. To the Jews, it is obedience to the law of God as given to Moses; to the Christian, to glorify God and to do his will. Apparently the existentialist would deny that there is an end proper to men, but would affirm that men may make for themselves, by affirmative action, an achieved end. Such an end, if achieved, is individual and not to be generalized to apply to all men. The variety of answers that men have held out to themselves leaves a dialectical choice to every young person as he pursues his education. Let us see if we can contribute anything to the dialectic. Philosophically the question of the proper end of man belongs to an area of thought that the eighteenth-century German teacher of philosophy, Christian Wolff, called teleology. The word comes from the Greek telos, which Aristotle uses so often as the term for his final cause. The study of ends, as Aristotle conceived it, is concerned with more than the end of man. Since man is a natural being and a part of and participator in the world, the existence of a final cause in the world and for the world would of course imply something about the end for man as well. Teleology, however, considers ends in general. The consideration of the end for man belongs rather to ethics and politics. Aristotle's discussion of causation and particularly final causation owes much to what he learned from Plato. His debt to his master is as evident in his disagreements with him as in his direct borrowings. Although it is always dangerously misleading to assert something too dogmatically about Plato's beliefs and philosophical opinions, it is probably true that for Plato the belief in a final cause, a telos, is an affirmation and not a fully reasoned conviction. The idea of the good, Socrates seems to assure us, cannot be proved by demonstrative reason but is grasped after a long preparation and excursion from mathematics to dialectic. Nevertheless the dialogues not only inspired in later thinkers a teleological approach to the world, but also supplied them in great part with the language and imagery of this way of viewing the world. There is a great resemblance between the teleology of Plato and Aristotle, and a profound difference. In both philosophers the world is dependent on a rational principle, and the things that change move toward an end and are good for something, as well as good simply to a greater or less degree. In both, art fits the same pattern as nature; in both, man has a special position of importance and through reason shares somehow in the divine nature. For Plato, however, it is almost safe to say, art is more -natural than it is for Aristotle. The "constructor of the all" works like a demiourgos, an artisan, and the cosmos 3 �The College is an artis!Jc product. In the lively dialectical dialogues culminating in the Republic, the arts-medicine, shipbuilding, farming, architecture and many others-are looked to for information about the way of the world. In Aristotle, on the other hand, art is distinct from nature and imitates her. For Plato the changing world has two principles of mO\·ement: the self-moving activity of rational soul and the disorderly motions of the primitive receptacle which nous brings into order by its persuasion of necessity. In Aristotle the divine noesis is an unmoved mover, who transmits motion to the world beneath him through the intermediary of the heavenly spheres with their moving intelligences. Nature, then, becomes the principle of movement of the things in the sub-lunar world. The disorderly motions of chaos, which Plato represented as somehow the energizing cause of motion in the world of becoming, disappear from Aristotle's picture. They are replaced by the potentialities of material, which are actualized by nature as efficient cause and tend toward the being of what they are potentially. The active working of intelligence in artisan fashion is replaced by the unconscious purposes of natural motion-except in the case of man. Man's intelligence allows him through art to be a principle of movement in material and so to imitate nature, as in contemplation he imitates God. I have dwelt at some length on the Platonic and Aristotelian discussions of ends because their philosophical analysis has had such mastery over our thinking. \Ne cannqt escape their influence. Let us, nevertheless, remem- ber that Aristotle certainly, and Plato in all probability, 'looked on the world as fundamentally unchanging, with fixed species maintaining themselves everlastingly through reproduction, true to type except for certain monstrous accidents. In their world, man's end was an assimilation of his life to the cosmic order of the universe. Virtue was at the same time the means to this end and the end, so far as men could attain it. While it is not true that the idea of progress was foreign to Plato and Aristotle or unacceptable to them, it is the case that the spatially finite, but temporally infinite, universe of their thought made fundamental progress philosophically impossible. In their view, while man was the roof and crown of nature, and was a microcosm that reflected the macrocosm of the universe, he could only contemplate the beauty of the cosmos, and that only if he was specially gifted, persevering, and lucky. He could not share in it creatively. It is significant that for Plato the sense of sight, the contemplative sense, is the paradigm of intellect. Much as we owe to Plato and Aristotle it is impossible for us to follow them in their definition of the ends proper to man. This is not a philosophical question only but a real question for each of us as we try to order our lives. As seen by the Jews and the Christians, man is a historical being and the world order is moving toward a culminating point, not endlessly repeating itself as the 4 ancient Greek conceived it. This \'ii.'\\' ::in'S much more importance to individuality. If mnt is hist?rical, individual men are distinguished by thcit l'lxc m th~ lime sequence. Their uniqueness is not liH'tch to be a:tnbuted to the simple material individuation ,,f ,·J.t;;~cal ph1losophr. They are no longer mere contempl.tl''" ,,f the ceaseless rounds of the heavens but doers a11 d "'"kcrs, partiCipants in the progress of m~n and the "'''tid tn its final end. Making and doing are inevitably aCC•'"'i'·"""d by m1stak~, by error. The contemplative man "' ,n·ll as the ~rac!J­ tioner of political virtue, as Aristot k C\''.'cei~es lum, IS essentially static. The great-souled "'"" ,,t Anstotle, and all his politically virtuous men, arc 1h''""clves objects of contemplation; their value lies in whJI thcv are and_ the example they set to other men, rathcr 1h:lltlll the a~hievc­ ment of any social or political goa h. 11 tIus VIew, VIrtue is its own reward." Historical man on the other hand. 11·hile he has his own virtues, gait;s his being from his particiJ.?a~ion ~n the ongoing of the world. The dnl'ltilll' of ?ngmal sm is an expression of rrian' s partiality in IIH, !ustonc~l. proce~s. It is an account of the fallibility ,,f :1111· p~rhcipant m a process that extends beyond him<~·lf. Ihat mvolves hnn in goals whose achievement he canllnl_ expect to see .. It is also an account of the greatne~~ of man as a bemg capable of helping to forward such gn:tls. I am not here expressing an optimistic view that cn'J_rl hmg_ tends toward good. Far from it. It is only too plaill th;tl nnstakes,errors, crime's, stupidity, misfortUne play :1 .I:J.rgc part m any historical process. It is only that I wn11ld have you keep in mind that this is not the whole ;H·cmmt, that there IS achievement as well as misfortune, :nHl that man's life is meaningful because it is measured by its failures as well as by its successes. The measure is what is in quesliotL In the Platgnic tradition the archetypal universe, the tdeas, were the measure. In Aristotle's formulation ill!' Hk:ts become God, moving the world as the beloved moves Ihe love~. In evert thing there is a movement from wh;tl is poss1ble !or It to what it actually becomes, and this lltove':'ent IS set going by the first mover, who is pore ;tc\oahty_ or Go~!. If we try to find a measure by which I" tlctermme mans success or failure in achieving his end. we cannot wholly abandon the Platonic and Aristotelian vtcw. As we have seen, man is born into the world wil h C'l'rt"ain limit~ti<:>ns and with certain potentialities concli\i1111!'d by those limitations. To live is to actualize the huJII'"' potenhahhes one is born with and the ideas or the At i::totelian God are pure actualit;,, Yet the measure of ;whicvcment is not a simple imitation of God. In treating of the physical world, At i::totle talks about time and concludes that time is tlw JHIIIlher or measure of change. Change, for Aristotle, is tlw l1111damental C~~'] dihon of the physical worlcl. If wt· '"""cler the soct.I world of man, "action" 'replaces "r lr:ntr;e" as the key J �April 1969 term. "Action" in Greek is· praxis and is used only of human action. In physics there is no action, only motion· and change. Now, I propose to say that history is the measure of action. As I have already remarked, the Jews and the Christians make history a central factor in understanding human life. I take the term "history" broadly to mean the available record of human events. And I include myth and poetry in the record. Myths and epics and dreams are historical events in themselves and are reflections, images, imitations if you will, of human action. If historv is the measure of human action, which occurs in the phy;ical world into which man is born, then history is the record and the measure of man's exploitation of nature, his own included. Man's potentialities, supplied by his nature, include the power to take advantage of the potentialities that exist in nature and that are realized, apart from man, in the procession of time. The potentialities of nature, when viewed in connection with the ends proper to man, become instrumental values, which man can use and order to his ends. To speak of potentiality and value in nature leads us to the scholastic "metaphysical goodness of all things." Since the world is finite, possibilities always outnumber actualities, and so nature as actualized is radically imperfect. Not every good that might be is, in fact, actualized; on the other hand, from a narrower point of view, not everything actualized is good in all respects. But because of contingency in nature it canna! be said that nature is simply wasteful; that which in one event shows as a wasted potentiality or seems to be good for nothing, may contingently, or through human art, find elsewhere a use or perform a function productive of something good. Thus being and goodness are intermingled aspects in events. It may be objected that in "following this line of argument we have to go from Heraclitus to Protagoras, even as Theaetetus and Theodorus are made to do, and that it has now been said that "man is the measure of all things." Now, there is a sense in which this proposition is true for Plato. Taking good as the measure of that ·which contributes to human happiness is to assign to man a position of dignity with respect to the standard by which things are measured. It is clear, however, that this is to apply to man a standard that is more widely rooted in nature (or as Plato would say, being) than the life and opinions of any particular man. Thus man is the measure of all things insofar as he converts the instrumental goods of nature into the ingredients of his happiness. This is what I have called history. But nature is the measure of man insofar as his happiness depends on the natural endowment which he, as a part of nature, possesses. In this respect, as a finite being, man, as well as nature, fails to realize many potentialities, but since he is rational and is free to choose, his failure is the occasion of tragedy, while nature's failures are only faults or, if on a large scale, catastrophes, but are never tragic. The actuality of human life teems with possibilities, some to be realized, some deferred, some excluded. Among the possibilities is heightened awareness of surroundings. If possibility and its passage to actuality are a primary fact, the mind's awareness of process becon1es an awareness of possibility, of use. From this comes the mind's power, through intellect and imagination, that is, through the liberal arts, to find its way to the unactualized and the unactual, to myths that enlighten the human spirit, to philosophy. Philosophy may supply the connection between the ideal criterion of which I spoke and the historical and mythical paradigms against which we measure ourselves and our condition. It is an activity by which we get a better grasp of existence and so understand the conditions under which we live and are active. Activity rather than spectatorship is natural to us. \Vhat I. spoke of a while ago as teleology is the part of philosophy that leads from metaphysics to ethics and politics, because it shows us that we have a proper end rooted in the being of the cosmos but individually significant. Though we did not make the world into which we came, teleology tells us that we are makers, the only ones perhaps within nature; that by our living we make the world partly new; that if we attain wisdom, we may even make our part of the world a little better. This is a small and finite hope, but it is at least genuine. 5 �A Reading of the Gettysburg Address* By EVA BRANN Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming well read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring the arts of awareness, the interpretative or "trivial" arts. Some works, written by men who are productive masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative application. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is such a text, and the following reading did indeed begin as an exercise in a language tutorial in Annapolis. But although an exercise, it was nevertheless done on the hypothesis essential to liberal study: that what the author wrote then might be true even now. I. The Speech As A Whole It is probably best to begin by observing what is most ob1·ious about this "Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg" (p. 734 )-its brevity. It consists of ten sentences which can be spoken in a little over two minutes. We know from Lincoln himself that he chose his format quite deliberately. When Everett generously wrote to him,' "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes," Lincoln answered, "In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one" (p. 737). Edward Everett had been chosen to be the main speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, on ground bought by the eighteen Northern states which had lost men in the battle there. Lincoln, as chief of state, had been invited only two weeks before the ceremony. Everett courteously sent Lincoln his own two-hour speech, composed in the classicizing style for which he, a professor of Greek, was famous, so that Lincoln could consider it in writing his own. \Ve might then expect Lincoln's speech to be composed as a counterpoise to Everett's; in fact, it seems to be a tacit and tactful repudiation of the classical rhetorical tradition, not only in style, which is (in contrast to Everett's Latinate dactyls) English and iambic, but in a deeper way. For Everett's speech was explicitly modelled on Pericles's Funeral Oration as given by Thucydides, but Lincoln can be contrasted with Thucydides's Pericles precisely as an American with an Athenian statesman, as a republican leader with an oligarch, that is, as a political teacher with a master manipulator. The Gettysburg Address will, accordingly, turn out to be a distillation of Lincoln's political philosophy, which he, on this occasion as on many others, attempted to infuse into the nation at large, a nation distinguished by the fact that its prosperity "has a philosophical cause" (p. 513). It is for this reason that the written versions of the speech have no formal salutation, just as its body does not contain the pronoun "I." The very brevity that made its ten sentences at the time so fugitive in the hearing makes them a "permanent possession" in later readings. For because of it the speech is readily learned by heart and is, in fact, learned by heart by many school children. That means that it may succeed in lodging in the heart, in the form of sound sentiment, those very propositions, essential to the national life, which are too difficult-and perhaps too dubious-to be continually kept in mind. Lincoln recognized that "In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything." Lincoln's rhetoric aims at the conversion of political principle into "moral sentiment" (p. 401). Consequently, as a scanning of the grand framework of this little speech shows, Lincoln makes his brief words E,·a Brann, tutor of St. John's College since 1957, Ph.D. (Stanford), FeHow of American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Sibley Fellow of Phi Beta Kappa at the Agora Excavations in Athens, mem- ber of the Institute of Ad,·anccd Study, Princeton (1958-1959), has recently published an extensive study of Plato's Republic, "The Music * This article, given as a lecture on both campuses in the fall of 1963, is a much shortened version of a study published in a supplement to The Palaestra, a student magazine. Page references are to Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and \Vritings, ed. R. P. Basler, Universal Libmry, 1962. 6 of the Republic," in Arn~. Journal of Classical Studies, University of California, Berkdc)·, April, 1967. She is also the translator from the Gennan of Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origins of Algebra, M.I.T. Press, 1968, and author of numerous articles in the St. John's Collegian on mathematics, astronomy, and other subjects in the liberal ai:ts. I I �April 1969 poignant with a world of meaning. In time it spans the past ("Four score and seven years ago"), the present C'l\Tow we are engaged in a great civil \var"), and the future ("this nation ... shall have a new birth of freedom"), and in space it comprises the battleground on which it is delivered (in the middle sentences), the continent on which the nation was born (in the first sentence), and the earth which it is to save (in the last sentence). II. The First Paragraph Lincoln begins: "Four score and seven years ago.". "Four score/' with its long oh's, SOUI).dS a more mournful, solemn note than could the words "eighty-seven years," but the choice of the phrase is not only a matter of sound; it also carries a special meaning. It is the language of the Bible, as in Psalm 90:10: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. \Vith the psalm in mind the phrase implies: just beyond the memory of anyone now alive, too long ago for living memory. Now, we know that from youth on Lincoln was concerned with a peculiarly American danger: the death of sound political passion. In his speech on "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions," of 1838, Lincoln drew a. clear parallel with the early community of Christians, whose danger lay in the fact that the generation of disciples and eye-witnesses had been followed by a second generation which had only heard by word of mouth, by a third which had only read of Christ, and by a fourth which had begun to forget. So in the American community; the scenes of the revolution, he said, "cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest" (p. 84). The men who had seen the Revolution, who were its "living history/' ar~ now gone. They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. (p. 84) The danger that the enthusiasms of the Revolution might fade away has advanced to a fact in 1863, the time of the fourth generation from that event; the national edifice has to be rebuilt "from the solid quarry of sober reason." This is the age for a deliberate mining of the first accounts, for reading the founding documents. So, then, "Four score and seven years agd' points to that quarry, that mine, of reason. Subtract 87 from 1863 and the result is 1776. Lincoln considers that this nation was both conceived in and born with the Declaration of Independence. On July 7, 1863, in response to a serenade on the occasion of the victory of Gettysburg, under tl1e influence of the providential coincidence that the victories of Gettysburg and of Vicksburg had both been announced Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. "'e have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us .to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. November 19, 1863. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. on the Fourth of July, he had said: How long ago is it-eighty odd years-since on the Fourth of July for the first time in the history of the world a nation by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal." That was the birthday of the United States of America (p. 709). And in earlier speeches he had often counted back the 80 or 82 years to 1776 (pp. 392, 393). In repeatedly fixing on the signing of the Declaration as a crucial date, Lincoln is making a deliberate political judgment concerning the hierarchy of founding events, different for instance from that of Toombs of Georgia, who had begun a speech in 1850 in this way: "Sixty years ago our fathers joined together to form a more perfect Union and to establish justice," referring the founding of the republic to 1790 (the date when the last original state ratified the Constitution), and quoting from its Preamble. Lincoln's version gives rather the birtl1 of the nation. 7 �The College Lincoln goes on: "our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The "fathers," then, are the men who devised and signed the Declaration, especially Jefferson. These men "brought forth": this is again Biblical diction; the phrase is used, for instance, in Luke 1:31, in the annunciation of the Messiah's birth. They "brought forth on this continent": there are undertones here of "begot upon the body of this land," "fathered on this fallow continent as mother"; the child nation is safe in the lap of a whole continent, capable of protecting it from foreign interference and of providing those unlimited riches which are its material condition. The new nation was "conceived in Liberty" (Liberty being the only noun capitalized besides "God") : not conceived in love as are blessed children, but conceived in the spirit of liberty as are blessed nations (cf. p. 315). Thus the begetting of this nation was a begetting of reason (so also "bringing forth" can mean "uttering reasons," as in Isaiah 41:21). Upon this all but holy conception, the nation-child was devoted to a proposition as in a baptism. The proposition "that all men are created equal" was in quotation marks in the first draft (p. 735), since it comes from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. What is the significance of the birthdate of 1776? Consonant with the second Federalist, Lincoln held that the Declaration of Independence was preceded by the Union which had been formally established by the Articles of Association of 1774 and was succeeded by the establishment of the Constitution in 1787 (p. 582). This sequence was of the greatest significance, for it meant that the nation's birth was a birth of principle, a birth whose conditions had been made safe by the slightly antecedent union of the people and whose nature was kept safe by allowing the practical instrument of its life to wait on its conception. Thus, using phrases borrowed from Proverbs 25:11, Lincoln wrote of the principle "Liberty to all" as expressed in the Declaration: The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union and the Constitution are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it (p. 513). Here "subsequently" must, in the case of the Union, mean not later in time, but in political priority. Lincoln, then, held the Declaration to be far more than a declaration of independence, and indeed, it would in that case have been a peculiar document to cite in a war to fight secession. But it is n1uch more; for its author, Jefferson, had, Lincoln said, "had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth" (p. 489). It is precisely in the omission of this truth that the various declarations 8 of ,ndependence adopted by the Union's adversaries are characterized (p. 607). And so Lincoln says: I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time (Address in Independence Hall, 1861, p. 577, cf. pp. 362, 513). Now, what is of prime importance in the speech is bow these principles, which mark the true beginning of the nation, are held. Lincoln denominates them "conceptions" and "propositions." In the Declaration the fathers had held these "truths to be self-evident." Something has happened between the founding and the present which forces Lincoln to call the axioms of the Declaration mere propositions. What happened was that the Declaration had been called in public "a self-evident lie," a phrase Lincoln often cited with repugnance (pp. 314, 331, 489), for it creates a dangerous situation: One would start with great confidence that he could .· convince any sane child that the simpler propositions . of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society (p. 489). We know that Lincoln had made a special effort to study texts concerned with, and to ponder the nature of, axiomatic self-evidence and logical consequence. In his short autobiography he particularly mentions that he had "studied and nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of Congress" (p. 549). He understood that self-evidence is a peculiarly delicate affair, since once impugned, once only denied in public, a self-evident truth turns into a debatable proposition. Yet as the axiom, precisely by reason of its self-evidence, is unprovable, so the proposition has no proof from higher principles, but can be verified only from its consequences or-dreadful prospect-from the fatal consequences of its contrary-the very situation of the Civil War. What, more precisely, are these principles whose standing has changed? In the words of the Declaration they are "that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Here equality of creation, equality before God, precedes and is the condition of the other rights, of which only some are named. Now Lincoln seems in the Gettysburg Address to reverse this order in setting liberty as the first conception, as he had before termed "Liberty to all" the principle of the Declaration (p. 513). But elsewhere he says, "I believe that the declaration that all men are created equal is the r f• ! I i ! ' ~ ' �April 1969 great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest" (p. 479). \Vhat does Lincoln consider to be the real relation of these two principles? De Tocqueville, in the chapter inquiring "VV"hy Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Endur{ng Love of Equality than of Liberty" (Democracy in America, II, ii, l), considers liberty and equality two diverse and independent things; equality, he says, pertains primarily to the social, liberty to the political sphere. Yet he admits that ultimately and radically considered, the two are what would be called in logical terms "commensurately uni~ versa]," that is, they imply each other: "It is possible to imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality would meet and blend." Lincoln takes exactly this "extreme" view. He habitually sets out his understanding of the principle of equality wrth respect to the slavery question, which would appear to be primarily a question of liberty. On the other hand, he interprets equality of creation to mean precisely the possession of inalienable rights 1 chief among which is political liberty. The order of the two terms in the speech, then, srgmfies only that a community conceived in the spirit of liberty is congenitally devoted to the enunciated condition of its conception, the axiom of equality. Lincoln is able to join the two conceptions in this way precrsely because he does not make De Tocqueville's divisiOn between the social nature of equality and the political nature of liberty. Equality, the ruling article of Lincoln's political thought, is not fundamentally a social or even a political matter, for it is prior to human affairs. Lincoln asserts the serious converse of De Tocqueville's statement that Men who are similar and etjual in the world readily conceive the idea of the one God, governing every man by the same laws and granting to every man future happmess on the same conditions. The idea of the unity of mankind constantly leads them back to the idea of the unity of the Creator (II, i, 5). The effect of this converse is a deep doctrine regarding man's original nature in the strict sense and his conse~ quent standing in what Lincoln calls "the economy of the Universe/' namely his common submission to ''the justice of the Creator to his creatures ... to the whole great family of man"; it is a deep-felt revival of Jefferson's discarded version of the Declaration, which had asserted "that all men arc created equal and independent; that from tl1at equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable." This crcaturely equality implies no social homogeneity at all-the authors of the Declaration, Lincoln asserts, "did not mean to say all were equal in color, SIZe, mte1lect, moral developments, or social capacity" (p. 360). But it does mean that men have each a will of their own and a sufficient amount of good common sense for the earthly realization of their equality, in civil liberty, which, in effect, is self-government; it is on this view of human nature as having its source in a creator that Lincoln's trust in the wisdom of the people concerning the basic matters of ordinary life depends. The American social situation is, then, the consequence of America's political principles; or to put it another way, in America society is originally based on political principles, and politics, which is ultimately a matter of faith, precedes society, not the reverse (cf. p. 279). III. The Second Paragraph Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. In his middle paragraph Lincoln passes from "four score and s·even years ago" and "our fathers" to "now" and "we," from the generation of the Revolution to the generation of the Rebellion, of the "great civil war," which, in its enormity, he had in the days of the victory of Gettysburg termed, in Miltonic language, a "gigantic Rebellion" (p. 709, also p. 702). Indeed, there was to him something of the Fall in what he termed the wanton "destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes" (First Inaugural Address, p. 584). Yet in that very speech Lincoln had maintained the right of revolution (p. 587), a right he had already asserted in the House as a "sacred right" during the war with Mexico. But, he maintained, the action of the Southern states was not revolution nor secession-it was "rebellion" (p. 602). The states could not leave the Union, for they had never existed, as states, "out of" ·the Union, but had entered it, insofar as they were entities at all, only as colonies, or, if as territories, from the state of nature (p. 479). There could be no "war between the states" but only a "civil war." He justified this legalism by the argument that the Union alone is the guarantor of republican government through the Constitution. For this reason the Union-although, as De Tocqueville observed, an abstract being-is absolutely unbreakable. Lincoln's effort is to turn the assent to this abstraction into a palpable feeling, even in this •Speech in which, out of tactful respect for the fact that a national but not a federal cemetery is being dedicated, the word "Union" never appears. But, secession being rejected, what remains of the right of revolution? Lincoln's thinking on this crucial matter is that of a radical conservative. When charged with revolutionary views himself, he protests his conservatism: \\That is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, agaiqst the new and untried? \Ve stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" (p. 528); but since the controversy referred to is the extension of slavery, which Lincoln opposed with all his might, his 9 �The College very opposition to change is conceived in the spirit of the Revolution. In other words, in this country, whose orig' inal go\'ernment was constituted by revolution, the most progressive side tries most faithfully to return to the beginnings; that side has once and for all preempted the Revolution, the essence of which is the process of change by majority decision, so that all rebellion is counterrevolution. But this means that in a well-founded polity justice is almost identical with organic law, and a sense of justice with the intention to make it "long endure." Hence the right of revolution is strictly circumscribed. If, by mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of vie\v, justify revo- lution-certainly would, if such a right were a vital one (p. 584). The issue must be one of constitutional rights denied, and any sectional or factional uprising, upon a mere feeling of dissent, constitutes an uprising against the people. So Lincoln savs of the secessionists: These politicians are subtile and profound on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that power which made the Constitution, and speaks from the Preamble, calling itself "We the People" (p. 606). This war, Lincoln goes on to say, is a test. The crisis has t]le .;ature of a test, because this government is an e>;periment, as Lincoln said in his message to Congress, which he had called into special session to meet on that fateful day of July 4, at the beginning of the war in 1861: Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled-the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains-its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it (p. 608). As the final phase of an experiment the war represents one test for all cases, a model case of a nation well established, in which two necessary founding conditions were optimal, namely the wisdom of the fathers and the receptivity of the continent; if this nation fails, then it is demonstrated that "any nation" must fail. This is how the American enterprise had been understood from the founding; "it seems to hove been reserved," says the first Federalist, to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice. IV. The Third. Paragraph In the last two sentences, half the speech in length, Lincoln develops the single explicit theme of the speechthe second dedication of the nation, in this consecrated place, here among the dead (Lincoln removed a fourth 10 "here" from the final version), in that spell-like diction which gives successive colons identical or near-identical endings. To describe the nature of this new dedication he mingles the language of church and legislative assembly. The dedication, the consecration, the hallowing, the devotion Lincoln urges is of a political sort. He had urged it already in 1838, in his speech on "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions": Let reverence for the laws ... become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars (p. 81). Lincoln is deliberately consecrating politics. The last two clauses give the effect of the new dedication: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." The words "under God" were not in the first draft;- they were reported in the newspaper versions of the speech as delivered and later incorporated by Lincoln (cf. p. 752). Why, did he add them? Under the heading "Of Civil Religion," the last heading in The Social Contract, Rousseau describes the civil religion of republics which it is the business of the sovereign to set out, not as religious dogmas but as "sentiments of socialibility." They ought to be simple, few in number, precisely fixed, and without explanation or comment. The existence of a powerful, wise, and benevolent Divinity, who foresees and provides the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws (IV; viii). This is precisely the nature of Lincoln's faith as continually set out in his public pronouncements. The nation is under a beneficent Father who "dwelleth in the Heavens" (p. 728). It has a double parentage-the founding fathers and the Father above. This nation will have "a new birth of freedom." Those words were not, at the time, felt to be at all innocuous. Nor are they, if "of freedom" is read not as an objective genitive, so that the nation is said to give birth to a new freedom, but as a parallel to "conceived in Liberty," so that the nation itself is said to be reborn. The Chicago Times, in reporting the speech, said that in this phrase "Mr. Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the men who were slain at Gettysburg," for they fought only to preserve the old government. Now, as has been shown, Lincoln in !net agreed with this conservative view of the struggle, but in a not so innocuous way. He had said: Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south-let all Americans-let all lovers of liberty everywhere-join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so �April 1969 saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of saving. \Ve shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations (p.315). . The last phrases are a paraphrase of the Magnificat, the words of the mother-to-be of the Messiah: "For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" (Luke 1:48). It is Lincoln's awesome idea that the generation of the Civil War, under his leadership, is at once the savior and the parent of the savior nation, that America is to politics "almost" as Israel was to the spirit. That means that for the Union side the war is a kind of second coming, a second bringing-forth, after four score and seven years. Lincoln has converted Jefferson's extravagant opinion that "a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing" (Letter to Madison, January 30, 1787) into a serious view concerning the . periodic rebirth of the Revolution-to occur, evidently, in fullest force in the fourth generation, once in a century. In this idea Lincoln recognizes that a country founded in a revolution is bound to have a generational problem, brought about by the very success of the system, for he says: We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them-they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors (p. 77). The generational dilemma raised by successful survival of the revolutionary institutions is that the successor generations, bred in that most desirable ignorance, the ignorance of anarchy and despotism, and mistaking the drained habits of their parents for the tradition, will in the low of political passion arouse themselves by giving current problems a cataclysmic cast, and may, developing an appetite for unknown terror, be willing to cure dissatisfaction by catastrophe. A return to the founding Revolution alone can forestall such an event, or if, as in the case of the Civil War, the event becomes a fact, can turn it into an act of salvation. Lincoln continually makes the effort to convert the war in this way, even comparing its financial funding to that of the Revolution (p. 602). But the phrase "a new birth of freedom" also has a more precise meaning. Lincoln contended that the Declaration of Independence included Negroes and that the authors of the Constitution intended that slavery would in time be abolished. Accordingly he was the implacable foe of the extension of slavery-this single issue dominates his speeches before the war. It was an issue important to him partly because peculiarly connected with it was the question of the axiomatic character of the founding principles, namely the question of their universality. Such propositions, pronounced concerning "all men/' must either altogether fail or altogether prevail, in respect both to institutions: "I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free" (1858, p. 372), and to individuals: , This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it (p.489). Lincoln repeatedly pointed out that the fathers had not allowed the word "slavery" to disfigure the text of the Constitution. No more does it occur in the Gettysburg Address, and yet it is there, in the background, for on the first of that very year he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and that fact gave a specific meaning to the "new birth of freedom." Lincoln begins with the Revolution and its statement of principle, the Declaration; he ends with a phrase defining popular government and alluding to its instituting document, the Constitution. This represents the natural difference in the commitments of the first and the ll �The College fourth generations: As the patriots of seventy-six did to support the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor (p. 81; cf. Declaration, end). This government "shall not perish from the earth"that is the Work," the "task," the Cause." Lincoln has ended, as he began, with language heavy with the Bible: The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net (Micah 7:2). If this rebellion prevails, this allusion warns, so that this government does perish, men will return to that universal state of war, the war of each against all, which precedes the institution of government; the Rebellion will undo the Founding. In Lincoln's words: Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments is the only true sovereign of a free people. \Vhoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or despotism ( 1861, p. 585). And finally, there is the allusion to Jeremiah 10:11: "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth." False gods shall perish, but the government of the people shall not perish. 11 11 V. The Speaker After having, at length, considered the speech, it rs legitimate to consider the speaker. Lincoln is, at his height, a public man: If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country (1839, p. 112). But an American speaker who, like Lincoln, means to put his whole soul at the service of the body politic, has a peculiar problem, rooted in the quality of American life, which De Tocqueville describes in the chapter called "Of Some Sources of Poetry Among Democratic Nations": "Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests-in one word so anti-poetic-as the life of a man in the United States" (II, i, 17). This is because democracy has given up in distaste the source of aristocratic poetry, the past, while its 1·ery principle, that of equality, deprives it, by making all contemporaries equally mediocre, of sources in the present. There remain to democratic poets, De Tocqueville says, only three sources of theme.s: the nation, the future, and God-and these precisely anticipat.e the themes of 12 Lincoln's public poetry. But, as he observes in the chapter on "\Vhy American Writers and Orators Often Use an Inflated Style," it is difficult to present these themes at the middle distance: In democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object: namely, himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he perceives only the immense form of society at large or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either minute and clear or extremely general and vague; what lies between is a void (II, i, 18). The very nature of the principles of equality and liberty is responsible for this American problem of the middle void. For they are axioms of openness, that is, propositions of reason which are yet not intended as prescriptive bases for the whole of life, principles of potentiality which, not being themselves goods, only offer the possibility of goods, the foundations of a prosperous privacy, which become the less interesting the more efficacious they are. The Gettysburg Address begins and ends not only with phrases borrowed from American oratory but with the diction of the Bible. In his effort to fill this American void, Lincoln finds a source book which is at once traditional but not antique, which offers an appropriate alternative to classicizing rhetoric. The Bible, on the one hand, lends him a language at once high and popular, a language of salvation with which to magnify the American enterprise; with its diction. he speaks as "Father Abraham," as the first patriarch of a new generation of founding fathers. On the other hand, it supports him in a view of the nature of political affairs as finally beyond merely human management, a nature whose public acknowledgement damps the hysterical activity filling the American void, and reduces it to that melancholic deliberateness on which the public business thrives. So the same speaker who is so eminently democratic in theme is the very reverse in form. Again De Tocqueville provides the criteria in his chapter on "Literary Characteristics of Democratic Times": Taken as a whole, literature in democratic ages can never present, as it does in periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity, science and art; its form, on the contrary, will ordinarily be slighted, sometimes despised. Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, almost always vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be more common than bulky books (II, i, 13). Now, this otherwise so accurate description is conspicu· ously inapplicable to Lincoln's writing. The Gettysburg Address is small, to be sure, but it was not rapidly executed: Lincoln had brought a worked-over draft from �April 1969 \Vashington; he re-worked this in Gettysburg on the eve of deliverv, and he amended each of the three known copies he made over the next three months. Although, as he said, not a master of language nor in possession of a fine education, he was careful; he wrote to a man who had submitted to him an edited version of one of his speeches: So far as it is intended merely to improve in grammar, and elegance of composition, I am quite agreed; but I do not wish the sense changed, or modified. to a hair's breadth. And you, not having studied particular points so closely as I have, can not be quite sure that you do not change the sense when you do not intend it (p. 545). His style is the very opposite of that of the typical democratic writer described by De Tocqueville in his chapter on "How American Democracy has Modified the English Language" (II, i, 16), who out of lack of care, love of change and desire for bigness, uses old words in indeterminate senses, introduces vast numbers of new words usuallv borrowed from technical vocabularies, and loads his sp.eech with abstract and general expressions. The lapidary precision of form, deliberately acquired in a solitary study of grammar, which carries the patriarchal grandeur of Lincoln's rhetoric is a sign of a novel kind of aristocracy-republican aristocracy. Lincoln tacitly rejected Everett's cold classicism as inappropriate to a democratic speaker whose object must not be to demonstrate or exert his own superiority. His own rhetoric shows precisely those special characteristics of certain ancient aristocratic writers, of whom De Tocqueville writes in the chapter entitled "The Study of Greek and Latin Literature is Peculiarly Useful in Democratic Communities": Nothing in their works seems done hastily or at random; every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur and is shaped after some conception of ideal beauty. No literature places those fine qualities in which the writers of democracies are naturally deficient in bolder relief than that of the ancients; no literature, therefore, ought to be more studied in democratic times (II, i, 15). Lincoln himself is, then, in De Tocqueville's sense an aristocratic \vriter, even to the point of finding his sources in the past. The man who had had from youth the "peculiar ambition" of being "truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem" (p. 57), could have no quarrel with the fundamental idea of aristocracy. For he was himself an exemplification of Jefferson's conten'tion, set out in his correspondence with Adams (October 28, 1813), that aristocracy and democracy, the rule by the best and the rule by the people, have been made compatible in the United States, that the citizens in free election can and will-as he said, "in geneial/' and as we must say, on occasion-choose from amorig themselves the "natural iiristoi," the best by nature. The Gettysburg Address is the utterance of such an iiristos, a man at the same time excellent in the antique sense and good in the common understanding. l3 �"How Is The Seminar?"* An Exercise in One Particular Hearing and Viewing of the Question I By MICHAEL OSSORGIN The question in the title is inextricably bound up with the particularities of the voices, situations and times that gi,·e rise to it at St. John's. It has, first of all, an immediately practical dimension: "great" texts, many strange ones, ranging widely, have to be read and thought about \Vithin a short span of time; conversation has to go on; and learning ought to be taking place with all members of the seminar. Secondly, the question has also a moral dimension as long as the practices in question are open to praise and blame, passion and reason, misery and happiness, while they begin, proceed and end with particular men and women, students and tutors,t and authors of books, forming one learning community called "seminar." Thirdly and finally, the question acquires a dramatic dimension when, and only when, a course taken by such practices is being viewed in and through the occurring and recurring situations of the seminar: as a whole, in breadth, \vithin a perspective, in depth. This kind of viewing is raised to the level of comprehensive and lasting vision in some works on the seminars' reading list. For instance, it occurs in the staging, the mise en scene of Socrates's conversations by Plato in the Dialogues and by Aristophanes in The Clouds. "The truth * For those unfamiliar with the title of this essay: this question is probably the most frequently heard opening for conversation on the St. John's campuses, among students and Faculty alike. The seminar, it is frequently said, "is the heart of the Program." (Ed.) t Tutor is the title held by all members of St. John's faculty. 1l1cre are no other academic ranks, although there is a tenure system. Through this arrangement the College reduces the diversion of faculty energy from teaching and learning by concern for advancement in rank to a minimum; irrele\'ant obstacles to reason's being the chief authority in discussion, in this \Vay, are also minimized. (Ed.) :j: At St. John's grades are registered in the Dean's Office but not reported to students unless special request is made and special condi· tions warrant such reporting. Instead, at the end of each semester the student meets all his tutors in the "don rag," a consultation between a student and his tutors on all phases of the student's work at the College. The tutors report t0 one of the seminar lCJ.ders on the student's work. Then the student is asked to comment oo the reports and to judge his own work. Rather than reporting marks, the don rag attempts to discorcr and articulate the rcasoJJS for the student's lack of progress, or, more happily, for. his success in understanding. (Ed.) 14 of things staged" is meant to be eyed with the immediacy of involvement, before scholarly detachment, if desirable, could be thoughtfully and meaningfully sustained. Here the poet's eye, as it were, takes precedence over the scholar's eye. Staging both reveals and conceals the artist at work. It reveals a vision, its breadth and its depth, while it conceals the "seer"; it may even conceal something of the vision from an indiscriminate view. The revealings and the concealings seem to be rooted in the artist's practical and moral attitude toward his fellow men, and more deeply, in his attitudes towards what he views as lifegiving and as mortifying, in fact and in conscience. Ultimately and suddenly, if at all, his perspective opens, or opens partially, to the all-pervasive and guiding graces of the sublime and of the humorous. But here one nears something which is at the same time still distant and remote, as throughout Dante's Comedy, and, as with the Comedy, one is always tempted to try to cut it down to SIZe. To come back to our title, the following is an exercise in one particular hearing and viewing of the question. The question is raised perennially at St. John's. Soon after convocation it is usually voiced in relation to the unfamiliarity and to the puzzlements with the folk, ]ores, and books that are beginning to mingle in seminars. Its first or immediately practical phase subsides with the spread of familiarity and habituation. It enters its second, or moral, phase in times of don rags,:): when it is raised more specifically: "How is one's performance in the seminar?" Don rags tend to have a purging effect on a seminar, strengthening its moral fiber. Finally, at the end of the year, the question may enter its third, or dramatic, phase with the producers and the performers of the annually staged skits. The skits tend to distribute punishments Michael Ossorgin, tutor at Santa Fe, has been with St. John's since 1956. A Russian, he was educated at the Lycee Russe, Conservatoire Russe, and Institut de clllCologie Orthodoxe, where he received a L.Th., all in Paris. He was an instructor in theology at St. Tikhon's Seminary, PennsylYania, and later an instructor in music under the auspices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska when the College discovered him. He has been deeply involved in studies of the novels of · Dostoevsky. I , �April 1969 and awards, to keep some feelings of failure on edge, and to carrY the \'iewers and the listeners to the brink and the verge 0£ many laughs, and an occasional tear. Throughout the year the question also persists in quiet sorts of \Y3\'S, It keeps imposing itself in difficult seminar situations involving intricate demands of texts, minds, and com'Cfsation. It taunts one to pause and reflect on what is and what is not happening in the seminar, what its possibilities ar.e and ~vhat one's possibilities in it are. At times, such reflections must take a perilous course amidst harsh impediments· to learning that insist on being there. At other times, they mav take an occasio~al flight towards the highest learning possibilities. \Vhatever their course, they tend to proceed from different points of ,·iew with different learners. The angle of one's \'iewing "from a point" may widen or it may narrow. Occa- sionally it may widen enough to gauge the span of one's learning times as it presents itself at various distances to one's fotesigh t and hindsight. It may even widen to gauge a lifetime of genuine learnings. as em- bodied in many a text at St. John's. However, onh· four years arc required bv the College for certification in liberal artistry, and only one \'ear is allotted to a particular seminar; accordingly, one may choose one's angles and one's distances. In some such ways as these, or in others, one may happen to Yie\\' the question in the title and discover that the hidden part of learning m semin~ns thri,·es on that \·cry question. Here I hasten to make a parenthetic remark that, as far as I can see, the program at St. John's does not seem to rest on formulae, or on hunches, not even on utterances from a position. of knowledge, but continues to rest on the acts of its own rediscovery. In these respects the program strangely resembles "the truth of things staged." The other day the question rang in my ears in very peculiar circumstances. I had just finished reading a certain romance of knight errantry, and was plunging into daydreams and hallucinations under its magic spell. The book happened to be the only romance of knight errantry I have ever read: Cervantes's Don Quixote. Of course! Or is it Don Quixote's Cervantes? I am not sure, for I cannot make up my mind once and for all whether "man is the father . . ." or Hthe child of his works," even without the implications of the additional "step:" But to get back to the story, I found myself thrown onto a vast stage in the middle of a play. I did not know where I was in the play, with whom, or what was going on. Yet, I knew somehow that the play had something to do with the life of inquiry. Not being able to stand my predicament, I tried to orient myself on the stage. I recognized its two outstanding landmarks: "the High Cliff of Madness" and "the Abyss of SimpleMindedness." Stretched in between were the broad expanses of the "Tierra Firma." Among the figures moving around, one pair stood out as central to the play, for, between the two of them, they covered the whole magnitude of the stage. I "figured them out" as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: the knight came down from the High 15 �The College Cliff to transform men and their ways to what they ought to be; his squire came up from the Abyss to rule over them as they happen to be, i.e., "as God made them, and often much worse." 'Two more figures were conspic- uous, for, unlike the rest, they did not move, but stood still, one at each end of the stage, at its exits. They· had been "figured out" by another enchanted reader of Don Quixote in The Diary of his: To some observers all phenomena of life develop with a most touching simplicity and are so intelligible that they are not worth thinking about or even being looked at. However, these same phenomena might embarrass another observer to such an extent that, in the long run, he feels una blc to simplify them, to draw them out into a straight line and thus appease his mind. He then resorts to a different kind of "simplification" and very "simply" plants a bullet in his brain so as to extinguish at once his jaded mind, together with all its queries. Such are the two extremes between which the sum total of human intelligence is enclosed.-Dostoevski The rest of the figures were moving anywhere between the pair at the extremes and around the pair "at the center." I found I was not lost after all, for I began to have some vague notions about the breadth of the stage, and about the range of the characters on it. Still, I sorely lacked some guiding notions about the plot. I knew that it had something to do with the life of inquiry, but I could not ·figure out its beginning, its middle, and its end. There was nothing else for me to do but to get into the act by inquiring around. . To my surprise, the first character I ran across happened to be in the same predicament I was in. The two of us inquired of the third ... ; the story was the same.... By the time the compan)c reached a sizable number, the story was still the same. It was useless to go on like that, yet each hesitated to part from the company of the others, for we had something crucial in common: the predicament and the question. There was a possibility of putting our minds together to see if we could come up with an answer as to what the action of the play might be. Everyone spoke in turn. At the end there was an embarrassment in addition to the predicament: we had ended up with as 16 many answers as there were minds available. We had to pause, reflect, and deliberate .... There was a possibility for each to try to support his opinions with reasons, while making efforts to understand what the others were saying, as they, each in turn, understood it themselves. We began to converse. In a way we made some progress: the embarrassment, which had been added, subsided and a new bond began to emerge. It was a bond of awareness that the various affirmations and denials in and of our opinions craved justification in terms of evidence, and that evidence as such is something that could be seen in common. At times we battled, at other times we conversed in a friendly way. Still, on the whole we were moving back and forth with no end in sight. Again we had to pause, reflect and deliberate.... There was a possibility of moving towards an end: in case of battles, to try to see clearly into the issues involved, "to raise the conflict to the level of rational articulation"; and in case of friendly conversations, to try to raise them to the level of illumination, of insight. Both tasks proved to be extremely difficult to sustain in conversation. Yet, to the extent to which each was trying, "the patterns of his respective affirmations and denials began to change, as his insight into possibility was deepening." And so, to make a long story short, it finally dawned upon us that our conversation was occasionally reflecting the action of the life of inquiry: its beginning, its middle, and even an end. Some began to feel like trying out their roles on the stage at large. . . . But the magic spell of . Don Quixote wore off. . . . I found myself on the campus grounds in "The Land of Enchantment." The buildings stretched between a foothill and an arroyo, with the dormitories at either end, with the classroom buildings and the student activities center in the middle. It was getting dark, the lights went on, and soon various figures began to appear from various · directions, following their converging and diverging paths towards their respective seminars. It was time for me to go, too .... End of the exercise. How is the seminar? The quotations in the exercise are taken from Cervantes, Don Quixote; Dostoevski, The Diary of a \\lriter; and The Dean's Statement of Educational Policy and Program, St. John's College, 1959. (Author) ( I �The College and the Underprivileged By LAURENCE BERNS Longstanding injustices and neglect have deprived too many Americans of the resources ·and opportunities for ad,·anccment shared by most of their countrymen. The greatest sufferers, clearly, have been American Negroes. At St. John's, as throughout the nation in recent times, mam lm·e been moYed to translate their feelings about thesC matters into action. The situation at Santa Fe, where there is almost no 1\:egro population, is different from the one at Annapolis. But there, too, a number of community projects have been undertaken. Under the Community Service and Continuing Ed.ucaiion Program of the Higher Education Act of 1965 a project is in operation with tutor Stuart Boyd as director. Students have been leading seminars at the state mental hospital and at the state prison at Cerillos. A tutoring sen·ice for high school dropouts and near-dropouts was organized by students of the College. Students have been helping in local high schools as teaching assistants. \Ve shall concern ourselves here, however, with activities directed mainly towards the Negro population and, therefore, at Annapolis. At Annapolis, too, students have, on a somewhat occasional basis, tutored pupils at local high schools. During June of 1968 a three-day pilot project under the auspices of the Jack and Jill Foundation of ·washington, D. C., was tried with Negro boys who were scholastic "underachievers.'' Simple readings and a movie, Raisin In The Sun, were discussed in seminar, and some elementary mathematics tutorials were conducted. Baseball and basketball games took place in the afternoons. Tutors Peter Laurence Berns, tutor at St. John's since 1960, receiYed his Ph.D. from the Social Sciences Di\·ision of the University of Chicago. He \Yas a lecturer in the liberal arts nt the UniYersity of Chicago from 19 56 to 19)9. lie has ,nitten the chapter on-Thomas Hobbes, History of Political Philosoph;:, R:md \Ic:;-.;ally, 1963, and a chapter on "Aristotle's Poetics" in Ancients and .\Iodems, Basic Books, 1964. He spent 19661967 on lca,·e of absence as Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rosary College, Ri,·cr Forest, Illinois. lie is currently engaged in a translation of Aristotle's Politics for Bantam Books. Brown and George Doskow were in charge of the project. As a result of this project the Foundation is looking forward to a seven-week program during the summer of 1969 for 100 boys between fifteen and seventeen years old. They will all be seriously behind in their academic work, serious "underachievers"; 50 will be Negroes, 35 SpanishAmericans, and fifteen American Indians. A very simple St. John's curriculum is planned: seminars, mathematics and writing tutorials, and a choice of a class of instruction in reading or a laboratory. The program is to be directed by Leroy Giles, who has been in charge of the Upward Bound program at Howard University. There is some reason to doubt whether the program will materialize: only $20,000 has been raised out of a needed $140,000 (including the cost of student room and board). In the spring of 1968 the Annapolis Faculty resoh·ed to initiate an Annapolis Community Scholarship Fund at St. John's: its primary aim is to provide fees at St. John's for intellectually qualified but economically underprivileged Negroes from Annapolis. Efforts to raise funds for such students have not been as successful as anticipated, although the Honeywell Corporation has promised $400 for each of four years. There has only been one student recipient of such money. This student had applied successfully to the College, but was unable to attend because of lack of funds. She then left town for New Yark and was working in a bakery there when she was informed that funds would be available. (Contributions may be sent to the Fund in care of Julius Rosenberg, Director of Development, at the College.) The Educational Enrichment Program for Annapolis was conceived and developed by teachers at St. John's and the Naval Academy in cooperation with officials at local high schools. The program was initiated in response to the Office of Economic Opportunity's failure to award an Up\\'ard Bound Program to St. John's for the year 1968-69. Its goals were genera]],. those of the national program: in raciaiiy integrated programs, to stimulate the culturally and economically underprivileged towards greater educational achievement. The program at St. 17 �The College John's was directed by tutor Benjamin lv!ilner and carried on by nine tutors on a voluntary basis. The students were mostly in their ninth, tenth, and eleventh years of high school. Twenty-two enrolled and eighteen completed the program. All of those who completed it were Negroes. There were seminars, classes in mathematics, and English composition, and work in the art studio. Mr. Milner informs us, "There were some accomplishments-chiefly of a remedial nature-in English composition and in mathematics. To our disappointment, the seminar (a discussion of short stories, poems, novels, biography, and a movie) never developed as a significant learning experience for more than a few students. Some were too young, and some, while they could read the assigned texts, could not understand them, because of their very limited vocabularies and their not having the habit of using a dictionarY. \Ve learned a lot-about the students, about their ne~ds, and the best way to meet them. For the students, I venture to believe, it was a significant educational experience, although neither they nor we could point to dramatic accomplishments." One question raised by some of these experiences is whether St. John's, because it is framed for liberal education on the highest level, is the appropriate place for helping those who need the most elementary kind of instruction. It is very difficult for those without experience in· the program to realize just how elementary the needed instruction is. The programs are, in effect, stopgap measures to make up for intolerably inadequate elementary school education. Most great books may presuppose too much: yet there may be some exceptions, e.g., Euclid and the Bible, and one tutor reports that his most successful class was a discussion based on Xenophon's Education of Cyrus, book one, chapter three, sections sixteen and seventeen. \Vhat does seem clearly to be transferable is the St. John's tradition of dedicated teaching, and especially the seminar training in dialectic and discussion that has been so successful in getting students to expose and reflect upon what is really going on in their minds, in involving them directly in teaching each other and themselves. The closing exercises of the program on August 9 consisted of refreshments, an exhibition of the students' art work, and the following address by tutor Laurence Berns: You have volunteered to devote six vacation weeks to the improvement of your minds and, we hope, your hearts. We congratulate you for having the good sense to choose to do so, and for having the good heart to stick it out to the end. All animals need food, all ·animals need shelter and almost all animals need families. In this respect man is no different from the other animals. But man is the talking animal and the thinking anin.1al, and when you brir1~ those together, the learning animal. !\Jan is the animal 18 which through learning has the power to modify his feelings, to control his feelings, to improve his feelings, to impros·e his likes and dislikes. This sounds very rosy. It is not so rosy. This great opportunity which Nature, or Nature's God, has opened up for man is a two-edged sword-it can cut one way and it can cut the other way. For man's thinking and talking, his power to learn, makes its way to man's feelings through the force of habit, through the formation of habit, and habits can be good or bad. The sword of learning is a two-edged sword, a dangerous instrument, because it can lead to bad habits as well as good habits. Man is the learning animal, and because of this even when he does the things all animals do-eat, seek shelter and have families-he does it with ·a difference: man can't just do things the other animals do, he's got to do them with style. \Ve always watch each other's styleto see whether it's good style or bad. A man or a woman's style points to what he or she has learned. What I'm pointing to is that no man can help learning. It's what . he learns that counts: he can Jearn to spoil his feelings, to corrupt his feelings, to make his likes and dislikes worse as well as to make them better. In fact, it's probably easier to do that than to make them better. If you don't put your mind to work at forming good habits, it's likely that, whether you know it or not, it will be working to form bad ones. Forming good habits, I believe, is what the business of education is chiefly about. \Ve must continually search for those teachers and those books which can guide our learning power towards improving ourselves, which can teach us how to be strong and sensitive, courageous, tender and thoughtful all at the same time. The best teachers (and this refers to books, too) are the ones that teach us and move us to become our own· teachers, to become thoughtful critics of ourselves, that arouse in us the habit of constructive thoughtfulness. The best teachers and the best books make us aware of how much we Jose when we waste our time. There are some who think that the most important thing about a man is the size of his bankroll, or the sharpness of his clothes, or the size of his muscles, or the color of his skin. No matter how many of them there are, and there are a lot oi them, they are very superficial people. What counts is the quality of a man's mind and heart, what he does and has done with his power to learn. I should like to end this talk with some words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his book Strength to Love: May I offer a special word to our young people .... Many of y.ou are in college and many more in high school. I cannot overemphasize the importance of these years of study. You must realize that doors of opportunity are opening now that were not opened to your mothers and fathers. The great challenge you face is to be ready to enter these doors. �NEWS .ON THE CAMPUSES does not wish his name disclosed. likes to be known as "T. K.," transThe Western Consolidation Cam- ferred to Annapolis from Santa Fe and Richard Ferrier, a junior from Oak- paign constitutes the second of three found herself involved in the junior land, California, appeared with four phases in Santa Fe's "Decade of Devel- seminar program almost immediately. students from Bennington College in opment," 1964-1974. About $5,445,000 \Vorking with her are Bonnie \Velch Vermont on Philadelphia's vVFIL-TV was received in the initial period of and Dolores Strickland, Class of 1971, on January 21st. The program, entitled 1964-1968. The College will seek Marvin Cooper, Class of 1970, and J<On Camera," specializes in controver- $7,200,000 during 1968-1971, a total Tom Geyer, Class of 1969. sial subjects. Every day one of five news for the decade of $16,541,000, which T. K. states the program does take columnists in the Philadelphia metro· is committed to the firm establishment a great deal of time. "We have planpolitan area has a day "on camera" of the St. John's idea in the west. ning sessions where we decide upon the interviewing guests and discussing all Urging support for the current cam- readings to be covered. Before the semkinds of topics. paign, an editorial in the Santa Fe inar we decide upon a question broad The columnist and questioner for New Mexican said that growth and enough to encompass the whole work the Tuesday program was Otto Dekom, recognition for a new college often read, and after the class we meet to critic-at-large for the \Vilmington, Del- come slowly. "We are pleased to note, evaluate the day's work." She adds, aware, News-Journal. The students therefore, that as St. John's in Santa with a smile, that having found herself were asked .about the contrasting cur- Fe moves into its fifth year of life, it in that position, she can understand the riculum• and differing aims of each shows the potential for achieving the role of a tutor better now. college, both of which grant Bachelor kind of local and national significance The seminar students come from of Arts degrees. its many godparents had hoped for at varied races and economic backgrounds. the christening in 1964." The editorial "Each student has something valuable cited the growth in enrollment, support to offer," T. K. reports, "no matter Goals Set for Western by Board members and others in the what his background, and each should Consolidation Campaign . West, participation of students in com- present his ideas as they relate to him. The \Vestern Consolidation Cam· paign Committee has announced Santa munity service projects, initiation of the The students get to hear other inter· Fe's financial goals for the three-year summer Graduate Institute of Liberal pretations of life besides their own." Recently St. John's student polity period ending June 30, 1971. The cam-. Education, and the construction of attractive and useful buildings. donated $50 towards the purchase of paign will seek to raise a total of books for the program. The children $3,896,000 for endowment ($2,000,read and discuss classics such as Aesop's 000), a physical education building Annapolis Students Conduct Fables, Milne's \Vinnie-The-Pooh, and ($1,000,000), annual operating budgets Seminars at Elementary Scho.ol ($693,000), and debt retirement ($203,· Five Annapolis students have been Carroll's Alice in \Vonderland. 000). The Committee is headed by conducting weekly junior "Great Tom L. Popejoy of Albuquerque, re- Books" seminars at Adams Park, a local Two Santa Fe Grads Write "Memos cently retired president of the Univer- elementary school within walking dis- for the New President" sity of New Mexico. tance of the campus. The school counTwo members of the Class of 1968 selor, Mrs. Sarra Shockley, requested at Santa Fe are involved in research At the same time that this campaign was announced, President Richard D. the participation of St. John's students projects at the Center for the Study of Weigle disclosed St. John's College in for the project which is similar to one Democratic Institutions at Santa BarSanta Fe had received almost $2.5 mil- carried on once before by students who bara, California. The appointments of lion from members of the Board of have since graduated. Over thirty stu- Kenneth L. Kronberg and Philip P. Visitors and Governors in less than dents from the fifth and sixth grades Chandler II as Junior Fellows were an· three and a half years. These donations were chosen bv their teachers for inclu- nounced by Center President Robert were prompted by a challenge gift of sion in the exPeriment. i\l. Hutchins. Center Fellows include $400,000 from a Board member who r~oni Karen Thomas, a junior who Stringfellow Barr, former president of Annapolis Junior Appears on WFIL· TV in Philadelphia 19 �The College St. John's College. Hutchins said Chandler is assisting in studies on a world constitution and on restoring modern mathematics to the status of a liberal art. Kronberg is working on "Creating the Future"-a project involving "revolutionary devel- opment in technologically advanced nations." Douglas Allanbrook Composes and Performs Douglas Allanbrook's 4 OrclJeslrai Landscapes-Symphony No. 3 was given its premier performance by the Oakland Symphony Orchestra in Berkeley, California, in the spring of 1968. Mr. Allanbrook, St. John's tutor and composer, whose works have been widely performed both in this country and in Europe, gave a harpsichord concert in St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Annapolis, on January 19th. He performed works by Couperin, J. S. Bach, and Rameau on the College's new harpsichord. The harpsichord was built by William Dowd of Boston, and modeled on an instrument made by Tasguin in France during the eighteenth century. The Presser Foundation of Philadelphia contributed towards the acquisition of the instrument. Famed harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, Professor of Music at Yale University, gave the dedication concert on the instrument on November 1st in Francis Scott Key Auditorium. The January, 1969, issue of the Center Magazine featured a section called "i\lemos for the New President," written by members of the Center, including Chandler, Kronberg, and Barr. The two graduates called for a national review of the role of higher education. "The problem centers around education, of which the university offers both too much and too little," Kronberg \\Tites, "-too much to allow students to remain totally ignorant of the world, not enough to satisfy the opened Pandora's box of intellectual curiosity coupled with personal commitment." Chandler writes, "The generation gap. is not a natural phenomenon; rather, the rites of passage have been Library Activities Make Friends lost. Traditionally, the initial exposure for St. John's to the liberal arts constitutes the transAn active and creative Friends of formation of children into free men. the Library Committee has set up seve "Reformation of the University era! programs to bring Santa Fe resiawaits the renaissance of 'the liberal dents and authors together and to college; the solution to the generation arouse friendly interest in St. John's gap requires a renewed faith in the College. potentials of human life," he concludes. Three book-author luncheons are Stringfellow Barr in his "me,;,o" scheduled to be held at Santa Fe's asked the new President to set a higher famous hotel, La Fonda, from March cultural tone for this nation. to May. At each luncheon three writers "Mav·be the best way to raise the will discuss contemporary literature cultural tone of the naiion is to inte- and its production. Dates set by the grate politics and art. You might, for Committee are March 14th, Aprilllth, example, submit the speeches your and May 9th. Participating Santa Fe ghost-writers will be putting together authors are to include John Creasey, to a decent poet in order to make them Jack Shaefer, Richard Stern, Dorothy refer, as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address Hughes, Richard Bradford, Charles referred, not only to the matter at Bell, and Donald Hamilton, with hand but also those few matters always others to be named later. at hand." The Committee sponsored another Finallv, Barr urged that Americans popular cvcnt-"A Sampling of the be challenged by the "hard objectives Poets' Roundup"-last October as a mentioned in the preamble of the old- benefit for the Library. This was a nosest written constitution in the world- talgic revival of the Poets' Roundup ours." held regularly in Santa Fe during the 20 thirties when local writers gathered to read their works to each other and friends. Mrs. Edgar L. Rossin, chairman of the committee planning the event, is the daughter of the founder of the original Roundup, the late Alice Corbin. The Library received a number of generous gifts of books and money from friends of the College this year, including nearly 400 books last fall from John Dodds of New York. Dodds, a former resident of Santa Fe, is a member of the College's Board of Visitors and Governors. He and his wife, actress Vivian Vance, helped plan commencement week activities for the first graduation last year. Graduate Institute Plans Third Summer Program The summer Graduate Institute in Liberal Education will hold its third session at St. John's in Santa Fe, June 23rd to August 15th. Conducted by members of the Faculty from both campuses, the Institute offers to members of the teaching profession, and others who are qualified, the opportunity to pursue a carefully planned program in the liberal arts, based primarily on the study and discussion of important works of Western thought. The Institute was started in the summer of 1967 with a program on Politics and Society. Two other subject-areas were offered in 1968-Literature, and Philosophy and Theology. Mathematics and Natural Science will be added this summer to complete the four-part program. Students earn nine hours of graduate credit in eight weeks, approved for teacher certification by the New Mexico State Board of Education. Those who complete all four summer programs successfully, or three summers at St. John's plus nine hours of graduate credit from another institution, will earn a Master of Arts in Liberal Education from the Institute. The first degree will be awarded this year. The academic program consists of seminars, tutorials, preceptorials, and, with the introduction of the 1\'lathematics and Natural Science program, laboratories. �April 1969 GATHER!~G-Si;.; members of the Board of Visitors and Governors gather during a reception jn the lobby of Key Auditorium on Friday, March ith. They arc, left to right, Myron L. Wolbarsht, Cla~s of 1950, professor of ophthalmology, Duke University, Durham, N. C.; John D. Oosterhout, Class of 1951. :mistant branch chief of the Tracking DiYision, NASA Goddard Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Fr~nk Appleton, Elgin He-reford Ranch, Elgin, Ariz.; Emmanuel Schifani (Lt. Gen. Ret.), Springer Corp., Albuquerque, N. M.; Louis T. Rader, \'ice president and general manager, Industrial Process Control Di\·ision, General Electric Co., Charlottcs\·ille, Va.; and Martin H. Dubilicr, president and chief executive officer, Kearney-Na.tional, Inc., New York, N. Y. Wolbarsht and Oosterhout are Alumni Representatives on the Board. (Courtesy of Lee Troutner/The EveJJing Cap_ital) The Institute's first director was Robert A. Goldwin, an Annapolis alumnus. The current director is Elliott Zuckerman, an Annapolis tutor. Applicants for admission must have a Baclielor's degree from an accredited institution or the equivalent in study and experience. Although the curriculum is designed primarily for teachers, applications are invited from others. Decisions on admittance are made by the Admissions Committee of the Faculty. Students who plan to receive their ]\Jaster's degree from another institution are advised to consult that institution before enrolling at St. John's. Fees have been kept low thanks to underwriting from the Carnegie Corporation. Twelve teachers from inner~ citv schools in Baltimore have attended with fellowships granted under the auspices of the Hoffberger Foundation. Ten teachers from \Vashington, D. C., inncr-citv schools have also attended under scholarships, six of which were granted bv the Cafritz Foundation. There were 91 students enrolled in the progr~m bst summer, with eight tutors from Annapolis and five from Santa Fe teaching the eight-week cur- riculum. All those who have been connected with the Institute have been gratified beyond expectation by the enthusiasm, seriousness, and dedication with which these older students have em braced the Program. Representative comments during first summer don rags were, "\Vhy didn't we hear about these books before!" and "Everyone talks about it, but you people really are concerned with what students are thinking about." More about the Graduate Institute will appear in a future issue of The College. All inquiries regarding applications and fees should be sent to the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. Faculty and Staff Make OffCampus Visits Several members of the Annapolis Faculty and staff visited off-campus this past year. Dean john S. Kieffer, Assistant Dean Robert Spaeth, and tutor Hugh P. McGrath travelled to i\lacalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the end of. October. Joining them were John Steadman and Elliot Skinner from the Santa Fe campus. The dean and four tutors were returning a visit the Faculty of Macalester paid to St. John's in the college term year 1966-1967. Discussions were held comparing the ways in which the two schools conceive of and try to fulfill the aims of liberal education. Among the topics discussed was the impact and potential impact of liberal education on today's world. Edward M. Godschalk, Assistant Director of Admission on the Annapolis campus, travelled to MinneapolisSt. Paul in early November, Milwaukee in late November, Chicago in early December, and Pittsburgh in early February visiting public and private high schools. He also arranged showings and question periods about our 16 mm. film, entitled "St. John's College," filmed without a script and without rehearsal, which describes St. john's and its aims. Tutor emeritus Ford K. Brown was in New York City for a social hour and organizational meeting of the New York alumni chapter on February 5th. Thomas Farran, Jr., Director. of Alumni Activities, and Darrell L. Henry, President of the Alumni Association, accompanied him. They also attended the February 21st alumni reception and dinner in Philadelphia. Students Endorse Program at St. John's Students on the Annapolis campus responded with a whole-hearted endorsement of the College in a survey taken in October of last year. According to Director of Admissions James M. Tolbert, a random sample of students was asked about the success of the college program and life at the school. The survey, entitled "Questionnaire on Students and College Characteristics," was prepared by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New jersey. One set of answers indicated that 87 percent of the students were more concerned with academic life than with social activities. Ninety-four percent thought the 'faculty-student relation- 21 �The College ships were close and informal, and 98 percent declared a majority of the faculty seem genuinely interested in teaching. In addition, the students said, the College has excellent library resources, and it sponsors a rich cultural program, attracting nationally known scholars to address students and faculty. One section of the questionnaire co.ncerned classroom activity and fac- ulty-student relationships. Ninety-four percent of the students stated that the tutors challenged them; 95 percent belie,·ccl that the studentS arc encouraged to think for themsel\'Cs. Kinety percent of the students thought there was a great amount of contact with the facult\' outside the classroom, with the tutors. treating the students as indiYiduals. The questionnaire also showed that the students were rather fully involved in intramural athletics, recreation-outing activities, dramatic productions, dating and social life (79 percent). Eighty-nine percent expected to continue their education into graduate or professional schools. Eighty-six percent were satisfied with the College's assistance in moving them towards their ultimate educational goals. The greatest endorsement' of the College was found in the response of 97 percent that they would recommend the College to like-minded high school seniors. The students were given the opportunity to write comments on the reYerse side of the answer sheet. i\lany students wrote further descriptions of the College, its program, and life on campus. One student commented that St. John's "is committed to the active use of reason by its members." It encourages ((education, not instruction," wrote another. Students warned that those who are much interested in social life should look elsewhere for a college education because St. John's is highly academic and intellectually inclined, with a difficult curriculum. TheY further encouraged those who do not know the College to obtain a catalogue and to visit the campus. "St. 22 ings and Santa Fe." "I like the life of the seminar-conversation which seeks to be meaningful." "Although this is a good learning situation, with good tutors and small classes, I feel that the books themselves are what makes the school what it is." "The seminar transforms what might College Entrance Examination Board otherwise be dry, distant classics into for students in secondary schools. living masterpieces of human experience. You have to work hard to have a Freshmen Tell Why They Like dull seminar." the St. John's Program "The serious student will find it Several Santa Fe freshmen were close to impossible to run out of interasked recently to comment on the St. John's academic program after their esting things to think about in the first few months on the Santa Fe cam- St. John's program." "The thing that is most enjoyable pus. Their remarks included: about St. John's for me is the people. "I think ... that the part I like best For the first time in my life I have here is the atmosphere, where a person found people who like to really talk who thinks seriously is not regarded as about things. Tutors and students alike a freak, as is often the case elsewhere." are willing to sit down and thrash out "Vv'hether putting a Euclidean proof a question with me, no matter how on the board, breaking down the gram- long it may take, or what subject it may mar of a Greek sentence, or discussing be. That's what happiness is." a play bY Sophocles, the instructor doesn't ask one to accept but to ques- Chess Tournament Held on tion." · Annapolis Campus "St. John's is not perfect, but it is The first annual Great Books Open one of the best schools there is. I do Chess Tournament was held in the nw work to learn, not for a grade, and Baldwin Room of Campbell Hall Jangrades can be an awful pressure. My uary 24th through January 26th on the main interests have always been in Annapolis campus. The tournament English and languages, but lab has was sponsored by the United States' opened up something totally new for Chess Federation and the District of John's is like no other," one enthusias- tic student concluded. rdr. Tolbert said results of the questionnaire were compiled by the Educational Testing Service and will constitute part of the description of St. John's in The College Handbook, an informational manual prepared by the me." "The personal validity of the work here tastes very good. 11 u . . . the intense discussion and learning in such a casual atmosphere bring student and tutor together, not so much as the teacher and the taught, but as equal partners in the task of learning." "To be honest, I could not say St. John's is for cyeryone, only for those individuals willing to discuss ideas, not merely memorize them." "I have discovered through discussion not only a latent ability to speak, lost in hum-drum, lecture-type classes, but also an ability to write." "The setting of the school is an obvious advantage: natural surround- Columbia Chess League. The successful meet was organized by St. John's students. First place prize money of $125 was shared by three out-of-state winners, Carl Sloan of Alexandria, Va.; William Gary, Jr., Charlottesville, Va.; and Pedro Saavedra of the Math Department of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. Three St. John's students as well as three United States Naval Academy midshipmen participated in the tournament. Of the eighteen entrants, Marvin Cooper ('70) and Alan Plutzik ('71) placed fifth and sixth respectively, only one-half point behind the winners. BQb Dunleavy, a freshman at St. John's, also participated. �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES Dinner Honors Medical Men The annual iiiid-\\'intcr Dinner of the .-\lumni Association. held this \Tar on :\larch 15th, paid tribute to tlwse alumni in the medical profession. Dr. Thomas Boumc Turner of the Class of 1921 was asked to represent the other doctor-alumni in rcceiYing special recognition from the Association. Thi~ ,-Car's mid-\~·intcr fete was de- signed c.llong lines somewhat different from tho~c followed in earlier \'ears. The Dinner Committee, heacle~l by Echard \\'ebb,- '63, was aware of past critici~m that there should be more to the Dinner th~m just a meaL Conse- quently a fu11-sct.~h: dinner-dance was arranged at the Barn in Glen Burnie. 'rllC'rc ·,yas an open bar both before and after the meal, a roast beef dinner, and dancing to li\'c music until 1 a.m. As this goes to the printer, some \Veeks before the C\"Cnt, prospects pointed towards a good turn-out of alumni and guests. - Dr. Turner, now dean emeritus and professor of microbiology at the Johns Hopkins UniYersitY School of Medicine, first came to St. John's as a sub- fre~hman in the Preparatory SchooL lie graduated from the College in 1921 and entered the Unisnsih· of i\ Ian·hncl \ledical SchooL ln 1925 the ne;,. doctor started an internship at the Hospital for the IV omen of i\ lardand, and the following rear was a resident at \lerC\ Ilospital. From 1927 to 1929 he held <1 fello\\·ship in medicine at the Hopkins School of :\ledicine, and was later an instructor and tl1cn an associate in medicine. Dr. 'I 'urncr clCJXlrtccl temporarily from the academic world in 1932, \Yhcn he bcc;nnc <l staff member of the Intcrmtion<Jl Ile<1lth Di,·ision of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1939 he was ~p- pointed professor of bacteriology and director of the Department of Bactcriolog\·, Johns Hopkins Uni,·ersity School of HYgiene and Public Health. Except for a .four-year tour in the Office of the Surgeon General, U. S. Army, during \Vorld \Var II, Dr. Turner remained at the Hopkins until his retirement in 1968. He became dean of the medical faculty in 19 57, Dr. '1'urner sen'es on the advisory committee on medical research of the \Vorld Health Organization, as well as on the national advisory council of the National Institutes of Health. He is a past president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and a fellow of the American Public Health Association. Although busy professionally, Dr. Turner has found time to sen·e as both secretarv and chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College. Gone But Not The Alumni newsletter about St. John's, just two years old in illarch, has gone the way of the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and other publications which used to be. This section of The College will no\\· sef\·e as the principal conveyor of ne\VS for and about alumni. It might be well to remind our readers of our unappeased appetite for news; with material for only slightly over a page of Class Notes, for example, we arc on a very meager diet! Things arc happening to each of you, or you arc causing things to happen. Yonr classmates and friends rea11\' would like to hear about them. So, \Vhen you do something noteworthy, or something noteworthy happens to yo.u, ]d ns in on the good news. Regional Chapters Regional alumni committees or chapters, key elements in most alumni organizations, have never held that position in the Alumni Association of St. John's College. The chapter concept is not a new one, hO\vever, and at times in the past there have been active groups of alumni in a number of cities. For whatever reasons, these chapters have become quiescent over the years; today, only about two meet even once a year. Interest in regional chapters has been renewed since last October, when Darrell L, Henry took over the reins of the Association. Mr. Henn' belieYes that one way to a strong arid lasting relationship behveen alumnus and College is the extension of the College community beyond the campus limits. To take the College into the home areas of the alumni requires a local organization with which the Association and the College can work. This is where the regional alumni chapter fits in to the picture. Initially, four centers of alumni population were selected for special attention: New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The last three of these have had chapters in the past, so New York was the only truly new area. AppropriatelY enough, the first general meeting took place in that city. On Februarv 5th about 65 alumni and guests mtt in a Second Avenue restaurant. Francis :t\'lason '43, Ste,·e Benedict '-17, and Ralph Herrod '50 headed an ad hoc committee for the affair. Ford K. Brown, inYitcd specifically for the occasion, delighted e\·en·one "·ith his commentarv on the College as viewed by a tuto~ emeritus. The next regional meeting took place 23 �The College all the \\'3\' across country irl San Francisco on ·February I 6tl;. Under the guidance of i\Iorrow and Carol Otis '64-, a dinner for some seventeen alumni, spouses, and parents was arranged. '"J 'om Parran reported briefly on affairs at the College, and on the general plans for renewing actiYity in alumni chapters. As in :t\'c\\' York, the high pcrcc.:ntagc of younger alumni promised well for the future. FebruarY was apparently a popular month for alumni meetings. In Philadelphia the old Delaware \'alley chap- ter assembled 60 strong on February 21st. Baker J\liddclton '38 and Victor Schwartz '61, with assistance from Eel Dws-cr '30 and others, put together _this fine affair. President \ V cigle, Ford K. Brown, and Darrell Henry represented the College and the Asso- ciation. :\fter the preliminary organiza tiona] phase, it is hoped that regional groups sYill des·ote their attention to specific programs. or projects. Seminars, panel discussions, talks bv tutors or staff offi- cers, and social cv~nts have been sug- gested. \ Vhile the Association and the College will lend all possible support, regional groups must decide for them, sels·cs what they want to do. King William Associates This year a special category of alumni donors has been established. An,· alumnus who contributes $100-or mo-re for current unrestricted purposes is enrolled in the King \Villiam Associates. Established primarily to recognize those alumni who support St. John's in a special way, the new designation aho emphasizes the importance of the unrestricted gift as the principal form of alumni gi\'ing. BY FebruarY 21st eighteen alumni froni a.s man\· cbsses ha,·c been en~ rolled <lS charter members of the Assoc-i~1tes. Before the end of the Cap1paign many more ,,-jJl ha\T joined. \\'hy not <lclcl Your name to the rolls? The first eighteen King \\'i~liam 1\"ociatcs arc: Rickml H. Jloclgson '06, Benjamin Michaelson '12, Care,· Jarman '17, Robert A. Bier '19, Milto;, G. Baker '21, W. Royce Hodges '26, G. Newton Scatchard '30, Vbdimir F. Ctibor '32, Stanley J. Bartis '33, Dalton C..!. \Velty '35, Samuel H. Desch '36, Paul R. Comegys '41, Haven E. Simmons '-14, John J. Lobell '46, Thomas G. Fromme ')0, Jac Holzman '52, and Arthur Kunglc, Jr. '67. Help Wanted Completed Alumni History Questionnaires arc rather important for the Alumni Office. Manv of those mailed to alumni last summer ha\'e not found their wav back. Ii sou has·e not filled in yours,_, please do -so and return it to us. How's Your Memory? Can anyone identify the alumni in the hack-cm-er picture? There are a number of old photographs like this in the Alumni Office. Every now and then we will reproduce one, and ask for sour help. \Ve would like to hear from you old-timers. essential to a successful reunion program. Some of the earlier classes may have had a more complete organization, but almost all classes have had at least a secretary. In some classes we will have to find replacements, and may even have to draft a volunteer or twO. For this coming October, then, we should like to invite classes of '09, '19, '29, '39, '44, '49, '59, and '64 to make a particular effort to be with us. Final arrangements for Homecoming must still be made, but it is quite likely that the dedication of the "new" Library building will be held at that time. " 'e shall be in touch with the classes mentioned above in the months ahead. Plan now to come to Annapolis on October 18th. CLASS NOTES 1872 Dr. James D:n,ison lglelmrt in February was inducted posthumously into the Lacrosse Hall of Fame. Dr. Iglehart, the father of lacrosse in 1\hryland, is credited with bringing the sport to the Baltimore area. The first game in Baltimore was played on Nm·ember 23, 18i8. 1910 !vir. & Mrs. Newton B. CoJiinson celebrated their 50th \vedding anniversmy in November. Class Reunions Comments recently recei\'ed by your Alumni Director indicate considerable interest in class reunions. This is a welcome turn of events, and will be supported ii1 every way possible. Two things can be done immcdia te1y: we can set up a specific schedule for foimal reunions, and we can activate or reacti,·ate class secretaries. :For the schedule, we propose that each class hold a formal reunion on the 5th, lOth, 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, etc., anniversaries of the graduation of that class. Vv c suggest that a logical time for these gatherings would be at Homecoming each fall, and that the reunions be held on campus, or at least in Annapolis. (Santa Fe alumni in 1973 maY, of course, want to haYC their 5th reu-nion in Santa Fe.) Class secretaries provide a point of contact with the classes, and arc thus 1913 John \\filson was inducted posthumously into the l\laryland Athletic Hall of Fnme in December. An outstanding football player and coach at St. John's, J\1r. \Vilson also coached at the NaYa] Academy for many years. 1918 Clvdc E. Bourke and 1'-Ars. Charles H. Aml;rson were married on December 23, 1968, in ]n·ington, N. Y. The Bourkes make their home in Annapolis. 1921 Luther S. TaJJ joined radio station \\').L\RFl\1 {Baltimore) as an account executi\·e last fall. Mr. Tall hncl earlier retired from positions ,,·ith \\'. IT. Lomeyer, ]nc., and Payne and l\1crrill, Inc. lie is a former president of the :\]umni As~ociation. 1922 Richncl T. Porter, noted basch:1ll pbyer at St. John's. and bter with the R1ltimore Orioles and the Cle,-c1and Indians, was inducted into the ?\lnn-hmd Athletic llall of Fame in December. -1\Ir. Porter now makes his lwme in Drexel -llill, Pa. I I I 1 _,_.t' �April 1969 1932 :\nothcr St. Johnnie now in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame is Philip L. Lotz, now practicing law in Staunton, Va. !\Ir. Lotz joins his brother Ed11·in, who was admitted to the Hall in 196i. As undergraduates they formed the backbone of the defense when St. John's played Canada in the 1931 Lally Cup series. Phil Lotz was named captain of the :\11Timc All-American Lacrosse Team in 1932. 1936 Samuel H. Desch, former executive ,·icc president ·and a director of the Pepsi-Cob Co., recently. \\'35 appointed president of the Dairy and Scn·iccs Di,·ision of Borden, Inc. :i\Ir. Desch was elected to the Board of Visitors and Gm-crnors of the College at I Iomecoming last October. 1938 Thonws E. Smith was recently promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the ::--.Iarybnd State Police. Col. Smith is now chief of operations, second highest position on the force. 1939 James R . .1\IcQueen, Jr., president of the Trojan Bmt Co., and president of the Na· tioml Association of Engine and Boat :..1anubcturcrs, opened the 59th National Boat Show in ::\ew York on January 25th. Dr. Francis J. Tmmsend, Jr., is one of a group of interested citizens seeking to build and staff a ycaHound emergency treatment center in Ocean City, l\Id. 1942 Albert A. Poppiti, until January 7th the Commissioner of Public Safety of \:Vilmington, Del., recently addressed the Maryland ·Coyernor's Conference on Fire Pre\·ention. l\-h. Poppiti's topic was "Firefighting Problems during CiYil Disturbances:" 1943 Francis S. Mason, Jr., last fall assumed duties as assist;mt to the president of Steuben Glass in New York City. 1944 Jr., was recently pro· mated to assistant professor of science ·at the U.S. Na\'al Academy. Joseph F. Hollywood, 1947 I. \Vendall Marine, a represcntati\·e of the U.S. Geological Sur\'ey ~tationccl at the Atomic Energy Commission's Sa\·annah Ri\'er (Ga.) plant, was recently m\·;mlcd a Certificate of Apprccintion by the Commission. Dr. J\brine's ~rca of primary concern has heen the longttml storage of mdimcti\·c wnstc mnterials. 1951 John F. Horne, Jr., recently joined the faculty of ;\nne Arundel (:\1d.) Community Colkgc. 1-Ic ,,·ill teach n new comse in Afro.-\mcrican culture. Earlier. l'vir. Horne was social studies ad\'isor to Harvard University's Nigerian Project for two years. 1956 E,·erett H. \XIiJson is an assistant professor at the UniYcrsity of Maryland School of Social \\'ark. 1958 Christina (Sopher) Neuman graduated from Pomona College last June, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She is now working toward an J\L-\. degree in German nt the University of Californi~ in Riverside. 1960 Cnptain George B. Jones, III, a member of the U. S. Army for seven years, is a helicopter pilot stationed in Savannah, Ga. 1962 Barry L. Fisher, currently on a surgical residency at Cedars-Sinai J'vfedical Center in Los Angeles, plans a further residency in pediatric surgery on the Enst Coast starting in 1971. Dr. Fisher receiYed his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of l\ledicine ( 1966), and interned at Einstein College Hospital. He and his wife, the former Irene Katz, were mar· ried in 1966, and have a son, Scott Robert, born last I\ lay, \Villiam R. Salisbury and Diana Curns were married in December in Kronberg, Germany. :\Ir. Salisbury is a Foreign Service Officer at the .-\mericnn Consulate, Frankfort·am-Ma.in. 1963 Alan Dorfman is now an instructor in mathematics at Catonsville (Md.) Community College. He holds a master's degree from Johns Hopkins Uni\'ersity. Robert K. Thomas and Rosemary Jierjian were married in December in Beirut, Lebanon. Mr. Thomns is with the USIA in Lebanon, 1964 A welcome letter from Jere my Leven brings us up to date on his many activities. In addition to founding, writing, producing, and directing The Proposition (see November newsletter), he spent four months in Europe last summer. In Florence he met Linda Forte, \\·hom he married in December. He is no\V starting a professional theater in Cmnbridge {!\lass.), and in his spare time has been travelling and lecturing in connection \Yith his research at Han·ard. There he leads a team deYeloping nn cducntional system for the year 2000. It's now Cnptain Ke\'in J. \\Iitty, U. S. Army. Cnpt. \Vitty, an instructor in the Engineer School at Ft. Beh·oir, Va., was promoted last fall. 1966 The engagement of Alexis clu Pont Valk and Cynthia Zm·ckas of Joplin, Mo.. was nn: nounced on December 1St. :\Iiss Zuvekas is a graduate of Ball Stnte UniYersity, while Mr . Valk is now studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Michael D. Weaver has received an assistantship and tuition scholarship in philosophy at the Uni\'ersity of Cincinnati. 1967 Ga}' Diane Singer and Joseph P. Barrata '69 were married last June. The couple is living in Annapolis while Mr. Barrata completes his senior year. 1968 Santa Fe graduates Philip P. Chandler III and Kenneth L. Kronberg, now junior fellows at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, recently were in the news (see news from Santa Fe elsewhere in this issue). Eren P. Jacobson is college representative in the eastern Great Lakes area for Dodd, Mead & Co. \Villiam R. Owens (SF) and Nancy Anne \\food SF 'il were married in Albuquerque on January 3rd. Gilbert Rcnaut is now teaching mathematics at Edmondson High School in Baltimore. Ruth Ann (Nelson) Hiltebeitel writes that she received her A.B. degree from Brown last June, with n major in e:\:perimental psychology. She lives with her husband and baby daughter in Winnepeg, Canada. In Memoriam 1904-R. TuNIS STRANGE, ·Annapolis, Md., December 10, 1968. 1906-GEORGE DoN RILEY, Baltimore, Md .• November 14,1968. JoHN B. WELLS, Annapolis, Md., January 4, 1969. -l-9BB==-LEWIN VlETHERED BARROLL, Baltimore, Md .• February 2, 1969. 1910-CHARLES A. MuLLIKIN, more, Md., Febrmry 8, 1969. Balti- 1923-H. B. R. RoBERTS, Salisbury, Md., March 4. 1969. 1925-CHARLES \:V. WHAYLAND, Annapolis, Md .• February 24. 1969. -193 3-DR. LINCOLN J. MAGEE, Winchendon, Mass., December 8, 1968. 1934-DR. EuGENE J. River, Mass., 1968. DIONNE, Fall 1935-LAwRENCE J. O'CoNNOR, Linthicum Heights, Md., January 29, 1969. _ 1940-JonN E. DuFFY, Annapolis, Md., No\'ember 19, 1968. 1944-HARRISON SAsscER, Che\'y Chase, Md., January 19. 1969. · 1966-C. PHILIP AcKERMAN, New York City, Dccemb~r 8, 1968. �� 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, April 1969 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Tolbert, James M. Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume X[X]I, Number 1 of The College. Published in April 1969. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_21_No_1_1969 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 Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/68d34f3e8731847aea4d83d709f6fd17.pdf c07c5acc330797ce39a88cc66000959c PDF Text Text �The College Cover: Portrait of Newton by Kneller. \Ve should like to invite tutors, alumni, and students to submit articles for publication by The College. Articles on any subject which would be of interest to the College community and which would be representative of the life of the mind of the College will be considered. Mindful of St. John's tradition and Socrates's suggestion in The Phaedrus that what every good speech or writing most deserves is a question period, we should like to begin a new feature, entitled "Question Period," which would contain questions or criticisms of what- ever we have published and answers from their authors. (Ed.) Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. (Julius Rosenberg, Director) and Santa Fe, N. M. (Frank McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Dr. Richard D. Weigle. Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. In the July Issue: The First Annual Provocation Address, by Robert A. Goldwin • I Mathematics As A Liberal Art, by Samuel S. Kutler 3 Number Z IZ Alumni Activities July 1969 10 News On The Campuses Volume XXI The Teaching of Theology to Undergraduates, by the Reverend J. Winfree Smith. 18 �The First Annual Provocation Address The 1967 Graduate Institute in Liberal Education By ROBERT A. GOLDWIN Everybody knows how an academic session ought to begin; that is, it properly begins with a Convocation ceremony and a Convocation Address. And everybody knows how an academic session ought to end; and that is, with a Commencement ceremony and a Commence- ment Address. But if there is no Commencement, as in our situat.ion, what kind of farewell ceremony and talk is called for? And what is such a talk called? One of my colleagues suggested recently that if one begins with a Convocation, one ought to end with a Provo- cation. I thought that was an excellent suggestion, and so I have prepared this Provocation Address. I hope that the excellence of the suggestion will be appreciated, that a Provocation Address will- become a tradition of the Graduate Institute, and that this address tonight will come to be known in later years as "The First Annual Provocation Address." · Provocation strikes me as quite consistent with the underlying idea of Commencement. It seems strange to some people, especially at first glance, that the ceremony marking the end of formal education is called Commencement. But the intention is, I think, very clear-that the best way to understand the end of formal education is as a true beginning. Commencement suggests that we look ahead; in the same sense, a Provocation Address should provoke us to look ahead. An educational provocation should seek to provide some beneficial irritant to keep us usefully active and thoughtful until next June. An academic provocation must seek to follow the example of the ancient gadfly. We have spent the summer studying politics and society, and during that time we have read about and thought about and written about different kinds of communities and their underlying principles. What about this community, this Graduate Institute? What kind of society or community is it? We can say of it that it is only temporary, because after eight weeks we are about to disband and disperse. We can say that it is not architectonic, because it is a com- munity within many large communities. We can say that it- is· not even a political community, because whatever powers it exercises fall far short of political power. The question then is, in what sense is it a community? What has made us a community? Now, certainly, the answer is not the residence we have shared, not the meals we have shared, not our outings, not Our parties, not even our common interests and woFk. Nothing has made us a community if it is not the desire we all share to understand. But one might object that the principle I have just stated is what characterizes every good school, and that there is nothing peculiar to this Institute in the shared d-::sire to understand, however strong it may be. I think ·if is true, that objection, and worth thinking about, too, for the question "What is a school?" is a noble question. We are forced to go one step farther. What makes this school the community we have all felt it to be-unique in our experience, unique in our schooling experience? This community has been characterized by one unusual fact that sets it off from other schools. We have lived for eight weeks in the presence of greatness. I do not mean the greatness of any one of us; I mean the greatness of the authors of the books we have str1died. They, the great authors, have set the standards under which we have worked and lived this summer. Now I must point out to you that the greatness of those authors has made us the victims and the beneficiaries of a ridiculous paradox. The paradox can be simply stated: they, the authors we study, are great; in fact, they are the greatest teachers available to us. Compared to them, to those giants of our civilization, we are pygmies. But because we chose to learn from the truly great teachersand this is the ridiculous paradox-we have spent eight weeks unavoidably trying to tell each other, and ourselves, about the .errors those giants made. It lfas been a common thing for one of us to say, "Now where Hobbes (or Aristotle, or Rousseau, or Marx, or Freud, or any of our authors)-now where Hobbes made his fundamental error," and so on. Is that not presmnptuous? Of course 1 �The College the greatness of the great authors. But, it is not too much to hope that many of us have been affected in another way, that we have developed a preference, a strong preference, a growing preference, and perhaps a permanent preference, for excellence rather than the mediocre. All of us know the Biblical story of Jacob, who one evening met a Inessenger of the Lord, and, for some reason, wrestled with him all night long. As morning approached, the messenger of the Lord asked Jacob to let him up. Jacob replied that he would only if the messenger blessed him. Part of the blessing was that a new name was bestowed on Jacob, "Israel," the one who wrestles with God. We, too, have been wrestling with beneficent adversaries capable of blessing us. The authors we have wrestled with this summer may or may not be messengers of the Lord, but they are surely men from whom we may obtain a blessing through wrestling well. At this moment, when the wrestling is about to cease, what blessing shall we ask of them? I make this suggestion-and let this be the provocation -that we ask them to bless us by making us as ambitious for excellence as they were for greatness. And, if, as a result, a strong inclination toward excellence works itself into the very constitution of our beings, then this com· munity will persist, even though dispersed, but no other way. I know the other members of the Faculty join me in thanking you for your diligence, your patience, your ex· cellent good humor, your intelligence, and your devotion to teaching and learning. In short, we thank you for being the kind of people you are. it is; worse than that, it is arrogant. What excuse can we possibly make? Our only excuse is that they made us do it. That is, the only way we can learn from those great teachers is for us to attempt to argue with them, which sometimes necessarily means to disagree with them. In order to be their humble students, we had to make ourselves their critics, which is arrogant. That is the inescapable, ridiculous paradox involved in study of the sort we have been engaged in this summer. To learn from the greatest teachers, one must learn how to be humbly arrogant. Timidly, apologetically, hesitantly, docilc1y, but with arguments, we must say, "Excuse me, 0 Great One, but I think you are wrong." Now what is the consequence of our having dared to live in the presence of greatness? If we had been thoroughly successful, I mean completely successful, no one of us could ever again be satisfied with, or tolerant of, the second-rate. We could not even settle for the first· rate, because greatness stands far above even the firstrate, the skillful, the excellent. But, unfortunately-or per· haps fortunately for the ease of our lives-we have not been that successful. We must surely understand and acknowledge that we have not learned how to share in 2 Robert A. Goldwin began his term as Dean of St. John's College in Annapolis on July l, 1969. He was Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Public Affairs Conference Center at Kenyon College. He is Editor of the Rand McNally Public Affairs Series-volumes of essays which have grown out of Conference Center meetings among practicing political men, journalists, and academics. The volumes present responsible and authoritative statements of differing views on major public problems on a variety of subjects. Some of the volume titles are America Armed: United States Military Policy; A Nation of States: Tile Amcricau Federal System; Political Parties, U.S.A.; 100 Years of Emancipation; Left, Right, and Center: Liberalism and Conservatism in t11e United States; Higller Education and Modern Democracy: The Crisis of tile Few and tlw Manv; and A Nation of Cities: America's Urban Problems. · Mr. Goldwin has also edited three readers in international relations. He is the author of "John Locke," in History of Political Philosophy, published in 1963 by Rand McNally, and he is presently writing a book on Locke. In 1966 he was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. He is a 1950 graduate of St. John's College and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. IIe was one of the planners and the first director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in Santa Fe. Since enrolling as a freshman he has always been connected with College activities. All those who have had the opportunity to observe and to admire his leading a seminar or conducting a question period know that his return to the College is indeed a coming home. �Mathematics As A Liberal Art By SAMUELS. KUTLER Seminar Discussion on the Place and Extent of the Teaching of Mathematics in the Liberal Arts Curriculum'' SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS The Instruction Committee of St. John's College Dr. Richard D. Weigle, President Dr. JohnS. Kieffer, Dean Mr. Robert S. Bart, Tutor Dr. Eva T. H. Brann, Tutor Dr. Jacob Klein, Tutor Mr. SamuelS. Kutler, Tutor Mr. Hugh P. McGrath, Tutor Mr. Dean R. Haggard, Tutor Brother, U. Alfred, F.S.C., Professor of Mathematics, St. Mary s College Dr. Henry Alder, Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Davis Campus Brother T. Brendan, F.S.C., Associate Professor of Mathematics, St. Mary's College Dr. Max Kramer, Professor of Mathematics, San Jose State College Dr. Gordon Latta, Professor of Mathematics, Stanford University Dr. Kenneth 0. May, Professor of Mathematics, Carlton College, Visiting Professor of Mathematics University of California, Berkeley Campus ' Mr. John Thomas, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of San Francisco Dr. Richard P. Wiebe, Assistant Professor of Mathematics St. Mary's College ' Dr. Lloyd Williams, Professor of Mathematics, Reed Col· lege * Taken from the "Proceedings of the Colloquium on The Liberal Arts Curriculum: Structure and Content, St. Marv's College, March 25th-March 27th, 1965," pp. 27-41. · Mathematics is a liberal art at St. John's College. Although four hours a week are set aside for a mathematics tutorial! the mathematics curriculum should not be set up or considered mdependently of the curriculum as a whole. Mathematical illustrations illuminate discussions in semi· nars and language tutorials, which in turn illuminate discussions of the methods, axioms, postulates, and definitions m the mathematics tutorials. Certain passages in Plato's Republic must remain dark unless illuminated by careful study of geometry. One cannot read far in the writings of Whitehead without wanting to know what experiments and what hne of reasoning leads to the incredible postu· lates and conclusions of relativity theory. Every leader m a mathematics tutorial is engaged in teaching and learning ii: other parts of the program. This permits radical questwmng beyond what is ordinarily considered to be within the boundaries of mathematics. It allows students and tutors to pursue lines of inquiry leading to relation· ships between the work of the mathematics tutorials and the .semina~, language program, laboratory sciences, and musiC tutonal. By studying Euclid and Ptolemy in mathematics tutorial while they are reading Plato and Aristotle in seminar, by studying Newton's Principia ... while they are reading Locke, Hume, and Kant, the students discoyer~without requiring sermons on the subject-relationships m and between what are conventionally regarded as separate fields of knowledge. The chief specific aim of the mathematics tutorial, as stated in the catalogue, "is to give the student insight mto the nature and practice of thinking, of reasoning that proceeds systematically from definitions and principles to necessary conclusions." And, one might add, to become familiar with those objects, such as number and figure, which are preeminently accessible to tl1is kind of think· ing. T11e student should learn what a demonstration is. H~ sh<:uld learn this br understanding demonstrations, by cnli~IZmg demonstratwns, and by performing demon· stratwns. Mathematics is a discipline in which the subject matter allows of great precision. If it is the case that politics, for example, does not allow of the same precision of argument, the student of the liberal arts should have 3 �The College something to hold up as a model of that precision which he must always fall short of in a political discussion. To what extent should mathematics be studied in a liberal arts curriculum? In an age dominated by modern science and technology the student should have enough theory and practice in symbolic mathematics so that he will not have to despair of being able to understand the ing propositions himself, defending his proofs from ob- discoveries and even of being able to criticize claims to authority made in the name of mathematical physics and Dedekind's analysis of the real number system. The study of Euclid concludes with the construction of the five mathematical biology. regular solids, which soon reappear in a seminar reading of Plato's Timacus and again in his sophomore year when he reads Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. In Since no one can be considered to have received a good education if he accepts uncritically the opinions of the educators of his own times, the student should encounter alternatives to these opinions. At the present time many educators appear to be of the opinion that no child is too young to begin to learn mathematics from the point of view of the theory of sets. It seems that we may be approaching a time where no other way of mathematical thinking would be conceivable. At such a-so far hypothetical-time a liberal arts mathematics curriculum should draw material from any period of history that presents an alternative approach. At the present time it would seem to be worthwhile to study the first book of Euclid's Elements with an attempt to understand it not from a "higher" point of view, but as much as possible as Euclid himself understood it. Then proofs of the same theorems from Hilbert's axioms would provide a modem approach. Each study should enrich the other, and the student should then be in a position to begin serious and fruitful reflection on the nature of geometry. The following review of the mathematics program at St. John's is not meant to suggest that St. John's has found the only correct road to a mathematics curriculum for liberal arts students. Many improvements have been made over the years and we try to remain open to suggestions for further improvement. We do believe, however, that the present mathematics program at St. John's is successful to a large extent, to a greater extent than any other program we know of, in meeting the aims of such a mathematics jections, and explaining it to those who arc having diffi- culty understanding the proof. Among the high points in the study of Euclid's geometry is the theory of ratios, in which the difficulties caused by the existence of incommensurable magnitudes are met by the Eudoxian definitions of same and greater ratio that contain the seeds of the last third of the year the attention of the tutorial is fixed on Ptolemy's Almagest. Here the student finds the theorems of Euclid extended to set up a mathematical science of the 1notion of heavenly bodies. His first experience with mathematical methods of approximation is in Ptolemy's construction of a table of arcs and chords that is equivalent to our trigonometric tables. The freshman mathematics program concludes with Ptolemy's theory of the sun's movement. In the sophomore year the study of the Ptolemaic system of the world continues with the consideration of a theory of planetary motion. Before long the difficulties and complexities become apparent in Ptolemy's attempt to "save the appearances" by means of regular circular motion about the earth as center. The student is prepared for the transition to Copernicus's heliocentric theory, which is effected by proofs that show the mathematical equivalence of the two theories in accounting for certain basic measur- able phenomena. Apollonius's purely geometric treatment of conic sec- tions is the next course of study. The student builds upon his understanding of Euclid's Elements to reach the culmination of Greek mathematics. In the last third of the sophomore year, analytical geometry is studied. Because of the previous work on Apollonius, an especially important proof is that every conic section represents an equation of the second degree and conversely. Here, and at other points curriculum. To see more fully how the College under- in the study of conic sections, ancient and modern arts stands these aims it is necessary to turn to the particulars are brought to bear on the "same" objects, which be- of the program. We hope to emerge from the consideration of these particulars with opinions applicable to a mathe- cause of radically different treatments are somehow not matics program in any liberal arts curriculum. In his freshman year at St. John's, every student begins with the Elements of Euclid. The freshman who thought that mathematics was only for those with a special aptitude finds himself actively engaged in discussion about mathematical principles: the definitions, the postulates, the common notions. Together with students who were sure that they had mastered plane geometry in secondary school, he begins to reflect on the nature of the mathematical objects and on the nature and kinds of mathematical demonstration that Euclid displays. Besides challenging and discussing the proofs given by his fellow students, he is acquiring the art of effectively demonstrat- 4 quite the same. The contrast between the treatments leads to the raising of far-reaching questions about these treatments and their objects. Assumptions and presuppositions arc thus explored which otherwise might never have been brought to light. In the third year the historical order of subjects is abandoned; that is, the calculus in its modern form is studied as preparation for the consideration of the roots of mathematical physics in the works of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. (It should be said that the order of subjects in this program is not based on any theory of history, but on the opinion that in many, if not most, cases the order of insight, or natural order of conception and argument can best be understood by studies that follow the historic �July 1969 development.) In the Principia . . . the student sees astronomy no longer treated only as a heavenly science but "heavenly and earthly motions brought under one law." There is an exciting moment when Newton seems to have grasped the notion of limit in its modern rigorous form, "For those ultimate ratios with which quantities vanish are not truly the ratios of ultimate quantities, but limits towards which the ratios of quantities decreasing without limit do always converge; and to which they approach nearer than by any given difference, but never go beyond, nor in effect attain to," and then he reverts to ('till the quantities arc diminished in infinitum." In the fourth year there is a return to elementary geometry. Lobachcvsky, in the uncertainty as to whether there is more than one line through a point that does not meet a given line, produces a consistent, perhaps unimaginable, geometry. Moreover, Lobachcvsky insists that the choice between consistent geometries must he decided by astronomical observation. The student, returning to the demonstrations of elementary geometry, finds he is handicapped by being unable to usc his images in quite the way he could with Euclid's geometry proofs. The student is compe11ed to re-examine his opinions about the nature of geometry; for example, a re-reading of a section on the transcendental aesthetic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is then in order. With these alternatives to Euclidean geometry having been examined, the groundwork has been laid for a consideration of more general geometry with the examination of the claim of Arthur Caley that projective geometry is all of geometry.. The substance of that claim becomes clear when the nonEuclidean geometries, as well as Euclidean geometry, turn out to be special cases when considered as subsets of the projective plane. The mathematics program concludes by extending the study of astronomy that began with Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to the geometrization of physics proposed by Einstein in the theory of relativity. · CoMMENTARY BY BROTHER U. ALFRED In discussing the mathematics program of the St. John's plan and its relevance for liberal education in general, there are some major problems. What is the standard of judgment? Liberal education from what one is able to read about it is an undefined quantity in the sense that we are blessed with innumerable divergent conceptions of its nature. Such a flexible yardstick does not lend itself to accurate measuring. Accordingly, a mathematician might proceed in the first instance to note that the St. John's program has the characteristic of consistency. Starting with the concept of learning from the great teachers of all times and accepting the twofold nature of the liberal arts as manifested in the trivium and quadrivium, it is only appropriate to seck for works that incorporate classical development of mathematics either in its own right or in relation to other fields .... One can go on to specific difficulties of a practical nature. The program evidently docs not agree with the usual pattern of college education as exemplified in our country wherein students as a rule engage in some measure of specialization so as to be prepared for their specific subject area in graduate work or their life work after college. Possibly, the superior type of student can take the St. John's program and then go on to higher studies and without too much difficulty compensate for the lack of ad hoc work in his area of specialization. But I doubt if the generality of students would be able to do this. T11e problem then is thrown back to one of economics: so many years of schooling costing so much per year before one is able to arrive at the time of gainful employment .... Next, while the emphasis on the great themes in mathematics and concern with mathematical classics has admirable features, it would seem to me to be carried to an extreme. Too much time and effort is spent on puzzling through obscure and involved approaches which have long been superseded. There is an answer, of course: this is the way to train the human mind; what the students do not get in n1athematical content, they acquire in greater ability to analyze difficult language and piece together obscure thought processes. Such an answer carried to its logical consequences can arrive at the absurd conclusion that the more obscure and difficult a teacher is, the better he is This view could be very satisfying to some of the people who spend their years confusing the young mind in the classroom, but it hardly appears satisfactory from the standpoint of the young mind .... Simply as a springboard for discussion, I would like to advocate the following as a minimum: In the freshman year, there should be a course along the lines indicated by Dr. Henry L. Alder in a recent article in the American Mathematics Monthly entitled "Mathematics for the Liberal Arts Students." This emphasizes the free operation of the human mind in its approach to quantity and form. Starting with a fully fabricated theorem such as is found in Euclid is quite artificial. IVIathematics is never discovered in this state. Such formulations are the very last 5 �The College stage in a process of development beginning with vagne fumblings, proceeding by surprising intuitions, maneuvering by shrewd guesses, checking by numerous .examples, arriving at a projected theorem, attempting to prove this theorem ... and only after a long period of development when many such processes have been carried out, the fullfledged logical system a Ja Euclid is achieved. To start students at this end of the process is fine for exemplifying the logical structure of a mathematical system, but very poor as a means of giving them a mathematical experience. In the upper division course, this would be the time to show students one or more mathematical systems including Euclid's, though it would not be advisable to go through the entire work. Here would be the place to consider those many fine topics treated in the St. John's program: rational and irrational number, limits, the nature of with the kind of mathematics which presupposes a totally different conceptual approach. That's one of the reasons why we prefer it. There are other reasons-let me not go into them now. On the very general question why mathematics should be studied at all, I should like to point out the fundamental fact that the way to learn is originally the mathematical way; there is something about learning mathematical relationships which presents the model of all learning, because of its precision and the necessary avoidance of all the sophistry which usually surrounds our way of talking. Furthennore1 mathematics is, indeed, a way of speaking, a very strange way of speaking, because it is related to our use of signs, and although words are signs, the mathematical signs arc different because they are not necessarily pronounced. They are written or diagrammed1 put down somewhere on sand 1 or on paper, or on the blackboard. I have, pemonally, a certain opinion-it may be totally wrong-that the development of mathematics consists in changing the nature of those signs with which mathematics originally started.* That is, originally mathematical signs were not symbols, but .they became symbols later on. And this symbolic language is, of course, an incredible, powerful tool for our understanding, for understmfding a) our world, and b) ourselves. So it seems to me that liberal education, if it is to exist, cannot possibly avoid studying mathematics. calculus, the postulational approach to mathematics, what constitutes mathematics, the relations of mathematics and science, non-Euclidean geometry, the Dedekind cut, and so on. The historical significance of these ideas brought out especially by relating them to passages from the great works on mathematics should be considered essential. Finally, without becoming too technical, students should be brought to the very last word in modern mathematicswhat it is doing, where it is going, its significance for the future of our culture. DISCUSSION Mr. Klein: ... it is perfectly conceivable to us that our mathematics program is not built in the right way. I think that what you said about Euclid representing a sort of last stage in the whole process of mathematical experimentation, as it were, is· quite right. It is a sort of an accomplished affair, and to start with that is questionable. On the other hand, one could start the freshman year with the buildup of the number system. The reason-one of the reasons, not the only one-why we prefer our way is this, that it helps the rest of the program. While in the freshman year they are reading books written originally in Greek, the relation to Euclidean mathematics and Apollonian mathematics is much closer than if you start 6 Miss Brann: ... Another topic that comes up and becomes very vital is: What are the objects with which mathematics deals? And since we begin in classical mathe- matics with systems which do have specific objects to be seen and imagined and analyzed, and then go on to the type of mathematics (first represented by analytical geometry) which does not apparently have such objects, this question is very quickly transformed into the following: Is mathematics primarily concerned with objects or with methods? And so we raise a second great topic the question: what is a method? Is there an objectless method? Does the object determine the method? Or the method the object? So when I began by saying that it probably would be accurate to say in some way that we don't study mathematics, this is what I meant. We're really interested in ways of understanding primarily, and if the particular theorems 1 the particular discoveries of mathematics are in some way curtailed, that may be deplorable from a different point of view, but it fits in with what we are trying to do. Dr. May: I'd like to ask a couple of questions whose answers will give me a better picture of what actually * Sec Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought ami the Origin of Algebra, translated by Eva Brann, with an Appendix containing Victa's Introduction to the Analytical Art translated by the Reverend J. Winfree Smith, Jr., M.I.T. Press, 1968. (Ed.) �July 1969 happens in class. I imagine you studying Euclid in the first year and, as we say, discussing the proofs. Now it's well known that Euclid is incomplete-his axiom system is incomplete-someone who's trained in modern mathematics would be able to demolish a good many of these proofs. Does it ever happen in your critical discussions that students realize on their own that things are missingthat the argument isn't complete? And does the instructor call this to the attention of the student? Mr. Kutler: It certainly happens that students discover this, either by themselves or with the help of Thomas Little Heath, who has edited it, and filled it with scholarly comments of all kinds, historical and mathematical. Now, I'm not sure that Euclid, if he were alive-and maybe you could convince him-would agree with you that all the gaps are gaps. I'm not sure that the enterprise he's interested in is the same as the enterprise of modern mathematics. That is, I think Euclid's talking about triangles, not the ones you draw on the board but the ones in your -imagination. But I think he expects you to look at those figures, or look at them with your mind's eye. So when you say in the first proposition in Euclid, "Well, look, he doesn't have an axiom which says that two circles are going to intersect," maybe he'd say "I don't need an axiom for that because it's about figures and we can see that there's a point inside and a point outside and we know what circles are, and of course they meet." Dr. May: Do you stay within the Euclidean program and judge Euclid on the basis of what he was trying to do or do you also consider the possibility of other programs at the same time? Miss Brann: This is another one of those large topics which arises very nicely within this framework. Most of our students have some sort of vague notion of, to use a there arc two aspects of mathematics-modern aspectsthat one, I think, is neglecting. The first one is the enormous amount of mathematical information which makes people feel that one can't start with the present. On the other hand, one of the characteristics of mathematics in the last hundred years is a tremendous achievement in understanding the simple ideas of mathematics. And I think that this makes it possible by utilizing what we know about mathematics now to start with the very most modern ideas, to start with mathematics as it now exists, and present that to the beginning student. I think that by so doing, and only using the classical material as contributive, one would be able to achieve all the goals of the Program. Certainly one would teach logical reasoning and so on. I think you will do this far quicker by starting with what we now know about logical reasoning. Mr. Kutler: The quicker there's no doubt about. Dr. May: I think quicker and more deeply. The individual would even understand better the chssical work in this area if you begin utilizing everything we know. So that I would say, instead of starting with the old and going toward the new, start with everything we know now. Mr. Kutler: We do that with the calculus. I tried to say that. We do it with the calculus and then we read Newton's lemmas, and we get the tension in the other direction, the way you want to see it; that is, we see a struggle for something-somethimes Newton seems to have it as much as Cauchy had it. I do think it's bad if everything is presented too simply as a finished product. You see Brother Alfred's criticism about Euclid would apply pretty strongly to what you say now, that is, you don't see any struggle or groping to come up with this, but everything is presented as something all smooth with all the edges taken off. technical term, an "axiomatic system," when they come to us. When we begin to study Euclid, one of the interesting topics to discuss is whether this is what they had heard rumors of in high school, whether Euclid's "system" is intended to be an arbitrary axiomatic system in the sense they imagined. Well, three years intervene, and we finally come to the senior year when we begin to study modern axiomatics, and it turns out that in fact there exists a world of difference between an Euclidean axiom and an axiom of Hilbert. And though it is in fact the case that we don't do justice to the ramifications of modern axiomatics, I think that we do do justice to the difference between the approaches. And this does make many students feel that thev want to go on with the modern side. Dr. May: ... it seems to me that it would be better not to make it the concern to get to modern times from ancient times, getting modern ideas from old ideas, but to start with what we know now, and to usc the old ideas to illuminate modern understanding. It seems to me that . .. but you see one thing we do, and nobody has emphasized this, one reason why we like to do a lot of theorems in Euclid is it's the first, it's the beginning of having the students learn to demonstrate. And when they learn it, it's not by our lectures. We consider that a major thing-I don't know whether you agree with me or not. 7 �The College Dr. Kramer: I agree up to a point. Too much time is spent, I think, on doing everything in Euclid. There are many methods of proof. Euclid practically restricts himself to one. Oh, he gives a token to the indirect method, but there is very little induction, nothing of mathematical induction, and he doesn't get involved in the laws of logic (for example, the law of the contrapositive) and things of this sort. So my feeling is this: I would like to see you cut back the number of theorems from Euclid-give the rest of the time to a consideration of a variety of methods of proof, and see what has evolved, for example, through the use of algebraic methods. I'm not saying you must disregard Euclid's work. With the statement that one must start with it, I agree a hundred per cent. My feeling is that you must cut back to make room for these other things. Mr. Kutler: To make the points you want to make, it seems to me, that Euclid doesn't have this or doesn't have that, which we notice, time and again, would go in and out the ear of the student who hasn't worked with it long enough. They don't have any solid thing to base against the modern approach. Miss Brann: Do not forget that many of these students are people who, in an ordinary college, would regard themselves as having a block against mathematics. Mr. Bart: I'd like to say just one word about the example that came up with continuity-two words. First of all, of course, continuity doesn't wait in our treatment until the senior year. That's manifest. It emerges the moment we try to look at a locus problem. We're immediately confronting the converse of the situation we've been getting with the conic section taken as a cut, in which it seems the figure is given in its continuity in the manner in which, say, Euclid gives it. When we try to look at the conic section as some kind of locus problem, immediately the question of continuity has to come up, and then we try to go back and ask ourselves to what extent and in what way Euclid presupposes it. But it 'doesn't seem to me certain that our notion about continuity, that is the notion we formulate in a mathematical system today, is the real starting point of the problem of continuity. Those definitions and those achievements really seem to me to have something in back of them, and what they have in back of them is really what Euclid starts with. Now at what moment one is to become articulate about the problem of continuity is not completely clear to me .... There are various approaches to these problems, but I'm also inclined to believe that there is merit in doing what we do, the obvious merit being that students who expect to have problems with math don't. The strange fact abont our program is that nowhere is it more successful than in our math program, simply in the sense that within a week the students find that they don't have blocks, they 8 don't have problems, we don't have to do handsprings, we just forget that, and it's extraordinarily rare that a student fails to come out with a profitable experience. I'm inclined to think that the Euclidean starting point is a perfectly good starting point. There was, it seems to me, in a number of remarks that have been made, the impli- cation that we have improved on the Euclidean starting point, especially improved pedagogically. It's taken for granted that we've improved on it mathematically, and perhaps that's correct. Set theory doesn't seem to mehowever central and, to many people, fun-it doesn't seem to me clear that it is as successful a starting point pedagogically. Dr. Williams: Would simple group theory be a better starting point? It's much simpler. Geometry's tough. It's complicated. Mr. Bart: That depends on what you're trying to do. That depends on whether you feel with Euclid that the objects of geometry have a givenness ... or not. And it seems that really until the eighteenth centmy people were inclined to think so. I don't know. They might have been wrong, but they did have this notion. Dr. Williams: Well, when you said "in back of it" you meant in time, that is, what people were doing when they stumbled onto the notion. Mr. Bart: What they were doing was something like trying to describe a figure as a set of points. But of course if you haven't understood a figure as a set of points, the problem of continuity doesn't have the same prominence. Dr. Williams: Well, maybe continuity should be postponed. I don't hold any brief for that particular topic, unless one is studying the history of mathematics. Then, of course, it is very central. Mr. Bart: We're not pretending to be studying the history of mathematics for its own sake. It is very true that more than in anything else we do we follow an historical pattern in mathematics, but I think we would try to argue that we do so for two reasons, one pedagogical, and probably more importantly, the very great impact on the student of the transition from ancient mathematics to modern mathematics through the Cartesian revolution. The axiomatic method as we're understanding it, say especially under the aegis of Hilbert, is not the only starting point for the science of mathematics. In fact, not only in theory, it's not the only starting point. I agree with Mr. Kutler, I doubt very much that Euclid would agree that all of the gaps we find arc gaps. I very very much doubt it. Miss Brann: Let me try to say what Mr. Bart's saying in a somewhat different way. People do usually agree when they talk about modern mathematics of the types that have been mentioned, that the word "abstract" is a good word for it. Some of its beauty and simplicity comes from its "abstractness." Well, it seems to me that it's very hard to keep an interest in something abstract if one hasn't first become thoroughly familiar with the concrete underpinning from which it has been abstracted. It seems �July 1969 to me that the mathematics that we do in the first three just a matter of efficiency of communication, circulation, years, which is so closely associated with physics, or at and so on. It has made possible things that couldn't be done otherwise, but that's not the essence of the change. Miss Brann: You would agree that what you are now propounding is a doctrine of great importance and that it is, whether true or false, an opinion which one would need least with objects of the imagination, is precisely the ground of concreteness frmn which the abstractions 1nust be understood to have been made in order to seem formally beautiful. That is, they are the proper ways, or at least the most convenient ways, of viewing the things which are left behind. For what good are these new ways to the understanding if what has been superseded, if not presupposed, by them is not at some point recalled? some years to investigate. That is, you wouldn't want us or anyone else to accept this opinion as simply true? But how else would one investigate whether it was true or not except by making the comparison? Dr. May: Mathematic language is an extension. It includes the ordinary every day language and some additional symbols just as every other scientific language does. This little business of the nature of mathematical symbols is really a side issue. Mr. Bart: For us, it simply isn't a side issue. The issue that we're facing really is to carry the students as far as we can back over the Cartesian revolution about the nature, not merely of mathematics, but a great many other things, to the point where the word "image" would no longer be a synonym for the word "symbol," as it's tended to be in literary discourse and elsewhere, and obviously as in your reaction to my remark; and to the point in which we would really sec that the role which Mr. Kutler ascribed to the imagination is now meant in a rather literal sense, the very sense which, I guess, is so crucial Dr. May: If one approaches mathematics by studying Euclid because he was a great n1athematician, in the same way that one approaches philosophy by studying Plato and Aristotle because they were great philosophers, there's a difference in the outcome: some part of Euclid are timeless and they're incorporated in modern mathematics, and some are obsolete and confusing. Euclid suffered in many aspects of his work by simply not understanding things which now we do understand. And therefore by taking off from the modern ideas, we really hit the problems that are meaningful today with the understandings that we have today. So that I think that this prejudice in favor of the classics has led to the curriculum that is here. Mr. Bart: You don't accept in the least Mr. Klein's suggestion, which we take extremely seriously, that there was a Cartesian revolution, and in making mathematics symbolic, mathematics was profoundly transformed? Dr. May: I don't think there's any difference between using words and using any other symbols. Words are symbols just like the others. Nor do I think there's anything special about mathematical symbols on the alleged ground that you don't pronounce them. You do. There isn't a single mathematical symbol which you have which can't be read, and stated in words. We do it all the time. There's no essential difference there. This is not the revolutionary thing, although it is true that mathematicians have developed a more efficient lar)guage. This is to Kant-the role of the imarination and the role of the objects of mathematics as images. Now of course a great many of the gaps which we think we find in Euclid disappear. There aren't gaps from that point of view. There are gaps insofar as we are grappling with symbols, every meaning of which must be given through definition and axiom. But maybe it's not the case that all objects of mathematics are only given to us by definition and axiom. It's perfectly clear that a very long tradition of mathematicians who were not exactly fumblers did not entertain this point of view. Samuel S. Kutler, tutor at St. John's College, is a 1954 graduate of the College. Before returning to Annapolis as a tutor, Mr. Kutler had risen from Assistant and Associate Mathematician to Mathematician at the Applied Physics Laboratory of TI1c Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured on Cantor's mathematics of the infinite and on Euclid's Elements. 9 �The Teaching of Theology to Undergraduates By the Reverend J. WINFREE SMITH \Vhy should theology be taught to undergraduates and how should it be taught? Before dealing with these questions we should have some rough definition of theology. As the origin of the word suggests, theology can mean any reasoning about God or what relates to God without specification as to what is meant by God or the possible source and means of one's knowledge of God. So it could mean what Aristotle calls theology, which is identical with first philosophy or metaphysics. But we shall mean by theology an investigation or a teaching that is concerned with the God of the Bible and the tradition that springs from the Bible. We may assume that the education of undergraduates has as its aim not to train them in some skill which will pay we11 after graduation, unless the words "pay" and "well" be taken in a highly metaphorical sense. It has as its aim the training and informing of their souls. T11is means that they have to he led to know their own souls. T'he fact is that there is no man living in the modern world whose soul is not already touched by theology. He cannot know his own roots without knowing theology. This does not mean that modern thought is a simple derivative of theology and ultimately of the Bible. It does mean that in order to understand modern thought, i.e., in order to understand ourselves, we have to go back to the beginning of modern thought. Modern thought originated in a breaking away from ancient thought, both from classical philosophy and from the Bible. The education of modern man, therefore, re~ quires that he go back and seek to understand this breach, to sec whether it was a total breach or a partial breach. At the very roots of modern thought there is an argument which is basically a theological argument and which cannot be dealt with fairly without knowledge of the ancient tradition of theology. This is one reason why theology is essential to liberal education. There is a second reason, which is perhaps more important and which is quite independent of any consideration of the history of thought. During the years that an undergraduate is in college he should be examining in a leisurely and ordered way the basic questions of the mean- 10 ingfulncss of his own life, of human life in general, and of the world as a whole. All such questions become ultimately theological questions. One can understand what Laplace meant when he said he had no need of the hypothesis of God. Modern physics can proceed with its theories, its experiments, and its measurements, to its discoveries without reference to God. But if one stands just a little way outside of modern physics, one can ask what its meaningfulness as a whole is and this necessarily involves one in the question of heaven and earth in general and whether in the beginning they were created by God. There is no area in which human inquiry, if pressed far enough, docs not lead to theological questions. Men are generally interested in such questions as: Is there a God, or not? If so, is he a God who cares for men or one who does not? If he is a God who cares, is he limited or not limited in what he can do for me? Can he, for example, raise them from the dead? What does his care imply with respect to what man should do and what he may hope for? Theological education feeds the soul of the undergraduate by acquainting him in a more or less thorough way with the serious and well-reasoned answers that might be given to the questions, answers that are rich and far-reaching in their implications. It gives him much to wonder about and to explore with his mind and heart. The conclusion to be drawn is that theological education is essential to liberal education, whether the educational institution be a secular one or a religious one. In the secular institution the study of theology cannot be thought of as taking faith either as its premise or as its conclusion. The secular institution cannot assume the trnth of the Bible or the dogmas of faith. But it must assume that the Bible and the dogmas of faith make a serious claim to being the simple trnth, a claim that is well worth examining and exploring. No doubt both teachers and students will bring to such a study special prejudices and feelings, of which they must constantly be aware. It is none the less possible for believers and non-believers to apply to the Bible the art of communal discussion with a view to finding out what it is saying in its own ten11s and on what its claim to trnth rests. �fuly 1969 In a college with a religious commitment the teaching of theology would mean something more. For a man of faith, piety is the necessary motive for any study, and one would not engage in theology if one did not regard the study of theology as a pious work. Piety for a Christian means the acceptance of the Bible and the dogmas of faith as truth given by God. It is none the less the case that these given truths have to be appropriated. The believer has to make them his own. One way he does this is through the activity of his intellect, by which he seeks to deepen his own understanding of the revealed Word of God. A liberal arts college with a religious commitment has a duty to assist the undergraduate believer in this enterprise. The enterprise should not be understood too narrowly. Theology must be seen as bearing upon questions that can take their origin in anything with which the undergraduate may be concerning himself. If theology so interpreted is not the queen of the sciences, it is still the center toward which all thought moves, by whatever circuitous paths. Liberal education in a liberal arts college, while its aim is to train and inform the soul, cannot save the soul. Only God can do that, and the institution that God uses for that purpose seems to be, not the college, but the Church. The Reverend Josepli Winfree Smith, Jr., tutor at St. John's College, received his B.D. from the Virginia Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was Rector of St. Paul's Church, Ivy Depot, Virginia, from 1939 to 1941. In 1959 he was awarded the Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. He has lectured on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Aristotle's Ethics, John Calvin, Ptolemy, and Kepler's astronomy. Students and tutors have profited from his notes on the number and ratio books of Euclid, his paper on Ptolemy's "Theory of the Moon," and his introduction to and transbtion of Viete's Introduction to the Analytical Art. For some twenty-five years students have benefited from his Tuesday evening extra-curricular classes on the New Testament. ]] �NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES GRADUATION IN ANNAPOLIS The I 77th commencement exercises of St. John's College in Annapolis were held on Sunday, June 8th, under the Liberty Tree on the front campus. The Invocation was delivered by the Reverend Joseph Hemighaus, Assistant Pastor, St. Mary's Church, Annapolis. Jacob Klein, tutor at the College since 1938 and former dean, gave the graduation address. Graduating Magna Cum Laude was Robert Jerome Benton, Raleigh, N.C. Cum Laude graduates were Mariam Alice Cunningham, Edmond, Okla.; Linda Ellen Davenport, New Hope, Pa.; Bernard Mark Davidoff, Philadelphia, Pa.; Anne Barbara Lyons, Westport, Conn.; David Eugene Riggs, Evansville, Ill.; and Catherine Allen V'lagner, Shoreham, Long Island, N.Y. Those receiving degrees Rite were: George Michael Anthony, Brandon, Ore.; Meredith Artis Anthony, Washington, Pa.; Joseph Preston Baratta, Sylmar, Calif.; Mark Israel Bernstein, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Gabrielle Harris Bershen, New York, N.Y.; Dorothy Louis Brodie, Brooklyn, N.Y.; David Wade Caruthers, Cheshire, Conn.; Robert Browne Davis, San Francisco, Calif.; Margaret Ann Escher, New Yark, N.Y.; Regina Clare Forsyth, Houston, Tex.; Benjamin Spencer Franklin, Jr., Bala-Cynwyd, Pa.; Thomas Powick Geyer, Pottstown, Pa.; Janet Anne Gleason, Roanoke, Va.; Philip Gordon Holt, Bethesda, Md.; Martin Kalmar, Flint, Mich.; Blake Landor, Highland Park, Ill.; Deborah Adelaide Moll, Oxford, Md.; Joan Jacqueline Mooring, Braddock Heights, Md.; Gregg Dennis Rains, Weymouth, Mass.; David Leonard Simon, New York, N.Y.; Katen Stagg Simon, Valley Stream, N.Y.; 12 Cheryl Elizabeth Sirofchuck, Sutersville, Pa.; Anthony Jay Snively, III, Washington, D.C.; Merrill Richard Stevens, University Park, Md.; Mary Fowler Teed, Annapolis, Md.; Linda Margaret Torcaso, vVheaton, Md.; Prcsiilcnt of T. Mellon and Sons of Pittsburgh, Pa. Karen Lee Jurgensen, Albuquerque, N.M., and David Alexander Sackton, Cambridge, Mass., graduated Magna Jeannine Pennington 'Vatson, Bel Air, Cum Laude. Md.; and H John Witman, III, Yardley, Pa. Included in the graduation cere- Cum Laude graduates were Margaret Louis Blum, Washington, D.C.; Vicki Sue Brown, New York, N.Y.; William James Cromartie, Jr., Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Michael John Hodgett, \"link, Tex. Receiving degrees Rite were Frank Hudson Adams, Chestnut Hills,-Mass.; monies was Richard Tower Congdon, DeKalb, Ill., 1952. Mr. Klein was recognized by the Board of Visitors and Governors and the College for his thirty-one years of service to the College. A scroll signed by Mr. Walter F. Evers, retiring chairman of the Board, and by President \'Veigle was presented to him. Retiring Dean Kieffer was also hon- Governors and Governor and Vice- Paul Fleitmann Bunker, Santa Fe, N.M.; Lynn Ellen McCiivc Butler, Buffalo, N.Y.; \Villiam Roderick Butler, Lancaster, Tex.; Daniel Cleavinger, Albuquerque, N.M.; Raymond Jay ored by the Board and was presented Drolet, Farmington, N.M.; Craig Fan- a scroll recognizing his forty years of service to the College in many capaci- sler, Sun City, Ariz.; Shirley Jean Cushing Flint, San Jose, Calif.; James Morrow Hall, Albuquerque, N.M.; Melissa Ann Nettleship, Fayettesvillc, Ark.; Claudia Nordstrom, South Nyack, N.Y.; Joe Pratt Reynolds, Arlington, Tex.; Robert Lessing Rosenwald, Jr., Santa Fe, N.M.; James Austine Scanlon, Upland, Calif.; Marilyn Joyce Avery Soon, Tulsa, Okla.; .Thomas Evans Stern, Palo Alto, Calif.; John ties, including president. A Faculty Resolution was then presented to Mr. Weigle honoring him for his twenty years of service and guidance as president of St. John's College. The Benediction by the Reverend Hemighans concluded the ceremonies. SECOND SANTA FE COMMENCEMENT 'll1c second commencement day at St. John's College in Santa Fe began at 11:00 a.m. with a baccalaureate service with visiting lecturer Bishop James P. Shannon as speaker. The invocation and benediction at the exercises was given by the Rever- end Lowell Russell Ditzen, director of the National Presbyterian Center in \'Vashington, D.C. Principal speaker at the graduation was Mr. Adolph W. Schmidt, former chairman of the Board of Visitors and Harvey Strange, San Antonio, Tex.; Lee Tepper, Washington, D.C.; Joseph Hicks Tooley, New Yark, N.Y.; Carol Ann Lightner Tucker, Albuquerque, N.M.; Steven Lee Tucker, Albuquerque, N.M.; and Michael Anthony vViener, Sausalito, Calif. The Class of 1969 graduated 63 seniors on both campuses. AWARDS AND PRIZES PRESENTED AT BOTH COMMENCEMENTS Awards and prizes at the two com- �fuly 1969 mencements were presented to the following students: To the Senior who has the highest standing, a silver medal, offered by the Board of Visitors and Governors: (A) Robert Jerome Benton, {SF) William James Cromartie, Jr., and David Alexander Sackton. To the member of the Senior Class who writes the best Senior ~essay: (A) Dorothy Louise Brodie; Honorable mention, Joseph Preston Baratta and Anthony Jay Snively, III, (SF) Vickie Sue Brown; Honorable mention, Margaret Louise Blum. To the member of the Junior Class who writes the best annual essay: (A) Marielle Mikah Hammett; Honorable mention, Diana Owen Runyon, (SF) James Frederick Scott; Honorable mention, Michael Joseph Landry. To the member of the Sophomore Class who writes the best annual essay: (A) Katherine Elisabeth Jackson; Honorable mention, Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen, Jr., (SF) James Christopher Brown and Jenny Frances Calm. To a member of the Freshman Class who writes the best annual essay: (A) Deborah Jessica Letven, (SF) John Stephen Denney. To the student whr submits the best English translation of a Cree'..: poem: (A} Mark Leland Haynes, (SF) Edward Gerald McGrath. To the student who submits the best English translation of a French poem; (A) Meredith Artis Anthony, (SF) James Dale Danneskiold and Donald Hugh \Vhitfidd. To the student who submits the best English poem: (A) Anthony Jay Snively, III, (SF) First prize, James Frederick Scott; Second prize, Jonathan Lippitt Brewer and Kerry Martin Prechte1. To the member of the Freshman or Sophomore Class who submits the most elegant solution of a mathematical problem: (A) Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen, Jr.; Honorable mention, Jeffrey Sonheim, (SF) No prize. To the member Of the Junior or Senior Class who submits the most elegant solution of a mathematical problem, or submits the best short essay on a "mathematical topic: (A) Anthony Jay Snively, III; Honorable mention, Dikran Kizilyan, (SF) Michael Joseph. Landry. To the student who submits the best brief comment on a piece of music: (A) No prize; Honorable mention, Jeffrey Coleman Kitchen, Jr. To the student who submits the best musical composition or the best commentary on the song, "An die Musik," by Schubert: (SF) Joe Pratt Reynolds. To a Junior for ac-ddemic achievement, con~ structive ·membership in the College community, and commitment to post-graduate study, the Duane L. Peterson Scholarship: {A) Edward Michael Macierowski, {SF) Michael Joseph Landry. To the member of the Junior Class considering teaching as a career, a book award given by Teachers College, Columbia University: (A) Richard Dclahide Ferrier. Assistant Dean Robert L. Spaeth meets with Annapolis Mayor Roger VI. Moyer to discuss campaign plans before the May 13th election. Mr. Spaeth's initiation into politics \vas successful with his election as alderman from the third ward, \vhile Mr. Moyer was voted a second term in office. ASSISTANT DEAN ELECTED ANNAPOLIS ALDERMAN Robert L. Spaeth, assistant dean and tutor, was elected alderman from the third ward in Annapolis, on Tuesday, May 20th, by a vote of 426 to 327. He defeated the Republican candidate, Mrs. Anthony M. Leigh. On Thursday, May 15th, on the editorial page of the Annapolis Evening Capital Mr. Spaeth was endorsed in the following terms: he "is not the kind of college professor-politician who would permit pendantry to block common sense. He is the kind who will roll up his sleeves and work toward fair, reasonable and productive eonclu· sions." The editorial also spoke of his ex· eellent grasp of what the city's prob· !ems were and his keen sense for the kinds of solutions they required. He was endorsed also by the Annapolis Committee for Good Government and by the United Democrats of Anne Arundel County. In his campaign Mr. Spaeth stressed 1) the need for a street parallel to West Street, 2) holding the line on taxation of property owners, because the prop· erty tax as now constituted is too regressive, 3) continuing the improvement of the Annapolis police force, 4) the need for a better Historic Ordinance (controlling building in the downtown area for the purpose of pre· serving the historic character of the city), and 5) the need to improve housing conditions for many of our citizens, which involves expanding urban renewal and involving Negroes in every facet of the city's progress. Mr. Spaeth had won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, April 15th, by a vote of 300 to 245. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time in St. John's history that a tutor has been elected to the office of alderman in Annapolis. l3 �The College NAVAJO STUDENT 110VES IN Two WoRLDS AT ST. JOHN'S When Benjamin Barney was a little boy in a government school on the Navajo reservation, he had two great desires. One was to go to college; the other was to remain true to the Navajo way. His teachers told him to forget both ideas. He did not. Mr. Barney is now going into his senior year at Santa Fe, and he tries to weave together the best from both his worlds. In his three years at St. John's, he has found that the study of various philosophies has led to the reexamination of his own beliefs. As a result, he reports "my Navajo religion has become more important to me." At St. John's he has especially enjoyed studying Greek and French, discussing the philosophy of Plato, and analyzing Euclidean propositions. When home with his family near Lukachukai, Arizona, he enjoys talking to his "traditional" Navajo parents about the meaning of life, participating in their religious rites, and practicing the ancient arts and crafts of his people. After he graduates he would like to go into education, preferably of Indian youth. He has already had some instructional experience in local schools Benjamin Barney and at the Demonstration School of Rough Rock, Arizona. PUBLIC READINGS HELD AT THE CoLLEGE A series of literary readings at the College attracted favorable attention this past school year in Santa Fe. Participants included poets Bert Meyers, Michael Jenkins, Peter Nabokov, Robert Greeley, W. S. Merwin, Richard Brautigan, and Barrett Price, as WoODWARD HALL RENOVATED well as W. Warren Wagar, who is best known as an historian and author of The City of Man. Tutor Charles Bell read excerpts from his new novel, The Halt Gods, in addition to some of his own poems. Another tutor, Stuart Boyd, read from the works of Robert Woodward Hall has been completely renovated and library books again fill Burns "in an authentic accent." Several students also read their own poems, including seniors Frank Adams and Vicki Brown, junior James Scott, sophomores Jonathan Brewer and Vicky Manchester, and freshman Kerry Prechtel. A reading in honor of the ]60th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth was given by sophomores Ralph Esdale and Steven Moser and freshmen Seth Cropsey and Stephen DeLuca. Dramatic readings of Faustus and Heartbreak House also were presented by students and faculty during the year. RECORD ENROLLMENT EXPECTED IN SANTA FE St. John's will enter its sixth academic year in Santa Fe this fall with an expected enrollment of about 275 students. This will be the largest since the College opened in 1964 and will place it well on its way to the 300-plus projected for the fall of 1970. This incoming freshman class of 125 should be among the most able in the history of the Santa Fe campus. More than half of the applications approved through May ranked in the top ten per cent of their high school classes. Admissions Director Douglas Price and his assistant, Gerald Zollars, a 1965 aluinnus, have visited numerous dties in the West this year to talk with prospective students and their parents. l4 Thirty scholarships worth $6,000 each have been awarded by St. John's to outstanding high school seniors in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, planning to attend college this fall. The Southwest Scholars Program was started last year by friends of St. John's to help students from this region on the basis of academic merit and ability. its interior. Annapolis Treasurer Charles T. Elzey accepted the building on behalf of the College from W. H. \1\Tard Construction Co., Inc., on Wednesday, May 7th. Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky & Lamb (now RTKL, Inc.) _redesigned the building, with furmshings by The H. Chambers Company, interior designers of Baltimore. On Timrsday, May 15th, and on Saturday, May 17th, students, faculty, and staff undertook the enormous task of transporting over 42,000 volumes from their two-year temporary dwelling, Mellon Hall, across campus to \1\1oodward Hall. Books were carried in coded bags to predetermined locations in the library. There were some exciting moments on Thursday morning when "Eyewitness News," Channel 13, WJZ-TV, m Baltimore, arrived to film the move. A featurette on the move appeared that evening on the station, under the title, "A Different Kind of Student Demonstration at St. John's." On Tuesday, June lOth, a preview showing of the library for the Friends of St. John's Committee as well as members of the press was held. President Weigle and Committee Chairman Richard F. Blaul, a 1932 alumnus, made welcoming remarks, after which Librarian Charlotte Fletcher and staff gave a tour of the building. Faculty wives were hostesses at the reception. Formal dedication of Woodward Hall will be on Saturday, October 18th, during homecoming activities at the College. (See back cover.) �July 1969 BOARD OF VISITORS AND GOVERNORS ELECTS WoMAN As CHAIRMAN Mrs. Margaret (Peggy) Driscoll of Santa Fe is the new chairman of the College Board of Visitors and Governors elected during the meeting on May 31st in Santa Fe. Mrs. Driscoll, a wrdow, replaces Walter F. Evers of Cleveland, Ohio. She has been on the Board since 1965. Also elected to the Board were Jack M. Campbell, former governor of New Mexico; John Matthews, Abilene, Texas; Mrs. George Raudenbush, St. Louis, Missouri; and 'Mrs. Howard Sirak, Columbus, Ohio. College officials believe Mrs. Driscoll may be the first woman ever selected as Board chairman. MR. WEIGLE HoNORED IN SANTA FE One of the highlights during graduation week in Santa Fe was a May 31st party given by Mrs. Ruth Hurley for the Board of Visitors and Governors. During the evening Mr. Weigle, who is celebrating his twentieth year as president of St. John's College, received three gifts. One was a book conveying expressions of appreciation to him from all present and past Board members. Another was a large sterling tray bearing Mr. Weigle's name and the anniversary date, plus the engraved signatures of all the Board members who have served during those twenty years. He also received an oil portrait by Charles Thwaites. BISHOP SHANNON NAMED SANTA FE VICE PRESIDENT The Most Reverend James P. Shannon, former Auxiliary Bishop of St. Paul-Minneapolis, has been appointed tutor and vice president of St. John's College in Santa Fe, President Weigle recently announced. Bishop Shannon, who attended a summer course at St. John's in Annapolis in 1941, has a master's degree in literature from the University of Minnesota and a doctorate in history from Yale University. He served as president of the College of St. Thomas for ten vears. He also has studied at Oxford University. AsSISTANT DEAN VISITS COLLEGE ABROAD In March Barbara H. Leonard, tutor and assistant dean, participated in a Comparative Education Seminar that visited schools, colleges, and universities in England, Russia, Austria, and Germany. Seminar members were college and university presidents, deans, professors, and secondary school administrators. · Secondary and higher education was discussed with students, faculty, and staff at the University of Leeds and Trinity and All Saints College in England, the University of Moscow in Russia, the University of Novosibirsk in East Siberia, the University of Vienna in Austria, and the Free Uni~ vcrsity of West Berlin in Germany. rl 'he Seminar spent one day in East Berlin as guests of East German educators. Talks were held with the Ministries of Education in all four countries and with representatives of the Trade Union of Education and Scientifi:c Workers of the U.S.S.R. Topics discussed included administration and or~ ganization, professional appointments, ranks, salaries, and policies, student organizations, student life, stipends, and problems. Miss Leonard found conversations with students from the Free University in West Berlin about causes of student unrest particularly interesting. It was reported to her that many who study political science, sociology and . economics there cannot find jobs based on their specialties and some Severna Park, Maryland, Jones Elementary School student Mary Louise Jones raises a point during a junior great books seminar led by St. John's College students Blanche Nusbaum and Susan Mackey. The seminar is similar to one directed by Mrs. Nelson (formerly T. K. T1wmas) last semester at an Annapolis e1emcntary school. (Photo by Tomatsu Nakata.) COLLEGE HoNORS KIEFFERS A reception· in honor of Mr. and Mrs. John Spangler Kieffer was held on Monday, June 9th, in the lobby of the Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall. Tutors Barbara H. Leonard and Robert S. Bart were reception cochairmen. Tutor Ford K. Brown expressed the College's gratitude to the Kieffers and presented them with a silver tray engraved with Mr. Kieffer's name and the dates of his deanship in Annapolis. 15 �The College enroll in theology with a view to using the pulpit as a platform to espouse their social and political convictions. With no time limit on preparation for academic degrees opportunities are opened for some to become what amounts to professional student revolutionaries. She heard of one woman, a revolutionary leader, who had been a member of the Student Council since 1958. ANNAPOLIS FACULTY ACTIVITIES Douglas Allanbrook recently signed a contract with the international music publishing firm of Boosey and Hawkes. The company will publish his "Four Orchestral Landscapes - Symphony No. 3" and "Forty Changes" this year. Mr. Allanbrook will be on sabbatical leave during 1969-1970. Gisela Berns became an American citizen on May 29, 1969. Mrs. Berns prepared for her citizenship examination by studying junior and senior ~eminar readings in The Constitution, The Federalist, Speeches of Lincoln, and the excellent textbook on American government by sometimes St. John's lecturer, Martin Diamond, The Democratic Republic (Rand McNally, 1966). Her witnesses were Tutor Emeritus Simon Kaplan and Tutor Robert Williamson. Mrs. Berns received her doctorate in classics and _philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Laurence Berns gave two lectures"Rational Animal-Political Animal," an analysis of the relation of nature and convention in speech and in politics, and "Piety in King Lear," under the auspices of the Graduate Program in Politics and Literature at the University of Dallas in March. He reports a lively question period followed - each lecture. Howard J. Fisher visited three public high schools, Evanston Township, Lake Forest, and Deerfield, and one preparatory school, Lake Forest Acad- ·emy, in the Chicago metropolitan area in the middle of May as part of the Faculty's effort to engage secondary school students' interest in the liberal arts. 16 Harvey Flaumenhaft was married to Mera Joan Oxenhorn on Sunday, May 18th, at Westbury Manor, Westbury, Long Island, New York. The ceremony was performed by Rabbi Oxenhorn, the bride's uncle. Mrs. Flaumenhaft is in the process of completing work for a doctorate in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Harry L. Golding presented an hour lecture on Friday, March 28th, at the College of Steubenville, Ohio, entitled Relativity Theory: An Introduction and Some Philosophical Aspects. TI1e lecture was sponsored by the philosophy department of the college. John S. Kieffer, retired dean of .the College in Annapolis, will be on sabbatical leave for 1969-1970. Samuel S. Kutler visited two public high schools, Edina and St. Louis Park, and three preparatory schools, Northfield Collegiate, Blake, and St. Paul Academy in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area in early May as part of the school visiting program. (See news item abont Howard J. Fisher.) Mr. Kutler taught thirteen classes and talked with faculty and guidance counselors. At a joint meeting of Blake and Northfield Collegiate he met about a hundred faculty members and their wives and spoke briefly on The Distinction Between Education and Training. A lively discussion period followed the lecture. He reports his most successful sessions were based on exploring sections of Plato's Meno with students. After getting the students to share Meno's perplexity about how to define excellence, reading and articulating his famous paradox about learning and analyzing the slave boy scene, it became evident to the students that mathematical arts, the ability to interpret myths and philosophical discipline were needed, all together, in order to begin to understand both the problem and the reading. Rosemary Lauer appeared at a forum entitled The Invisible Tyranny?-Academic Freedom and Theology in the Catholic University, on Tuesday, April 22nd, at Boston College. Barbara H. Leonard will spend five weeks in Ceylon and South India this summer. She will also visit Lady Doak College and American College in Madurai, South India, where she taught as a Fulbright Lecturer and Honorary Professor of Zoology in 1962-1963. Miss Ida Doraiswamy, tutor at St. John's in Annapolis in 1964-1966, is chairman of the mathematics department at Lady Doak College. Miss Leonard intends to visit some of the Greek islands on her return. J. Winfree Smitl1 will be on sabbatical leave during 1969-70. W. Kyle Smith, tutor emeritus, led two classes at the United States Naval Academy on the Brazilian novel Gabriela, Cloves and Cinnamon. He is preparing a study of Calvin's views on the ethics of war for a seminar in the philosophy of war, also at the Academy. Mr. Smiili is a member of the Board of Directors of the Westminster Foundation of Annapolis, an organization that is concerned with religious work among students in the Presbyterian churches in the United States. Mr. Smith has also been participating in ((Dialogue," a group composed of Negro and white Annapolitan citizens who are interested in improving race relations in their city. Robert L. Spaeth led a seminar for Oak Ridge, Tennessee, secondary school students on Thursday, March 27th, to exhibit the St. John's College seminar technique. Open to the public, the seminar centered on Volume One of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Mr. Spaeth's visit was part of an exchange program between Oak Ridge scientists and Annapolis and Santa Fe tutors. Two FRESHMEN LEAD GIRL SCOUT TROUP . Two freshmen girls at Santa Fe have helped a troop of Girl Scouts in the fifth grade of a local public school develop a special project in sign language for the deaf. Ann Miller of Lubbock, Texas, and Molly Porter of Shaker Heights, Ohio, �rnly 1969 encc. He also has been in charge of student programs working with underprivileged children in Santa Fe, patients at the State Mental Hospital, and inmates of the State Penitentiary. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a member of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association, and a Certified Clinical Psvchologist. STRINGFELLOW BARR LECTURES ON BOTH CAMPUSES Santa Fe graduates march into the Student Center auditorium for Commencement Exercises on Sunday, June 1st. (Photo by Karl Kernberger.) worked with the girls in learning to communicate with the signs and in a production of The Wizard of Oz carried out in sign language. Performances were given in town and at the State School for the Deaf, which is located in Santa Fe. Both Ann and Molly are "early-enrollment" students who came to St. John's after their junior year in high school. Ann, who had training in Scout leadership, conceived of the project after viewing a performance of the National Theatre of the Deaf. ACTIVITIES OF PRESIDENT WEIGLE ARE VARIED President Richard D. Weigle was invi ted to serve as a consultant to the Curriculum Revision Committee of the University of Notre Dame on Monday, May 19th. Teaching and administrative personnel at the university wished .to confer with Mr. 'Veigle regarding Notre Dame's optional liberal arts program, called the General Program of Liberal Studies. He was asked to discuss the educational ideals embodied in the St. John's curriculum. Mr. Weigle delivered a commencement address, "The Liberal Arts Col- lege: Anachronism or Paradigm," at T11e Colorado College on Monday, June 2nd. The college then granted Mr. Weigle an honorary doctor of laws degree. Our president also appeared on 'VBAL-FM radio on Saturday, May lOth, on a program entitled "Molly Martin Presents A Day In Annapolis." Miss Martin featured the city during a · thirteen-week series. Mr. Weigle discussed the uniqueness of the College curriculum as well as his background with the State Department and his service with the U.S. Army Air Force as a captain in China. Earlier during April a talk by Mr. 'Veigle was tape-recorded by the United States Information Agency for a "Voice of America" broadcast. TUTOR ELECTED HEAD OF THE STATE PsYCHOLOGICAL AssN. The New Mexico Psychological Association has elected tutor Stuart Boyd of St. John's as president for the coming year. Mr. Boyd has degrees in philosophy and psychology from Aberdeen University in Scotland. He has been a tutor at St. John's since 1966, teaching mathematics, French, and sci- Stringfellow Barr, eo-founder of the St. John's academic program and former president of the College, visited the Santa Fe campus on April 25th. His lecture on "The First World Revolution" attracted the largest crowd of the year and it was necessary to hold the discussion period in the dining hall to accommodate all the students and townspeople who came. _ Mr. Barr visited the Annapolis campus on ~/lay 2nd to lecture on "Socrates and the Multiversity." His lecture was the first given as part of the Scott Buchanan 1tlemoria1 Lectureship established in March, 1968, by friends, students and tutors in honor of the late former dean. The Conversation Room was filled to capacity by inquisitive students eager to converse with one of the founders of the program. JAMES I. GILBERT James I. Gilbert, artist-in-residence at the College in Annapolis, died Saturday, March 29th, at his home in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Mr. Gilbert was professor of lmmanities at the University of Chicago before joining the Faculty in 1962. His spirited presence on campus is sorely missed especially by the many students and townspeople who profited from his instruction and example in the Art Studio. A collection. of his paintings was presented at the galley in Santa Fe at the end of the school year. A similar collection is planned for showing in Annapolis in the fall. 17 �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES PROFILES: MEET OuR ALUMNI The Alumni Association of the College last fall completed a two-year study _of Alumni-College relations. Among the resulting recommendations was a suggestion that the College publicize more widely what its graduates are doing. Although the primary purpose of that suggestion was to bring together several different elements of our alumni body by introducing one to the other, .. such publicity might also help answer the oft-asked: "But what do your alumni do?" From time to time, then, the Profiles feature will appear in this section of The College. Ou; purpose will be to acquamt alumm With each other, and to. show those outside the "family" what so':'e ?f our graduates are doing with their hves. Our first two subiects are a college French te~cher and a research neur~Jogist who IS also a teacher. We thmk that you Will enJOY meetmg them. Morris A. Parslow, I945 18 Morris A. Parslow was born in Wil· liamston, Michigan, graduated from Muskegon High School, and attended Muskegon Junior College and Albion College before coming to St. John's. Like many who entered college in the late thirties and early forties, Mr. Parslow found his education interrupted by the war. As a result, he spenf almost two years on campus, served in the Army for three years, and returned to tile College in 1946. He received his bachelor's degree two years later. Following graduation, Parslow stud~jed in France for two years, first at the University of Grenoble, then at the University of Strasbourg. In 1950 he entered graduate study at Princeton University as a junior fellow in romance languages. The following year he became a Herbert Montgomery Bergen Fellow in modern languages and received his M.A. degree in French in 1952. Continuing with the study of French at Princeton, he earned the Ph.D. degree in 1954. Parslow started his teaching career while still at St. John's as a student _tutq.r during his senior year. While at Princeton he was a teaching assistant, and from 1953 to 1959 he was first an instructor and then an assistant pro~ fessor at the University of Chicago. In 1959 he became an associate professor at the State University of New York, Long Island Center. He has been at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, since 1962, and is curren.tly a professor of French. MF. Parslow is married to the former Michele Milliat of Grenoble, France. With their three sons imd a daughter they make their home in Grinnell. Mr. Parslow's brother Robert, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, is a 1951 graduate of the College. Our second Profiles subject, Henry B. Higman, was born in Millington on Maryland's Eastern Shore. After graduation from Millington High School he came to St. John's in the fall of 1944. Like Mr. Parslow, he found his college interrupted by the war; his graduation cum laude occurred in 1950, as of the Class of 1948. I·Iigman continued his schooling first at the University of Delaware for a summer, and then as a pre-medical student at the University of Maryland during 1950-1951. He entered Maryland's Medical School in 1951, and received his M.D. degree four years later. The new doctor interned for one year at the Delaware Hospital in Wilmington, and then spent three years' residency in neurology at the Charity Hospital of Louisiana. During the period 1959-1962, Dr. Higman held a special training fellowship in neurochemistry at the National Institutes of Health, and was a research fellow in biochemistry at Columbia University. Higman spent the next two years- as an instructor in neurology at the Lo.uisiana State University Medical School, Henry B. Higman, 1948 �July 1969 then four years as an associate professor of neurology at the University of Illinois Medical School. While at Illinois he was also attending neurologist at Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. In 1968 Dr. Higman moved to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as professor and first chairman of the then-new Department of Neurology, the p'osition he holds today. A frequent contributor to professional journals, Higman's articles reflect his special rese-arch interest in the chemical basis of neural transmission. He is a member of the U. S. Public Health Service Advisory Committee on Neurological Training, as well as a member of several medical organizations. Dr. Higman lives with his wife and four children-two boys and two girls -in Upper St. Clair Township, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Higman is the former Betty Jean Rusteberg of Annapolis, sister of A. Irwin Rustebcrg of the Class of 1930. AWARD OF MERIT The Alumni Award of Merit, first awarded in 1950, may be awarded annually at the discretion of the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association. The Award is made to an alumnus for ~~distinguished and meritorious service to the United States or to his native State or to St. John's College, or for outstanding achievement within his chosen field." Association President Darrell L. Henry asks that confidential letters of nomination be submitted to him no later than August 29th. Letters may be sent to Mr. Henry at the Alumni Office at the College. Each letter should contain sufficient information about the nominee to permit thorough evaluation by the Board of Directors. Previous recipients of the Award have been: 1950 Amos Francis Hutchins, M.D. 1951 John Vincent Jamison 1952 Lynde Dupuy McCormick 1953 Robert Otis Jones '06 '05 '13 '16 1954 John Triplett Harrison '07 1955 William Lentz '12 1956 Thomas Farran, M.D. 'll 1957 Thomas Bourne Turner, M.D. '21 1958 Walter Scott Baird '30 1959 William Childs Purnell '23 1960 J. Ogle Warfield, Jr., M.D. '19 1961 Robert Franklin Duer, Jr. '21 1962 Richard Herman Hodgson '06 1963 No award made 1964 C. Carey Jarman '17 1965 William Cranmer Baxter '23 1966 John Charles Donohue '35 1967 John Wesley Noble '17 1968 George M. Gclston '35 HOMECOMING Make your plans now to attend Homecoming on October 17th and 18th. There is no Navy football game in town that weekend, so plan to stay overnight. Classes with numerals ending in 9, plus '44, are encouraged to hold their reunions that weekend. The feature event will be the dedication on Saturday afternoon of the new library building, Woodward Hall. In addition, the Board of Visitors and Governors is meeting in Annapolis on Saturday, so here is a chance to meet and talk with the governing body of the College. VVe hope to have the Homecoming Dinner in the gymnasium, so that the faculty and the senior class can be included. To our knowledge, this will be the first time that alumni, faculty and seniors have all attended the dinner. It should be a great step toward making Homecoming a com1nunity affair. Tentative Schedule: Friday, October 17th: Afternoon: Alumni Seminars Night: Lecture or Concert Afternoon: Alumni Annual Business Meeting. (Board of Visitors and Governors meeting.) Dedication of Woodward Hall; tour of building. Evening: Reception, Alumni, Faculty, Seniors, Board members, and special guests. Night: Dinner for Alumni, Faculty, Seniors, and Board. Dance, entire community. PICTURE We received quite a response from the "old timers" to the back cover picture in our April issue. Even a current student was among those who helped identify the thin-clad stalwarts: he knew Louis Clark from St. Paul's School. Our sincere thanks to H. Monroe Helm '25, A. M. Cunningham '26, Louis D. Clark '27, Frank H. Kaplan '29, Ralph S. Guth and R. Ellis Mitchell '30, James W. Crabbe and Robert G. Woodman '32, and Edward E. Gray '34. Congratulations to Mitchell and Kaplan who identified all seven men correctly. The picture is of the varsity track team of 1927, and appeared in the 1928 Rat-Tat. From left to right: William J. Humphreys '27, team captain; Thomas Van Clagett, Jr. '30 (deceased); Lawrence M. Taylor, Jr. '29 (deceased); Frank H. Kaplan '29; Louis D. Clark '27; Rev. Charles M. Robinson '29; and E. Rochester Bryant '27, team manager (deceased). The mile relay team of Humphreys, Clark, Clagett, and Robinson won the Small College Championship of Maryland in 1927, and finished third in a field of seventeen colleges in the Penn Relays in Philadelphia. Saturday, October 18th: Morning: Alumni-Student discussion on Graduate Schools. (Board of Visitors and Governors meeting.) Noon: Buffet luncheon. CHARTER FLIGHT Interested in a trip to Switzerland? Or to anywhere in Europe or the Mediterranean? We may have just the trip you have been waiting for. The Alumni Office is investigating 19 �The College the feasibility of sponsoring a charter flight late next winter (to take advantage of lowest rates). For a group of 75 alumni (wives and children are also eligible), the individual roundtrip fare via DC-8 jet will be about $156. How can you afford to stay at home? The group will fly from Baltimore to Zurich and Geneva, and will return from those cities two weeks later. From Geneva those who wish to go further south can obtain excellent connections. The fare covers the specified flights to and from Europe only. A complete announcement, with a reservation form, will be sent during the summer. Think of the fun you can have touring, skiing, or just sitting in the sun. Make your plans now to join the St. John's College Alumni Charter. ALUMNI DELEGATES Again this year, St. John's College was invited to inaugurals, dedications, and convocations at other institutions. Mr. Weigle attended two inaugurals himself: that of Edward M. Levi as president of the University of Chicago, and that of John J. Pruis as president of Ball State University. Alumni were invited to represent the College at other ceremonies. We are grateful for the willingness with which they responded. - These alumni represented the College at the following ceremonies: S. Paul Schi11ing '23, the inauguration of Morris B. Abram as president of Brandeis University, October 6; John ")<inlocb '47, the inauguration of James R. Lawson as president of The Fisk University, October 6; J. Jeremy Bodine '63, the inauguration of TI1codore D. Lockwood as president of Trinity College, October 12; The Honorable f Dudley Digges '33, the dedication of the I'lew campus of the Charles County Community College, October 12; Stephen W. Ber--gen '45, the inauguration of George I-I. Wil1iams as president of The American University, October 16; Alfred Geier '54, dedication of the i1ew campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology, October 19; T. Lansdale Hill '41, the inauguration of the Very Reverend Thomas D. Terry, S.J ., as president of the University of Santa Clara, October 24; Walter Schatzberg '52, the 125th anniversary convocation of the College of the Holy Cross, October 26; John D. Alexander, Jr. '53, dedication of new buildings at Towson State College, November 2; Willimn A. Darkey '4 2, the inauguration of Ferrel Heady as president of the University of New Mexico, November 9; Jerome D. Goodman '34, dedication of the new campus of Bentley College, November 11; Pasquale L. Polillo '56, the inauguration of the Vezy Reverend Terrance Toland, S.J., as president of St. Joseph's College, November 14; Edwin F. Heinen '39, the inauguration of Allyn P. Robinson as president of Dowling College, February 2; Herbert K. Mohn, Jr. '68, the inauguration of Robert S. Eckley as president of Illinois Wesleyan University, March 22; John \V. Boud1er '29, inauguration of Kermit A. Johnson as president of Alabama College, March 25; Neal R. Gross '65, dedication of Herbert I-I. Lehman College of the City University of New York, and the inauguration of Leonard Lei£ as first president, March 28; George 0. Kunkle, Jr. '62, the Centennial convocation and inauguration of Vivian W. Henderson as president of Clark College, April 19; Mrs. William Aston '55, the inauguration of James A. Butcher as president of Shepherd College, April 19; John D. Mack '45, the dedication of the Elizabeth Seaton Library of the College of Mount Saint Vincent, April 19; Joseph C. Hofmann, Jr. '42, the inauguration of Ronald G. Weber as president Of Mount Union College, April 25; Charles J. Kibler '36, the inauguration of John A. Fincher as president of Carson-Newman College, April 29; William J. King '38, the inauguration of William H. Wagoner as president of Wilmington College, May 1; Midmel C. Keane '45, inauguration of Herbert Schueler as president of Richmond College of the City University Of New York, May 9. CLASS NOTES Lloyd F. Taylor, 1939 High School's first lacrosse team, Gen. Gelston played at St. John's and later helped coach at Boy's Latin School 1936 George T. \Vingate in March was named to the newly-created position of coordinator of government activities for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company's Chemical Division. Mr. Wingate wi11 remain in "\Vashington, D.C., where he has been since joining the company nine years ago. 1938 1912 Philip L. Algei was honored by the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady, N.Y., recently when he received the Charles Proteus Steinmetz award for outsto·mding community service. The award cited Mr. Alger's \Vork with the Freedom Forum, United World Federalists, and the Citizens League, as well as with local civic organizations. We can also report the publication of a new book co-edited by 1vir. Alger, The Life and Times of Gabriel Kron, and the publication of the sccorid edition of his Mathematics for Science and Engineeri11g. 1927 Elmer M. Jackson, Jr., has been awarded the Maryland Librazy Association's Trustee' Citation for 1968, in recognition of his "distinguished leadership" in the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Library Association, 1932 Richard F. Blaul has been elected president of the Anne Arundel County YMCA for 1969. Mr. Blaul recently also assumed chairmanship of the Annapolis committee of the "Friends of St. John's." 1935 Major General George M. Gelston, Adjutant General of Mazyland, was co-chairman {with Senator Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland) of the first Lacrosse Heroes Banquet on June 6 in Baltimore. In addition to playing on Towson A note froq1 R. Cresap Davis, too late for the last issue, .reveals that he has left his fu11 time law practice in Annapolis, and is now on the faculty of Frederick Community College. In addition to teaching a variety of legal and business courses, 1\!Ir. Davis maintains a 1a·.v practice in Hagerstown. James L. McCully was recently appointed to a two year term as chairman of the Board of License Commissioners of the Baltimore City Liquor Board. Jobn C. \Vagner \vtitcs that he is a metallurgist with the U.S. Army Systems Command in St. Louis, Mo. He works with materials selection and failure analysis in connection with Anny aircraft. 1939 Frederick R. Buck has become president of the Title Guarantee Company of Baltimore. Richard \XI. Snibhe, an architect in New Yark City for 28 years, has been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. Such election is a lifetime honor bestowed on members \vho have contributed notably to the advancement of the profession of architecture. L1oyd F. Taylor in TVIarch was elected president of Standard Kollman Industries, Inc., after six years as president of one of the corp·oration's principal subsidiaries, Casco Products Corporation. Standard Kollman is a diversified manufacturer of aircraft instruments, optical equipment, automotive accessories, and elec;;L( ') )\ 20 �July 1969 tronic components. Mr. Taylor and his wife live in Bridgeport, Conn. 1947 The Rev. Samuel B. Bird, Jr. became rector of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Pelham, N.Y. in March. Prior to moving to Pelham, Father Bird was for seven years rector of the Church of the Resurrection in Ilopewe11 Junction, N.Y. 1950 In February, \V. Bernard Ficisclunann, head of the comparative literature program at the University of Massachusetts, gave a series of six lectures (one delivered in German) at the University of Tulsa. Mr. Fleischmann is an ·alumni representative on the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College. 1953 Glenn Yarbrough continues to make news across the country with his popular college concerts and his recordings. He recently recorded a number of songs by poet and composer Rod McKuen, his partner in a recording firm. In addition to his wide-ranging interests in boating, mus~c, and the col1ege generation, Mr. Yarbrough ts deeply involved in founding an experimental school for orphans near Lake Hcmett, California. 1960 Carol Haynie writes that she is in her tenth year of teaching, currently in the Lodi California Unified School District. She teaches a combined first and second grade, and believes that St. John's "did a wonderful job" of preparing her for teaching. John R. Jacobson, for the past year an officer in the division of Continuing Education of_ the State University of New York, Albany, wlll become the executive director of the Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area this summer. The Association is composed of eight colleges, and is concerned with cooperative programs between the colleges. 1961 Stephen Morrow is bureau manager for United Press International in Baltimore. . Ha~rison Sheppard writes that on April 24 hts wtfe Joy presented him with a baby boy, their first child, Justin Andrew Sheppard. Mr. Sheppard, formerly with the Justice Department, is now Attorney Advisor to Federal Trade Commissioner Philip Elman. 1962 Judith Mary Levine and magazine cartoonist Mort Gerberg were married on February 1 in New York City. Mrs. Gerberg completed her undergraduate work at Columbia University, and holds an M.A. degree in art from New York University. The couple reside in Greenwich Village. 1964 Sara (Hobart) Homeyer writes that husband Charles will enter the military service at (, :;; Three members of the Class of 193 5 meet at the sixth Annual Scholar-Athlete Award Dinner in Baltimore. Left to right a~e: Major Gcner_al George M. Gelston, Adjutant General of Maryland; John C. Donohue, co-chauman of the Dmner; and Colonel James L. Hays, III, director of Selective Service for Maryland. The Dinner is co-sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Chapter of the National Football .Foundation and Hall of Fame, and the Quarterback Club of Baltimore. (Plwto by Chuck Hickey.) an early date. She and son Peter will visit with grandparents until Charles is settled. 1966 The engagement of Richard F. Fielding and Miss Sara E. Melzer was announced in April, with a July wedding planned. Mr. Fielding is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Carole (Picarda) Kelley writes that she and Loren '67 are "alive and well and in Italy," where he works for an American company on a contract with the Olivetti Corporation. Mrs. Kelley says that it is an interesting experience to set up housekeeping in a t0\\'11 where noone speaks English. The Kelleys live in an old stone house in Ivrea, in the Italian Alps, and may be reached c/o Olivetti D.S.I., 10015 Ivrea, Italy. Peter Morosoff, lst Lieutenant, :Marine Corps, was wounded in Vietnam February 25., by grenades when North Vietnamese soldiers overran a hill being held by Marines three miles below the Demilitarized Zone. Hospitalized- for two weeks in Vietnam and .two weeks in Yokosuka, Japan, he was taken to St. Alban's Naval Hospital in New York City. He visited the College May 21 enroute to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where he will be an artillery officer with the Second Marine Division. 1967 Arthur Kungle, Jr., is employed by the Air Quality Control Sec-tion, Division of Environmental Services, Anne Arundel County Health Department. 1968 Donald A. Booth, a visitor to the campus in April, has completed Navy officer training and as of that time, was training in submarines in ,q New London, Conn. Todd Everett (SF) is now free-lancing in Los Angeles. Antigone G. Phalares (SF) taught second and third grades in Tanana, Alaska, this past year. Tanana, about 100 miles northwest of Fairbanks along the Yukon River, has a large Indian population. Miss Phalares, in proper Alaskan spirit, entered and placed second in the 1969 Tanana Winter Carnival Chcechako Dog Race. (For those not raised on Jack London, a cheechako is a tenderfoot in Alaska.) Jonathan Sinnreich and Masha Zager '70 married on December 29, 1968, in New York City. Susan Turnbull (SF) and Eleftherios Zagoras were married last November in Los Angeles. TI1e couple are now living in Athens, Greece, where Mr. Zagoras is with Olympic Airlines. Frederick R. Wicks (SF), who came to St. John's from Alaska, is another alumnus now teaching there. He teaches third and fourth grades in Nondalton, an Indian town about 175 miles southwest of Anchorage. Mr. Wicks plans to enter the Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian-Universalist) in Berkeley, California, this coming fall. t-"i ~----------------~ In Memoriam "'1(}W~NEwTON B. CoLLINSON, Edgewater, Md., April 14, 1969. ,.,.-191-5-HERBERT E. Ju:rvrP, Easton, Md., April !6, !969. ·19"3"7-REV. CHRISTIAN NEUJviANN, Ellicott City, Md., May !6, !969. �Woodward Hall, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland (Photo by Tomatsu Nakata) e College John's College lapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 20 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1969 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXI, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1969. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_21_No_2_1969 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 Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/047da1f8cff6a089b928a3048f257333.pdf 807999648394c93e3a0d3cba87d1f7ae PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico September 1969 \._ l ' ~~ .,._- SPECIAL ISSUE: PRESIDENT'S REPORT �The College Cover: Line conversion of Richard D. \Vcigle (Photo by Bill Johnson, Den''er Post). Inside front cover: i\ k Dowell Hall. The annual Report of the President comprises a major part of this issue of The College. The new format seems particularly appropriate for this, the twentieth anniversary report of President \ V cigk, an cl permits a general review of the past two decades as well as a more detailed report of the year just ended. T'he editors are pleased that the President chose the new magazine as the ,-chicle for this landmark report. The staff of the magazine acknowledges receipt of several manuscripts for possible publication, and hopes to begin the "Question Period" feature in the December issue. Your criticisms arc welcomed. (Eds.) J\ fanaging Editor: I\Iary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant : Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71 The College is published by the De,·elopment Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg, Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (Frank McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John 's College, Richard D. Weigle. Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. Vol. XXI September 1969 No. 3 In the September Issue: The Liberal Arts College: Anachronism or Paradigm, by Richard D. \Veigle ....... . 1 The Report of the President 4 News on the Campuses . . 12A Alumni Activities . 12F Twenty Years in Retrospect . 13 Scenes At The College 24 �The Liberal Arts College: Anachronism or Paradigm Commencement Address, The Colorado College, June 2, 1969 By RICHARD D. WEIGLE 'y These are parlous times for the independent liberal arts college. Harbingers of gloom and other Cassandras freely prediot the probable demise of this allegedly anachronistic institution upon the American educational scene. The Darwinian thesis of the survival of the fittest is the ground for such pessimism. How indeed can these relatively small and impecunious colleges withstand the competitive pressures of the giant public and private multiversities and the myriad state normal schools, now respectably redesignated and r.estructured? And what about the epidemic of junior and community colleges now breaking out in every state? \Vith ready access to the public purse, tax-supported institutions bid for students with minimal tuitions and for teachers with enticing emoluments. What hope is there for the traditional liberal arts college, which dominated American higher education until only a few decades ago? As we explore the question of whether the free-standing liberal arts college has outlived its usefulness and los t its relevance, let us go back to the Latin word conlegium or collegium. The root word here is legere, meaning "to choose, to pick, to collect, or to gather together." There is a close connection here to the word collega, "one chosen at the same time," that is, a colleague. A collegium is therefore a group of persons united in colleagueship, a guild, a corporation, or a college. History shows that the word collegium was first applied to hostels for poor students. Apparently the cathedral chapter of Paris established the first college around the vear 1180. It was called The College of the Eighteen. The Sorbonne in Paris; Balliol, Merton, and University Colleges of Oxford; and Peterhouse College at Cambridge followed in the mid-thirteenth centurv. On the Continent the university tended to absorb th~se colleges, but in England the colleges dominated the universities instead. They often provided complete curricula and became teaching institutions rather than simple hostels. It was the British College which provided the model for the young American colleges of the 17th and 18th centuries. Harvard, the first, was started in 1636 under Congregational Church auspices. Its founders were large1 ly Cambridge men from Emmanuel College. Most early American colleges began under church sponsorship. The Episcopalians were involved in founding William and Mary in 1693, the Congregationalists in opening "The Collegiate School" in 1701, later to become Yale. The Presbyterians brought Princeton into being in 1746, and the College of Rhode Island, the forerunner of Brown University, was founded by the Baptists in 1765. Of the 182 colleges which had been born prior to the War between the States, only one in nine was a public institution. The modern university with its correlative emphases upon teaching and research has been a more recent <level: opment. Here the pattern tended to be that of the German university, dating back to the creation of the University of Berlin in 1810. This type of institution came into being in the United States (in the latter part of the 19th century) in places like the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago. Harvard, Yale, and other institutions which had begun as colleges became universities as they added graduate work, oftentimes in areas which had long been considered too technical and too utilitarian for the intellectual life of the scholar. A landmark in American educational history was of course the introduction of the electiv.e system into the undergraduate curriculum by President Eliot of Harvard at the turn of the century. The old liberal arts curriculum built around the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy thus yielded to a wide range of subjects, many of them avowedly illiberal and often highly specialized. It may be well at this point to ask ourselves what we understand by the liberal arts, which should be the hallmark of the liberal arts college. The Greek word for such an art is nxv'l, from which the English word "technique" and "technical" are derived. Liberal arts are therefore liberal or liberating skills, skills of the mind. The primary function of these liberal arts or skills has been to mediate man's understanding and to give conscious form to knowledge. In contemporary terms man uses words, or verbal symbols, as he practices such liberal arts as analyz- I �The College ing, thinking, writing, speaking, and deciding. By the same token he uses a set of mathematical symbols as he practices such liberal arts as counting, measuring, deducing, experimenting, and demonstrating. If I may be pardoned one quotation, a paragraph from the Catalogue of your young sister institution in New Mexico seems to state the case rather we11: Knowledge advances and the fundamental outlook of man may change over the centuries, but these arts of understanding remain in one form or another indispensable. They enable men to win knowledge of the world around them and knowledge of themselves in this world and to use that knowledge with wisdom. Under their guidance men can free themselves from the wantonness of prejudice and the narrowness of beaten paths. Under their discipline men can acquire the habit of listening to reason. A genuinely conceived liberal arts curriculum cannot avoid aiming at these most farreaching of a11 human goals. And now let us return to the word "co11ege." The Oxford English Dictionary offers several definitions. A co11ege is termed "an organized society of per~is performing certain common functions and possessing certain rights and privileges, a body of co11eagues, a guild, a fc11owship." I pass over one definition which suggests that a co11ege "often combines, in its original character, the functions of a local charity for the aged, eleemosynary education for the young." It is unlikely that either hard working professors, on the one hand, or high tuitionpaying students, on the other, would appreciate such a definition. It is safer to understand the co11ege as "a society of s~holars formed for the purpose of study and instruction." It is my contention and my faith that the fundamental concept of the liberal arts college is sti11 valid and relevant, and that such a college can indeed provide a paradigm for American education. But there are necessary conditions. The liberal arts co11ege must be true to itself. It must commit itself to its own distinctive program, and it must practice this with integrity. It must not attempt to be a11 things to all men, nor may it seek with impunity to be an inadequate replica of the universality. Its competitive position depends, not upon its similarity to other institutions, but rather upon its uniqueness. All of this means that the liberal arts co11ege must constantly resist pressures, even well-meaning ones, to alter its program. Alumni, the general public, the government, and even the faculty and the students, may exert such pressures. I am not suggesting that the liberal arts co11ege remain static and stagnant. Far from it! My only concern is that such change foster, rather than impede, the liberal learning which should animate the entire institution. In the United States we are fortunate to have a wide range of colleges and universities. The diversity of our institutions of higher education has indeed been a source 2 of strength and vigor m this country. This situation should continue. Without trying to establish any single pattern for our liberal arts co11eges, I would like to set down certain desiderata which might we11 make this particular type of coll.ege more of a paradigm for the education of young men and women over the four years fo11owing their seventeenth or eighteenth birthday. First, the liberal arts co11ege should be a one-purpose institution. Its objective should be the best possible liberal education of undergraduates. Any compromise with vocational and pre-professional training is hazardous, for experience seems to indicate that the camel has a way of moving into the tent. It goes without saying that the liberal arts co11ege should rarely offer graduate work, for it will divert faculty talent and it will prove an expensive appendage. Second, the curriculum ought to be limited in scope and imaginatively conceived. Granted that few faculties or administrators would agree with the St. John's purist position of no electives and no majors, I would propose the next best alternative, a relatively sma11 number of majors with minimum quantitative requirements in each. At the same time I would encourage the offering of such courses as would devdop the ski11s of the student in both the great system of symbols which man has developed and refined-words, on the one hand, and numbers, signs, figures and formulas, on the other. No man or woman is libera11y educated without benig conversant with both. Where possible, I would urge faculties to stress relationships and connections between areas, fields, and courses. T'he primary criterion for the inclusion of any course in the curriculum should be its contribution to developing the thinking skills of the student, not the information to be imparted. Facts are always accessible in any good library. Third, the liberal arts co11ege should concentrate on good teaching. Its faculty members should not be under any compunction to do research or to publish. These are President Weigle receives honorary doctor of laws degree at commencement exercises of The Colorado College, June, 1969 (Photo by Knut- son-Bowers.) �September 1969 functions of th~ university._ Nor should consultantships assignments distract faculty members from thcu pnmary opportunity of classroom teaching. I submit th~t any_ teacher can remain intellectually alive by broadenmg himself through exploring new fields and thus r~discovering. unsuspe~ted implications for his own specialty. He will find his colleagues and his students constant sources of stimulus. Ideallv, he will eschew the lectun:; in class for discussion and clialectic. Only as students and t~acher bot~ participate in questioning, searching, proposmg, analyzmg, and defending will the best liberal teaching a~d learning take place. Parenthetically, I might add that JUSt. a_s the .teacher is not to be diverted by extraneous activity, neither should the student be. Extracurricular engagement, athletic, social or governmental, must never usurp the interest and attention of any studcn t, else the teaching at the liberal arts college has surely failed. A fourth consideration is size. The liberal arts college should be content to remain small and should resist the temptation to grow. ~here is a story that most college presidents, when quest10ned as to the ideal size for their institt~tion, will pr~pose an enrollment 100 larger than then m effect. Addmg a hundred tuition fees is no solution ~o ~ny college's financial dilemma. For a good college 1t simply creates ,t he need for one or two million doll.ars mor~ in endowment. Careful study will determine optmmm size for any liberal arts college from a financial point of view. But even more important is preservation of the sense of community, which is one of the liberal art~ co~leg~'s great.est assets. We are already reaping the \vlurlwmd m certam of our larger institutions where computers and gigantic lecture courses have robbed the studen~ of any feeling that he matters as a person. In the small liberal arts college communicating is possible among students, faculty members, and those much maligned but very necessary characters unhappily known as administrators. A final and most important consideration is independence of action. The liberal arts college can be free of political pressures. Its board of trustees can guarantee responsible academic freedom. Its facultv can be encouraged to ex~eriment wi~h new teaching techniques or new sequences m the cumculum. Its students ,exercise their freedom to study and to learn, with full assurance that the ~aculty and the administration care and that they are mdeed the only reason for the college's existence. Undergraduate education at the liberal arts college under these ~onditions should strongly appeal to faculty and students m other colleges and universities. Should the liberal arts college succeed in what I have proposed _for it-undeviating adherence to its single purpose o~ liberal education, limiting the curriculum, concentratmg on effective teaching, preserving smallness and a real sense of community, and maintaining independence of thought and action-it will indeed become the paraan~ ov~rseas digm to be emulated by other institutions. Witness already the movement in large universities to create small undergraduate colleges within them-the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California and Justin Morrill College of Michigan State University. But the real and lasting effects flowing from a rededication of the liberal arts college to its original commitment will be the influences upon the individual student. You, the members of the Class of 1969 of The Colorado College, stand before us today having completed four yea~s in a liberal arts college. The faculty, the administrative staff, the board, the alumni, and the friends of the liberal arts college have sought to provide you with a place and the conditions where real learning can take p!ace. As we all know, such learning is a highly individual matter. Whether each of you has succeeded in these four years _is not attested to by the diploma you are about to receive, but rather by your own quiet assessment of how well you meet certain criteria which measure a liberal education. Is your mind keener, more imaginative and more versatile as a result of your college experience? Is it simply a storehouse of rapidly disappearing facts, or is it a tool which you can employ with joy and confidence in the years that lie ahead? Are you aware of the tradition in which vou stand and can you therefore live with some perspective of history? Too many people today are ignorant of the minutes of ~he previous meetings. They live in the here and now, an isolated and lonely ,existence, as compared to the richness of man's accumulated heritage. Have yo~ confronted and honestly sought answers to the pers1stmg and baffiing questions of man's existence and his relation to his fellows, to the world around him ~nd to .the divine Force which must have brought him mto bemg, ~ave you the:efore discovered or developed a personal philosophy of hfe that will make living meaningful and satisfying? Finally, do you respect reason and do you have confidence that dialectic-reasonable conversation and communication between rational men and women-can arrive at solutions to problems and can approach the attainment of truth? Eristic-the art of disputation or fighting with words-seems currently fashionable, whether in a tirade fr~m Peking or a confrontation on a college campus. History demonstrates that it is a totally inadequate substitute for dialectic and for reason. · Members of the Class of 1969, I salute you and wish you well as you continue the lifelong process of education. I hope that your four years in college enable you to share my ~onviction tha~ the liberal arts college is hardly archaic and my faith that it can and will provide a paradigm for the future. Richard . D. \Veigle has been President of St. John's College m Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 1949. 3 �The College The Report of the President 1968-1969 Twenty years ago today this Board elected me to the presidency of St. John's College. The prospect was both sobering and challenging to this young college teacher temporarily turned State Department official. St. John's was beset with long-standing debt, aging buildings, and administrative turmoil. Enrollment was declining; regional accreditation had just been denied. But the educational ideas which had produced the St. John's Program were eminently sound. Given the assets of the Program, it seemed that the College must succeed. Now in 1969 St. John 's College stands on firm ground. It has achieved a high degree of administrative and financial stability. The curriculum has evolved into an ever more effective vehicle for the liberal education of both tutors and students. Many promising young teachers have been added to the Faculty. Antiquated buildings have been renovated and new structures added, without detracting from the traditional atmosphere of a colonial college. A sizable endowment has been established. But the most significant development has been the creation of a second St. John's College in Santa Fe. Here an entire new campus has been constructed, with the Annapolis college as a model for curriculum, for teaching techniques, for administrative organization, and for physical facilities. St. John's is, therefore, now two colleges. This fall over 600 students will be enrolled, three times as many as in 1949. Yet the essential character . of the learning experience at St. John's will not have changed. This Board can be justly proud of what it has accomplished in the brief span of two decades. The quality of a St. John's education and the unique plan for expansion through duplication have justly earned national recognition for this college of ours. As you are well aware, the college or university presidency has become a hazardous and precarious post in recent years. The problems facing most presidents still include the traditional ones of faculty recruitment and retention, student nurture and governance, alumni and community relations, state and federal grants, and omnipresent deficits. But a new and profoundly disturbing dimension has been added. A militant and impatient 4 minority of students and junior faculty members have forsaken the means of reason and dialectic and adopted instead the tactics of confrontation, demands, occupation, and force. Presidential casualties have been heavy under harassment, with concomitant faculty vacillation. One of my colleagues suffered a fatal heart attack; numbers have resigned, several from prestigious universities. It is no secret that college and university boards of trustees are now seeking candidates to fill over two hundred presidential vacancies. In contrast to the unrest and disturbances at many other institutions, St. John's College has exhibited over these two decades a remarkable fidelity to its single purpose, an enviable sense of community, and a high degree of accomplishment. During this period -St. John's has in effect been a pilot college demonstrating the effectiveness of educational concepts and ideas which might prove salutary in meeting problems on other campuses. Certain of these principles are here delineated. First, St. John's College has steadfastly adhered to the concept of smallness. It believes that one of its missions is to provide a truly intimate learning community for those young' men and women most likely to profit from it. The College recognizes , that there is no magic in any particular number, but it has held that the nature of the institution would change if enrollments were to grow by even relatively small annual increments. Consequently, St. John's met the problem of expansion in 1964 by the unique method of mitosis. The small college in the mountains of New Mexico may well be a forerunner of other small St. John'ses as yet unborn in various parts of the United States. The faculty and the administrators of St. John's College take vigorous exception to the view that a college must be judged in quantitative terms ap d that the size of a college should be determined only by factors of efficiency of operation. Instead, they believe that learning is an intensely personal experience and that it occurs in each individual as he reacts to his environment and to his opportunities for personal interplay with those around him, both his teachers and his fellow students. The wisdom of the St. John's position is now borne �September 1969 out by the efforts of large universities to break themselves down into small residential colleges of the approximate size of St. John's. A second important tenet of the St. John's philosophy of education is that students should participate fully in their own education. The seminar and the tutorial have proved to be unusually efficacious in achieving one of the College's main goals, that of developing the student's ability to think. Dialectic, courteous and reasonable conversation, both inside and outside the classroom, seeks to approach the truth. Students learn the fine art of listening, an art widely lacking and much needed in this world of conflicting special interests, of lobbying, and of confrontations. In contrast to the passive attitudes of students in large lecture courses, the St. Joh n's student is encouraged to state his own opinions about subjects under discussion in the classroom. He is required to affirm his premises, to meet the reasonable objections of his colleagues, and to reach a reasoned position as a basis for action. It seems clear to me that the failure of the large institutions to involve the student in an active classroom situation is one of the roots of the current discontent which has manifested itself so unhappily on many campuses. A third principle of St. John's College is the conviction that firsthand acquaintanceship with their Western heritage is a prerequisite for young men and women in this or any other. period of time. To be ignorant of what the best minds have thought and written on the wide range of questions and problems which have confronted men over the centuries, is to impoverish one's existence. In all ages men have pondered their relationship with each other, their place in the natural order of the universe, and their relationship to a divine being. They have confronted the problems of the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the ruler and the ruled, the just and the unjust. The basic themes persist, regardless of changing circumstances. A dialogue of Plato, a Shakespearean play, or a political treatise by Alexis de Tocqueville often provides unsuspected perspective on matters of immediate concern to present generations. The relevance of such books to the world today is soon apparent to the student. In seeking to understand them he discovers more abiding principles than he would find in a series of elective courses on current problems. Still another fundamental concept to which the College has adhered over the years is that all students should be literate in the mathematics and th~ sciences, as well as in the humanities. Publication of C. P. Snow's book ,Thc Two Worlds and the uncomfortable advent of Sputnik simply confirmed St. John's College in the course which it had chosen to follow in 1937. Unfortunately, our colleges and universities have thus far failed miserably to make the scientist more humane or the humanist more conversant with the sciences. In the closing third of the twentieth century, every intelligent citizen should have enough exposure to the world of science to comprehend both governmental and private developments in this ever-expanding sphere of activity. Finally, St. John's College has adhered steadfastly and single-mindedly to its basic commitment to liberal education. Here it has more than justified David Boroff's designation of it as "the very archetype of liberal education, the pure thing." In the absence of departments and major areas of concentration students do not undertake their studies as a means to a vocational end. Instead, learning becomes a pleasure in itself. Reading, studying, discussing, writing, .e xperimenting, and demonstrating are undertaken because they themselves are found to be both satisfying and stimulating. If St. John's succeeds iJ?. imparting the joy of learning to a young man or woman it will have importantly shaped the rest of his life. Two small St. John's Colleges can never exert the impact which they deserve to upon American higher education. Yet the very presence of these small communities of learning has been a proverbial mustard s.eed, and the Board should not discount the influence which it has exerted. In more than one instance actions taken by St. John's College have subsequently been followed by larger sister institutions. The decision to admit women in 1951 seemed almost sacrilegious at a college which had been exclusively male since 1696. Now nearly two decades 5 �The College later, the trend. toward coeducation among even Ivy League colleg~s ~s pronoll:nced. During my Chairmanship of the Commiss10n on Liberal Education of the Association of American Colleges, intellectual life conferences fam~liarized college presidents and deans with St. John's semmars and caused them to introduce such seminars on ~heir ~o~e campuses. In 1965 the Peace Corps revamped its trammg program for volunteers using as a model the St. John's seminar. Finally, mention should be made of the College's impact upon public education through the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education on the Santa Fe campus. Here teachers, many of them from inner-core city schools or from schools in rural areas, <discover for the first time the Western tradition in which they stand and the effectiveness of the teaching techniques in seminars and tutorials. Elsewhere I have sought to summarize the major developments at St. John's from 1949 to the present. There I have delineated the major changes in the academic progra~1,. the building of a faculty and a student body, the additions. to the College's resources, and its major involvements with the marketplace, the world outside its walls . I am convinced that the education which St. John's College provides has never been more relevant or more necessary than it is today. If the conflicting demands of the various segment3 of this nation's population are to be reconciled and if consideration and reason rather than confrontation and force are to prevail, students must be offered a liberal education, one which meets their deepest needs rather than stirring their angry frustrations. 1949-President ·Weigle and Dean Klein walk to Convocation. The St. John's Deanships The academic year under review was the last for John Spangler Kieffer as Dean of the College. No man has served St. John's in more capacities than he-President, Dean, Board Member, Tutor, and Director of Adult Education-since he and his wife joined the College forty years ago . Mr. Kieffer will continue to serve as Tutor following a sabbatical leave trip to Greece. He retires from the Deanship with the affection and gratitude of the entire college community. On July 1st Robert A. Goldwin assumed the Deanship of the Co.llege and of the Annapolis campus. A St. John's graduate m the Class of 1950, Mr. Goldwin earned both the. M.A.. and .P.h.D . ~egrees from the University of Chicago m Political Science. He was Director of the ~ublic Affairs Conference Center at Chicago before joinmg the Kenyon College faculty in 1966. In 1967 he served as the first Director of the St. John's Graduate Institute in Liberal Education on the Santa Fe campus. I ar:i P.leased to report that \Villiam A. Darkey more than Justified all our high expectations in his first year of the Santa Fe Deanship. He assumed his new duties with imagination, diligence, and perceptiveness. This was the final year for both Assistant Deans, who had served since the opening of the Santa Fe campus. Mr. Robert E. Skeele resigned to accept a deanship at Marlboro College, and Mrs. Ingeborg Lorenz Lang leaves to teach at the Verde Valley School in Arizona. The College owes a par~icular debt of gratitude to these two persons who contributed so much during the institution's formative yea:s. For the coming year John T. Rule will be Acting Assistant Dean for Students and Mrs. Marie Winterhaler the Registrar, Acting Assistant Dean for Administration~ Accreditation of Santa Fe Campus The major development of the year on the Western campus was achievement of full accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Previously the Santa Fe campus had been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and S~condary Schools .through the parent campus in Annapolis. The new reg10nal accreditation includes both the bachelor's and master's degrees. The Association asks to receive annual reports for at least three years on enrollments, finances, and the organization and administration of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. The Library in Annapolis Meanwhile in the East renovation and enlargement of .Hall, the College Library, was completed durmg the sprmg. A holiday was declared in mid-May and students and staff together accomplished the move of the book collection from temporary quarters in Mellon Hall back into the library building. The relocation of the books ~ oodward 6 �September 1969 ~, was a smooth and efficient operation, thanks to the student volunteers. Miss Charlotte Fletcher, the Librarian, called it "a kind of day of triumph for all of us ." Woodward Hall is now a completely new and func- · tional library within its traditional facade of turn-of-thecentury collegiate architecture. The creati~i~ ~f two ~t~ck floors in the lowered basement and the adiommg addition along King George Street almost doubles the floor space in the library. A formal ceremony of rededication is planned for the afternoon of Homecoming on October 18, 1969. The next task confronting the Librarian is the recruitment of additional trained staff members. This necessity results in part from the resignation of Mrs. Simon Kaplan, who has served loyally and well as Cataloguer since 1948. All the members of the college community are deeply appreciative of Mrs . Kaplan's service over the years. Graduate Institute in Liberal Education On August 14, 1969, the first ,eleven master's degrees were awarded to students who had completed three summers in the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and who had transferred sufficient credits from other institutions. An appropriate commencement ceremony was held in the Great Hall of the Student Center. Robert Goldwin gave the address. This session marked th~ co1:11pletion of Elliott Zuckerman' s two-year term as Du.ect~r of the Institute. He is to be highly commended for his administration of this new program, \vhich again this year 19 51-The smokestack from the old heating plant topples to the ground on the back campus in Annapolis . attracted nearly a hundred teachers. A new director will be nominated ·at the fall meeting of the Board. Instruction Both Deans report that the teaching throughout the College during the academic year was successfu~ and the morale high. The annual meeting of the Instruct10n Co~­ mittee took place in Santa Fe in mid-March. r~~e pnncipal matter discussed was .a propo:al for revismg ~he Junior and Senior mathematics tutonals and laboratones. This had been worked out by a study group of tutors under the chairmanship of J. \Vinfree Smi th. The pro~ posal was approved and will go into effect next .Y~ar. The Committee also considered the program of admittmg a February freshman class and recommended its cont~n­ uance for another year. Finally, the subject of a thud campus at Oak Ridge, Tennessee was discussed. There was general agreement that the need to assimilate new tutors to the St. Jo.hn's Program would preclude any possible further expansion for at least five years. 1 The Tutors Jacob Klein ended his active. teaching car~er . at St. John's College in June. Appropriately he was mvited to make the address to the graduating class and was presented with a scroll recognizing his immense contributions to the College over the years . Mr. Klein arrived at St. John's as an emigre scholar in 1938. He was Dean for nine years, from 1949 to 1958, and then held an Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. I shall always be grateful to him for his guidance and counsel during my neophyte years in the presidency. During the year forty faculty members taught on the Annapolis campus. In addition th~e~ retired tuto.rs, Ford K. Brown, Simon Kaplan, and Wilham Kyle Smith, conducted preceptorials. Eva Brann, Alvin Main, and Malcolm Wyatt were on sabbatical leave; Rob~rt Sac.ks w.as given leave to teach at St. Mary's College m Cahforma; and George Berry was granted leave for personal reasons. Gerald E. Bunker and Rosemary Z. Lauer completed their appointments and leave the College for other positions. Eight new appointments have been made on the . Annapolis campus for the fall. Bert Thoms, who taught at St. John's from 1949 to 1954 and has since.been head of the Department of Philosophy at \:Vashmgton and Jefferson College, returns to the Faculty on a tenure appointment. Other appointees are Robert J. ~nd~rso~ , who holds the master's degree from Yale Umversity m Philosophy and has taught a~ Temple. University; Vassilios Christides, a Ph.D . candidate at Prmceton, who has been a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton .Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies; Wye Townsend J~mis.on, . who h.as just completed her Ph.D. at Stanford Umversity m ~usic; Aaron Kirschbaum, a candidate for the Ph.D. m the 7 �The College 1951-A new heating plant is opened in Annapolis. (Photo by M. E. \V arre11 . ) 19 52-A fire damages the Great Hall of McDowell in Annapolis. History of Science at the University of Wisconsin; Robert Mueller, a St. John's graduate in the Class of 1947, who holds a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University in History and who has taught at Armstrong State College in Georgia and Savannah State College; George Vahanian, who was granted the Ph.D. degree from Boston University this summer in Greek Philosophy and Logic; and Ray A. Williamson who received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Astronomy. An exciting innovation on the Annapolis campus is the appointment of the first Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence. This chair will be filled by Leo Strauss, eminent political scientist and first incumbent of the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professorship at the University of Chicago. Mr. Strauss will work at the graduate level with both teaching interns and regular tutors of the College. It is hoped that such work will constitute for these tutors an important renewal of their intellectual capital. In Santa Fe the College's principal effort with respect to the Faculty continues to be the building of a cadre of tutors who are both experienced and versatile in the whole curriculum. This effort implies the discovery of good teachers who understand and are sympathetic to the goals of the St. John's program and are willing to commit themselves to it long enough to become skilled in its content and methods. Financial considerations have thus far precluded giving reduced teaching programs to new tutors. It is planned in the years ahead to try to assign newly appointed faculty members two-thirds teaching schedules in the hope that they will be able to audit other classes and to undertake a more carefully devised program of orientation. At the end of the academic year six tutors left the Santa Fe Faculty: Robert J. Kovacs, Mrs. Ingeborg Lorenz Lang, Bill K. Mathews, Jr., George B. Miller, Robert E. Skeele and Dr. Julius 'Vilson. Dr. Wilson, who during his service as College physician also taught one laboratory section, will go into full retirement. Thomas J. Slakey was on sabbatical leave and Clarence J. Kramer on leave of absence. For the coming academic year three new members of the Faculty have received appointments: Glenn A. Freitas, who holds a number of degrees from Laval University and from the Pontifical Biblical Commission in Rome and who has been a professor at St. Mary's College in California; Ralph J. Quintana, who has an M.A. from the University of Colorado and has been a professor of history at Highlands University; and Robert D. Sacks, of the Annapolis campus. 8 The Students Enrollment on the two campuses this year exceeded 560. In marked contrast to last year, the Santa Fe campus experienced a high rate of attrition, while the Annapolis campus ended the year with more students than were enrolled initially. The Annapolis record is attributable to a very high retention rate and to the enrollment of a February freshman class of 22 students. As Dean Darkey notes in his report, attrition tends to be regarded as an index to the health of the college community and to the adequacy of its functioning. The Dean wisely points out that such judgments must be made with caution. A "successful" student is not always one who takes the A.B. degree, though naturally the College holds that the program is a four-year entity. The Admissions staff is therefore right in exploring those characteristics in prospective students which are the most reliable predictors of active and fruitful involvement in the College. To the individual faculty member a low rate of retention may mean his own failure or that of his colleagues, or perhaps the failure of methods and materials of the curriculum. Such inferences may be correct in a particular �September 1969 case, but in most cases they are probably not. The danger is that such assumptions might produce a climate for endless trivial tinkering with the curriculum. In colleges as small and intimate as the two St. John's colleges the answer probably lies in better teaching, better counseling, and a more supportive social structure in the college community. Dean Darkey suggests that the climate of the learning community might be improved through more consistently serious academic demands of the students. In analyzing this whole situation it is important not to overlook the general climate of unrest that deeply affects all young persons today. St. John's College, by its very nature, attracts intelligent and articulate students who are sensitive to the dilemmas and pressures of our times-the ill-starred war in Vietnam, the blight of urban poverty, the continuing racial conflict, and so on. Some students certainly leave because of these pressures. It is significant, however, that many who do so proclaim their desire to return, and indeed often do return. It seems to me a great tribute to the College and its educational program that in a ,period of general student unrest and unhappy confrontation the two St. John's campuses have demonstrated the value and effectiveness of genuine communication between student and tutor, of mutual respect among all members of the community, and of serious involvement in the ongoing educational program of the college. The distribution of the students among the several classes on each campus was as follows: Annapolis Freshmen February Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Totals Total 46 39 19 Women 69 9 25 23 21 176 147 323 74 29 21 21 45 29 10 11 119 58 31 32 145 95 240 321 242 563 Men 59 13 128 22 71 suspended on both campuses for engaging m further unilateral liberalization. For a second year at Santa Fe, Stuart Boyd, of the Faculty, administered and supervised a Title I Project in Youth Opportunities and Social Problems. The project sought to establish relations with various community agencies and institutions and to train students to work with them in varying conditions and stresses. Some two dozen students were successfully involved as week-end workers at the New Mexico State Hospital, as summer group workers and tutors with Young Citizens for Action, as case-work aides in the Division of Child Welfare of the Department of Health, and as part-time teacher-aides at Acequia Madre and Manderfield Public Schools. One student founded a tutoring organization which enlisted volunteers from the two colleges and high schools in town to work with slow and deprived boys and girls. One tragic event saddened the Annapolis college community and shocked the people of the city. Anne Bradley, a junior from Brookline, Massachusetts, left her dormitory after curfew to get a snack. She was subsequently found murdered on the State House lawn. Her assailant has never been discovered. The Administration redoubled its warning to students on both campuses to exert the utmost caution in walking both on and off campus after dark. A relatively small number of A.B. degrees were awarded on the Annapolis campus. Thirty-five seniors received degrees, one of them magna cum faude and six of them cum faude. The second commencement on the Santa Fe campus witnessed the awarding of two degrees magna cum laude, four degrees cum faude and 22 degrees rite. 1953-The important senior oral is filmed for a movie on St. John's College. (Photo by M . E. Warren.) 62 40 Santa Fe Freshm~n Sophomores Juniors Seniors Totals Grand Total Student morale on both campuses was good. Particular note should be made of the excellent service of Christopher Nelson, a junior, who served for the second year as Executor of the Student Polity at Annapolis. His leadership made the Polity a significant factor in the College's life. Rules of Residence continue to be a problem in spite of the liberalized visiting permitted between the hours of noon and midnight. Some students were 9 �The College Class of 1973 r I I Both Directors of Admission report capacity entering classes this fall. Over 500 final applications for admissions were received, 246 for Annapolis and 263 for Santa Fe. Those accepted appear to be an able and interesting group. For Annapolis 613 were in the top fifth of their graduating class, for Santa Fe 693 were in this category. Median Scholastic Aptitude Test scores for Annapolis entrants were verbal-696 and mathematical-661, for Santa Fe, verbal-643 and mathematical-593. The geographical distribution of the 250 incoming freshmen shows that 38 states, the District of Columbia, and five foreign countries are represented (In each case the first figure is for Annapolis, the second for Santa Fe): Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Georgia Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentuckv Louisian; 3 7 I I I 5 I I I I 2 6 I 30 12 Maryland 8 Massachusetts 6 Michigan 3 Minnesota 2 Mississippi 2 Missouri 2 Nebraska I Nevada New Jersey 5 New Mexico New York 18 3 N. Carolina 4 I N. Dakota I I Ohio 6 Oklahoma 2 Oregon 2 4 I I 2 25 6 I 5 I Penn2 sylvania 13 Rhode Island I S. Dakota I Texas 2 12 Vermont I Virginia 8 Washington I \i\T.est Virginia Great Britain I Greece I HongKong I Spain I Venezuela I Again this past year prospective students were encouraged to visit the two campuses, live in the dormitories and attend classes. A record number of 250 took advantage of this opportunity in Annapolis, half of whom subsequently applied. Santa Fe had 191 student visitors, 125 of whom applied and 70 of whom are enrolled in the Class of 1973. The future recruitment program of the College undoubtedly will benefit from the fact that the fiftieth annual meeting of the Country Day School Headmasters AssociMion was held on the Santa Fe campus in late June. Fifty-nine current headmasters from coast to coast attended, many of them with wives and children. All participants expressed in extravagant terms their appreciation of St. Joh n's College, the beauty of its campus, and the hospitality of its staff. Administrative Personnel . In addition to appointments already mentioned for the Annapolis campus, Julius Rosenberg, of the Class of 1938, was appointed Director of Development; Mrs. Mary Jean Felter, Director of Publicity; and Mrs. Violet Keily, secre- 10 19 55-The historic Carroll-Barrister House is moved through Annapolis streets to St. John's campus. (Photo by M. E. Warren.) tary in the Development Office. M rs. Vicki Cone, of the Class of 1968, was appointed Library Assistant, succeeding Miss Anne Wright. Mrs. Vaughnita Benda became mimeographer, replacing Mrs. Barbara Littler, and M .rs. Theresia McGuire secretary to the Assistant Deans after Mrs. Roberta Henke resigned. Mrs. Pauline Fowler resigned in June to be married. She had serve~ faithfully and competently as College Nurse for seven years. At Santa Fe James P. Shannon, who resigned from his ecclesiastical duties as Auxiliary Bishop of Minneapolis and St. Paul, was appointed by the Board to be Tutor and Vice-President for the coming academic year. Mr. Shannon was Visiting Lecturer during the second semester. He will now teach a Greek tutorial, counsel with students, and assist the Dean and me in administrative and development matters. Mr. Shannon holds the Ph.D. degree from Yale University in American studies. For ten years he was President of the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul and in 1966 was Chairman of the Association of American Colleges. Major personnel changes were made in the Library on the Santa Fe campus during the course of the year. George Miller, the Librarian, left in January for health reasons. Alice Whelan, Assistant Librarian, was appointed Acting Librarian. Her former position was filled in June by the appointment of Mrs. Sara Douglas. Finally, Mrs. Marilyn Copelan became Circulation Librarian, succeeding Mrs. Carolyn Mathews . Dr. Julius Wilson, who had served conscientiously and sympathetically as College Physician since the opening of the new campus, decided to retire. For the coming year Dr. Robert Scott has been appointed. Dr. Scott is moving �Sep tern ber 1969 his place. The Alumni Award of Merit this year was presented to Major General George M. Gelston, of the Class of 1935, Adjutant General of Maryland. The Alumni Annual Giving Campaign was launched in December after careful planning and organization. It concluded with a telethon in the Maryland-Virginia-D. C. area in June, when over 300 alumni were telephoned by volunteers. Participation was the best on record. Six hundred twenty-nine a.Jumni contributed $20, 700 for the general purposes of the College. Many became King William Associates by contributing $100 or more. In addition, alumni gifts for scholarship endowment totaled $36,570, for memorial endowments $74,441, and for the physical plant $15,146. The aggregate of all alumni gifts, including bequests, was $146,847. Finances 19 59-President Dwight David Eisenhower gives dedicatory address in the auditorium of Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall. (Photo by M. E. \Varren .) his practice to Santa Fe from Indianapolis. In the Business Office Henry Salazar was succeeded by Jam es Carr, who had previously worked for an accounting firm in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Other appointments on the western campus are Charles Webb, Bookstore Manager, Mrs. Stephanie Roberts-Hohl, secretary to the Dean, and Miss Vivian Heye, Senior Resident in the Women's Dormitory complex. The Alumni Homecoming in October marked the culmination of a useful two-year study of Alumni-College Relations. Direct results of this study were activation of chapters of the Alumni Association in New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, delivery of a Friday night Alumni Lecture by Richard Massell, of the Class of 1965, alumni involvement in the counselling of seniors, and participation in the program to recruit new students. The new publication, The College, was well received. It is expected to bring alumni and other friends of St. John's excerpts of lectures, papers, and news from both campus.es. Daniel L. Henry, of the Class of 1961, was elected Pr.esident of the Alumni Association, succeeding Julius Rosenberg when Mr. Rosenberg became the College's Director of Development. John D. Oosterhout, of the Class of 19 51, was elected to a three-year term on the Board of Visitors and Governors, succeeding Edward A. Kimpel, Jr., of the Class of 1931. Cyril R . Murphy, Jr., of the Class of 1936, was re-elected but resigned for personal reasons. The Board of Directors of the Alumni Association named Samuel H. Desch, of the Class of 1936, in It is gratifying to report that both cam puses completed the fiscal year with a modest excess of income over expenditure. In Annapolis income from all sources amounted to $1,522,988, as compared with total expenditures of $1,507,492. This left a surplus of $15,496, in contrast to the deficit of $25,433 a year ago. The Santa Fe figures showed aggregate expenses of $1,429,068 against income totaling $1,435,769. The surplus of $6,701 was applied against the cumulative deficit of $198,809 incurred during the first four years of the new college's operation. A major change in investment policy was adopted by the Board during the year. Under the new procedure known as the total-yield concept, a certain portion of growth in the portfolio is considered to be part of the income available for current use. For the next fiscal year a figure of 63 was s.et as a realistic and reasonable return on the portfolio from both dividends and appreciation. During the winter the Board appointed Goldman, Sachs and Company, of New York City, and T. Rowe Price and Associates, of Baltimore, as investment advisers. Responsibility for the investment of the portfolio was divided equally between them. The Decade of Development During the year the Decade of Development was rescheduled to correspond to the first ten years of the new college's life, from July 1, 1964 through June 30, 1974. The Western Consolidation Campaign, as the second phase of this progral)1 began July 1, 1968, with a revised goal of $3.5 millions. During this first year of the campaign a total of $556,469 was obtained in new gifts and pledges, just one-sixth of the amount to be raised within a three-year period. The smaller and more realistic goal resulted from the necessity of substituting a $600,000 administration building for the $1,000,000 physical education building. The expanding enrollment has placed great stress on available teaching facilities. The administration building 11 �The College would release to instructional use at least three classrooms, ten faculty offices, and nine dormitory rooms presently occupied by administrative personnel. Revised preliminary plans are now being drawn. An initial grant of $100,000 toward the cost of the building has been voted by the Trustees of the Max Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada. Frank ~kGuire, Director of Development, has made notable progress in involving the Santa Fe community through a sustained information and public relations program. In this he has been helped immensely by the appointment of Maurice E. Trimmer as Director of Public Information . A steady flow of news releases and publications has emanated from Mr. Trimmer's office. The Boards of Associates in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Los Alamos and Denver have met with tutors, students, and members of the staff. The Friends of the Library Committee sponsored a highly successful series of Book and Author Luncheons which drew hundreds of people and redounded to the credit of St. John's. In fact, such a favorable climate of opinion had been created that the College successfully survived a grossly unfair allegation of drug activity in a Santa Fe County Grand Jury report. Legal recourse in the court resulted in the expunging of the Grand Jury's unsupported charge from the record, to the gratification of the College's friends. Meanwhile, in Annapolis, Julius Rosenberg, Director of Development, sought to reactivate the Friends of St. John's College. Richard F. Blaul, of the Class of 1932, an Annapolis businessman, served as Chairman pro tern. A preview tour and reception at the new Woodward Hall drew well over 125 friends in June. A monthly series of events at the College is contemplated for the coming year. Initial steps have been taken to develop Friends of St. John's College in Baltimore and in Washington. Mrs. Felter has done a fine job in making news of St. l 965-A Peace Corps hut adorns the back campus by the boathouse. 1963-President Weigle watches the construction of the Student Center in Santa Fe. John's available to the various media and in editing and in producing the publications of the College. Mrs. Felter is Managing Editor of The College; Laurence Berns and James M. Tolbert, of the Faculty, are respectively Editor and Editorial Consultant. Considerable good will was generated in the Annapolis area when tl:ie College made available its facilities for the annual Annapolis Fine Arts Festival in June. Mr. Rosenberg spent considerable time during the winter months in an effort to obtain a matching grant of $600,000 from the Maryland General Assembly toward the cost of constructing a new physical education building between the heating plant and College Creek. The project failed, largely because of the mood of economy in the legislature. It is planned to make another effort by introducing a new bill next January. Meanwhile preliminary architectural planning for the structure is being clone by the firm of Cochran, Stephenson & Donkervoet of Baltimore. Gifts, Grants, and Bequests It is interesting to note that over $20,000,000 has been received by St. John's College over the past twenty years, for an average of a million a year. The greatest continuing measure of support has come from the Trustees of Old Dominion Foundation, whose grants over the period exceed $8 millions for current purposes, for endowment, for new construction, and for debt liquidation. The strength and vitality of the St. John's enterprise today is attributable in no small measure to the magnificent support which Paul Mellon and Old Dominion Foundation have given the College over the years. During the year under review a total of $1,652,813 was received in gifts, grants and bequests to the two St. John's campuses. In addition, gifts in kind, including land, to 12 �NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES GRADUATE INSTITUTE AWARDS FIRST DEGREES St. John's College in Santa Fe reached another important milestone in its five-year history on Thursday, August 14th, with the awarding of the first advance degrees by its Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. Eight students from New Mexico and three from Maryland received the Master of Arts degree from St. John's president Richard D. \rVeigle at ceremonies in the Great Hall: New Mexico -Albuquerque, Miss Rachel Ann Colvard and L. Luis Lopez; Encino, Ernest Archibeque; Los Alamos, Mrs. Eliza beth Ann Aiello and Miss Helen ]. Starling; Santa Fe, Mrs. Lee Langspecht Bowen, Mrs. Kathleen Hamilton, and Frank McGuire. (Mr. McGuire is Assistant to the President and Director of Development in Santa Fe.) Maryland- ] oseph G. Gardiner and William Yannuzi of Baltimore, and Francis A. Tewey of Reisterstown. Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of St. John's College, spoke to the graduates and the audience on the theme of "smallness and greatness." He said the motto of St. John's and the Graduate Institute should be "Contemplate greatness: Think small." "There seems to be an observable affinity of smallness and greatness and therein lies a practical problem. Our times are not at all congenial to smallness. . . . there is now a real danger that the study of human greatness will be lost, as all the activity of the world becomes mechanized, computerized and enlarged." T'he Graduate lnstitue was opened on the St. John's campus in the summer of 1967 with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation, primarily to give school teachers the opportunity for a liberal education and to extend the ideas of the liberal arts into the public education system. A five-year grant of $161,000 has helped the Institute to provide financial aid for teachers from ghetto and rural area schools who wish to enroll in the program. First graduates of The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education and faculty and friends listen to commencement address by Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of St. John's College. Mr. Goldwin was the first Director, and he was succeeded by Elliott Zuckerman, also of the Annapolis faculty, in 1968 and 1969. The four study sections are Literature, Politics and Society, Philosophy and Theology, and Mathematics and Natural Science. The successful completion of all of the sections over four summers may earn a Master's degree. Or, as in the case of these first graduates, one can receive a degree after completion of three of the eight-week s.essions, plus nine hours from another graduate school. Mr. Goldwin urged the graduates, most of whom are teachers, to be "doers" in the greatest sense of the word. He noted that Socrates never built a building, wrote a book, or made a profit, but "what he made, what he did, what he shaped and brought to life has endured longer and had more influence for the good than any work of any other mortal man. He made not just a building or a city or even just an .e ra-but an entire civilization, a world." There were about 95 students in the Graduate Institute this year. They responded enthusiasticaly to the liberal arts-great books program with such comments as: "I like the vigorous expectation that the texts will be understood and the freedom given to meet that expectation." "I have learned more about how to teach from watching the tutors . . . than I learned in the numerous 'methods' courses that I have been exposed to over the years." "What I like best is that it is tremendously flattering to have people care about what I think." " ... makes learning a joyful experience because it emphasizes thinking as opposed to fact finding." 12A �~ I I I The College Six TuToRs AND ONE TEACHING INTERN JOIN II ANNAPOLIS FACULTY 1~· .1 Six new tutors and a teaching intern will join the Annapolis faculty this fall. They are Robert J. Anderson, Vassilios Christides, Wye T. Jamison, Aaron Kirschbaum, Robert Mueller, George Vahanian, and Ray A. Williamson. Mr. Anderson received his A.B. in philosophy from Temple University in 1961 and his M.A. in philosophy from Yale University in 196~. He presently is completing his doctoral dissertation, a commentary on Plato's Theaetetus, and working for the New York City Department of Welfare. Mr. Christides received a diploma in classics from the University of Athens in 1955 and a M.A. in oriental studies from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1961, and is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of oriental studies at Princeton University. He taught classics in Greece and at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1965 he received the honor of a junior fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C. Miss Jamison graduated magna cum laude from Vassar College with her B.A. in classics in 1964 and received her M.A. in musicology from Stanford University in 1965. At Stanford she is completing her doctoral dissertation, "Dance as a Topic in the Operas of Mozart." At Vassar she was awarded the Francis Walker prize for proficiency in piano. In 1964 she received a '"oodrow Wilson Fellowship, and Stanford Fellowships in 19661967. She was a teaching assistant in music appreciation, history, and theory from 1967 to 1969. Mr. Kirschbaum received a B.A. in political science in 1964 from the City College of New York and a M.A. in the history of science in 1969 from the University of Wisconsin. His dissertation is entitled "Gaston Bachelaireand the Psychoanalytical Critique of Science." He was a teaching assistant 12B in the history of science and European cultural history at the University of Wisconsin from 1965 to 1968, and a correspondence instructor at a University of Wisconsin extension from 1964 to 1968. Recently he became chairman of the University of Wisconsin Teaching Assistants Association. Honors received include two years as a University Fellow under the auspices of William Freeman Viles and the Ford Foundation. Author and coauthor with Dr. R. Wagner of two books on geometry, Mr. Kirschbaum has also been active in local politics, working with the Wisconsin Alliance Party, devoted to the causes of peace and freedom. Mr. Mueller, a 1947 St. John's College graduate, studied at the New School for Social Research before obtaining his M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1951. From 1961 to 1962 and from 1964 to 1965 he was an assistant professor of history at Armstrong College in Savannah, Georgia, and from 1968 to 1969 he was an assistant professor of social science at Savannah State College. From 1962 to 1964 and 1966 to 1967 he studied at the University of Chicago under the Committee on the History of Culture. Mr. Vahanian, the teaching intern, received a B.A. in 1963 from Washington and Jefferson College and a M.A. in 1967 from Boston University. He expects to receive his Ph.D. this year from Boston University. His disserfation is entitled "The Relation between Zeno of Elea and Euclid's Elements." He taught philosophy and logic at Tufts University, Calvin College, and Boston University. Mr. Williamson received a B.A. in physics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1961 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1968. He was a teaching assistant in physics and a research assistant in physics at the University of Maryland before obtaining a three-year NASA traineeship in 1963. Recently he was an assistant astronomer at the University of Hawaii. His wife, Abby, taught at the Key School from 1963 to 1966. Paul Mellon, 1944 LIBRARY REDEDICATION AND BOARD MEE TING SET FOR HOMECOMING WEEKEND The Board of Visitors and Governors will meet with Mrs. Margaret Driscoll as chairman on Friday, October 17th, and Saturday, October 18th, during homecoming weekend in Annapolis. On Saturday the library, Woodward Hall, will be rededicated with Paul Mellon, Class of 1944, giving one of the addresses. Woodward Hall was originally constructed in 1900 and was recently completely renovated. Further details concerning homecoming activities may be found in the alumni news. NEW PERSONNEL HIRED IN SANTA FE New faculty members in Santa Fe include Glenn Alan Freitas, Ralph G. Quintana, and Robert D. Sacks. Istvan F ehervary has been made director of student activities, and John T. Rule and Mrs. Marie Winterhaler are assistant deans. Mr. Freitas received his B.A. from St. Mary's CoUege of California in 19 57. From 1960 to 1964 he studied at the Universite Laval in Quebec, re- �Sep tern ber 1969 ,-· ceiving a licentiate in theology. From 1964 to 1966 he studied at Ecole Biblique ,et archeologique Francaise de Jerusalem. In 1965 he obtained the baccalaureate and in 1966 a licentiate in Sacred Scripture and Pontifical Biblical Commission in Rome. From 1957 to 1960 Mr. Freitas was an instructor in classical languages at Garces Memorial High School in Bakersfield, California, and an assistant professor of theology at St. Mary's College from 1967 to 1969. He was also a member of the Instruction Committee and Faculty Library Committee at the college. Mr. Quintana, a cum laude graduate of Williams College in 1947, was a Tying Scholar, and Phi Beta Kappa. In 1966 he received his M.A. in history from the University of Colorado and is a doctoral candidate at the university. From 1946 to 1949 he was an instructor at Williams and from 1953 to 1958 he was a master at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs. He also was a master of the Hebron Academy in Maine (19591961) and the Denver Country Day School (1963-1966). He comes to St. John's after teaching history as an assistant professor at New Mexico Highlands University. Mr. Sacks, a 1994 graduate of St. John's College, received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1963. From 1954 to 1956 he studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, from 1956 to 1957 at Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and from 1957 to 1959 at the University of Chicago. Mr. Sacks is familiar to Annapois as he tutored at St. John's from 1961 to 1968. In 1968 he taught at St. Mary's College in California. Mr. Fehervary is a graduate of the Hungarian Air Force Academy. He studied engineering at the University of Budapest and was a member of the Hungarian Olympic team in fencing and ·modern pentathlon in 1946-1947. He was editor of an English and French newspaper in Vienna from 19 57 to 1964. In 1962 he founded the Europa Club for Sport and Cultural Activities in Vienna. From 1966 to 1969 he served as chairman of the physical education program for the American School of Tangier. Mr. Rule, who has been a parttime tutor in Santa Fe, retired in 1966 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he had been dean of stud en ts and professor. He received his training at M.I.T. and Harvard. Mrs. Winterhaler, who has been serving as registrar and executive secretary, is a graduate of Oberlin College and also attended the University of Puerto Rico. She spent her early school years in Germany and Switzerland. BOARD MEMBER JOINS FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA St. John's College Board member Louis T. Rader became chairman of the electrical engineering department of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on September 1st. Dr. Rader is also the Alice M. and Guy A. Wilson professor of electrical engineering and professor of business administration. He was a vice president of General Electric Company and general manager of its communications and control division, Charlottesville. Dr. Radar received his B.A. in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia and his M.A. and Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology. His former positions include director of the electrical engineering department of Illinois Institute of Technology, president of the Univac Division of Sperry Rand Corporation, and group vice president and director of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. He serves on the Blue Ridge Community College advisory board, the Robert A. Taft Institute of Government board of trustees, the advisory engineering committee at Lafayette College, and the industry advisory committee of the University of Virginia's Graduate School of Business Administration. Dr. Rader has been a member of the St. Joh n's Board of Visitors and Governors since 1961. Louis T. Rader (Photo by Fabian Bachrach) SANTA FE GRANTED NORTH CENTRAL ACCREDITATION President Weigle announced in August that the Santa Fe campus was granted accreditation by tpe Commission on Colleges and Universities of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The Santa Fe campus had been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools ever since the southwestern campus opened in 1964. Chairman of the visting committee of the North Central Association was John J. Pruis, president of Ball State University. Committee members were William Bentsen, vice president of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest; Edward B. Espenshade, chairman of the department of geography of Northwestern University; and Clarence L. Golightly, special assistant to the vice chancellor of the Milwaukee campus of the University of Wisconsin. President Weigle expressed the gratification of both the Board of Visitors and Governors and the Faculty that the Santa Fe campus had won its independent accreditation within the brief span of five years. 12C �The College j, ST. JOHN'S BRINGS ANNAPOLIS AND SANT A FE CIVIC OFFICIALS TOGETHER I East and West met on Friday, August 8th, in Santa Fe-with a strong assist from St. John's President. Mayor Roger Moyer of Annapolis and Mayor George Gonzales of Santa Fe sat down together with members of their respective city councils to discuss mutual problems. Despite the differences in cultural backgrounds and geographic locations of their cities, these civic leaders found they share many similar interests and concerns. The joint meeting was the idea of President Weigle, who is chairman of the Maryland Commission on the Capital City, which sponsored the trip for the Annapolis delegation. Both cities are distinctly rich in history, Weigle noted, Annapolis going back to the English colonial period and Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in the United States, still bearing the marks of its Spanish founding. Each has developed historic zoning ordinances, is trying to adapt urban renewal aims with its unique traditions, and is located near a large metropolitan area. The Annapolis visitors were given a tour of Santa Fe by John Gaw Meem, member of the College's Board of Visitors and Governors and donor of the site of the Santa Fe campus. They had lunch at St. John's with Santa Fe officials, conferred at the city hall in the afternoon and were guests of the Weigles for dinner at Chimayo, a nearby village. Several of them afterwards enjoyed a performance of the San ta Fe Opera. Annapolis participants, besides Mayor Moyer, included City Attorney Eugene Lerner, council members Noah A. Hilman, Robert L. Spaeth (of the St. John's faculty), John T. Chambers, and Roscoe J. Parker, along with commission members Senator John W. Steffey and C. Hayes Duvall. :Mesdames Chambers, Lerner, Steffey, and Duvall accompanied their husbands. Santa Fe Mayor Gonzales was joined bv council members Alfonso Larragoite, Lee Rubenstein, and Reynaldo Torres, and City Manager Marion Sebastian. ANNAPOLIS FRIENDS HOLD RECEPTION FOR CLASS OF 1973 A reception in honor of the members of the Class of 1973 was hosted by the Annapolis Friends of St. John's Annapolis and Santa Fe city councils gather outside St. John's College in Santa Fe. I on Sunday, September 28th, in Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall. Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Annapolis Friends is Richard F. Blaul, Class of 1932. The reception also formally introduced to the Annapolis community the new academic dean, Robert A. Goldwin, a 1950 cum faude graduate of the College. SANTA FE RECEIVES $100,000 GIFT FOR CONSTRUCTION OF ADMINISTRATION BUILDING The Fleischmann Foundation of Reno, Nevada, has voted a grant of $100,000 toward the planned Administration Building for the Santa Fe campus. The new building, which is expected to cost $500,000, will enable the College to release space now occupied by administrative offices in the Evans Science Laboratory and the women's dormitory. It is hoped that federal funds will cover half the total construction cost and that private gifts will make up the difference. FEBRUARY FRESHMEN VIEW ORIOLE VICTORY The s.econd "February freshmen" class, which was enrolled on the Annapolis campus during the summer months, had the pleasure of attending an Oriole game on Thursday, July 24th. Seventeen of the twenty freshmen accompanied by President Weigle, Assistant Dean and director of the summer program Robert L. Spaeth, and Tutor John Sarkissian, were hosted by Jerold C. Hoffberger, Chairman of the Board of Baltimore Baseball Club, Inc. Before the game the freshmen ate dinner in the Hit'N Run Club at Memorial Stadium. NATIONAL HEADMASTERS GROUP MEETS AT SANTA FE 11 Officials and members of the Country Day School Headmasters Association of the United States gathered in Santa Fe from Thursday, June 19th, through Saturday, June 21st, for the I 12D �Sep tern ber 1969 organization's fiftieth national conference. It was the first meeting in the southwest for the association, which usually convenes on eastern campuses. The fifty-nine headmasters and their families seemed immensely pleased with St. John's and their experience there. Thev lived in the student residences and were able to take advantage of such campus facilities as the riding horses and tennis courts between sessions. The College also helped to provide them with tours of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and the Bandelier Indian Cliff Dwellings. ANNAPOLIS CAMPUS HOSTS CONFERENCES AND ANNAPOLIS FINE ARTS FESTIVAL A Maryland Workshop on Crime and Corrections was held on the Annapolis campus from Friday, June 13th, through Sunday, June 22nd. The conference, first of its kind in the East, was under the direction and sponsorship of the National College of State Trial Judges and the (Maryland) Governor's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. The U. S. Department of Health, Education and \Velfare supported it with a grant of $67,000. The workshop was directed by a group of California social scientists known as The Berkelev Associates. In attenc:fance at the conference were judges, policemen, legislators, lawyers, correctional officers, and a few private citizens. Twenty-one convicts also participated on an equal basis with the lawmen. Each morning the convicts presented a psychodrama on aspects of prison life such as homosexuality, extortion, and drugs. During the afternoons groups analyzed the issues raised during the morning dramas and discussed how to solve them. Dr. Richard Korn, professor in the Criminology School of the Universitv of California at Berkeley, guided the convicts through the psychodramas. A public defender, Douglas Rigg, and Dr. David Fogel, former director of juvenile institutions in Marin County, California, helped Dr. Korn organize the conference. Dr. Fogel said its purpose was to acquaint officials with what really goes on in prisons, and to inform convicts on what basis officials make decisions. The seventh annual Annapolis Fine Arts Festival was held on Saturday:, June 21st, and Sunday, June 22nd. A fine arts exhibit including twentyfive photographic prints from the collection of Ansel Adams was displayed in Iglehart Hall. Art and sculpture from more than five states was shown. A youth choral workshop concert was directed by Warner Lawson, dean of the college of fine arts and the school of music of Howard University, on the back campus on Sunday. A youth symphony workshop concert concluded the festival Sunday evening. Directed by Harry John Brown, music professor at New York State University, the concert featured Gary Karr, a double bassist. Each year the Annapolis Fine Arts Festival is sponsored by the Annapolis Festival Foundation, Inc. The Sciences and Systems Division of the Rockville, Maryland, laboratory of TRACOR, Inc., held a meeting on Monday, June 23rd, and Tuesday, June 24th, in Annapolis. Conferees discussed the basic purpose and approach of a report concerned with defining the most advanced techniques in controlling pollution through computer modeling. The report will be the end result of a $34,000 contract recently awarded by the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration to TRACOR's Ocean Sciences and Water Resources Section. Dr. William H. Espey, manager of the firm's Hydrospace Program, is supervisor of the contract, and Richard J. Callaway is project director. An all-day conference for Maryland law enforcement officers on the problem of narcotics called by Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel took place on Thursday, August 7th. About 150 officials including chiefs of police from towns around the State, State police barracks commanders, and security officials from Maryland's major industrial and business concerns were in attendance. The purpose of the seminar was to permit an exchange of information between Federal narcotics officials and Maryland law enforcement personnel on the latest advances and newest developments in the nation-wide war on drug abuse. Panel participants were Donald D. Pomerleau, commissioner of the Baltimore City Police Department; Colonel Robert J. Lally, superintendent of the Maryland State Police; Joseph G. Cannon, commissioner of the Maryland Department of Corrections; and from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, John Ingersoll, director; Dr. Edward Lewis, Jr., chief medical officer; and Donald E. Miller, chief counsel. OPERA CHAMBER ENSEMBLE PERFORMS AT SANT A FE Leading musicians of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra presented a public concert of works of Bach, Ravel, and Brahms in the College's Great Hall on Sunday, July 27th. Students in the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education were admitted free of charge. Members of the chamber ensemble included members of symphony and philharmonic orchestras in New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, and the University of Delaware. The Santa Fe Opera is a repertoire company which presents a s.eries of traditional and modern works each summer, which this year included the American premieres of Krzysztof Penderecki's "The Devils of Loudun" and Gian Carlo ~en~,tti's "Help! Help! The Globolmks. GRANT RECEIVED FROM NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION The National Science Foundation has awarded a $600 grant to the Santa Fe campus for the purchase of instructional scientific equipment. The grant, effective from July 1, 1969, to June 31, 1971, will be spent under the direction of Tutor Roger S. Peterson. 12E �I ALUMNI ACTIVITIES PROFILES: MEET OuR ALUMNI Although many St. John's graduates of the past three decades have entered academic careers, that certainly is not true of all. There is a strong sprinkling of business and professional men and women, as well as those who have entered technical and scientific fields. Our subject for this issue is in the latter category, and is one of several alumni in our country's space program. As you will see, St. John's also had a hand in putting a man on the moon. From Cumberland in western Maryland, just out of Allegany High School, John M. Twigg, Jr., came to St. John's in September, 1948. Unlike the subjects of our first two Profiles, he was able to complete his college work without interruption, and graduated in 1952. Twigg spent the next two years at The Johns Hopkins University, trying to squeeze three years of electrical engineering into two. He was successful in this, and received his B.E.S. degree in 1954. After a year as a sales engineer with Westinghouse, he was claimed by the Army for a two-year period. Military service means different things to different people. For John Twigg it introduced him to his present career. Stationed at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., he worked with some of the nation's leaders in the growing field of rocketry. When he left the Army in 1957, it was to move to what was then Cape Canaveral, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He has been there ever since. His experience with the space program spans a wide range of events: test conductor for the Jupiter space 12F John M. Twigg, Jr., 1952 shot which carried aloft space monkeys Able and Baker; test conductor of the Mercury-Redstone launch carrying Captain Virgil Grissom in July 1961; then test supervisor on the Saturn 1 project, followed by a position as branch chief, Launch Vehicle Operations. Twigg's present position is that of assistant to the Director of Launch Vehicle Operations for the Apollo Applications Program. Twigg and his wife, the former Marie Jean Chelson of Cincinnati, have a son nine and a daughter four years of age. They make their home in Cocoa Beach, Fla. HOMECOMING Plans for Homecoming are gradually taking shape. Since people are the key to an event like this, we are pleased that several class reunions are being planned. Dr. Bob Bier is coordinating the 50th anniversary celebration of the Class of 1919; Allan Hoffman and Jack Brooks are luring the Class of 1949 back to the campus; and Harvey Gold- stein and Bill Tilles are helping 1959 plan its tenth "birthday." We hope that the other "9-ers," plus 1944 and 1964, will also be with us. The principal event on Homecoming Day, of course, will be the rededication of Woodward Hall, the College library building. Mr. Paul Mellon, alumnus of the College in the Class of 1944 and a long-'time friend, will be one of the speakers at the ceremony. In other activities, students will again have a chance to discuss with alumni the attractions and pit-falls of graduate schools. Dr. vV. Douglas 'Veir '57 and a panel of alumni will discuss and answer questions about graduate school experience. The Homecoming Dinner will be held this year in the gymnasium in order that faculty and seniors might be able to join alumni for that event. Special tables will be reserved for reunion classes and their guests. While the entire program was not complete when this went to press, the following events are fairly certain: Saturday, October 18, 1969 9 a.m.-2 p.m.-Registration. 10 a.m. -Graduate School Discussion. 12 noon -Buffet Luncheon. 2 p.m. -Annual Business Meeting. 4 p.m. -Library Rededication. 5:30 p.m. -Pre-Dinner Festivities. 7 p.m. -Homecoming Dinner. 9 p.m. -Alumni Parties. ALUMNI MEMBERS OF COLLEGE BOARD The directors of the Alumni Association have announced the nomination of J. S. Baker Middelton '38 and Myron L. Wolbarsht '50 as alumni representatives on the Board of Visi- �September 1969 ,. tors and Governors of the College. Both alumni are serving currently on the Board. If re-elected, they would serve until 1972. l\fr. Middelton, Director of Industrial Relations for the Keufel & Esser Co., is a member of the Orga.nization and Annapolis Campus Development Committees of the Board. He has served as chairman of the latter committee. Mr. \Volbarsht is Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of Research, Duke Universitv Medical Center. He is serving as ·chairman of the Annapolis Admissions Committee of the Board, and holds membership on the Annapolis Planning and Development and Alumni Relations Committees. CHARTER FLIGHT Does Rome in the spring sound better than th e Alps? We hope so, because unforeseen circumstances have forced us to modify our originallyannounced plans. The charter trip is being sponsored lw the College rather than the Alumni Association, and this means that tutors, students, alumni, and administrative personnel are all eligible. And to permit the maximum number to take advantage of the trip, it will take place during the Annapolis spring vacation. CLASS NOTES Plan now to join our flight to sunny Italy and the glory that was-and isRome. ALUMNI GIVING: IT Is MoRE BLESSED The final report of alumni giving for the year 1968-69 has been prepared in detail, and wi11 be distributed to all alumni. It seems appropriate to report a few highlights here, to keep nonalumni readers informed about this important form of alumni activity. First, the Alumni Annual Giving Campaign (the Alumni Fund) was re-defined last year to mean giving for William B. Athey, 1932 current unrestricted purposes only. (Photo by Leonard L. Greif, Jr.) Led by chairman William B. Athey '32, a team of four co-chairmen and forty-four class captains and their vol- 1906, Roscoe E. Grov.e of the Class unteer agents wrote, telephoned, and of 1910, and John H. E. Legg of the visited their classmates and friends. Class of 1921. Some 629 alumni responded to these The key to success this past year appeals with $20, 700, thus exceeding was participation, in many cases firstthe Campaign dollar goal with the time involvement on behalf of the greatest number of unrestricted gifts College. A good example was the ever received in one year. round-up telethon held in Baltimore Second, more than $125,000 for en- on June 10th-12th. Of the seventeen dowment and plant purposes was re- volunteers who devoted three hours ceived through alumni gifts and be- each, eight were first-time workers. quests. The largest amounts came Together, they raised more than $1,500 from the estates of Alfred Houston and for the Campaign; perhaps more imHenry F. Sturdy, both of the Class of portantly, they enjoyed doing it. correctly the track team in the April issue. Mr. Robinson was a member of that team. 1923 Paul L. Banfield, headmaster of the Landon School. Bethesda, Md., attended the 50th annual conventiop of the Country Day School Headmasters Association of the United States last June. The meeting was held on St. John 's Santa Fe campus, exactly ten years after the same association met on the Annapolis campus. S. Paul Schilling, professor of systematic theology and chairman of the division of theological studies at Boston University School of T heology, is the author of God in An Age of Atheism, to be published in September by the Abingdon Press, Nashville, Tenn . 1924 Lt. Gen. Ridgely Gaither, USA (ret.), was reappointed Police Commissioner of Annapolis in July. Gen . Gaither's four-year appointment was appro\·ed unanimously by the city aldermen . Adel the name of the Rev. Charles M. Robinson to the list of those who identified 1928 Louis L. Snyder, professor of history at TI1e City College of the City University of New York, has been elected to the American Committee of the History of the Second \ Vorld \Var. He has also been appointed to the AdYisorv Committee of the Committee of Federal Legislation of the New York State Bar. 1937 L. Lee Moore , Jr., in June was appointed principal of the Druid Hills Elementary School in Martinsville, Va. He has been in that city since 1948, and was most recently Director of Federal Programs for its school s~ ·stem . 1938 Samuel D. Foster, Jr., and his wife Betty were honored in May for their contributions to Girl Scouting activities in Anne Arundel County, Md. Mr. Foster has been honored in the past for his work with the Boy Scouts. 1939 Lewin W . Wickes was appointed general attorney for the Penn Central in July. Mr. Wickes joined the former Pennsylvania Railroad in 1947, and was made assistant general counsel in 19 5 5. 1942 Joumet G . Kahn left St. Xavier College last June to become director of the Honors Program at Marquette University . 1948 A recent visitor to Santa Fe and the western St. John's was C. Robert Morris. 1949 John (Father Hilary) Hayden reports that he .is still a monk of St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D. C. He teaches Greek, Latin, and the Great Books in the Abbey School, and is novitiate-master for the monastery. He is currently president of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, and vice-chainnan of the Northeast Conference on Teaching Foreign 12G �Ill The College Victoria (Meeks) Blair-Smith and husband Hugh are the proud parents of Robert McPhail Blair-Smith II, born June 19th in Cambridge, Mass. Elise Mary Filipi and Robert F. Abbato were married in West Grove, Pa., on June 28th. Mrs. Abbato completed her undergraduate work at the University of Delaware, and has been a kindergarten teacher. Her husband, employed by General Electric, has degrees from Cooper Union School of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania. Judith (Morganstern) Licht and husband Robert '62 announced the arrival on June 24th of second son Jacob. Mr. Licht will be a lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Bucknell University during the coming year. 1962 Philip P. Chandler II, 1968 (SF) (Photo by Jimmy Chen) Languages. He would like to know how many '49ers plan to come to the Homecoming October 17th-18th. 1953 On July 1st John D. Alexander, Jr., became a partner in the Baltimore law firm of Allen, Thieblot & Alexander. James \\!. Linsner writes that he has accepted a position at St. Mary's College in California, and will be teaching music and Ptolemy this coming academic year. 1959 George W. \Vorthington, after fourteen years experience as a public relations executive, has formed his own public relations agency with offices ih New York City. 1960 J1 I Captain John J. G. Lane and his wife Grace (Prevost) '59 have moved to Oklahoma City, \\·here he is stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. Captain ·Lane received his master's degree in management from Texas A&M in May, together with the University's Alumni Award for Outstanding Graduate Stllilent of 1969, as well as the Facultv Achievement Award in Management. · Frank B. Murray writes that he and his wife Fiona (Paul) are moving to Newark, Del., mid-August. He will be an associate professor in educational psychology at the Uni\-ersity of Delaware. 1961 Eric A. Arnold, Jr., writes that he defended his doctoral dissertation (Administrative Leadership in a Dictatorship: the Position of Joseph Fouche in the Napoleonic Police, 1800-1810) before the Department of History at Columbia University last February. During the 1969-70 academic year he will hold a position in the Department of History at the University of Denver. 12H J. Jerome Brennig, Jr., having completed a tour with the Peace Corps in India, has returned to the United States. He and his wife, the former Nilimina Sapra, now live in Madison, Wisconsin. Pherne Perkins received a master's degree from Harvard University on June 12th. Nancy (Hillis) Schroeder informs us that husband Irwin, who graduated with honors from the University of San Diego Law School, was one of sixty outstanding law graduates nationally who were offered positions with the Department of Justice. In September he will start work with the Land and Natural Resources Division of the Department. Mrs. Schroeder, who has taught first grade this past year, writes that she is ready to mo\'e to the East Coast. 1967 The engagement of Clark E. Lobenstine and Miss Joy Ann Chatlain was announced in the early summer, with a July 19th wedding scheduled in Kansas City. Miss Chatlain, a_ native of Shawnee Mission, Kan ., and a graduate of the state University, is a research assistant at The Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Lobenstine is a social worker at Spring Grove State Hospital. 1963 1968 Robert K. Thomas, whose marriage to Rosemary Jierjian of Lebanon was announced in the April issue, sends more information about his work for USIA. He is in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, as assistant to the Public Affairs Officer, and will soon take over as director of the American Center there. Although Jidda is "beastly hot," the Red Sea and its water sports are just minutes away. Mr. Thomas says his wife speaks English with a native American accent, and is as excited about St. John's as he is. Philip P. Chandler II (SF) will help Stringfellow Barr during the coming year in preparing an historical account of the curriculum revolution at St. John's College in 1937. Todd H. Everett (SF) clarifies our cryptic entry about him in the July issue. He is now an account executive in the advertising department of Liberty /UA Inc., and says that his free-lancing, in the same general field , is now secondary. The engagement of Jinua P. MacLaurin to Thomas Rie '70 was announced in May. An August wedding was planned. George Partlow wrote in June that he was entering Peace Corps training for a project in Jamaica, W. I. 1964 Eleanor L. Noon received her MD. degree on June 3 from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. So far as we are aware, she is the first women graduate of St. John's to enter medicine. Dr. Noon will intern at South Baltimore General Hospital. Lowell I. Shindler and wife Barbara are the proud parents of Whitney Alison, born on July 3rd. 1969 On July 19, Anne Barbara Lyons and Thomas H. Farrell '67 were married in Santa Fe. The marriage was performed by the Rev. J. Winfree Smith of the Annapolis faculty. 1966 Frances E. Borst writes that she has been (as of June) a Peace Corps teacher in Thailand for more than a year, and is now making plans for graduate school. Richard F. Fielding and Miss Sara Elizabeth Melzer \Vere married in Scarsdale, N. Y., on July 3rd. Brother Robert '68 was best man. The bride is a graduate of the University of \Visconsin, and is working toward a doctorate in romance languages at the University of Chicago. Mr. Fielding is studying for a doctorate in political science, also at Chicago. Melvin and Deena (Brodkin) Kline '67 report they both completed their M.S.Ed. degrees at the Ferkauf School of Yeshiva University in New York in July. They plan to settle permanently in Israel where they expect to teach. In Memoriam 1906-GuY BoNNEY, Kinsale, Va ., June, 1969. 1918-DR. LLEWELLYN HALL, Hartford, Conn., June 21, 1969. West 1919-DR. THOMAS R. O'RouRK, SR., Baltimore, Md ., July 24, 1969. 1933-WILLIAM A. Md., August 10, 1969. PERCY, Vienna, 1962-WILLIAM A. HELLIWELL, New York City, May, 1969. �September 1969 of the Class of 1916, $10,000. The residence willed to the College by Henry F. Sturdy, of the Class of 1906, was sold, and the sum of $28,633 placed in a permanent fund as a memorial to Professor Sturdy. To the many alumni, Board members and other friends of St. John's College who have contributed so generously of their time and of their substance over this past year, I should like to convey the College's deepest gratitude. I know that the members of the Faculty and the staff on both campuses would endorse these sentiments. I am confident that even a substantial number of St. John's students realize and appreciate what friends and supporters of this College are doing on its behalf. We all move into this third decade with confidence and hope. RICHARD D. President ,;v 1968-The interior of oodwarcl Hall is completely stripped before renoYation. (Photo b~, Stewart Bros. Inc.) the Santa Fe campus totaled $42,996, making a grand total of $1,695,809. Once again members of this Board amply demonstrated their confidence in the new Western college by giving $426,930. Foundations contributed $91,520, business corporations $43,980, parents of students $4,385, and friends and young alumni $45,698. It is significant that there were 520 donors this year as compared with 324 last year and 242 in 1966-67. Particular mention should be made of a life income gift of $67,671 from Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Hayward of Cimarron, New Mexico, and a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scarlett, of Baltimore, Maryland, for a portrait of the President by Charles W. Thwaites, Santa Fe artist. In Annapolis there were 840 gifts for current purposes aggregating $66,111: $20,610 from alumni, $1,890 from Board members, $25,854 from business corporations, including St. John's share of the annual campaign conducted by the Association of Colleges in Maryland, $8,950 from foundations, $3,826 from parents and $4,891 from friends. The Annapolis endowment was increased by gifts of $620,296. Approximately half of this amount came in the form of matching grants from Old Dominion Foundation. The most notable single gift was that of $187,500 from Thomas l\!I. Evans of New York City, a former member of this Board. A total of $232,851 was received toward the reconstruction of \Voodward Hall. This included a grant from the State of Maryland of $75,000, federal funds of $132,204, and a helpful further grant from the Trustees of the Hodson Trust of $25,000. I am pleased to report four alumni bequests, all of which have been added to the College's endowment through the creation of memorial funds in the names of the individuals: Roscoe E. Grove, of the Class of 1910, $15,978; Alfred Houston, of the Class of 1906, $29,287; John H. E. Legg, of the Class of 1921, $22,289; George Davidson, Jr., WEIGLE Annapolis, Maryland September 17, 1969 TWENTY YEARS IN RETROSPECT ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE 1949-1969 The table on the following two pages contains the highlights of the twenty years of the presidency of Richard D. Weigle. Categories listed are: major developments, the academic program, tutors and students, developing resources, and the public and the college. The concluding pages of the September issue are devoted to the financial reports for the fiscal year 19681969. (Eds. ) 13 �The College 1949-1950 196 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 27 $461,956 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 173 25 $455,612 EnrollmentFacul ty Budget 151 17 $413,804 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 133 19 $478,789 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 125 25 $555,170 EnrollmentFacultv Budget 139 26 $504,080 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 166 24 $531,628 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 179 28 $622,430 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 212 29 $679,679 EnrollmentFaculty Budget 225 32 $785,421 Major Developments The Academic Program Richard Weigle elected President. First College Polity adopted by Board of Visitors and Governors. Jacob Klein appointed Dean. Written enabling exams moved back to June from fall of senior year. Board votes to admit women students in September, 1951. lV[usic tutorial inaugurated for freshmen under Victor Zuckerkandl' s direction. 1950-1951 1951-1952 Individual lab projects initiated m senior year. 1952-1953 St. John's accredited by Iviiddle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Fire damages McDowell Hall (November). Self-study undertaken on grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education. Sophomore language tutorial to emphasize English and Greek. 1953-1954 Teaching internship program begun with six appointees. Enabling exams moved to end of sophomore year. 1954-1955 First six women graduate. Initial quinquennial review of College Polity completed. Self-study published (April). 1955-1956 Faculty study group instituted. First theme "Classical Logic and Modern Logic." 1956-1957 Board creates Visiting Committee to establish closer relationship with Faculty. Internship program ends. Calendar reverts to semester plan. Algebra dropped; test for freshmen substituted. President Eisenhower speaks at dedication of Francis Scott Key Memorial (Class of 1796) and Mellon Hall (May); Paul Mellon and Mark Van Doren made Honorary Fellows. Curtis Wilson becomes Dean. Special events: Founders' Weekend; Kirkpatrick concerts; Monteverdi's Orfeo; and lectures on "The Scientist as Philosopher" and "Man and His World." 1957-1958 1958-1959 I 14 I �September 1969 ,. Tutors and Students Developing Resources The Public and the College TI.A.A. faculty retirement and collective life insurance programs adopted. Gift announced of $ 300,000 from Old Dominion foundation for a new heating plant. Publication of about St. John's begun. Barbara Leonard appointed Assistant Dean for Women. Faculty opposes Ober Bill, requiring loyalty oaths. Old Dominion offers to match up to $250,000 for plant and $1,000,000 for endowment. Weigle appointed to Board of Education of Anne Arundel County. First tenure appointments made under College Polity. Twenty-four women enroll in Class of 1955. Heating plant dedicated at fall Homecoming. Randall Hall remodeled to house women. Historic Annapolis, Inc. founded m meeting in the Great Hall. $300,000 Old Dominion grant liquidates all indebtedness. Brice House sold. Association of Independent Cplleges in Maryland formed for cooperative fund-raising . First St. John's conducted. St. Jolm' s Story, color-sound movie filmed during fall. Nadir in enrollment-125. Seminar-in-Europe College contracts with U. S. Foreign Operations Administration to orient foreign nationals from labor and other fields. Faculty advisers instituted for freshmen. New faculty salary scale adopted. New women's dormitory completed; named for Levin Hicks Campbell, Class of 1793. Campus master plan adopted. Endowment reaches $1,000,000. Weigle made chairman of Commission on Liberal Education of Association of American Colleges. James Tolbert becomes Director of Admissions. College JOms College Scholarship Service. Valk Tutorship established. Carroll-Barrister House ( c. 1721) moved on campus from Main Street. 212 Norwood Road purchased for President's Residence. \iVeigle travels to India for U. S. State Department lecture tour. Work begun on auditorium and laboratory building; financed by $750,000 from State and $1,250,000 from Old Dominion. 9 St. John's Street purchased for dormitory. Weigle elected President of Board of Education of Anne Arundel County. Freshman Class of 107 largest smce 1934. Faculty scale adopted with $12,000 maximum. Third Century Fund campaign planned for $6,600,000 m two-year period, 1958-1960. Portrait at a Faculty and The Student Body published. · System of 12-year tenure appointments begun. College joins College Entrance Examination Board. Bequest of $1,787,120 from Addison Mullikin, Class of 1895. Humphreys Hall restored as dorm. State deeds former railroad land to College. Country Day School Headmasters Association meets on campus. 15 �The College 1959-1960 Major Developments The Academic Program EnrollmentFaculty Budget 257 33 $914,331 Board invited by citizens of Monterey Peninsula to consider second St. John's campus in that area of California. New laboratory revision begun. Faculty visit Reed College on Hazen Foundation grant. EnrollmentFaculty Budget 280 36 $1,030,830 Board votes Feb. 22 to try to start second St. John's College in Santa Fe, after considering 40 sites. Legal authority for granting degrees in New Mexico obtained. Second year of French substituted for German. Analytical geometry introduced in sophomore year and calculus moved to junior year. Reed professors visit St. John's. EnrollmentFacultv Budget 293 40 $1,051,243 Master plan for Santa Fe campus adopted by Board. $1,467,362 raised in first year. Land given in Carmel Highlands for possible third campus. EnrollmentFaculty Budget 313 43 $1,139,874 Ground broken for Santa Fe buildings on April 22. John Kieffer appointed Dean of the College. Preceptorials introduced for juniors and seniors. EnrollmentFaculty Budget 319 50 $1,248,387 Accreditation reaffirmed by Middle States Association will carry to Santa Fe campus for two years. Clarence Kramer named Santa Fe Dean. Music tutorial shifted to sophomore year; biology concentrated m sophomore year; measurement and chemistry for freshmen. EnrollmentsFaculty Budgets ASF- 321 - 84 46-11 $1,227,613 491,101 Santa Fe campus opens with 84 freshmen; Robert 0. Anderson speaks at October dedication; Maryland and New Mexico Governors attend. Third quinquennial Polity Review creates single Instruction Committee meeting annually on alternate campuses. EnrollmentsFaculty Budgets ASF- 341 - 148 45 - 18 $1,377,856 834,959 EnrollmentsFaculty Budgets ASF- 333 - 168 46-27 $1,338,727 1,172,113 Joint Middle States and North Central Association Evaluating Team calls Santa Fe "complete second college" "A magnificent achievement." Written enabling exams for sophomores abandoned. Eight-week Graduate Institute begins with 33 students (June). EmollmentsFaculty Budgets ASF- 316-170 46- 28 $1,482,816 1,199,269 First Santa Fe class of 34 seniors graduated. February class of 19 freshmen admitted at Annapolis; summer semester followed in Santa Fe. Three-year, one summer transfer program to be tried provisionally. EnrollmentsFaculty Budgets ASF- 323 - 240 40 - 32 $1,507,491 1,422,937 North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools accredits Santa Fe campus for B.A. and M.A. degrees. ~,frs. Walter Driscoll first \,\roman and first westerner to chair Board. William Darkey appointed Dean at Santa Fe. John Kieffer retires as Dean m Annapolis; Robert Goldwin appointed to succeed him. 1960-1961 1961-1962 1962-1963 1963-1964 1964-1965 1965-1966 Planning undertaken for summer Graduate Institute in Liberal Education at Santa Fe; Robert Goldwin named Director. 1966-1967 1967-1968 1968-1969 16 �Sep tern ber 1969 Tutors and Students Developing Resources Addison Mullikin Tutorships established; first appointments made. Third Century Fund campaign ends with H,698,000 raised. Book Store opens in Humphreys Hall. McDowell Hall renovated. Five extra tutors appointed to gain experience in anticipation of need for faculty at Santa Fe. The Public and the College Endowment reaches $6,000,000. Santa Fe citizens donate 260 acres as site for new campus. St. John's International Labor Center closes after orienting 6,200 foreign visitors from 72 nations. Master plan for Annapolis campus commissioned. Boat house rebuilt after fire (Octa ber) . 25th Anniversary of St. John's Program marked by publication of P'ortrait of Graduates. David Boroff's article appears m Saturday Review (March). Admissions applications jump to 420, an increase of 60 3 over previous years. Chase-Stone House rebuilt at cost of $250,000. Architects retained to plan Woodward Hall renovation and addition. New contract with U. S. Labor Department to run Center for one year. T\velve-vear tenure appointments aband01;ed; full tenure appointments restored. Planning begun for Decade of Development, fund-raising program for both campuses totaling $16,500,000. Summer Peace Corps training program for India conducted at Annapolis. Faculty colloquium held at St. Mary's College of California. Carnegie Corporation of New York grants $161,000 for Graduate Institute. Tennis courts built at Santa Fe. Western Consolidation Campaign begun. Peace Corps training program held for Philippines (Annapolis) and Latin America (Santa Fe). Santa Fe Dormitory complex for 126 women and Health Center completed at $920,000 cost. Overlook and terrace behind McDowell Hall constructed. Weigle elected chairman of Association of American Colleges, Vice Chairman of Independent College Funds of America. New faculty salary scale instituted with $17,000 maximum. Santa Fe admissions doubled; Southwest Scholars Program instituted. The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations make grant of $200,000 to Santa Fe campus. Laboratory building named for Thomas M. Evans. Governor appoints Weigle Chairman, Maryland Commission on the Capital City. First 11 l\!I.A.'s m Graduate Institute awarded. Renovation and enlargement of Woodward Hall completed at cost of $600,000. Endowment reaches $9,000,000. Board members pledge $2,400,000 in Western Consolidation Campaign. Country Day School Headmasters Association meets on Santa Fe campus. Publication of The College begun. 17 �The College ST. JOHN'S Annapolis, BALANCE SHEET, ASSETS CURRENT FUNDS Unrestricted Cash Accounts Receivable Due from Other Funds Sundry Receivables . . Inventory-Bookstore Prepaid Expenses Total . . . . . . .. .. $ 142,564 4,173 12,745 4,383 23,454 3,519 ...... . . . . . $ 190,838 .$ 77,489 lll,855 14,119 .$ .$ 203,463 394,301 .$ 47,217 1,799,086 38,175 7,341,620 7,041 Restricted Cash. Loans Receivable . Investments . Total. Total Current Funds ENDOWMENT FUNDS Cash. Accounts and Notes Receivable .. . . . .... . Matching Funds and Pledges Receivable. Investments at Cost. Accrued Income . Total Endowment Funds . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . $ 9,233,139 PLANT FUNDS Total Plant Funds. 63,246 367,182 5,047,146 394,221 29,221 5,000 . . $ 5,906,016 Total Funds .... . $15,533,456 Cash. Land and Campus Development . Building and Improvements .. . ..... .. .. . . .. . . Equipment ... U.S. Government Grant Receivable. Due from Other Funds .. 18 . ..... . . $ �Sep tern ber 1969 COLLEGE rviaryland June 30, 1969 LIABILITIES AND CAPITAL CURRENT FUNDS Unrestricted Notes Payable , .. Accounts Payable . Due to Other Funds . Student Advance Deposits . $ 165,53 8 25,300 Reserve for Current Operation . Total . 100,000 12,99 5 5,000 47, 543 $ 190,838 $ 99,574 Restricted Advanced from U. S. Government 99,574 103,889 Fund Balance Total Total Current Funds $ $ 203,463 394,301 ENDOWMENT FUNDS Principal-Income Expendable Unrestricted Endowments Restricted Endowments . . Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities Unexpended Income Due to Other Funds Total Endowment Funds $ 6,859,915 926,763 1,431,143 3,073 12,245 $ 9,2 33,319 PLANT FUNDS Accounts Payable Funds Available for Plant Expansion Investment in Plant $ 24,517 72,950 5,808,549 Total Plant Funds $ 5,906,016 Total Funds $15,533,456 19 �The College ST. JOHN'S Santa Fe, BALANCE SHEET, ASSETS CURRENT FUNDS General Current Cash. Investments ........ . . .. .. .. . Notes and Accounts Receivable, Less Reserve of $952 . . . . . .. . .. . . Deferred Expenditures Due from Other Funds . Other Assets I ~· · Total .. . . . $ 49,498 7,450 19,688 29,056 21,525 13,080 $ 140,387 Restricted Current Cash-Restricted Cash-Loan Funds Investments-Restricted Notes Receivable-Loan Funds (Students) United Student Aid Fund Deposit .. $ 69,430 1,844 4,300 127, 149 1,000 Total $ 203,723 Total Current Funds $ 344,110 ENDOWMENT FUNDS Cash Investments Total Endowment Funds $ 43,737 6,083 $ 49,820 PLANT FUNDS Cash Retirement of Indebtedness Funds Land and Land Improvements . Buildings Library Books . . ....... ......... ............ Other-Land and Buildings Equipment and Furnishings 20 $ 6,293 63,041 284,665 4,766,130 76,938 90,623 387,397 Total Plant Funds $5,675,08 7 Total Less: Inter-Fund Cancellations $6,069,017 21 ,525 Total Funds $6,047,492 �Sep tern ber 1969 COLLEGE New Mexico June 30, 1969 LIABILITIES AND CAP ITAL CURRENT FUNDS General Current ~·· Notes Payable Accounts Payable and Accrued Expenditures Deferred Income Actuarial Annuity Obligation Total $ 200,000 44,013 66,665 21,817 $ 332,495 (192,108) Cumulative Fund Deficit 1963-69 . Total . $ 140,387 Restricted Current Fund Balances Due to Other Funds $ 189,652 14,071 Total $ 203,723 Total Current Funds . $ 344,110 ENDOWMENT FUNDS Total Endowment Funds $ 43,737 $ 6,293 PLANT FUNDS Unexpended Retirement of Indebtedness Funds Fund Balances Due to Other Funds Invested in Plant Dormitory Bonds of 1964 Dormitory Bonds of 1966 . Actuarial Annuity Obligations Due to Other Funds From Contributions and Current Funds . Notes Payable . .. . . .. . . . 62,588 453 864,000 885,000 191,064 7,000 2,197,689 1,461,000 Total Plant Funds . $5,675,087 Total Less: Inter-Fund Cancellations $6,069,017 21,525 Total Funds $6,047,492 21 �The College ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Annapolis, Maryland CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1969 REVENUE Education and General $ 592,061 598 415,299 9,574 Tuition Fees Adult Education Endowment Miscellaneous $1 ,017,532 Total Auxiliary Enterprises Dining Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 142,343 Dormitories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . .. . 131,211 Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. .. .. . .. . ... .. .. .. . .. . .. .. . 33,764 Coffee Shop ............. .......... ........... ......... 812 Total $ 308,130 Other Non-Educational Revenue .. $ 134,982 Gifts and Grants $ Total Revenue 62,343 $1,522,987 E XPENDITURES Education and General Administration $ 151,371 General 133,3 78 Instruction . . 560,71 7 Student Activities 12,526 Adult Education 560 Plant Operation and Maintenance . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . .. ... . .. . .. .. .. . .. . . . . . 257,615 Total ...... . . .... .... ... . . . . . . .. .. . .. .. . . .... . . .. . .. .. . .. . . . . .. .. . $1 ,116,167 Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 39,456 Dining Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134,412 Total . .... .. . . . . . . . . ... .. .. . . .. ... . . ... . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . $ 173,868 Other Non-Educational Expenditures Scholarships and Grants in Aid . Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . Total . Total Expenditures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Revenue in Excess of Expenditures . 22 $ 201,110 16,346 $ 21 7,456 . ... ... . . . $1,507,491 . . . ... . . $ 15,496 Transfer of Funds for Library Renovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 5,000 Funds Available for Future Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 10,496 �September 1969 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Santa Fe, New Mexico CONDENSED STATEMENT OF INCOME AND EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1969 INCOME Educational and General Tuition Endowment Income Miscellaneous $ 465,527 365 4,134 Total .. . . . $ 470,026 Auxiliary Enterprises Dining Hall Dormitories . .. . .. . ... . .. ... . . . . . .. . . . . Bookstore . . .. . .... .. . . ... . ....... . . . $ 119,835 111,469 20,253 Total $ 251,557 Other Non-Educational Income Gifts and Grants Organized Activity Relating to Instructional Departments. $ 12,994 $ 687,334 $ 13,858 Total Current Income $1,435,769 EXPENDITURES Educational and General Administrative and General Instruction Student Activities Operation and Maintenance ...... . .. . . . . . .. . . $ 270,988 504,462 12,951 127,818 Total $ 916,219 Auxiliary Enterprises Dining Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... . .... . . . . . . ... . . Dormitories, including $ 58,8 55 debt service . Bookstore Total $ 90,078 109,108 19,23 5 $ 218,421 Other Non-Educational Student Aid .. ... Interest Annuity Payments . . .... ..... .... . .. . . . ..... . Organized Related Activities .. .. . . .. . .... . ...... . ... . .. . .. . . . ... . Miscellaneous $ 157,472 70,671 9,184 18,631 924 Total $ 256,882 Total Expenditures $1,391 ,522 Appropriations For National Defense Student Loans . ... . . .. ... . . . .. . . . For Capital Outlay . . .... . . . . .... . . . . . ....... . $ 1,560 35,986 Total Appropriations . . . . . . . . . $ 37,546 Total Expenditures and Appropriations . .. ... . $1 ,429,068 Excess of Income over Expenditures and Appropriations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ 6,701 23 �The College ~· · SCENES AT THE COLLEGE Photos by M. E. Warren 24 �GIFTS AND BEQUESTS St. John's College is a non-sectarian, independent liberal arts college deriving its income from student fees, from a limited appropriation by the Maryland General Assembly, and the gifts of its friends and alumni and from permanent endowment funds. The College's permanent endowment now exceeds $7,000,000, but increasing educational costs will require future additions to these funds. The CoUege invites gifts and bequests to its current budget, to its building program, and to its permanent endowment funds. Inquiries may be addressed to the President or the Treasurer. Bequests may be made in a form similar to the following: "I hereby give and bequeath to St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland or m Santa Fe, New Mexico the sum of . . . .. . ... . .... dollars." The Co11ege would prefer gifts and bequests to be applied in the discretion of the College, but gifts and bequests may be made for specia11y stated purposes. �Santa Fe: A dream is now a five-y_ear-old reality. The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, September 1969 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-09 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXI, Number 3 of The College. Published in September 1969. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_21_No_3_1969 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 Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e49127065869f74ee717b64f4822df9c.pdf 5fca4e2b700189a81956fa98b7e9c957 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, December 1969 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969-12 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXI, Number 4 of The College. Published in December 1969. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_21_No_4_1969 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 Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/851c685d75958aa5f7dec341738382f9.pdf a46766133c87a2cc6e24920c51686a72 PDF Text Text �The College Cover: Plato and Aristotle, from "The School of Athens," by Raphael. Inside front cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis campus. The College is a publication for friends of St. John's College and for those who might become friends of the College, if they came to know it. Our aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our opinion, St. John's comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well-placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John's. Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71 The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg, Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (Frank McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle. In the April Issue: I Biological Explanation, by Robert A. Neidorf. Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss 6 April 1970 No. I 15 News on the Campuses. 18 Alumni Activities Vol. XXII "When Is St. John's Going to Resume Athletics?" by Bryce Jacobsen 23 �A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss The following gtvmg of accounts took place at St. John's College, Annapolis, on January 30, 1970. Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss were introduced by Dean Robert A. Goldwin: Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss are going to present us tonight with two {(accounts." The origin of this event is, I think, quite simple. Many of us have known them both, as our teachers, for many, many years. In a sense we can say that we know much about their teachings. But, in fact, most of us know very little of the genesis of their thought. And it occurred to us that it would be, very simply, enlightening, to hear from them their own accounts of the origin and development of their thoughts in those matters of greatest interest to us, their students .... It is arranged that Mr. Klein will speak and then Mr. Strauss will speak. Then we will have questions, in our accustomed style. Mr. Klein This meeting has two reasons, one is accidental, the other is important. The first is the fact (and any fact is some kind of accident) that Mr. Strauss and I happen to have known each other closely, and have been friends for 50 years, and happen both to be now in Annapolis at St. John's College. The other reason, the important one, is that Mr. Strauss is not too well known in this community and that we as a real community of learners should begin to understand better why he is now a member of this community. We thought it might be not too bad an idea, although a somewhat embarrassing one, to tell you what we have learned in our lives, what preoccupied us and what still preoccupies us. Dead Week might perhaps indeed provide the right opportunity, the kairos, to do that. I shall begin. Up to my twenty-fifth year I had one great difficulty. I was a student, and so was Mr. Strauss-we studied at the same university-, and I studied all kinds of things, something called philosophy, and mathematics, and physics, and I did that quite superficially. But what preoccupied me mostly during those years was this: whatever thought I might have, and whatever interest I might have in anything, seemed to me to be located completely within me, so that I always felt that I could not really understand anything outside me, could not understand anything uttered or written by another person. I felt that I was in a kind of vicious circle, out of which I could find no escape. I wrote a dissertation, which is not worth the paper on which it was written, obtained my Ph.D. degree, and then after a short while, returned to studies. Now, while Mr. Strauss and I were studying we had many, I should say, endless conversations about many things. His primary interests were two questions: one, the question of God; and two, the question of politics. These questions were not mine. I studied, as I said, quite superficially, Hegel, mathematics, and physics. When I resumed my studying, a certain man happened to be at the University in the little town in which I was living. This man was Martin Heidegger. Many of you have heard his name, and some of you might have read some of his works in impossible English translations. I will not talk too much about Martin Heidegger, except that I would like to say that he is the very great thinker of our time, although his moral qualities do not match his intellectual ones. When I heard him lecture, I was struck by one thing: that he was the first man who made me understand something written by another man; namely Aristotle. It broke my vicious circle. I felt that I could understand. Then I began studying seriously, for myself, seriously, not superficially. It became clear to me that one had to distinguish the classical mode of thinking from the modern mode of thinking. Our world and our understanding, as it is today, is based on a certain change that occurred about 500 years ago, and this change pervades not only our thinking but the whole world around us. It made possible one of the greatest achievements of man, mathematical physics, and all the auxiliary disciplines connected with it. It made possible, what we call with a strange Latin word, science. This science is derived from the classical mode of thinking, but this derivation is also a dilution which blinds our sight. My studies led me to conclude: we have to relearn what the ancients knew; we should still be able to persist in scientific investigations, where real progress is 1 �The College possible, although the science with which we are familiar is also capable of regress and of bringing about a fundamental forgetfulness of most important things. As a consequence of these studies and of this understanding, a question arose: How should people be educated? At that time a certain political upheaval made it necessary for me to come to these United States, and to land on the St. John's campus. This great question, how to educate people, became suddenly a "practical" question. I found here a man, an extraordinary man, whose name you all know, Scott Buchanan. He was also struggling with this question, as he had been struggling all his life. Since then, as the Dean told you, I have stayed here on this campus. Mr. Strauss, meanwhile, worked on his own, tenaciously, indefatigably, and in an exemplary way. His erudition, his zeal, his tenacity brought fruit-resplendent fruit. As so many others, I learned from him. There are indeed, I think, differences between us, although it is not quite clear to me in what they consist. And I do think that at this point it is not too important to find out what they are. Mr. Strauss might allude to them. Mr. Strauss I must begin with an introduction to my introduction. Some faculty members, I was told, had misgivings about this meeting. The only ones which are justified concern this question: Is it proper for people to talk about themselves in public? The general answer is: no. But there are exceptions. First, what is true of men in general is not equally true of old men. Second, and above all, people may talk about their thoughts concerning matters of public concern, and virtue is a matter of public concern. Those thoughts, it is true, are connected with our lives and I for one will have to say something about my life. But this is of interest even to me only as a starting point of considerations, of studies, which I hope are intelligible to those who do not know my starting point. Why then speak of one's life at all? Because the considerations at which I arrived are not necessarily true or correct; my life may explain my pitfalls. The subject is the relations between Klein and me, i.e., our agreements and our differences. In my opinion we are closer to one another than to anyone else in our generation. Yet there are differences. I wish to learn from Klein how he sees these differences. It is possible that our disagreements have something to do with the differences of our temperaments or humors. It is more helpful and worthy, however, if I tell the tellable story of my life with special regard to how Klein affected it. I must warn you: I may commit errors of memory. Apart from this I shall not always keep to the chronological order. I was brought up in a conservative, even orthodox Jewish home somewhere in a rural district of Germany. The "ceremonial'' laws were rather strictly observed but 2 there was very little Jewish knowledge. In the Gymnasium I became exposed to the message of German humanism. Furtively I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. When I was 16 and we read the Laches in school, I formed the plan, or the wish, to spend my life reading Plato and breeding rabbits while earning my livelihood as a rural postmaster. Without being aware of it, I had moved rather far away from my Jewish home, without any rebellion. When I was 17, I was converted to Zionismto simple, straightforward political Zionism. When I went to the University I tended towards the study of philosophy. For reasons of local proximity I went to the University of Marburg which had been the seat and center of the neo-Kantian school of Marburg, founded by Hermann Cohen. Cohen attracted me because he was a passionate philosopher and a Jew passionately devoted to Judaism. Cohen was at that time no longer alive and his school was in a state of disintegration. The disintegration was chiefly due to the emergence and ever increasing power of phenomenology-an approach opened up by Husser!. Husser! told me a few years later, the Marburg school begins with the roof while he begins with the foundation. But also: Cohen belonged definitely to the pre-war world. This is true also of Husser!. Mosc characteristic of the post-war world was the resurgence of theology: Karl Barth. (The Preface to the first edition of his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is of great importance also to non-theologians: it sets forth the principles of an interpretation that is concerned exclusively with the subject matter as distinguished from historical interpretation.) Wholly independently of Barth Jewish theology was resurrected from a deep slumber by Franz Rosenzweig, a highly gifted man whom I greatly admired to the extent to which I understood him. It was in Marburg in 1920 that I met Klein for the first time. He stood out among the philosophy students not only by his intelligence but also by his whole appearance: he was wholly non-provincial in a wholly provincial environment. I was deeply impressed by him and attracted to him. I do not know whether I acted merely in obedience to my duty or whether this was only a pretense: I approached him in order to win him over to Zionism. I failed utterly. Nevertheless, from that time on we remained in contact up to the present day. Academic freedom meant in Germany that one could change one's university every semester and that there were no attendance requirements nor examinations in lecture courses. After having received my Ph.D. degree (a disgraceful performance) in Hamburg I went to the University of Freiburg in 1922 in order to see and hear Husser!. I did not derive great benefit from Husser!; I was probably not mature enough. My predominant interest was in theology: when I once asked Husser! about the subject, he replied, "If there is a datum 'God' we shall describe it." In his seminar on Lotze's Logic I read a paper in the first sentence of which the expression "sense per- �April 1970 ception" occurred. Husser! stopped me immediately, developed his analysis of sense perception and this took np the rest of the meeting: at the end Husser! graciously apologized. I attended regularly the lecture courses on the Social Doctrines of the Reformation and the Enlightenment by Ebbinghaus: I still remember gratefully Ebbinghaus's lively presentation of Hobbes's doctrine; Ebbinghaus shared with Hobbes a certain boyish quality. One of the unknown young men in Husserl's entourage was Heidegger. I attended his lecture course from time to time without understanding a word, but sensed that he dealt with something of the utmost importance to man as man. I understood something on one occasion: when he interpreted the beginning of the Metapbysics. I had never heard nor seen such a thing-such a thorougb and intensive interpretation of a philosophic text. On my way home I visited Rosenzweig and said to him that compared to Heidegger, Max Weber, till then regarded by me as the incarnation of the spirit of science and scholarship, was an orphan child. I disregard again the chronological order and explain in the most simple terms why in my opinion Heidegger won out over Husser!; he radicalized Husserl's critique of the school of Marburg and turned it against Husser!: what is primary is not the object of sense perception but the things which we handle and with which we are concerned, pragmata. What I could not stomach was his moral teaching, for despite his disclaimer, he had such a teaching. The key term is resoluteness without any indication as to what are the proper objects of resoluteness. There is a straight line which leads from Heidegger's resoluteness to his siding with the so-called Nazis in 1933. After that I ceased to take any interest in him for about two decades. To return to 1922, the resurgence of theology, of what sometimes was even called orthodoxy, was in fact a profound innovation. This innovation had become necessary because the attack of the Enlightenment on the old orthodoxy had not been in every respect a failure. I wished to understand to what extent it was a failure and to what extent it was not. The classical statement on this subject in Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind had become questionable because Hegel's whole position had been called into question by the new theology. One had to descend to a level which is, in the good and the bad sense, less sophisticated than Hegel's. The classic document of the attack on orthodoxy within Judaism, but not only within Judaism, is Spinoza's Tbeological Political Treatise. Spinoza's Treatise had been subjected to a fierce criticism by Cohen-a criticism which was impressive because Cohen was entirely free from the idolatry of Spinoza as the God-intoxicated thinker but it was nevertheless inadequate. In order to form an independent judgment I began, therefore, a fresh study of the Tbeological Political Treatise. In this study I was greatly assisted by Lessing, especially his theological writings, some of them with forbidding titles. Incidentally, Lessing is also the author of the only improvised live dialogue on a philosophic subject known to me. Lessing was always at my elbow. T11is meant that I learned more from him than I knew at that time. As I came to see later Lessing had said everything I had found out about the distinction between exoteric and esoteric speech and its grounds. In 1925 Heidegger came to Marburg. Klein attended his classes regularly, and he was, naturally, deeply impressed by him. But he did not become a Heideggerian. Heidegger's work required and included what he called Destruktion of the tradition. ( Destruktion is not quite so bad as destruction. It means taking down, the opposite of construction.) He intended to uproot Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, but this presupposed the laying bare of its roots, the laying bare of it as it was in itself and not as it had come to appear in the light of the tradition and of modern philosophy. Klein was more attracted by the Aristotle brought to light and life by Heidegger than by Heidegger's own philosophy. Later Klein turned to the study of Plato in which. he got hardly any help from Heidegger. Klein convinced me of two things. First, the one thing needed philosophically is in the first place a return to, a recovery of, classical philosophy; second, the way in which Plato is read, especially by professors of philosophy and by men who do philosophy, is wholly inadequate because it does not take into account the dramatic character of the dialogues, also and especially of those of their parts which look almost like philosophic treatises. The classical scholar Friedlander had seen this to some extent, but Friedlander had no inkling of what Plato meant by philosophy. Klein and I differ somewhat in our ways of reading Plato but I have never been able to find out precisely what that difference is. Perhaps the following remarks are helpful. T11e first offshoot of Klein's Platonic studies is his work on Greek logistics and the genesis of modern algebra -a work which I regard as unrivalled in the whole field of intellectual history, at least in our generation. While Klein was engaged in this work, I continued my study of Spinoza's Treatise from which I had been led to Hobbes, on the one hand, and to Maimonides on the other. Maimonides was, to begin with, wholly unintelligible to me. I got the first glimmer of light when I concentrated on his prophetology and, therefore, the prophetology of the Islamic philosophers who preceeded him. One day when reading in a Latin translation Avicenna's treatise, On the Division of the Sciences, I came across this sentence (I quote from memory): the standard work on prophecy and revelation is Plato's Laws. Then I began to begin to understand Maimonides's prophetology and ,eventually, as I believe, the whole Guide of tbe Perplexed. Maimonides never calls himself a philosopher; he presents himself as an opponent of the philosophers. He used a kind of writing which is in the precise sense of the term, exoteric. When Klein had read 3 �The College the manuscript of my essay on the literary character of the Guide of the Perplexed, he said, "We have rediscovered exotericism." To this extent we completely agreed. But there was from the beginning this difference between us: that I attached much greater importance than Klein did and does to the tension between philosophy and the city, even the best city. I arrived at a conclusion that I can state in the form of a syllogism: Philosophy is the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge; but opinion is the element of the city, hence philosophy is subversive, hence the philosopher must write in such a way that he will improve rather than subvert the city. In other words the virtue of the philosopher's thought is a certain kind of mania while the virtue of the philosopher's public speech is sophrosyne. Philosophy is as such trans-political, trans-religious, and trans-moral but the city is and ought to be moral and religious. In the words of Thomas Aquinas only reason informed by faith knows that God must be worshipped, and the intellectual virtues with the exception of prudence do not presuppose moral virtue. To illustrate this point, moral man, merely moral man, the kaloskagathos in the common meaning of the term, is not simply closer to the philosopher than a man of the dubious morality of Alcibiades. This view of philosophy was derived from my study of pre-modern philosophy. It implies that modern philosophy has a radically different character. In modern times the gulf between philosophy and the city was bridged, or believed to have been bridged by two innovations: 1) the ends of the philosopher and the non-philosopher are identical, because philosophy is in the service of the relief of man's estate or "science for the sake of power"; 2) philosophy can fulfill its salutary function only if its results are diffused among the non-philosophers, if popular enlightenment is possible. The high point was reached in Kant's teaching on the primacy of practical, i.e., moral reason; a teaching prepared to some extent by Rousseau: the one thing needful is a good will and of a good will all men are equally capable. If we call moralism the view that morality or moral virtue is the highest, I am doubtful if it occurs in antiquity at all. I was confirmed in my concentration on the tension between philosophy and the polis, i.e., on the highest theme of political philosophy by this consideration. What distinguishes present day philosophy in its highest form, in its Heideggerian form, from classical philosophy is its historical character; it presupposes the so-called historical consciousness. It is therefore necessary to understand the partly hidden roots of that consciousness. Up to the present day when we call a man a historian without qualification (like economic historian, cultural historian, etc.) we mean a political historian. Politics and political philosophy is the matrix of the historical consciousness. 4 • SELECTION FROM THE QUESTION PERIOD Question: Concerning the difference between Mr. Klein and Mr. Strauss. Mr. Klein: I do suppose that his emphasis on the political aspect of our lives, which can never be disregarded, of course, is something I do not quite agree with. On the other hand, we do agree that if there is philosophizing, it is a completely immoderate undertaking, that cannot find, ultimately, its goal, although one has to persist in it. Now where the difference here is, is really not quite clear. Mr. Strauss: ... I believe that there is another way of stating the difference. Mr. Klein and I differ regarding the status of morality. Mr. Klein: (Laughter) I am not entirely certain of that. That's all I can say. \Veil, I will add something to that. And that is again a question of a difference of emphasis. I think I wouldn't emphasize it so much, the morality of man, but I do think that man ought to be moral. Mr. Strauss: Yes-sure. I did not mean that when I spoke of our difference. I think that in your scheme of things morality has a higher place than in my scheme. Mr. Klein: I really don't think so. Why do you say that? Mr. Strauss: Because we have frequently had quite a few conversations . . . now and then, and one general formula which suggested itself to me was that you attach a higher importance to morality, as morality, than I do. Now, let me explain this. That the philosophic life, especially as Plato and Aristotle understood it, is not possible without self-control and a few other virtues almost goes without saying. If a man is habitually drunk, and so on, how can he think? But the question is, if these virtues are understood only as subservient to philosophy and for its sake, then that is no longer a moral understanding of the virtues. Mr. Klein: That may be. (Tape break) Mr. Strauss: ... a statement by a modern extremist, but who had a marvelous sense for Greek thought, Nietzsche -in his Genealogy of Morals, third treatise, "\Vhat is the Significance of Ascetic Ideals," he explains, why is a philosopher ascetic? And he makes this clear, that he is ascetic. And, he says, that is not different from the asceticism of a jockey, who in order to win a race must live very restrainedly, but that is wholly unimportant to the jockey, what is important is to win the race. If one may compare low to high things, one may say similarly of the philosopher, what counts is thinking and investigating and not morality. Of course the word morality is a "bad word" because it has so many connotations which are wholly alien to the ancients, but, I think for provisional purposes, we can· accept it. Mr. Klein: If there's something that I learned from Plato, or that I think that I learned from Plato, is to �April 1970 understand that nothing can be-nothing can be-that isn't in some way-and that's very difficult-good. That's why I do understand why Mr. Strauss says that the philosopher is in a certain way superior to the concern about morality, but I can not agree that the ultimate consideration of things, as far as one is capable of doing that, ever, ever, frees men of the compulsion to act rightly. Mr. Strauss: Yes, I think that you believe that. Yes, that is what I meant. Questioner: Of what use is the city to the philosopher? Mr. Strauss: Without cities, no philosophers. They are the conditions. Mr. Klein: You wouldn't deny that, would you? Questioner: But it seems to me that the city provides for the needs of the body. Mr. Strauss: Yes, sure. Questioner: But does it provide for the needs of the soul? Mr. Strauss: To some extent, sure. Questioner: Is it necessary for its existence? Mr. Strauss: To some extent, obviously. In one way or another, even if there is no compulsory education, the city educates its citizens. Questioner: Wouldn't the philosopher get his education from nature? Mr. Strauss: His first education, surely not. His first education he would usually get from his father and mother, and other relatives, that is to say, from the city. Questioner: How does it follow from the saying that every thing that is, is somehow or other good, that a man should act rightly? Mr. Klein: I would answer that very simply: He must try to be what he is. And, by the way, to be a man, a human being, is not a simple matter. The trouble with us human beings is that we are not quite complete, neither when we are born nor when we die. Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's College since 1938, and was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. Born in Russia, he studied in Germany. He is the author of Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra {translation, M.I.T. Press, 1968), and Commentary on Plato's Meno {University of North Carolina Press, 1965). Leo Strauss is the first Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence of St. John's College. He is also Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy of the University of Chicago. His works include Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953); What Is Political Philosophy? (Free Press, 1959); Thoughts on Machiavelli (Free Press, 1958); "How to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in the translation of the same of the University of Chicago Press, 1963; Persecution and the Art of Writing (Free Press, 1952) containing "The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed"; and Socrates and Aristophanes (Basic Books, 1966). 5 �Biological Explanation* BY ROBERT NEIDORF This paper discusses an old but continuing controversy in the philosophy of biology. It is the controversy between those who claim that purpose and action for an end is present in the behavior of animals and in the development of their internal structures, and those who claim that it is inaccuracy of thought or plain superstition to speak that way. This second group I will call mechanists. The first group used to be called vitalists, but for reasons that will emerge I do not wish to use that term, since it carries certain unfortunate associations. The paper falls into two parts. The first is analytical and destructive; the second suggestive, vague, constructive, much weaker as argument, and to me much mor:e interesting. I. Living things, especially animals, have incredibly complex internal structures; their organs, tissues, and cells seem to be arranged in patterns which subserve the growth, maintenance or reproduction of the organisms in which they occur. So thoroughgoing is the apparent functional relation between the structures and their containing organisms, that the whole presents the appearance of a miracle. We see nothing like it in the rocks, the weather or the stars. It is then natural to suppose that plants and animals cannot be understood in the same way as earth, cloud and heavens. How then can the organic world be understood? One might think of material organisms as governed by one or more Intelligences that are non-material, spiritm1.l, in some way separate from the material organisms they govern. This hypothesis is usually called vitalism, and it is not susceptible to investigation by familiar methods; for this reason I lay it aside, but without prejudice. The obvious alternative is to think of governing Intelligences that are natural parts or aspects of animal material. Again there may be one or many, and the notion of a plurality of such Intelligences is not inconsistent with their subsumption in some fashion under a single world-embracing * A lecture 6 delivered at St. John's College in Santa Fe, April, 1968. Intelligence. For simplicity, I concentrate in what follows on the hypothesis that there are many, each associated with a definite material organism. In this view the term Intelligence has to be understood metaphorically, since we do not find in plants or animals any evidence of deliberation or ability to grasp a universal. The hypothesis therefore takes this form: in the plant and animal worlds, vital processes are governed or at least influenced by some inarticulate and usually unconscious striving toward the achievement of a goal specific to the organism-that goal being the development and maintenance of just those structures and activities that are typical of the species, and the production of further instances of their own kind. This purposive striving is simply a characteristic or quality of the kind of matter that we encounter in the organic world, namely organic matter. This, as I understand it, is the core of the view held by Galen, and before him by Aristotle, a view now widely rejected as metaphysical, anthropomorphic, superstitious, sentimental, dogmatical, and-worst of >~11-prescientific. I call it organicism. Part of the contemporary attitude of disdain toward organicism is based on evolution, for it seems that evolution makes it possible to understand the organic world in precisely the same way as the inorganic; that is, as a series of events governed by a blind mechanical causality. But here we come upon a surprise. At the very beginning of The Origin of Species, Darwin quotes Aristotle approvingly. He suggests that the principle of natural selection is "shadowed forth" in Aristotle, and he cites a passage from Physics, II, 8, which I give in the Oxford translation: Why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for tl1e sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the �April 1970 same with the parts in nature, e.g., that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come to be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grow otherwise perished and continued to perish. Evidently Aristotle is here expounding a view, attributed to Empedocles, which has something in common with Darwin's. But Aristotle does not believe it, as we see in the passage immediately following: It is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not abscribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dogdays, but only it we have it in winter. It then it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these [i.e., the teeth] cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end.... Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature. The argument may be restated thus: if a structure serves a purpose, the series of events causally antecedent to the structure are either relevant to the purpose or not. If not, they do not often realize the purpose, as we see empirically. But the teeth almost always do. Hence the process of eruption of the teeth is relevant to the purpose, is "for an end." We must ask how a modem biologist of the mechanistic stripe would reply to this. No doubt he will point out that Aristotle has quite missed the point of the evolution theory. Evolution, he might say, does not invoke coincidence to explain the eruption of these particular teeth in this particular animal, but to explain the general fact that animals of such and such a kind have teeth of such and such a kind. The first teeth arose coincidentally, as the outcome of mechanical causes unrelated to nutrition; but since they did serve the nutritive function, the animal possessing them enjoyed a competitive advantage, and so on with a familiar story. Ultimately, teeth-not just these teeth but teeth in general -appear on the scene coincidentally; particular teeth, other than the first, arise by the operation of mechanical necessity flowing from a mechanism of inheritance. When we take this view, further shifts of emphasis occur, for then Aristotle's insistence that "action for an end is present in things that come to be . . . by nature" now appears superfluous; the mechanical causes explain everything. So Aristotle's view is refuted or outflanked by shifting the subject to a wider context. But we have not heard the end of him, for his argument can also be shifted to that wider context and repeated. Thus: throughout the animal and plant worlds we see structures serving the accomplishment of what look like natural purposes. The occurrence of structure functionally adapted to ends is the general rule, not the exception. Hence that general fact cannot be the result of coincidence; therefore action for an end exists in things that come to be by nature. It does not matter at this point whether we hold, with Aristotle, that species are fixed and have always existed much as they are now, or whether we think with the evolutionist that species begin in time and evolve one from another. The general fact is the existence of functionally adapted structure, and that general fact has to be explained by acknowledging the existence of action for an end. To put the same point differently, the mechanist cannot prevail by referring the development of adapted teeth to an ingenious genetic mechanism, for we still have to ex~ plain the functional appropriateness of that mechanism. Thus Aristotle's argument has some residual forces despite evolution, and we see that the argument between biological mechanists and their opponents is really independent of the fact of evolution, which could have been inferred from the fact that the controversy antedates Darwin by two millennia. Thus generalized, the Aristotelian argument on behalf of action for an end in nature is I think conclusive, pro- vided we admit that there are such things as ends. So our question is now disentangled from the confusing context of evolution, and takes a simple form: is there such a thing as end or purpose in animals? For Aristotle it was past doubt that the normal series of events in the life of a normal living creature represented an approach to a "completion," then a recession from that completion in senility and death. The completion itself is defined by the disposition to perform, and the ability to execute, a variety of complicated and highly integrated processes, including self-maintenance and reproduction. Except when he is in a theological mood-which is for him a strained one-it is no use asking him what the completed mature animal is for. It is for itself, for its specific normal processes. As the Zen Buddhists have it, the purpose of a flower is simply to open, a truthif it is one-that cuts clean across the flower's reproductive function. For the mechanist, the attribution of the term "completion" to the adult animal is a conventional or subjective mode of speech; for him there is just a physico-chemical system passing through varying stages of activity and stability, and it makes no objective sense to single out any one stage as a privileged one, worthy to be called the completion or the desired end. How can the controversy between mechanism and organicism be decided? I will review five different attempts to decide the issue. The first three are attempts to come 7 �The College to a decision on empirical grounds, the fourth on pragmatic grounds, and the last on analytical grounds. First empirical attempt: someone asks me whether animals have completions or ends and I try to find out by cutting up the animal, looking for the end or the directive agent for all the world as if I were looking for the vermiform appendix. This is clearly wrong. It is as if someone tried to find the form in matter with the help of a microscope. Second empirical attempt: are there phenomena inconsistent with one theory or the other? And first, are there things that animals do that chemical systems cannot? If there are, it would overthrow the mechanist view. No one has yet built a tiger in a laboratory, but there seems to be no limit to the extent to which machines can imitate macroscopic biological behavior, and no limit to the ingenuity of biochemists in synthesizing almost-biological microsystems. It wonld be bad tactics to hang the organistic philosophy on the prediction that machines cannot do X, Y or Z; name it, and someone builds a machine that can do it. And it would be bad logic to hang it on the prediction that no one will ever bnild a machine that can do everything animals can, for this might be true as an accidental matter, even though animals were just machines. Next, are there hard facts, real or imaginary, that conld overthrow organicism? I can only think of one that has been proposed, and that is the imaginary fact of the laboratory production of a genuine animal, fertile and true-breeding. But I think it is wrong to imagine that this would refute the organic view. It would only show that animals can be produced in a peculiar manner. Roughly half of the higher animals-the female halfpossess the capacity to synthesize animals from relatively simple chemicals; only the process is so usual that we fail to dwell on its truly remarkable and very puzzling characteristics, and in the human case we often take pains to prevent it. Third empirical attempt: is one of the two views more adequate than the other? I.e., are there phenomena that can be accounted for under the one theory that the other theory must ignore as unexplainable? Again, probably not. The organicist says that stems grow up in order to put the leaves into the light and air. The mechanist discovers growth-controlling fluids generated in the tip which flow differentially down the stalk depending on its orientation, thus insuring that the stem grows upward. The mechanist now claims to have explained the directionality of stem growth, which his opponent could not do. His opponent replies that any purpose has to be effected by a mechanism, and he thanks the mechanist for having found the relevant one in this case. Next, are there phenomena that can be explained teleologically but not mechanically? Again I think not. I think anything can be explained mechanically, but to explain why requires a digression, for here I must explain 8 what I understand by mechanical explanation. What follows is a simplified version of an account found in Ernest Nagel's book, The Structure of Science. I propose that mechanical explanation of a system involves four conditions. ( 1) The system or phenomenon enjoys momentary states or conditions defined by a finite collection of simultaneous momentary qualities; for example, in Newtonian mechanics the state of a material particle is defined by its location and its instantaneous momentum. (2) There is a formulated procedure for observing and measuring these qualities. ( 3) There are mathematical functions which connect the states of the system at one time with its states at other times in such a way that, given the state at some chosen initial time, one may in principle predict the state at any future time. (4) The system behaves in accordance with these predictions. Some philosophers hold that this is the general pattern of all explanation, with some variation in the definition of state to allow for statistical and probability considerations that are prominent in some kinds of systems. As might be expected, such philosophers tend to be hostile to teleological explanation. Mechanical explanation understood in this way is historically linked to an atomistic and chemical understanding of nature, which ·thus leans heavily on the ideal of prediction. The 19th century biologist Hans Driesch believed that certain biological phenomena associated with embryological development and regeneration of lost members could not in principle be understood mechanically. But the history of biology passed him by and later workers, mostly enthusiastic mechanists, discovered mechanisms of heredity and growth control of a subtlety and complexity apparently undreamed of by Driesch. I believe this is typical of a general pattern; phenomena at one time inexplicable and unpredictable except from the teleological point of view later yield to mechanical explanation. One might even suggest that the mechanistic program is doomed to succeed; for given any regular phenomenon, it may just be a matter of ingenuity to invent a mechanical system with suitable state-definitions and time-dependent mathematical functions that "explains" the phenomenon. Having failed to decide the controversy by empirical means, I now turn to a pragmatic attempt. That is, we might give the palm to whichever view seems most useful in generating interesting research problems and useful medical devices. At first glance the mechanist has the advantage here; certainly those university biologists who espouse some form of mechanism are also those who have the biggest buildings, the most expensive equipment, and the greatest number of Ph.D. students. They also have a rhetorical point to make, for they tend to claim that if you are satisfied with teleological explanations you will be uninterested in finding mechanisms, thus choking off inquiry. But neither Aristotle nor Galen deny the presence of the importance of mechanisms, they only deny the �April 1970 adequacy of mechanistic explanations in isolation. Yes, says the mechanist, but we have made great strides in biology precisely by ignoring the teleological approach; we never use the concept of purpose or end. Then, asks the organicist, why is your literature choked with the words purpose, function, in order to, and so on? Oh well, comes the casual reply, that is just a short-hand for a more elaborate series of statements; we all understand that. But do we? The attempt to decide the issue pragmatically ends in confusion, as is perhaps appropriate for all pragmatic attempts. We now find the mechanist using teleological notions, but claiming that in a fundamental sense he is not really using them. We must therefore examine the attempt to rewrite all teleological propositions in the form of non-teleological propositions; for it is .essential to the mechanist position that such rewriting must always in principle be possible. Space forbids a detailed presentation of any of the many recent attempts to carry out this program. Perhaps the most characteristic effort was published in 1950 by A. Sommerhof in a book entitled Analytical Biology. Sommerhof takes it as axiomatic that living systems are characterized by behavior and structure-growth which is adaptive; that is, conducive to some goal defined as a frequent, typical, or otherwise important state of the system. His problem is to define the apparently teleological term adapted in non-teleological terms. The analysis is complex, and colored by a full sense of the difficulties of the problem. He decides that a given response in a living system is adapted if and only if the following conditions hold. ( 1) The response will, in conjunction with a given environmental context, lead to the goal. (2) The response and its corresponding environmental context are each members of ensembles of real or imaginary responses and contexts, correlated with each other one-toone, and such that any correlated pair will lead to the same goal. ( 3) The response enjoys a measure of causal independence from its corresponding context; rather, the response and its corresponding context are both outcomes of one set of prior causal conditions. (4) It is possible to say that, had the prior conditions been such as to produce a different environmental context, they would also necessarily have produced a different (but corresponding) response. This schema provides a definite meaning for the assertion that a response is adapted, yet there is no reference to use, purpose, or striving. When we say a response is adapted we are referring in a short-hand way to its complex relations with other states real and ideal. What explains the response is the ordinary causal mechanism that produces it; and this latter is of course understood mechanically, in terms of disconnected momentary states related only by time-dependent mathematical functions. But here I must express a misgiving. Let us assumealthough it is arguable-that Sommerhof's analysis permits us to pass from any statement about goals to a complex of other statements expressed in strict mechanical terminology. Is this a translation? If it is, the process should work in reverse, and any biological situation that falls under the Sommerhof schema should be equally describable in terms of goals and purposes. I think that animal death is a case that falls under the schema, for in any environment that we know the higher animals all exhibit longterm processes leading to death. But no one will say that death is a goal, and that aging processes are responses adapted thereto. Sommerhof concedes this, and rejects death as a suitable goal-state on further grounds. It is then a matter for further discussion as to whether the rejection-criteria are-or can be-stated in purely mechanistic terms. My misgiving rests on the suspicion (perhaps unwarranted) that biologists characteristically select goalstates for causal analysis through a sense of their subjectmatter that lies quite outside Sommerhof's schema, and quite outside any possible cluster of purely mechanical meanings. If so, Sommerhof's schema, however supplemented, is a way of deducing many useful mechanical statements from a few teleological statements, but it is not a translation. This leads to what I think is the fundamental discomfort that will be felt by many persons, myself included, 9 �The College in the face of an approach like Sommerhof's. Even conceding that it is possible to replace all of our customary uses of teleological terms with strictly equivalent mechanical terms, we might still feel that the result could only provide the bare bones of an adequate description. Mechanical terms do not describe the states of an organism at various times as truly related to each other, but as discrete moments tied together by empirical mathematical functions. Differently put, a mechanical description like Sommerhof's is not dynamic, but kinematic; it has no room for the forces, tensions, and pressures that we think operate in the organic world; it only tells us about static states that appear and disappear under a purely adventitious order. Like the cinema, it suggests that what appears to be dynamic and flowing is actually a series of static tableaux. Of course certain kinds of changes in these successive tableaux could be labeled as forces, but this would not satisfy the objector, because he is convinced that something goes on in the animal world analogous to what he feels when he senses internal muscular stress, the restlessness of a frustrated bodily drive, or the quiescence of satisfaction. No doubt this objection is anthropomorphic; it remains to be seen if it is on that account vicious. What I am finally questioning is the whole tradition of describing nature and animal life in terms of disconnected momentary states, a tradition which derives on its epistemological side from Hume and on its ontological side from 17th century science. It is a tradition which insists that the fundamental entities of the world, or of our perceptive experience, are distinct items not related to each other except in space and time, and internally homogeneous. Thus, for Hume, any experience of feeling which differs from moment to moment is not one experience, but two. He says, "Whatever is distinguishable is separable." And for a devotee of Newtonian particle physics (which Newton was not), any change in the condition of an object has to be understood as a translocation of constituent particles, where each particle remains unaffected by its motion and is really just a series of instantaneous acts of occupation of points in space. The atoms do not and cannot acknowledge each other by any internal alteration 1 nor can one moment in an atom's life acknowl~ edge the existence of past or future moments. II. Having failed to decide the original controversy by any of the approaches made so far, the suspicion arises that we are dealing with a pseudo-problem generated by inattention to the meaning of the term purpose. Some would say that we should read the meaning of purpose from the animal world, where we see structures serving ends. Since it is just the suitability of this posture which is under examination, we cannot ]Ocate the meaning there without begging the question. Another source for the meaning of purpose rests in deliberative human experience; but it seems clear that animals do not enjoy such experi- 10 ences. It is often maintained these these are the only two meanings for purpose; in which case the term is either applied to the animal world by convention and vacuously, or we have to impute thought to animals. But I think there is a third source. Let me go back to David Hume, who is the outstanding exponent of the view that our experience is made up of disconnected bits and pieces carrying no intrinsic order. If under suitable circumstances I were to shout Brutus, most listeners could be relied upon to shout back Caesar. This is a kind of order among our perceptions that Hume must account for. He would point out that when we first meet Brutus we have no inclination to think of Caesar; that comes only after we have read Plutarch and Shakespeare. For Hume this shows that the psychological relation between imagined-Brutus and imagined-Caesar is not part of the perception we call imagined-Brutus; for if it were, it would have been there from the beginning. He accounts for the association by invoking a force of the mind which is trained, like Pavlov's dogs, to repeat in imagination those conjunctions of perceptions which have been forced upon it by past experience. This associative force of the mind is inexplicable in Hume's system; it reveals itself as a felt tension under certain circumstances and must be accepted as brute fact. I would draw from these psychic phenomena a different lesson. Instead of saying that imagined-Brutus is associated with imagined-Caesar by a mind-force, we may say that the content of the present perception "imaginedBrutus" is truly connected to, stressed by, influenced by our past reading, so that it is now essentially and intrinsically related to the present perception "imaginedCaesar." After reading Plutarch, the experience "imaginedBrutus-imagined-Caesar" is not two experiences, but one, with distinguishable but inseparable aspects. It is only a dogma to assume that the presence within the experience of disting,uishable aspects must be explained by breaking the experience into a conjunction of separate experiences, as Hume would have it. We are now spared the embarrassment of a mysterious mind exerting curious forces on its own perceptions, a mind which Hume in other contexts insists is nothing more than the collection of its perceptions. The same point may be urged with the aid of a sketch that has appeared frequently in the works of Gestalt psychologists and recent philosophers. If you focus to the right of the central circle and say "antelope," you see one thing. If you focus to the left of the central circle and say "bird," you see something else. We have to distinguish carefully between the perceptions and what is supposedly really there on the sheet that bears the diagram. What is on the sheet is a pictorially neutral and unchanging pattern of ink-grains. But the existence of that unchanging thing is inferred from our perceptions, and it is a mistake to think a priori that our perceptions must have the self-contained neutrality that is in the inferred physical �April 1970 0 reality. It is therefore a mistake to suppose that there must be one unchanging perception upon which the mind puts different interpretations at different times; there are many perceptions (loosely said to be perceptions of the same thing), spread out in time although bearing a family resemblance, and substantially influenced by other perceptions lodged in the same biography. If it will be allowed that we have perceptions of sensation and imagination that cannot be analyzed atomistically, let me assume that the same holds for some of our emotions. I will then use the word feeling to refer alike to the contents of sensation, imagination or emotion. The next step is the claim that we have feelings which are organized organically, in the sense that there are indissoluble wholes within which one may sometimes discriminate tension and resolution, within which one may sometimes truly say that this strives for that and finds its completion therein. In a recent book, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Susan Langer argues that this is so, and that the clearest articulation of such relations of feelings is to be found in the arts. She claims, for example, that the relations of tension and resolution found in music are really there as the music is felt, that they are not mere conventional terms of harmonic theory. In her view, all art is in part an articulation of this sort of genuine organic relatedness found at the level of feeling. I think it evident that such organically related feelings are found in our responses to felt bodily drives, to love, to novels and plays, and even to books on mathematics. Langer even maintains that our sense of deductive logical form is derivati;<e from and dependent upon a universally shared feeling of rightness in connection with certain verbal relations. It is not essential to my argument to follow her that far, but only to concede that such a thing as irreducible qualitative "completion" exists in the life of feeling. If this be allowed, we advance to another thesis:-that animals have such feelings. This should be laughable because so obviously true, but it is wrong to underestimate the power of scientific dogmas. One would think that anyone who has heard a dog scream would know that animals have feelings, yet there have been biologists who argued that vivisection without anesthesia is justified because animals are just machines, whose screaming is strictly analogous to squeaking gears. In any case, if animals have feelings I assume that some of their feelings are organic in the sense just stipulated; that is, that they sometimes constitute wholes within which there is tension and resolution, striving and c~mpletion. Surely animals do not attain to the levels of organic synthesis of feelings of which humans are capable, for we have the help of paint and canvas, drum and fife, and fairy stories; but attain it they do. The next step is critical. If the psychological life of an animal is susceptible of regions of organic organization, why not admit that the same thing holds for the animal when viewed physically? The animal viewed physically is just a collection of material substances, and we are here face to face with the dogma that matter cannot feel. But that view is linked historically to the science and philosophy of a certain time, and it seems to me silly to cling to it if the argument leads elsewhere. The chief obstacle to the organic view of matter comes from the fact that we think we know what matter is, pretty much. Matter is what comes in billiard balls, steel beams, piles of mud, pools of water, wind on the face. Whatever it is, it neither feels nor possesses desires; to think otherwise is to throw us back into the world of river-gods and wind-spirits that we have figured our way out of-thank God. But I think it has to be observed that those who cling to a radically inorganic view of matter have a difficulty :-they have to account for the rise of organic feelings in animals, and of feeling and thought in humans, and it is peculiarly hard for them to do so. If we endorse the premise that matter consists only of atoms going bump-bump in the dark, it is hard to see how billions of atoms can do anything else than go bumpity-bumpity-bump in the dark, and there is still no place for feeling, much less thought. This difficulty is independent of the particular type of atomic theory one holds; it arises so long as one assumes that the fundamental constituents of matter are unalterable and internally homogeneous entities, either classical atoms or momentary system-states. Materialists of this mechanistic persuasion usually account for feeling and thought by assigning them to a miracle, or to a II �The College non-material substance, or by denying that science is competent to cope with such airy things, or by denying altogether that they have any causally significant existence. I regard these one and all as counsels of despair. The view I am advancing claims that matter should not be understood as something composed of self-contained particles or momentary states; matter should be understood as organic through and through, made up of events or acts each enjoying temporal thickness, capable of internal differentiation into aspects that from another point of view may also be events or acts, related to each other essentially rather than accidentally in space and time; matter is more like a changing forcefield, perhaps, than like a particle. It is further maintained on this view that matter is sometimes capable of sustaining relations which deser'.'e to be called tension-resolution, or strivingcompletion, and that these relations cannot be decomposed into ensembles of isolated states as in Sommerhof's schema, but are what they are in virtue of a unique qualitative attribute that we recognize because it enters our own experience frequently. In this view it is possible for matter to achieve conscious feeling and thought. Compare this passage from Susan Langer's book, where she is discussing the complexity of physical and chemical systems: The complexity of such processes is beyond the imagination of anyone who does not know some samples of them rather intimately; they grow up into self-sustaining rhythms and dialectical exchanges of energy, forms and qualities evolving and resolving, submicroscopic elements-already highly structured-merging and great dynamisms emerging. The common-sense tenet that such products of nature cannot attain feeling, awareness and thougllt loses its cogency when one is confronted by the actual intricacies of chemica] and electrochemical organization. The bridge to organism arises of itself, and the conviction that "extended substance" [i.e., matter] cannot think and "thinking substance" cannot have materia] properties appears as a medieval doctrine handed down to modern philosophy in Descartes' famous dictum, and with no firmer foundation than his word. The traditional view has now been turned up side down. Instead of regarding organisms as very complicated mechanisms, we regard mechanisms as tragically simple organisms. We see that for the mechanist action for an end was never possible in nature because in his view action in the dynamic sense is never possible at all. The controversy between mechanism and organicism may be decided in favor of the latter by imposing a metaphysical vision in which striving is present in animals because it is potentially present everywhere. It thus turns out that we are not discussing two contesting interpretations of experimental evidence; we are in fact discussing two con· trary metaphysical visions about the basic character of the material world. It is obvious which view I incline to, 12 and I would like to conclude by confronting the view with three brief criticisms. First criticism: The view is silly because it imputes feeling to matter; the only kind of feeling we know is conscious feeling, and while animals may share this, surely plants and inanimate matter do not. This objection is based on the principle that there is no such thing as unconscious feeling. My only reply is to raise a further question. Suppose that during a heated conversation a man sits down beside me, so close that he crowds me on the bench. Without interrupting the flow of words, and without becoming aware of discomfort, I move over.* I would like to say that my motion was a response to an unconscious feeling. I suppose a mechanist would say that if I was not aware of any discomfort there was no such feeling, and my motion was a kind of reflex action. That is a possible way of describing the situation, but it seems to me an awkward way, and in any case I do not see why it is obvious that the situation must be described that way. Another example: Anyone who reads a lecture at St. John's and who survives the discussion afterwards finds out that he holds some important beliefs of which he was previously unaware. In general, we have no qualms about using the notion of an unconscious belief. But the ability to believe something is a most sophisticated human capacity; the ability to experience feelings seems far more primordial. If the former can occur unconsciously, why not the latter? It is an open question. Second criticism: The view is anthropomorphic because it seeks to understand nature in terms drawn from human experience. Reply: If you insist upon trying to understand nature in terms entirely alien from human experience, you will never be able to explain human experience in those alien terms, and you will then be driven to invoke supplementary or supernatural principles. We see this in Descartes' theory that mind and matter exist side-by;side but independently. And we see it in Locke's theory that feeling and thought arise as a result of the action of matter on our brains, but how that happens is in his view forever incomprehensible to us. Third and final criticism: Let us grant that organicism provides a unified scheme of explanation, even though that scheme may be more evident in the promise than in the execution; and let us grant that organicism is the only or the most accessible unified scheme. Still, why should we insist on a unified scheme at all? Perhaps the world does consist of a brute combination of mind and matter, which we descnbe and correlate but never render intelligible. Perhaps the material world does consist of a heap of disconnected atoms whose spatial relations to each other can be summarized and predicted but never reduced to some underlying intelligibility. Reply: In the opening passages of Process and Reality, Whitehead gives * TI1is example was suggested by Mr. Dean Haggard. �April 1970 an interesting definition of an incoherent metaphysics. He says that a metaphysical scheme is incoherent if it contains principles that can be understood in isolation from each other, such as mind and matter, or atoms and paths of motion. In this way he expresses his preference for a scheme of understanding in which nothing is left as ultimate mystery, describable but unaccountable; for an incoherent system as he defines it is one in which the connection or togetherness of first principles is unaccounted for. Hence, organicism, which does not seek a simple deductive understanding of the world with everything flowing out of a single principle, but an understanding in which every principle, every experience, and every entity is incomplete in itself and must find its com- pletion by reference to others. There is no mundane logic by which one can prove the superiority of such a scheme or vision. Robert A. Neidorf received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Universi,ty of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from Yale University. From 1962 to 1964 he was a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. He was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton, 196H967. He is the author of DEDUCTIVE FORMS: An Elementary Logic (Harper and Row, 1967), a book in· tended to serve either as an introduction to general logic or for a first course in .symbolic logic. Some of Mr. Neidorf's special interests have been the history and philosophy of science, Aristotle's Ethics, et al. He joined the faculty in Santa Fe in 1967. With Respect to Descartes To avoid the lie he showed great tact; And swore sincerely by the beard he lacked. Not false cried Many, and it was true. Nor true saw some, but only a Few. Centaurs prance, they lead the dance. The god hears the vaunt from below. Uproused he turns him to advance. Will he come with lyre, or with bow? -Argonides 13 �"When is St. John's Going to Resume Athletics?" BY BRYCE JACOBSEN A Midshipman from the Naval Academy recently asked me this question. Many alumni and other friends of the College have done the same during the years that I have been the Director of Athletics at St. John's. The question, with its implications that I am Director of what does not exist, or even Director of Nothing, has both amused me, and not surprisingly, even slightly irritated me. That so many should still identify a college athletic program with an intercollegiate athletic program, is rather strange. Thirty years ago, however, not many questioned this, among other sacred cows of American education. President Barr had to .explain to a waiting world the College's "revolutionary" abandonment of intercollegiate athletics in a radio address in November, 1938. Everything he said then still rings true now. Let me quote at some length from that memocable broadcast: I propose to discuss an important step which St. John's College has taken within the past ten days. Many of those who are listening to me, including alumni members of the College, will by now almost certainly have been told by somebody that the College administration has abolished athletics. Those who believed this statement should, it seems to me, be gravely disturbed. I think I ought promptly to disabuse them. To keep the record straight, I shall therefore first state the facts. Athletics have not been abolished, but the College has decided that after the close of the present academic session athletic facilities will be increased* and at the same time will be· placed on a strictly intramural basis . . . . The system of intercollegiate athletics which has developed during the past 20 years will no longer support the prime purpose of a liberal college. I suppose I ought to have foreseen this. But I didn't. Certainly, there have been enough Carnegie reports, enough magazine articles by candid writers like John Tunis to convince men of my generation that we are sheer sentimentalists and ignoramuses if we suppose that intercollegiate athletics are the * Emphasis supplied. l4 (Ed.) same thing we remember from 20 years back. They do things better now, with Rose Bowls, Cotton Bowls, and Sugar Bowls; with costly equipment, transcontinental journeys, and big money; with costly coaches and costly quarterbacks. I knew all this. The first thing I !earned about athletics on arrival at St. John's was that we were booked to play our unnatural rivals, Army and N.Y.U.in an effort to keep down the high cost of modern athletics by earning a good "gate." But still I thought it might be possible to adapt intercollegiate athletics to educational ends, to pare down schedul-es, to decline with Photo by M. E. Warren �April 1970 thanks such games as Army and N.Y.U., and to protect the coaches from criticism if they lost games by refusing to hire athletes. I was mistaken. The thing that taught me I was mistaken was what happened when intercollegiate athletics collided with a curriculum that really required work. . . . There is no reason on this round earth wl1y securing a liberal education in an undergraduate college should be a less serious business than acquiring a medica] education in a medical school. But if it is a serious business, then it had better steer clear of another very serious business, indeed a highly organized "big" business, intercollegiate athletics. For this big business has its own exigencies: those who won't meet them had better keep out. That big business substitutes spectator psychosis for actual participation, cheering sections for playing teams, an orgy of sports goods equipment for costumes fit to have fun in, large business staffs with long-term schedules for the old-time impromptu challenge of natural antagonists, monotonous physical drill for ]earning to play by playing, pressure from fellow-students for zest to play, the exhibitionism of star performers for the satisfaction of playing well because it is more fun to play a game well than badly. The sum total of these things is hysteria, lost motion, the death of the amateur spirit, and an athletic system that competes with study instead of supplementing and strengthening it. We have all known these things for years, unless we have been ostriches or Rip Van Winkles. But I repeat, they don't prove fatal so long as undergraduate education is run in low gear. In fact, I should insist again that, so long as education is run in low gear, these things are better than idleness. But there is something better still, and that something is amateur athletics, amateur athletics of a quality no college can achieve so long as it is meshed in with the new kind of at11letics, the big-business kind. The educational program now going on at St. John's must have the support of amateur athletics. It must have it, because amateur athletics is rich in terms of health, recreation, skill, and co-ordination. To get that support, it will expand its intramural athletics. More varieties of sport will be offered, and more facilities. Our colleges are often abusively called country clubs. I want to see St. John's offer the sort of athletic facilities a good country club offers . . . . Sooner or later, I hope sooner, the present system of semi-professionalized intercollegiate athletics will hang itself. When it does, the problems that caused us to take our present stand will disappear. When it does, we shall doubtless play games with other colleges as naturally as 15 �The College Phot{} by M. E. Warren earned them. It was always, for some of us, one of the highlights of the year. Somewhere in the intervening years, sad to say, this tradition was lost. Now that the history of the athletic program has been presented, let us examine the program itself in some detail. There are several areas to be considered. First, we maintain for the use of the College various fields, courts, and a gymnasium. There is widespread use of these facilities on an unorganized basis-persons simply coming to the gym to individually exercise, or to pick up any competition they can find in individual or team sports. The activity at this level is quite high. Second, we run tournaments in certain individual sports. In November, we began with table tennis, in which some 47 students and Tutors were involved. In January, we have the badminton tournament. This y.ear 56 persons participated. Last year 89 men were involved at least once in our individual tournaments. This is about 55 per cent such games were once played. Meanwhile, athletics at St. John's will be for the student, not the student for athletics. Over 30 years later, we recognize how right Mr. Barr was in his penetrating analysis of the state of intercollegiate athletics. The unhappy features of the system, which he so vividly described, have become worse since then. It may come as a surprise to some that the founding fathers of the New Program, Messrs. Barr and Buchanan, should have been concerned at all about athletics. But they were very much concerned about having a good athletic program, not the sham kind of thing described above. In those early years of the College, they worked hard and long with Mr. Ned Lathrop to set up and promote the new athletic program. Mr. Lathrop became the first Tutor and Athletic Director under the new system. To signify the College's involvement and commitment to the new athletic program, an Annual Athletic Banquet was held each year. Mr. Barr personally ·presented the various Blazer Awards to the students who had of all male students. We try to offer as much individual instruction as we can in these sports. Third, we maintain an organized schedule of team competition in touch football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. We play 20 games in each sport, 100 in all. Once every spring we hold our annual track meet. The student body is divided into five teams, called "Spartans/' "Hustlers," "Guardians/' 41 Greenwaves," and "Druids." These teams are self-perpetuating and continuous. Freshmen are assigned to them in a simple alphabetical scheme. However, as sophomores, they are "drafted" permanently to some team. Many alumni who live in the Annapolis area continue to play for their team. Tutors are re-drafted each year on teams. This fall, 120 male students, many alumni, and many Tutors played in our football and soccer leagues. This is about 60 per cent 16 �April 1970 under severe stress. Its limited facilities seriously restrict the scope of our program. The College is planning to build a new physical education building, as soon as the money can be raised. Our students are well aware that we have an unusual athletic program, designed solely for their benefit! (It is a sad commentary on most American colleges that the irony in the preceding sentence should make so much sense.) They appreciate this situation, and respond to it. The average student, with no special athletic abilities, becomes an important part of this enterprise. We count on his growing interest and involvement. It is significant, I believe, that in recent years, almost no student has seriously questioned the fundamentals of this program, or proposed that we should resume intercollegiate athletics. The only people who have proposed such a return are those who are unacquainted with the present program. This is not to suggest that we have solved all our problems-far from it. But we keep working at them within the spirit and context of Mr. Barr's call for amateur athletics at St. John's. I hope that the question posed in the title has been adequately answered. Our goal here, in the current idiom, is participatory athletics-or even the "athletics of involvement." of the male students. Last year about 75 per cent of the male students participated in our team sports program. We encourage participation as much as we can. It is, of course, all voluntary, and no one has to fear losing varsity status, or his scholarship, or his job, if he happens to miss a game, or if his team happens to lose now and then. All these activities have put the present gymnasium Bryce Jacobsen graduated from St. John's College in 1942. He was a farmer and carpenter until 1957 when he returned to St. John's as Tutor and Director of Athletics. Mr. Jacobsen has concentrated on the teaching of mathematics and has published articles on subjects like Apollonius' Conic Sections and Ptolemaic astronomy in the St. John's College Collegian. His even-tempered fairness, helpful instruction, and undefeatable excellence in every sport he tries his hand at have won him the admiration of all who participate in the athletic program. We regret the following ERRATA in the December, 1969, issue in The Habit of Literature, by Richard Scofield. Page one, column A, line 20 for the read a; 1. 13 from the bottom, for and class read and in class; 1. 6 f.b., for philosophy read philosopher; I. 2 f.b., for of read in; col. B, I. 10 for be of meat read be full of meat: p. 2, col. A, 1. 26, for than having read than never having; col B, 11. 5 and 6, for of St. John's students ... to their own read of a St. John's student . . . to his own; 1. 12 f.b., for actions read action; 1. 11 f.b., for of a pagan read of pagan: p. 3, col. A, I. 7, for is a pleasure read is the life of pleasure; 1. 17, for people who read people, who; I. 6 f.b., omit a; col. B, 1. 3, omit the; 1. 23 for will not be read wi11 never be; 1. 27, for it to read to it; 11. 12 and 13 f.b., insert commas after vocation and after as such: p. 4, col. A, I. 8, for and supernatural read and to super· natural; 1. 9, for out of life read out of life and is for the benefit and use of life; col. B, 1. 1, for claims read claim; 1. 2, omit will. (Eds.) 17 �NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES of Mediaeval Studies m Toronto, Canada. BoTH CAMPUSES CLAIM WOODROW WILSON DESIGNATES Edward Michael Macierowski, a senior in Annapolis, and James D. Danneskiold, a senior in Santa Fe, have been chosen Woodrow Wilson Designates by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey. The students were two of the 1,153 finalists that topped a field of 12,000 outstanding graduating seniors nominated for the honor by more than 800 colleges. The Foundation's selection committee picked Designates as "the most intellectually promising" 1970 graduates planning careers as college teachers. Mr. Danneskiold is the first winner from the Santa Fe campus in the annual competition. He plans to do his graduate work in philosophy or in the history of science. The senior from Whittier, California, says he has learned a great deal about good teaching from his experiences in St. John's tutorials and seminars. Mr. Macierowski has received the WalterS. Barr scholarship at St. John's for four years. During his junior year he won the Duane L. Peterson scholarship award for $1,000 for "high academic achievement, constructive mem~ bership in the College community, and commitment to later post-graduate work." He is the student member of the Lectureship Committee that selects guest lecturers at the College. He was instrumental also in arranging "the Greek floor" in one of the dormitories for students interested in intensive extra-curricular study of Greek. Mr. Macierowski plans to continue his studies at The Pontifical Institute 18 GRADUATE INSTITUTE TO OPEN FOURTH SESSION THIS SUMMER James D. Danneskiold (Photo by J. R. Thompson) Edward Michael Macierowski (Photo by Edward J. Edah1) The bulletin for the 1970 session of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education is available at St. John's College in Santa Fe. The eight-week summer Institute will hold its fourth annual session at the College from June 22nd to August 14th. The program is designed primarily for school teachers and other college graduates interested in exploring the basic works of Western civilization. The Director is James P. Shannon, who is Vice Pcesident of the College in Santa Fe. Seminars, tutorials, and preceptorials are conducted by members of the Annapolis and Santa Fe faculties along with some teachers from other colleges. Students may earn a Master of Arts degree upon the successful completion of four summer sequences of study or three sequences plus nine hours of graduate credit from another institution. The four subject areas are again Politics and Society, Philosophy and Theology, Literature, and Mathematics and Natural Science. CONTRIBUTORS RECEIVE COPIES OF GREAT BOOKS In its last mail solicitation for donations, the Santa Fe Development Office offered copies of several of the Great Books to those who sent contributions to the College. Of the twelve books offered, most requests came for Montaigne's Essays and Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In �April 1970 third place was Darwin's The Origin of Species, followed by Melville's Billy Budd, Einstein's The Principle of Relativity, Homer's The Iliad, Apollonius' On Conic Sections, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Freud's A Genera! Introduction to Psychoanalysis, The Constitution of the United States, and Plato's Crito. The only book listed and not requested was Elements of Chemistry by Lavoisier. Van Doren's Libera! Education also was offered and it ranked next to Darwin in popularity although not on the Great Books list. The mailing was considered successful with about 40 per cent of the donors giving to the College for the first time. FoRUM FEATURES WASHINGTON SEMINAR MEMBERS AS GUEST SPEAKERS Since January a prominent group of federal officials, national legislators, attorneys, Washington columnists and political writers have been making individual guest appearances at the St. John's College student Forum in Annapolis. The guest appearances constitute a kind of "tuition" for the St. John's seminar the group held one night a week for five weeks during November and December in Washington at the National Press Club. The subject of the seminar was "Plato's Republic." Dean Robert A. Goldwin called the seminar the "highest level, postgraduate course in political philosophy in the country." Members of the seminar include Joseph Califano, attorney and former special assistant to the President; James Farmer, assistant secretary of administration, Department of Health, Education and Welfare; David Ginsburg, attorney and former executive director of the Commission on Civil Disorders; Miss Meg Greenfield, editorial writer for The Washington Post; Thomas Houser, deputy director of the Peace Corps; Senator Charles MeG. Mathias; Representative Abner J. Mikva; Robert Novak, syndicated columnist; Allen Otten, Washington cor- Board member David Ginsburg pauses before answering a question during an Annapolis stu- dent Forum meeting (Photo by Bob White/ Anne Arundel Times). respondent, The Wall Street Journal; Senator Charles H. Percy; and John Robson, attorney and former Undersecretary of Transportation. In addition to the Dean, Jacob Klein, Tutor Emeritus, and Miss Eva Brann, Tutor, represented the College. Senator Charles McC. Mathias speaks during a student Forum meeting in Annapolis (Photo by James Villere). ST. JOHN'S AND NAVAL ACADEMY HoLD JOINT SEMINARS IN ANNAPOLIS St. John's College in Annapolis has been participating with the United States Naval Academy in several joint St. John's students and Naval Academy Midshipmen participate in a joint seminar (Photo by Robert Fenton Gary). 19 �The College seminars on liberal arts topics. The first seminar, held at the College during the first week of last December, brought together nine St. John's students and nine Midshipmen to discuss Paper Ten of The Federalist. John A. Fitzgerald, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Academy, and Robert A. Goldwin, Dean of St. John's, led the discussion. According to Dean Goldwin the initial seminar was "a splendid success." He also observed that this seemed to be the first joint activity between the two campuses that anyone could remember. At the conclusion of the first meeting, both the Dean and Rear Admiral James Calvert, Superintendent of the Naval Academy, decided that there should be more of such seminars. Additional meetings have taken place and are being planned for topics in the natural sciences, mathematics, and politics. CARITAS SociETY FoRMED To Am ST. JoHN's TI1e Caritas Society, the women's group of the Friends of St. John's College in Annapolis, was formed recently to promote a variety of cultural activities at the College. The society took its name from the Latin word meaning "love and dear regard for." Its goals are "to create a new image of St. John's for the Annapolis community, to make the College the cultural center of Anne Arundel County, and to raise funds for student aid purposes." The society's first activity was to sponsor Archibald MacLeish's drama, J.B., produced by the students' Modern Theater Guild. Chairman of the December event was Mrs. Joan L. Baldwin. During January, under the direction of Mrs. Alan G. Harquail, chairman, the society sponsored a harpsichord concert by Tutor Douglas Allanbrook. Proceeds benefited the Faculty Scholarship Fund for student aid. The concert was taped for future broadcast by an educational radio station, WETA, Washington, D.C. 20 During March the society was host at a luncheon reception on the first day of its Cinema Review I. Mrs. Theodore G. Osius was chairman of the event. Additional functions are planned for the year including a general membership tea during the spring. SANTA FE CITIZEN DoNATES LAND TO COLLEGE Ten acres of land adjacent to the Santa Fe campus have been donated to St. John's by the local owner, Mr. LeRoy Manuel. The land will provide additional frontage along Camino de Cruz Blanca as well as protecting that a"ea from possible unsightly private development. The gift was in addition to the eight acres donated by Mr. Manuel in the early 1960's. The St. John's campus now totals 270 acres at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Most of the land was given to the College originally by John Gaw Meem, Santa Fe architect and member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. STUDENTS HEAR VIETNAMESE OFFICIAL A representative of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., came to Santa Fe in January to speak at St. John's at the request of a student organization there called "Goodtimes Tran Kho Hoc of the Vietnamese Embassy: in Washington, D.C., came to Santa Fe at 'the invitation of St. John's students to present his government's views on the war. Santa Fe student Elizabeth Randolph, 1973, learns silver craft under the guidance of a local artist. This is one of numerous extraciiiricular activities available to St. John's students (Photo by J. R. Thompson). Overground." Tran Kho Hoc, Third Secretary with the embassy's political section, spoke on "Prospects for Peace in Viet Nam." After his speech, he answered questions for about 1:Vz hours and visited a student barbecue. Mr. Hoc said he believed American demonstrations for the immediate withdrawal of troops were "well-intended" but "more subjective than ra- tional." He said North Viet Nam should admit it is an aggressor and should agree to supervised elections in all of VietNam. Members of the audience questioned him about such matters as the imprisonment of political opponents to the government, the closing of newspapers, and desertions of Sonth Vietnamese soldiers. Mr. Hoc is one of several speakers and entertainers brought to the campus this year by Goodtimes Overground, which also sponsors studies on topics of interest. FASCHING BALL HELD AT SANTA FE The Santa Fe students celebrated the end of the winter session with a �April 1970 which he describes as intellectually and physically demanding as a combination of chess, ballet, and track running. He is quite impressed with the progress of the students, who practice several times a week. They are searching for another team in the area with which to hold a competition. thusiasm for continuing the discussions at future meetings. Students also attended the Board meeting in Annapolis during October and entered into lively discussion of campus life with Board members. BoARD MEMBERS AND STUDENTS BRIDGE THE GENERATION GAP Students at Santa Fe have become involved in the growing national concern over the pollution of the na- When members of the St. John's College Board of Visitors and Governors come to town for a meeting, The breaking of the pifiata is an old Southwestern custom which St. John's students adapted in the Holiday party they gave for the children of the Santa Fe faculty and staff (Photo by J. R. Thompson). Fasching Ball to which they invited the pnblic. The "Fasching" title was suggested by the Director of Student Activities, Istvan Fehervary. It is the name of the festive season before Ash Wednesday in Europe. Two bands played a variety of music from waltz to rock for the semi-formal ball in the Student Center. Donations were accepted to help to pay the expenses. It is hoped it will become an annual event for the students and the College's friends in Santa Fe. they make a point of talking to students as well as to staff members. At the January meeting in Santa Fe, the Board members exchanged ideas with students at the opening business session of Friday, at special seminars on Saturday afternoon, and informally in the coffee shop and elsewhere on the campus. The seminar reading was the commencement address given last year in Annapolis by Jacob Klein. It produced lively discussions on the meaning of liberal education and the relative roles of reason and sentiment in pursuing a worthwhile life. Participating Board members expressed en- ECOLOGY CRISIS ATTRACTS STUDENT INTEREST tural environment and resources. Nine- teen students received permission to attend the "Can Man Survive?" symposium held at Colorado College in mid-January, After their return they helped to conduct special seminars at St. John's on January 30th with Paul Ehrlich's article "Eco-Catastrophe" as the reading. Conservation films from the Sierra Club were shown that afternoon and a table of material on ecology was offered in the Student Center. Students also have participated in local meetings on programs to control pollution in Santa Fe and New Mexico. Plans were being discussed for action on April 22nd, when national attention was to be focused on these concerns. Touche! Santa Fe seniors Michael Landry and Carol Paterson practice on the campus patio (Photo by Kathy Lear). FENCING TEAM SEEKS CoMPETITION A former champion from Hungary is training what apparently is the only fencing team in New Mexico at St. John's College. Istvan Fehervary, the Director of Student Activities at St. John's, won the first national competition in foil fencing for youth in Hungary at the age of 17, and he was a member of the Hungarian Olympic team in fencing and modern pentathlon. He believes that St. John's is an appropriate setting for an ancient sport 21 �The College Leo Strauss the highest tribute one scholar can pay another by remarking that he has brought to academic studies 'the scholarship and philosophic insight necessary to a proper confrontation of ancients and moderns.' " ADULT CoMMUNITY SEMINAR HELD IN ANNAPOLIS Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence (right), receives a copy of the citation accompanying his honorary doctor of laws degree from the Very Rev. Joseph T. Cahill, C.M., president of St. John's University in New York. ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY GRANTS HoNORARY DEGREE To LEo STRAUSS During convocation exercises in November, St. John's University in New York presented an honorary doctor of laws degree to Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar-inResidence at St. John's College in Annapolis. The convocation climaxed an all-day symposium of commemorating the SOOth anniversary of the birth of Machiavelli. The Machiavelli Symposium presented distinguished scholars who delivered papers relating to the life and work of the Florentine author. Mr. Strauss spoke on "Machiavelli and Classical Literature." His paper will be printed in Review of N ationa! Literature, a new periodical to be published by the St. John's University Press in the spring. The Reverend Joseph I. Dirvin, C.M., Assistant to the President of the university, read the degree citation which began, "A colleague has paid 22 The St. John's College Adult Community Seminar is meeting again this semester. The seminar is a series of discussions of great books, led by St. John's tutors. The seminar is open to the public. The only requirement is that the assigned hook must be read in preparation for the discussion. Each seminar is two hours long; it begins with a question by one of the two tutors and it continues with discussion by the members of the seminar. Readings for Spring 1970 include Democracy in America by Tocqueville; several addresses, speeches, and letters by Lincoln; articles by Mencken; Go Tell It On The Mountain by Baldwin; and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. Tutors Geoffrey Comber, Nicholas Maistrellis, and Robert L. Spaeth have been leading the discussions. BoARD APPOINTS NEW MEMBER Attorney Charles David Ginsburg of Washington, D.C., has been elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors. A graduate of West Virginia University and Harvard Law School, Mr. Ginsburg has had experience in variG>us governmental positions in Washington, the latest as Director of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Commission). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has participated in the recent Washington Seminars conducted by Dean Goldwin. The Board at its January meeting in Santa Fe also approved the appointment of two new tutors at Santa Fe effective July 1st-Frank K. Flinn of Philadelphia, and John S. Chamberlin of Toronto, Canada. Mr. Flinn is assistant professor at LaSalle College Graduate School of Religion, and Mr. Chamberlin is Archivist, Center for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. CONCERTS HoNOR BEETHOVEN BICENTENARY Santa Fe Tutor Timothy Miller is presenting a series of four public concerts this year at the College in honor of Beethoven's bicentenary. Miller has performed two piano programs and will give the remainder of the series later in the year. He holds degrees in English literature and in music from Harvard, Yale, and Indiana Universities, and also has studied at the Music Academy in Hamburg and at the University of London. ANNAPOLIS GAINS FEBRUARY FRESHMEN CLASS Twenty-one students, mostly transferees from other colleges and universities, began their college education again as freshmen at St. Joliri's Annapolis campus this February. The class includes students from twelve states and the District of Columbia, with six students from Maryland, and one from Hawaii. The students signed the College register as part of the regular formal ceremony. The Faculty attended in full academic regalia. The freshmen will complete their year during the summer in Annapolis. Robert L. Spaeth, Tutor and Assistant Dean, is director of the summer program. Some of the places from which the students have transferred are Boston University, McGill University, Purdue University, the University of California at Levine and Santa Cruz, and the University of Maryland. CHARTER FLIGHT The much-advertised charter flight to Italy has been cancelled. Although the flight was opened to all members of the College community, as well as to the Friends of St. John's, there was insufficient response to the invitation. (Based on actual deposits received, the flight would have cost about $2,500 a person and that certainly was no bargain!) �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES COUNSELING AND PLACEMENT During the past few months both the Alumni Association's Career Counseling Program (or Alumni Advisory Program) and the placement and counseling services of the College have been subjected to critical review. The Counseling Program started four years ago under the leadership of then-president Jack L. Carr '50. Since that time individual alumni have counseled students on an occasional basis and once-a-year discussions about graduate schools have been held with students at three of the last four Homecomings. Any other alumni counseling has been a personal, voluntary, and informal activity. Counseling and placement at the College have been the responsibility of one of the assistant deans whose duties also include supervision of the financial aid program as well as teaching. Graduate school counseling has often been done by tutors on the basis of a personal friendship with a given stu· dent, with no coordination through the placement office. Dean Goldwin has stated that the College must improve its counseling service, especially in guiding students toward graduate fellowships. At the same time, the Alumni Directors see room for improvement of alumni participation in counseling. The concern of Mr. Goldwin and the attitude of the Alumni Board are underscored by comments from younger alumni who are still in graduate school, and seeking positions: they know the College is not doing all it should to help them. It is recognized that the College's financial resources for placement and counseling are limited. This is an added reason for a joint College-Alumni endeavor. With this in mind, the Alumni Directors appointed Mrs. 1 Nancy Solibakke '58 as a committee of one to study the placement and counseling function at St. John's, with particular emphasis on alumni involvement. After consulting with Dean Goldwin, Mrs. Solibakke and Charles E. Finch, Assistant Dean for placement and financial aid, visited a number of college placement offices. Based on their findings, Mrs. Solibakke on February lOth submitted a report to the Alumni Board for study, approval, and transmission to Dean Goldwin. The report sent to the Dean contained four specific recommendations: I. That the placement office institute standard placement techniques including student dossiers, preparation of students for interviews, and standard liaison activities between the College and possible placement situations; 2. That the placement office formulate lines of communication to the students making as much information available to them as possible and in general serving as a liaison between the student and placement information; 3. That the Dean in consultation with the faculty explore forming a faculty placement committee that serves on a rotating basis to advise students in their junior and senior years and whose duties it will be to keep abreast of information coming from the placement office and pass it along to students who, in their judgment, would benefit; 4. That the Alumni Association set up and maintain in the placement office a file of alumni and others who are familiar with the St. John's curriculum and who will serve as advisors to students in various professional and academic fields both about the general "state of the field" and about specific requirements and possibilities of which they are aware. Mr. Goldwin found the report most helpful, and is exploring ways of putting the first three recommendations into effect. The Alumni Association has begun to implement recommendation num- ber four. During late February a special questionnaire was sent to certain more recent graduates. When completed and returned the questionnaire will form the nucleus of the Alumni Placement Counselor File. Ultimately, the placement officer at the College should serve as the coordinator for all career, employment, and graduate school counseling. It- is hoped that alumni and others, as potential employers, will make their needs known to the placement officer. The combined efforts of the faculty, the placement officer, and the alumni counseling volunteers should then provide graduating seniors and younger alumni with a much-needed service. ALUMNI ARE GIVING TI1is year's Alumni Annual Giving Campaign is off to a very healthy start, Chairman Myron L. Wolbarsht '50, reports. During the first 30 days of the drive, 129 alumni responded with some $3,800 in gifts. Leading the response were !6 King William Associates (contributors of at least $100). The class captains and their volunteer agents started to work during January and February, and the effect of their appeals was felt almost immediately. By the 28th of February more than $8,300 in unrestricted gifts had been received from 311 alumni. An additional $800 was received from corporate matching programs of companies employing alumni. Of the responding alumni; 32 were King William Associates. 23 �The College These statistics point to the important fact that the alumni of the College, in response to appeals from classmates and friends, are setting new records this year. The February 28th gift totals were almost a full month ahead of last year. That is a record of which all alumni can be proud, especially, of course, those who have contributed. If you have not sent a gift this year, please consider what a gift can mean to St. John's. Like all of us, the College is affected by the inflation of the national economy. Careful management of our resources can achieve a great deal, but it cannot work miracles. In order to buy needed services, to attract and keep able tutors and staff, the College must spend more and more money. Income must keep pace with spending; gifts are an important part of our income. Students also bear their share of increased costs: fees for next year will be at an all-time high of $3,400. (Ten years ago they were $2,100; on a comparative basis, it takes $40 now to match the value of a $25 gift in 1960.) If you have never made a contribution to the College, consider doing so now. If you simply have not responded this year, consider increasing your gift. Your support, so eagerly sought, is just as deeply appreciated. CLASS NOTES many newspapers and periodicals, and -he is a regular contributor to the New York Times. Horace W. Witman recently sent Miss Strange some family information which she thought his classmates might enjoy. Mr. Witman wrote that daughter Hope Ann was mar· ried last April, and having finished a business coJiege course, is employed as a medical secretary in Wilmington, Delaware. Daughter Elaine received her A.B. degree cum laude in English from Lincoln University in June, and has joined the University's library staff. Son John is in the 11th grade, and is now choosing between the Naval Academy and a medical career. New York City, a critical look at events leading to passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. Mr. Harris, whose writings appear in The New Yorker, is also the author of "The Real Voice," about Estes Kefauver's attempts to regulate the pharmaceuticals industry, and "A Sacred Trust," about Medicare. Joseph I. Kiliorin, Jr., dean of Armstrong State College, Savannah, Ga., participated as a panel member in the International College and University Conference held in Atlantic City in March. Dean Killorin's discussion -area was "Inter-Institutional Cooperation; Who Benefits?" His daughter Diana, by the -way, is a freshman on the Annapolis campus this year. 1909 In the December issue it was stated that the Class of 1909 was not represented during the reunions at Homecoming. A11en H. St. Clair writes to point out the error of that statement, and we apologize to him and to his two guests who were indeed present. 1921 Dr, Thomas B. Turner, Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University medical faculty, has received the William Freeman Snow award for distinguished service to humanity. The award is the highest presented by the American Social Health Association. 1923 Paul L. Banfield, who founded Landon School 40 years ago, announced in December that he is retiring as headmaster of the Bethesda, Md., boys' preparatory school. His retire· ment will be effective this coming fall. 1933 J. Dudley Digges, former chief judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit of Maryland, was appointed associate judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland in November. In his new capacity, Judge Digges represents the Fourth Appellate Judicial Court, which includes Maryland's four southernmost counties. Judge Digges is the immediate past president of the Maryland State Bar Association. 1934 The January 11th edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican carried an interesting feature about W. Thetford LeViness. Mr. LeViness, a resident of Santa Fe for 30 years, was our only resident alumnus when St. John's first went into that city. He is the librarian for the State Department of Health and Social Services, and pursues an active second life as a freelance writer. His particular area of interest is New Mexico and its native cultures, and although confined to a wheel-chair ( a cerebral palsy victim since birth) he visits Indian pueblos and archaeological digs throughout the state. Mr. LeViness's articles have appeared in 24 1938 R. Cresap Davis is teaching full time at Frederick (Md.) Community College as associate professor of business administration. He is serving this year as chairman of the Faculty Council. 1941 If you have ever conducted a meeting of any organization, chances are you relied heavily on the orderly mind of the grandfather of Henry M. Robert, III. His "Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Bodies" has sold more than 2.6 million copies in several editions. With his mother, Mr. Robert, III has just edited a complete revision of the authoritative volume. Published by Scott, Fares· man & Co., the new edition appeared Oil> February 19th, 94 years to the day after the first edition -was published. On February 16th Mr. Robert appeared on NBC's "Today" show to publicize the book. 1942 A. Chesley Wilson, after several years with the American Hospital Association in Chicago, moved to the Annapolis area about two years ago. He works at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. 1946 Charles L. Van Doren delivered the weekly lecture in Santa Fe on January 16th. Mr. Van Doren, associate director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago, spoke on "Rhetoric." 1947 Richard S. Harris has written "The Fear of Crime," published by Prager Publications in 1950 Two members of the class of 1950 now have a greater-than-normal interest in the College these days: James H. Frame's son Matthew and Theodore W. Hendrick's son Bill are members of the Annapolis freshman class. 1951 James A. Grinder and Mrs. Nancy Moran Noel were married in New Canaan, Conn., on February 27th. Mr. Grinder is a vice president of A. A. Schechter Associates, Inc., a New Yark City public relations firm. 1952 Walter Schatzberg has been appointed to the rank of associate professor of German at Clark College. 1954 Merle Shore and his wife Priscilla '55 op· crate the Village Frame in Santa Barbara, Cal., a shop specializing in frames, prints, and original graphics of international stature. Alfred R. Sugg, Jr., a member of the Theater Department at Western College, Oxford, Ohio, delivered the Friday lechue on January 23rd in Annapolis. His subject was the dramatic structure of "Prometheus Bound." 1957 Mrs. Arnold Daane of Cambridge, Md., received a Christmas message in December alleged to be from her son, Navy Lt. Cdr. Hugh Allen Stafford. Cdr. Stafford, identified by the �Department of the Navy as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, sent his message over Radio Hanoi, and a tape was given Mrs. Daane by the Navy. Cdr. Stafford was shot down over Haiphong August 31, 1967, while on his 31st combat mission. Although Mrs. Daane could not positively identify the taped voice as that of her son, several letters and a postcard written in apparently fresh ink indicate that he is indeed alive and well. 1966 Jonathan Alfred Kaplan and Abigail Winston Ewert of New York City were married in Dedham, Mass., on November 1, 1969. The bride was graduated from Winsor School and the Boston Conservatory, in dance. Kenneth H. Thompson sends a most interesting brief of his activities. An assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Dr. 11wmpson is devoting full time this academic year to his research on comparative politics. He is one of twenty political scientists in the nation to be awarded a Ford Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship for the year 1969-70. Mrs. Thompson is an assistant professor of sociology at Scripps College, where she is a colleague of Harry Neumann '52. The Thompsons have just built a mountain home at Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains near Los Angeles. Dr. Thompson also writes that they have visited former dean Curtis Wilson and his family in La Jolla, Cal. 1961 Darrell L. Henry, president of the Alumni Association and Zoning Hearing Officer for Anne Arundel County (Md.), resigned the second of those positions to enter practice with an Annapolis law firm on February 12th. Mr. Henry received his law degree from the U niversity of Baltimore in 196 5. Did you know that Artlmr I. Simon was the discoverer and is now the manager of Goldie Hawn, the zany blonde featured in television's weekly show, "Laugh In"? 1963 Dr. Oliver M. Korshin visited the Santa Fe campus last November, He works for the U. S. Public Health Service out of San Francisco, and makes his home across the Bay in Tiburon. 1964 Stephen C. Fineberg writes from Athens, where, although a "confirmed philologist," he has been studying at the American School for Classical Studies this year. He plans to be back at the University of Texas next year, pursuing his doctoral work. Mr. Fineberg's experience in Athens has "opened whole new perspectives on antiquity" for him. "It was something of a rude awakening to discover that the Greece of the 19th century romantics ... was in fact {and is) excessively muddy, sweaty, and above all very noisy." 1965 David R. L1chterman lectured in Annapolis on Friday, February 27th. His subject was "Selfhood and Reason," concerning Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Mr. Lachterman is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Syracuse University, and a Fellow, Institute in Greek Philosophy and Science, Colorado Coilege. 1966 Ian M. Harris writes that he received his M.A. degree last spring from Temple University, and that he is now enrolled in a doctoral program at Temple. Michael Weaver in November was awarded a tuition schobrship and a graduate assistantship in the University of Cincinnati's Depart" ment of Philosophy. 1967 Gay (Singer) Baratta writes a most appealing letter about the life which she and husband Joseph '69 are leading in Israel He has just finished an intensive Hebrew language course, and has started a program for potential teachers. Mrs. Baratta is a computer systems programmer at the Israel Institute of Technology. Their apartment in Haifa has a view of the entire city, the Mediterranean Sea, and the coast. The Barattas both, to quote Mrs. Baratta, " ... find the goals of the St. John's language tutorial vividly realized in living here; learning and living with a new language really makes one think about what bnguage is supposed to accomplish--and how it does it." Richardson B. Gill, San Antonio, Tex., business executive, has announced his candidacy for the U. S. House of Representatives. He will try to unseat incumbent 0. C. Fisher, a 28-year veteran of the Congress. Mr. Gill is president and chairman of the Board of Richard Gill Properties and of Gillsons Co., both of San Antonio, and a vice president of the El Rancho Grande Hotel Co. of Brownsville and San Antonio. 1968 William R. and Rebecca (McClure) Albury celebrated the arrival of their second child, Alicia Frances, on February 13th. Alicia's father is now a graduate student in the history of sci- ence at the Hopkins, while her mother is completing work for her bachelor's degree in the Evening College of the same university. Christopher Ballmer (SF), replying to the mailing about the Italian charter flight, regretted that, since he was on " ... a 52-week deluxe Vietnam holiday ... ," he could not possibly consider the one to Italy. Jane-Ellen (Milord) Long writes that she is Book Editor and a member of the cat1Iog department at Schwann, the Boston publisher of a well-known record catalog. According to a recent letter from his father, David I. Moss (SF) is currently enrolled in the rabbinical program at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. During his first year after graduation, the younger Mr. Moss was a student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 'While in Israel he learned the exacting art of Torah calligraphy, and has gained some recognition designing marriage contracts for his friends. His father reports his son finds New York very noisy after Santa Fe and Jerusalem. Donald J. and Marilynne (Wiiis) Schell announce with joy the arrival of Patience Alexandra (Sasha), born in New York City on the 19th of February. Mr. Schell is a second-year student at General Theological Seminary. Mrs. ScheU has completed one semester toward her master's degree in Early Childhood and Elementary Education at New York UniverSity. 1969 Miriam A. Cunningham and Michael J. Cohen were married on November 23, 1969, and are making their home in Brooklyn, N. Y. Linda Torcaso and Mark Bernstein were married on December 28th in Washington, .D.C. They are now living in Philadelphia where she is a first-year student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and he is a research associate at the Franklin Institute Museum. Wendy Watson (SF) and Kirk Cheyiitz SF'68 were married several months ago in Washington, D.C., and are making their home in that city. In Memoriam 1909-Col. Everett LeC. Cook, Washington, D.C., January 8, 1970. 1912-Col. Charles R. Jones, San Antonio, Tex., January 20, 1970. 1915-Howard Claude, Galena, Md., February 25, 1970. 1916-Col. Gabriel T. Mackenzie, Kendall, Fla., January 12, 1970. 1920-Dr. Joseph J. Klebach, Scranton, Pa. 1922-William D. K Aldridge, Chestertown, Md., Summer, 1969. Philip H. Cooper, Phoenix, Md., July 26, 1969. Edgar F. Voelcker, Baltimore, Md., November I, 1969. 1923-BGen. William C. Baxter, Phoenix, Md., January 29, 1970. 1926--George A. Woodward, Crofton, Md., January !2, 1970. 1931-Henry S. Emrich, Pacific Palisades, Cal., March 7, 1970. 1933-Cad S. Thomas, Easton, Md., November 24, 1969. 193 5-MGen. George M. Ge1ston, Lutherville, Md., February 17, 1970. 1937-Herbert K. Clayton, Baltimore, Md., December 1, 1969. �The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 24 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, April 1970 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXII, Number 1 of The College. Published in April 1970. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_22_No_1_1970 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e86bde4b673c857fe2f13ca703ad4eb3.pdf a9f8fcf62a0de8be4959ae3200520f8d PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico July 1970 �The College Cover: Michael Faraday. Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis. The College is a publication for friends of St. John's College and for those who might become friends of the College, if they came to know it. Our aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our opinion, St. John's comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well-placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John's. Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71 The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg, Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (Frank McGuire, Director); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle. In the July Issue: I The Number of My Loves, by Charles G. Bell. Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1970, by Reverend J. Winfree Smith. . 3 Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism, by Thomas K. Simpson. 6 July 1970 No.2 17 News on the Campuses 18 Alumni Activities Vol. XXII Prayers, by Michael S. Littleton. 27 �Commencement Address Annapolis, 1970 By THE REVEREND J. WINFREE SMITH In a church near London there is a plaque with the following inscription: In the year 1653, when all things sacred in the kingdom Were either profaned or demolished, This Church was built by Sir Richard Shirley, Baronet, Whose singular praise it was To do the best things in the worst times And hope them in the most calamitous. These times in which we live are not the worst times or the most calamitous. But they are bad times and they threaten worse and more calamitous times. In the United States of America we have special troubles which arise partly from our power and our wealth, but also and maybe consequently from a disrespect for law. We can understand how for many black people and others among us "law" means only an instrument of injustice and oppres- sion. It has, however, been the greatness of the United States as a political society to have combined law and freedom, to have made freedom possible by means of law which is the only way it is possible. We must think both of the common law and of constitutional law. Murder committed by Black Panthers endangers society; committed by police, it endangers society even more. Arson, whether committed by the frustrated poor in ghettos or by frustrated students on campuses, is as criminal as arson anywhere and is not to be justified as a form of rhetoric. There can be no freedom where men fear the destruction of their lives and the external means of living them. A concern for life and property is not necessarily a bourgeois concern. We the people of the United States in adopting the Constitution declared in the words of that document that it was to be the supreme law of the land. Sometimes those whose very powers depend upon the Constitution speak and act in such a way as to contravene it. The Congress in passing the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1968 may have been acting in response to the mood of the people and with respect for one kind of law. But in doing so they were also attacking the independent authority of the Supreme Court. The President, when recently the Senate was about to vote on a certain nomination to that Court, referred to himself as "the one person entrusted by the Constitution with the power of appointment" of Supreme Court justices. He was forgetting or deliberately ignoring the constitutional, and by no means nominal, requirement, that such appointments be made only with the advice and consent of the Senate. Furthermore, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that those who talk most about law and order are not deeply concerned to preserve the law contained in the Bill of Rights, the law that directly protects specific freedoms. Americans who would not have their country destroyed will respect both the common law and constitutional law and will respect legal processes for the removal of unjust law. They will refuse to be "polarized" no matter who may be playing on which of their passions to attract them to this pole or repel them from that. In independence of soul they will not allow the present confusion of good and evil to overwhelm their power to discriminate them. Many teachers in our colleges and universities, as well as many students, are determined that those institutions shall as such become active in political affairs. There may be occasions when such institutions have to act politically. For instance, it would surely be their duty to resist by all lawful political means a measure such as that not long ago proposed in Congress, though not passed, to require every college "to adopt an approved code of conduct for its students and teachers before it or they could be eligible for federal aid." The reason it would be their duty is that such a measure would destroy the independence of the educational institution. A college is of service politically exactly by keeping itself out of political action. It is of service because its independence does not mean indifference, but rather the occasion and the freedom to discuss and debate political issues with rational detachment, which is the only way to obtain light upon them. It is a truly amazing thing that some teachers and students do not believe in such debate or the possibility of any rational detachment. They have become champions of blind action. Although I have never seen it defined, I suppose that the name "activists" refers to such champions. The action they desire they often call "revolution," which is also not defined, but it seems to mean destroying all human institutions. There is an echo of Marxism in this though I �The College without the painstaking Marxist argument designed to show that in capitalist society all law and government, all religious and educational institutions are derivative from that society and in the dialectic of history destined to be destroyed along with it. In these bad times we who belong to this small college, but all the greater for being small, often feel ourselves to be like the philosopher in the 6th book of Plato's Republic who amid the circumstances of actual political life is like one "in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along." If we retire to the shelter of a wall it is partly to get a place where we may begin to see and understand what is going on in that storm and what should and could be done about it. And if we sometimes manage to ignore the storm, we do not consider that we are self-indulgent for there is a seraph that constantly whispers to us that we have a true self that is above the storm, and that knowledge belongs to another world and is itself good. Others hurrying past may call to us to leave our shelter and join them. They think it is no time for business as usual. They do not know that when it is a question of the business in which we arc engaged it is always time for business as usual. Last year's com1nencement speaker referred to our pro~ gram and the character of our studies as presupposing the authority of intellect. Let me stress the word "authority." The authority of intellect is not the authority of doctrine. St. John's College has no authoritative doctrine. But it is devoted to asking questions about all things around us. This asking of questions is meaningful not because we can always find answers, but because learning occurs. That genuine learning does occur means that the intellect is not a servant or an instrument, but that it has authority. Graduates of the Class of I 970, I bid you do the best things in these bad times and in the worst times if such should overtake you. Cultivate temperance in political judgment and action. Cultivate the courage to stand firm for reason and sense against unreason and nonsense. Sup~ port what justice there is in our laws, our institutions, and our ways without losing sight of a higher justice by which they must be measured. Be intemperate and erotic in the quest for wisdom and understanding. Value charity and humility since he who hates or contemns his brother 2 abides in death, as someone has said. What hope can I offer you for the future of this earth? I do not know. Things do not look good. The future is perhaps not as much within man's hands as he has persuaded himself in our modern era. It is, of course, my own belief that it is in the hands of a beneficent God, and that is ground for hope. If you do not share that belief, is there some ground? Ignorance of the future is not reason for despair, but neither is it reason for hope. Yet I would pray that it be your singular praise, no matter how bad the times, not only to do, but to find it possible to hope, the best things. The Reverend Joseph Winfree Smith, Jr., Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, received his B.D. degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Virginia. He was Rector of St. Paul's Church, Ivy Depot, Virginia, from 1939 to 1941. In 1959 he was awarded the Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. He has lectured on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Aristotle's Ethics, John Calvin, Ptolemy, and Kepler's astronomy. Students and Tutors have profited from his notes on the number and ratio books of Euclid, his paper on Ptolemy's "TI1eory of the Moon," and his introduction to and translation of Vi6tc's Introduction to the Analytical Art. For some 25 years students have benefited from his Tuesday evening extracurricular classes on the New Testament. �The Number of My Loves Selections By CHARLES G. BELL In flaming And is still . From the Preface . . . But what is the whole field of love? It is not comprised of sex, romance, and marriage. Despite all attempts of materialists and reductionists in all ages to fumigate nature of everything more anthropomorphic than particles in motion, embodied attraction retains and will retain some- thing of the mystery and ambiguity of love. No less with us than with Dante "the love that moves the sun and other stars" stretches from gravity through electrical and chemical affinities to hunger, lust, the quest for knowledge, the longing for God. "Our soul is restless until it rest in Thee ...." The Act Dante, who witnessed heaven and hell, Found both fashioned out of flame. In the passion of this calm, Feel love's keel wake worlds of pain. From Part II Dogwood and Flowering Judas From Part I Moss-green Far in the spruce wood, through the stained Twilight over the needled ground, A space opens, as under water, brimmed With sky and green, where a spruce tree has died. To stretch out on the cinquefoil of that ground: Wood sorrel, bunch berry, goldthread, A walnut gnawed, a robin's egg, Coil of a snail, gray feather of a dove. Child of death, come with me Over the brown-stained ground, To the round heart of birth, Love-luminous, moss-green. Te,Dea The well That floats the leaf And flower, Drowning them; The flame That wraps itself Cornel, a Florentine profile, Snow-maiden, Quatrefoil dawn-flower; Redbud, Venetian puta:na, Spilling the Wine of noon's orgies; In the garden of the heartGod saidLet them bloom together. From Part III Rainsong of Fish and Birds A long drought. In the heat of this afternoon Unaccountably the birds Begin to sing. I go with mask and snorkel to the pool. Dive. Fish come round me: black bass, goggle-eye, brim, Flowing and retreating, expectant among The water-weed. When I come up for air, The liquid interface is dimpled with white spume, 3 �The College Rustling on the water; thunder shakes the trees; And the birds are singing in a gust of rain. Love of Number How cause and wish Foreknowledge, chance and deed Rustle around us dark and luminous as rain. ONE 1 Giant Spruce To climb that liquidly resilient up the air, To take fixed and swaying all year the wind and rain, To point branch over branch the skyward bone of the spire, And trail for the nuture of light sun-terraces of green, Through centuries to unfold the templet shape we areHere conqueror, earth-waster, lift fire-eyes of pain and say: "I might have been life-rooted, like that tree." The point alone. Dilate it (birdcall, waves in a pond, Circle and sphere, in the gravity of onesness, raindrops, stars) Cleaves an in from out, other from same Self-reflecting TWO Since every actual round Stretches on some axis, oblate dividing star, Breeds the antinomy of poles. Fix on the void betweenIn turbulence the axis mounts a thrust Bisecting: pyramid of THREE From Part IV Dunghill Harbinger Only the poor keep roosters. In the dark before the dawn From every moonvine porch And shanty ridgepole breaks The raw confirmatory cry. The suburbs of the rich are silent. A Fly Thrown into the Fire The black body shrinks and hisses Fringed with lightWhat stretched the neck, what preened Head and wings, Changed to incandescenceAll flesh grass In the hands of the living God. 4 Timaeus' flame. From there to four asks toil, vertex Split apart; asks skill, to draw them equally, balance the post And lintel temple of the year, Roma Quadrata, Circumscribed FOUR Too perfect. Reason's limit. Beyond is miracle. Call imagination back to the sphere, the wave four had stilled: Golden section, curling vine, petals, starfish, Undulant and dancing sea-barn fluent FIVE Love would rest there. But in rest knows the cold descent of rule More than quadrate order where all the waters close Lost to love and play, tyranny of bees The radial crystal �July 1970 SIX The Berlin Titian From that ice cage We reach out any way. Numbers Where Venus in the lap of flesh, Subdued by music, cleaves her thighs, The lover plays; only his eyes Pursue those generous valleys, flank and breast. Infinite: seven music's prime, closed in the octilgon, The gods' ennead nine, three threes, And one, Gothic TEN Endecasyllable Hourly market dozen and the haunted Gulf thirteen ... But all of them born of Pythagorean five By the breeding on female two of male And numberless But in a landscape broad as dream, Brown fields and mountains in dim light, The curtained carriage of his thought Drives to a stable, drawn by a plunging team. Being on its downward course Delays in music, delegates the act; Love's home unentered is the root Whose flower is beauty, whose seed is force. ONE From Part V Midsummer Night in Aspen Meadows Winding down three valleys from fir mountains Converging pastures, flickering fires in dark nowThe world I say is like that: multi-dimensional Comet-slug, shaping time-space landings as it goes. And by each eye of fire, in the eave of God's nativity, Krishna dancers, bongo hippes, single acid brooder, Spin the cocoon of vision, inwardness as always Reaching out-to be the whole earth-river, Charles G. Bell was born in Greenville, Mississippi. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Virginia ( 1936), a Rhodes Scholarship, a B.A. degree (1938), a B. Lilt. degree (1939), and an M.A. degree ( 1966), all at Oxford University. He has been both a Research Assistant in Physics and an Assistant Professor of English at Princeton University, an Assistant ProfeSsor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, a Guest Professor at the University of Frankfurt, a Guest Professor in the Honours Program at the University of Puerto Rico, and a Fulbright Professor in the Technische Hochscule in Munich. In addition he has been awarded with Rockefeller and Ford Foundation grants. He was a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, from 1956 to 1967 when he joined the College at Santa Fe. Mr. Bell is the author of two volumes of verse, Songs for a New America (1953), revised edition, Dunwoody, Georgia: Norman S. Berg, 1966; and Delta Return (1956), revised edition, same publisher, 1969. He is also the author of the first two parts of a novel triology The Married Land, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962, and The Halt Gods, same publisher, 1968. Both his life and writings testify to his aim to bring art and science into organic union. Glacier of marging soul-fires down black mountains, The comet filled with eyes, it cannot be ... and is . • • • 5 �Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism By THOMAS K. SIMPSON This is part of the first chapter of a study of a neglected great book, James Clerk Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. The Treatise appeared on the original reading list of the new program, but apparently was taken off just in time for my senior year in 1950; I never read it as a student. Apparently it was a hard book to incorporate in the program. The problem of my study is, really, how to read a book of analytic mathematical physics. Interestingly, it develops that the book and the problem are well matched, since Maxwell, writing one af the last great works of natural philosophy, is wrestling with the question, how to write a book of analytic mathematical physics in such a way that it can be read with understanding. Maxwell wages a relentless struggle with the symbols throughout the book, trying all the while to develop a rhetoric of mathematical physics which will make the equations intelligible. 'I11e present chapter is not about the Treatise, however, but about another great book (also a dropout from the reading list), Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity. The reason why the study starts with the wrong book is given in the first pages. (Author) development. But Maxwell not only draws upon Faraday as his source; in a curious way he makes this source the object of his work as well. We are directed back to Faraday, to read with renewed apreciation and understanding: If by anything I have here written I may assist any student in understanding Faraday's modes of thought and expression, I shall regard it as the accomplishment of one of my principal aims-to communicate to others the same delight which I have found my_ self in reading Faraday's Researches 2 It is therefore essential that the present study of Maxwell's Treatise should begin with some consideration of Faraday's Experimental Researches. No summary can convey either the content or the character of Faraday's writings. As perhaps the ultimate example of their genre, the literature of scientific inquiry organized episodically in linked series, they are a texture of speculation and intelligent experiment so interwoven that it is virtually impossible to isolate significant sections from their context or detail. The point of the work is in effect this very mass of theme and variation. What I hope to do in this chapter, rather, is first to discuss the nature of science as Faraday conceives and practices it, and then to In an extraordinary way, Maxwell's Treatise vn Electricity and Magnetism presupposes that the reader is already familiar with another book, Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity. One can indeed master the Treatise without having read Faraday, bnt such an approach cannot lead to the understanding which Maxwell deeply desires to share with the reader. Many wbrks refer repeatedly to a single principal source, but there must be few which command their readers as Maxwell does in a footnote to Chapter III of Part IV: "Read Faraday's Experimental Researches, Series i and ii." 1 As I have asserted earlier, Maxwell has designed his Treatise as a faithful translation of Faraday's Researches, and throughout, Faraday is the mainspring of the work and the guide to its Copyrighted by T. K. Simpson 1 James Clerk MaxweB, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (3rd ed., 2 vols.; Oxford: 1892), 2, p. 178. (This is the edition cur~ rently available in a Dover reprint.) 6 identify certain principal insights which Faraday tended to bring to bear on electromagnetism in his later work. These last constitute the primary material with which Maxwell works in Part IV of the Treatise. Since it appears to me that these insights, however powerful, by no means constitute a theory, I have titled the present chapter simply "Faraday's Thought on Electromagnetism," and not "Faraday's Theory." As we shall see, one way of looking at the "translation" of Faraday's ideas which Maxwell accomplishes is exactly as the transformation from the mode of empirical inquiry in which the Researches are cast, to that of theory, demonstrated in a systematic treatise. Faraday developed two concepts which became increasingly significant in his thought about magnetic and electromagnetic effects. One was of course his concept of "lines of force." He was impressed by this notion early when he spoke of the lines merely as representations, and 2 Maxwell, Treatise, 1, p. xi. �July 1970 called them, as others did, the "magnetic cnrves." Toward the end of his work, they bore nearly the whole bnrden of his thought on these topics, and he speculated increasingly about their possible "physical existence." The other fundamental concept was that of the electrotonic state. This is now less familiar to students of science, but for Faraday it was both significant and deeply troubling, and he returned to it, as Maxwell points out, again and again from its first introduction in connection with the induction experiments of Series I in 1831, to the end. Faraday was convinced that the surge of current which he ob- science. However brilliantly he succeeded in self-education in other areas, he apparently never felt it necessary to acquire the mathematics he had missed. The result is that he does not have before him with any vividness that universal paradigm of a reasoned deductive system, toward which virtually all competent physics over the ages has tried to shape itself. In particular, Faraday apparently never studied Euclid; he has no working notion of a system of axioms and postulates, or of reasoning leading with logical rigor to universal theorems. There is at least the possibility that this innocence--of served in the secondary circuit in electromagnetic induc- mathematics represents not merely accidental ignorance, tion could not occur unless the secondary conductor had been initially in a state of electric tension. which was relaxed when the primary circuit was broken. The term but a deliberate rejection. We are blessed with the record of a remarkable exchange of correspondence between Faraday and Andre-Marie Ampere, the French philosopher and mathematical physicist, whose work on electrodynamics Duhem once called "a theory which dispenses with the Frenchman's need to envy the Englishman's pride in the glory of Newton." Here Faraday confronts his opposite, a brilliant mathematical theorist, and in the course of the correspondence Faraday finds occasion to describe his view of his own role. We shall return to this in greater detail below, but note this reaction of Faraday's when confronted with a mathematical argument of Ampere's: I regret that my deficiency in mathematical knowledge makes me dull in comprehending these subjects. I am naturally skeptical in the matter of theories and therefore you must not be angry with me for not admitting the one you have advanced immediately.. 3 This skepticism of theory, I believe, turns him away from mathematics almost on principle. He tends to regard ''electrotonic" was manufactured to express this electric tension. As we shall see, Maxwell's translation of Faraday's thought on electromagnetism turns about these two notions, the "lines of force" and the "electrotonic state." For Maxwell, then, these will become fundamental concepts in a connected theory. But what sort of use does Faraday himself make of them? I think it becomes clear on a reading of the Experimental Researcl1es that Faraday does not use them as elements of a scientific theory in any formal sense. Even if we were not to ask for a connected or complete theory, doubt arises whether concepts in Faraday's hands even tend toward inclusion in a provisional theoretical structure. The question, indeed, becomes more fundamental: does science, for Faraday, grow toward a theoretical shape, or does it develop toward something else altogether, not theory, but an account of a different kind? We might attempt to answer the question by putting Faraday's account to certain tests, asking it to do the kinds of things theories are expected to do: to solve "problems," to "predict" phenomena on the basis of certain given con- dictions, or to yield general "theorems" through logical argument from assumed premises. But these functions, though they are surely among the proper tasks of an effective scientific theory, are precisely those which Faraday does not undertake. Faraday was almost totally uneducated in mathematics. It is difficult to grasp the significance of this fact for mathematicians as operating on a height, while his own work, as experimentalist, is close to nature, and to fact; it would be a mistake, I believe, to overlook the element of pride which mixeS with humility in his descriptions of his more modest work. In a moment of triumph following upon the discovery of electromagnetic induction and the explanation it afforded of the Arago disk phenomenon, he wrote to his friend Richard Phillips: 3 Faraday to AmpCre, Sept. 3, 1822. "L. de Launay," Correspondance du Grand Ampb-e ( 3 vo1s.; Paris: Gauthier-Villiars, 1936-1943), 3, p. 911. 7 �The College It is quite comfortable to me to find that experiment need not quail before mathematics, but is quite competent to rival it in discovery; and I am amazed to find that what the high mathematicians have announced as the essential condition to the rotation ... has so little foundation ... .< There is a suggestion of a mora] note in Faraday's rejection of theory, as will become clearer when we look at his characterizations of the true form which science should take. In relation to mathematics, this passage from the work which Faraday early adopted as his pocket guide, Isaac Watts's Improvement of the Mind, may be significant: But a penetration into the abstruse difficulties and depths of modern algebra and fluxions, the various methods of quadratures ... and twenty other things that some modern mathematicians deal in, are not worth the labour of those who design either of the three learned professions . . . This is the sentence of a considerable man . . . who was a very good proficient writer on these subject; he affirms, that they are but barren and airy studies for a man entirely to live. upon ... He adds further, concerning the launching into the depth of these studies, that they are apt to beget a secret and refined pride, an over-bearing vanity, the most opposite temper to the true spirit of the go~el. 'I11is tempts them to presume on a kind of omniscience in respect to their fellow-creatures, who have not risen to their elevation . .. 5 Faraday remained, in a phrase he used without, I think, any hint of apology, an "unmathematical philosopher." Maxwell grew up solving problems; as a child, he carried them with him for spare moments, calling them his "props"; as a man, he filled his Treatise with them. By contrast, for all we know, no teacher may ever have set Faraday a problem, ever assigned him certain "givens" and required him to find the corresponding "unknowns." 4 Bence Jones, The Life and Letters of Faraday {2 vo1s.; Philade1phia: 1870), 2, p. 10. 5 Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind (Washington, D. C.: 1813)' p. 213. 8 Naturally enough, then, he does not think of his .electromagnetic notions as serving this purpose, and a reader can-· not make much of the Experimental Researches if he comes to them with this criterion in mind. It is not only that Faraday cannot perform the operations of algebra or geometry, that he can make only a first approximation to a quantitative argument of any complexity. It is not only that he uses spatial images and models where others would work with number and symbol. It is not that he uses brief arguments where others would construct theorems. To a degree, these may all be true of Faraday, but -as I express them they suggest defects; in Faraday's case, they must be construed as aspects of his special strength. His steps are not weak and faltering, his works are not those of a man who hesitantly approaches a language he has not properly learned. Faraday (for all the humility which has been attributed to him) steps forth proudly, and while he is generally cautious and of course always modest in his public claims, he speaks with a voice as confident and firm as that of any scientist who knows the strengths of his own method. He is speaking a different language from that of the theoretical scientist. He is not stepping hesitantly toward a mathematical physics; he is marching confidently along a different road. He has indeed no notion of theory as a goal of science. In retrospect, this is a fantastic situation. In the land of Newton, at a time when mathematical physics was again flourishing, some of the most creative scientific work of the century in a new and more difficult area of physics was done over a long period of years by a man who had no notion of the Principia and did not share either Newton's methods or his goals. For Faraday, Newton's classic triumph was quite meaningless, the triumph which had polarized the intellectual life of Europe for a century. How can the historian of science understand the success of such a deep and total disruption of any reasonable continuity in the scientific enterprise? Perhaps the ultimate challenge for the present study is to lay the groundwork for finding the significance of the Faraday-Maxwell episode in the development of mathematical physics. Physics seems indeed to have profited immensely from this instance of amnesia in its work, but it is well to keep in mind that the fact that this one course was followed does �July 1970 not m.ean that it was in principle a necessary "stage'' of development, or that it was ultimately for the "best." There is a sense in which the serious historian must always weigh alternative histories. On the Continent there were of course a number of highly competent scientists at work on the topics which concerned Faraday, both mathematicians and experimentalists, and I think one may reasonably suppose that most of Faraday's discoveries would before long have been made by others whose thought was in the tradition stemming from Newton. The great Newtonian counterpart of Faraday was Ampere, but there were many others, Weber, the Neumanns (father and son), Kirchoff, Lorenz, Helmholtz, Boltzmann, Hertz. There were at once capable mathematicians and skillful searchers; had electromagnetic theory developed in the hands of such workers without the peculiar turn of thought given it by Faraday and Maxwell, it is quite conceivable that physics might have passed into the modern era, more or less on schedule, as a more purely mathematical discipline, and without the digression marked by the "field" concept. Accordingly to a number of critics, the field concept was never systematically necessary, and has been the source of much confusion, beginning with the Treatise itself' Faraday's unmathematical physics, therefore, developed and interpreted as it was by Maxwell, may have diverted science from a more rational course of development which would have made little or no use of the concept of the "field," but would have left nope of the phenomena unaccounted for. What then is Faraday's concept of science? It is evi- 6 The classic criticism of Maxwell's theory is Pierre Duhem, Les Theories Electriques de f. Clerk Maxwell (Paris: Hermann, 1902). Outstanding among the more recent critics is O'Rahilly, who recommends a direct particle/particle interaction equation in the tradition of Wilhelm Weber. Alfred O'Rahilly, Electromagnetics: a Discussion of Fundamentals ( 19 35), reprinted as Electromagnetic Fundamentals ( 2 vols.; New York: Dover Publications, 1965), especially pp. 645 ff. See also J. A. Wheeler and R. P. Feynman, "Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action," Reviews of Modern Physics, 21 (1949), pp. 425 ff., and articles by Parry Moon and D. E. Spencer, among them "A New Electrodynamics," Journal of the Franklin Institute, 257 (1954), pp. 369 ff., and "Electromagnetism without Magnetism," Amer. J. ot Physics, 22 ( 1954), pp. 120 fl. dent that he is not merely an experimentalist, cleverly providing data for theoreticians to work up into theories. On the contrary, Faraday had one of the most fertile and insistent of speculative minds; in a certain sense, he was constantly producing new hypotheses and his mind was constantly reasoning from them. The result of this, reported in the thousands of paragraphs of the Experimental Researches .rnd the still more numerous paragraphs of the Diary, is not theory; but a vast weaving and unweaving of powers, a process of discovery and identification, a great, highly unified formulary for the production and classification of effects. Faraday, as Tyndall proclaimed and all the world agreed, is the great "discoverer"; the paradigm for Faraday is Odysseus rather than Euclid: he travels from land to land, reporting wonders, guided by legend and myth, rumor or divine love. For Odysseus, the dominant desire is to see men's cities and to know their minds, and to gather all this together in the return to Ithaca. For Faraday, it is to investigate all the powers of nature, and to unveil them as essentially one, in the lecture hall on Albemarle Street. If Faraday did not learn this from Homer, he was moved to it by Dr. Watts: Let the hope of new discoveries, as well as the satisfaction and pleasure of known truths, animate your daily industry. Do not think learning in general is arrived at its perfection, or that the knowledge of any particular subject in any science cannot be improved, merely because it has lain five hundred or a thousand years without improvement. The present age, by the blessing of God on the ingenuity and diligence of men, has brought to light such truths in natural philosophy, and such discoveries in the heavens and the earth as seemed to be beyond the reach of man ... Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters ... 7 Here is Faraday's own characterization of his hope for his chosen science of electricity, in a passage which opens the famous Series XI on induction: The science of electricity is in that state in which 7 Watts, Improvement of the Mind, p. 24. 9 �The College every part of it requires experimental investigation; is just now of far more importance, the development given to Odysseus to talk with Athena, face to face? This is not theoretical physics; as has been suggested, it is essentially chemistry, not in the modern sense of of the means by which the old effects are produced, Lavoisier, but as a science of powers, in the tradition of and the consequent more accurate determination of von Belmont and Stahl.10 We might best understand Faraday as the disciple of Davy, and the Researches as the evolution of a coherent chemistry of electromagnetism. The translation of Faraday which Maxwell is to accomplish in the Treatise must be, among other things, the transformation of this chemistry into the form of a mathematical theory worthy of admission to the halls of Trinity. In this, it must he like the historic transformation of Greek thought from the mode of Homer to that of Euclid. The Experimental Researches are dense with questionsFaraday's method is that of unremitting inquiry. The not merely for the discovery of new effects, but what the first principles of action of the most extraordinary and universal power in nature:-and to those philosophers who pursue the inquiry zealously yet cautiously, combining experiment with analogy, sus~ picious of their preconceived notions, paying more respect to a fact than a theory, not too hasty to generalize, and above all things, willing at every step to cross-·examine their own opinions, both by reasoning and experiment, no branch of knowledge can afford so fine and ready a field for discovery as this. Such is more abundantly shown to be the case by the progress which electricity has made in the last thirty years: Chemistry and Magnetism have successively acknowledged its overruling influence; and it is probable that every effect depending upon the powers of inorganic matter, and perhaps most of those related to vegetable and animal life, will ultimately be found subordinate to it. (XR if360) 8 In one paragraph Faraday has given both his vision of nature, and the method of science proportioned to it. He describes an impasse in the science of electricity-one in which phenomena are known in plenty, but first principles are lacking. To another man, this would look like a situation which called for a theory; but for Faraday, this is precisely the situation which calls for "experimental investigation"; it is a "fine and ready ... field for discovery." What is to be sought? Not axioms or laws, but the principles of action of a power-the most universal in nature, which moves all of the inorganic world and perhaps for the most part the plants and animals as well. This is not something to he resolved with paper and pencil, hut by facts: we very notion of a "series" of researches is, in a sense, that of a chain of linked questions and answers. Before we bring our own questions to bear on Faraday's work, let us listen briefly to the questions Faraday asks of himself. The underlying question for Faraday is always the same: what really exists in nature? The practical form which this takes is that of the test: what will happen if I do this? Can I produce the phenomenon, the visible or tangible evidence, which will be the sure symptom of the existence of this or that suspected power or state? Think, for example, of the discovery of the diamagnetic force. (XR, Series 19 & 20). Faraday had first sought to reveal the state of strain in a dielectric, to which the curved lines of electric action were already a clue; using polarized light, he hoped to make manifest the existence of the hypothesized lines of action of contiguous particles. This failing, he asked the analogous question for the curved lines of action of the magnetic force: do lines of strain really exist in a diamagnetic medium? When this succeeded, and the plane of polarized light was rotated on passage through his "heavy glass" in a strong magnetic field, he announced see that for Faraday, the causes, the "first principles," are not laws but themselves facts, to be unveiled to observation in the laboratory. We should remember that it was 8 The notation (XR i/360) refers to Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, volume i, p. 360, of the original edition, which is reproduced with the same pagination in the current Dover reprint. 10 9 It is impossible not to point out the striking appropriateness of the epithet which Homer regularly assigns to Odysseus: in his laboratory, Faraday is indeed the man "of many devices." 1H "In a very real sense, all his discoveries were chemical if chemistry be defined (as it was by Faraday) as the science of the powers of matter." L. P. Williams, in Lancclot "Wbyte, ed., Roger Joseph Boscovich (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), p. 163. �July 1970 that he had: ... at last succeeded in magnetizing and electrifying a ray of light, and in illuminating a magnetic line of force. (XR iii/2) By this, he says in a note, he . . . intended to express that the line of magnetic force was illuminated as the earth is illuminated by the sun, or the spider's web illuminated by the astronomer's lamp. Employing a ray of light, we can tell by the eye, the direction of the magnetic lines through a body ... (XR iii/2) This I believe is a paradigm of Faraday's concept of science: to make manifest to the eye what is suspected to exist in nature. In one of his last writings about the magnetic lines of force, he carefully drew a distinction between the limited powers of mathematical physics as a mode of representing the forces of nature, and his own search for "the one true physical signification" of the phenomena: Indeed, what we really want is not a variety of different methods of representing the forces, but the one true physical signification of that which is rendered apparent to us by the phaenomena, and the laws governing them ... supposing that ... mathematical considerations cannot at present decide which of the views of magnetism is either above or inferior to its eo-rivals; it surely becomes necessary that physical reasoning should be brought to bear upon the subject as largely as possible. For if there be such physical lines of magnetic force as correspond (in having a real existence) to the rays of light, it does not seem so very impossible for experiment to touch them; and it must be very important to obtain an answer to the inquiry respecting their existence, especially as the answer is likely enough to be in the affirmative. (XR iiij531) An hypothesis or a theory is nothing more than an unresolved suspicion; a part, as Tyndall suggested, of the scaffolding, not of the edifice of science itself, which moves on to deal with existences. He then demands of himself, what it is which has been revealed by the new phenomena. It is a condition of tension, and therefore of force, because it relaxes as soon as the magnetic induction is removed, but is it the same as the magnetic force, or different? He tests, by determining whether the diamagoetic body responds to a magnet; not observing any motion, he concludes that: ... [T]he molecular condition of these bodies, when in the state described, must be specifically distinct from that of magnetized iron, or other such matter, and must be a new magnetic condition; ... the force which the matter in this state possesses and its mode of action, must be to us a new magnetic force or mode of action of matter. (XR iii/21) In other words, having made a force manifest, Faraday proceeds to identify it, by asking whether it is the same as, or specifically different from, previously known forces. The same line of inquiry, of course, in time revealed that indeed the diamagnetic material does move under the action of a magnet, but moves in a way specifically distinct from the motion of a magnetic material. The existence of the diamagnetic force, first revealed only optically, is now revealed by a second token, a specific type of motion. This motion is summarized in a law: All the phaenomena resolve themselves into this, that a portion of such matter, when under magnetic action, tends to move from stronger to weaker places or points afforce. (XR iii/69) There follows a brilliant experimental inquiry as to the universality of the new effect, concluding with the generalization: All matter appears to be subject to the magnetic force as universally as it is to the gravitating, the electric and the chemical or cohesive forces; for that which is not affected in the manner of ordinary magnetic action, is affected in the manner I have now described ... (X.k. iii/70) To reveal, to identify, and to generalize-the greatest part of the stream of Faraday's working questions serves these three ends. He frequently reasons by analogy, but for Faraday an analogy functions most often as a tentative identity, drawing him on (as in the case of the diamagnetic and magneto-optic forces) to decide whether the two analogous powers are finally the same or different. Admittedly, Faraday is never content to rest with an unexplained phenomenon, and he moves on from a law 11 �The College such as that of diamagnetic action above, to ask why the action occurs. Again, this might seem to be the step into theory, which I have denied Faraday takes. Indeed, he begins a paragraph shortly after with the words, "Theoretically, an explanation of the diamagnetic bodies . . . might be offered . . .," and proposes an account of diamagnetism in terms of induced polarity, a theory which was as we shall see beautifully successful in the hands of Weber, though Faraday himself soon disowned it. But a theory for Faraday is merely a makeshift explanation, a temporary and unsatisfactory stage of science, which is dispelled as the science progresses. The explanation of diamagnetism which proved more fruitful in Faraday's hands, and which accounted as well for magnetism and magne- crystallic action (the pointing of crystals in the magnetic field), is a good case in point. This is the theory of the conduction of lines of force: I cannot resist throwing forth another view of these phaenomena which may possibly be the true one. The lines of magnetic force may perhaps be assumed as in some degree resembling the rays of light, heat, & c.; and may find difficulty in passing through bodies, and so be affected by them, as light is affected ... the position which the crystal takes ... may be the position of no, or of least resistance; and therefore the position of rest and stable equilibrium. (XR iii/12223) I submit that the decisive words in this paragraph, for Faraday, are these: "Which may possibly be the true one." Even if this explanation accounted for all the known phenomena, I do not believe Faraday would have rested for a moment until he had found out the lines of force, which here take on a new importance, and given tangible and visible evidence of their presumed passage through bodies. Only thus would the "truth" of the view be exhibited to his satisfaction. His renewed efforts to reveal the "physical lines" of force are well known. 111ey culminate in papers of 1852 and 1855 (XR iii/437, 528). Here the concern is openly for the real ("physical") existence of the lines, and these papers are therefore "speculative" in a way in which the disciplined researches were not; but I think it is apparent that the whole thrust of the Experimental Researches 12 has been toward this end: to discover the powers of nature, to find out their true characters, and, finally, to produce the guarantees of their ''physical" existence. In an apology for speculation, which prefaces the 1852 paper but which really speaks for the role speculation has played throughout the Researches, Faraday says: It is not to be supposed for a moment that speculations of this kind are useless, or necessarily hurtful, in natural philosophy. They should ever be held as doubtful, and liable to error and to change; but they are wonderful aids in the hands of the experimentalist and mathematician. For not only are they useful in rendering the vague idea more clear for the time, giving it something like a definite shape, that it may be submitted to experiment and calculation; but they lead on, by deduction and correction, to the discovery of new phenomena, and so cause an increase and advance of rea] physical truth, which, unlike the hypothesis that led to it, becomes fundamental knowledge not subject to change. (XR iii/408; italics mine) Speculation is a thread which "leads on" toward the goal of science; the path is through "discovery of new phenomena," and the terminus is not a completed theory, but "real physical truth." What then is "fundamental knowledge not subject to change"? As immune to change, it must be manifest in the phenomena; as fundamental, it must consist in those select phenomena which directly reveal the primary, universal powers. Such would be phenomena which made manifest the "physical lines" of magnetic force. In his late, unpublished researches on "Time in Magnetism" Faraday was hard at the effort to capture such primary evidence. 11 In a recent biography of Faraday, L. Pearce Williams makes a striking observation about the law known as "Faraday's," relating the current induced in a circuit to the change of flux through it. Faraday certainly states the law: They also prove, generally, that the quantity of electricity thrown into a current is directly as the amount of curves intersected. (XR iii/346) 11 Faiaday's Diary, cd. Thomas Martin (7 vols.; London: G. Bell & Sons, 1932-1936), 6, pp. 434-444; 7, pp. 255-333. See T. K. Simpson, Isis, 57 (1966), pp. 423-425. �July 1970 Williams points out, however, that in its context in a search for sure evidence of the lines of force, this law "was not directed at electricity at all": Faraday was trying to prove that there was a certain specific amount of 'power' associated with every magnet; the induced currents merely detected this power.12 Williams adds that Faraday was interested in the induced electricity in Series I, though in the passages cited there Faraday was not stating the quantitative "law." I think this distinction is valid, and significant for an understanding of Faraday's purposes. Whereas the world has taken from Faraday a quantitative law relating motion in a magnetic field to induced current, Faraday himself had his eye on the problem of detecting the "sphondyloid of power" about a magnet; he was seeking out an entity in nature, and using the moving wire with its law of action merely as a highly prized instrument in the search. This is the physics of the explorer, the discoverer. Throughout the Researches Faraday sought what he called "contiguity" in nature; understandably, he seeks the same contiguity in the account of nature. A work of science should record a completed exploration, a detailed mapping, without gaps, of contiguous substances and powers. Maxwell, I believe, sees this about Faraday, so that it is not merely Faraday's clarity of view and inventiveness which attract Maxwell, but an image of the form physics might take, a physics of contiguity. In the transformation which Maxwell made of Faraday's thought, I believe his obj·ective was not only to find a mathematical expression appropriate to Faraday's electromagnetic concepts, but to bring into analytic form Faraday's insight about the nature of physics itself as a connected system. This calls for a new kind of mathematical physics, field physics. I mentioned earlier that two concepts are particularly important in Faraday's thinking about electromagnetism, namely the "lines of force" and the "electrotonic state." Thus far, the discussion of Faraday's inquiry into diamagnetism has emphasized only the former, but curiously it was the "electrotonic state" which seemed to Faraday himself the more fundamental idea, and it is this latter which 12 L. Pearce Williams, Michael Faraday (New York: Basic Books, 1965), p. 463, n. 51. Maxwell takes as the key in his translation of Faraday. For anyone who holds as I do that Faraday did not work with theories, the electrotonic state presents a special problem, since it is a concept which he never abandoned, and yet was never able to support empirically. He held it with tenacity, as we shall see, even though it remained a pure speculation. Without attempting to trace the history of this elusive notion through the Experimental Researches, I should like to try to indicate its role in Faraday's thought. In Series I, it appears in effect as the vehicle for Faraday's perplexity at the unexpected finding that an electric current is induced only by variation of the current in a primary circuit, or by motion of a permanent magnet. Like Fresnel, Faraday had expected a magnet to produce a current in a conductor at rest, and even after he had discovered the pulse of current on make or break of the primary circuit, he continued to look for the anticipated effect during steady flow of the primary current. Taking the inductive pulse as evidence of a change of this supposed state, he names it "after advising with· several learned friends" the electro-tonic state signifying that it is a tension in the direction of current flow in the conductor, and Series I is conceived more as the announcement of the discovery of a new state of matter, than as the discovery of the phenomenon of induced currents: Whilst the wire is subject to either volta-electric or magneto-electric induction, it appears to be in a peculiar state.... This electrical condition of matter has not hitherto been recognized, but it probably exerts a very important influence in many if not most of the phenomena produced by currents of electricity. (XR ij16) He has to confess, however, that he had found no evidence for the existence of the newly named and announced state whatever: This peculiar condition shows no known electrical effects whilst it continues; nor have I yet been able to discover any peculiar powers exerted, or properties possessed, by matter whilst retained in this state. (XR i/16-17) The Experimental Researches thus open with a somewhat embarrassing blunder-for he never was able to find any 13 �The College evidence of the State" whatever, and in Series 2 he for~ 11 mally withdrew the claim that it exists, though at the same time he reasserted his own conviction that it must: Thus the reasons ... have disappeared; and though it still seems to me unlikely that a wire at rest in the neighborhood of another carrying a powerful electric current is entirely indifferent to it, yet I am not aware of any distinct facts which authorize the conclusion that it is in a particular state. (XR ij69) Before making this reluctant retraction, he had made great efforts to exhibit the existence of some such static state in conductors in a magnetic field: that is, the efforts to produce an effect in a conductor due to the mere presence of a strong magnetic field did not stop with the discovery of electromagnetic induction, but were if anything accelerated by it. The electrotonic state was the surrogate for the effect which had for years been expected, and which he still felt must exist. The experiments which he performed then, on copper bars and leaves in a magnetic field, were the equivalent of a search for diamagnetism or diamagnetic polarity, and the actual discovery of diamagnetism seven years later, which we have discussed above, was the outcome of essentially the same search for a state of tension due to a steady magnetic field. In effect, the persistent search for the electrotonic state yielded the diamagnetic state. Faraday himself speaks eloquently of his unremitting dedication to the search for this missing "state"; three years after the retraction, he writes: Notwithstanding that the effects appear only at the making and breaking of contact, (the current remaining unaffected, seemingly, in the interval) I cannot resist the impression that there is some connected and correspondent effect produced by this lateral action of the elements of the electric stream [that is, the magnetic action of the current] during the time of its continuance ... there appears to be a link in the chain of effects, a wheel in the physical mechanism of the action, as yet unrecognized. If we endeavor to consider electricity and magnetism as the results of two forces of a physical agent, or a peculiar condition of matter, exerted in determinate directions perpen- dicular to each other ... (XR ij342) 14 He is seeking in the electrotonic state a "physical agent" of which electricity and magnetism are merely two manifestations. In 1852, some thirty years after Series I, he reasserts his faith, now linking the search with that for the physical lines of magnetic force: Again and again the idea of an electro-tonic state ... has been forced on my mind; such a state would coincide and become identified with that which would then constitute the physical lines of magnetic force. Another consideration tends in the same direction. I formerly remarked that the magnetic equivalent to static electricity was not known ... (XR iii/420-421) He then sketches what amounts to a completed scheme of nature, in which he takes the magnetic line as dynamic by analogy to electric currents, and then inserts the electrotonic state as a static state of magnetism, a magnetic tension analogous to the electrostatic tension which he has asserted precedes all conduction. The conviction expressed in Series I is reiterated in the last pages of the Experimental Researches; speaking of the wire which experiences a current when it is moved in a magnetic field, he demands: Now, how is it possible to conceive that the copper or mercury could have this power in the moving state, if it had no relation at all to the magnetic force in the fixed state? ... The mere addition of motion could do nothing, unless there were a prior static dependence of the magnet and the metal upon each other ... (XR iiij55l) Even the complex, never-completed experiment on 11Time in Magnetism" with which the Diary closes is a search, strictly speaking, for the electrotonic state; he writes to Maxwell in 1857: I hope this summer to make some experiments on the time of the magnetic action, or rather on the time required for the assumption of the electrotonic state . ...13 It would hardly be going too far to say that the Experimental Researches begin, and the Diary ends, with abortive efforts to find the one thing Faraday most wanted to 13 Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, Tl1e Life of James Clerk Maxwell (2nd ed.; London' 1894), p. 200. �July 1970 discover, yet for which he was never able to adduce a single definite fact. The momentum of this search carries over, however7 into Maxwell's reformulation of Faraday's views, where, as we shall see, the electrotonic state holds the central place. We see here, as others have emphasized, that the "experimental" researches are shaped and motivated by great speculative forces. Does this mean that science is, for Faraday, ultimately in fact a theoretical enterprise? I think it is only so to the extent that there is a gap which has not yet been filled, as it should be, by something other than such speculative concepts. His own terms in a quotation above are revealing: there is "a link in the chain of effects, a wheel in the physical mechanism of the action, as yet unrecognized." As the gap is filled, the need for theory will disappear. As science takes its completed form, hypothesis and speculation, which is the only sense of "theory" for Faraday, drop out, and a completed "physical mechanism" with no gears missing takes their place. True science, for Faraday, is the machine revealed. It is useful, finally, to note what Faraday does not ask himself. He does not ask questions about functional relationships: he does not ask, for example, the amount of the repelling force on a diamagnetic body, or the dependence of this on the strength of the field in which it is placed. He does not work with ratios and proportions. Not only does he almost never write an equation: he never asks the kind of question which has an equation as the natural form of its answer. Faraday's discomfort with the notion of a functional relation in mathematics is revealed poignantly by a remark he made very late in his career, at a time when he had finally been brought into confrontation with the dreaded inverse-square law of gravity. He rebels at the formulation "with a strength VARYING INVERSELY ..." The capital letters are his, expressing his outrage at what he considers a blatant violation of the principle of conservation of the force: how can it then "vary"? 14 He 14 Faraday, "On the Conservation of Force," Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics (London: 1859), pp. 443 ff., where the remark quoted is found on p. 463. The essay is of special interest to the present study, as Maxwell discusses it at length in a letter to Faraday (Campbell, Life of Maxwell, pp. 202 fl). understands, indeed, the algebraic relation as describing the effect, but the equation which for Newton and many generations of scientists after him had fully characterized the force, seems to Faraday utterly unjust to it. "Why, then, talk about the inverse square of the distance?" he says, commenting on the dismissal of his theory by the astronomer-royal, Sir George Airy; "I had to warn my audience against the sound of this law and its supposed opposition on my Friday evening..."?15 Reference was made above to Faraday's correspondence with Ampere. The following passage from a letter to Ampere, written early in Faraday's career, reveals the extent to which he was aware of the divergence of his concept of science from that of the mathematicians: I am unfortunate in a want of mathematical knowledge and the power of entering with facility into abstract reasoning; I am obliged to feel my way by facts closely placed together ... On reading your papers and letters, I have no difficulty in following the reasoning, but still at last I seem to want something more on which to steady the conclusions. I fancy the habit I got into of attending too closely to experiment has somewhat fettered my power of reasoning and chains me down and I cannot help now and then, comparing myself to a timid navigator who, though he might boldly and safely steer across a bay or an ocean by the aid of a compass which in its action and principles is infallible, is afraid to leave sight of the shore because he understands not the power of the instrument that is to guide him. 16 Could there be a more revealing contrast between Faraday's steady effort to satisfy his mind with a dense series of "facts closely placed together," and the elegant demonstrations of the mathematical physicist, embodied in the electrodynamics of Ampere? The latter had announced 'his program at the beginning of his Theorie Mathematique: Observer d'abord les faits, en varier les circonstances autant qu'il est possible, accompagner ce premier 15 16 Jones, Life of Faraday, 2, p. 354. de Launay, Correspondance, 3, p. 929. 15 �The College travail de mesures pnecises pour en deduire des lois generales, uniquement fondfes sur 1' experience, et deduire de ces lois, independamment de toute hypothese sur Ia nature des forces qui produisent les phenomenes, Ja valeur mathematique de ces forces, c' est-a-dire Ja formu}e qui Jes represente, teiJe est Ia marche qu'a suivie Newton ... c'est elle qui m'a serve de guide dans toutes mes recherches ....17 One should not, I think, be put off by the modesty which Faraday assumes, however sincerely, in this letter. It is clear that he reaiJy makes no apology for his physics. It is a science, not of mathematics, but of facts. It does not Jack mathematics, for it does not need mathematics. As the letter reveals, Faraday sees mathematics as useful (for others) as a short-cut, in leaping over gaps. His own idea, however, is of a science without such gaps, a science essentiaiJy non-quantitative, not needing either mathematical equations or chains of argument, but only inteiJigent experiment and clarity of view. Faraday certainly reasons incessantly. But for him the motions of the mind are constantly checked by reference to fact, so that the result is a dense structure, a closelyspaced series, directed throughout by experiment: Let the imagination go, guiding it by judgment and principle, but holding it in and directing it by experiment.ls Throughout the Experimental Researches, it is true, speculation and imagination run ahead of experiment, but seldom by more than a paragraph; this is not theory-building in the mathematician's sense, but envisioning new, pos~ sible things, and they are no sooner envisioned, than they are sought. This is of course a naive view, profoundly naive. Faraday built the world of Experimental Researches according to this naivete, and if we are to view it by any other criteria, or use his work for other purposes, we must first to a certain extent destroy it, and then rebuild. It is, perhaps, the literary triumph of MaxweiJ's Treatise that it effects this translation of Faraday's thought into mathematical physics with such gentleness and understanding, preserving so much of Faraday's concept of nature and of science. 16 17Andrt!-Marie Ampere, ThCorie mathCmatique des phenomenes electro-dynamiques, uniquement dCduite de l'expCrience {1827) (reprinted Parie: Librairie Scientifique Albert Blanchard, 1958), p. 2 (italics mine) . 18 Faraday, Diary, 7, p, 337. The remark in its context in the Diary pages is not a reflection, but a Dionysian outcry in the midst of the chase. It is surrounded by a cascade of ideas, as much speculative as experimental, about a wished relation of gravity and electricity. Thomas K. Simpson attended Rennselaer and Virginia Polytechnic Institutes where he studied physics and electrical engineering. After military service he resumed his education at St. John's College, graduating in 1950. He received an M.A. in Teaching degree from Wesleyan University in 1955, and a Ph.D. degree in the History of Science from The Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He has been a Danforth and a National Science Foundation Fellow. He was one of the founders and is currently President of the Key School, an experimental school in Annapolis. He has been teaching at the College in Annapolis since 19 55 and has had an important part in the development of the College's laboratory science program. Both by his teaching and by his example Simpson has shown how science can and should be understood as a liberal art, as one among the humanistic disciplines. �Prayers Given at St. Johns College, Annapolis By MICHAEL S. LITTLETON Convocation, September 1968 Baccalaureate Service, June 1970 Eternal God, the source and fountain of truth, To whom men turn when weary with illusion, In humble recognition of the precious gifts of knowledge And insight which thou dost bestow upon all who diligently seek them: 0 Lord, our Lord, how excellent thy name is in all the earth; Great and marvelous are thy works, Just and true are thy ways, thou King of kings, TI1e Gentiles come to thy light, And thou dost lighten thy people Israel. We ask thy blessing upon this institution of learning, its faculty, students and administration. That we may be delivered from fanatical devotion to halftruths, From that half-hearted drudgery which takes no delight in the given, and from sloth in all its forms. Keep alive in us that freshness which lies deep down in things, yet ever close at hand, And with it the patience to forge for ourselves tools of understanding, sturdy and precise, Which shall enable us to continue on the path of knowledge in pursuit of the common good. We pray in the name of the Lord To whom belongs the earth and the fullness thereof. Amen. Convocation, September 1969 Eternal God, whose glory is above the heavens But is mirrored in the tiniest fragment of thy creation, We thank thee that in the fullness of time Lighten our dark world, 0 God, and lead us in the paths of peace. Direct our nation that she may walk upright in the hour of responsibility. Bless this college, now and in the years to come, TI1at it may perform its task with integrity and gladness. Bless these students about to graduate That they may be encouraged by the memory of these years spent together. Create in us all clean hearts 0 God, that we may see thee aright. Renew a right spirit within us, that amidst a babel of warring tongues We may discern thy true word. Restore unto us the joy of thy salvation, And uphold us with thy free spirit, Lest having begun a good work, we grow weary in well doing And miss thy kingdom's goal. Amen. Thou dost create man in thine own image and IikeneSS 7 And dost call him from childish pursuits on to the full stature of manhood: Michael S. Littleton has been a Tutor at St. John's College since 1960. The recipient of the B.D. and S.D.M. degrees, he is a Minister of Music at the United Church of Christ in Annapolis. To be watchful, wakefull, compassionate and free; Not conformed to the present schema of things, But renewed in mind and spirit, Able to give an account of the hope that is in him. Do thou bless this college And all who teach and learn, That we may find courage to live with our own complexities, And grace to upbuild one another in truth. Amen. 17 �NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES St. John's College in Santa Fe conducted its third commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 31st, on the campus patio, holding the program outdoors for the first time. The Reverend Robert Boshen of the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, gave the Invocation and Benediction. The graduates, faculty, and audience sat around the lovely pool and waterfall which were given to the College by actress Greer Garson in memory of bier, 0.; Steven Alan Jackson, Santa Fe, N.M.; Christine Lincoln, Cambridge, Mass.; Kyle Van McCard, Corning, Ia.; Jane Moore, Liberal Kan.; John Edward Munoz, Santa Fe, N.M.; Toni Karen Thomas Nelson, Los Alarnos, N.M.; Sigrid Catherine Nielsen, San Bruno, Calif.; Warren Frederick Schmalenberger, Albuquerque, N.M.; David Michael Sills, Chicago, Ill.; Kathleen Marie Skelton, Geneseo, Ill.; and Kathryn Joan Teipel, Tulsa, Okla. Mr. Robert A. Neidorf, who has taught at St. John's in Annapolis and Santa Fe for a total of five years, was selected by the senior class to present her mother. A warm southwestern sun the commencement address. He said in "The literature of the new generation contains just criticisms of the shone on the gathering while a spring breeze tugged playfully at the academic gowns and tassels of students and tutors. President Richard D. Weigle announced the awarding of 27 degrees. Graduating Cum Laude were James D. Danneskiold, Whittier, Calif.; Michael J. Landry, Franklin, La.; Christopher B. Nelson, White Plains, N.Y.; Yehudith N. Schneider, Mamaroneck, N.Y.; and James R. Walker, Fort Stockton, Tex. In addition 22 seniors were graduated Rite: Andrea Lynn Asti, Severna Park, Md.; Benjamin Barney, Lukachukai, Ariz.; Henry Hunsden Carey, New York, N.Y.; Ted Eugene Crook, Rifle, Colo.; Michael Neil Dayton, Santa Fe, N.M.; William Henry Doleman, Honolulu, Hi.; Toni Katz Drew, Santa Fe, N.M.; Hugo Bengt Donaldsson Hamilton, Santa Fe, N.M.; Sarah Jane Curtis Henderson, New York, N.Y.; Samuel Merritt Hitt, III, Mountain Lakes, N.J.; Susheila Louise Horwitz, Gam- his speech that America is in danger because many of its leaders and young usually extended with sweeping con- SANTA FE HoLDS ITS COMMENCEMENT OUTSIDE FOR FIRST TIME 18 people lack a "sense of history." Mr. Ncidorf said history "is a human process in which three vital things are created: the language of a people, an actualization of freedom for those people, and an idea of themselves, an idea of what they are and ought to be, an idea that may be expressed in their literature, their rituals, or their political in~ stitutions." A failure to understand American history in these terms-- is evident in recent actions by President Nixon and Vice-President Agnew and in the practices of some of the younger generation. older generation, but the criticisms are Santa Fe's third commencement, held outside this year, was situated around the Garson memorial pool. �July 1970 tempt to anyone who does not share the rituals and slogans of the young ...." He said the President had violated the tradition of separation of powers among the branches of government in ordering troops into Cambodia, and the Vice-President had disregarded the American concept of "due process of law" in his "campaign of intemperate and inflammatory vilification against the collegiate youth." The Class of 1970 graduated 72 seniors on both campuses. ANNAPOLIS GRADUATION EXERCISES The Class of 1970 in Annapolis graduated 46 seniors on Sunday, June 7th, on the front campus under the 700year-old Liberty Tree. The Reverend G. Holmes Mendelman, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Annapolis, delivered the Invocation. The Reverend J. Winfree Smith, tutor at the College since 1941, gave the graduation address (see elsewhere in the magazine). Graduating Magna Cum Laude were Marielle Mikah Hammett, Pottstown, Pa.; Deborah Warren Kalmar. Annapolis, Md.; Edward Michael Macierowski, Springfield, Mass.; Joanne Linda Murray, Arlington, Va.; and Diana Browning Runyon, Annapolis, Md. Cum Laude graduates included Ronald Herbert Fielding, Cohasset, Mass.; Stephen Joel Forman, Houston, Tex.; Steven T. Harvey, Harrison, N.Y.; Maureen Linda Hollander, Hamden, Conn.; Joan Leslie Kramer, South Orange, N.J.; John Patrick MacDonald, Detroit, Mich.; Madelyn Jane Siegel, Baltimore, Md.; Masha Zager Sinnreich, Annapolis, Md.; and Susan Smith Wigutoff, Orlando, Fla. Those receiving degrees Rite were Philip Joseph Avila, Jr., Yeadon, Pa.; Samuel Stephen Burnett, North East, Md.; Catherine Ann Caffrey, Gmnd Island, Neb.; Patricia Ann Carey, La Vale, Md.; Thomas Anthony Chambliss, Chattanooga, Tenn.; David Domenic Cicia, Northampton, Mass.; Henry Clay Constantine, III, Baltimore, Md.; John Richard Dean, Boston, Mass.; Stephanie Ann Forrest, Madison, N.J.; Jeffrey David Friedman, Cleveland, 0.; Steve Alex Hancoff, Annapolis, Md.; Maya Hasegawa, Richmond, Va.; Roy Alan Hepner, Huntington, W. Va.; David Harding Humphreys, New York, N.Y.; Juan Blaise Ianni, Arcola, Va.; Dikran Kizilyan, Istanbul, Turkey; Arthur Harold Luse, III, Mahopac, N.Y.; Mary Elizabeth Perry, Glastonbury, Conn.; Thomas Anthony Pink, Chicago, Ill.; Thomas Rie, West Chester, Pa.; Susan Gail Rumore, Glendale, N.Y.; Cara Gendel Ryan, New York, N.Y.; Anne Robin Schmidt, Baltimore, Md.; Worku Sharew, Lock Haven, Pa.; Mark Leonard Silverman, South Dartmouth, Mass.; John David Smith, Humacao, Puerto Rico; Richard Edward Sohmer, Annapolis, Md.; Melanie Hannah Sollog, Franklin Square, N.Y.; Jean Lenore Stephens, Chassell, Mich.; Anthony Vitto, Jr., Rockville, Md.; Charles Robert Williams, Silver Spring, Md.; and Nancy Lillian Williams, South Windsor, Conn. Included in the !78th commencement exercises was Paul A. Lowdenslager, Annapolis, Md., as of the Class of 1955. The Benediction by Reverend Mendelman concluded the ceremonies. President and Mrs. Weigle were hosts at a buff·et supper for the graduates, faculty, and guests, at their home in Wardour. POLITICS AND THE COLLEGE At St. John's this May, as at most campuses throughout the country, the United States-South Vietnamese operations in Cambodia produced significant reactions. With turbulence and disruption overcoming most of what are called the major centers of higher learning in the nation, the St. John's community conducted itself with dignity mid sobriety in action, and with honesty and intelligence in inquiry. On May 8th and 9th a group of students and Tutors participated in a 24hour silent vigil processing about Church Circle in Annapolis in a demonstration of concern for what liad taken place at Kent State University. Some Tutors and students also engaged in activities to inform Annapolitans about the Church-Cooper and Hatfield-McGovern amendments. On May 12th a letter drafted by President Weigle and signed by some 350 members of the College com' munity from both campuses was pre- Tutor Benjamin C. Milner, Jr., led the Annapolis graduation procession. (Photo by John S. O'Brien/Aune Arundel Times) I "' 19 �The College sented by President Weigle and three students to Herbert Klein, President Nixon's Director of Communications, in Washington. The text of the letter foiiows: Dear Mr. President: We as individual students, faculty members, and administrative officers at St. John's College wish to convey to you our deep concern over the most re- cent expansion of the undeclared war in Southeast Asia and over the resulting dissension and division in our coun- try, especially within our colleges and universities. We are deeply troubled by the sacrifice of our young men and by the drain upon our country's resources. There is a basic question wlllch disturbs us as well. We doubt the constitutionality of this undeclared war which was embarked upon by a previous administration. We agree with Senator Charles Matlllas that the Senate seems to have been denied its historic constitutional role of declaring or not declaring war. We would lwpe for a speedy return to the proper delineation of tl1e functions and responsibilities of the three branches of the Government, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. In grave moments of history like these, nothing can be more important than a strict upholding of the Constitution. Many of us recognize that we do not have the necessary background or ·facts to assess the wisdom or necessity for the original American involvement in Indo-China or for the subsequent escalation of the fighting. We are not experts on power politics, Communist subversion, political vacuums, or military strategy. However, we share a repugnance for the conflict which has devastated this area of the world for nearly two decades. We earnestly want to believe you when you publicly commit yourself and our government to withdrawal of our armed forces as rapidly as is consistent with safety and prudence. St. John's College is devoted to the life of the mind, to reason, and to dialogue. We cannot subscribe to irrational and violent methods of dissent 20 Director of Communications Herbert Klein receives letter to President Nixon, and President Weigle and students Denise Fort, Mary Coughlin, and Lee Elkins. (Official Photograph, The Wl1ite House) since they imply an abandonment of tl1e fundamental principles for which a college or university should stand. We doubt whether confrontations can advance the cause of reason. Nor will the welfare of the country be advanced by a national strike of students or the closing of our colleges and universities. We shall continue with our regular academic program. We believe that our primary responsibility as students and teachers is to continue to study and learn. Only then will we be properly equipped to exercise our life-long responsibilities as participating members of tl1e political communities which depend upon enliglltened and rational leadership-our towns and cities, our states, and our nation. This decision should not be interpreted as implying any lack of concern on our part. Though the College considers it inappropriate to take an institutional stand on such a matter of national policy, we as individuals may choose to show our own personal positions in appropriate and dignified ways. We hope that our actions may com- mend themselves to students and faculties in other colleges and universities and may prove to have a sobering effect in a period of campus turmoil and national division. Therefore, as individual citizens and members of the St. John's community, we hereby record our dissent and in so doing insist that such dissent be registered in the proper way. The questions and arguments of President Weigle and three students, Mary Lee Coughlin, Lee Elkins, and Denise Fort, it was reported, were received attentively and argued with intelligently by Mr. Klein. A press release covering the letter suffered the usual abuse that carefuiiy qualified statements receive from a large part of the national press: in some places this letter of protest and dissent, which also spoke against "irrational and violent methods of dissent," was reported as a letter of support for Presidential policy. In a number of places, however, the reporting was accurate. A Coiiege meeting was held on the evening of May 12th. President Weigle �July 1970 reported on a second press release issued by the Publicity Office stressing the vigorous dissent of the signers of the letter to the President. Dean Goldwin spoke briefly about the grave dangers stemming from the growing politicization of the colleges and universities in the country. Taking stands on controversial political issues as institutions already has destroyed the conditions for open-minded, unprejudiced .examination of controversial issues on a significant number of important campuses in the United States. "What is at stake," he said, "is freedom of inquiry." The Dean proposed that the regular Friday evening lecture for May 22nd be abandoned in favor of a dual lecture presenting opposing positions on the Cambodian operations, and that Saturday, May 23rd, be set aside as an extra day of study comprised of two seminars on the subjects of Southeast Asia and Viet Nam policy, and the role of the dissenting citizen. Discussion took place to solicit suggestions from the students and to determine the general reaction to the proposal. Shows of hands were taken to determine what kind of participation might be expected. There was some debate as to whether attendance should be required or voluntary. It was argued that required attendance would be one step towards that politicization spoken of earlier, that students and faculty who did not want to participate, who did not want to take part in any activity that could be construed as joining in political dissent, should not be required to do so. On the other hand, it was argued that required attendance would endow the meetings with the the Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, and a member of the Senior Staff of the National Security Council, presented the case for the administration. a Question: The Uses and Abuses of Civil Disobedience," by Harris L. Wofford, Jr.; and "The Case Against Civil Disobedience," by Herbert J. Storing. On the Annapolis campus about 80 per cent of the faculty and some 60 per cent of the students participated in the seminars. This extra day of study carried out at the most burdensome time of the regular work year was generally reported to have been highly successful. In Santa Fe, over 200 letters were written by students to their Congress- Professor Morton Halperin, author of China and the Bomb and Contemporary Military Strategy, Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, who resigned as a consultant to the National Securitv Council when United States forces' entered Cambodia, presented a case against administration policy. The Question Period was packed, long, lively, intelligent, and informative, and marred by no disruptions. The readings for the seminar at 10:00 A.M. on Viet Nam and Southeast Asia were President Nixon's speech on Cambodia, an article by Henry Kissinger, an article by Senator Fulbright, and a ten-point proposal by the Vietcong. Readings for the seminar at 2:00 P.M. on the role of the dissenting citizen were taken from the recently published volume, On Civil Disobedience-American Essays Old and New (Rand McNally), edited by Robert A. Goldwin. The essays were "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; "Law as President Weigle has announced the appointments of Gerald F. Zollars as Director of Admissions and John- S. Steadman as Assistant Dean at Santa Fe. Mr. Zollars graduated from Annapolis in 1965 and received his graduate degree at the University of Hawaii's EastWest Center. He succeeds Douglas R. Price, who has accepted the position of Special Assistant to the President of the Univer:iity of Hawaii. Mr. Steadman, who has been a Tutor at St. John's in Annapolis and Gerald Zollars Plwto by J. R. Thompson John S. Steadman Photo by Robert Nugent _..., men, expressing opinions on the escala- tion of the Southeast Asian conflict. ADMISSIONS DIRECTOR AND ASSISTANT DEAN APPOINTED AT SANTA FE seriousness of our regular work. Some argued that they would approve and participate in the activities if voluntary, but not if required. A show of hands revealed that a large majority were in favor of the activities being voluntary. On Friday, May 22nd, Professor Robert E. Osgood, author of Ideals and Self-Interest in America's Foreign Relations and Limited War, Professor of International Relations and Director of 21 �The College Santa Fe since 1962, succeeds John T. Rule. Mr. Rule, who retired as Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966, has taught at St. John's for two years and served as acting Assistant Dean the past year. Mr. Zollars served as assistant admissions director during Mr. Price's three years as director. PRESIDENT WEIGLE LEADS STUDENTS IN "EARTH DAY" CLEANUP IN SANTA FE Students and faculty observed Earth Day on April 22nd at Santa Fe with talks by officials of private and public agencies concerned with pollution control, films on the environmental crisis, outdoor dinner of organic foods, and a seminar. The action phase of the College's participation in the national program began the previous Saturday when President Richard D. Weigle led a group of students in an all-day cleanup along several streets near the campus. A dump truck loaned by the City of Santa Fe was filled several times with bottles, cans, auto parts, discarded furniture, and other trash found scattered along these streets. The College received commendation from residents in the area and a special citation from the Santa Fe City Council. GRADUATE STUDENTS COMPLETE FouRTH YEAR IN SUMMER INSTITUTE The first students to complete all four sections of the summer Graduate Institute in Liberal Education will receive their M.A. degrees at Santa Fe August 14th. The Graduate Institute was started in 1967 with a course in Politics and Society. Two other subject areas-Literature, and Philosophy and Theology-were added in 1968. Mathematics and Natural Science were offered for the first time last summer, completing the four-part program. Twelve students received degrees last year as a result of having completed three summers at St. John's, plus nine hours of graduate credit transferred from another institution. 22 The institute's curriculum was de- signed primarily for the benefit of school teachers wishing to enrich their liberal arts training, but applications are invited from others interested in this type of advanced education. James P. Shannon, vice president of St. John's at Santa Fe, is the director of the institute this year. His predecessors in that position have included Elliott Zuckerman, tutor at Annapolis, and Robert Goldwin, now Dean of St. John's College. The Graduate Institute has received aid from the Carnegie Corporation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a result of such financial assistance, several stu- deQts have been able to enroll who are teachers in core ateas of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore and in small rural schools in New Mexico. ANNAPOLIS FACULTY NOTES Laurence and Gisela Berns became the parents of a daughter, Anna Elena, on Friday, May 29th, the first anniversity of Mrs. Berns's becoming a citizen of the United States. Eva Brann, Jacob Klein, and Thomas K. Simpson are three St. John's College tutors who were recently appointed to a new Curriculum Committee at the Key School in Annapolis to expedite work on an extensive statement of the school's curriculum. Robert A. Goldwin edited On Civil Disobediei]ce, published by Rand McNally in December. The book was used for the special seminars at Annapolis. He was also the leader for the Public Affairs Conference on "Censorship and Freedom of Expression" at Kenyon College, May 7-lOth. The Dean was interviewed on WBAL-FM Radio, Saturday, May 16th, for a program entitled "Molly Martin Presents A Day In Annapolis," a thirteen-week series on Maryland's capital and its citizens. Mr. Goldwin will serve as moderator at the Aspen (Colorado) Institute of Humanistic Studies on August l6-29th. During the 1968-1970 academic years Jacob Klein gave the following lectures: "On The Soul in Plato's Republic," and "Introduction to Aris- tole," at the University of Chicago; "On The Nature of Nature," at The New School for Social Research and Claremont Men's College; "On Precision," at St. Mary's College of California, the University of Massachusetts, and Catholic University of America; and "On Liberal Education," at Cornell University. In addition he led a seminar, 11 0n Plato's Statesman," at Yale University, and a seminar, "On Liberal Education," at Cornell University in which two St. John's alumni, Linda Davenport and Bernard Davidoff, participated. Samuel S. Kutler will be on sabbatical leave in 1970-71, traveling and studying in England. Barbara H. Leonard will travel to Africa and India during her 1970-71 sabbatical leave. Benjamin C. Milner, Jr., served as chairman of the Anne Arundel County liberal New Democratic Coalition, wing of the Democratic Party, which stresses citizen participation in politics. His book, Calvin's Doctrine of the Church, was published by E. J. Brill this year. Richard Scofield was appointed Tutor Emeritus by the Board of Visitors and Governors during the June meeting in Annapolis. Mr. Scofield joined the St. John's faculty in 1927, teaching continuously at the College except for 1948-49 when he was Visiting Associate Professor of History and Humanities at the University of Chicago. He held an Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship commencing in 1959. In December Thomas K. Simpson was principal speaker at the History of Science Society annual meeting, Washington, D.C. The speech was on the "Metaphysical Foundations of Maxwell's Treatise On Electricity And Magnetism." · Robert L. Spaeth was appointed chairman of the newly-formed housing committee for the City of Annapolis. He called housing "the most serious social problem in Annapolis" and expressed confidence that the committee would improve relations between the city council and the city's housing authority. a- �July 1970 David H. Stephenson is the new conductor of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Since joining the St. John's faculty in 1963, he has arranged several concerts, conducted the small and great choruses at the College, and directed a full performance of Bach's Cantata No. 101 at St. Anne's Episcopal Church. He has recently completed a book on the works of Beethoven which will be published shortly by Thomas Y. Crowell Company. The Danforth Foundation recently awarded a leave grant to President Richard D. Weigle. The grant provides an opportunity for the college administrator to enlarge his perspectives of current and future educational issues and to renew his inner resources for con~ tinucd leadership in higher education. The Weigles plan to begin their leave in May, 1971. After giving the commencement address at Bard College on Saturday, June 20th, Mr. Weigle received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. Elliott Zuckerman is an Associate of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, for 1970-71, during his sabbatical leave from Annapolis. SANTA FE AWARDS SOUTHWEST SCHOLARS Ten outstanding high school students in the Southwest have been awarded scholarships worth $250 to $1,500 by St. John's for 1970-71. The winners by state include: Arizona, Jody Mary Bol, Scottsdale. Colorado, Carl A. Huffman, Wheat Ridge. New Mexico, Mike Lee Beall, Santa Fe; Kathleen Marie Buchen, Los Alamos; George S. Davidson, Carlsbad, and David B. Wallace, Las Cruces. Oklahoma, Jennifer Gail Jordan, Turpin. Texas, Sheila Cathryn Jackson, Beaumont; David B. Maclaine, Houston, and Phillip B. Weathers, Denton. The Southwest Scholars Program was started by friends of the College to encourage attendance at St. John's by young people from the five southwestern states. The grants are renewable annually upon successful completion of the previous term's work. §!tee/1 §a11son Comes !fJ v/nnafiolis Governor and Mrs. Mandel were hosts at a reception at the Government House Friday evening, in honor of Miss Garson and the Caritas Society, giving recognition to the Society and its community activities this past year. On Saturday, May 23rd, the Fogelsons enjoyed a cruise of the harbor and the Chesapeake Bay on the Governor's Yacht and a tour of the Annapolis campus. That evening Miss Garson received The Caritas Society of the Friends a standing ovation following the showof St. John's College in Annapolis ing of "Mrs. Miniver," and was sursponsored an evening with Miss Greer prised with a bouquet from the Caritas Garson on Saturday, May 23rd, with a Society. She was available for queschampagne buffet supper and a show- tions from the audience, and mingled ing of two of her films, "Mrs. Miniver" freely with delighted guests during the and "Madam·e Curie." "champagne reception. Miss Garson and her husband, Mr. Mrs. L. Corrin Strong, a member of E. E. Fogelson, a former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, the Board of Visitors and Governors, gave a luncheon on Sundav in honor were met at Friendship Airport by of the Fogelsons. ' Mrs. Marvin Mandel, the First Lady Members of the Caritas Society who of the State of Maryland. Mrs. Richard were committee chairmen for the eveD. Weigle and Mrs. William Jabine, ning with Miss Garson were: Mrs. WilII, chairman of the Caritas function, liam Jabine, II, Mrs. Robert 0. Felter, also greeted the couple. Mrs. Theodore G. Osius, Mrs. Richard In addition to being interviewed at F. Blaul, Mrs. Bert Thoms, Mrs. Joan the airport by WMAR-TV, Baltimore, L. Baldwin, Mrs. William G. Gideon, Miss Garson participated in a taping Mrs. Remsen Johnson, Mrs. L. Corrin at W ANN-WXTC Radio in Annapo- Strong, Mrs. Karlton F. Morris, Mrs. lis and a press conference that after- Colby G. Rucker, and Mrs. William B. noon. Clatanoff. Student Daniel Sullivan assisted with the artwork on the proMiss Garson signs autographs during the champagne reception. gram. NEW MEXICO AUTHORS ADDRESS LUNCHEONS FOR BENEFIT OF ST. JoHN'S LIBRARY This year's spring series of the St. John's Book-and-Author Luncheons continued the success of the 1969 programs. A total of about 600 people attended the luncheons on April lOth and May 14th at Santa Fe's downtown hotel, LaFonda. The series is sponsored by the St. John's College Library Associates Committee, headed by Richard l\/Iartin Stern, who is a prize-winning author himself. Local book stores help sell tickets and the programs are well covered by press and television. Speakers so far this year have in23 �The College eluded Walter Kerr, former general manager of the New York Times International Edition; John Masters, Calcutta-born, author of 16 books including Blrowani Junction; Tom Mayer, whose first collection of short stories, Bubble Gum and Kipling, was published before he was 21 and whose next book will be about Vietnam, where he spent eight months as a free lance correspondent; Peggy Pond Church, whose The House at Otowi Bridge is in its third printing; Tony HiUerrnan, whose The Blessing Way has received favorable reviews and a film contract, and Alice Bullock, prolific writer of articles, author of Legends of the Santa Fe Country and member of the St. John's Library Associates. STUDENTS EXHIBIT ARTS AND CRAFTS An exhibition of art work and crafts made by students this past year was held in the St. John's Gallery at Santa Fe, May 22nd-30th. Awards were presented by the Student Activities Office for the best work in fine arts, pottery and photography. Prize-winners included: Fine Arts-Gretchen Vadnais '72, Portland, Ore., and John Kvapil '72, Phoenix, Ariz. Pottery Making-Christopher W. Hill '72, Tucson, Ariz.; Karen A. Nelson '73, Danville, Calif.; James M. Nelson, Tucson, Ariz. Photography-A. Mackenzie Waggaman '73, Reno, Nev.; J. R. Thompson '73, Rocky Ford, Colo.; Rachel L. Trneblood '72, Blue Bell, Pa. Thompson also was cited for his editing of the student publication "Seven," printed this year in newspaper tabloid form, and for his direction of the musical HFantasticks." STUDENTS PRESENT "THE FANTASTICKS" A student version of the longest-running off-Broadway play, "The Fantasticks," was presented in Santa Fe May 19th-20th. The first night's performance was for students and faculty and the second for the public. Directed by J. R. Thompson '73, Rocky Ford, 24 Colo., the boy-meets-girl musical included Kaley Moffatt '73 of Fort Worth, Texas, as the girl and Greg Ford '72, East Palo Alto, Calif., as the boy. Others in the cast were Jack Holman, Lemoore, Calif.; Jon Stroud, Shreveport, La.; Tom Robinson, Newport, R.I.; Dana Netherton, Florissant, Mo.; Eric Springsted, St. Paul, Minn.; MelJanie Morgan, San Antonio, Texas. All were freshmen except sophomore Netherton. Pianists were Jacob Stoller '73, Mill Valley, Calif., and Ray Davis, tutor. ANNAPOLIS STUDENTS DANCE IN CONCERT The Annapolis Association for Contemporary Dance presented a studio concert of its dance theatre and choreographer's workshop on Sunday, May 17th, at the College in Annapolis. 'I11e Association featured two works by Miss Georgia Cushman, "On Conic Sections," created in 1961, and "Pallavi," a premiere. Douglas Bennett, '71, composed the music which was performed by Kimi Hasegawa, '73, Leslie Starr, '72, and William Martin, '71. The senior dance theatre included faculty wife Mrs. Marilyn Williamson, and students Michelle Budny, '70, Marcia Greenbaum, '73, Priscilla Lindsay, '73, and Christel Stevens, '72. Miss Elizabeth Kurs, daughter of Tutor and Mrs. Louis B. Kurs, was a member of the junior dance theatre. Santa Fe fencers Michael Landry, Carol Paterson, and Edith Callender placed at the Texas Collegiate Fencing Championships. COLLEGE RECEIVES GIFT OF PAINTING Award-winning artist Shirley U. Miller of New York has given her painting "Purple Lake" to St. John's College in Santa Fe. Miss Miller has had one-man exhibitions at Aspects Gallery and Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York. Her awards include the New Masters Fine Arts Award, 1966, at the New England Exhibition; M. Grumbacher Award, 1967, Painters and Sculptors Society; Audubon Artists Medal for Creative Oil, 1968; and the D. Wu Jeet-Key Memorial Award, 1969, National Association of Women Artists. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Arts, and she attended Black Mountain College, N.C., and the Art Students League, New York (Merit Scholarship). STUDENTS EN JOY WIDE VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES Santa Fe students have enjoyed outdoor activities ranging from skiing to river rafting this past year under the guidance of the new Director of Student Activities, Istvan Fehervary. Members of the College's fencing team, the only one in New Mexico, competed in April in the Texas Collegiate Fencing Championships and returned with three torphies. Senior Carol Paterson of San Bruno, Calif., won second place in the women's division; senior Michael Landry of Franklin, La., was fifth in the men's division, and freshman Edith Callender of Littleton, Colo., came in sixth among the women. Students interested in river rafting made several week-end trips down sections of the Rio Grande on rubber rafts. The Santa Fe Ski Basin, only an hour's drive from the campus, offered lessons and equipment at reduced prices to students during the winter. Other activities included horseback riding, soccer, karate, basketball, modern dance, swimming, and softball. Work has begun on a temporary track. The Student Activity Office Award for best all-around athlete went to Robert J. Schlegel '72, Palo Alto, Calif. Rebecca Brinkley '72, Lovington, N.M., received the prize for best girl athlete. �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES PROFILE Michael H. Elias, born in Monticello, N.Y., graduated from St. John's in June, 1962. During the spring of his senior year he was co-editor, with Theodore Stinchecum '62, of the special College Bulletin entitled Mathematics. Mr. Elias taught a variety of subjects in the New York City public schools in his first year after college, and in the spring of 1963 he joined the Living Theater in the cast of "The Brig." He performed with "The Brig'' company in New Yark, and toured with it in Europe, for almost two years. Back in New York, he did a number of plays at the Judson Memorial Church, among them Stinchecum's production of "Antigone." He then worked in television, several films, and summer stock, before teaming up with Frank Shaw in a comedy act. The act was evidently quite successful, playing in night clubs, college con- Michael H. Elias '62 certs, and on the Ed Sullivan Show, in addition to a number of appearances on NBC's "Tonight Show." In 1968, Elias and Shaw, as the act was known, received an offer to go to Hollywood to write for television. They went, and in the past two years have BucHANAN BooK ALUMNI AND THE DISTRIBUTED COLLEGE POLITY The recent mailing of Embers of the World to certain alumni was made possible by the generosity of the publisher, The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara. In view of the understandable limit the Center had to place on the mailing, the book was sent only to those classes of alumni who were at St. John's with Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr, the classes of 1938 through 1950. The book, a series of interviews with Mr. Buchanan, edited by Harris Wofford, may be ordered through the College Bookstore by others who might be interested. pol-i-ty n 4a: the form or constitution of a politically organized unit. (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary) For the first time since a formal Polity was adopted by the College in 1950, the Alumni are recognized officially as members of the College. A completely revised set of "by-laws" for the governance of St. John's was adopted by the Board of Visitors and Governors on June 6th. Article I thereof states in part that "The College shall be understood to consist of the following: (a) the Board of Visitors and Governors; (b) the Faculty; (c) the Students; (d) the Alumni; and (e) written for "What's It All About, World," "The Leslie Uggams Show," "The Pat Paulsen Show," "The Good Guys/' ''Love, American Style/' and "The Bill Cosby Show." The last of these received very favorable notice in the New York Times. Mr. Elias also has teamed up with another St. Johnnie, Robert W. Garland '62, to produce films, to race cars, and to work with a seminar group in the film colony. A project to produce "Fear and Tremblin' ," their own adaptation of the Kierkegaard classic, unfortunately collapsed. The Elias'Garland team fared better in last year's "Baja 500" auto race in a car of their own design, finishing 23rd in one of the most gruelling of all road races. Meanwhile, Mrs. Elias, the former Caroline Bielefelt '65, is putting the St. John's program to work at Disneyland. She is a consultant for a park with the proposed theme of Classicland. The Eliases make their home in Los Angeles. the Staff." The new Polity also defines Alumni: "All who have formally matriculated on either campus, who are not at pres- ent enrolled, and whose class has graduated, whether graduates or non-graduates, whether in graduate or postgraduate programs, shall be called Alumni of St. John's College." In addition to the quoted sections which concern alumni as individuals, the Polity recognizes the Alumni Association: ''The Alumni Association shall be the formal means by which alumni participate in the life of the College. Through the election of Alumni members to the Board of Visitors and Governors, alumni share in the direction of that life. In these and 25 �The College other ways, alumni shall be given the opportunity to serve the College." In other actions, the Polity now provides that the President of the Associati?n attend meetings of the Board of Visitors and Governors as a par~ ticipating, non-voting guest, and that election of alumni members to that Board take place in the spring. The result of this latter provision is that all members now begin and end their terms at the Annual Meeting, normally in May. WATCH THIS SPACE IN THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE WITH THE AREA GROUPS Regional alumni groups have been considerably more active these past six months than in the preceding six. On February 22nd, the Los Angeles area alumni met at the home of Dr. and Mrs. David Dobreer '44 to honor President and Mrs. Weigle. Further to the North, the San Francisco alumni, augmented by some parents, met at the Miyako Hotel at a reception for Mr. Weigle. Thomas M. Carnes '52 was the prime mover for the February 28th event. In Annapolis, informal monthly lunch meetings have resulted in the revival of an official chapter. Frank B. Marshall, Jr. '45 has been elected chairman. Luncheon meetings will continue next fall (the second Friday of each month), and the group will help the Fnends of St. John's in Annapolis with the second annual reception for incoming freshmen. May 26th saw the New York area alumni gather in the apartment-gallery of Eugene V. Thaw '47 to hear Tutor J. Winfree Smith report on the state of the College. Mr. Smith spoke briefly about the Polity revisions being pre- 26 sented to the Board of Visitors and Governors for approval. He then discussed the reaction at the College to the Cambodian offensive and the Kent State shootings (see related article in NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES). Finally, he mentioned several possible curriculum modifications which have been discussed by the Instruction Committee. Francis S. Mason, Jr. '43, acting chairman of the New York group for the past two years, was coordinator for the event. Two days after the New York gettogether, the Washington (D.C.) alumni met in Silver Spring, Md., for a dinner and talk by Tutor Ford K. Brown; 69 alumni and guests were present. Mrs. Cynthia (Siehler) White '66, Dr. Robert A. Bier '19, and William R. Tilles '59 coordinated this most successful regional alumni gathering. The group is now talking about a midsummer picnic on the Annapolis cam- pus. These accounts support the theory of Association President Darrell Henry that alumni are interested in some sort of local activity in their home regions. The prevailing sentiment has been to keep '~organization" to the minimum necessary for proper functioning, to avoid fixed activity schedules, and to keep all functions informal. The Alumni Association cnCQttrages regional groups to organize, no matter how loosely, and stands ready to assist in whatever way it can, particularly with mailings. Any group wishing to be recognized formally as a chapter of the Association should get in touch with the Director of Alumni Activities at the College in Annapolis. Starting at far left: At New York alumni meeting (from left) Hope Zoss '67 meets Steven Shore and Donald and Marilynnc (Wills) Schell, 1968 graduates from Santa Fe. Mary (Bittner) O'Connor '59 and escort talk with the Rev. J. Winfree Smith of the Annapolis faculty. Francis Mason '43, New York area chairman, gets acquainted with John Clapp '68 and Ronald Silver '63. �July 1970 A In Baltimore, (left to right) Theodore W. Hendricks '50, and Dorothea (Wend) and Jerome Gilden '54, chairman of the Baltimore telephone roundup, in action. First nighters hard at work in the Baltimore office of the C&P Telephone Co. will contribute. Many colleges now use the telephone exclusively for annual giving campaigns. There is little doubt that a telephone appeal yields a higher return than a letter, even a letter from a classmate. Whether or not St. John's is ready for an all-'phone campaign is now being discussed. Over-all cost would not be out of proportion to the increased revenue which could be expected. The real question is whether enough volunteers can be enlisted in the cities from which calls would be made, and that depends on local leadership. Telephone campaigns will be explored thoroughly over the next few months, so don't be surprised if you get a •'phone call next year instead of a series of letters. Edward C. Webby '63 and Richard F. Blaul '32 launch the telephone roundup in Annapolis. Alumni Office of the College, they are deposited in a special account maintained by the Treasurer of the Association. Disbursements of these funds are controlled by the directors of the Association. TI1e College finances the Alumni Office, some of the activities of which may be for the benefit of the Association, but the College contributes no funds to the operation of the conducted by the College through the Development Office, which includes the Alumni Office. (TI1e Director of Alumni Activities is employed by the College, although his office serves as the administrative office for the Association.) Although members of the Association each year volunteer to work in the Annual Giving Campaign, the Association and its activities. involved. To sum up: if you have paid your membership dues, you have not by that act contributed to the College. You must make a separate donation, payable to St. John's College, in order to be listed among the annual givers. Joshua T. Gillelan II '68's. TELEPHONE DOLLARS TI1e Alumni Annual Giving Campaign this year ended in a jingling of telephone bells. Since the Baltimore telephone "round up" was so successful last year, another and larger round up was held in that city this year. The result was three nights of calling all over Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the Virginia suburbs of the District. In addition, a team of alumni in Annapolis spent three nights making local calls in that area. Results are hard to evaluate at this time. As we go to press, gifts are still coming in. In Annapolis, about 140 calls were completed; 50% of those promised to send a gift, and received a follow-up card. Based on last year's experience, almost all of those alumni DUES AND GIFTS: A DISTINCTION Each year a misunderstanding seems to arise about Association dues and an- nual gifts to the College. These are not the same. The Alumni Association, a legal entity incorporated in the State of Maryland, derives its income principally through collection of dues (for which printed notices are sent out shortly after January lst each year, with a follow-up mailing in July). The dues help finance Homecoming activities and assist regional chapters, for example, by subsidizing their mailings. Although dues are mailed to the Annual gifts, usually sent in response to specific letter or telephone appeals, go directly to the College and help finance College activities like paying faculty salaries, for example. The Alumni Annual Giving Campaign is Association as an organization is not 27 �The College Clockwise: Seniors Thomas Chambliss (left foreground), Masha (Zager) Sinnreich, John Dean, Worku Sharew, Dikran Kizilyan, Jeffrey Friedman, Susan Rumore, Stephen Forman, Arthur Luse. Alumni Association President Darren Henry '61 and his wife Linda were among the alumni present. CLASS NOTES 1909 Cdonel Robert A. Jones and Mrs. Jones were on the Annapolis campus for the events of Commencement week-end. T11e Joneses make their home in Palo Alto, Cal. 1922 Dr. Rafael Rodriguez-Molina, writing as R de Villafuerte, is the author of The Americanization of Manuel de Rosas. Published by Vantage Press, Inc., the book is a fictionalized autobiography, tracing the life of a Puerto Rican medical scimtist from the Sp'anish-American War to the present. Dr. Rodriguez-Molina himself spent a year at St. John's, finished his college and professional education at the University of Puerto Rico, and has followed a life 28 ANNAPOLIS Dean Robert Goldwin '50 concentrates on steamed crab while listening to Stephen Burnett '70. SENIOR-ALUMNI CRAB FEAST MAY 29, 1970 of teaching and research. Although retired from active practice, he is still listed in the catalogue of the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine with the rank of clinical professor of medicine. 1931 In January Richard C. Mottu returned to his job as manager-purchasing for Koppers Company, Pittsburgh, after six months of service with the National Alliance of Businessmen. After 19 years with Revere Brass and Copper, John S. Price retired on June 1st. At the time of his retirement, Mr. Price was plant engineer at Revere's Rome (N.Y.) division. Mr. and Mrs. Price will make their home at 2235 Alice Lane, Clearwater, Fla. 33516. Crab Feast co-chairman Henry Braun discusses dissection techniques with seniors- Stephanie Forrest and Anne Schmidt. Judge, Maryland Court of Appeals, was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from St. Mary's College of Maryland. Daniel J. Ward was recently elected Northern Region Vice President of the Fuel Merchants Association of New Jersey. Mr. Ward is part-owner of Strand Engineering, Inc., of Paterson. 1937 Willard 0. Ash, chairman of the department of mathematics and statistics at the University of West Florida, in September will become dean of the college of arts, sciences and technology at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. 1938 On May 3rd, J. 1933 Dudley Digges, Associate The new president of the Propellor Club of Baltimore is John L. Lambros, assistant to the �July 1970 general manager of Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Baltimore Repair Yards. The Club is comprised of persons in the shipping industry in the Baltimore area. J- S. Baker Middleton, who joined Keuffel & Esser Company, Morristown, N.J., last year as Director of Industrial Relations, has been Promoted to the position of Vice PresidentIndustrial Relations. From 1966 to 1969 Mr. Middleton was Director of Manpower for Scott Paper Company. 1939 Frederick R. Buck, president of the Title Guarantee Company of Baltimore, has been reelected to a second term as president of the Maryland State Title Insurance Association. 1943 On Saturday, March 7th, John L. Hedeman and Joanne Anderson were married in ceremonies at the Annapolis Yacht Club. Dr. Hedeman is in private medical practice in Annapolis, while Mrs. Hedeman teaches in the Anne Arundel County school system. 1944 In May, Paul Mellon was named recipient of the 1970 Thomas Jefferson Award of the National Society of Interior Designers. The award is given for an outstanding contribution to the preservation of American cultural heritage. Mr. Mellon was cited for his contributions to the National Gallery of Art, of which he is president and trustee. 1945 The July issue of Modern Photography mentions Gene Thornton as a possible candidate to take over the photography column of the Sunday New York Times. Mr. Thornton has written about the fine arts for many years. 1946 Clarence J. Kramer, former tutor and first dean of St. John's College, Santa Fe, and a cofounder of the Key School in Annapolis, has been reJected to the Board of Trustees of that School. 1950 W. Bernard Fleischmann, for the past three years chairman of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has been named the first dean of Montclair (N.J.) State College's new School of Humanities. Mr. F1eischmann has been an Alumni member of the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's since 1967. Thomas K. Simpson, tutor on the Annapolis campus, in March was elected president of the Board of Trustees of the Key School. Mr. Simpson was one of the founders of the Annapolis school. 1951 Robert S. Hill has been promoted to the rank of professor, and has been named acting head of the new Department of Political Science, at Marietta (Ohio) Col1ege. Mr. Hill joined the Marietta faculty in 1969. 1952 Alvin A. Aronson, author of the off-Broadway plays "The Pocket Watch" and "Night Hawks," will return to the College in Annapolis next year as a member of the Junior Class and as playwright-in-residence. 1953 Philip H. Lyman, who started working for the Gotham Book Mart during his college summers, since 1959 has been in charge of the cinema section of the famous New York book store. 1956 Pasquale L. Polillo has been appointed News Director of television station KGO-TV in San Francisco, and now makes his home in San Rafael. 1958 John A. Bremer (M.A.) has been director of the unique Parkway Program of the School District of Philadelphia since the Program started in 1968. Drawing students from the eight Philadelphia school districts on a volunteer basis, the Program is designed to help the present-day urban student "live learningly with~ in his present life-space, and . . . to expand this life space." Jacques F. Cartier, founder, producer, and artistic director of the Hartford (Conn.) Stage Company, is co-writing an original comedy for Warner Bros. Entitled Spy Mother, the motion picture involves an international espionage agent, his do-good mother, and the Federal government. 1959 Charlotte F. King will assume the duties of Resident Head of Campbell Hall for the coming academic year, while Assistant Dean Barbara Leonard is on sabbatical leave. 1961 Stephen Morrow, formerly with the UPI bureau in Baltimore, is now at the Cleveland office of the same news service. John R. Pekkanen, Midwest Bureau Chief for Life Magazine, is one of 13 journalists selected for the 33rd class of Nieman Fellows, to study at Harvard University in 1970-71. Mr. Pekkanen plans to study the history of American social and political movements. 1964 Arlene (Andrew) Banks writes that she and husband William P. will be in New Haven this summer, where Mr. Banks will be doing research at Yale. Mrs. Banks called our attention to the appearance of Dr. Paul Rosenberg '61 on a Los Angeles television program about drugs. The University of Rhode Island named David R. Jordan an instructor in Latin for the spring semester. Mr. Jordan is a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, and holds an A.M. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy C. Leven in March became the proud parents of Zoe Roberts Leven. Mrs. Leven is the former Linda Forte. Sharon (Kaplan) Wallis writes that she and Charles S. Wallis '65 were married on March 14th at her parents' home in Philadelphia. Mr. Wallis holds the degree of Master of Fine Arts from Tyler Institute of Art, and is working full-time as a sculptor. Mrs. Wallis, a Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Law School graduate of 1967, is a staff attorney for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She is working on a program to train law students to represent tenants in eviction cases. John Wise, a painter currently working in painted plexiglass, held his first Washington, D.C., showing this past March. The Washington Post at the time gave Mr. Wise a very favorable review. 1965 Gerald F. Zollars has been appointed Director of Admissions at St. John's College in Santa Fe. Mr. Zollars has been Assistant Director of Admissions of the western campus since 1967. 1966 Robert E. Fields, Jr., we learn from his brother-in-law, Army Captain Frederick J. Blachly, has been awarded a doctor's degree in Bio-Chemistry by King's College, Cambridge. Mr. Fields will remain in England, at least for the time being, doing research and some teaching at Cambridge. A. Stevens Rubin, Jr. received his M.D. degree in June from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Rubin will be an intern this coming year at Philadelphia General Hospital. 1968 Nancy Jean Goldwin and Steven T. Harvey '70 were married Sunday night, June 14th, in an outdoor ceremony held in the quadrangle behind McDowell Hall. The couple wiJI live in the Boston area, where Mr. Harvey will do graduate work at Harvard. 1969 The College has received welcome news that Daniel L. Cleavinger (SF) and his wife, the former Anne Bancroft SF '68, escaped injury in the May earthquake in Chimbote, Peru. The two Peace Corps volunteers lost their small apartment, and were evacuated up the coast to the town of Trujillo. Melissa Nettleship in April assumed duties as Director of Consumer Protection in the New Mexico Attorney General's Office. In Memoriam 1917-Dn. HENRY SHEPPARD, Jn., Baltimore, Md., May 25, 1970. 1925-HAROLD H. CECIL, Stevensville, Md., May 9, 1970. 1933-WILSON J. C. BRAuN, Phoenix, Md., April, 1970. 1934-RrcHARD A. WATSON, Upperco, Md., May, 1970. 1946-VrNcENT W. McKAY, Erie, Pa., May 17, 1970. 29 �ALUMNI MAKE YOUR PLANS NOW ANNAPOLIS HOMECOMING OCTOBER 16-17, 1970 The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 29 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, July 1970 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXII, Number 2 of The College. Published in July 1970. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_22_No_2_1970 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1b562899a190bf0fe51162ed3d2274a9.pdf e6a2cc4f2385b4a8d5c8ceb5acd07c14 PDF Text Text FlL~ THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico September 1970 �The College Cover: James Madison, by Charles Wilson Peale. Courtesy of Albert E. Leeds, Philadelphia. Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis. The College is a publication for friends of St. John's College and for those who might become friends of the College, if they came to know it. Our aim is to indicate within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our opinion, St. John's comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well-placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John's. 1 Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71 The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 (Julins Rosenberg, Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle. In the September Issue: I Personal Freedom, by Thomas Slakey Published four times a year in April, July, September, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. Reasonable Politics and Technology, by Laurence Berns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Report of the President, 1969-1970. . ....... lOA September 1970 No. 3 l4 News on the Campuses . 16 Alumni Activities Vol. XXII Richard Scofield, 1898-1970 20 �Reasonable Politics and Technology By LAURENCE BERNS Admiration for the intelligence, the courage, the discipline, and the prodigy of orgacnization that made the moon exploration possible has led many to form expectations for similar spectacular successes in dealing with more pressing social, political, and economic problems. It may be salutary, surely not novel, to refer to the dangers that can arise from such unreasonable expectations. First7 moderate, workable, partial, or gradual, solutions get condemned as unsavory compromises or as myopic. Extreme alternatives come to pre-empt the field of action. Second, to turn to the human consequences, compromise or failure breeds frustration; frustration, for some, leads to paralyzing despair; for others, more dangerously, to hatred of their political opposition as the imagined causes of the failure, and finally, to political fanaticism. The workability of parliamentary, republican government is directly proportional to the strength of that philosophical temperament that can accept and appreciate the idea of a "loyal opposition," of honest and honorable disagreement. So far the major premise of this argument, that the expectations are unreasonable, has only been assumed. On what grounds? I As a goal, landing a man on the moon would seem to be uncontroversial. Whether resources should be allocated to it or not may be controversial, but the goal itself is hardly contrm>ersial. There are few, if any, political goals about which this can be said. Dispersion of authority makes for inefficiencies, but allows more scope for individual initiative and for the exercise of individual judgment; concentration of authority may be more efficient, but induces regimentation and, by eliminating checks and balances, makes the abuse of authority more possible. In different circumstances the weight of these different considerations will be different; and probably in all circumstances different men can conscientiously and reasonably differ about their relative importance. Socrates, the political scientist par excellence, elucidated this state of affairs by referring to the distinction between opinion and knowledge, and by arguing that in the cognitive element of political life opinion rather than knowledge will always predominate. Socrates may have hinted, but did not insist, that· full knowledge of the political good was unattainable; but he certainly did argue that such knowledge was extremely rare, hard to come by, and well-nigh impossible to put into political practice. As far as I can tell, the variability of the subject matter, the power of the human passions, and the relative strengths of rational and irrational powers in most men, the central facts these arguments rest upon, have not been changed in any decisive way by the technological development. To refer to the distinction between opinion and knowledge, of course, is not to deny that some opinions -are better than others. II Because opmwns are essentially disputable, and because political disputes, by the passions they arouse, can often be more harmful to society than the original difficulties prompting them, it is frequently more important for political practice to maintain reasonable procedures for settling and dispensing with problems than it is to be certain that the solutions to the problems be correct solutions. 1 Imperfect solutions are not necessarily unreason~ able solutions in a free society: what is most to be avoided is action that could destroy those procedures and institutions for compromise and debate which, by the discussion attendant upon them, open up the way for reason to make the limited but saving contribution that it might make to free political life. For a government to be free, constitutionally authorized governmental and party officials should be free from the kind of coercion, intimidation and pressure that prevents them from making maximum use of their own capacities for rational discourse and debate. This freedom, more 1 Cf. Aeschylus, Oresteia, especially Eumenides. 1 �The College As a goal, landing a man on the moon would seem to be uncontroversial. particularly, the privileges and immunities with regard to their political speech which had been won for members of legislative bodies in tbeir respective legislatures, became the paradigm, it has been suggested, for the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly laid down by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: that is, privileges and immunities with regard to political speech, which till then had been granted only to members of legislative bodies in their legislatures, were guaranteed to all citizens; the entire citizen body as far as its political speech is concerned is conceived by analogy to a free deliberative assembly.2 If this most generous conception is correct, it might provide us with a solution, in principle at least, to the pressing problem of conflict between the right and duty of duly constituted government to govern and the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment: it would not seem to make sense to allow what was meant to serve as an instrument of something analogous to unintimidated rational deliberation to be used to destroy the conditions for rational deliberation in those places where not something analogous to it but unintimidated rational deliberation itself is required. Some seek to mitigate the increasingly technocratic character of modern life by means of what is being called participatory democracy. To the extent that this means transferring authority to local political institutions wherever possible, it is in harmony with -to the extent that it seeks to by-pass or dispense with the direction of leadership by direct democracy, it is in tension with what 2 governed. Our governors, our representatives, should repre- sent not the Hpassions" nor the "inclinations" but the "interests," the well-being, of the represented.3 They are to be provided with the best possible conditions and resources for reasonable, well-informed deliberation; for determining what, under tbe Constitution, the best interests of their constituents and the country as a whole are, and how those interests can best be served. Because they are to be put in the best position for deciding, they are the representativ-es, not the delegates, of the people. The people, on the other hand, are understood as qualified periodically to judge by means of elections their leaders and the general effects of the policies formed by tbeir leaders. In tbis way, among others, they check and influence their leaders. They do not, however, make policy; they are not regarded as some mystical repository of political wisdom or virtue. The formation and execution of policy is to be carried out by those best situated and best qualified to carry it out, by a democratic leadership. A liberally educated leadership, in the classical view, fosters enlightened government and justly secures its own position I) by controlling the overambitious, the demagogic and the autocratic, within its own ranks, 2) by dispensing justice, and 3) by providing moral examples, moral leadership, for the great bulk of the population. Cf. George Anastaplo, The Constitutionalist: Notes on the First Amendment, to be published in 1970 by Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, p. 5, and chap. 5, sec. 9, esp. pp, 115-120. 2 we regard as the more adequate philosophical psychology of the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist, and the Constitution of the United States. According to the Declaration of Independence governments derive their just powers not from the will but from the consent of the -3 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist, Nos. 49 and 71. �September 1970 cerning educational capacities might perhaps best be left open, but, as the first part of this paper indicates, unreasonable expectations can be at least as dangerous as undue pessimism. IV Whether resources should be allocated to it or not may be controversial ... The winning, the survival, and the extension of freedom are seen to depend not only on sound laws and institutions, but also upon the abilities of the recipients of freedom to use freedom well. More importantly, not only the survival but also the value of any freedom is dependent upon the same abilities, that is, upon the virtues of the citizens, and, primarily, upon the virtues of those who are fit by nature, by training, and by education to guide the rest. III The temptation to seek technical, or mathematical, solutions to political problems was noted at least as early as Aristotle's somewhat humorous description of the preciousness of the first non-professional political projector, Hippodamus. 4 The description seems to su~~est that mathematical studies unaccompanied by humamzmg philosophic and literary studies, not only do little to dispel the mental effects of love of honor, or excessive political ambition, but when coupled with the latter seem to produce a distinctive perversity of their own. The general lesson Aristotle draws from reflection on Hippodamus is that it is unreasonable to expect political life, which cannot abstract from habit and custom, from human pa~swn, prejudice and stupidity, to be able to proceed 1n as reasonable a way as the arts and the sciences. . One might argue that the situation Aristotle descnbed c<1n be remedied by universal education. Are all, or most, or even many men educable in that way? The question con- 4 Aristotle, Politics, bk. ii. Technological progress has brought along with itself certain unprecedented problems: overpopulation, pollution of the physical environment, pollution of the spmtual environment by the mass media and advertising, to mention only a few. The technocratic controls reqmred to remedy these ills may make, or have already made, a certam loss of individual liberty unavoidable; every effort should be made to reduce such losses to a minimum. Technology makes it easier for more and more people to gratify all kinds of desires, some grand and presumably harmless, like going to the moon, some abominable, like those of the recent tyrants of Russia and Germany, and very many very petty desires. No responsible scientist (microbiologists included) or engineer has claimed that technology can provide men with the wisdom to desire what is good for them. The most responsible use of technology, of the science of means, would be to free men-for the fuller development of their spiritual, or mental, capacities. Yet from within the scientistic perspective these higher purposes are hardly visible, and the spiritual energies of more and more men are being absorbed and monopolized by technique and technical tasks. Knowing how crowds out learning why. The disproportion between human power and human wisdom grows apace. What originated as instrumental carries us along in the wake of fortuitous and unpredictable developments. To be in a position where human error IS intolerable, where the very conditions of existence of the race as a whole are at hazard, can be fatal for more than political liberty. The problematic character of the great project for the conquest of nature is becoming increasingly obvious. What would seem to be required is a thoroughgoing reconsideration of the principles of that project, of the science which gives it life, and of the alternatives to that science. That reconsideration might well begin by turning to the serious study of those who have devoted themselves most humanely, most industriously, and most intelligently to the exploration of the human psyche, to seeking the science of ends-that is, to Homer, to Aristotle, to Plato, to Shakespeare, and to the authors of the Bible. Laurence Berns, Tutor at St. John's Col1ege since 1960, received his Ph.D. degree from the Social Sciences Division of TI1e University of Chicago. He was a Lecturer in the liberal arts at the University from 1956 to 1959. He has written a chapter on Thomas Hobbes, History of Political Philosophy, Rand McNally, 1963,_ and a chapter on "Aristotle's Poetics" in Ancients and Modems, Bas1c Books, 1964. He has lectured on "Liberal and Illiberal Politics," "Piety in King Lear" and "Rational Animal-Political Animal: Nature and Convention in Politics and Human Speech." He is currently engaged in a translation of Aristotle's Politics for Basic Books. 3 �Personal Freedom* By THOJVi.AS SLAKEY I n the political jargon of the day, no word comes so easily to the lips as the word "freedom." We call ourselves free men, citizens of a free country, the leaders of the free world. The civil rights marchers used to sing of a time when ''We shall all be free," and now, more stridently, they call for it, "freedom now." We are fond of quoting, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And yet some of what passes for truth among us helps to destroy onr freedom. That is, it destroys our understanding of freedom, and therefore, I believe, helps to destroy onr freedom itself. I can perhaps best illustrate what I mean by referring to a debate between the psychologists B. F. Skinner and Carl R. Rogers which took place in 1956 acnd was reported in the magazine Science at that time. 1 Skinner is best known as the author of a Utopian novel, Walden Two, which describes a community designed and controlled by expert psychologists. Rogers and Skinner agree that the sciences of human behavior, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and so on, are rapidly growing in their ability to predict and to control. They are beginning to establish laws about human beings which have the form of laws about physical particles, such that Hthe existence of certain describable at exposures so brief that the viewers arc completely unaware of having seen the word. They tend, however, to see the face as becoming angry. Then the experimenter begins to flash the word "happy" on the screen in similar fashion. Now the viewers see the face as becoming more happy.2 What arc the consequences of such growing po"'er to predict and to control for the ancient belief in the freedom of the will? For Skinner the consequences arc obvious: the conception of human freedom is simply an illusion. In fact he welcomes a future in which expert psychologists will exercise a greater and greater control over their fellow human beings, somewhat in the fashion of his novel Walden Two. 3 Rogers, on the other hand, does see a difficulty. He asserts that alongside the growing evidence that human behavior is subject to laws, there is also the direct and immediate experience of "responsible personal choice, the most essential clement in being a person . ... To deny the experience of responsible choice, is to me as restricted a view as to deny the possibility of a behavioral science" (Readings, p. 136). And yet Rogers, in this debate, could see no way to reconcile freedom and behavioral science. He thought that the assertion of both must re- conditions in the human being and/or in his environment main a paradox, "The great paradox of behavioral science," is followed by certain describable consequences in his actions" (Readings, p. 128). To give an example of predictability: a certain test on the perception of a dim spot of light in a dark room can be used as a predictor of race prejudice. To give an example of control: the use of comparable to the paradox in physics of the wave and particle theories of light: we assert both that light behaves as if it were composed of waves and as if it were composed of particles without in any way being able to reconcile the two assertions. Similarly, Rogers says, we assert both that man's behavior is predictable and that it is free without in any way being able to reconcile the two assertions (Readings, p. 136). Later, in his book On Becoming a Person, Rogers sketched a partial solution of the paradox and I will speak of it later. But it is not only among professional psychologists that there is difficulty with the concept of freedom. Consider subliminal or unconscious perceptions. A face is shown on a screen. The viewers are asked to note how the expression changes. Then the experimenter, without changing the image of the face, flashes the word "angry" on the screen *A lecture delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, February, 1968. My quotations are from the reprint in Readings in Abnormal Psychology, Human Values and Abnormal Bel1avior, \V. D. Nunokawa, ed., Chicago, 1965, pp. 122-139 (hereafter cited as Readings). Rogers later returned to this subject in his book On Becoming a Person, Boston, 1961. 1 4 the emphasis in modern literature on abnormal and erratic 2 3 Examples from On Becoming a Person, pp. 369, 373. See Readings, pp. 122-139 passim, and esp. pp. 136, 138. �September 1970 behavior. In part this emphasis expresses what poets have always expressed, an interest in unconventional characters and a rebellion against stale and meaningless traditions. But I think there is something more involved: a rebellion not only against stale reasoning from the past, but against reason as such. In her lecture earlier this year on Jean Paul Sartre, Miss Hazel Barnes spoke of a man standing on the edge of a cliff. Most probably he will not jump off. But he could jump off, she insisted, he really could jump off. Why should she insist on this possibility? Because she feels that to guide one's actions by reasoning about alternatives, to explain the actions of others by giving reasons for what they did, and perhaps most of all to predict the actions of others by figuring out what reasons might lead them in one direction or another, all of these are hostile to our freedom because they show that our actions are determined in some way. \Ve do not freely perform an act; we are led to it, driven to it, restricted to it by reasons. E ven in a book like Tolstoy's War and Peace, which is written within the conventions of the 19th century novel, whose characters are fairly con- ventional in ideas and behavior, one finds an attack on the use of reason. Tolstoy shows us Pierre Besuhov, fumbling, foolish, always constructing elaborately reasoned plans for the best use of his great wealth. Yet after the war and his experiences of suffering, after his mysterious friendship with the simple peasant Pia ton Karataev (note the name Platon), Pierre finds himself a changed man. Tolstoy says of him, Now to his own surprise he found that he had no more doubt or hesitation on all such qttestions. Now there was a judge within him settling what he must do and what he must not, by some laws of which he was himself unaware (Modern Library ed., no date, p. 1033). Similarly, Nikolay Rostov, befote the war always worrying about what to do and usually behaving badly, after the war becomes a very successful farmer, skilled at handling his serfs. Tolstoy says of him, He could not have said what his standard was of what he ought and ought not to do; but there was a standard firm and rigid in his soul (p. 1068). The novel as a whole fills out and lends plausibility to this view. We see battles, complex, vast, involving thousands of individual men. Who can plan them in any detail? Who can predict their outcome? On the other hand, we see men and women falling in love. Who can say why Andre loves Natasha? Various reasons can be given but they do not add up to a full explanation. The whole is larger than the sum of the parts. Somehow we feel that if Andre could catalogue all of his reasons for loving Natasha, his love would be sterile, perhaps even destroyed. Thus while there is surely some truth in the view that we cannot guide our lives by fully articulated reasons, yet the anti-rationalism of the novel is very heavy, heavy despite Tolstoy's own rich and subtle understanding of the people he portrays. Why? The long philosophical Epilogue at the end of the novel shows us why. Tolstoy sees a conflict between free will and determinism, between acting freely and guiding one's life by detern1ining reasons. He says, speaking in his own person in the Epilogue, 11 0nce admit that human life can be guided by reason, and all possibility of life is annihilated" (p. 1054, and see pp. 1101-36 passim). Finally, if we move from the world of behavioral science and the world of literature to our own familiar experience, I think we find all about us the pursuit of the irrational. I will only mention two of the most obvious manifestations: experimentation with the so-called "mind expanding" drugs, and fascination with the non-rational aspects of religion, especially with the non-rational aspects of Eastern religions. Thus I assert again that there are difficulties with the concept of freedom, and most fundamentally with two questions: what does ((freedom" mean? and, what does the guidance of one's life by "reasons" mean? 5 �The College I would like to begin my attempt to discuss these two questions by examining something which Skinner takes as an obvious fact: that predictability is incompatible with freedom. Is this the case? Consider an example. Socrates is ordered by the government of the Thirty to take part in the arrest of another citizen. This was a technique used by the Thirty to force prominent people into a public acceptance of their rule and a public affirmation of their authority. Socrates studies the case and decides that the man is innocent. What will he do? We know Socrates' character well enough to predict that he will refuse to take part in the arrest. We know the reasons that guide his life and we know how strong he is. Does the fact that we can predict what he will do make his action less free? Consider the alternative possibility. At the decisive moment Socrates is afraid of death and yields to the Thirty. Thus he does not conform to our prediction. Docs this make his action more free? hy then does Skinner see a conflict between predictability and freedom? I think that his view of the matter, and I suspect that he does not realize it, is essentially that articulated by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. What Skinner takes as an obvious fact, W needing no discussion, has seemed obvious, I believe, only since the time of Kant. Let us examine what Kant says. Kant defines "freedom" as "absolute spontaneity," as "a power of absolutely beginning a state." 4 He means by this an action which has no cause whatsoever in the events and circumstances prior to it in time. He considers the example of rising from one's chair (B. 479) an example which could have had its origin in a lecture hall like this one. Anyone of you could at this moment rise from his chair and leave the room. This might be due to the oppressive heat of the room, a sud,den pain, a recollection of something you had to do, etc. But if your action is due to any such event or circumstance, Kant sees it as caused and for him this means not free. Only if your action is such that it begins a completely new sequence of events in space-time which has no relation whatsoever to any previous events can your action be called free. Kant sees, of course, with his characteristic courage and strength to follow out his ideas to their ultimate logical consequences, that such a conception of hee human acts takes them completely outside of any possible scientific consideration. "Science" here means not only the science of Skinner and Rogers, who try to set up laws of human behavior which are modeled on the laws of physics, but also "sciencen in the broader sense of knowledge about human behavior of the kind one finds in Aristotle's Ethics, or Plutarch's Lives, or even the kind of knowledge one finds in countless novels and plays. Kant discusses, for example, "a malicious lie by which a 4 Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, tr., London, 1953, p. 474, B. 473. 6 certain confusion has been caused in society" (B. 582). He sees that we can study the history of the man who lied, considering his upbringing, his friends, his natural disposition of shamelessness, perhaps, or of levity and thoughtlessness. But none of this is in any way relevant to our judgment of his lie as a free act. For this consideration, "we presuppose that we can leave out of consider- ation what this way of life may have been, that we can regard the past series of conditions as not having occurred and the act as being completely unconditioned by any preceding state, just as if the agent in and by himself began in this action an entirely n.ew series of consequences" (B. 583). Furthermore, all judgments of morality are concerned only with actions as free. Kant again draws the logical consequence, "'T'he real morality of actions, their merit or guilt, even that of our own conduct, thus remains entirely hidden from us" (B. 580). Given such a view of freedom as absolute spontaneity, how is it possible for Kant to assert its existence? It is obvious that at least the vast majority of human actions have some relation to prior events and circumstances. Kant's reply is that any human action can be considered under two quite different aspects. It can be considered as taking place in the world of space~time, the world where causes operate, the world of the natural sciences, the world of most of our ordinary experience. But it is a mistake to think that this world is the only existing reality. Behind this world of experience, of appearances, of phenomena, which is essentially a human construction, lies another world of what he calls "Things in themselves." It is in this world, as real as or even more real than the world of phenomena, that the free human act exists, that the immortal soul exists, that God exists. It is the concern of the entire Critique to establish the plausibility of the world of Things-in-themselves, and I cannot review Kant's arguments here. I will only point out that those who accept Kant's conception of freedom as absolute spontaneity but who do not accept his argument for a world of . Things-in-themselves separate from the empirical world end by either denying the existence of freedom, like Skinner, or by seeing the existence of freedom as an absolute and incomprehensible paradox, like Rogers. I believe that if one accepts the terms in which Kant discusses the problem, if one accepts the concept of freedom as absolute spontaneity, then there are no other alternatives. L et us consider, then, why Kant conceives of freedom in these terms. We began with writers of our own century. We sought the roots of their thinking in Kant. We now must take a further step backwards and seek the roots of Kant's thinking in Hobbes. Hobbes takes as his model for the understanding of human behavior the new mechanical philosophy of the 17th Century, which explains events in terms of matter in motion. Thus in a chapter on method from his De �September 1970 The vast majority of human actions have some relation to prior events and circumstances ... Corpore, he asserts that "motion cannot he understood to have any other cause besides motion" (VI, 5). He first discusses the motions considered by physics, and then asserts 1 (VI, p. 31). The beginning of a voluntary motion is called an "appetite" or "desire," if it is toward something, and an "aversion," if it is away from something. "Good" and "evil" are defined in terms of appetite toward and away from. The only difference Hobbes sees between After physics we must come to moral philosophy; in which we are to consider the motions of the mind, namely, appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope, fear, anger, emulation, envy, etc.; what cause they have, and of what they be cause. And the reason why these are to be considered after physics is, that they can directly perceive, whereas "pleasures of the mind" arise from the expectation of pleasures of sense from some object which is absent (VI, p. 34). Thus no distinction is made among kinds of pleasures or kinds of voluntary have their causes in sense and imagination, which are motions. the subject of physical contemplation. (VI, 6) Note what Hobbes casts together here in a single group. Let me repeat the list: ~'appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope, fear, anger, emulation, envy, etc." All of these are motions produced by causes, specifically by prior motions in sense and imagination. No distinction is made among kinds of motions produced by kinds of causes. Motions of love and benevolence are of essentially the same type as motions of appetite and anger. If my child is hurt and I comfort him in an effort to help him stop crying, this is to be understood in essentially the same terms as when, annoyed by his crying, I shout at him and strike him. Or, to return to our earlier example, when Socrates stands against the judgment of the Thirty and refuses to cooperate in the arrest of an innocent man, this is to be understood in essentially the same terms as if, through fear, he yielded. The interpretation I have made of the quotation from De Corpore can be supported from the chapter on "Volun· tary motions" in Leviathan-' Hobbes distinguishes in animals two sorts of motions, vital motions, such as the motion of the blood through the body, breathing, nutrition, and so on, and voluntary motions, such as walking, moving our arms, speaking, and so on. Voluntary n1otions are defined as motions "first fancied in our minds" 5 Page references are to the Blackwell edition, Oxford, 19 57. "pleasures of sense" and "pleasures of the mind" is that "pleasures of sense" arise from present objects which _we G iven such an account of pleasu. re, how does Hobbes think that we deliberate among pleasures, how do we choose? Hobbes considers deliberation simply as a succession of appetites and aversions. First we incline toward some object, then we incline away from it, due to a fear of some evil consequence. "The whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes and fears continued till the thing be either done, or thought impossible, is that we call deliberation" (VI, p. 37). Choice, or "will," is simply "the last appetite in deliberating" (VI, p. 38), the appetite which is immediately followed by motion toward the object. Again, no distinction is made among kinds of objects which move the will. Such a conception of choice is evident in a popular tendency to place an action like giving money to the poor or risking one's life to save a drowning man on essentially the same level as eating a piece of candy or taking a ride on a roller coaster, classing all these actions as the same because they produce a kind of "pleasure" or usatisfaction," with no distinction made among kinds of pleasure or satisfaction. Such supposed psychological sophistication is to be contrasted with the naive judgment that some human actions are genuinely 41 altn1istic," that is, fundamentally directed toward others, alteri. I turn now to Hobbes' account of freedom. For Hobbes the question of "freedom" or "liberty" offers no difficulty whatsoever. "Liberty" is defined simply 7 �The College as ''the absence of opposition"; and "opposition" means "external impediments of motion" such as walls and chains (XXI, pp. 136, 137). Thus, unless a man is actually tied down or confined within a certain space, he is said to be free. In this sense of "freedom," as Hobbes sees clearly, animals are free in the same way that man is, and even water, when it is not constrained to flow within certain banks, can be said to be free (XXI, pp. 136, 137). Thus, to say that a man has "free-will" means simply that "he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to do" (XXI, p. 137). But what of the freedom of the will itself, when a man chooses to do one thing rather than another? Hobbes denies that a creature having the power of thought and judgment might be free in a sense in which animals and inanimate objects are not. Finally, when he goes on to discuss political liberty, he is able to say that it makes sense only for a state as a whole, which succeeds in operating without constraint from other states. Within a state, there is as much or as little liberty in a monarchy as there is in a democracy, since both states constrain men to abide by the laws. Hobbes says that the idea of political liberty is essentially an illusion inherited from the Greeks and the Romans! (XXI, pp. 140, 141) Now, what is the line of development from Hobbes' discussion of deliberation, choice and liberty to the Kantian difficulties about freedom? Despite the vast differences in the conclusions they draw, I think the line of development is very simple and direct. Kant does want to affirm the presence in man of a kind of freedom which is not simply the absence of external restraints. It is a freedom to do what one knows to be right despite one's upbringing, despite one's desires, despite the conditions in which one is acting. It is a freedom which is the basis of moral choice. Nevertheless, Kant accepts the terms in which Hobbes has discussed the problem. Kant makes no distinction among the kinds of causes which act on the will. Everything which acts on the will is a kind of mover, or "motive," which produces a certain motion as its effect, analogous to a physical particle producing a physical motion. Whether a man does something for good reasons, or does it in a fit of rage it is all one, an action which is caused and could have been predicted. The only kind of freedom Kant can see is a complete absence of causation of any kind, an "absolute spontaneity" which has no reference whatever to anything prior to it in time. Kant affirms that such freedom exists, but it is an affirmation which depends on a world of "things-in-themselves" lying outside experience. U p to this point, my argument has been largely negative. I have tried to describe a conceptual problem and to show what its origins are. At several points I have suggested that the fundamental error which gives 8 rise to the problem is the failure to distinguish among kinds of human actions, among the kinds of things which lead men to act, that is, the tendency to class everything indifferently as a "motive," as a mover of the human will analogous to a billiard ball producing motion in another billiard ball. I wish now to make a fresh start by considering a thinker who stands completely outside the tradition which begins with Hobbes and whose discussion of human behavior consists primarily in distinguishing among kinds of men and kinds of human actions. I refer to Aristotle and particularly to his Ethics. The first thing to notice is that Aristotle brings to his discussion of human behavior not a single model of causality, as does Hobbes, but a distinction of four kinds of cause, that is, four ways of answering the question "why?" Only one of these is described in terms of motion, namely, the efficient cause, or that from which motion begins. Answers to the question "why?" can also be given in terms of the components of a thing, the material cause, or in terms of the nature or definition of a thing, the formal cause, or, most important in the present context, in terms of the end or goal, the telos, at which something aims, called the "final" cause. It is interesting to note that this distinction is obscured in a crucial way by the English translators of the Ethics, who are themselves fully in the grip of the Hobbesian tradition. Thus Aristotle speaks of "the principles" of human action. His word is arche, which means simply "beginning." W. D. Ross, in the translation familiar to most of us, the one published in the one volume Basic Works of Aristotle, writes "moving principle" (lllOa 2). The Loeb translator goes still farther. At a point where Aristotle speaks of the telos or goal of an action, he writes "the end or motive" (l!IOa 14). In some sense these translations are not incorrect, and yet I think they illustrate the difficulty that both of these translators had in reading an ancient text without bringing their own habits of mind to it, and the still greater difficulty for one whose only reading of an ancient text is filtered through translations. L et us proceed. We move from the general classification of causes, which deals with all kinds of events in the inanimate as well as the animate world, to the particular discussion of human behavior. Aristotle's first concern is to define "voluntary" action, but the order in which he proceeds is extremely interesting. He begins by considering "involuntary" action, perhaps because he finds it easier to identify and to describe. Involuntary action is, first of all, action which is compelled or forced, and what this means is made clear by examples. A man riding in a boat which is carried off course by the wind, or a man physically dragged along by stronger men is said to act under compulsion. Aristotle defines this as action in which the arche, the principle or beginning of the action, is outside the person (Ethics, III, I, ll!Oa �September 1970 We presuppose that individuals do have control over their own actions ... l-4). Involuntary action is, secondly, action done through ignorance, and again what this means is clarified by examples. A trainer thinks that a spear he is using in practice has a blunted point. In fact the spear does not have a blunted point and the trainer kills his pupil. His ac.t was done through ignorance; that is, in a literal sense, he did not know what he was doing. If had known the spear was pointed he would not have done what he did ( lllOb 17lllla 20). Aristotle is now in a position to define voluntary action. I quote: Since that which is done under compulsion or by reason of ignorance is involuntary, the voluntary would seem to be that of which the arche, the principle, is in the agent himself, he being aware of the particular circumstances of the action ( lllla 21). Thus two conditions are required for an action to be voluntary. First, the principle of the action must be in the agent himself. T11is means simply that the agent is not compelled. Second, the agent must know what he is doing. This means simply that the agent is not ignorant of the circumstances of his action. In other words, voluntary action is defined negatively. An act is voluntary unless it is done through compulsion or ignorance, unless, that is, it is involuntary. Voluntary action means action which is not involuntary. I n the course of his discussion, Aristotle moves from the clear cases of involuntary action to the ambiguous cases. What about someone who, to avoid sinking in a storm, throws his goods overboard? Is not his action in some sense compelled? (lllOa 8) Or what about someone threatened with terrible punishment if he does not do what he is told? ( lllOa 5, 20-33) Or could one not even say that all pleasant and noble objects have a kind of compelling power which forces us from without? (Ill Ob 9) Or again, what of a man who is drunk or a man in a violent fit of rage? Is he not in some sense ignorant of what he is doing? (lllOb 25) And could one not say that any man, who does not know that what he is doing is wrong, is in a sense ignorant of what he is doing? ( lllOb 29-34) Aristotle's response to these ambiguous cases and the questions which arise from them is in a way dissatisfying and yet interesting. He acknowledges that a man who throws his goods overboard in a storm or who pursues pleasure is, in some sense of the word, "compelled." But he refuses to assimilate this to the case of a man who is compelled in the sense that he is physically dragged along. Aristotle sees that a man in the sway of passion is in a sense ignorant of what he is doing, and yet he refuses to assimilate this to the case of the trainer who thinks that the spear he is using is blunt (III, 1, passim). Aristotle does not aim at theoretical simplicity. Again and again he returns to particular examples, and I have mentioned only a small number of those he actually describes. In any case, let us postpone for the moment the difficulties arising from the ambiguous cases, and follow Aristotle's analysis to its next stage, which is a discussion of choice. F or Aristotle not all voluntary actions are chosen; for example, actions done in anger. He ascribes volun- tary action to children and animals, but not choice. What then distinguishes choice? Again Aristotle has a simple criterion. He describes the activity of bou1euest1:wi, which means taking counsel, planning, advising. (The word commonly used to translate bouleuesthai, "deliberation," is of Latin origin and has the specific sense of deciding among alternative courses of action, that is, of weighing alternatives on a balance, libra.) Aristotle points out, for example, that we do not take counsel or make plans concerning eternal things, such as mathematical propositions. We investigate them and think about them, but we do not consider what to do about them. Similarly concerning natural events which always happen in the same way, such as the rising of the sun. Similarly still about chance events, like stumbling on a buried treasure. And finally concerning things impossible for us, like becoming emperor of Persia, we do not make plans, we do not deliberate. For none of these things come about "through us," di'hemon, through our efforts. What then do we deliberate about? We deliberate about things which "are in our power and can be done," as Ross translates it, ton eph' hemin kai prakton, which are ours and which are do-able" (1112a 19-30). With this description of deliberation as a basis, choice is then simply defined in terms of deliberation. When is an action chosen? When it follows deliberation (1112a 15). 11 N ote that this definition presupposes that actions 11 which are chosen are actions which belong to us" as Aristotle puts it, eph' hemin, or as Ross translates 11 it, "are in our power." What are actions in our power"? Again the meaning of the expression comes negatively from examples of things not in our power: mathematical propositions, the rising of the sun, stumbling on a buried treasure, and so on. Yet Aristotle does go on to explicitly 9 �The College consider the question whether good and bad actions, acts of virtue and vice, are really "in our power" in a deeper sense. He first points out that both in our private lives and in our laws we presuppose that individuals do have control over their own actions, for we punish those who do evil acts and honor and praise those who do good acts, as though we meant to deter the one and to encourage the other ( 1113b 22-5). He also points out that we excuse those who acted under compulsion or in ignorance, when both arc taken in the strict sense defined earlier. For ignorance in a looser sense, for example when ignorance is due to drunkenness, one is not excused and in fact the penalties might even be increased. This is because we feel that the person was responsible for his own ignorance (1113b 30). But now comes the difficult question. One can agree with all that Aristotle has said and accept the accuracy of his definitions and the claim that they reflect the practice of our lives. But one can still ask whether the apparent power that we have over our choices might not be an illusion. For one can still ask whether the way in which possible alternatives appear to a person is really in his power. Does not paying his debts appeal to one man because of the way he has been brought up, whereas cheating appeals to another man? Aristotle does raise this question, but his answer might seem too obvious and too close to our ordinary experience to be very impressive. He reverts to his general discussion of virtues and vices, which are simply states of character or habits acting in certain ways. Before one has acquired a habit, Aristotle asserts, one does have the power to act differently. After one has acquired a certain habit, for example the habit of drinking heavily, one does not have the power to change, at least not to the same degree (1114a 3-22). How does one acquire good habits? How does one become temperate and courageous? The answer is simple but the task is difficult: one becomes temperate or courageous simply bv repeatedly performing acts of temperance and courage (Ethics, II, I, 4; III, 5). T his point is filled out by the discussion of akrasia in Book VII of the Ethics. Akrasia means simply "lack of strength" but is usually translated as "weakness of will" or "incontinence." With regard to sensual pleasures, pleasures of food, drink and sex, Aristotle makes a three-fold distinction. On the one hand there is the virtuous man who enjoys such things to an appropriate degree and at appropriate times. On the other hand, there is the intemperate or vicious man who enjoys them to excess and at inappropriate times. In between there is the man of akrasia. He has good principles, he knows what he ought to do, and yet he is unable to follow his principles. In the particular situation, he is carried away by his desires and indulges more than he intends to. He is a man for whom there is still hope of virtue because he can, by 10 repeatedly restraining his evil desires and performing the individual acts of virtue, finally acquire the habit of doing good, that is, the virtue itself. For the vicious man, on the other hand, there is no hope, because he not only acts badly in the particular situation and under the influence of overwhelming desire, but his very principles have been corrupted. He believes that self-indulgence is a good thing and goes ahead to act on that belief. He is, in one respect, like the man of virtue, in that he acts on his principles. His trouble is that he has acquired bad principles. (See Book VII, Ch. l-10, passim.) Thus, Aristotle says that "the incontinent man is like a city which passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but makes no use of them," whereas <~the wicked man is like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to usc" ( 1152a 20-24). Thus Aristotle's discussion of voluntary action and choice simply follows our ordinary experience of human behavior. As far as I have observed, nowhere in this discussion is a word used which could be translated "free," and he does not speak to the problem of freedom and determinism posed by Kant because this problem does not arise for him. For him there is no abstract theoretical standpoint from which men could be said to be free-or not free. Nevertheless I have mentioned those passages where Aristotle speaks of actions as eph' hemin, as "ours" or "in our power," and I think we can construct from these passages the direction of Aristotle's reply to Kant. Asked if man is free, Aristotle would not try to answer the question in general, but would discuss whether particular men in particular situations are free and to what degree. To what extent did they understand the circumstances of their action? Did they think about what they were doing before they acted? Or did they act on impulse? Were they angry or agitated at the time the decision was made? Were they drunk? From the replies to these questions we can say to what extent they clwse to do what they did. And to say that they chose is, in Aristotle's terms, to say that the action was "theirs," ''in their power," and, I would add, it is to say that the action was "free." Suppose we then ask, "But what about the choice itself? Was that free?" Again Aristotle wants to know the particular sort of person we are considering and the particular history he has had. Are we offering a drink to a man who enjoys drinking but does not get drunk, to a man who does not often get drunk but who on this particular occasion has been drinking heavily, or to a con- firmed alcoholic who is at this moment licking his lips in impatience? It is obvious that in some ordinary sense of the word "free," there are degrees of freedom of choice among these three men. To say that none of them is free is simply to obscure the distinction we would want to make among them. If we refuse to use the word "free" to make this distinction because we are reserving it for some high theoretical meaning, then we have to find �REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 1969 Through the past year of campus dissension and unrest across America, the students and Tutors of St. John's College distinguished themselves by their sane and rational behavior. Almost all of them were gravely concerned over the war in Southeast Asia and the crisis at Kent State University. To express their dissent from national policy they chose what they considered to be proper and appropriate means-a letter to the President signed by individuals and delivered by hand to the White House, a twenty-four hour peace vigil, letters and visits to congressmen, and an extra day of classes on Vietnam and on the general problem of dissent. St. John's College believes that there is grave danger to higher education in this country if colleges and universities as entities take political stands. Such politicization could well result in the subversion of these institutions into action agencies and in the ultimate loss of real academic freedom. St. John's students and Tutors correctly insisted that their opinions be understood as those of individual citizens and that the College not be officially or implicitly involved. In the words of the letter to the President, "St. John's College is devoted to the life of the mind, to reason, and to dialogue. We cannot subscribe to irrational and violent methods of dissent, since they imply an abandonment of the fundamental principles for which a college or university should stand .... We shall continue with our regular academic program. We believe that our primary responsibility as students and teachers is to continue to study and learn." A college or university must be a place where any idea or opinion may be expressed, entertained, examined, or criticized. Complete freedom of inquiry must prevail. 1970 The goal must be the search for truth. The rules musf be the rules of reason. The tools are the liberal arts, the thinking skills. To prescribe a position, a dogma, a doctrine, or a political stand is to vitiate freedom to question, to discuss, to study, and to learn. The contemporary trend of making colleges and universities action institutions to deal with society's problems and woes is fraught with real danger. A college like St. John's must continue to adhere steadfastly to principle in these matters. Nor does this mean any lack of concern for the outside world. St. John's will have failed in its full mission if its graduates are not inspired or impelled to meet their full responsibilities as citizens of the Republic. It is interesting that St. John's students declined during the critical days to judge their fellows in other institutions. Some thought that they might have acted differently had they not been at St. John's. As one student put it, striking against St. John's College would be senseless, for students here already have most of what students elsewhere are seeking-small classes, genuine dialogue with Tutors, a sense of the dignity and worth of the individual, full opportunity to participate in class, and serious and thoughtful discussion of the great questions of human existence. Indeed, the vague smoldering disenchantment with the conventional academic experience appears to me to be at the root of the problem for students in many colleges and universities. This disconrent is capitalized upon by the relatively small and vocal minority of dissident radicals, who associate it with political issues to which it is at best remotely relevant. In my opinion no palliative or remedy of the ills of higher education can be found in the coBtemporary movement to involv-e students in the governance of our col- lOA �The College leges and universities through board membership, or to make them partners in planning the curriculum. A college cannot and should not be a democracy. In fact, a college is not a political organization of any sort. One of the vital tasks of colleges should be to preserve the distinction between an educational community and a political community. Each segment-board, faculty, and students of the college community-has its assigned role. Responsibility rests by charter with the board and is delegated by it to the president. He in turn delegates it to deans, administrators, faculty, and students. Students must indeed be listened to on all matters, and their ideas, proposals, and suggestions should be seriously and tj10ughtfully considered. But a college faculty cannot evade or surrender its basic responsibility for prescribing that course of study which in its opinion is most likely to result in a liberally educated man or woman. Nor can a board, a president, or a dean yield to expediency or pressure and fail to maintain those conditions which are considered m 0st conducive to real learning. A college, to be true to its purpose, should be a community of learners. It is significant that the word "community" is derived from the Latin communis-con mean~ ing "together" and the root mu meaning "to bind." From the same origin comes the word communico, meaning "to divide a thing with one, to impart, or to communicate." As a community, then, a college is a society or body of disparate individuals bound together by the common goal of learning. In such a body communication, the full sharing of thoughts :md ideas is paramount. There must also be a proper ordering of the body if its laudable ends are to be achieved. Hence the need for clearly defined functions and working relationships. Quinquennial Polity Revision The year just ended at St. John's College witnessed a further development and refinement of the College's basic constitution, the Polity. It has been a major accomplishment that every five years a mandatory reveiw. of this document has been completed to the general satisfaction of the various segments of the college community. This year notable progress was made by broadening the concept of the Faculty to include not only Tutors, the teaching members, but Associates as well, that is, administrative staff members. Sections defining the role of the students were amplified, and, for the first time, the alumni were included as part of the College. Both campuses were accorded equal status. A major change in administrative structure was instituted by the creation of the position of Provost on the Annapolis campus. This new post will have presidential powers, though the incumbent will report to the President of the College rather than to the Board. The objective is to relieve the President of many administrative details and to assure greater attention to the developing needs of the Annapolis campus. A search for a suitable candidate for the provostship is now in progress. lOB The Annapolis Campus Robert Goldwin brought to the deanship a high degree of vigor, imagination, and judiciousness. With remarkable success he gave high priority to four matters: the attrition of student enrollment, the recording of the instructional program, the rules of residence for students on campus, and the College's relations with the world outside the campus. It is gratifying to report a net loss of only three students throughout the year. The February freshman class and returning students almost replaced the number who left during the year. The significant point is that many fine students, who might have been lost to the College, were apparently satisfied with the progress of their education and stayed on. At the initiative of the Dean, Tutors kept records of what happened in every seminar, and uarchon" or "gau- leiter" Tutors did the same for tutorials and laboratories. As a result a complete account of what is done in every class in every year is now available for the use of new Tutors. These reports are in no sense rigid guides but rather starting points for the further improvement and refinement of the curriculum. In similar fashion, a care- ful record has been kept by Elliott Zuckerman, Secretary of the Instruction Committee, of all its deliberations and decisions. Copies of his report for the year were circulated to all Tutors. Much time and energy were expended in deliberations over possible revision of the rules of residence. A liberalization of the rules resulted. Curfew was eliminated for women students, except for freshman women during the first semester. Visiting hours were extended somewhat, but the College would not accede to the request of some students that dormitories remain open for intervisitation twenty-four hours a day. The general problem will undoubtedly continue to trouble the College. It may be relieved somewhat as a larger proportion of students are permitted to live off campus. As part of his effort to improve relations with the outside world, the Dean instituted two series of seminars. One series was conducted combining St. John's students and midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy. Co-leaders were drawn from the two institutions. A second series was conducted for public figures in Washington and led by the Dean. Tuition for this series was the requirement that participants visit the Annapolis campus and speak on national affairs before the Student Forum. These seminars contributed helpfully to a new understanding of the College by people outside it. Finally, mention should be made of a most significant innovation in the area of instruction. Under the direction of Hugh McGrath, one of the College's most senior Tutors, a six-week New Tutors School was conducted on campus this summer. Five of the seven newly appointed Tutors participated to prepare themselves for the shock of meeting their first classes. The Dean and I are both �September 1970 confident that the quality of teaching by these new Tutors will be greatly improved as a result. The Santa Fe Campus Dean William Darkey reports that notable progress has been made on the western campus in broadening general faculty competence in all areas of the program. Classes were scheduled during the year so as to permit maximum opportunity for auditing. Many Tutors availed themselves of the chance to observe their fellows teaching. As a corollary it is gratifying that almost all requests for teaching assignments for the coming year included at least one subject new to the Tutor. The criterion of extending one's competence in the St. John's Program is already being taken very responsibly. A special study group of music Tutors was set up and met regularly throughout the year. As a result, a syllabus of carefully selected materials was prepared for use in the Music tutorial. Furthermore, three "non-musicians" can now be assigned to the Music tutorial for the coming year. The Dean also reports that six Tutors without previous experience in teaching biology have now successfully taught in that part of the laboratory program, and that a half-dozen faculty members studied elementary Greek for eight weeks this summer. Thomas Slakey instructed the group under the auspices of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. Some Tutors learned the language for the first time, others reviewed their previous acquaintance with it. The Dean notes that for the coming year the teaching slate will be somewhat tight, though a ratio of eight students to one Tutor will be maintained. The Dean urges a policy of earlier interviews with prospective faculty members and earlier appointments another year. In general, he concludes that the morale of the faculty has been good on the Santa Fe campus and that the quality of the teaching has been high. Ricl1ard Scofield The entire St. John's community has been saddened by the death of Richard Scofield, one of St. John's greatest and most beloved Tutors. He had retired at the end of June following 43 years of service on the St. John's Faculty. Educated at the University of California and at Oxford University, where he held a Rhodes scholarship, he was first appointed to the St. John's Faculty in 1927 as a member of the English Department. When the New Program was introduced he undertook diligently and enthusiastically the varied duties of a Tutor. Since 1959 he had held an Addison E. Mullikin Tutorship. The scroll honoring Richard Scofield npon his retirement read in part as follows: In these years nothing has been more trusted by students and colleagues alike than his patience, his modesty, his calm perseverance, his subtle understanding, and his unswerving rectitude, nothing more admired than his urbanity and elegance and, above all, his capacity for warm friendship. In his company other persons have felt themselves somehow at their best. The Tutors The selection and training of the best possible faculty members continues to be a matter of prime importance both in the east and in the west. This year each campus received approximately 300 applications for teaching positions. Seven new Tutors have been selected for appointment at Annapolis and three at Santa Fe. Two teaching interns have also been appointed at Santa Fe, both of whom will work toward Master's degrees. Appointed to the Faculty on the Annapolis campus for the coming academic year are Steven Crockett, who holds a Ph.D. degree in the History of Culture from the U niversity of Chicago; William DeHart, who has a doctorate in biology from the University of Rochester Medical School, and who has been an assistant professor at the Medical College of .Virginia; Robert Licht, a young St. John's graduate, who has been teaching philosophy as an instructor at Bucknell University; Brian Patrick McGuire, who has just completed his D.Phil. at Oxford University in History; Alfred Mallin, whose doctorate is in Philosophy from the Penn State University; William O'Grady, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in Political Science; and Jonathan Skinner, whose doctorate at the Universitv of Massachusetts was in the field of mathematics. Additions to the Santa Fe faculty are John S. Chamberlin, who has completed work for a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in Medieval Studies; Frank Flinn, who has a B.A. from Quincy College and a B.D. from Harvard Divinity School; and Edward H. Porcella, a St. Mary's College graduate, who holds the M.A. degree in Philosophy from the University of California at San Diego. The two teaching interns on the Santa Fe campus are Mrs. Toni Katz Drew, who graduated from St. John's College in June. and Paul D. Mannick, who completed his undergraduate studies at California State College at Long Beach this year. During the year just ended Douglas Allanbrook, John Kieffer, and J. Winfree Smith were all on sabbatical leave while Gisela Berns, George Berry, Clarence J. Kramer, and Henry Larom were on leave of absence for all or part of the year. Mr. Berry resigned during the year because of the pressure of family business. Peter Brown, Vassilios Christides, Alan Cotler, Carl Linden, Robert Mueller, and George Vahanian, all completed the terms of their appointments and leave the College for other positions. The Students The following excerpt from Dean Darkey' s report well IOC �The College summarizes the student situation on both St. John's campuses: "The quality of campus life at St. John's is as difficult to assess with confidence as it is on any campus. On the one hand, we have escaped the more obvious manifestations of student unrest that have troubled campuses throughout the country. It is certainly safe to say that our advantage is due in part to the essential nature of St. John's itself, that is to its deliberately small size, to the intellectual soundness of its curriculum, and to the high quality of its teaching. Much of the current campus unrest is certainly aggravated by the impersonality of the enormous universities and by the curricular chaos into which students are thrust with the assurance that they will receive an education. By contrast our curriculuill provides a common intellectual experience in a commu- nity small enough to permit an easy dialectical consideration and assimilation of that experience. These conditions and the fact that the curriculum has deep roots in the larger tradition of our society produce community to an unusual degree within the College and this is a source of great strength. "But we must recognize that our students come to us from the same world that other college students come from. Ours are a highly selected group of sensitive and intelligent young men and women who are responsive to the tensions that properly enough trouble all young people today, and although we have escaped the more openly destructive manifestations of those tensions, St. John's is, nevertheless, profoundly affected by them. For example, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that our so-called problem of attrition is a symptom of the general unrest. The student who withdraws, declaring as many do that he has no really serious criticism of St. John' s-in deed he usually avows his intention to return in time-is, in most instances, deeply troubled by the same causes that produce demonstrations on other campuses.'' St. John's on both its campuses had its largest enrollment to date. Attrition at Santa Fe was somewhat higher than at Annapolis. Figures for the vear follow: Annapolis Freshmen February Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Total Santa Fe Freshmen Sophomores Juniors Seniors Total Grand Total lOD Men 71 14 56 40 35 216 Men 71 40 13 21 145 361 Women 54 7 41 26 24 !52 Women 54 36 15 12 117 269 Total 125 21 97 66 59 368 Total 125 76 28 33 262 630 A major factor contributing to good morale on the Annapolis campus this year was a rejuvenated Collegian. Under the able editorship of Daniel J. Sullivan, of the Junior Class, some thirty weekly issues appeared. The publication was partly newspaper and partly magazine. At Santa Fe the greatest positive contribution to the life of the students was the establishment of the SAO, the Student Activities Office, under the direction of Istvan Fehervary. All sports and other activities fell under the purview of this office, whether soccer, skiing, rafting, and fencing, or photography, the theater, jewelry-making, or the publication Seven. Students were confronted with an increasingly serious problem in the area of financial aid. For Maryland students the State's new scholarship program worked to the disadvantage of those selecting an independent college like St. John's. This is graphically demonstrated by the sharp decline of awards to students attending St. John's over the past five years: Year Number of Students Total Sclwlarsl1ip Funds 1965-66 59 $!19,125 '1966-67 50 99,000 1967-68 45 90,850 1968-69 30 53,800 1969-70 24 32,350 Every effort must be made to alter the system so that a more equitable share of these scholarship funds are made available to Maryland residents desiring to attend independent institutions. In spite of the reduction of state scholarships, the College sought to provide as much financial aid as possible out of its current budgets on both campuses, as the following table shows: Total Annapolis Santa Fe Student Assistantships $ 43,740 $ 48,933 $ 92,673 Grants-in-Aid 67,191 49,464 116,655 Maryland Scholarships 32,350 32,350 Southwest Scholarships 58,500 58,500 Staff Children's Scholarships 3,900 1,950 5,850 Other Scholarships 1,000 42,340 41,340 Educational Opportunity Grants 13,165 6,682 19,847 VI ork-Studv Program 5,992 5,992 $201,686 $172,521 $374,207 These figures include no financial aid through loans, either by local banks or within the National Defense Student Loan program. In June the College awarded 75 Bachelor of Arts degrees, 27 of them on the Santa Fe campus and 48 of them on the Annapolis campus. Five Annapolis seniors received recognition in the form of degrees magna cum laude, that is Hwith great praise.'' Fourteen seniors earned cum laude degrees, that is "with praise," nine in Annap~ �September 1970 olis and five in Santa Fe. These two most recent classes bring to 935 the total number of St. John's graduates of the New Program. Admissions This has been a disappointing year from the standpoint of admissions. In contrast to the 508 applications of last year, only 450 prospective students completed final applications for this fall. Instead of two capacity classes of 125 students each, Annapolis expects to enroll 120 students and Santa Fe 108. Apparently experience at St. John's parallels that of other independent liberal arts colleges. Undoubtedly higher college fees, the depressed state of the economy, and the relative scarcity of loan funds have all contributed to the decreased numbers. In May Douglas Price resigned from his position as Director of Admissions in Santa Fe to become Assistant to the President at the University of Hawaii. Earlier in the year Edward Godschalk had relinquished his responsibilities as Assistant Director of Admissions in Annapolis in order to pursue graduate study. Both men made substantial contributions to the success of the admissions program over the past several years. Gerald Zollars has been appointed Director of Admissions at Santa Fe replacing Mr. Price. Tile Graduate Institute in Liberal Education Under the able directorship of James Shannon, Vice President of the College, the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education completed a successful fourth session this summer and graduated 28 teachers and other adults with the degree of Master of Arts. Full-time enrollment rose from 84 to 120, an increase of nearly half. Graduate Institute students came from 20 States, with the largest number registered from New Mexico and Maryland. It is clear that the Institute is performing a useful service and that every effort must be made to publicize it more widely, particularly in certain of the larger cities in the Midwest. Eighteen Tutors constituted the faculty for the summer, each of them teaching two assignments. Most of the Tutors were drawn from the two St. John's campuses but two Tutors were appointed from other institutions, A. Lowell Edmunds of Harvard University and Mrs. Chaninah Maschler of New York City. Once again generous compliments were paid by the students to the faculty and to the calibre of instruction. This was the final year of the helpful funding grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Graduate Institute received as well a supporting -grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This was made possible by generous matching grants from the Cafritz Foundation of Washington, D. C.; the Hoffberger Foundation of Baltimore, Maryland; and of the Richardson Fund of New York City. Tile Libraries Hugh P. McGrath, a Tutor at the College since 1948, gave the address at the re-dedication of Woodward Hall at Homecoming, October 18, 1969. The new building has found immediate favor with students and Tutors alike on the Annapolis campus, though staff members continue to be haf!led by gremlins in the mechanical equipment. During the summer months especially the availability of quiet air-conditioned space for reading, study, and seminar discussion has been a godsend for the February fresh· men and others. A truly significant accession to the Library holdings during the year was a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Peter H. W. Jackson, of Cedar Hills Plantation, Rutherford, North Carolina, of some 500 volumes published in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Mr. Jackson was a member of the Class of 1943. In Santa Fe the year has been one of re-organizing procedures, systems and routines within the Library. A comprehensive staff procedur~ manual was produced and will be amended as necessary. Notable gifts of music were received from Miss Amelia Elizabeth White of Santa Fe, Professor S. Ellsworth Grumman of New Haven, Connecticut, and Mr. and Mrs. Donald McCormick, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Library Committee of Santa Fe citizens, nnder the dynamic chairmanship of Richard Stern, continued its successful Book and Author luncheons, drawing sell-ant crowds for the benefit of the Library. The Associates and the Stafl After only a year as Vice President on the Santa Fe campus, James P. Shannon has resigned to undertake study of the law. He won many new friends during the year for his work in the Greek tutorial, for his counseling, and for directing the Graduate Institute. His role in development is also greatlv appreciated. Appointed to replace Mr. Shannon in the vice-presidency is J. Burchenal Ault, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, the unanimous recommendation of the Faculty's search committee and of the College's administrative officers. Other departures from the Santa Fe staff include Marie Winterhaler, Registrar and Acting Assistant Dean, and Frank McGuire, Director of Development. Mrs. Winterhaler was the first staff appointee at the new college in 1962. She remains at St. John's as the wife of a Tutor, Roger Peterson. Mr. McGuire undertakes work with the Indians. He did yeoman service for the College in bringing it closer to the Santa Fe community. The College records its gratitude to both, and also to John T. Rule, who served an interim one-year appointment as Assistant Dean. In addition, the following personnel changes should be recorded: Mrs. Emily Van Horn was appointed secretary to the Director of the Graduate Institute. Mrs. JOE �The College Esther Lopez and Mrs. Marilyn Copelan were added to the staff of the Development Office, replacing Mrs. Van Horn and Mrs. Louise Tamotzu. In the Library, Mrs. Holly Tani was succeeded by Mrs. Beth Floyd. Her position on the switchboard was filled by Mrs. Ruth Archer. Another library appointee was Miss Linda McCormick. Charles Webb managed the College Book Store. At Annapolis Charles Finch, who had been Assistant Dean, was appointed Director of Financial Aid and Placement. Dr. Robert Biern and Dr. Charles Kinzer were named College Physicians and Dr. Sigmund Amitin College Psychiatrist, succeeding Dr. Gerard Church and Dr. Robert Ward. Mrs. Jnlianna Rugg was appointed College Nurse. Mrs. Kathryn P. Kinzer was appointed Assistant Librarian, and Mrs. Josephine B. Thoms served for the year as Director of the Fine Arts Studio. Mrs. Leanore Rinder was named a secretary in the Dean's Office, while in the Development Office Mrs. Violet R. Keily was replaced by Mrs. Renee Jabine, who was in turn succeeded by Mrs. Emalea E. Noyes. Everett Whitehead resigned as Library Assistant at the end of the year. During the coming academic year Miss Barbara Leonard, Assistant Dean, will be on sabbatical leave. Geoffrey Comber will serve as Acting Assistant Dean in her stead, while her place in Campbell Hall will be filled by Miss Charlotte King, of the Class of 1959, who will be Resident Head and Student Counsellor for the year. The Alumni By all available measures the year just ended was a good one for alumni activities. The stage was set with a successful Homecoming. This was followed by re-vitalized and informal chapter activities in Annapolis, Baltimore, Washington, and New York. The program of counselling of undergraduates has involved a considerable number of alumni, to the profit of the graduating seniors. Finally, it is noteworthy that 838 alumni gave a total of $26,140 in the annual giving campaign, by far the greatest number of donors and the largest amount contributed to date. Again the affairs of the Alumni Association were in the capable hands of Darrell Henry, of the Class of !96!, as President. J. S. Baker Middelton, of the Class of 1938, and Myron L. Wolbarsht, of the Class of !950, were each re-elected by the Alumni for second consecutive terms on the Board of Visitors and Governors of the College. The Alumni Award of Merit was presented this year to Dr. Louis L. Snyder, of the Class of !928, Professor of History at City College of the City University of New York. Finances From a financial point of view the past year was a major disaster for the Santa Fe campus, which failed by $251,828 to balance its current expenditures and appropriations of lOF $1,527,961. Income from fees was lower by $50,000 than the budget estimate, but the main problem resulted from a failure to develop new unrestricted gifts. The depressed state of the stock market was undoubtedly a major cause of the College's difficulty. Every effort must now be exerted to develop substantial new sources of support, for the new college's borrowing power has been exhausted. The Annapolis campus fared somewhat better but still ended the year with an excess of expenditures over revenue in the amount of $13,687. On this campus fees from students and gifts considerably exceeded budget estimates, but greater expenditures for faculty salaries, for student financial aid, and for plant operation and maintenance more than offset the gains. The Annapolis campus now also faces a difficult current cash situation, as its reserve for future operations has been nearly depleted. The book value of the College's endowment fund dropped to $8,776,!98 while the market value reached a low point of $7,141,642 at the end of the fiscal year. The investment portfolio realized losses on the sale of securities in the amount of $345,405. The sum of $190,2!! was drawn from earlier reservation of profits to make up the necessary draw of 6% for current budget purposes. It is good to report that the Brice House mortgages of $25,000 and $15,000 respectively were paid in full during the year. A purchaser was found for the Glendale property. If the sale is consummated as anticipated, a loss will be taken but the net annual income to the College will be greatly increased. Development Julius Rosenberg, Director of Development, calls the year just ended as the year of the breakthrough for St. John's College in Annapolis. Town and gown relations were the best in many years, thanks largely to the work of the Friends of St. John's College and to the founding of the Caritas Society, its women's auxiliary. Various social functions were held involving College people and townspeople, the largest of which was an "Evening with Greer Garson" in May. Nearly 500 guests were attracted to the campus for the showing of two of Miss Garson's films and for the reception for her and her husband, Mr. E. E. Fogelson, former member of the Board. The gratitude of the College is extended to the many individuals in the Friends and in the Caritas Society who worked to make the various affairs so successful. As a matter of policy the College has now consolidated its publications program in a single quarterly, The College. Under the editorship of Laurence Berns, Tutor, and the managing editorship of Mary Jean Felter, Director of Public Information, The College combines articles and lectures with news from both campuses and with alumni notes. It is proving itself an effective vehicle to reach alumni, parents, and friends as well as more immediate members of the St. John's community. Meanwhile, an active program of news releases continues. St. John's re- �September ceived most favorable publicity from coast to coast this spring as a result of the mature and rational actions of its students. Gifts, grants and bequests to the Annapolis campus totaled $284,268 during the year, representing contributions from 1,231 donors. The largest amount was for current purposes: $25,000 from The Hodson Trust in Morristown, New Jersey; $8,700 from other foundations, $6,885 from business corporations, $4,045 from Board members, $2,465 from parents, $3,271 from friends, $26,140 from alumni, and $17,878 from Maryland business firms and corporations through the joint appeal of the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland. Gifts for endowment purposes totaled $93,934, $47,046 of which represented matching funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Restricted current gifts in the amount of $49,643 were received as well as gifts toward the Library totaling $29,576 and toward Harrison House totaling $16,732. On the Santa Fe campus the Boards of Associates in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Denver continued to function helpfully in building good will and understanding of St. John's College in the Southwest. Local groups were encouraged to hold luncheon meetings and other gatherings on campus so that their members might become familiar with the College. An active program of news releases about the College events was pursued. It is apparent that word is reaching an increasing number of people, for the flow of visitors on campus steadily increases. As already noted, gifts and grants to the Santa Fe campus were sharply reduced from the total of the preceding year. The sum of $402,551 was received for general purposes and $71,173 for scholarships and other student financial aid, making a total of $473,724. Apart from cash contributions the College received many gifts in kind. Noteworthy among these was a gift of ten acres of land contiguous to College property and lying just north of Camino de Cruz Blanca. This generous contribution from Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy Manuel assures the College of adequate protection for its campus for many years to come. To these and to all donors to both campuses the College expresses its heartfelt gratitude. 1970 the raising of $5,000,000 for the Annapolis campus and $10,000,000 for the Santa Fe campus. Mrs. Duane L. Peterson, of Baltimore, Maryland, a devoted member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, has pledged one and a quarter million dollars over a period of years. This will cover the cost of constructing and furnishing the student center at Santa Fe, for which funds were borrowed from the Annapolis endowment fund seven years ago. Mrs. Peterson's commitment will therefore assure the repayment to Annapolis of most of the outstanding loan upon which the Santa Fe campus has been paying interest over the years. I am also pleased that the Board has taken action to name the building "The Peterson Student Center" in honor of both Mrs. Peterson and her late husband, Duane L. Peterson. This is a good omen for the future. * * * I was pleased to be selected by the Danforth Foundation as one of the recipients of its Short-Term Leave Grants for College and University Administrators. Mrs. Weigle and I appreciate tbe willingness of the Board to allow us a four-month leave of absence for this welcome period of study and refreshment. We hope to be away during the early months of 1971. As I conclude this, my twenty-second report, let me again express gratitude to all of those associated with the College-Board members, Tutors, Associates, Staff members, students, alumni, parents and friends. Your work for the College and your commitment to it account for whatever we have been able to achieve on the two campuses. Because of you the presidency of St. John's never ceases to be a deeply satisfying and challenging experience. RICHARD D. WEIGLE President September 8, 1970 275th Anniversary Next July will mark the 275th anniversary of the granting of a Royal Charter to King William's School in 1696. Faculty committees on both campuses are preparing for appropriate activities to celebrate this significant anniversary. It is planned as well to inaugurate a major fund-raising drive to be known as the 275th Anniversary Fund. The campaign will open in 1971 and continue for three years, the final years of the Decade of Development. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to announce the first major commitment in this program which envisions lOG �The College ST. JOHN'S Annapolis, Maryland BALANCE SHEETS, ASSETS Annapolis Santa Fe CURRENT FUNDS Unrestricted Cash Accounts Receivable Due from Other Funds . Due from SJC-Santa Fe. Prepaid Expenses Miscellaneous Bookstore Inventory .. Total Unrestricted ·Funds $ 54,648 4,947 $ 37,722 125 5,917 46,003 20,284 32,929 22,418 23,013 $ 120,455 $ 50,907 58,129 840 $ 64,381 3,226 Total Restricted Funds $ 109,876 $ 83,767 Total Current Funds $ 230,331 $ 211,318 $ 2,394 124,987 2,871 $ $ 130,252 $ 162,052 $ 231,210 7,283 129,460 1,461,000 49,792 870 Restricted Cash Investments Loans Receivable $ 127,551 16,160 Due from Other Funds . LoAN FuNDS ........ Cash National Defense Student Loans . Other Student Loans . Total Loan Funds 13,856 147,196 1,000 ENDOWMENT FUNDS . Cash .... Accounts and Notes Receivable . Faculty Home Loans Loan to SJC-Santa Fe . Due from Other Funds. Miscellaneous . Investments . Securities-at cost 6,616,080 49,755 234,000 Mortgages on Real Property. Real Property . . ............. Total Endowment Funds 155 2,985 $ 59,507 $ 8,779,450 $ 62,647 12,069 44,000 $ 15,623 PLANT FUNDS Cash Investments Notes Receivable Due from Other Funds Retirement of Indebtedness . Land and Campus Development Buildings and Improvements . Equipment and Furnishings Land and Buildings-Other . Library Books .. Total Plant Funds . $ 11,000 67,000 103,332 313,615 4,766,839 421,787 77,343 95,613 2,395 375,677 5,168,920 394,221 $ 5,997,282 FUNDS Due from Current Fund . Due from Plant Fund $5,872,152 ANNUITY $ Total Annuity Funds Total Funds lOH 21,241 193,064 $ 214,305 $15,137,315 $6,522,474 �September 1970 COLLEGE Santa Fe, New Mexico June 30, 1970 LIABILITIES AND CAPITAL Annapolis Santa Fe 3,664 51,984 52,187 $ 310,000 36,881 83,101 103,836 37,669 CURRENT FUNDS Unrestricted Notes Payable Accounts Payable Deferred Income . $ Due to Other Funds . Due to SJC Annapolis . Reserve for Future Operations Cumulative Fund Deficit 12,620 (443,936) $ 120,455 $ 127,551 ---- $ 109,876 $ 8),767 Total Restricted Funds $ 109,876 $ 83,767 Total Current Funds $ 230,331 $ 211,318 $ 130,252 $ 162,052 $ 130,252 $ 162,052 Total Unrestricted Funds Restricted Fund Balances LoAN FUNDS Fund Balances Total Loan Funds ENDOWMENT FUNDS $ 7,880,672 895,527 3,251 $ 62,647 $ 8,779,450 $ 62,647 $ 5,938,817 (21,535) $2,099,067 1,722,000 200,065 1,461,000 103,332 93,624 $ 5,997,282 $5,679,088 Annuity Funds . Due from Other Funds .. $ $ 214,305 193,064 Total Annuity Funds $ $ 407,369 Total Funds $15,137,315 $6,522,474 Principal-lnveshnents Reservation of Profits-Sale of Securities Unexpended Income Total Endowment Funds PLANT FUNDS Invested in Plant Federal Dormitory Bonds Due to Other Funds Notes Payable . 80,000 Retirement of Indebtedness Unexpended ... Totdl Plant Funds . ANNUITY FuNDS 10! �The College ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Annapolis, Maryla-nd Santa Fe, New Mexico CONDENSED STATEMENT OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1970 Annapolis Santa Fe 686,393 444,747 91,667 115,850 10,443 $ 496,272 $ 1,349,100 $ 979,450 REVENUE Educational and General Tuition Endowment Income Gifts and Grants Scholarships Miscellaneous Total $ 3,099 473,724 6,355 AUXILIARY ENTERPRISES Bookstore Dining Hall Dormitories Total $ 45,760 164,072 143,429 $ $ 353,261 $ 270,281 $ OTHER NoN-EDucATIONAL INCOME Organized Student Activity . Total Revenue 27,061 131,774 111,446 13,974 12,428 $ 1,702,361 $1,276,133 312,194 691,213 16,974 279,131 $ 292,585 $ 1,299,512 $ 971,553 ExPENDITURES Educational and General Administrative and General . Instruction Student Activities Operation and Maintenance Total Auxiliary Enterprises Bookstore Dining Hall Dormitories Total $ $ 49,578 150,520 515,742 24,634 138,592 $ 28,085 98,947 121,474 ---200,099 $ 248,506 $ Student Financial Aid $ 192,294 $ 172,522 Other Expenditures $ 24,143 $ 114,933 Appropriations National Defense Student Loan Capital Outlay $ $ Total Total Expenditures .. Excess Revenue (Expenditures) lOJ $ 1,716,048 $ (13,687) 1,302 19,145 20,447 $1,527,961 $ (251,828) �September 1970 ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE Annapolis, Maryland PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS June 30, 1970 Gift of Donor Old Dominion Foundation Matching Gift Total Fund $1,989,953 150,215 $ 500,000 150,000 $2,489,953 300,215 $2,140,168 $ 650,000 $2,790,168 TUTORSHIP ENDOWMENTS Addison E. Mullikin, 1895 Arthur deTalma Valk, 1906 SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENTS Annapolis Self-Help George M. Austin Memorial, 1908 Chicago Regional Class of 1897 Class of 1898 Dr. Charles C. Cook Corporal George E. Cunif!, III, 1930 Faculty John T. Harr~on, 1907 Hillhouse High School, 1927 Richard H. Hodgson, 1906 Alfred Houston, 1906-Student Aid Houston Regional Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones Robert Edward and Margaret Larsh Jones Arthur E. Landers and Hilda Combs Landers Massachusetts Regional Philip A. Meyer II, 1938 Oklahoma Regional Thomas Farran, 1911 Pittsburgh Regional Reader's Digest Foundation Clifton H. Roehle Murray Joel Rosenberg Memorial Hazel Norris and J. Graham Shannahan Clarence J. Stryker Friedrich J. von Schwerdtner $ 15,000 25,000 3,070 8,672 87,933 13,705 $ 15,000 25,000 3,070 $ 30,000 50,000 6,140 8,672 87,933 13,705 270 25,483 45,050 16,034 300,500 45,287 1,000 72,000 28,333 2,000 45,370 28,362 52,000 6,165 1,120 12,500 7,055 2,726 3,070 7,056 1,552 135 2,359 20,025 7,367 150,250 2,500 500 36,000 $ 575,519 STUDENT LOAN FUND ENDOWMENTS George Friedland John David Pyle, 1962-Memoria1 135 23,124 25,025 8,667 150,250 42,787 500 36,000 28,333 2,000 22,685 19,362 26,000 6,165 560 12,500 7,055 2,726 3,070 3,643 1,552 $ 323,864 $ 899,383 22,685 9,000 26,000 560 3,413 25,035 4,569 $ 20,000 1,470 $ 45,035 6,039 $ ALUMNI MEMORIAL ENDOWMENTS Granville Q. Adams, 1929 Charles Edwards Athey, 1931 William C. Baxter, 1923 Drew H. Beatty, 1903 Dr. William Brewer, 1823 Frederick W, Brune, 1874 Benjamin Duvall Chambers, 1905 Henry M. Cooper, Jr., 1934 Walter I. Dawkins, 1880 Robert F. Duer, Jr., 1921 In Honor of: Dr. Philip Edwards, 1898 Joseph W. Fastner, Jr., 1960 Allen Lester Fowler, 1915 Edna Gable and Roscoe E. Grove, 1910 Charles W. Hass, 1927 Dr. Amos F. Hutchins, 1906 Clarence T. Johnson, 1909 $ 29,604 $ 21,470 $ 51,074 $ 1,100 5,825 25 300 125 854 2,638 1,000 58,683 3,265 1,135 2,000 500 16,545 40 658 100 $ $ 1,100 5,825 25 500 250 1,361 2,638 2,000 58,683 3,600 2,!20 2,000 1,000 16,545 40 1,291 100 200 125 507 1,000 335 985 500 633 lOK �The College 100 18,357 200 200 5,140 23,166 !,020 5,000 325 432 550 12,219 100 5,000 10,000 4,933 !,000 !,108 850 402 100 3,270 500 28,633 3,000 2,500 125 625 2,000 Clifford L. Johnson, 1911 Helen Barnes Jones and Robert 0. Jones, 1916 Jonathan D. Korshin, 1966 (Library) Oliver M. Korshin, 1963 (Library) Dr. W. Oscar LaMotte, 1902 J. H. E. Legg, 1921 William Lentz, 1912 Leola Burnette and Thomas Watkins Ligon, 1916 CoL Harrison McAlpine, 1909 James McClintock, 1965 Robert F. Maddox, 1876 William L. Mayo, 1899 Ridgley P. Melvin, 1899 WilliamS. Morsell, 1922 (Athletic Fund) John Mullan, 1847 Walter C. Mylander, Jr., 1932 H. Keith Neville, 1905 Dr. John 0. Neustadt, 1939 Blanchard Randall, 1874 Susan Irene Roberts, 1966 Leroy T. Rohrer, 1903 Harrison Sasscer, 1944 C. H. Schoff, 1889 Henry F. Sturdy, 1906 Rev. Enoch H. Thompson, 1895 John T. Tucker, 1914 Dr. RobertS. G. Welch, 1913 Dr. Willis H. White, 1922 Amos W. W. Woodcock Fund, 1903 125 625 1,000 100 25,920 200 200 5,140 23,166 2,040 5,000 650 432 550 12,219 200 10,000 20,000 4,933 2,000 1,108 1,180 402 200 3,270 1,000 28,633 6,000 2,500 250 1,250 3,000 7,563 1,020 325 !00 5,000 10,000 1,000 330 !00 500 3,000 $ 225,648 OTHER ENDOWMENTS Hertha S. and Jesse L. Adams Concert Fund Alumni Memorial Book Fund Philo Sherman Bennett Prize Fund Benwood Foundation Library Fund George A. Bingley Memorial Fund Scott Buchanan Memorial Fund Helen Cropsey Davidson and George Davidson, Jr. Fund for Tomorrow Lectureship Floyd Hayden Prize Fund Mary Safford Hoogewerff Memorial Library Fund Library Fund Monterey Mackey Memorial Fund Emily Boyce Mackubin Ellen C. Murphy Memorial Library Fund Henry H. and Cora Dodson Sasscer Newspaper Fund Adolph W. Schmidt Fund Mrs. Blair T. Scott Memorial Prize Fund Kathryn Mylroie Stevens Memorial Prize Fund Elma R. and Charles D. Todd Memorial Library Fund Clara B. Weigle Memorial Fund Daniel E. and Jessie N. Weigle Memorial Jack Wilen Foundation Library Fund in memory of Murray Joel Rosenberg Victor Zuckerkandl Memorial .Fund Alumni Endowment General Endowment $ 34,973 $ 260,621 60,000 355 308 25,000 14,897 5,770 20,025 3,000 77 31,683 560 200 75,192 !,500 !,500 10,569 518 !,250 19,500 !,196 2,500 $ 60,000 $ 120,000 355 308 50,000 14,897 5,770 20,025 6,000 102 3!,683 960 200 75,192 3,000 1,500 10,569 518 1,250 39,000 1,196 2,500 $ 1,000 19,321 205,480 522,429 $1,023,830 Total Endowment Principal IOL 3,000 25 400 1,500 19,500 186,309 1,000 19,321 391,789 522,429 $ 295,734 $1,319,564 $2,559,858 PERMANENT ENDOWMENT FUNDS Old Dominion Foundation Grants Not Applied to Named Funds Reservation of Profits, Sale of Securities 25,000 $2,559,858 $ 895,527 $4,890,296 $ 895,527 $2,885,899 $8,776,195 �September 1970 crying; in short, for behavior which is not chosen. A case of special interest is that of slips of the tongue, for which Freud provides his ingenious causal explanations in terms of an hypothesized unconscious mind.6 Now, to put my argument about human freedom into There is a distinction between a "reason" for an d a " cause " of an ac t'wn ... some other expression to distinguish the relative freedoms of the three drinkers. Our word "free" has lost Its use in ordinary language, that is, it has lost the meaning it had. If a philosopher like Kant elmms to have a meaningful use of the word "free" in his theoretical system, then the burden of proof is on him. And one should always be suspicious of the ?'eanmg of words used in special or technical ways. It lS not easy to giVe words a clear meaning. In these last few remarks, I have shifted from the style of Aristotle to the style of the s_o-called _"ordinary language" philosophy initiated by Wrttgenstem. Yet I think the two are congenial, despite the recent charge from this platform that the ordinary language philosophers are misologists or haters of reason. I myself would say that they are haters only of abstract theories which generate what they regard as pseudo-problems. They are agamst the kind of system building in philosophy which prevailed from Descartes through Hegel, but they are for looking closely at the way people talk and the way people behave. I have argued that this is the style of Anstotle," and ':' fact many of the ordinary language philosophers see Anstotle as a man from whom they can learn. I will pursue this digression a bit further. 'I11ere is a well known distinction in contemporary philosophy which I think makes essentially the point I have found in Aristotle1 namely a distinction between a "reason" for a certain action and a "cause71 of an action. For example~ we can ask why Socrates is heading for the market place, why he left the party early, and so on. We expect to be told the answer in terms of reasons why he drd what he did. The search for causal explanations of human behavior arises only, and this is the important point, arises only where the explanation in terms of reasons breaks down. For .example, if we know that Socrates loves parhes and never chooses to leave a party early, we might conjecture that he was caused to leave by a sudden illness, by an irrepressible hatred for someone who just entered the room, or by some other such cause over which he had no control. Explanation in terms of causes is also apl'ropnate for such things as facial twitches, pains, laughmg and terms of the distinction between "reasons" and "causes": To think of all human actions as not free is to think of them all as if they were caused. It is to think of an action done for carefully considered and good reasons as being on the same level with a facial twitch or an outburst of crying. Why should all human actions be assimilated to such a single model? Why should one seek such theoretical simplicity at the cost of ignoring the variety and complexity of human behavior? L et us return now to Carl Rogers. I began this dis- cussion of freedom and deterrriinism with an account of a symposium between Carl Rogers and B. F. Skinner. Both men felt that predictions and explanations of human behavior were hostile to human freedom. I argued that both accepted an essentiall~ K~ntian ~oncep­ tion of freedom as absolute spontaneity m which the free human act has no antecedents in preceding space-time. Skinner looked forward to increasing predictability and control of human behavior. As for human freedom, he regarded it as an illusion. Rogers, on the other hand, wanted to assert the existence of free human choice as the most important aspect of being a person, but he could see no way to do this except as an absolute paradox. He wanted to assert that men are free and yet he saw that their behavior could be predicted and explained, and he saw no way to reconcile predictability and freedom. In his later book, On Becoming a Person, Rogers describes what he sees as a partial solution to the problem of free will and determinism (p. 193). This partial solution comes from Rogers' conception of a "fully functioning person,': one who is living his life well. When a fully functioning person chooses to act in a certain way, he takes account of everything in his present situation and in his past experience which is relevant to his action. He is to be contrasted with what Rogers calls the "defensively organized" person 1 who shuts out elements of his own past and of the situation around him. He cannot face certain aspects of himself or of his world. Thus he denies or distorts some of the data relevant to his actions. Now the significant point of this contrast for the problem of free will and determinism is as follows: one could say that the person who chooses by taking account of all relevant data is in a sense ''determined" by those data 1 and yet Rogers claims, on the basis of his clinical work, that such a person "experiences the most complete and o For an excellent discussion of the distinction between causes and reasons, see R. S. Peters, Tile Concept of Motivation, London, 1958, Chapter l. Peters is both a psychologist and a philosopher influenced by the Wittgenstein school. See also his reference to Hobbes, p. 1, and to Aristotle, p. 157. 11 �The College absolute freedom." The defensively organized person, on the other hand, who shuts out some of the relevant data and is therefore not determined by them, is "not free to make an effective choice." Thus Rogers concludes that where there is more determinism, there is, surprisingly, more freedom, and where there is less determinism, there is less freedom. Rogers himself does not follow out the implications of this discovery. In this very passage he still speaks of freedom as "spontaneity" (p. 193), and at the end of On Becoming a Person, where he returns again to discuss his earlier symposium with Skinner, he repeats in practically the same language as before that the problem of free will and determinism presents an absolute paradox (p. 400). Despite the force of his own experience and despite his efforts to break out, Rogers is still in the Kantian box. But what he is moving towards, I think, is a distinction among kinds of determinism. Asked whether free will is incompatible with determinism, one must first ask, "What kind of determinism?" Is it determinism by careful thought which takes account of all the factors in a situation? With Rogers, I want to say that such determinism also constitutes the freest human action of all. And yet, unlike Rogers, I do not feel a paradox here because I do not think of freedom as spontaneity, as implying complete lack of relation to previous events in space-time. Instead I think of free action simply as action which is intelligently chosen, and where the choice is not hampered by vicious habits. I could stop here. I have given a solution to the problem of free will and dterminism which satisfies me and which I think would have satisfied Aristotle had he posed the problem for himself. That is, I have argued that the problem of free will and determinism is essentially a pseudo-problem, resting on an inadequate conception of freedom and a failure to distinguish among kinds of determinism. And yet what I have said is perhaps not adequate to satisfy Rogers or to satisfy most of you. I want therefore to extend Aristotle's analysis one step further. In the discussion of choice, Aristotle remarks in passing that children and animals are not capable of choice ( 1111 b 8). In the discussion of weakness of will he remarks that animals are not capable of weakness of will. The reason he gives is that animals cannot grasp universals, but only particulars (1147b 5). The greatest of the Aristotelian commentators, Thomas Aquinas, develops these remarks into an argument for the freedom of the human will. What does it mean to "grasp a universal"? It means to grasp some particular thing not merely in terms of its particular sensory qualities but as falling in some larger class where the essential attribute of the class must be understood by an act of mind. It cannot be perceived by the senses. I can perhaps make the point clear by example. 7 The cxamp1c is actually drawn from William James, Principles of Psychology, New York, 1904, Vol. II, pp. 349-350. 7 12 Consider a man who regularly takes his dog fishing with him. He arrives at his boat to find that he has forgotten the sponge which he always uses to bail out the boat. Since he does not wish to return to the house for the sponge, he makes motions of bailing out the boat while saying to the dog, "Sponge. Sponge. Go fetch the sponge." The dog goes back to the house and returns with the sponge. Is this a case of grasping a universal? No. The dog merely associates some particular thing, a sponge, with a par- ticular act, bailing out the boat. But, if the dog had not been able to find the sponge, and had returned instead with a bucket, then he would have grasped a universal. The point is that he would have had to abstract from the particular, the sponge, to the universal class under which it belonged, namely, things useful for getting water out of a boat. Most men could easily make this abstraction. Few, if any, animals could. N ow, what are the implications for human freedom of the capacity to grasp universals? When a man is considering a· possible action, he considers it not merely as a particular, as something he could do which is pleasant or painful. He sees it as a means to some end, as one porticubr way of achieving that end. Animals too are capable of selecting means to ends, but not in the same way. Since an animal, at least for the most part, grasps only particulars, he cannot compare the particulars with each other to decide which best serves the universal end. He cannot compare a sponge and a bucket and decide which is the best instrument for bailing out a boat. He can only associate in his memory the particular, sponge, or the particular, bucket, with the particular act of bailing out the boat. To compare them he would have to grasp the non-sensory universal under which both fall, something useful for bailing out the boat. Since he cannot do this, he cannot in any meaningful sense choose between bucket and sponge. The end of bailing out the boat is itself a means to a further end, going fishing. This can in turn be a means to a still further end, obtaining food, or it can be an end in itself, something done for its own sake. Ultimately, aeording to St. Thomas, the end for which we do things is the most universal category of all, namely, the good. In this life, he argues, man is never presented with any- thing which is completely and perfectly good in every way. The activity of fishing, for example, attractive as it is in some respects, takes time, costs money, involves the risk of getting wet, and so on. Presented with the possibility of fishing, we can always consider it under those aspects under which it is not good, under which it does not attract us. Therefore we are always capable of rejecting it. Our minds are capable of choosing something else which better approximates the universal good. 8 8 It is difficult to give a good single reference for St. 111omas' doctrine of free action. Cf. Summa Tbeologica I, Qq's 82-3; Ia !Iae, Qq's 6-17; De Veritate, Q. 24. �September 1970 This concludes my argument for the freedom of the will. Let me review what I have said by considering the various senses which have been given to the word "free." T he first sense of "freedom" is total and complete spontaneity, a complete lack of relation to anything prior in space-time. I showed the paradox to whrch this concept of freedom gives rise and traced its origin to Kant. The second sense of "freedom" is lack of external constraint. This is the sense in which Hobbes defined "freedom," and it 1nakes no distinction between the way in which men are free and animals are free, or even water flowing down a hill is free. The third sense of "freedom" is that actions are "ours" or "in our power" in the sense that we can deliberate among alternatives a-nd choose what we will d~, ~nd in the sense that our choices themselves are not lrmrted by inadequate understanding or by vicior<s habits. "Freedom" in !:his sense is compatible with the fact that our actions and even our choices are completely predictable. This is the sense of freedom I found in Aristotle. A fourth sense of freedom, suggested by St. Thomas' analysis, accepts the account of freedom as dependent on choice, a choice guided by reason and unobstructed by vice. But it shies away from accepting complete predictability as compatible with freedom. It holds out for the idea that given any possible course of actron, a human being could always have chosen differently. Thus I characterize this fourth sense of "freedom" as reqmnng that a person "could have done otherwise." This. is part of what is involved in the concept of spontaneity, and in fact it may even be the essential point that Kant and others want to 1naintain, that a man's behavior is not completely determined by his situation and his past life, that he could always have done other':'rse than he does. If so, this fourth sense of freedom satisfies the demand for freedom as spontaneity, but does not go to the extreme of saying that a free human act has no relation to anything prior to it in space-time. Whel:her or not I ought to argue for an element of spontaneity in human behavior, I do not know. As I have said before, I am inclined to think that complete predictability is compatible with complete freedo~ and that the;e . real!y IS no conflict between them, provided that one drstmgmshcs among ki-nds of predictability. Predicting that Socrates will refuse to cooperate in the arrest of an innocent man is a totally different thing from predicting which way a rat will run in a maze. I wish to close with a few remarks. about the practical consequences of this discussion of free~om. In a w~y the practical consequences are unimpressive. There IS no theory which can tell us exactly what we ought to do in the extremely varied and complex circumstances of our lives. The ultimate particular action must be grasped by an act of perception; it cannot be deduced from any rules. And yet there are certain general prmcrples whrch follow from a conception of freedom like the one I have sketched. For one thing I have tried to remove a pa~adox _which in my opinion gets i-n the way when one rs trymg to decide what to do. I mean the belref that predrctabrlrty and freedom are incompatible with one another. This belief is, I think, at least partly responsible for the various phenomena of irrationality which I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, for Tolstoy's. statement that a life of reason is hostile to a truly meamngful hfe, for Mrss Barnes' feeling that being able to jump off a cliff is an important and valuable aspect of human life, and so. on. To remove the paradox IS not to tell a person precrsely how to act, but it does free him to use his reason in deciding what to do. It frees him from the feeling that the use of his reason restricts and limits his freedom, that his action must be absolutely spontaneous if it is to be free at all. A s a second practical consequence, consider the following. Suppose we a"e trying to influence someone else's actions. Do we use the techmques of modern advertising, which is content to move people with flashy pictures, with glamour, with subliminal devices of which they are not even aware? Or do we proceed wrth arguments, with persuasion, with reasons wluch respect the capacity of the person to understand the facts of a situation and to himself make an intelligent choice? The expert psychologist Skinner is content to blur this distinction. He is content with any kind of what he calls "reinforcers" of human action, as long as they get a person to behave in a certain way (Seep. 124 of the debate cited in the first paragraph of this article). In fact even some of our political leaders seem to be content to motivate the citizens of a supposedly free country by techniques which have more and more of the sti~k of modern advertising and less and less of l:he clean arr of ratronal discourse. But one who understands and values human freedom will not allow himself to use such techniques. How will he proceed? I have tried to say. in general, but I cannot say in detail, and certamly not m a few words. I can say, however, that reflecting on Aristotle's Ethics or Shakespeare's plays or Tolstoy's novels will help. For the answer is at once as obvious and as difficult as bringing up one's children, as obvious and as difficult as education, as obvious and as difficult as achieving personal freedom for oneself. Thomas J. Slakey is a graduate of St. Mary's Colleg.e, ~alifornia. He received an M.A. degree in philosophy from the Umye~site. Laval, Quebec, and a Ph.D. degree in philosophy from <;o~ne11 UmYemty. He became a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis m 1959 and mored to Santa Fe when the College opened there in 1964. He has lectured on the concept of "form" in Plato and Aristotle, ~nd o~ St. P~ul's Epistle to the Romaus, and has published in The PhllosophJCal Re\'ICW. 13 �The College Marion E. Warren RICHARD ScoFIELD 1898-1970 Richard Scofield, one of St. John's' greatest teachers, died Thursday, July 16th, at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. For seven years he had been afllicted with cancer but had gallantly and cheerfully surmounted both pain and discomfort to continue his tutorial duties at the College. His luminous intelligence, his learning, his gentle· ness, his humor, his love of excellence, and his sure knowledge of when to speak and when to be encouragingly silent-these have made him as nearly ideal a Tutor as the College is likely ever to have. In all these years nothing has been more trusted by students and colleagues alike than his patience, his modesty, his calm perseverance, his precise and subtle understanding, and his unswerving rectitude; nothing has been more admired than his urbanity and elegance, and, above all, his capacity for warm friendship. In his company, other persons have felt themselves somehow at their best. 14 �September 1970 FRoM The Habit of Literature The College, December 1969 " ... I have come increasingly to see that intellectual we think or feel, though without thought and feel- virtue in general, which is the goal of a liberal arts ing, what we do had better for the most part be left college, requires, as a condition for its existence, that undone .... sentimental and moral education without which we are barbarians, not fully human . . . poverty and "Literature is not a substitute for action. It is an vulgarity of feeling, more than stupidity, put humane invitation, in the midst of action, to withdraw from letters beyond the mind's reach . ... it for a moment and to look at it, but as essence and as possibility rather than as existence. In these mo- "Love without knowledge is blind; there is no ments, as if out of time, there are no decisions that better way to avoid the excesses of ignorant and have to be made. 'The falcon hood of morality' need fanatical love than patient study of the causes and not be worn though the discourse itself were moral. consequences of choices. But without love, power Literature makes for serenity and for confidence, not and knowledge are worthless and dangerous ... for the passionlessness of philosophy, not for the peace of religion. It may point beyond itself to super- "It is not necessary to choose the life of action as human and to supernatural goods; it does not attain against the life of thought, society as against con- to them. Its consolation arises out of life and is for templation. These are arbitrary and artificial alterna- the benefit and use of life. It returns you to action, tives. The life of good will embraces them all. _And ready, restored. The habit of literature is the college's the measure of good will is what we do, not what special and best gift to you . ..." �NE~lS ON THE CAMPUSES GRADUATE INSTITUTE AWARDS 28 M.A. DEGREES The Graduate Institute in Liberal Education completed its fourth successful summer at St. John's in Santa Fe, August 14th, with the awarding of M.A. degrees to 28 candidates. The commencement address was given by Dr. Benjamin Henley, acting superintendent of schools in Washington, D. C. Several of the graduates are teachers in his district. Receiving degrees were students from the following areas: Maryland - Baltimore, Grace P. Bennett, Walter Dudley, William Eldridge, Joseph Hines, and Daniel Mowrer. Washington, D. C.-Isaac Block, Marjorie Harper, Otto Jordan, Joyce Ann Matthews, Helen Scott, Governor Stokes, and Malcolm Tillett. New Mexico - Santa Fe, Rosalie Bindel, Sarah Connelly, Wendy Gray, LaVera Loyd, Correen Najjar, Sandra Purrington, and Edwin Reel; Albuquerque, Velma McConnell; Alameda, Simmie Gibson; Cuba, Jacob Martinez. Others-James H. Childers, Colby, Kansas; William Douglas, Williamsburg, Virginia; Muriel McCown, Pueblo, Colorado; Sara Macina, Midland, Texas; Fred Schwendimann, Richardson, Texas, and Andrew Treacy, Patchogue, New York. The Graduate Institute was opened in 1967 to provide advanced training in the liberal arts for school teachers and other interested college graduates. There were twelve graduates last year at the first awarding of degrees. There were a total of 123 students enrolled this past summer from eighteen states and the District of Columbia. Most of the Tutors come from the St. John's faculties in Annapolis and Santa Fe. James P. Shannon of Santa Fe was the director. 16 The four sections of the curriculum are "Literature," "Philosophy and Theology," "Politics and Society," and "Mathematics and Natural Science." One may receive a degree on completion of all four sections of the program, or on completion of three s~c­ tions if one has nine graduate credits to transfer from another college or univerisity. Each eight-week section includes a tutorial, a seminar and a preceptorial which includes the writing of a paper. Readings are generally from the St. John's seminar lists of great books. The school teachers who participate say they learn a great deal about teaching methods simply by participating in the discussions and by observing how the Tutors usc the art of questioning and listening to develop a student's thinking and learning abilities. They testify the St. John's methods can be applied at all levels from first grade through high school. Discussing what they enjoy about the Graduate Institute, they say: "The program is valuable to adults in a period of transition in their vocational lives." "Most universities and colleges have numbers. Here you remain a person." "It is a fantastic experience to have the freedom to express your ideas, to participate." <IYou can relate to other people as you've never done before; it is almost impossible to withdraw from others in the community." ~~The program emphasizes the dignity of man, that he's more than a biological being" (From a medical student). Tutors this year included Robert Bunker, Tiwmas Harris, DaViG-Jones, Harvey Mead, Michael Meehan, Michael Ossorgin, John Steadman, and Ralph Swentzell of Santa Fe; Joseph Cohen, Geoffrey Comber, George Doskow, Nicholas Maistrellis, Benjamin Milner, Thomas Simpson, and J. Winfree Smith of Annapolis; Lowell Edmunds, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Chaninah Maschler of Forest Hills, New York. James P. Shannon, Benjamin J. Henley, and Richard D. We~gle (left to right) are.show~ in .front of an Indian weaving in the Santa Fe student center followmg the Graduate Inshtute m Liberal Education commencement, which was addressed by Mr. Henley. �September 1970 PLAYWRIGHT IN RESIDENCE AND SEVEN NEW TUTORS JOIN ANNAPOLIS FACULTY This fall !\Ivin Aronson became the playwright ;,-, ::esidence at St. John's College in Annapolis, and Steven B. Crockett, William D. DeHart, Robert Arthur Licht, Brian Patrick McGuire, Alfred Mallin, William W. O'Grady, Jr., and Jonathan B. Skinner became members of the faculty. Mr. Aronson attended St. John's College from 1948 to 1950 and Columbia University from 1950 to 1951. He is the author of two off· Broadway plays, Nighthawks and The Pocket Watch (725 performances). He was an assistant to Alan Jay Lerner for three years, and actor and sound technician at Circle-in-the-Square for three productions. Mr. Crockett received the A.B. degree in 1965 from Earlham College where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1967 he was awarded the A.M. degree from The University of Chicago where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Ford Foundation Fellow. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University. Dming 1969 he was an instructor in the lmmanities at the Central YMCA Community College in Chicago and an advisor to undergraduate students on the Committee on General Studies in the Humanities at the University. Mr. DeHart graduated from Allegheny College with a B.S. degree in 1955 and was certified to teach by Clarion State College in 1959. The University of Rochester granted him a Ph.D. degree in 1965. After a year as a teaching fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, he joined the Department of Physiology at the University of Rochester Medical School as a graduate physiological trainee. From 1965 to 1966 he was Senior Neurophysiologist at Smith, Kline, & French in Philadelphia, and from 1966 to 1970 he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology of the Medical College of Virginia. He is a member of the New York and Virginia Academies of NEW CATALOGUE POLICY Science1 the American Association for When the 1970-72 College catalogue the Advancement of Science, the International Union of Physiological is published this month, there will not be a general mailing to alumni. Sciences 1 and Sigma Xi. There has always been some question Mr. Licht received a B.A. degree about alumni needing or even wanting from St. John's College in 1965 and an M.A. degree in 1967 from the Penn- each issue as it appears. Each copy sylvania State University where he is costs $.60. Then, too, the copies rea doctoral candidate in philosophy. At quired for one alumni mailing would the University he was a graduate as- supply the needs of the Annapolis Adsistant and a National Defense Edu- missions Office for an entire year. cation Act Fellow. He was a lecturer Hence, the expense of a general mailin the Department of Philosophy at ing to alumni does not seem to be Bucknell Univ.ersity from 1969 to 1970. warranted. Alumni who are serving as AdMr. McGuire received his B.A. demissions Volunteers will each receive gree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1968 and is a doctoral a copy of the catalogue. Other alumni candidate in history at Oxford Uni- can receive them by sending a request versity. From 1968 to 1970 he was a to the Publicity Office, St. John's Fulbright Scholar in Balliol College at College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. The new catalogue will again contain Oxford University. He is married to the former Ann Kirstin Pedersen of the site plans for the two campuses as well as new material on finaneial Copenhagen. Mr. Mallin is a 1965 graduate of aid and admissions. Western Illinois University. From 1966 to 1969 he was a National De- PRESIDENT WEIGLE REPLIES TO fense Education Act Fellow at the Uni- PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION versity of Pennsylvania where he reON CAMPUS UNREST ceived an M.A. degree in 1967. He was President Richard D. Weigle of St. a Richard M. Weaver Fellow from 1969 to 1970 at the University of Penn- John's College has cited general student sylvania where he is a doctoral candi- dissatisfaction with their education as date in philosophy. a basic cause of campus unrest in Mr. O'Grady graduated summa cum America. laude from the University of Notre The computerized approach to eduDame in 1966. He received the M.A. cation has led to discontent and disdegree in 1966 and the Ph.D. degree illusionment among students, President in 1970 from the University of Chicago Weigle said in reply to a questionnaire where he was a Woodrow Wilson from William W. Scranton, chairman Fellow, a Danforth Fellow, and a Uni- of the President's Commission on versity of Chicago Humanities Fellow. Campus Unrest. Students, Mr. Weigle said, were beFollowing graduation from Carleton College in 1963 with a B.A. degree, ing short-changed in their education beMr. Skinner received an M.A. degree cause of fragmentation of learning, from the University of Michigan in neglect of undergraduate teaching, lack 1964. After two years as an instructor of ''real dialogue," and failure of instiin mathematics at Hope College he tutions to instill in their students "a was a teaching assistant, an instructor sense of history." He credited the lack in mathematics, and a lecturer at the of violence at St. John's to its traUniversity of Massachusetts where he ditional liberal arts curriculum, emphawas a doctoral candidate. W11ile at the sis on learning through discussion, and University of Michigan he was a the personal involvement of each Woodrow Wilson Fellow. In addition student in his education. he is a member of Pi Mu Epsilon and "The sheer force of numbers, parPhi Kappa Phi. ticularly in the state-supported insti- 17 �The College tutions, results in a computerized oper~ ation, which the individual student resents and finds dehumanizing," the President noted. "Compartmentalization of knowledge through, and even within, departments has fragmented faculties and student bodies, so that true community of learning is difficult if not impossible to achieve," he added. SANTA FE RECEIVES FoRD FOUNDATION GRANT The Ford Foundation has approved a grant of $150,000 for St. John's College in Santa Fe to be used at the President's discretion. Tire grant of $50,000 annually for three years will be used in a variety of ways to strengthen the overall academic program. President Weigle said that several projects were being considered. One possibility would be to create a toplevel committee of St. John's Tutors to work with academic specialists in studying certain subject matter fields to discover whether they might be included in the St. John's curriculum. The President cited the library and lecture programs as other areas in which portions of the grant might be used to improve the overall development of the College at Santa Fe. Funds also are needed to provide more frequent interchange of faculty members between the two campuses. FEBRUARY FRESHMEN ATTEND SUMMER CLASSES IN ANNAPOLIS Twenty students who matriculated on the Annapolis campus in February concluded their freshman year during the summer. They attended seminars led by Tutors Douglas Allanbrook, Bryce Jacobsen, William Pitt, John Sarkissian, Robert L. Spaeth, Robert 'Villiamson, and Elliott Zuckerman. The summer classes began on Mon~ day, June 15th, and continued through Friday, August 21st. The twenty freshmen began their sophomore year with the regular class in Septemher. 18 J, Burchenal Ault VICE PRESIDENT APPOINTED IN SANTA FE J. Burchenal Ault of Oyster Bay, New York, has been appointed Vice President of St. John's College in Santa Fe. President Richard D. Weigle said the College's Board of Visitors and Governors approved the appointment which was effective September 1st. Mr. Ault is responsible for administrative supervision of the Santa Fe campus except for academic matters and student welfare, which remain the province of the Dean. He will represent St. John's in Santa Fe in the absence of the President and he will be responsible for the development, public relations, and fnnd-raising programs of the College. Mr. Ault, who has a B.A. degree in English literature from Yale University, has had extensive business executive experience in New Yark. He was President of Burlington Industrial Fabrics Company for six years. From 1964 to 1969 he was Vice President, Treasurer, President, Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Radiation Research Corporation in Westbury, New York. He presently is a director of two businesses. Mr. Ault has been active in educational and civic affairs in the East. He is a member of the Alumni Board at Yale University and Chairman of the Alumni Fund at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He is a Trustee of Hofstra University, St. Paul's College, Chatham Hall, and the Foundation for Education of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. He is President of the Pro Arte Symphony Orchestra Association of Hempstead, New York, and a Trustee of the Goldovsky Opera Institute. He is a former Mayor, Trustee and Chairman of the Planning Board of the Village of Upper Brookville, Long Island. He serv.ed in the U. S. Marine Corps in Korea and held the rank of Cf\ptain when released from active duty. The 44 year-old executive is married and has five children. His father, Bromwell Ault, is a former chairman of the St. John's Board of Visit<JrS and Governors. NEW TuTORS AT SANTA FE Three Tutors and two interns joined the Santa Fe faculty this fall. A former Tutor, Henry N. Larom, rejoined the faculty after a two-year leave of absence. The new Tutors are John S. Chamberlin, Frank K. Flinn, and Edward H. Porcella. The interns are Mrs. Toni Drew and Paul D. Mannick. Tutors Dean R. Haggard and Charles G. Bell are on leaves of absence. Mr. Chamberlin received his B.A. degree in English from Haverford College in 1964, his M.A. degree in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto in 1966, and his Ph.D. degree in Medieval Studies from Toronto in 1970. He has lectured on Old English, Chaucer, and Forms of English Literature, and has served as archivist at the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received two Woodrow Wilson Fellowships. Mr. Flinn received his A.B. degree from Quincy College, Illinois, in 1962, was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Divinity School (B.D.) in 1966, studied at the University of �September Heidelberg as a Fulbright Fellow in 1966-67, and did graduate study in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Harvard ( 1967-68) and the University of Pennsylvania ( 1968-69). He served as Assistant Professor at La Salle College Graduate School of Religion Philadelphia, 1969-70; Instructor at Boston College, 1967-68; and Lecturer at Newton College of the Sacred Heart 1965-66. ' Mr. Porcella has a B.A. degree from St. Mary's College and an M.A. degree from the University of California at San Diego, where he was a doctoral candidate. He has been an Instructor in philosophy at the University of San Diego College for Men from 1969 to 1970, Teaching Assistant in humanities at the University of California, 1965-70, and Lecturer in literature and theology at St. Mary's, 1967-68. Mr. Larom was an education director for the Peace Corps in Ethiopia and Elementary Language Arts Director for the State of New Mexico during his leave of absence. He taught at St. John's in 1967-68. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Montana and his master's degree from Idaho State University. He taught in the Nokuru Secondary School in Kenya, East Africa, in 1963-65 under sponsorship of Teachers College, Columbia University. Mrs. Drew received her B.A. degree from St. John's in Santa Fe this year. Mr. Mannick compl€ted his freshman and sophomore years at St. John's in Santa Fe. He received his B.A. degree in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from California State College at Long Beach this spring. NEIDORF APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE INSTITUTE IN LIBERAL EDUCATION The Board of Visitors and Governors has approved the appointment of Robert A. Neidorf to succeed James P. Shannon as Director of the summer Graduate Institute in Liberal Education. Mr. Shannon has resigned as Vice President of St. John's College in Santa Fe and Director of the Insti- 1970 year by one of the six recognized regional U. S. accrediting associations. St. John's in Santa Fe was accredited independently last year by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. CAMPUS NoTES Robert A. Neidorf tute to enroll in the School of Law of the University of New Mexico. Mr. Neidorf has been a Tutor in both Annapolis and Santa Fe and in the Graduate Institute as well. He is a member of the Instruction Committee, and will continue to serve as a Tutor in the College. Mr. Neidorf received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree from Yale University. He served as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton and was an Instructor and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. SANTA FE RECEIVES FRoM FouNDATION $5,000 St. John's College in Santa Fe has received a $5,000 grant from C.I.T. Foundation of New York. To qualify for the grant, St. John's had to raise an equivalent sum through donations from local business organizations and funds. The check was presented to Santa Fe's treasurer, Kirk C. Tuttle, by Donald George, regional representative for C.I.T.'s Tuition Plan, Inc. '1 'he Foundation's annual awards go to privately supported, four-year nonspecialized liberal arts colleges and universities that were accredited or had accreditation restored in the previous Charles T. Elzey, Annapolis treasurer, was elected president of the Annapolis Fine Arts Festival Board for 1970-1971. He recently served as treasurer of the 1970 Fine Arts Festival. The College was one of the focal points of the June festivities with opening ceremonies in the Francis Scott Key Memorial Hall, poetry readings in McDowell Hall, art and sculpture exhibits in Iglehart, and an outdoor cafe. James E. Grant, business manager in Annapolis, and three colleaguesRobert Welzenbach, Donald Stratton, and Fred King-recently won first prize in the international barbershop quartet competitions in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Oriole Four quartet won the highest award on June 27th after twelve and a half years of dedicated work. The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.) contest is sponsored annually by the International Society as a tribute to Owen C. Cash who founded the society in 1938. John S. Kieffer is at home recovering from major surgery. The Annapolis 1970 graduation address by The Reverend J. Winfree Smith has been published in the Congressional Record on June 30th and Jnly 8th. Edward G. Sparrow represented the College at the inauguration of Dr. ClaLence C. Walton as the first lay president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C., in November. Marie Winterhaler, one of the first staff members of St. John's College in Santa Fe, resigned August 7th as acting assistant dean; she and Roger S. Peterson, a Tutor at the College, were married on August 23rd in Los Angeles, California. 19 �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES ALUMNI DELEGATES During the academic year 1969-70, a number of alumni across the country were called upon to represent the College on ceremonial occasions at other institutions; w.e are grateful to the following for their help: John S. Price '31, at the sesq~icen­ tennial celebration and maugurahon of Thomas A. Bartlett as president of Colgate University, September 25th, 1969; Kendon L. Stubbs '60, at the !50th anniversary convocation at the University of Virginia, October 21st; Alice G. Chalmers '67, at the inauguration of Arthur G. Hansen as president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, November 29th; Thomas Farran, Jr. '42 at the lOOth anniversary convocatio~ and inauguration of Jacqueline Grennan Wexler as president of Hunter College, February lith; Ch;nles L. Van Doren '46, at the lOOth anniversary convocation at Loyola Uni~ versity of Chicago, March 9th; Robert A. Licht '62, at the inauguration of Robert J. Nassen as president of Bloomsburg (Pa.) State College, April 18th; Jonathan E. Brooks '49, at the centennial convocation at the Umversity of Akron, May 8th; Paul R. Comegys '41, at the inauguration of Frank N. Elliott as president of Rider College, May 16th; and Fred Bielaski '16, at the dedication of the new campus of the University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico, July 16th. ALUMNI SET NEW GIVING RECORDS Although the final report on Alumni Annual Giving will be published in detailed form soon, our readers might enjoy a few highlights of the 1969-70 Campaign which ended on June 30th. 20 New records were set as 828 alumni responded to the appeals of Chairman Myron L. Wolbarsht '50 and his team of volunteer workers. Unrestncted gifts amounted to $26,139, or 4.5 per cent in excess of the announced goal. Tbere were 87 King William Associates during the year, up from 83 the previous year; 56 of these were enrolled for the second time. (Membership in the Associates is limited to alumni who make an unrestncted g~ft of at least $100.) The total response was 29.2 per cent, comfortably passing the goal of 25 per cent, and up from 22.5 per cent last year. Thirty-six of the achve classes exceeded the 29.2 per cent figure, while 50 classes went over the 25 per cent goal. And for the first time in many years, every class was represented by at least one donor. DANFORTH FELLOWSHIPS FOR WOMEN This year for the seventh time the Danforth Foundation has announced competition for its Graduate Fellow. ships for Women. The objective of the program 1s to find and develop college and secondary school teachers among American women whose preparation for teaching has been postponed or interrupted. Recipients of the Graduate Fellowships are expected to undertake full:time teaching upon completwn of their de· grees. . Thirty-five new appomtments are available annually, with the maximum award for 1971-72 set at $3,000 plus tuition and fees, or for heads of families, $4,000 plus tuition and fees. Appointments are for one year beginning September, 1971, and are renewable annually. A brochure Danforth Graduate Fellowships for 'women, provides fuller information about this program. Write: Graduate Fellowships for Women Danforth Foundation 222 South Central Avenue St. Louis, Missouri 63105 HoMECOMING OcToBER 16-17 Building on the success of last year's record-breaking attraction, this year's Homecoming Committee is pJ;mning another two-day event. Chairman Jack A Nadol '57 has announced the gener~l schedule of activities, and this appears on the back cover of this issue. The highlight for many alumm Will again be Alumni Seminars on Saturday morning. (The specific readmgs w1ll be announced in a special mailing about mid-September.) Those who attended last year will note that there 1s no conflict with this year's seminars. For those who are inclined toward golf tennis or sailing, Friday's schedule 'offers ~pportunities to enjoy the outdoors. For those whose interests are less athletic, the week-end offers a variety of other activities. . Again this year, certam classes :"'ll be holding reunions at Homecommg. Special emphasis is being placed on the "decade" classes, and on the 5th and 25th year classes. Plan now to join these and other classes in October. CLASS NOTES 1924 Coleman M. Anderson, known to generations of students at Ba1timore's Forest Park High School as "Andy", has retired after 46 years of service to scholastic athletics in Maryland. During his years at Forest Park, Mr. ~nderson coached five sports, and among Ius young charges were many future St. Johnnies. �September 1970 1931 On June 30, 1970, Lt. Gen. Lewis J. Fields retired after 39 years' service in the United States Marines. Gen. Fields received his professional education in various Marine Corps schools and at the Army's Field Artillery School at Ft. Sill, Okla. At the time of his retirement, Gen. Fields was Commanding General, Marine Corps Development and Education Command, Quantico, Va. Gen. and Mrs. Fields now make their home in Fairfax, Va. 1940 Robert H. Reynolds on August 7th received his master's degree in Social Studies from Shippenburg (Pa.) State College. 1963 Paul C. Coclmm, recently graduated from the General Theological Seminary in New York, is now vicar at the Church of the Holy Cross, San Antonio, Tex. He was ordained deacon on June 14th. Mr. Cochran and his wife, whom he met and married when he was in Greece, are parents of a year-old daughter, Anastasia. S. David Krimins graduated in June from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. and Mrs. Krimins and their year-old son, Ethan Marc, are now living in Richmond, Va., where Dr. Krimins is an intern at the Medical College of Virginia HospitaL 1964 1947 A good note from John Brunn advises that he has just completed a year's soibbatical leave, studying mathematics at California State College at Hayward. He will again be teaching mathematics and physics at Chabot College in San Francisco. Mr. Brunn adds that in the spring he will work with an interdisciplinary program using great hooks; he will have the physics, mathematics, and astronomy portions of the program, and will lead one of the five discussion sections. TI1c August 3rd issue of Time contained a brief write-up about Eugene V. Thaw, as part of a story on private art dealers in New York City. 1950 The Rev. David C. Streett II in July became Administrative Director of the Augusta (Ga.) Planned Parenthood Association. He will also continue as vicar of All Saints' Church in Beach Island, S. C. 1955 Donald A. PI1illips joined the National Council on Alcoholism, Inc., in June as Assistant Director of the Labor-Management Services Department. For seven years preceding this latest appointment, Mr. Phillips was Sales and Service Manager for Ma1co Plastics, Inc., in Baltimore. He and his family make their home in Fanwood, N. J. 1958 Christina (Sopher) Neumann in June received her M.A. degree in German from the University of California at Riverside, and has started work on her doctorate in the same field. 1961 Darrell L. Hemy, President of the Alumni Association, former Zoning Hearings Officer for Anne Arundel County (Md.), and now in law practice in Annapolis, was a Democratic candidate for the Maryland Senate in the September, 1970, primary election. 1962 Susan (Cliver) Eames and Lt.Comdr. Lucian B. Purinton II were married last October 18th, and at present are stationed in Portugal. Sara (Hobart) Homeyer, who so thoughtfully sent the information about Paul Cochran (see 1963), writes that her husband has been assigned to Altus Air Force Base, Okla., from San Antonio. John F. White, a graduate assistant at the New School for Social Research in New York, delivered the Friday lecture for the February freshman class on August 14th. Mr. White's subject was "On Mimesis (Poetry and Politics)." 1965 Susan (Liebersobn) Ginsburg writes that husband Jay is now a partner in A. A. Ehrlich and Associates, a Washington, D. C., firm engaging in individual and business financial planning. The Ginsburgs are the parents of a year-old son David, and e.xpect another addition at the end of the year. 1966 \Villiam N. McKeatchie last Trinity Sunday became a deacon in the Church of God in a ceremony in Toronto, Canada, Mr. McKeatchie will serve in the Cathedral Parish of St. James in Toronto until October, and will then become Assistant to the Chaplain and a D .Phil. candidate at St. John's College, Oxford. Douglas C. Proctor and Miss Roberta Ruth West of Rockville, Md., were married July 18th in Silver Spring, Md. working at Spring Grove State Hospital as an alternative to military service, hopes to become a Presbyterian clergyman. Hope Rosemary Zoss left the single ranks when she and Jon Wayne Schladen were married on May 31st at her parents' home in Minneapolis. Both Mr. and Mrs. Schladen have been reading specialists for Independent Education Services of Princeton, N. J. In addition, Mrs. Schladen has conducted a master course in reading development at the Chaplain's School, Newport, R. I. 1968 Bruce R. Baldwin {SF) received his M.A. degree in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan on May 2nd. So far as we are aware, Mr. Baldwin is the first Santa Fe gradu. ate to receive an advanced degree. Information from the Santa Fe campus indicates that Mr. Baldwin was to have entered Peace Corps service on July 6th. 1968 Ann Blaine Garson is now a graduate student in pathology at the University of Pittsburgh. The engagement of Stephanie Prigge and George F. Kramer SF '66 was announced in July. An August wedding was planned. M"r. Kramer is a law student at the University of New Mexico. 1969 Jonatlmn D. Sackson and Penelope R. Rowe '71 were married August 8th in Cincinnati, with Andrew A. F. Garrison '70 serving as best man. The Sacksons will live in Annapolis this year. Hugo B. D. Hamilton (SF) and Miss Georgia Marodes Weyer were married on June 27th in Santa Fe. Mrs. Hamilton is a native of Santa Fe, and is Registrar of the Museum of New Mexico. The Hamiltons wiH make their home in Santa Fe. In Memoriam 1967 William F. Cone bas been appointed Assist· 1910-P. Y. K. HowAT, \Vashington, D. G., July 19, 1970. ant Headmaster of the middle grades at the Key School He has taught mathematics at the Annapolis school since graduation from St. John's. Roger B. Glad and Miss Rowena E. McDonald of Port Hueneme, Cal., were married on June 20th. Mrs. Glad is a student at the University of California at Los Angeles, while Mr. Glad is employed in the Los Angeles area. Clark E. Lobenstine, his wife Joy, and two Episcopal clergymen have begun a Christian commune in Baltimore. Their desire is to show that peace in this world must start at the neighborhood level, where people, with their basic differences, show that they can live together in harmony. Mr. Lobenstine, who is 1921-BEVERLY S. RoBERTS, Fredericksburg, Va., March 25, 1970. 1922-JoHN H. ScHWATKA, Chestertown, Md., June 29, 1970. 1923-ALBERT SYDNEY DERINGER, Chestertown, Md. July 17, 1970. THOMAS S. PHOEBUS, Richmond, June 24, 1970. 1929-THE REV. CHARLES M. ROBINJarrettsville, Md., July 14, 1970. SON, 1943-PETER H. W. JACKSoN, Rutherford, N. C., July 8, 1970. 21 �HOMECOMING ACTIVITIES "Friday, October 16th: Morning: Golf Tournament Afternoon: Golf Tournament Alumni Seminars Noon: Luncheon with students Afternoon: Annual Meeting Tennis Matches Sailing Night: Graduate School Counseling Alumni- Student Soccer Game Lecture Movie Informal "Welcome Aboard" Cocktail Party Saturday, October 17th: lVIorning: Registration The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 2!404 Night: Annual Dinner Alumni Parties Second-elass postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 21 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, September 1970 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-09 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXII, Number 3 of The College. Published in September 1970. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_22_No_3_1970 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf President's Report Presidents The College https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/9d7c5dff94abb029509aa40bf098e760.pdf 3fa11b3b07fdfe1b8dded9572dae5733 PDF Text Text THE COLLEGE St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland Santa Fe, New Mexico December 1970 �The College Cover: Statue of Virgil, by Benedetto Antelami (?),Mantua, Palazzo Ducale, ca. 1215. Inside Front Cover: McDowell Hall, Annapolis. The College is a publication for friends of St. John's College and for those who might become friends of the College, if they came to know it. Our aim is to indicate, within the limitations of the magazine form, why, in our opinion, St. John's comes closer than any other college in the nation to being what a college should be. If ever well-placed beacon lights were needed by American education it is now. By publishing articles about the work of the College, articles reflecting the distinctive life of the mind that is the College, we hope to add a watt or two to the beacon light that is St. John's. Editor: Laurence Berns Managing Editor: Mary P. Felter Alumni Editor: Thomas Farran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Maurice Trimmer Art Editor: Daniel Sullivan, '71 The College is published by the Development Offices of St. John's College, College Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21404 (Julius Rosenberg, Director), and Santa Fe, New Mexico (J. Burchenal Ault, Vice President); Member, American Alumni Council. President, St. John's College, Richard D. Weigle. Published four times a year in April, July, October, and December. Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. Vol. XXII December 1970 No. 4 In the December Issue: Reflections on the Idea of Science, by Curtis Wilson. 1 The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid, by Jacob Klein ... 12 News on the Campuses .. 19 Alumni Activities ... 23 �Reflections on the Idea of Science* By CURTIS WILSON We and our world stand within the unity of an encompassing history, a vast culture or set of traditions, inherited techniques and patterns of behavior, interlocking and diverging patterns of transmitted thought. And perhaps the mightiest of these traditions today is that which we call "science." Its eff·ects are omnipresent. It has trans~ formed, and continues to transform, at an ·ever accelerat- Rigorous standards of procedure are upheld; results are arrived at which are reproducible with a known order of precision. Should a mistaken assumption be made, it will surely be found to be such, for there is a constant reference to observation and experiment, to reality. We gain the image here of a machine which functions smoothly, dispassionately, according to rules of operahon which are clearly set forth once and for all. As its product we obtain universally established, objective truths. ing rate, the visible world around us as well as the routine of our lives. It has made possible the extinction of man and his culture in a universal holocaust; and it has presented, for the first time in the history of the human species, the possibility of banishing material want from the face of the earth. All this is journalistic commonplace, and the actual or possible material effects of science are not my concern here. These effects t?stify, of course, to a certain kind of success of the on-going tradition of modern science, and this success brings with it a certain claim. When I set out to think in the attitude of one who seeks to arrive a-t truth and to avoid falsehood, this claim appears upon the horizon of my thought, whether invited or not. It is the claim of the objectivity of science. Whether I choose to welcome this spectre as a friend, or to duel with him as an enemy, which is involved here is relatively recent. In the .thirteenth century the use of these terms in philosophic discourse was almost opposite to the present-day use; "subject," from subjicio, to place or throw under, could mean a thing as a sustainer of properties and attributes, something so to speak "thrown under" the qualities of the thing; "object," from objicio, to place or throw before or opposite one, normally meant the concept intended by the mind. The present-day use appears to derive from a particular setting of problems in modern philosophic thought, be- or even to dismiss him as irrelevant to my concerns, his ginning with Descartes's assumption that what exists must appearance, I believe, will not have been without lasting effect upon my thought. For as participant in a particular either be a thinking thing, res cogitans, or an extended thing, res extensa. Particularly since Kant, the words "subject" and "object" hav-e been the key terms of a compli- culture at a particular time-and every human being is that-! do not find it possible to determine my thought just as I please; problems, and the terms in which they are couched, are presented. And we cannot set out to think in our time without being confronted with the claim upon our thought of scientific objectivity. It seems best, therefore, to attempt to question this spectre, to try to elicit the meaning of his pr.esence. Why do I say "spectre"? Surely there is nothing ghostly or frightening about scientific objectivity. Here is a realm of light. We are out of the dust of metaphysical disputation. Superstition and prejudice have been left behind. *A lecture given at St. John's College, Annapolis, in September, 1961. "Objectivity," however, is a polar term; it evokes its contrary or opposite, "subjectivity"; it has its meaning in relation to the meaning of this second term. I should mention that the use of the terms Hsubject" and Hobject" cated and sometimes acrimonious dialectic. Kierkegaard says: "Subjectivity is the truth." The theologian Berdyaev says: "The self-alienation of spirit in objectivity is a fall." The psychoanalyst Theodore Reik speaks of the bitchgoddess objectivity. l-Ie suggests that there is an historical connection between the most elevated passion or thirst for knowledge and the desire to devour something; this hypothesis, he adds, will explain why people open their mouths when surprised. What is at issue here? Clearly the terms "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are being used as firearms; they are, as we say, "loaded terms." Is not this opposition basically the one of which C.P. Snow complains?-the splitting of the intellectual life of western society into two polar groups, between which there is a gulf of mutual incomprehension and even hostility-those typified as literary intellectuals 1 �The College on the one hand, those called scientists on the other. "The non-scientists," Snow says, have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man's condition. The scientists believe that the literary intellectnals are totally lacking foresight, pecnliarly unconcerned with their brother man, in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict art and thought to the existeThtial moment. It is not hard, Snow adds, to produce plenty of this kind of subterranean backchat. It is my purpose here, not to rehearse the debate, but to try to specify more exactly the notion of scientific objectivity, which I have called a ghost, and then to compare this notion with what I believe to be the actualities of scientific practice. When we think or speak of scientific objectivity, I believe we ar.e evoking a kind of mosaic of meanings, different components of which will be in the foreground of our attention in different contexts of discussion. I believe I can distinguish the following components. First, we are thinking of science as empirical, as based on observation of what we call facts. We are thinking of science as a set of statements which is "objective" in the sense that its substance, its essential content, is entirely determined by observation, even though its presentation may be shaped by and end in the discard. Yes, of course, you say, a selection has to be made; the observations have to be sorted. In order that knowledge should arise from sense experience, you must abstract or separate certain aspects from the different perceptions, associ3!te similar aspects in order to form general ideas, and correlate those aspects which are constantly conjoined. I counter with a question: What do you mean here by "observation" or "sense~perception"? Am I supposed to be thinking of myself as a blind computer harnessed to a brainless photoplate? Consider the following passage from Duhem's La theorie physique (p. 218): Enter a laboratory; approach the table crowded with an assor•tment of apparatus, an electric cell, silk-covered copper wire, small cups of mercury, spools of wire, a mirror mounted on an iron bar; the experimenter is ins·evting into small openings the metal ends of ebony-headed pins; the iron oscillates, and the mirror attached to it throws a luminous band upon a celluloid scale; the forward-backward motion of this spot enables the physicist to observe H1e minute oscillations of the iron bar. But ask him what he is doing. Will he answer "I am studying the oscillations of the iron bar which carries a mirror"? No, he will say that he is measuring the electric resistance of the spools. If you ar·e astonished, if you ask him what his words mean, what rela-tion they have with the phenomena he has been observing and which you have noted at the same time as he, he will answer that your question requires a long explanation and that you should take a course in electricity. convention. Second, we are thinking of science as a set of techniques, exact methods for establishing control over experience. We are thinking that there is something called scientific method, a set of precise rules for proceeding which can be formally set out and empirically tested. The scientist has only to follow the rules faithfully in order to arrive at reliable results. Third, we are thinking of science as proposing a certain type of explanation as the only proper and final kind of explanation; roughly speaking, a physico-chemical explanation of all things, including living and thinking beings. I shall take up the three components one by one. It will be clear enough that I regard these assertions embedded in the notions of scientific objectivity as false and misleading; but there is a central and important clement in the notion which I shall seek to disengage in the end. I begin with the notion of science as empirical, as determined in its essential content by observation. Kirchhoff, the nineteentl1-century physicist, said that science is ultimately concerned with nothing else than a precise and conscientious description of what has been perceived through the senses. Suppose now that a man devotes his entire adult life to writing down in notebooks a precise and conscientious description of what he perceives through the senses; when his life approaches its close, he forwards these notebooks to the National Academy of Sciences. It will not be merely because of bureaucratic inefficiency that these notebooks are never read by anyone, 2 Is it altogether clear that the visitor sees the same thing as the physicist? Consider the following cases. A musician listening to a quintet hears that the oboe is out of tune; the non~musician does not. Or a Westerner and a Far~ Easterner listen, both for the first time, to a Mozart concerto. For the one there is a perception of form, for the other there is confusing, unadulterated pure sound. For the experienced listener, the interpretation is there in the music; it is not something taking up a time of its own, subsequent to the hearing. 'I11e same goes for seeing. I see a bird in the air; my seeing takes him in as a being that has just been flying and that will continue in the arc of his flight. Or compare the way in which the freshmen see the College campus with the way it appears to his ancient Tutor. Seeing, hearing, perceiving are through and through interpretative; only in a limiting case, maybe in the case of a newborn babe, or a person fainting, does observation become an encounter with unfamiliar and unconnected flashes, spots of color, sounds, bumps. A physicist confronted with observations which he could describe only in terms of color patches, shapes, oscillations, pointer read- �December 1970 In the development of modern physics one has to distinguish the great theoretical achievements, or times of theoretical break-through, from the mopping-up exercises whrch follow. Textbooks of physical science tend to give the following picture. First a theory is proposed. Then there is a certain amount of logical and mathematical equipment, a kind of machine, used in manipulating the theory; the theoretical assumptions are fed into this machine along with certain initial condi-tions specifying the srtuatwn to whrch the theory is to be applied, the crank is turned; logical and mathematical operations are ings, would feel himself to be in a conceptually confused situation; he would try to get his observations to cohere against a background of established knowledge. It is in terms of a perceiving in which the elements already cohere in a pattern and interpretation that new inquiry proceeds, and not m terms of an encounter with pure flashes, sounds and bumps. Physicists observe new data as physicists, and not as cameras. What I have been saying argues against the view that observation is simply opening one's eyes and seeing, or that facts are plain and unvarnished, and not laden with theory. But I want to go further. Observation, measurement, experimental result-all these have had their roles in the development of what we call modern science. These roles have not been the same as the role of experience in, say, .theological speculation-where, by the way, experience does have a role; for I do not think that we can make any statement at all which docs not have roots of some kind in our experience of the visible, sounding world. But the question is how we are to describe the relation of theory and fact in the modern scientific development; and I maintain that we do not describe that relation correctly if we say that theories are merely convenient summaries of experience, or economic adaptations of thought to faots, or logical constructions whose sole purpose is to predict what will he observed. I do not even believe that it is corr~ct to _say that validity or rightness of a theory can be Slffiply JUdged by the degree to which it is confirmed by experiment, or that a theory is automatically discarded when experiment fails to confirm it. The rightness or wrongness of these statements that I make can only he determined through a close examination of the ways in which scientific speculation and experimentation have proceeded in actual, particular cases; I cmi only give a few indications here. I take physical science as paradigmatic, and avoid the social sciences where the maxim often seems to be: If you cannot measure, measure anyhow. intern~ ally performed, and numerical predictions emerge from the chute at the front of the machine. These predictions are arranged in the left-hand column of a table· in the right-hand column appear the results of actual r'neasure· ments. If the numbers in the two columns are in reasonable agreement, the theory is said to be confirmed; otherwise, it is disconfirmed. We must first ask: what is meant by "reasonable agreement"? Is an average deviation of three per cent acceptable, is ten per cent good enough, or should we insist on 0.001 per cent? These questions cannot be decided a priori, independently of the total theoretical background within which the physicist works in each case. In effect, the tables in the textbooks define what is meant by reasonable agreement in the case which is being described. In the second place, we must examine what physicists do in the period following the proposal of a new and encompassing theory. Are they engaged in attempting to confirm the theory by experiment? If so, then a failure to obtain agreement between theoretical prediction and actual measurement should lead to discarding the theory. Nothing of the sort happens. In general, a theory is not discarded unless there is another theory to replace it. In general, the theory has already been accepted; it has been accepted because it brings potential order to a large number of natural phenomena. Finer and finer investigations of the quantitative match between theory and observation are not attempts to confirm the theory, but attempts to make explicit what was previously implicit agreement between theory and the world. Again and again, nature's hand has to be forced. If the physicist succeeds in achieving reasonable agreement between theory and observation, he achieves a result already anticipated by the general community of physicists. If he fails, his failure counts not against the theory, but against himself; his talents have not proved equal to the task. In 1638 Galileo published his description of the famous inclined plane experiment. He claimed that comparisons of the times required by a sphere to roll different measured distances down the plane confirmed his prior thesis that the motion was uniformly accelerated; he did not report his measurements. Subsequently a group of wellknown scientists in France announced their total failure to get comparable results, and publicly doubted that 3 �The College Galileo ever tried the experiment. Presumably Galileo did perform the experiment; presumably he got results which appeared to him to be reasonable agreement with his hypothesis. Anyone who has performed this experiment with a present-day electric timer or stop-watch may doubt that Galileo's results were in anything like unequivocal agreement with the hypothesis. But for the development of physics this did not particularly matter. What mattered was that there should appear a detective like Newton, who, taking as clues such apparently unnoticed unrelated items as Galileo's thesis, Kepler's laws for the planets, observations of the lunar tides, and precession of the equinoxes, and so on, could produce a coherent pattern of intelligibility, a rational structure of potential explanatory power. The coherence and rationality of such a pattern is recognized precisely when one understands the theory, and not otherwise; there is a quality of wholeness there, an interlocking of parts in the theoretical structure, which commands the assent of the mind. And there is also an indeterminate range of yet unknown implications which later investigators will be years in ferreting out and trying to realize in experimental situations. In the years between 1902 and 1926, D. C. Miller repeated the Michelson-Morley experiment many thousands of times, in an effort to disconfirm the theory of relativity. The Michelson-Morley experiment, you know, is generally described as having shown that the velocity of the earth with respect to the ether is indetectible. (The ether is, or was, the medium hypothesized as carrying electromagnetic vibration-radio waves, light waves, and so on.) Actually the experiment detected a positive effect, corresponding to a velocity of about eight or nine kilometers per second. 4 This is considerably less than a pre-Einsteinian physicist, believing in absolute space, would have predicted; but it is not zero. In 1925, Miller announced that the whole series of his experiments confirmed overwhelmingly the existence of a positive effect of about eight or nine kilometers per second. Miller was known to be a careful experimentalist. One would have supposed that the theory of relativity would be insbmtly abandoned, or at least that physicists would have withheld judgment until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. Nothing of the kind. Only in Russia were Miller's results taken as casting doubt on the theory, and there the theory of relativity had not been accepted as yet anyway, since it was believed to be in conflict with the dialectical materialism of Engels and Lenin, and no material benefits seemed to flow from it. For physicists elsewhere, however, the theory of relativity continued to command belief for the reasons which had led to its original acceptance: it provided a coherent vision of laws, theories, facts, which had previously appeared disparate, rationally unconnected. TI1ere is still no generally agreed-upon interpretation of Miller's result; but the indetectibility of the earth's motion relative to the ether has been shown experimentally in ways quite independent of the Michelson-Morley apparatus. According to Einstein himself, and contrary to most textbook accounts, contrary even to certain implications in the St. John's manual on this subject, the MichelsonMorley experiment played no role in the formulation of relativity theory. Einstein was concerned fundamentally with certain anomalies in the theory of electrodynamics. For instance, he felt that when a magnet is moved relative �December to an electrical conductor, or a conductor relative to a magnet, the situation was fundamentally the same, and should be determined by the relative velocity alone; whereas Maxwell's electrodynamics gave different accounts of the two cases. It is sometimes alleged that Einstein's motive was to eliminate untestable conceptions from theory, for instance, the notion of absolute space. Such conceptions, it is urged, are meaningless. This assertion is an attempt to assimilate Einstein's work to the notion of science as economic description. Actually, the Newtonian conception of space was not untestable; Einstein showed not that it was meaningless but that it was false. What I am urging here is that the great and revolutionary theories of physics-and the number of these has not been large-have all possessed qualities of wholeness and coherence, intellectual beauties and harmonies and profundities, and that it is by these qualities that the theories have laid claim to truth. Observations and experimental results function as clues; but the theories transcend such experience by embracing a vision of the world. This vision speaks for itself and as such becomes accredited with prophetic powers. This view of the nature of physics will be confirmed, I believe, by a study of the major theoretical achievements from Copernicus to Einstein. Nor does the newer quantum mechanics deny it, so far as I can tell from a slight acquaintance. Unlike previous theories, it is peculiarly concerned with the processes involved in observation itself; but I do not find that it is a convenient or economical summary of experimental results. It requires of the physicist startlingly new ways of thinking about the world. Every one of the major theories has done just that-changed the framework of interpretation. And it is just for this reason that such major discoveries cannot be arrived at by continued application of a previously accepted framework of interpretation. This brings me to the second component of the notion of scientific objectivity which I have distinguished: the conception of science as method. Let me begin by considering the subject of methods generally. We are all able to do many things. We walk, talk, and eat with fork and spoon. All these actions involve sets of skills, or arts. What is an art or skill? Consider a simple case like this: the usc of a hammer to drive a nail. The carpenter is aware of both the nail and the hammer, but it is the nail which occupies the focus of his attention. He watches the effect of his strokes, and wields the hammer in such a way as to hit the nail effectively. He is aware in a subsidiary way of the feeling in his fingers and hand: even more dimly, he may be aware of the contractions in the muscles of his arm and shoulder, and of his whole bodily posture. But these feelings are not the object of his atter1tion; they are not watched in themselves. The subsidiary awareness is merged into a focal awareness of driving the nail. The adjustments in hand 1970 and arm and body are instrumental in achieving an end; the hammer is used as a tool, an extension of the body. By the effort of concentration on the operation to be performed, the successful nail-driver absorbs, one might say, the elements of the situation of which he might otherwise be aware in themselves; he is aware of them only in terms of the operational results achieved through their use. He is no doubt following here a complex set of rules; but he is not aware of these rules as such. The same thing, I believe, is true of every skilled performance. The process of bicycling can be analyzed in accordance with the theory of mechanics. It is found that when the cyclist starts falling to the right, he turns the handlebars to the right, so that the bicycle moves along a curve to the right. This action results in a centrifugal force which pushes the cyclist to the left and offsets the gravitational force which is dragging him down to the right. This maneuver soon has the effect of throwing the cyclist out of balance to the left, a lack of balance which he counteracts by turning the handlebars to the left; and so he keeps in balance by winding along a series of appropriate curves. An analysis in terms of Proposition IV of Book I of Newton's Principia shows that for a given angle of unbalance the radius of the curve must be inversely proportional to the square of the cyclist's speed. The cyclist, of course, knows nothing of all this; nor would such information be useful in learning to ride. In any skilled performance there are countless rules which are observed but of which the performer is unaware. An art or skill is a set of potentialities which is brought into play in the accomplishment of an end. The elements of the successful performance are merged in a focal awareness of the end. Bringing one of these elements into awareness may be occasionally helpful in improving performance; but focal awareness of the elements, if maintained, is destructive of the skill, and leads to a paralysis like stagefright. It may indeed be possible to analyze every aspect of a skilled performance; and it will then be possible to replace the performer by a machine. The studies of the industrial arts made in preparation for mechanization have repeatedly shown that such analysis is enormously difficult. The resources of microscopy, chemistry, mathematics, and electronics have as yet failed pathetically to produce a single violin of the quality which Stradivarius achieved as a matter of routine 200 years ago. Even in modern industries based on the discoveries of pure science there is a considerable amount of undefined knowledge or knowhow which forms an essential part of the technology. Hence the importance of imitation in learning a skill; the apprentice has to submit himself to the authority and example of the master; he thus learns to obey rules of which he is not focally aware and which may not even be explicitly known to the master himself. An unbroken tradition, from generation to generation, is essential here. 5 �The College I want to apply these conclusions now to the cognitive or intellectual arts, the arts not of doing but of knowing. Let me begin with the arts of language; it is the possession of these arts which distinguishes man from the other animals; and it is their exercise which has made possible the constant extension of human knowledge on the basis of previously achieved results. A language is no doubt a construction, the product of the activity of generations of human beings belonging to a given society. The ready use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, which have been invented and endowed with meaning by unknown men of the past, expresses a theory of the nature of things. Every child who learns to speak accepts unwittingly this theory or framework as the basis for all further efforts of understanding. There is a prevalent view that language is a set of convenient symbols used according to conventional rules of a "language game." Likewise, the nominalistic doctrine which was put forward in medieval times and is still with us, maintains that general terms are merely names desig- nating certain collections of objects. The implication is that a language is essentially arbitrary and unrelated to the way things are. This view is adopted in abhorrence of its metaphysical alternatives. On the contrary, I think that we can appraise skill and lack of skill in the use of words. I am sometimes aware of groping for words and phrases, and I recognize that something is awry when I get the wrong one. A skilled artist in speech is thoroughly conscious of the figurative and metaphorical elements in speech. He continues to correct and supplement one metaphor by another, even allowing contradictions to enter at times, but always attending focally to the unity of his thought. In skillful speech, there is only a subsidiary awareness of words; one sees through the words to things; attention is focused on the object of the thought. This characteristic has been called the transparency of language. Every situation to which speech is applied is to some extent unprecedented. In the adaptation of speech to new situations, there is a focal awareness of the situation of which we wish to make sense, and a subsidiary awareness of the words we are using as instruments. In this process the meanings of words become modified, but we are not focally aware of this change. Our framework of interpretation thus changes, and the words for which we grope become invested with a fund of unspecifiable connotations. What I have just said applies not only to the education of a single person, but to the development of the language of a whole society. The efforts of men to adapt language to situations and things have the result, after years and centuries and millennia, of modifying the instrument of interpretation itself. Some of the changes are degenerative; but words which have great human significance tend to accumulate a wealth of connotations adapted to the situations in which they have been meaningfully applied. It is 6 because of this fact that when we speak we say more than we know; that language seems to have a wisdom of its own. And it is also because of this fact that inquiries of the Socratic type are worthwhile. We have the power to take cognizance of a subsidiary element in the comprehension of a term, say ~~justice" or "courage"; we can try to define the term. Such an enterpris-e presupposes an understanding of the subject-matter to which the term refers. Only if we are confident that we can identify what is just or courageous in particular cases, can we reasonably undertake to define the term. If we want to analyze the meaning of the term, we must be using it as thoughtfully as we can, and at the same time watch ourselves doing this. We must look, with all the discrimination we ·can bring to bear, through the term "justice" at justice itself; for this is the use we are trying to define. I am urging, then, that the skills of using a language are like other skills; that the employment of linguistic skill involves the merging of a subsidiary awareness of words and grammer in a focal awarenes of an end, say persuading someone of something, or expressing a truth. The process depends on a fund of unspecified connections and connotations which constitute a framework or instrument of potential explanation. Any attempt to step altogether outside this framework and to criticize the structure of language as wholly arbitrary and conventional, is lacking in frankness; for the attempt employs and appeals to the very instrument whose validity it denies. Language commits us, far beyond our comprehension, to a vision of the world. It is a shirt of flame in which we arc garmented; the responsibility of wearing it we cannot avoid. The view I am advocating would deny that there is a single scientific method, or method of achieving truth, the rules of which can be set down once and for all. I do not deny that there are methods (plural) which have been developed in the particular sciences, and which continue to be applied effectively in a variety of situations. But formulations of these techniques, even by a competent scientist, tend to be inadequate because the scientist automatically supplements the explicit formulation by a tacit knowledge of how the techniques are applied in particular cases. As an illustration -of the way in which tacit appraisals are involved in the use of a giv:en technique, let me men- tion the application of probability theory. This theory is applicable to systems of objects and events which have a characteristic called randomness, and also to significantly ordered systems which interact with random systems. ~~Randomness" means the absence of significant order or pattern; ''significant order," of course, means absence of randomness. The randomness of a system cannot be speci- fied in terms of the particular elements of the system; such specification, if it were possible, would in fact destroy the randomness. The appraisal of a system as random or as orderly depends on tenuous criteria peculiar to the system �December 1970 under consideration, and cannot be reduced to universal rules. This becomes evident when probability theory is applied to a live scientific issue; in such cases there may be intense controversy Ol'er the proper experimental design and statistical technique. If we turn to the deductive or mathematical aspects of the science, I believe we shall find again the same supremacy of art over mechanical procedure. The teaching of all the mathematical sciences such as mechanics or electromagnetic theory relies to a large extent on practice in solving problems. The skill striven for in all these cases is that of converting a language which one has assimilated only receptively into an active tool for answering new questions. The rules for problem-solving that can be specified are but vague maxims: Polya, in his book, How To Solve It, says "Look at the end. Remember your aim. Do not lose sight of what is required ... Look at the unknown." In attempting to solve a problem we use the known particulars as clues, and try to feel our way toward an understanding of the manner in which these known particulars relate with each other and with the unknown which is sought. To recognize the problem in the first place means to anticipate a hidden potentiality. As we proceed in tracing out relations and in trying various transpositions of symbols, we may at a certain moment feel that we are getting close; we sense-not without excitement-the accessibility of a hidden inference. Finding the solution is having a "happy thought"; it is crossing a logical gap. The solution of further problems of the same kind may increase our facility. In some cases we may discover a routine technique for dealing with all problems of a given class; such problems are no longer problems. The recognition of a genuine problem, and the solving of it, are acts which are not reducible to mechanical or systematic technique. That genuine discovery is not in principle capable of being dispensed with in the deductive disciplines has been shown as a result of research in metamathematics, the study of the formal properties of mathematical systems. In some such systen1s, a decision procedure is available, a finite sequence of predetermined operations which suffices to resolve every question or problem that can be set in the terms of the system. Reckoning of sums, differences, products, and quotients of numbers is of this character. There are other systems in which a decision procedure is available for deciding whether a given sequence of statements constitutes a proof of a given statement, but in which there is no decision procedure which would enable one to decide, in a finite number of steps, whether a given statement couched in the terms of the system is provable or not-is a theorem or not. In these cases a machine can be built which, by operating on the axioms according to specified rules of inference, will churn out theorems, one after another; but there mn be no guarantee that it will turn out in a given finite time the answer to any particular question. The determination as to whether a given statement in the language of science is deducible or not is contingent on time, luck, ingenuity, and intelligence directed toward a goal. Euclid's geometry is of this char- 7 �The College acter. We may speak of a primordial darkness of reason here; we are unable to .envisage the total outcome of a series of acts whose generating principle we can envisage with complete clarity. There is still a further kind of situation in the deductive s~ienc':', discovered by Goede! in 1931. Within any deductive sc1ence of suffic1ent scope to include arithmetic, it is p~ss,.bJe to formulate sentences which cannot be proved w1thm the sc1ence, that is, starting from the stated axioms of the science and employing the stipulated rules of inference, but which can nevertheless be shown to be true by reflections on the science as a whole. In 1949 Turing showed that a machine could be devised which would construct and assert as new axioms an indefinite sequence of these Goedelian sentences, as they are called. It nevertheless remains true that any given set of mathematical inference machines can only cut a swathe out of the total field of mathematical truths. Mathematics cannot be formalized, once and for all, in a single linear deductive development; the methods of procedure and inference in mathematics are, in principle, inexhaustible. What I am saying here, in sum, is that no fixed impersonal, and fully specified technique can be laid down for attaining all and only the truth. The knowledge we have or gain is shaped within a framework of tacit acceptance and incompl~tely specificable arts which are logically pnor to any particular assertion we may make. Such a framework can be altered, or as I would say, improved, in th~ very process of examining a topic in its light. Either th1s 1s so, or hberal education is nomensical. My acceptance of one of these alternatives rather than the other is no doubt a passionate aot, a comn1itment. I turn now to the third claim associated with the notion of scientific objectivity, roughly speaking, the claim that only explanatwns based on physics and chemistry can be accred1ted as finalm the scwnces. Huyghens, in his Treatise on L1ght ~f 1678, speaks of "the true Philosophy, in which one conce1ves the causes of all natural effects in terms of mechanical motions." Laplace, in his Treatise on Prob~ ability of 1814, writes than an intelligence which knew at one moment of time all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the entities which compose it . . . would embrace in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for i·t, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes. S~ch a mind, Laplace claims, would possess a complete sc1entific knowledge of the universe. K. S. Lashley, speakmg >n 1948 at a symposium on cerebral mechanisms in behavior, states: Our common meeting ground is the faith to 8 which we all subscribe, I believe, that the phenomena of behavior and of mind are ultimately describable in the concepts of the mathematical and physical sciences. With these views I believe it is necessary to do battle. For they present us with a picture of the universe in which we ourselves are absent, in which there are no scientists and hence no science. This is a simple-minded objection. I would support it and amplify it by the following considerations, which will have to be brief. Suppose, first, that the universal knowledge of which Laplace dreamed were possible. Then from the positions and velocities of the n atoms or particles of the world at a given time t,, it would be possible to compute the positions and veloc!lles of all these particles at any later or earher time t2. As 1t turns out, if n is greater than two, no exact and general solution of the computational problem is possible. But even if it were, it would remain true that this knowledge would not constitute knowledge of all past and future events, unless "event" be defined in so narrow a fashion as to exclude the events of which I have experience. The Laplacean picture supplies no clue as to how the data of experience are to be accounted fo·r; how I am to pass from information about atoms to data of experience. It 1nerely claims, wrongly as it turns out, that an answer is possible to a question raised by the theory of mechanics itself. The change from Newtonian to quantum mechanics makes no difference in this argument. The wave equation of the world in quantum mechanic~ represents our ultimate knowledge of all the parbcles m the world, leaving open within this framework only variations which are strictly random. There is no accounting here for living beings or for intelligent behavior. Computing machines and feedback mechanisms, as is well known today, can simulate or improve upon the behavior of living and thinking beings. But here again I must point to a very obvious fact, which is nevertheless often forgotten: No knowledge of physics or chemistry would ever suffice to enable us to recognize or account for a machine. A machine for instance a clock a steam engine or a digital computer, is an instrument or implement which is operated in accordance with certain more or less specifiable rules for the sake of a certain advantage. Of instruments, operational rules, and advantages, physics and chemistry can tell us nothing. Suppose you are confronted with a problematic object and try to explore its nature by a physical and chemical analysis of its parts. A complete phys1eal and chem1cal account of the object, and of all 1ls future possible transformations, would still not enable you to discover that it is a machine, if it is one and if so how it operates. Such a discovery could only b~ made by testing the object as a possible instance of known or conceivable machines. For you must know that the problematic object embodies a rule of rightness, or operational rule; that 1t can succeed or fail, depending on whether it 1 1 1 �December 1970 operates in accordance with this rule or not. In the subject matter of physics and chemistry proper, the notions of success and failure do not occur. Given the rule of rightness, the physicist and chemist may be able to find the causes of a failure of the machine, or the material conditions under which it will operate successfully; but the reasons for the consecutive stage of operations of the machine, and for the ways in which its parts are coordinated, are not specifiable in physico-chemical terms. The relation between reasons and physico-chemical causes or conditions is like the relation between logical rules and psychological explanations as applied to processes of thought. A given sequence of thought may be started by appetite or intellectual passion; it may depend on memory, visual imagination, and verbal or other symbolism. But a psychological analysis of these conditions will never reveal whether the sequence of thought embodies a correct inference or not. The thesis that all living beings are physico-chemical automata, the opemtions of which are in principle totally specifiable in terms of spatio-temporal determinations, is not strictly inconceivable. It forms a closed interpretative system which is passionately pursued by a whole school of geneticists and neurologists today. The fact that most non-psychopathic persons become morally indignant when treated as automata might be said to be due to primitive patterns of mentality that a perfect scientific knowledge would eliminate. There are, of course, many biological phenomena which have thus far resisted reduction to physico-chemical or spatio-chemical terms. These include the powers of improvisation discovered by Driesch in embryonic fragments, and the powers of adaptive reorganization exhibited by many animals in the achievement of a predetermined end under profoundly modified conditions. Tims a rat which has learned to run a maze will continue to find his way through it after the neural paths used in learning have been cut, although he has to employ quite different patterns of locomotion. All along the evolutionary scale of life, there is evidence for the presence of active centers which act inventively in ways which are not fully specifiable in physico-chemical terms. It can always be claimed, of course, that further knowledge will enable us to explain such evidence away. These particular and no doubt intricate issues within the biological sciences I cannot follow up here. My central 9 �The College point is that if man is himself regarded only m his factuality, only as a complex object which is in principle specifiable in physico-chemical terms, then the very idea of science becomes unintelligible. I can no longer accredit myself with the responsibility for drawing an ever indeterminate knowledge from unspecifiable clues with an aim to universal validity; nor can I acknowledge other persons as responsible centers of equally unspecifiable operations, aiming likewise at universal validity. In the resulting image of the world and of man there is no longer room for the norms and ideas of reason. Thus we&tern man, who since the sixth century B.C., has defined himself by the idea of reason, as anima] rationale, loses sight of himself. Reason, through a partial realization of its goal in modern science, appears to betray itself. This is the primary root, I believe, of the intellectual crisis of our time. Let me recur here to the fact with which I began. What we call science is at any moment, and for anyone, a part 10 of an inherited culture, a set of techniques and patterns of thought which have been cultivated and transmitted, and which as such must have arisen, must have had origins, in human activity. Thus science has a history. This fact would be of little import if the past of science or of any cultural configuration were merely behind and extraneous to its present. But surely this supposition is false. For do we not know tha!t the historical present comes out of the historical past, and contains this derivation implicitly in itself? Is it not so in the case of languages, customs, laws, and indeed of every cultural achievement? And does not this fact point to a possibility-the possibility that tradition may allow itself to be questioned; that it is not necessary merely to live within a tradition, accepting it as a matter of course, or to set oneself up blindly as nihilist, rejecting traditions which have formed us? To follow up this line of inquiry in the case of the scienc.es is to refer scientific knowledge to the generating �December 1970 and producing activities of the mind; it is to attempt to discern how objective science came to be, how it must have stepped into history as a human production. The history which is in question here is not primarily factual hi&tory; and indeed the factual origins of the idea of objective science are irrecoverably lost. The concern is rather with general and necessary truths about the way in which this idea came to be there for human beings; and these truths are implicit in the mode of being of science in the living present. Do we nat know, for instance, this simple truth that science is transmitted from generation to generation, from teacher to learner, and that at the same time it is continually broadened, with the achievement of new results? And in this process is it not manifest that there is a continual synthesis, an incorporation of new results with prior re- sults to form a totality; and that at any time the entire achievement becomes the total premise for further results? Do we not know, further, that this history must have had a beginning; that there must have been a moment in time when a man of the past for the first time grasped, in full awareness, a truth as being there in its own right, as being evident, as constituting knowledge which was self-justifying and capable of indefinite expansion? Each science is thus related to an open chain of generations of investigators, working with one another and for one another. For the later investigators, the earlier acquisitions or results are not, in general, grasped in the same way as they were by the original discoverer in the original act of discovering. They have become embodied in speech and writing; and indeed in no other way could they be objectively and self-identically there, as ideal objects, for Everyman, for every real or possible investigator of every place and of every future time. Also, it is their embodiment in speech and writing which allows them to be used as stepping-stones to further results, stepping-stones in a deductive development. But these advantages bring with them a seduction. The sounds of speech and the signs of writing, these indefin;tely repeatable sensible forms of the embodiment of the ideal objects of knowledge, are, for the most part, taken in passively, in an unreal way, because they are given in the sphere of trust which is language. This seduction is a kind of forgetting, a lapsing of the originally active grasp of evidence, which nevertheless permits the deductive process to proceed. Thus GaliJ.eo and Kepler, and we also, can acCept the geometry of Euclid as a self-contained science, with no roots or foundations outside itself; we have lost sight of its beginnings, of the idealizing activities whiCh, starting from the vaguely typical objects of experience, and the rules of thumb in the practical arts, produced a universe of ideal entities among which exact and necessary relations hold. Can the original evidence be regained, reactivated? Can we, for instance, rediscover the original meaning of objec- tive knowledge, science, as present to the mind of the man who first envisaged its possibility? I would claim that this unidentifiable man is not totally unknown to us. He lived, no doubt, in an already developed cultural world. Like his contemporaries and like all men, he had first lived naively within that world, which he had then taken for granted and accepted unquestionably as reality. It was a magico-religious world, thoroughly imbued with meaning, with a traditional meaning bestowed on it by the members of the community whose world it was. All activities there were traditional, and were undertaken for the sake of living and making one's way about in this limitedly meaningful world. Even cognitive activities would there be motivated by, and essentially related to practical human interests. The notions of knowledge, truth, and error, would be understood only in relation to the specific world belonging to the community. Speculative activities would occur only within a finite horizon. Some moment; for some man, was a moment of emer~ gence from this limited world. It was, if we are to believe Plato and Aristotle, a moment characterized by wonder. And indeed, to wonder is to suspend praotical activity, it is to adopt the attitude of the detached, onlooking observer. And in the attitude of wonder there arises the conception of Being, Being-as-it-really-is-in-itself, a conception standing in contrast to the limited world belonging to a specific human community. Also, and correlative to this conception, there arises the idea of objective science, or knowledge of being, episteme, standing in contrast to the opinion, doxa, by which men relate themselves to their traditional and everyday world. This moment is a disclosure of unlimited horizons. For the idea of episteme is an ideal norm, an ideal limit with respect to every cognitive endeavor. The grasping of any single truth will henceforth be regarded as a transitional phase within an infinite process oriented towards this ideal limitepisteme as finally accomplished. The rise of this idea in Greek Antiquity marks the appearance in history of a new type of man who in all his finitude assumes an infinite task. To belong to this tradition is less a glory than a responsibi1ity. To seek to uncover its original meaning is an essential step toward the discovery of what we are. Curtis A. Wilson became a Tutor at St. John's College in 1948. He was Dean of the College from 1958 to 1962. From 1964 to 1966 he was a member of the Faculty of the College at Santa Fe. In 1966 he became a Professor in the History of Science with the Depar,tment of History of the University of California, San Diego, at La Jolla. The laboratory science and preceptorial programs at the College owe much to his efforts. He is the author of William Heytesbury, Medieval Logic and the Rise of Mathematical Physics, University of Wisconsin Press, 1956; "Kepler's Derivation of the Elliptical Path," Isis, No. 59, 1968; and "From Kepler's Laws, So-ca11ed, to Universal Gravitation: Empirical Factors," in the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, SpringerVerlag, VoL 6, No.2, 1970, pp. 89-170. He is currently engaged in a study of astronomy and physics from Kepler to Newton. 11 �The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid* By JACOB KLEIN It is impossible to read the Aeneid without being constetntly reminded of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nor can one read the Aeneid without becoming aware that the poem intends to glorify Rome and Rome's imperial and pacifying power under Caesar Octavian Augustus. All of you, I think, and also all Virgil commentators agree on these points. Let me quote two ancient ones. Servius, 4th century A.D., has this to say: "This is Virgil's purpose: to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus in the light of his ancestors" (Intentio Vergilii l1aec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus). Macrobius, 5th century, explains: Virgil held his eyes intently upon Homer in order to emulate not only Homer's greatness but also the simplicity and power of his diction and its quiet majesty. Hence the multifarious magnificence of the various personages among his heroes; hence the intervention of the gods; hence the weight of mythical details; hence the natural way of expressing passions; hence the tracing back of the origin of monuments; hence the elevation of his metaphors; hence the ringing sound of his rolling diction; hence the climactic splendor of single incidents. This "sweet imitation," says Macrobius, leads Virgil to the point of even imitating Homer's vices. We have to note that these ancient commentators attribute to Virgil a double purpose: not only is it his intention to praise Augustus, his imitation of Homer is, according to them, also an end in itself. Let me give you a series of examples of what these commentators call Virgil's imitation of Homer. I shall quote, in an English version, lines from the Iliad and the Odyssey and corresponding lines, again in an English version from the Aeneid. Odyss. XII, 403: "But when we left that island and no other land appeared, but only sky and sea, then verily the son of Kronos set a black cloud above the hollow ship, and the sea grew dark beneath it." Aen. III, 192: "After *A lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 25, 1966. 12 our ships gained the deep, and now no longer any land is seen, but sky on all sides and on all sides sea, then a murky rain-cloud loomed overhead, bringing night and tempest, while the wave shuddered darkling." This is repeated in Aen. V, 8. (Note that Virgil does not mention Zeus, the son of Kronos.) Iliad VIII, 16: "Tartaros ... as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth." Aen. VI, 578: "While Tartarus' self gapes with abrupt descent and stretches twice as far, down through the shades, as the heavenward gazing eye looks up to Olympus and the firmament." (Note the change from a one to one ratio to a two to one ratio.) Iliad VI, 305: Theano, wife of Antenor, priestess of Athene in Troy, prays "Lady Athene, that dost guard our city, fairest among goddesses, break now the spear of Diomedes, and grant furthermore that himself may fall headlong before the Scaean gates." Aen. XI, 483: The Latin matrons implore Juno: "0 mighty in arms, mistress in war, Tritonian maid, break with thine hand the spear of the Phrygian pirate [that is, of Aeneas], hurl him prone to earth and stretch him prostrate beneath our lofty gates." Iliad I, 234: Achilles swears, in enmity towards Agamemnon: "verily by this staff, that shall no more put forth leaves or shoots since at the first it left its stump among the mountains, neither shall it again grow green ...." Aen. XII, 206: Latinus swears, in friendship towards Aeneas: "even as this scepter shall never again be dressed in light foliage and put forth branch and shade, since once in the forest it was hewn from the nether stem . ..." Iliad XVI, 249: "So spake he [Achilles] in prayer, and Zeus, the counsellor, heard him, and a part the Father granted him, and a part denied." Aen. XI, 794: "Phoebus heard [the prayer of Arruns about Camilla], and in thought vouchsafed that part of his vow should prosper; the other part he scattered to the flying breezes." Iliad IV, 122: "And he [Pandarus] drew the bow, clutching at once the notched arrow and the string of ox's sinew: the string he brought to his breast and to the bow the iron arrow-head. But when he had drawn the great bow into a round, the bow twanged and the string sang aloud, and the keen arrow leapt" (namely towards Menelaus who is not killed). Aen. XI, 858: The goddess �December 1970 Opis, sent by Diana, "drew the fleet arrow from the golden quiver, stretched the bow with grim intent, and drew it afar, till the curving ends met each with other, and at length, with levelled hands, she touched the pointed steel with her left, her breast with her right and with the bowstring." (She aims at Arruns who is killed.) Odyss. XI, 206: "Thrice I [Odysseus] sprang towards her [his mother J, and my heart bade me clasp her, and thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream, and pain grew ever sharper at my heart." Aen. VI, 699: "Thrice, where he [Aeneas] stood, he assayed to throw his arms round his neck [his father's neck]: thrice the phantom fled through the hands that clutched in vain, light as the winds and fleet as the pinions of sleep." But we can also read in the second book of the Aeneid, verse 792: "Thrice, then I [Aeneas] strove to throw my arms round her neck [the neck of Aeneas's wife's shadow]: thrice the form, that I clasped in vain, fled through my hands, light as the winds and fleet as the pinions of sleep." Odyss. XIX, 562: "For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them." (Penelope is saying these words.) Aen. VI, 892: "There are two gates of Sleep :-of horn, fame tells, the one through which the spirits of truth find an easy passage; the other, wrought smooth-gleaming with sheen of ivory, but false the shades that the nether powers speed therefrom to the heaven above." (Virgil, the author, is saying this.) These examples can be multipled many, many times. There would be no point for me to continue quoting. But let us take notice of the fact that there is almost always some weighty difference embedded in the otherwise completely analogous phrasing and imagery. However the similarity between the Iliad and the Odyssey on the one hand and the Aeneid on the other goes far beyond phrasing and imagery. Let me give you another series of examples of what is called Virgil's imitation of Homer. When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca, Pallas Athene fills the countryside with mist so that Odysseus cannot recognize it. When Aeneas arrives in Carthage, Venus conveys him in a cloud so that nobody can see him. Before meeting with Penelope Odysseus is beautified by Pallas Athene. Before meeting Dido Aeneas is beautified by Venus. A young man, Elpenor, falls from the roof of Circe's house; Odysseus sees his shade in Hades and buries the corpse when he returns to the light of the day. The pilot of Aeneas' fleet, Palinurus, falls from his ship and is subsequently killed by· a barbarous tribe; his shade is seen by Aeneas in the nether world and his corpse buried later on. Diomedes and Odysseus, two seasoned warriors, engage in a spying mission at night, kill a quantity of Trojans and bring their enterprise to a successful and glorious end. Nisus and Euryalus, two young men, try to break through the enemy lines at night, kill a quantity of Latins and die gloriously but unsuccessfully at the end. The shade of Ajax keeps a contemptuous silence when facing Odysseus in Hades. So does the shade of Dido when confronted by Aeneas in the nether world. In point of fact, innumerable episodes in the Aeneid have their analogues in the Iliad or the Odyssey. There are exceptions, as, for instance, the diverse prophecies addressed to Aeneas, the transformation of the Trojan ships into mermaids in Book IX and the role of the warrior maid Camilla. Camilla has her analogue, however, in Penthesilea who, although not to be found in Homer, appears in many classical Greek texts and is mentioned by Virgil himself (I, 491). There is parallelism between Menelaus, Paris, and Helen on the one hand, and Turnus, Aeneas and Lavinia on the other, whatever the difference between these personages and their relationships. There is parallelism between Achilles and Patroklos on the one hand, and Aeneas and Pallas on the other, again whatever the difference betwen these pairs. To the catalogue of ships in the second book of the Iliad corresponds the catalogue of the Latin armies in the seventh book of the Aeneid. To the funeral games in honor of Patroklos correspond the games in honor of Anchises. Three times does Achilles circle the city of Priam in hot pursuit of Hector, while Aeneas covers five circles on the plain around the city of Latinus in hot pursuit of Turnus. To the shield of Achilles fashioned by Hephaistos upon the insistence of Achilles's mother corresponds the shield of Aeneas fashioned by Vulcan upon the insistence of Aeneas's mother. But the difference here is 13 �The College great: on Achilles's shield are moulded Heaven and Earth, Peace and War, Marriage and Litigation, Work and Leisure, and all the bounties of the earth; on Aeneas's shield are shown the glorious deeds of the Romans culmi·nating in Octavian's victory at Actium. What is the significance of this persistent and detailed, yet unfaithful "imitation"? In other poems, written before the Aeneid, especially in the Bucolics, Virgil also imitated his Greek predecessors, especially Theocritus, But this imitation involved only the general pattern, the general mood and style of the poems and hardly any of their details. The tradition tells us that Virgil, in his younger years, conceived the plan to write an epic poem devoted to the glory of Rome but that he gave up that plan hecause he found the task too difficult. In his later years he took it up again, prodded by Augustus, perhaps, and worked on the Aeneid for eleven years-until his death. It is in this period that what is called his imitation of Homer flourished supremely. The question we face is just this: why was it necessary for Virgil to imitate Homer to the extent he did? The ancient commentators I quoted in the beginning were late commentators. Their opinion that one of the purposes of the poem was the imitation of Homer and their implied opinion that such an undertaking was in itself praiseworthy were not shared by Virgil's contemporaries, we are told. His contemporaries re~ proached him for borrowing too much from Homer. Virgil is reported to have answered them, proudly and enigmatically, that it was easier to steal from Neptune his trident and from Hercules his club than to steal a verse from Homer. What did he mean by that? Let us go back to the unquestionable purpose of the Aeneid. It is the praise of Augustus and the projection of an exalted vision of the Roman world. What is the background of this praise and this projection? The answer is: a century of civil disorders and wars, beginning in 133 B.C., after the end of the Punic and Spanish wars, and a passionate and widespread desire for peace. Peace is finally restored by Octavian in the year 31. Let me quote from a modern critic, Edward Kennard Rand: "To Virgil's contemporaries, hardly any religious or political event could have had a more spectacular importance than the closing of Janus' temple [which act signified peace] twice in the reign of Augustus, once after the victory of Actium [over Antony] and once in the year 25 ... Only once be- 14 fore in all Roman history had this happy event occurred, namely, at the completion of the First Punic War." This peace is based on Roman rule under Caesar Augustus. And the origin of this Roman rule is the great subject of Virgil's epic endeavor. But how to attack so vast a subject? Let us understand Virgil's predicament. We, today, have an easy way of dealing with such a subject. To praise deeds or events, we call them "historical." We say: an historical meeting or an historical battle took place on such or such a day. In saying this we mean to pay tribute to the importance of that meeting or that battle. The adjective "historical" is used as a superlative which confers to an event a transcendent rank and the laurel of undying glory. But to Virgil-and not to him alone-the medium of praise is not History but Myth. For only the glowing light of a myth is able to illuminate the intrinsic unintelligibility of human deeds and sufferings. To write an epic poem on the grandeur of Rome means, therefore, to construct a myth. To use a Greek word familiar to Virgil, it means to p.vOo1rou:.Zv. Most myths are anonymous. They are there, filling, mirror-like, the horizon of human lives with splendid or dark or sometimes terrifying figures that bring to pass wondrous and awesome events. But there are also myths attached to names, to names of "mythmakers/' as, for example, to Homer, to Hesiod, to Plato. Can one compete with these mythmakers? Can one invent "new" myths? In fact, did those mythmakers I have just mentioned invent theirs? Did they not merely imitate or modify or transpose myths in existence long before them, just as the Greek tragedians did? How, then, shall Virgil go about it? Virgil has before him a plethora of legends related to various sites and monuments in Rome and Italy. The legend of Aeneas himself, of Aeneas the Trojan, the source of Roman stock, is well known in Roman lands. Can these legends lend themselves to form the nucleus of the myth Virgil is after? Must not other myths be taken into consideration? Virgil himself seems to have cherished the myth of the succession of the ages of mankind. Let us consider this myth briefly. Hesiod tells it in his Works and Days. Five generations of men have so far succeeded each other: first the golden one, in Kronos's time, when men lived as if they were gods, abundantly, without hard work or pain, without suffering from old age; then the gods created the second generation, �December 1970 of silver, far worse than the first, shortlived, troublesome, lacking piety; then came the age of bronze, when men were terrible and strong, destroying each other; then Zeus created the fourth generation of hero-men, who are also called half-gods; they besieged seven-gated Thebes and fought before Troy for the sake of lovely-haired Helen; those who did not perish in carnage and war were settled by Zeus in the islands of the blessed, at the extreme end of the world, with Kronos, freed from bondage, as their k;ng; finally carne the age of iron, in which we live now, in which the sense of right and wrong has been almost entirely lost, in which force reigns and vengeance and weariness; but Zeus will destroy this generation of mortals also. This story of the ages of men can also be found ill the Book of Daniel, supposedly written some hundred years before Virgil and in all probability unknown to him, but still symptomatic for the myth's universality and influence. In the second chapter of this book Daniel interprets a dream King Nebuchadnezzar had had. According to this interpretation the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar is the kingdom of gold, of power and strength and glory; it will be succeeded by another, presumably of silver, which in turn will be followed by a kingdom of brass; then will come a fourth kingdom, that of iron and clay, in which kingdom men "shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay"; at last the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will stand forever. So much, then, for the myth of the ages of mankind. But Virgil also knew the oriental and Greek doctrines of the Great Year. The Great Year is the time it takes for all stars and all planets to return to the same position, with respect to us, that they once occupied. This time constitutes an age, an alWv. Once this age reaches its completion, a palingenesis occurs and a new aiWv begins, identical with the pr-eceding one. This doctrine was also preserved in the collection of oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl, which oracles constitute the books of Sibylline songs widely diffused among the people. The cycle of cosmic life, the al~v, was divided into ten great months. The end of each of these months and the transition into a new one was supposed to be announced by a celestial sign. The sun grew pale after the murder of Julius Caesar, and it is reported that the apparition of a comet during the funeral honors rendered to the victim was interpreted by a soothsayer to ;ndicate the end of the ninth cosmic month and the beginning of the tenth. Some amalgamation between the doctrine of cosmic cycles and the myth of the four or five ages of mankind must have occurred in the course of time. Each cycle repeats the succession of ages, from the golden to the iron one. We witness this in Virgil's fourth Eclogue in the Bucolics, which, I hope, most of you have read. Let me quote a few lines from it: "Now is come the last age of the song of Cumae; the great line of the centuries begins anew. Now the Virgin too returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new generation descends from heaven on high." The Virgin is Astraea or Justice, last of the immortals to leave the earth. The eclogue is addressed and dedicated to Asinius Pollio, a patron of Virgil, who was elected consul in the year 41 and phyed a decisive role in the reconciliation between the two mighty leaders, Marc Antony and Octavian, at Brundisium in the year 40. But the emphasis in the eclogue is on a child "in whom the iron brood shall first cease and a golden race spring up throughout the world." The new age shall begin in the consulship of Pollio and the mighty months will then commence their march. The babe shall have the gift of divine life and rule over a world pacified through his father's virtues. His cradle shall pour forth flowers for his delight. Goats will come to the milking unbidden and the ox lie down with the lion. "On wild brambles shall hang the purple grape, and the stubborn oak shall distil dewy honey." The serpent will be no more, and the false poison-plant perish. Any lingering traces of human crime shall gradually disappear. In the beginning these traces will still be visible-in sailings across the seas, in the building of walls around towns, in the cleaving of the earth with furrows. Another Argo shall be manned to seek the golden fleece, "and again shall a great Achilles be sent to Troy." But when the child will have become a man, the trader shall quit the sea, ... every land shall bear all fruits .... The earth shall not feel the harrow, nor the vine the pruning hook; the sturdy ploughman, too, shall now loose his oxen from the yoke. Wools shall no more Jearn to counterfeit varied hues, but of himself the ram in the meadows shall change his fleece, now to sweetly blushing purple, now to saffron yellow; of its own will shall scarlet clothe the grazing lambs. 15 �The College of the myth of rebirth which tells of the return of the days of Saturn, of the golden age, after completion of a cosmic cycle and the beginning of a new alwv. Aeneas will land on Saturnian soil, in Latium. King Latinus, who rules "over lands and towns in the calm of a long peace" and himself descends from Saturn, will tell Aeneas, an offspring of Jupiter: "be not unaware that the Latins are Saturn's race, righteous not by bond or laws, but self-controlled of their own free will and by the custom of their ancient god." Evander, the "good man," king of the Arcadians, who is going to ally himself with Aeneas at precisely the spot where Rome shall stand, will recount to Aeneas the origins of Saturnian rule: This prophetic poem is written in a dark and oracular vein, imitating, perhaps, the Sibylline songs. The identity of the child has remained a controversial subject among scholars. The preponderant opinion tends to recognize in the child a son of Asinius Pollio. Christian interpreters considered the fourth Eclogue as a prophecy of the Messiah, saw in the child Jesus, the Christ, and in Virgil a pagan Isaiah. Not by chance does Virgil play the role of Dante's guide and mentor in Hell and Purgatory. It is conceivable that the Sibylline oracles, re·assembled after the genuine ones had burned with the Capitol in the year 83, might have contained some Jewish oracles reflecting the spirit and the substance of Isaiah's prophecy and that Virgil might have experienced their spell. What seems indubitable is that the fourth Eclogue expresses the overwhelming longing for a New Beginning, a new age of Peace. The mythical idea of the completion of a cosmic cycle and of a return to the happy days of Kronos, the days of Saturn, seems ever-present to Virgil's mind. We thus perceive the factors which determine the composition of the Aeneid devoted to the glories of Rome and to the bounties of Peace under the aegis of Caesar Augustus. The legend of the Trojan hero Aeneas, the ancestor of Roman power, would become part and parcel 16 In these woodlands the native Fauns and Nymphs once dwelt, and a race of men sprung from trunks of trees and hardy oak, who had no rule nor art of life, and knew not how to yoke the ox or to lay up stores, or to husband their gains; but tree branches nurtmed them and the huntsman's savage fare. First from heavenly Olympus came Saturn, fleeing from the weapons of J and exiled from his lost realm. He gathave ered together the unruly race, scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium, since in these borders he had found a safe hiding-place [from the Latin verb latere ]. Under his reign were the golden ages men tell of: in such perfect peace he ruled the nations; till little by little then crept in a race of worse sort and duller hue, the frenzy of war, and the passion for gain. And before the final triumph of Aeneas, Juno, Aeneas's implacable enemy, will yield to destiny, but will request this from Jove: "command not the native Latins to change their ancient name, nor to become Trojans and be called . Teucrians, nor to change their tongue and alter their attire: let Latium be, let Alban kings .endure through ages, let be a Roman stock, strong in Italian valour: fallen is Troy, and fallen let her be, together with her name." Jove will grant Juno's wish, and Rome's future will be secure. Under Caesar Augustus the reign of peace will begin anew. But is all this sufficient to account for the composition of the great Roman epic poem? Is this tl1e myth of the Aeneid? Have we not overlooked a crucial point in the very conception of the poem, to wit, that the epic poem itself, while embodying a myth, cannot help reflecting the age it belongs to? But are not the great cosmic cycles, the alwv", identical? Do not in each of them the Argo, and Troy, and Caesar reappear? It is with respect to this point that a Platonic myth becomes of utmost importance to Virgil. It can be found in Plato's dialogue The Statesman. The interlocutors in this dialogue are the Stranger from Elea and a young man, a namesake of Socrates. The �December 1970 Stranger tells the myth: During a certain epoch god himself goes with the universe as guide in its revolving course, but at another epoch, when the cycles have at length reached the measure of the allotted time, he lets it go, and of its own accord it turns backwards in the opposite direction, since it is a living being and is endowed with intelligence by him who fashioned it in the beginning. Thus, we read further, "the universe is guided at one time by an extrinsic divine cause, acquiring the power of living again and receiving renewed immortality from the divine artisan, and at another time it is left to itself and then moves by its own motion ...." Young Socrates asks: "But was the life in the reign of Kronos ... in that previous period of revolution or in ours?" The Stranger answers: No, the life about which you ask, when all the fruits of the earth sprang up of their own accord for men, did not belong at all to the present period of revolution, but this also belonged to the previous one. For them, in the beginning, god ruled and supervised the whole revolution, and so again, in the same way, all the parts of the universe were divided by regions among gods who ruled them, and, moreover, the animals were distributed by species and flocks among inferior deities as divine shepherds, each of whom was in all respect the independent guardian of the The Stranger summarizes his tale in the following way: Now as long as the world was nurturing the animals within itself under the guidance of the Pilot, it produced little evil and great good; but in becoming separated from him it always got on most excellently during the time immediately after it was let go, but as time went on and it grew forgetful, the ancient condition of disorder prevailed more and more and towards the end of the time reached its height, and the universe, mingling but little good with much of the opposite sort, was in danger of destruction for itself and those within it. Therefore at that moment the god, who made the order of the universe, perceived that it was in dire trouble, and fearing that it might founder in the tempest of confusion and sink in the boundless sea of diversity, he took again his place as its helmsman, reversed whatever had become unsound and unsettled in the previous period when the world was left to itself, set the world in order, restored it and made it immortal and ageless. This is the myth of the Stranger in Plato's Statesman, of which I have read to you only a small part. It changes the old myth of the cosmic cycles, which repeat themselves and remain identical, in a significant way. Dia- grammatically this can be shown as follows: Old pattern: creatures under his own care, so that no creature was wild, nor did they eat one another, and there was no war among them, nor any strife whatso- ever. The Stranger goes on to describe how god himself was the shepherd of man in that age. And under his care there were no states, nor did men possess wives or children; for they all came to life again out of the earth, with no recollection of their former lives. So there were no states or families, but they had fruits in plenty from the tr·ees and other plants, which the earth furnished them of its own accord, without help from agriculture. And they lived for the most part in the open air, without clothing or bedding; for the climate was tempered for their comfort, and the abundant grass that grew up out of the earth furnished them soft couches. That, Socrates, was the life of men in the reign of Kronos; but the life of the present age, which is said to be the age of Zeus, you know by your own experi·ence. Pia tonic pattern: C7 CJ The identity of the cycles in the Platonic pattern is, as it were, intermittent. And the reversal of the direction can be best seen at the beginnings of two consecutive cycles. What is important for us to see is this: to be able to accomplish his work, Virgil has to adopt this Platonic myth and to disregard its highly comical and self-refuting context. This adoption determines the composition of the Aeneid and, by implication, Virgil's true relation to Homer. The age of Homer is the age of Zeus, an age characterized by calamitous expeditions, disastrous wars, anarchical diversity. Its beginning is reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey, its climax reached in the Punic wars. The content of the Homeric poems has to be understood as a derived one. What underlies this content is the reversal of the preceding age of Kronos. Virgil's epic of Rome will have to reverse this reversal. It cannot avoid reproducing the main features and the single episodes of the Greek work, but it will reverse their order, shift the emphasis in them, exchange the nature and the role of the leading per- 17 �The College sonages; for the age of Jove is but a mirror-image of the age of Saturn. Does that mean that Virgil is bound to imitate Homer? No, on the contrary, it is Homer who cacnnot help imitating Virgil or, if you please, cannot help imitating the epic poet of the preceding Saturnian age, who is identical with Virgil. That is why there has to be so much unfaithful resemblance between the Aeneid and Homer's work. Virgil's own relation to the epic poem of the preceding age constitutes, it seems to me, Virgil's myth of the Aeneid. This is what he must have meant when he declared that it was easier to steal the club of Hercules and the trident of Neptune than to steal a verse from Homer. A poet of the god-led Saturnian age is incapable of stealing verses from a Javian poet, however excellent this Jovian poet may be. It might be objected that the Platonic myth, as a Greek myth, adopted by Virgil, is itself a product of the Jovian age. I venture to think that Virgil considered words of sages, words of philosophers as not subjugated to the dominion of the age in which these words were uttered, just as Tartarus and Elysium are outside the sway of the ages. It may be worth while to report to you what an unknown hand has inscribed into a manuscript of Donatus's Lite of Virgil (Donatus himself wrote in the fourth century A.D.): "... although he [Virgil] seems to have put the opinions of diverse philosophers into his writings with most serious intent, he himself was a devotee of the Academy; for he preferred Plato's views to all the others." Let me sketch briefly the way the reversal of the J avian order is accomplished in Virgil's poem. First of all, the Odyssey precedes the Iliad here, as every commentator since Servius has remarked. But, as we shall see in a moment, the first six books, which correspond to the Odyssey, still belong to the old Homeric age. When Aeneas and his men arrive in Carthage, they face a basrelief on the temple of Juno which depicts the Trojan war and all the events described in the Iliad. Their past is before them. But this past also casts a shadow on Aeneas's sojourn in Carthage. Aeneas falls in love wi-th Dido, who corresponds to both Calypso and Circe and resembles both Medea and Cleopatra. Aeneas's passion for this woman shows his lingering affinity to the Javian age, to which Carthage itself, Rome's eternal foe, belongs. A violent separation from Dido becomes necessary, a separation consummated only in Elysium, when the golden bough, the gift to Proserpine, is planted by Aeneas on the threshold of the land of joy, the abode of the blest in the nether world. There, in Elysium, Aeneas sees the shade of his father, while Odysseus, in Hades, meets the shade of his mother. There Aeneas is shown by Anehises the future of Rome, while Odysseus, in Hades, is told of the past and the present, except for the prophecy of the seer Teiresias. When Aeneas is leaving Elysium, a decisive event occurs, challenging our imagination. I quoted earlier the passage in the 19th book of the Odyssey and the corresponding 18 passage at the end of the 6th book of the Aeneid about the two gates of sleep, one of horn through which true dreams pass and one of ivory through which false visions and shades issue forth. Anchises dismisses the Sibyl and Aeneas by the ivory gate (porta que emittit eburna). How shall we understand these words? Is Aeneas, the pious Aeneas, led on by divine power, a false dream? Is the grandeur of Rome, Aeneas's treasure and burden, a melancholy illusion? Or do not these words, uttered at the very center of the poem, rather symbolize a cosmic reversal in the structure of the universe, marking the transition from the age of Jove to the reign of Saturn? In Greek, the words for "horn" and for "ivory'' are attuned to the mean~ ing of "fulfilment" and of "deception." Not so in Latin. Aeneas emerges from the nether world a changed man. A re-birth has taken place. His passing through the gate of ivory transmutes its function. From now on the poem changes its character, too. As the poet himself says: "Greater is the order of things that opens before me; greater is the task I essay." The task is greater indeed. The poem has to describe the beginning of the golden age. This beginning is marred by the inherited features of the preceding one, the iron one. Violence and fury will display themselves. -Under Turnus's leadership, Amata's predilections and Juno's help, the Latins and their allies will oppose the Trojans, aided by the Arcadians and Etruscans. A new Trojan war will rage in a reversed order. This time it will end with the victory of Aeneas, the new Hector, over Turnus, the new Achilles. After this victory there will be reconciliation between the Trojans and the Latins according to the terms agreed on by Jove and Juno. There will be reconciliation between Jove and Saturn, too. From then on Rome will begin its tumultuous ascent, until she reaches the height of Augustean peace. The tradition has it that Virgil, when he had finished (or almost finished) writing the Aeneid, wanted to burn all he had written. Augustus himself is said to have prevented this from happening. We may surmise that Virgil knew this much about his myth: its truth depended on the actual destiny of Rome. And, prophet that he was, he foresaw the future pax romana, the future Roman peace, more often than not immersed in a sea of corruption, of monstrous crimes and dismal anarchy. We should be grateful to Augustus, though. For even if the gate of ivory may have preserved its Homeric character, the nobility of Virgil's attempt and the boldness of his mythical VISIOn make us bow our heads and raise our minds. Jacob Klein has been a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, since 1938. He was Dean of the College from 1949 to 1958. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Marburg, Germany. He is the author of Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (translated from the German), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968; and A Commentary on Plato's Meno, University of North Carolina Press, 1965. His "Introduction to Aristotle" may be found in Ancients and Moderns, Basic Books, 1964. �NEWS ON THE CAMPUSES SANTA FE STUDENT CENTER NAMED IN HoNOR OF PETERSONS TI1e student center of St. John's in Santa Fe has been named the Peterson Student Center in honor of Mrs. Clemenhne Peterson of Baltimore and her late husband, Duane L. Peterson. President Weigle and members of the Board of Visitors and Governors participated in the unveiling of a plaque on the building on October 2nd honoring the Petersons for their services to the College. Mrs. Peterson came from Baltimore to attend the program on the Santa Fe campus. Before his death in 1963, Mr. Peterson was Chairman of the Board of Peterson, Howell & Heather, Inc., director and member of the Baltimore National Bank, and director of the Industrial Corporation of Baltimore. He was president of the Baltimore Association of Commerce in 1952-54, and he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Greater Baltimore Committee, Inc., in 1959-61. In the area of education 1 he was Vice President of the Association of Independent Colleges in Maryland, a trustee of Boys' Latin School, a trustee of Ripon College, and a member of the Board of St. John's College. Mrs. Peterson is making a gift of $1.25 million to St. John's College over a period of years to cover most of the cost of the student center, which houses the main library, dining hall, auditorium, coffee shop, art gallery, music room, and student and faculty lounges. The building was part of the first construction at Santa Fe in 1964. However, donations at that time fell short of the amount needed, so it was necessary for the college to borrow money to pay for the construction. About $539,000 of the $2 million construction cost has been repaid. Mrs. President Weigle shakes hands with Mrs. Clementine Peterson of Baltimore after ceremonies naming the student center in Santa Fe the "Peterson Student Center" in honor of Mrs. Peterson and her late husband Duane L. Peterson, both former Board members. Peterson's gift will enable the college to pay most of the remaining debt, President Weigle said. "No member of the Board of Visitors and Governors has been more faithful in attendance and in activity on the College's behalf," Mr. Weigle said of Mrs. Peterson at the plaque unveiling. ~~H.er keen interest in young people and in education has made her an ideal member and chairman of the College's Visiting Committee. Now, her exceedingly generous gift of this building attests to her interest in education, her commitment to St. John's College and its educational philosophy, and her confidence in this and future generations of young people. She wished to make the gift in honor of her husband, Duane, but we have finally prevailed upon her to allow the Board to name the building in honor of both Duane and Clementine Peterson. This is most appropriate since in our mind and hearts they are inseparable in their dedication and their service to this College." With Mrs. Peterson at the ceremony were her niece, Mrs. Lowell S. Peterson of Arcadia, California, and her children Duane L. II and Mary Gay. In 1968 Mrs. Peterson established the Duane L. Peterson Scholarships for outstanding juniors at St. John's. 19 �The College CAMPUS NOTES Ford K. Brown and John S. Kieffer were elected honorary alumni during Homecoming activities in Annapolis. Mr. and Mrs. Wiley Crawford are now living at 964 Old Santa Fe Trail in Sant" Fe, New Mexico 87501. Mrs. Mary P. Felter, Annapolis director of public information, was chosen to appear in the 1970 edition of Outstanding Young Women in America. One of 6,000 young women who contribute to the betterment of their communities, professions, and country, she is a graduate of the University of Maryland whose Alumni Association nominated her for the award. Charles E. Finch is the Annapolis director of financial aids and placement. Robert A. Goldwin, Annapolis dean, is editing a book ·entitled How Democratic is America: Responses to the New Left Challenges to be published by Rand McNally in the spring of 1971. (See also alumni news.) Edwin Hopkins was co-chairman of the United Fund campaign on the Annapolis campus. David C. Jones and Mary Modrall Burckmyer were married in Santa Fe on Saturday, September 5th. Aaron Kirschbaum and Danielle Doyon-Dugal were married in Annapolis on Thursday, September 17th. Thomas McDonald is on leave of absence for 1970-71. Robert A. N eidorf, director of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education in Santa Fe, discussed his Santa Fe commencement address with members of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California, on October 9th. In his talk, entitled "The Future and the Past," he remarked that this country is endangered because many of its leaders and young people lack "a sense of history." Mr. and Mrs. John Sarkissian became the parents of a daughter, Julia Araxie Shahan, on Saturday, September 19th. Mrs. Virginia Schenck is a resident 20 head of Humphreys Hall, replacing Mrs. Virginia West who accepted a position with Kirkland Hall College on Maryland" s E a s t e r n Shore. Mrs. Schenck is the mother of alumnus Peter B. Schenck. Robert L. Spaeth, assistant dean in Annapolis and city councilman, was elected to the Maryhmd State Central Committee of the Democratic Party on Tuesday, September 15th. Cornell University recently published Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of The Oeconomicus, by Leo Strauss, Scott Buchanan Scholar in Residence in Annapolis. The book is available through the College bookstores. SANTA FE STARTS CONSTRUCTION ON NEW OFFICE BUILDING Construction has started at Santa Fe on the ''Tower Building/' which should help the College meet its needs for classroom and residential space. The new three-story structure will provide room for offices, supplies, and a section of the library, which are now taking up space in Evans Science Hall and a women's residence building. Gifts and pledges have been received from private foundations and individuals to cover the building costs and related expenses. Sewell and Stanton President Weigle (right) shows a model of the proposed new administration bui1ding at Santa Fe to Mrs. Walter B. Driscoll, Board chairman, and Vice-President J. Burchenal Ault. 111ey are standing at the construction site at the foot of Monte Sol. Photo by Lynne Waugh. General Contractors of Santa Fe submitted the low bid of $499,975 for construction. William R. Buckley of Santa Fe is the architect. The building, in modified territorial-style, will include a portal and a bell tower. There will be 18,700 square feet of floor space. The contractor expects to complete construction befor.e the opening of the 1971 fall term. Gifts and pledges received for the new building include $125,000 from the Fleischmann Foundation, Reno, Nevada; $100,000 from the Kresge Foundation, Detroit, Michigan; real estate from John Murchison of Dallas valued at $200,000; $125,000 from a member of the Board; $25,000 in a bequest from the late Miss Flora Conrad of Santa Fe, and $15,000 from the U.S. Steel Foundation. The structure will house offices for the president, vice~president, dean, as~ sistant deans, treasurer, business· man~ ager, admissions director, and public in~ formation director, as well as the music and science sections of the College's library, space for printing and mailing activities, a conference room and sup~ ply area. The additional library space will accommodate up to 25,000 volumes, including three important music collections, which will become available for general use for the first time. POLITY REVISED As noted in the President's Report in the September issue of The College, the Polity recently underwent its quinquennial revision. "It has been a major accomplishment that every five years a mandatory review of this document has been completed to the general satisfaction of the various segments of the college community," wrote Pr.esident Weigle. Major changes include the broadening of the concept of the Faculty and the creation of the position of Provost on the Annapolis campus. In addition the alumni were officially recognized as members of the College. The Polity presently is being printed and copies may be obtained by writing �December 1970 the Public Information Office, St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. 21404. CLASS OF 1974: ANNAPOLIS One hundred seventeen freshmen registered at St. John's in Annapolis in September. They came from 26 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The largest percentages of stu· dents came from Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The youngest freshman was 15 years old at regis· tration; the oldest was 28. Nine stu· dents entered from the lith grade, and 26 had attended college before, five of them at St. John's. There were five veterans of the military service. Seventy per cent came from public high school. Most of the freshmen ranked in the top fifth of their secondary school class. Five were National Merit Scholars, 16 were National Merit semi-finalists, and eight received Letters of Commendation. Three freshmen are children of alumni, nine are siblings of earlier St. Johnnies, and one is the wife of a Tutor. NEW MEXICO AUTHORS SPEAK AT LIBRARY LUNCHEONS The Santa Fe Book and Author Luncheons were described in an article earlier this year in The Christian Science Monitor as "the most popular project in town." Several of the noon programs have filled the largest dining room available at Santa Fe's famous La Fonda. Twenty-seven New Mexican authors ha"e spoken at the nine lun· cheons held the past two years. The 1970 fall series held on October 9th and November 13th included novelist Stanley Noyes, wildlife-writer Burdetta Beebe, western-author S. Omar Barker, photographer Todd Webb, bridge ex· pert Betty Lind, and archaeologist Douglas Schwartz. The St. John's College Library Associates Committee plans the programs and obtains the speakers, who participate without charge. There are an estimated 160 writers living in the Santa Fe vicinity. Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin (left) and Yale University law professor Alexander Bickel converse with alumnus Arthur Kungle following Bickel's Friday evening lecture. Photo by James Viiiere. SHIP AHOY! SAILING RETURNS TO ST. JOHN'S Through the assistance, financial and otherwise, of several friends and alumni of the College, students in Annapolis have four International 420's to sail in College Creek and the Severn River. The boats were purchased from Arnold C. Gay, a local business- and yachtsman. Donors were Mrs. L. Corrin Strong, a member of the College's Board of Visitors and Governors; Mr. Coleman duPont, Mr. Richard H. Hutchings IV, 1944, and Mr. William W. Simmons, 1948, of Fawcett's Boat Supplies, Inc.; Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Fraley, Jr.; and the St. John's College Alumni Association, Mr. Jerome La Pi des (through the La Fides Foundation), and Drs. Theodore G. Osius and Charles E. Iliff, Jr. Additional donors to the boating program in services and materials were Mr. Charles Dell, 1924; Mr. Arnold C. Gay; Mr. Frank R. Atwell, 1953; Mr. David M. Saunders; Mr. Thomas Parran, Jr., 1942, Director of Alumni Activities; Mr. Charles T. Elzey, Treasurer, Annapolis campus; and Mr. Julius Rosenberg, 1938, Annapolis Director of Development. Faculty advisors to the program are Mr. John Sarkissian and Mr. Geoffrey Comber. Mr. Jay Newlin, 1971, is Commodore. (See boat photo in alumni news.) PRESIDENT WEIGLE's AcTIVITIES ARE VARIED President Richard D. Weigle represented St. John's College at the inauguration of Albert R. Jansen, S.J., at the University of San Francisco on February 27th. In August he spoke at the Foxhowe Association of Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, about the College. In September he attended the organizational meeting of the Maryland Independent Colleges and Universities Association, a group which will lobby for state funds for private higher education. He also spoke at the dedication of the new Preparatory School in Santa Fe. On October 24th Mr. Weigle attended a function in honor of Thomas Mann at Princeton University. On October 30th he gave the inaugural address at the University of Albuquerque whose new president is Francis A. Kleinhenz. 21 �The College Mr. Weigle attended a family observance in New Haven, Connecticut, on September 11th when his father, the Reverend Luther A. Weigle, celebrated his 90th birthday. Reverend Weigle is Dean-Emeritus of the Yale Divinity School, and was chairman of the committee of biblical scholars who issued the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in 1952. ANNAPOLIS HAS NEW ARTIST IN RESIDENCE St. John's College in Annapolis has a new artist in residence, Robert A. Cole, a graduate of the University of Maryland with a B.A. degree in 1966 and an M.A. degree in 1968. Mr. Cole was a graduate assistant instructor in Design I and an instructor in Applied Design I at the University. He was also an instructor in the basic drawing and design workshop at Dartmouth-Cape Cod during the summer of 1969. From 1968 to 1970 he taught ninth grade art at Annapolis Junior High School. His exhibitions include "Maryland Artists," Baltimore Museum of Art, 1966; ((Gross Memorial Exhibition/' College Park, Maryland, 1969; "Maryland Annual," Baltimore Museum of Art, 1970; and a traveling exhibition with Maryland Arts Council, 1970-71. STUDENT NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED IN ANNAPOLIS A weekly newspaper, The Collegian, is being published on the Annapolis campus with senior Daniel Sullivan as editor. The newspaper has kept the students, Tutors, and officers of the College informed about campus and community happenings. Also published last year, it prints any material that is submitted if signed by the author, subject to editorial comment. Editor Sullivan states that anyone interested in receiving the newspaper should write him in care of the College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Subscriptions are $7.00. 22 Margaret Frame '74 and Tutor Hugh P. McGrath as the Hostess and Falstaff respectively in the King William Players' production of "Henry IV, Part One." Photo by James Vi11ere. STUDENTS PRESENT SHAKESPEAREAN HISTORY The King William Players of St. John's College in Annapolis presented "Henry IV, Part I" by William Shakespeare, Friday, November 20th, and Saturday, the 21st, evening performances, and a matinee on Sunday, the 22nd. The performance, of more than amateur excellence, was highlighted by Tutor Hugh McGrath's surpassingly flawless Falstaff, Tutor Robert Williamson's flaming, and, at the same time, always clear and articulate Hotspur, and senior Harold Koenig's convincing transition from madcap to true prince, Prince Hal. Tutor Charles Finch played a stately King Henry; junior Matthew Mallory was an impressively menacing Worcester. Tutors J. Winfree Smith and Malcolm Wyatt played Sir Walter Blunt and Sir Richard Vernon respectively. Student players were Russ Lipton as Pains; Margaret Frame, a delightfully witless Hostess; Thomas Casey, Douglas and Peto; Craig Mooring, an impressive Glendower; Richard Ferrier, Mortimer; Lee Elkins, a jaunty Gadshill; Lester Silver, Bardolph; Jane Young, Lady Percy; J. Elliott Tourtelott, Northumberland; and David Carey, First Carrier. This smoothly cooperative effort of the whole college community was ably and strenuously coached, cajoled, and directed by senior Michael Victoroff. Tutor Robert Bart served in an advisory capacity. Playwright-Producer in Residence Alvin Aronson served as Executive Producer; sets were by Richard Gasparotti; and costumes were under the direction of Sarah Harrison. Following the Sunday performance the cast joined with those of the audience desirous of it for a discussion of the play. The discussion focused on the differences between Hotspur's, Falstaff's, and Hal's understanding of honor-honor as exclusive, all embracing, and unpolitic; as counterfeit; and as sharable, civic, and political. 'I11e achievement of this performance was the culmination of efforts beginning with more or less bimonthly Shakespeare readings shared by faculty and students the previous year, long and careful planning, and finally, long and painstaking, if not exhausting, work in rehearsals. Saturday night's performance was sponsored by the women's group, The Caritas Society of the Friends of St. John's College in Annapolis. The Society also loaned the King William Players $300 towards the purchase of permanent stage fixtures. (L.B.) �ALUMNI ACTIVITIES HOMECOMING Homecoming 1970 attracted more than 230 alumni and their guests this year, for activities which covered Friday and Saturday, October 16th and 17th. Co-chairmen Jack A. Nadal '57 and Temple G. Porter '62 arranged an attractive schedule for the two-day period. Again this year, Dr. David Dobreer '44, of Alhambra, Calif., came the greatest distance, accompanied by Ills wrfe and two of their daughters. Friday was a rather slow day, despite events designed to attract the out-door types. Dick Blaul '32 and Sam Shenker '38 had arranged a golf tournament, but only three players showed up: the Cozzolinos, Gene '29 and Bob '63, plus Ed Webby '63, made up the threesome. At the Boat House Frank Atwell '53 and the members of the Boat Club had the International 420's and Tempests rigged and ready, and several alumni fought the gusty breezes in College Creek. So far as tennis was concerned, no activity was evident. The lecture Friday night by Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor, proved more popular than the athletic events, and the "Welcome Aboard" party after the lecture was even more attractive. Carol and Bill Tilles '59 were hosts for that successful event. On the basis of figures from the Saturday morning registration, attendance was down from last year by about 20 per cent. What had been planned as three seminars was condensed into two, with Tutors Laurence Berns Joseph P. Cohen '56, J. Winfree Smith: Robert L. Spaeth, and Edward G. Sparrow, Jr., dividing the leadership tasks. As was true last year, those who participated were generally enthusiastic about keeping the seminar in the Homecoming schedule. soned students in a game of soccer. A memorial service for Richard Scofield was conducted in Great Hall at noon on Saturday, and was attended by all members of the College community. The Dining Hall luncheon proved popular, although seating was at a premium at times. And as was hoped, alumni and students were able to talk with each other in a few cases. The Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association attracted the usual 60-70 members; the principal items of business were the election of new directors and officers (see separate story); certain amendments to the By-Laws; the voting of $500 to a memorial fund in memory of Richard Scofield; and the election of Ford K. Brown and JohnS. Kieffer to honorary membership in the Association. After the Annual Meeting, a team of alert, aspiring, but aging alumni met a team of stalwart, strenuous, and sea- Before the final whistle, however, "harsh reality asserted itself," to quote Athletic Director Bryce Jacobsen '42, writing in the October 25th issue of The Collegian. "Muscle, nerve, and bone were deaf to the trumpet's call. As usual, they marched to a cadence all their own." The score: Oldsters-0, Youngsters-4. Some 80-90 alumni, faculty, and students then gathered in tl1e Library's King William Room for a session on graduate schools. Rogers G. Albritton '45, of Harvard University's philosophy department, was chairman of a panel of alumni, all present or former graduate students. Each discussed his or her own experiences, and then an~ swered questions from students. Graduate students on the panel were Sharon Bishop '65, Bryn Mawr Graduate Department of Social Work; John F. Miller '62, Art and Architectural History, University of Maryland; J. William Rumpp '63, Department of Physics, University of North Carolina; Peter B. Schenck '59, Clinical Psychology, Catholic University, and John I-I. White '64, Department of Philosophy, New School (New Yark). Former graduate students were Bruce Collier '65, Lecturer, History of Science, Harvard; W. Bernard Fleischmann '50, D.ean, School of Humanities, Montclair State College; Robert L. Parslow '51, Graduate Advisor-Associate Professor, Department of General Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh; Vernon E. Derr '44, Physicist, Environmental Science Services, Department of Commerce, Boulder, Colo.; Sydney vV. Porter, Jr., '54, Vice President, Radiation Management Corporation, Philadelphia, and A. Stevens Rubin, M.D. '66, an intern at Philadelphia General Hospital. 23 �The College Thanks go to Nancy Solibakke '57 for bringing this group of interesting alumni together for the benefit of the students. For most alumni, the cocktail party was an occasion to meet old friends and to make new ones as they enter· tained the faculty and members of the senior class. As he has for several years, Henry D. Braun '59 made the neces· sary arrangements for food and beverages. Dinner in the gymnasium fol· lowed the libations, and was the setting for the presentation of the Awards of Merit and a talk by President Weigle (see separate story) . The day's events were complete with the party in the Coffee Shop after the dinner. Nancy Solibakke and Stephen Mainella '54, with last-minute help from William D. DeHart of the faculty, arranged the attractive setting. (Md.) executive and a director for three years. REUNION CLASSES William R. Tilles '59 (left), newly-elected As· sociation president, is congratulated by Darrell L. Henry '61, former president. tion in Annapolis and a new member of the Board; Directors: NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS The first Board of Directors to be elected in accordance with the 1969 By-Laws was installed during the Annual Meeting on October 17th. The By-Laws now provide for the election of eight directors in even-numbered years and four in odd-numbered years. This year, in order to start the cycle properly, eight directors were elected for two years, four for one year. Two-year officers and directors are as follows: President: William R. Tilles '59, program administrator with IBM Corporation in Washington, D.C., and treasurer of the Association for two terms; Executive Vice President: Bernard F. Gessner '27, recently retired from the Coca-Cola Company, and a director of the Association for two years; Secretary: Mrs. Nancy C. Solibakke '58, Executive Secretary of the State Coordinating Office of the League of Women Voters of Maryland and secretary of the Association for two years; Treasurer: Temple G. Porter '62, Manager, Learning Material Production, Westinghouse Learning Corpora- 24 William B. Athey '32, of the insurance firm of Athey, Oberg & Associates of Baltimore, former member of the Board of Visitors and Governors and a long-time director of the Association; Bernard Casassa '34, contractor and property manager in the Washington, D.C., area and long active in alumni affairs, including service on the Board of Directors; Stephen Main ella '54, Chief of the Housing Hygiene Section of the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Department of Health and a director for a number of terms; Jack A. Nadal '57, an executive with the Navy Department in Washington, D.C., and a director for several terms. One-year directors are as follows: Jerome Gilden '54, owner and operator of the Jerry Gilden Gallery in Baltimore and vice-chairman of the Baltimore chapter of the Association; Mrs. L. Faye Polillo '56, a teacher at the Key School in Annapolis and active in the Annapolis chapter; William W. Simmons '48, an officer of Fawcett's Boat Supplies Company of Annapolis and active in the Annapolis chapter; and Edward C. Webby '63, a member of the staff of the Anne Arundel County Again this year the decade classes, plus the 5th and 25th anniversary years, were encouraged to have reunions at Homecoming. In those classes in which a member was willing to act as coordinator, there was the best response. In all classes attendance was smaller than in last year's reunion groups. The following alumni were present for reunions: I920-John D. Alexander, Sr., Mr. and Mrs. John H. Birely; 1930-Mr. and Mrs. J. Sprightly Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur E. Landers, Jr., Claxton J. O'Connor; 1940-Wilbur Matz (chairman); 1945-Rogers G. Albritton, Frank B. Marshall, Jr., 0. M. Meredith, Gene P. Thornton; -1950Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ladd Carr, W. Bernard Fleischmann, Mr. and Mrs. James H. Frame (chairman), Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Goldwin, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Hendricks, George Hofrichter, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt, John J. Logue, George Usdansky, Myron L. Wolbarsht; 1960-Lee and Hilda (Wozny) Freeman, Mary Gallagher, George P. Kell, Thomas J. and Belle (Patterson) Maher, Ronald C. and Katherine (Sauer) McGuirk, Elliot H. and Suzanna (Willis) Mini, Ronald A. and Sarah (Robinson) Munson, Frank B. Murray (chairman); 1965-Sharon Bishop, Bruce Collier, Jethro M. Eisenstein and guest, Britt R. Gilbert, Thomas D. and Pamela (Mark) Harvey, Diana Katz, Aliena (Dungan) Leonard, Bruce M. Preston (chairman) . SPRING TRIP TO VIRGIN ISLANDS As the old song says, "Three strikes and you're out," so we're coming up to bat for the last time. The game? To try to interest alumni in group travel somewhere. Our previous efforts were �December 1970 Philip L. Alger '12 inspects Award of Merit plaque with William R. Til1es '59. Representing General Noble, Carey Jarman '17 accepts plaque from President Tilles. Luther S. Tall '21 (left) receives plaque from former Award winner Thomas B. Turner '21. obviously ill-timed or unappealing; we hope that this latest effort will prove more attractive. If you didn't see one of the flyers at Homecoming, you will soon receive one through the mail. Basically, the trip involves eight days and seven nights in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The travel is on jet aircraft from Baltimore's Friendship Airport, the cost covers almost everything during the trip. The dates for the trip are April 1724, 1971, just at a time when we can all use some warm surf and sun after a long, cold winter. Watch for the special announcement giving all details. Meanwhile, make plans now to join in the fun. or to St. John's College, or for outstanding achievement in his chosen field." Philip L. Alger of the class of 1912 has been a professional engineer all his life. He earned degrees of bachelor of science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and master of science from Union College, both in electrical engineering. St. John's awarded him an in-course master's degree in 1916, and in 1968 he was honored by the U niversity of Colorado with the degree of doctor of science. Forty years of his long career were spent with the General Electric Company, during which time he became a leading authority on electric motors. He holds numerous patents in that field, and has written extensively about all aspects of mathematics, electricity, and professional ethics, among other subjects. He received the Lamme Award from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1958, and eight years later was selected as Engineer of the Year by the New York State Society of Professional Engineers. Alfred Houston Noble served in the United States Marine Corps from 1917, when he graduated from St. John's, until 1956, rising from Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant General while on active duty. Upon his retirement he was advanced to the rank of General, the first St. John's alumnus to hold that rank. He served in France with the Sixth Marine Regiment dur- ing t]le First World War, and in the Treasury Islands, and at Choiseul Island, Bougainville, and Guam during World War II. His many decorations include the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal with Oakleaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit with Combat "V," and the Croix de Guerre with Silver Star and Diploma. In 1827 Francis Scott Key helped form a Society of the Alumni; in 1934 Luther S. Tall incorporated the Alumni Association in its present form, served as its president for an unprecedented three consecutive terms, and was a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors during the critical years 1936-1938. Currently an account executive with radio station WMAR-FM in Baltimore, he was formerly vice president of Wm. H. Lohmeyer, Inc., a men's wear firm in Baltimore. For years Mr. Tall has been a leader in alumni activity in the Baltimore area, even after stepping down from active participation in Association affairs. General Noble was the only honoree unable to attend Homecoming, sending a telegram of regret from his home in La Jolla, Calif. Carey Jarman '17, winner of the Award in 1964, accepted the presentation plaque for him. Dr. TI10mas B. Turner, a classmate of Mr. Tall, a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and the recipient of the 1957 Award, made the presentation of Mr. Tall's plaque. AWARD OF MERIT An electrical engineer, a Marine general, and an advertising account execu- tive were honored with the 1970 Alumni Award of Merit at Homecoming this year. This was a departure from the practice of the past 20 years, and reflects a decision by the Association directors to increase the number of annual awards from one to not more than three. The Award of Merit, established in 1950, is given each year by the Alumni Association to an alumnus "for distinguished and meritorious service to the United States or to his native state 25 �The College President Richard D. Weigle greets Frank B. Marshall, Jr. '45, William W. Simmons '48, and the latter's mother, Mrs. Haven Y. Simmons. Front, left, A. Willard Joyce '13, Mrs. Dunlevy C. Downs, Mr. Downs '16; Rear, Guy D. Thompson '16, Walter W. Warner '14, Ernst Von Schwerdtner '17, and Carey Jarman '17. Graduate School forum in King William Room. Bernard F. Gessner '27, new executive vicepresident of Association, waits for dinner. ANNAJPOUS HOMECOMING From left: Roland N. King '25, George F. Wohlgemuth '19, Mrs. Robert A. Bier and Dr. Bier '19. 26 Mrs. Robert A. Goldwin (almost hidden, left) chats with Mr. and Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt '50 during cocktail party. �December 1970 Gene Thornton '45 (left), and Frank B. Marshall, Jr. '45, join Alex Koukly '44 at Friday night "welcome aboard" party. From left: Bill Hendricks '73, his dad Theodore W. '50, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin T. Hunt '50, and Annapolis Dean Robert A. Goldwin '50. California alumnus David Dobreer '44 (left) renews old friendship with Henry T. Wensel, Jr. '46. From left, Julius Rosenberg '38, Cyril R. Murphy, Jr. '36, John D. Alexander, Sr. '20, Darrell L. Henry '61, Earl R. Keller '21, and A. Willard Joyce '13. Henry S. Shryock, Jr. '32 and Charles Dell '24 follow soccer game closely. Mrs. Juliana Rugg, College nurse, Joan E. Cole '57, Gay (Patterson) Ahlf '59, and Charlotte King '59, from left. Sharon Bishop '65 and Tutor Edward G. Sparrow, Jr. 27 �The College ANNUAL GIVING Since 1937 St. John's has insisted that it is essentially different from other colleges. That this has been and is true was never more clearly shown than in the past five years. While violence has torn other campuses apart, St. John's has remained an island of relative tranquility, a college whose sole purpose is education, not political action. Unavoidably, there is one area in which St. John's is exactly like all other colleges: in its financial need. And that area is more critical for all colleges this year than perhaps ever before. Unlike some, St. John's has neither closed nor "gone public"; like many, we have raised fees this year and may have to do so annually. Unlike some, we have not frozen faculty and staff salaries; we have tightened our belt and pared an already streamlined budget. And like almost all others are doing, St. John's this year is asking parents, friends, corporations, and alumni to raise their level of giving. This year's alumni campaign has a goal of $30,000, for instance, up $5,000 from last year. Appeals for alumni gifts will start shortly after January 1st. We hope to be able to terminate the campaign in May. During that period you will be approached in person, by 'phone, or by letter; please respond as generously as you can. Don't hesitate to give, however, because your gift can't be a large one: the number of gifts is as important to us as the total amount received. If you want to take maximum advantage of tax benefits from your gift, you might consider giving before December 31st. No matter what you give, or when, the College will be most grateful. CLASS NOTES ers of the 175th Infantry Regiment during Wor1d War II and later commander of the 29th Division of the National Guard, is the second recipient of the Medal. old block, was a star lacrosse player at Brown University last season. 1914 Ernest L. Yost, M.D., as a member of the 50th anniversary class at Georgetown University, in June was honored with a Golden Jubilee Citation by the University. Dr. Yost received his medical degree from Georgetown in 1920. 1916 Lt. Gen. Thomas E. Bomke, USMC (ret.), and Mrs. Bourke were September visitors with his brother, Clyde E. Bourke '18, at the latter's Annapolis home, Gen. and Mrs. Bourke make their home in San Diego, Calif. 1917 The Rev. Dr. J. Turnbull Spicknall was honored on Sunday, April 5th, 1970, by the congregation of the Woodside United Methodist Church of Silver Spring, Md. In commemoration of his 50 years of clerical service, a portrait of Dr. Spicknall was unveiled at the church. 1919 Robert A. Bier, M.D., has "retired" from the post of chief medical officer of the Selective Service System, and has joined the Medical Division of the Civil Service Commission. Dr. Bier has been very active in re-forming the \Vashington chapter of the Alumni Association. 1921 Luther S. Ta11, an account executive with radio station WMAR-FM in Baltimore, and one of this year's AWard of Merit winners, was featured recently in the station's newsletter in a unique way. One page was devoted to a reproduction of Mr. Tall's senior class entry in the !921 St. John's Rat-Tat. 1923 lviaj. Gen. WiHiam C. Purnell in October received the Maryland Distinguished Service Medal and a special commendation from the Governor. Gen. Purnell, one of the command- 28 1924 Lt. Gen. Ridgely Gaither, USA (ret), Police Commissioner of Annapolis, and Miss Anne Stua1'i Harcourt were married during the summer in Silver Spring, Md. Dr. Robert S. McCeney, Gen. Gaither's roommate at St. John's, served as best man. 1934 The August 2nd edition of The Denver Post contained an interesting article by and about W. Thetford LeViness of Santa Fe. A cerebral palsy victim since birth, and confined to a wheel-chair, Mr. LeViness, nevertheless, pursues a fu11-time career as a librarian at the State Capitol in Santa Fe, a side-line as a freelance journalist, and with a companion travels the Southwest in a Toyota Land-Cruiser to gather material for his articles. Gust Skordas, assistant archivist for the State of Maryland, addressed the September luncheon meeting of the Annapolis Alumni chapter, describing the work done in the Hall of Records. 1935 Morton S. Fine is one of the co·producers of the new ABC-TV series, "TI1e Most Deadly Game." A radio and television writer who turned producer, Mr. Fine has among his credits the movie "The Pawnbroker" and the "I Spy" television series. 1938 William T. Ross in July was appointed manager of production planning for Celanese Fibers Company in Cumberland, Md. An employee of the company since 1940, Mr. Ross ho1ds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University. 1939 Frederick R. Buck's son Rick, a chip off the 1941 Paul R. Comegys, a general life insurance agent in Trenton, N.J., has become a parttime instructor at Rider College. 1944 John Davis Hill received the degree of master of arts in librarianship from the University of Denver last June. He is currently employed as Geology/Geophysics Librarian at the University of California at Los Angeles. 1945 Frank B. Marshall, Jr. has been elected president of the Annapolis Chapter of the Alumni Association. Mr. Marshall is the manager of an investment securities office in Severna Park, Md. Gene Thornton now writes the photography column of The New York Times Sunday edition. 1950 Robert A. Goldwin, dean of St. John's in Annapolis, was selected to appear in the 1970 edition of Outstanding Educators of America. This national honor has been extended to Mr. Goldwin on the basis of exceptional service, achievements, and leadership in education. Approximately 5,000 educators in all levels of education are thus honored each year. 1952 Warren Winiarski and his wife, Barbara (Dvorak) '55, Jive in the Napa Valley of California, where he is a winery consultant and is developing a 40-acre Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard. I-Ie hopes his enterprise will produce wines of excellence comparable to those of BordeatL-x. The Winiarskis live on a mountain top, and are initiating their three children in winery and vineyard practices, according to a recent letter. 1954 Folksinger and recording artist Glenn Yarbrough recently gave a concert at the Anne �December 1970 Arundel Community College near Annapolis. Many of Mr. Yarbrough's recent recordings have been works by his long-time friend, Rod McKuen. 1957 W. Douglas Weir, M.D., on July 1st started full-time work on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine as an assistant professor of psychiatry. His decision to devote more time to teaching was influenced largely by what Dr. Weir terms "stimulating, exciting changes in medical education." 1958 An interesting letter from Joseph M. Green, M.D., brings us up to date on his career. After St. John's he worked for a publisher for several years, attending school at night, and then he entered the State University of New York Downstate Medical College. He now has his medical education, a year's internship, and three years' residency in Internal Medicine behind him. This year Dr. Green is in the first of two years of a fellowship in cardiology, and is acting director of the Systems Computer Laboratory, at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He and his wife, the former Rachel Elfie, have a son, Noah, age one. 1959 Christ Sagos has accepted a position with the IBM Corporation working in Phoenix, Ariz., managing a small group on a highway contract with the Arizona highway department. His wife, Mary (Horton) '61, has completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, graduating this past August. T11e Sagoses have daughters seven and nine years of age. 1960 Along with the invitation to celebrate their I Oth reunion at Homecoming, the members of the class received a questionnaire card from chairman Frank Murray. The idea was to send back a card if they couldn't attend in person; six replies were received, and are summarized below. (In each instance the last statement, set in quotation marks, is in reply to the question, "How have you changed?") Betty (Beck) Bennett, husband David, and their two girls live in Berkeley, Calif., and Nirs. Bennett replies, "How not? I view cynicism and skepticism as necessities, find it harder to hope. But I do." Rosalie (Levine) Boosin, hllSband Joel, and their daughter live in Brooklyn. Mrs. Boosin is a teacher on child care leave, and writes, "I feel older. I hope I'm wiser." David Chang, wife Ann (Wisotzki) '63, and their two children live in Acton, Mass., where he labors in the military-industrial complex, and from whence he replies, "for the better, thank you." John E. Gorecki, an instructor in English at Macon (Ga.) Junior College, replies, "I am married, and I am looking forward to beginning a Ph.D. program in English shortly at some Southern university." John R. Jacobson is married, has two children, is Executive Director of Associated Colleges of the Mid-Hudson Area, lives in New Paltz, N.Y., and answers, "more cynical." John J. G. Lane, his wife Grace (Prevost) '59, and their three children live in Del City, Okla., where Capt. Lane is Chief of Research and Analysis, Communications Computer Programming Center, Tinker Air Force Base. His answer to the question about changing, "Aged 10 years." Kendon and Patricia (Townsend) Stubbs live in Charlottesville, Va., with their two sons. Mr. Stubbs is reference librarian and a member of the faculty of the University, while Mrs. Stubbs is "former teacher and a future teacher and full-time housewife." The Stubbses answer, "perhaps most significantly by activity in community affairs and problems." 1962 Maria ,(FJaschberger) Hanneman writes that her husband has received a one-year overseas research grant, and that they will be living in Ritterweg, Germany. 1963 Daniel T. Devereaux married Miss Helena "'iskman last April, and is currently assistant professor of philosophy at the University of 1 Virginia. Roberta Lee (Invin) Wagner writes that she, her husband, and their six children have moved to Kansas City, Kans., where she has accepted a one-year internship in clinical psychology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She hopes to obtain her Ph.D. degree in clinical psychology from George Peabody College, Nashville, Tenn., next summer. 1964 Jolin P. Hetland and six other IBM'ers left that corporation in October 1969 to form Corstar Business Computing Company in White Plains, N.Y. Mr. Hetland says, "we are not getting rich, but we're having fun and learning a lot." 1965 Daniel V. Madfredi is currently attending graduate school at the University of Toronto. Lt. Kerry Nemovicller writes that he is alive and well "somewhere on the border" in Israel. His card promises a longer letter when circumstances permit. Antigone Pllalares (SF) and Ervin Lee Moore were married on June 20th in Tanana, Alaska. Mr. Moore is a sanitarian for the U.S. Public Health Service. The Moores were scheduled to be transferred to Albuquerque in Sep· tember, and she plans to return to school, perhaps to pursue a master's degree in education. Mrs. Moore writes that Anne (Harlan) Plummer (SF) is also in Albuquerque, taking education courses at the University of New Mexico. Jinna (MacLaurin) Rie is presently enrolled at Goucher College in Towson, Md., as one of 38 participants in Goucher's 5th Year Program in Elementary Education leading to the degree of Master of Education. 1969 Meredith (Ardis) and G. Michael Anthony now live in Eugene, Oreg. Mrs. Anthony this past spring received her master's degree in writing from The Johns Hopkins University. Janet Gleason and Robert J. Benton were married on June 13th, and now live in New York City. David H. Humphreys has joined the staff of the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Department of Social Services. 1970 John R. Dean, having traveled in Europe and Greece this summer, has settled into his studies in comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts. Joanne Murray is a teaching assistant in the Deparbnent of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Maryland. Adrian E. Pols is currently employed by the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Department of Social Services. In Memoriam Dennis G. Glew in August was appointed an instructor in history and classics at Moravian College, Allentown, Pa. A Ph.D, candidate at Princeton University, Mr. Clew holds an M.A. degree in classics from that institution, and studied at the Albertus-Magnus University in Cologne, Germany, last year. Bruce Collier, a June recipient of a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University, now lectures in the history of science there. Vivian T. Ronay and Theodore L. Barry III were married during the summer, and make their home in New Yark City. 1925-J. GoRDON BASSETT, Baltimore, Md. CARTER D. MESSICK, Annapolis, Md., October 5, 1970. 1968 1965-TRAcY S. YoUMANs, Portland, Oreg. 1909-BusnROD B. HowARD, Charlestown. S.C., August, 1970. 1934-ROBERT CRANE {LEATHERBEE)' New York City, July 2, 1970. Daniel L. CJeavinger (SF) and his wife, Anne (Bancroft) SF '69, have returned safely from Peace Corps service in Peru. Mr. Cleavinger is now slated for active duty in the U.S. anned forces. 1969-ANTHONY J. SNIVELY III, Cambridge, Mass., October 12, 1970. 29 �St. John's College in Annapolis announces Summelt' Confelt'ence Site AvaHable Auditorium, dining hall, dormitories, classrooms (301) 263-2371, ext. 14 The College St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Second-class postage paid at Annapolis, Maryland, and at additional mailing offices. � 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 <em>The College </em>(1969-1981) Description An account of the resource St. John's College's Office of the Dean published <em>The College</em> from 1969 to 1981. The publication superseded <em><a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/37" title="The Bulletin of St. John's College">The Bulletin of St. John's College</a></em>.  <em>The College</em> was in turn continued by <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/13" title="The St. John's Review"><em>The St. John's Review</em></a> in 1981.  <br /><br />A separate magazine for St. John's alumni titled <em>The College </em>began publication in 2001, continuing <em>The St. John's Reporter</em>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=12">Items in the The College Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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 Santa Fe, NM 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 thecollegemagazine 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. 29 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Development Offices of St. John's College Title A name given to the resource The College, December 1970 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-12 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Berns, Laurence Felter, Mary P. Parran, Jr., Thomas Trimmer, Maurice Sullivan, Daniel Description An account of the resource Volume XXII, Number 4 of The College. Published in December 1970. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The_College_Vol_22_No_4_1970 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Santa Fe, NM Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf The College