22 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/55e6aa8f496fa78a421d25bf54284ef0.mp3 d715f6cabf822c3afed8083364d2ef02 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:08:08 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Brann_Eva_1972-05-05_ac Title A name given to the resource On Thomas More's Utopia Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on May 5, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-05-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535. Utopia More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535 Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2e712cf6ffbdf618790e699e961dda6e.mp3 1e9d6dc5c4d2a41546b04b3325072635 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:40:16 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Brann_Eva_1972-10-06_ac Title A name given to the resource The Poet of the Odyssey Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 6, 1972, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-10-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Homer. Odyssey Greek literature Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/edf751d064ff28012445edd4d5929c84.mp3 17ddf7b73e53cd0a282d3bdadcae7fdd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:58 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 10108 Title A name given to the resource On the Imagination Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 18, 1977, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The first few sentences of Brann's lecture are cut off by recording problems, just after the word, "Tonight." In Brann's lecture transcript, this paragraph reads, "Tonight I shall commit the deliberate indiscretion of trying to say what may be, all in all, unsayable. Let me, therefore, begin with a little disquisition on ineffability." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-11-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Imagination Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/38200fd7c406391596a25251f1c7cad7.mp3 541ed2683130d587bc4c79dc78d37afc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:21 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Brann_Eva_1983-08-18_ac Title A name given to the resource Against Time (part one) Description An account of the resource Audio recording of part one of a two-part lecture delivered on August 18, 1983, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The second part of the lecture was delivered on August 25, 1983. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983-08-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Time Philosophy, Modern Relation A related resource <a title="Against time (part two)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/316">Against time (part two)</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f9465c92e03a930e136a8f37c472f086.mp3 e10f7e4e6c5d3797c6b8f3814539d8dd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:44:32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 10309 Title A name given to the resource Telling lies Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 27, 1993 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993-08-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Truthfulness and falsehood Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cff1a32fe5ffd839cc243e915723b83c.mp3 76f94a6a12c5277a5c37f9a513225e67 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:48:39 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 64017 Title A name given to the resource The past-present Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 02, 1994 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994-09-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource History Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bfdbb6f8e7fbb2806e62c103d4270c32.mp3 53739bf1d32198e1f4edc8cb3f2ce6f2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:48:07 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 53170 Title A name given to the resource For the first time Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 01, 1995 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995-09-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Beginning Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b9bcfd75efadecc06c24f158e91742cf.mp3 2875359ba5fcf90ddb403595f8c6c859 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:46:37 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 58313 Title A name given to the resource Why read books? Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 20, 1996 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-08-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Reading Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2f3710d1a902396ef232c8cd5bfcd5c8.mp3 c875e1478be9bf1c897d18b17fc5cbc8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:49 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiocassette 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Brann_Eva_1998-09-04_ac Title A name given to the resource What, Then, Is Time? Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 4, 1998, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Brann's lecture is based on her book <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780847692927/What-Then-Is-Time">What, Then, Is Time?</a>, published by Rowman and Littlefield in 1999. The typescript of the lecture was reprinted in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/553">The St. John's Review, volume XLV, number 3 (2000)</a>. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-09-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Time Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ae5af4d1d5d6928ac824b521181f9242.mp3 c8b3a37f806f950e749020922418187f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:39 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Brann_Eva_2001-11-02_ac Title A name given to the resource Ways of Naysaying Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 2, 2001, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-11-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Negation (Logic) Nonbeing Nothing (Philosophy) Language A language of the resource English Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3edced224bf9b18d00f542adf27ed719.mp3 45dfa64795561c2c565e689d297b64ef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:13:33 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 71417 Title A name given to the resource The empires of the sun and the West Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on October 04, 2002 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-10-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Cort Montezuma II, Emperor of Mexico, ca. 1480-1520 Prescott, William Hickling, 1796-1859. History of the conquest of Mexico. Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f8ee9b6c94db38abb81625c20bea19d8.mp3 c2ae45e6bd4c142190c2d7b7e796f711 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:09:11 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 Against Time (part two) Description An account of the resource Audio recording of part two of a two-part lecture delivered on August 25, 1983 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The first part of the lecture was delivered on August 18. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983-08-25 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pm3 Subject The topic of the resource Time Philosophy, Modern Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 13440 Relation A related resource <a title="Against time (part one)" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/263">Against Time (part one)</a> Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b70c11230755fc2c9e5a92d0bdc64ed4.mp3 7a33a2c43ca112db6876e3c9e72f677b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio cassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:35:24 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Depth and desire Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 31, 1990 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990-08-31 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Heraclitus, of Ephesus Communism Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/5">Typescript</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 10245 Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6998381ef7d5480a664240c7c66d952c.mp3 89338496e3a2b9a9042764c1d6c5293d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Santa Fe Commencement Programs and Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data digital Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:21:12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Santa Fe Commencement Address, Spring 2016 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the commencement address given on May 21, 2016 by Eva Brann at the end of the Spring 2016 semester in Santa Fe, NM. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-05-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 2016 Santa Fe Commencement Speech Relation A related resource <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/536">Typescript</a> Language A language of the resource English Commencement Deans Santa Fe https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2fb47b31fc950ed0c6333a505daa7576.pdf 6d4c33d3ddd3435aff4b3e4d0c7a5cca PDF Text Text 1 Commencement, May 21, 2016 St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM “CHANGING THE WORLD” Eva Brann, Tutor, Annapolis Parents and Relatives, Fellow Tutors and Mr. President, Board Members and, above all, Santa Fe Seniors and Graduate Institute students! Some of you will remember that radiotelephone distress signal of old: “Mayday, Mayday.” It had, alas, nothing to do with the “merry month of May.” Our seniors, who have all learned a lot of French, will recognize the call right away: “m’aidez, m’aidez!,” help me, help me! All over our continent there are the same weekend events this month: commencements and graduations. Those organizers who think of this day as a beginning for you, as launching you into a new, the so-called real world, will have the printer put “Commencement” on the program. Others will interpret this ceremony as the entering into a higher kind of being, by the bestowal of the degree (gradus in Latin) of a Bachelor of Arts, in fact, of the Liberal Arts, and for them it will be a graduation. For us, your tutors, this day also has two aspects. Yesterday we were to each other, by the custom of our college, Mr. or Ms. From today and forever after, you will be to us Joan or John, and eventually we too will be given our first name. (To be sure, I’m in fond communication with certain alumni of my first graduating class, that of 1961, who cannot bring themselves, silverhaired though we’ve grown together, to call me Eva. —Well, we’re working on it.) This first moment, this transmutation from the style of cooperative respect between tutor and student to the affectionate familiarity of mutual friendship, is always poignant to me, and I think also to the alumni in their first hour. �2 For the tutors, too, there is a beginning—the beginning of an absence. Last week in Annapolis, the seniors I’d been with in seminar commenced not being on campus—gone off into the world. I went there on Sunday to meet a fellow tutor, and we confessed to each other a sweet nostalgia—“nostalgia” because those quondam-seniors were still such vivid ghosts, “sweet” because it is the way of our college that we don’t become estranged from each other through the phases of our lives. Be you known to us as undeflectable paragons of virtue or as irremediable scamps—when we see each other again, we’ll be, so to speak, on the same page right away, some page of those great books we’ve read together, in the midst of that lifelong, uninterruptible conversation we began here. And the truth is that our post-graduate friendships don’t much depend on actually having known each other. Sad to say, I know very few of you, but who doubts that we can be in the middle of satisfyingly significant talk within minutes of having met, not least because Annapolis and Santa Fe are—what a miracle!—Siamese twins living twothousand miles apart. But back to the mayday distress call. All over the country, speakers who accepted the invitation to talk to you on this last and first day, feeling as touched and honored by it as I was, soon began to agonize (somewhat as, to compare small matters with large, seniors do about the choice of their senior essay topic) about a fit subject for this great moment—one that alumniabout-to-be, the chief addressees, will find congenial and that our honored guests can listen in on with interest—the parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles who made all this possible and the brothers and sisters and childhood friends who put up with it all.—I won’t specify what there was to put up with, but I can imagine. So we call for aid on whatever power will come. As for me, I remembered a recent conversation, actually with one of our graduate students. I’ll transcribe it from my memory, abbreviated. �3 Student: “How will my St. John’s education help me to do what I want?” Me: “And what’s that?” Student: “I want to change the world.” Me: “For the better?” Student looks totally abashed; I’m a bit abashed as well, for being a smart-aleck. But he took it well, and the ensuing conversation was illuminating to both of us. At this point I want to assure you that at a thousand schools this May speakers will be alluding to this conversation. They will bid the graduates “Go forth and change the world,” or alternatively, “Go forth and make a difference.” I say, let us have a little last-moment language tutorial. Let us, Johnnie-fashion, analyze the sentence “I want to change the world.” But no, it’s not a real class conversation because in a St. John’s class you and your tutors were committed to making the best possible sense of what the people around the table and the books on the table were saying. But I, in all candor, will try to show that “I want to make a difference, I want to change the world” aren’t very sensible sentences. So here goes. This announcement has three parts: first, I want; second, to change; third, the world. So, first, “I want.” “I want” is about me, and if what I want is to be a “difference-maker,” it’s about my self-satisfaction. Recall yourselves as Juniors, when you struggled with Kant on morality. No one expected you to get it all. (In fact, there are some books we ask you to read largely so that you can reread them later in life, on the logical hypothesis that you just can’t read them for the second time unless you’ve read them for a first time.) As regards Kant, this much may have stuck: He thinks that doing right is not doing what you want but what you ought, and that, in fact, the only proof of your doing as you ought is that it hurts some, that your mere wanting is thwarted. So when it’s the world I’m planning to change, maybe “I want” should yield a little to “I should.” �4 Second, “change.” Why exactly “change”? There are many others modes of action besides this current mantra. There’s protecting and maintaining, activating and fulfilling, restoring and reviewing. Talk of mere change is just terminally vague babble—vague promise and vague threat. Its antidote is specific thinking expressed in adequate language. That very requirement, thoughtfulness and its articulation, was an explicit aim of the Program, to which you devoted the last four years. Third comes “the world.” It’s a big space in which to thrash about. In choosing it as the venue of my action, I’ve pretty much committed myself to the silliest of all maxims of action— another current mantra. It goes: Only if x happens, can y occur. Filling in the most common variables for this formula: “Only if the world changes radically, can little kids learn to love reading,” in other words, never—guaranteed. The implied lesson is: Forget about “the world”— stay local and avoid stymieing preconditions. And now the usually missing fourth part to the saying “I want to change the world,” namely, “for the better.” Your four years with us were, I think, above all intended to give you a head start in answering for yourself the most crucial of human questions: What is good? For making anything better without a view of good seems to me just groping in the murk of possibility. So, you’ll recognize two of the ways that the Program and the College were meant to help you with making the here better now. One was that we, students and tutors together, read remarkable books by unusually gifted authors, books that offered us various, often contrary models of the good life and its conditions. You may often have thought that our, the tutors’, intention was to throw you into a permanent muddle. But, of course, the opposite was our hope: It was that you would find in your reading the elements of your own firm view of what is good �5 universally and therefore what is better in particular. This crystallization is surely still in process for many of you. But my experience of six decades of alumni tells me that it does happen, perhaps over the next score of years. Much more will go into it than what you learned here, but that learning will, so alumni often say, be the informing reference of your experience. That ability to specify the universal is the second of the two ways our Program readied you for great deeds. Now, in the spirit of that specificity, I owe you an example of what I think of as actual action, local in worldly coordinates but grand in human scope. Most of you will, I’d guess, work in an office at some point. Proper offices have watercoolers, Xerox-rooms, galleys with hot-plates. People spend as much time there as they dare. So post a note: “Would you be interested in reading some poetry together during lunch hour? I propose Wallace Stevens’ ‘Sunday Morning.’ Copies are on the counter. Let’s meet next Wednesday in Room 666. Bring your lunch, I’ll bring cookies. Expertise inessential. Signed…” If no one turns up, which is unlikely, keep trying. Something will come to pass. Incidentally, don’t you eat yourself all the cookies (which are essential). Before I finish and let our seniors receive their degrees, I need to say that what I’ve done here isn’t quite right: I’ve told you what’s what and you’ve sat silent, except perhaps for an occasional guffaw. All my points were left unquestioned—deep metaphysical maxims such as cookies being essential to meetings and expertise inessential to poetry, and large practical claims, such as local happenings having more actuality than global commotions—Don’t let it happen to you very often, though these occasional one-way ritual performances are also necessary to human life. �6 So then: I wish you a life of genuine action and of actual happening, a life of as much happiness as you know what to do with—and a bit more. Go forth, find a place you can love, and help to make it “what it was always meant to be.”* Go forth and change the world—for the better. Thank you. * To ti en einai, “essence.” Aristotle, Metaphysics. (I bet that no other graduation speech in this country sported a footnote, least of all to Aristotle.) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Santa Fe Commencement Programs and Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem 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 digital Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 6 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Santa Fe Commencement Address, Spring 2016 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-05-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Relation A related resource <a title="Audio recording" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/498">Audio recording</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Santa_Fe_Commencement_2016_Eva_Brann_Speech Description An account of the resource Typescript of the commencement address given on May 21, 2016 by Eva Brann at the end of the Spring 2016 semester in Santa Fe, NM. Commencement Deans Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/39bbe47e04fc008ff2c151cbcfe14c85.pdf 45e1f0016e49968cda4828a9c6965b19 PDF Text Text THE STUDENT'S PROBLEM LECTURE ON THE LIBERAL ARTS Eva Brann Collegian Supplement, ~tober 1967 �St. John's College is a small liberal arts school, co-educational and non-sectarian, with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Editors. . . . . • . • . . . . . . . • . . . . .George and Meredith Anthony Associate Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • • . • • .Richard Sohmer Assistant Editors. . . • . . • . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . • Steve Forman Masha Zager F<1.culty Advisor . . • . . . . • . . . . • . . . • . . . • . . . . . • Eva Brann Cover Design . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . •.•.. Gabrielle Bershen St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland �The Student's Problem Lecture on the Liberal Arts, given at St. John's College in Annapolis on Friday night, September 22, 1967 Eva Brann, Tutor Fellow members of the Community of Learning, There is a sickness, traditionally called melancholy, which is particularly at home in communities of learning such as ours. Its visible form can be seen in the engraving by Duerer called Melencolia Prima. Amidst the signs and symbols of the liberal -arts, especially geometry, sits heavily a winged woman. Her eyes are fixed intently on visions of nothing - she is a figure of "careless desolation" surrounded by unvalued riches. Almost all the older members of this - and any - community of learning, be they teachers or students, are well acquainted with her. So will you be, who are fresh to our enterprise, the later the more devastatingly. However, not only we, but students throughout this country, over a quarter of whose citizens are now entering schools, are subject to this malady which has, in fact, in this very decade reached epidemic proportions. It therefore seems right to take account of it publicly, the more so since its cause is a peculiar version of a fundamental human problem which is just now beginning to cause this nation what will turn out to be, I think, its most characteristic agony. It is the problem of poverty amidst riches. I shall try to talk about its intellectual aspect not in those facile current terms which can do little but give the victims the bleak satisfaction of having a disease at once choice and popular. I shall not mention either "identity crises" or "alienation, " nor shall I talk of "middle class values, " rejected or otherwise, and "trends in society, "rapidly increasing or the opposite. Instead I shall begin by referring to a book which is a compendium of the traditional wisdom concerning the nature of human unhappiness, written when the human soul had not yet become a "field" for experts. In the beginning of the seventeenth century an English scholar, Robert Burton, wrote for his own relief and for the comfort of his friends a book called The Anatomy of Melancholy, in which everyone may find his particular misery acknowledged as a human condition. Burton makes a distinction between chronic suffering, a true disease of spirit, and the occasional type, of which he says simply that "melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality." I -3- �think that by the "character -of mortality" he means the knowledge, implied in every feeling that has any urgency about it, that the time of our life is finite. Melancholy, however peculiar and complex it may be, is essentially the sometimes paralyzing and sometimes frenzying dread of "missing out, " which comes to those who have had tantalizing intimations of earthly happiness. It is the stronger the more remote death is, and so strongest in the young, for in them every day demands the renunciation of a hundred possible futures for the choice of one actual life, and the very riches of this indeterminacy may stymie the energies and induce listlessness and restless sloth. Consequently the opposite of melancholy is riches in poverty, a serene ardour of the sort perfectly described in a : Buddist song of which the translation is as follows (I have, of course, no idea what the original really says): Well -roofed and pleasant is my little hut, And screened from winds:- Rain at thy will, thou god! My heart is well composed, my heart is free, - And ardent is my mood. Now rain, god! rain. · Melancholy is, then, a human sickness attendant ort the in · vestrhertt and expenditure of living time. That this is the case is shown by the kind of reliefthat that part of the youth of this country is indulging in which negotiates its future for an instant bliss and sells its hopes for a high moment, as the slogan goes, "right now." Their prototype is Dr . Faustus, the melancholy scholar who buys "experiences" of the devil at the expense of all time to come; there is,. in fact, a very perceptive novel of student life by John Hersey, called Too Far to Walk, which exploits this very legend of the melancholy doctor in modern dress. This then is the sickness which particularly afflicts students, and I shall now inquire why this is so. Our freshmen will soon lea.rn that the English word "school" is derived from the Greek word ''schole" which means "leisure." A student at school is a · person of leisure, a human being with an abnormal wealth of time free from business, left free to confront the acknowledged riches -of the spirit. And yet he often finds his appetite inept to this food, so that he who must have come because he wanted the life of study as a whole, cannot bring himself to study this or that assignment and spends his time in the frame of mind of which Paul says: "For what I would that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." Why does this happen? -4- �There are certain reasons for student discontent which I shall not consider much since they do not seem to me to go to the heart of the matter. One has to do with the restrictions and con formities demanded by the school as a semi-public institution. A college is a civil association grounded in the body politic and en tirely dependent on it for its survival. Its members, in joining this association, have in fact agreed to conform to the laws of the land. There remains, however, the vexed and vastly exaggerated question of conforming to its conventions. Here a subtle argument applies, and a student's appreciation of it is the measure of his understanding of the nature of a liberal education. For as I shall try to show later, a proper school harbours within itself such depths of true dissent and such abysses of true radicality, that an unobtrusive cloak of ordinary behavior is essential to its internal and external survival. Those who are considering growing long beards and sporting bare feet are, though they may not know it, supported even by classical Western authority, for the last great pagan, the Emperor Julian, showed in his essay called the "Beardhater" that it is a sign of Christian impiousness to despise beards, which are, even when thickets of lice, the philosopher's attribute. And who has read Plato's Symposium and does not know that bare feet are the very marks of the demon Love himself? But it is precisely because he appreciates the significance of such external signs that a serious person can afford to avoid them until he is sure that he knows what he is doing and to whom - to call such deliberate conformity hypocrisy is extremely simple-minded. Much restlessness also arises from the fact that students, who are in these years by the plan of nature at the peak of their sexual desires, are required by serious schools to observe the rites of celibacy. In this, more than in any other respect, the rules of school - life are no mere conventions, for whoever knows anything about the life of learning will not entertain the frivolous notion that it ought to be a very natural or satisfied life, but will understand that it requires a certain tension of soul and body and a certain reserve of deferred desire. µi the Symposium Aristophanes, whose business as a comedian it is to pursue the logic of ordinary and natural human behavior to its absurd end, gives a picture of constantly fulfilled desire as a frontless, faceless "two-backed beast" within which the mediating distance through which Eros needs to move has been closed, with the result that love and its attendant learning are at an end. And indeed, most of us have felt a certain loss of ardour in ageneration which feels free to proceed -5- �immediately to that end. Such then are what appear to me false irritants. There is, of course, also a genuine reason for the universal student disgust, and this has no cure but revolution - just such a revolution, I be lieve, as took place when the present program was instituted at this school over a generation ago. * Let me describe, justly, I hope, what seems to me the position which must be overthrown, the position of the vast majority of those engaged in the vast busi ness of higher education. They consider that there are at hand ready made bodies of information and disciplines which constitute the heritage of human learning. These must be made available to the student, who may, however, be expected to choose among them and who is therefore expected to desire to learn the ones he elects. Moreover, a certain randomness or freedom is granted in the manner in which the subject is to be absorbed, and some resistance to the mental food is not only expected but is actually considered healthy. Incentives such as marks are certainly used, but it is recognized that the best feeders ingest because they are hungry. The finest of the teachers under this view of learning are usually those who have themselves become in turn absorbed in their subject and are contributing.to its advancement. The institution of learning which corresponds to this ·'view is a vast clearing-house for the private predilections of people who are, to be sure, usually very much in earnest. This storehouse of specialist knowledge is the university, with its two major divisions of the sciences and the humanities and its combination of freedom of choice and formalization of presentation. The activity carried on there is diverse and stimulating, and yet efficiently organized, as Kant already observed, like a factory, on the principle of division of labor. It is in the nature of the set-up that the latest, the most effective and the most highly technical and theoretically elegant field is found most captivating by bright and . fresh students, and that the universities should become the breeding grounds of sophisticated theories and techniques. ~ *The program of St. John's College requires every student to· pursue the elements of the linguistic as well as the mathematical arts; and to consider seriously certain books belonging to the reflective tradition. -6- �Now why is it that this veritable smorgasbord of learning is more often than not stale and tasteless for its students? It is, I think, because this view of learning regards everything whichis not the latest technique as rriere history, somehow fascinating to those who happen to be curious and fond of sight-seeing, but not inevitably interesting to all who are human: "For to converse with those of other centuries is almost the same thing as totravel," says Descartes in the Discourse. The effect of engaging in such historical, or "objective", investigations of other people's affairs and opinions can be deadly. Let me read you what the most prophetic critic of our contemporary life, Nietzsche, wrote about the universities of 1873: . . . The young man is kicked through all the centuries; boys who know nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are considered fit to be introduced to political history. We moderns also run through art galleries and hear concerts in the same way as the youngman runs through history. We can feel that one thing sounds different from another, and pronounce on the different "effects." And the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense or historical culture. The crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelm ing, that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find another emotion, too - disgust. The young man has become homeless: _ he doubts all ideas, all moralities. He knows "it was different in every age, and what you are does not matter. " . . . No, such study of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns show. Consider the student of history, the heir of ennui that appears even in his boyhood. He has the "me thods" for original work, the "correct ideas" and the airs of the master at his fingers' ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method and produces something, or rather, in prouder phrase, "creates" something. ·He becomes a "servant of truth" and a ruler in the great domain of history. Ifhe was what they call ripe as a boy, he is now overripe. You only need shake him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap; -7- �but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its worm. . . Thus Nietzsche. But I shall not linger on this genuine cause of student des pair either, since you at St. John's College are not, I think, confronted with it. If the sin of the universities may be defined as the perversion of tradition into history and of the liberal arts into special techniques, then the deeply conservative revolution by which the program of this college was instituted may be described as a return to the tradition of learning and the liberal arts. But as ,the freshman will learn all too soon, this campus too is the scene of much confusion of the spirit resulting in dreary apathy or danger ous wildness. Whatever the particular circumstances of those afflicted, in some central way our program of study is responsible. It too occasionally induces melancholy, and that in some of the most serious students, who sometimes feel a stultifying lack of fit between their human necessities and the store of learning provided, to whom the wisdom of the ages sometimes appears as a grotesque formalization of their vital problems, for whom the course of study sometimes runs aslant of, or counter to, the course of their lives. So I shall address myself now to this particular problem which I recognize as the central legitimate difficulty of the life of learning: Why are we sometimes unable to accept the riches we have inherited? I shall do this by investigating what the liberal arts are and, in connection with this, what is meant by our tradition of learning. For us it is not so important to know that there are traditionally seven liberal arts as to understand why these are divided into two groups, the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. This division mirrors the double nature of learning, namely that it is always done through words on the one hand, and that these are always concerned with learnable objects on the other. The trivium, the arts of the word, deals with those skills by which thought, that which is internal to human beings, is brought out, expressed and made communal, while the quadrivium, the arts, one might say, of the world, deals with those skills which help us to acquire as knowledge what is in the world, apart from and outside of our speech. The first group was sometimes called "exoteric, "suitable for the uninitiated, since words are that of which all human beings -8- �have sufficient natural know ledge to be ready for artful instruction. Thus grammar, the art of using words correctly is, as Cassiodorus, the sixth century author of a book fundamental for the whole subsequent liberal arts tradition, says, the principle, source and foundation of the arts. The second group was, correspondingly, called "acroamatic," meaning the arts "to be heard," namely by fewer and more advanced students. This distinction goes back to Plato's Republic, in which all citizens receive some sort of education in poetry, while only certain chosen C'>nes study precisely those arts which were later to be known as the quadrivium - arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, dealing in turn with numbers, bodies, moving bodies and audible moving bodies, understood as the intelligible elements which constitute the natural world. I mention this ancient and medieval distinction because, with acertain shift of meaning and blurring of lines, it still dominates the schools. The devotees, as we all know, of the literary fields often think of mathematicians and scientists as practicing black arts alien to humanity, while the latter think of the former quite simply as occupied with "trivial" matters. Now that I have said briefly what liberal arts traditionally exist, let us take a look at their name itself. The liberal arts are the "free" or "freeing arts." But isn't the phrase which names them a contradiction in terms? Listen how John of Salisbury, a medieval defender of the trivium, defines "art" in his work called Metalogicon: "Art is a reasonable procedure which, using the shortcuts proper to it, brings about a facility for achieving the naturally possible. For in this procedure reason does not promise to undertake or effect the impossible, but having in view those things which can be done, it opposes, as it were, to the wasteful circuitous road of nature a short cut, and brings into being, if I may put it this way, a faculty for mastering the difficult. For this reason the Greeks speak of art as 'method,' a 'short way, ' which avoidi? the extra expenditure of nature and makes straight its winding circuit, so that that which is to be done can be done more di rectly and easily." And Thomas Aquinas says: "Art, then, is a method, a set course, whose pursuit has become a habit, a second nature, and whose aim is to do something and to do it efficiently. " (It goes, of course, without saying that the activities of people called "artists" at present can be called arts only insofar as these people are fully in command of their work. But we are, in any case, not now concerned with the so-called productive or with the mechanical arts, but with the arts of learning.) -9- �Now to be able to do things in this way means to be a train ed expert. The notion of efficient theoretical know-how, acquired by habit-forming training, by the internalizing of precepts, which dominates the modern instructional business, derives, therefore, strange to say, from the traditional liberal arts themselves. The arts are understood as curriculum subjects, scheduled and insti tutionalized learning programs, or as John of Salisbury himself calls them: "compendia," sets of precepts governing a range of particulars. Since the body of such precepts needs to be developed and perfected by the concerted and continued efforts of the masters of the arts, arts-learning is always "traditional" in the two senses of the Latin word "tradere," namely of "handing on" and of "betraying" a heritage. For the accumulation of know-how is on the one hand passed down, mostly in books, from generation to generation, and regarded as a valuable inheritance, but on the other hand, insofar as improvements and advancements in learning are made, each generation is very willing to forget and deny the perch from which it took off - and obviously, the steeper the flight, the more vehement the denial. To give an example: for almost two millenia the great tool of learning which tops off the triviwn, logic, had had its most authoritative statement in a body of treatises by Aristotle called traditionally the Organon or "Instrument." At the beginning of the seventeenth century Francis Bacon published, as part of a huge plan for the re-organization of human knowledge, a work significantly and boldly called the "New Organon," in which he writes: "For after the sciences had been cultivated and handled diligently, there has risen up some man of bold disposition (he means Aristotle), and famous for methods and short ways, which people like, who has in appearance reduced them to an art, while he has, in fact only spoiled all that the others had done." And that from a man a good quarter of whose vocabulary is, I would think, Aristotelian! The point, however, which I mean to make is that the arts-tradition, characterized by the conception of art as method, is as much behind the iconoclast as behind the scholastic. Let us take a very brief and inadequate look at the history and meaning of this word, "method. " The Greek word m~thodos means simply "a way to follow" or a "pursuit." In the dialogue The Republic, Socrates uses the word in just this way. He speaks of the "pursuit" of mathematical studies which will end in a unified view of all of these, and then goes on to speak of the "way followed by dialectic, which alone travels in such a way that it gets rid of hypotheses and comes to the source itself . . . . " If someone -10- �were to translate "the way followed by dialectic" by the words "the dialectic method" he would be very much misrepresenting Plato's text, for the way of dialectic, the way of questions and answers about the nature of things, is, as I shall try to show, fundamentally different from, if not diametrically opposed to, the artful, abbreviated, problem-solving procedure which is signified by the word for us. Gradually, largely under the influence of medical writers, who particularly appropriate the word and mean by it a rationalized technique of treatment clearly communicable to an apprentice physician, method comes to be a key word with very nearly its present meaning. An obvious and essential part of this meaning is that such a technique must be teachable, that is, - there must be handy, rationally organized compendia of precepts such as are associated with a program of studies; an art must have "elements," first beginnings through which a student is properly introduced to it. In fact, in time "method" sometimes comes to mean simply "curricular subject, " any organized public presenta ti on. By the sixteenth century interest in "method" as the pedagogi cal side of arts learning had become rampantly exaggerated. An outraged scholar (I'urnebe) of the period says: "Method - no word is more popular in our lectures these days, none more often heard none give a more delightful ring than that term. . . . " And Ramus, the prolific rhetorician whom he is attacking and who is the great proponent of method at this time, says: "But method is used not only in the matter of arts and curricular subjects but in every matter which we wish to teach easily and clearly." Our modern "textbooks" are the consequences of this trend. In the next century the method of method undergoes one of those great betrayals of which I have spoken. Having been so far largely in the service of humanist training, particularly rhetoric and logic, or, in terms of the liberal arts, in the service of the trivium, it is freshly appropriated now for the inquiry of nature, it becomes "scientific," always with the intimation that no previous method was a true method. The work most characteristic of this development and most influential in the new understanding of the meaning of science (although by no means in the actual pursuit of it) is Descartes introduction to three physico-mathematical treatises setting out his own discoveries in optics, analytical geometry and metc:;orology, called significantly a Oiscourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences. It proposes essentially the introduction of quantita- -11- �tive, that is, mathematical, methods into the speculative or liberal arts. Descartes says: "Most of all I was delighted with mathematics because of the certainty of its demonstrations and the evidence of its reasoriing, but I did not yet understand its true use, and believing that it was of service only in the mechanical arts, I was astonished that, seeing how firm and solid was its basis, no loftier edifice has been reared thereupon." And later on: "I have never made much of those things which proceed from my own mind, and so long as I culled no other fruits from the method which I use, beyond . that of satisfying myself respecting certain difficulties which pertain to the speculative sciences . . . , I never believed myself obliged to write anything about it, but so soon as I had ac quired some general notions concerning physics I believed that I could not keep them concealed . . .. For they caused me to see that it is possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life and that, instead bf that speculative philosophy which is taught in the Schools, we may find a practical philosophy by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, heavens and all other bodies that environ us as distinctly as we know the' different crafts of our artisans, we can in the same way employ them in all those uses to which they are adopted, and thus render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature. " (Incidentally, the phrase "practical philosophy" contains that very self-contradiction I am on the way to pointing out - for what in the world might an "applied" love of wisdom be? - whose end-result is that thorough debasement of philosophy whieh Hegel, with vicious humour, il lustrates in his Encyclopaedia by a new book title he found announced in an English newspaper, namely "The Art of Preserving Hair on Philosophical Principles.") Speaking very broadly, then, ever since Descartes to be "scientific" means to introduce the Cartesian method or to approach matters of any sort as a natural scientist. As one little sample of the scope and pervasiveness of the method, I might quote from just such an application, Emile Durkheim's fundamental essay on sociology, called "The Rules of Sociological Method." In this book he says: "that what the method demands is that the sociologist put himself in the same state. of mind as the physicist, chemist, or physiologist. " I have introduced this insufficient little disquisition on method to complete the description of the arts side of the liberal arts. Arts are rules for the direction of the mind, binding precepts. Medieval writers, who are still much concerned with the nature of the curricular arts, emphasize this by their understand-12- �ing of the etymology of the Latin word "artes" itself. The same Cassiodorus I mentioned before, as well as Isidore of Seville, claims that arts are so called because, in Latin, "artant arte" (translated: "they bind strictly"). Thus the arts appear to be the opposite of free or freeing. Again Cassiodorus - the work, inci dentally; in which he introduces the pagan liberal arts into Christendom is called the Institutes of Divine and Worldly Arts - recognizes this problem by rather shamelessly claiming that "liberal" comes from "liber, "book, thus turning the free arts into the bookish arts, a characterization which does, of course, in view of the traditional nature of the arts, have some appropriateness. John of Salisbury, again, catches another aspect in understanding "liberal" as pertaining to "liberi, " children, so that the arts are here interpreted as the education of children, which also has some truth in it. A last medieval writer, Hugo St. Victor, in his very acute discussion of the liberal arts called the Didascalicon, the "Teacher's Manual, " takes full account of the fact that the arts are con straining and that they are, perforce, taught by masters to. the immature: "They are indeed the best instruments and rudiments for preparing the way for the soul of a full knowledge of philosophi cal truth. This is why they are called the three-way (the trivium) and the fourway (the quadrivium) . . . . Of Pythagoras too it is said that he employed in his studies · a special custom." (I should remark here that the introduction of the quadrivium is traditionally attributed to Pythagoras, a Greek "mathematician" of the sixth century B. C., , the same one who is said to have introduced the word philosophia, literally the "love of, or friendship, for wisdom"). "For seven years," Hugo continues, "obviously corresponding to the seven liberal arts, none of his students might dare to demand of him a reason for what he said, but the words of the master had to be taken on faith until the student hadheard everything and could thus find the reason for himself." With this story Hugo acknowledges that the very arts intended to make the independent search for knowledge possible must come to the student as to a child, in a constraining and authoritative way. We all know that this aspect of the teaching of the arts is usually predominant. At the beginning of the eighteenth century appeared a work which crystalizes the development which I am sketching, and which 0 oreshadows, in an almost uncanny way, the problem of our own :ducational situation, Giambatista Vico's expanded lecture On the Study Plan of Our Time. Vico understands what he calls "the genius of his time, " his modernity, in terms of the menacing -13- �dominance of the scientific method; the whole work is a reaction of somewhat concealed but vehement opposition to Bacon and Des cartes. He describes the method of the latter, which he calls the "new critical philosophy," as intending to be "the common instrument of all our arts and sciences," which "supplies us with something fundamentally true of which we can be certain even when as sailed by doubt." There are also particular instruments such as the telescope, the microscope, the universities, the printing press, which assist in the discovery and mastery of nature and in the wide dispersion of that knowledge. But of all these the most powerful instrument is "analysis," that is, algebra, which represents the method in all its characteristic aspects, in its brevity, ease, communicability, power. Vico, although he acknowledges these virtues, is at heart disturbed by the predominance of training in these swift and certain manipulations in the study programs of young men. He believes that "the greatest drawback of our educational plan is that we pay an excessive amount of attention to the natural sciences and not enough to matters of human conduct." Vico, who delivered this lecture in his official capacity as Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples, wants to lead the university back to an emphasis on the uncertain, understood as the probable, which, he conceives, was taught in traditional logic. He wants the imagination again to be trained by poetry, the common sense by the wisdom of the ancients and the judgement by the opinions of contemporary men. In short, he wants the universities to give more weight to what we call the humanities, which are for him comprised in rhetoric. He is initiating, under the guise of the then current topic of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, the deeply shallow division of university learning into the "two cultures" of humanism and science with which we are more than ever afflicted. Now note what lies at the root ofthis quarrel. It is the difference between method and non-method. Let him who is not to be a physicist or mechanic, Vico says, "not spend much time as a boy or afterwards in those studies which are handed on by method." The founders of such studies are compared to tyrants who scatter the inhabitants of a eity to prevent opposition, who hobble individual judgment with rules, and gravest of all, who know nothing of free speech. The distinction between studies is based only secondarily on the nature of the objects involved, and primarily on the kind of approach used. But this distinction leads to an almost paradoxical classification. The natural sciences alone are artful, in the sense _ being methodical, while all that of concerns not the experts but humanity in common is artless, that -14- �is, free, but only in the sense of having no strict procedure, and being dependent on the taste and talent of each individual. Vico himself does not fail to issue a demand for the unification of the study plan of universities, but, I submit, his own understanding of the di vision of studies makes this unification permanently im possible, as the present state of universities, 250 years after Vico's lecture, shows. For so long as the sciences are regarded as the rigorously reasoned but inhuman business of a group specially habituated to a certain theoretical procedure, while a vast con glomeration of interests called the humanities are in the hands of professors who do not take quite so great a professional pride in their ability to think rigorously as in the meticulousness of their sensibility, clearly no power on earth, not even that benevolent coercion, an interdisciplinary credit requirement, can persuade very many students to study seriously in both divisions. For everyone will plead that his preferences are really the expression of his aptitudes and that he has, as the case may be, that famous "block" against mathematics or against languages. And so the liberal arts disappear, torn apart into the humanly rudderless artfulness of scientific method and the willful freedom of organized idiosyncracy. As I have tried to show, this division, driven to pernicious extremes in the universities, is in fact already inherent in the very notion of the liberal arts and in any liberal arts program, and our problem raises the possibility that the very neces sity of the paradox points to some understanding which, instead oi perpetuating the division, will heal it by showing it to be an indis pensable and yet a merely intermediary phase of a truly humar education. To point out this possibility will, among other things, mean giving aid and comfort to that serious student whose diffi culties with our program are precisely that it presents himat fixed and perhaps privately inappropriate times with prepared problems and procedures, which may all seem to shunt aside rather than meet his own concerns and doubts. In particular, there are those well-known scandals, the so-called classics of tradition, the foremost food of solid schools, which, although presented as containing what human wisdom there is, seem to insist on speaking in terms infuriatingly remote and "academic." And yet every student acknowledges with his act of matriculation that he is in need of an organized community of learning where there will perforce be a set sequence of studies such as can take little account of the con tingencies of the single human soul, and that whatever skills and arts there are can hardly be transmitted otherwise than in the terms of those who perfected them, so that in the beginning, at -15- �least, their rules and precepts and requirements must be submitted to. What troubles him, and rightly, is how he himself fares in this beneficent assault, how the tyranny exercised by the arts can ever succeed in setting him free from confusion and impotence. The problem can now be formulated m this way: how can the arts be the freeing arts? Let me put that same problem one last time in te rms of a simple and pointed formula. Human inquiry proceeds either .£y setting problems or by asking questions. I would by no means claim that the distinction between them which I am about to offer is simply a general fact of language usage; in fact, the Cartesian work which formulates the "rules for the direction of the mind" toward problems specifically terms these "questiones." But it is sufficiently pervasive at present for my purpose. Vico had, very accurately, seen the essence of Descartes' new method in an instrument which he regarded as a great danger to the human spirit, in "analysis" or algebra. Now Descartes himself received this instrument from a great but insufficiently acknowledged predeces sor, Franciscus Vieta by name. His fundamental essay, which has the significant name "Introduction to the Analytical Art, " ends with the following stupendous claim: "Finally, the analytical art appropriates to itself by right the proud problem of problems, which is: TO SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM." We are still or rather, more than ever, dominated by Vieta's immense ambition. We see everywhere and in everything problems which we expect to solve by the application of some general method - that is why we submit to the tyranny of a training. We speak of the "problem of freedom" or the "problem of God." Our griefs a::re called "personal problems, " and if they are expressed in a form annoying to others, "personality problems;" our aches and pains are "health problems," our vices "drinking problems" and the like; our public statements, especially lectures, frequently recur to "the problem under examination. " What is a problem? Again it will be useful to go back to the original meaning of the word in Greek. A problema is simply "something thrown out before" us, anything from an outwork, that is, a defensive structure thrown out before a military camp, to a task set before someone to be done. The word was also used with a special meaning in geometry, where it signified that a construe tion was to be furnished rather than a theorem demonstrated. For instance, the last book of Euclid's Elements culminates in a series -16- �of problems, the constructing of the five regular solids; and the propositions read, in abbreviated form: "to construct a pyramid", "to construct an octahedron, " a cube, an icosahedron, a dodecahedron. An ancient commentator observes that in some sense all problems are theorems, for "we regard the generation that takes place iu them as referring not to actual making but to' knowledge, " and Euclid presents his problems in this theoretical way. But there is a procedure which is special to problems as distinct from theorems and which the Greeks called "analysis;" here is the source of this important method, which consists essentially in imagining the construction as having already been done, and then analyzing it, that is, breaking it up, to discover how it could have been do.n e. The elements which, as the technical phrase goes, wUl "do the problem" are then put back together or "synthesized." Furthermore, Aristotle, using the word "problem" in a logical context, distinguishes it, in his Topics, from the straight-forward interrogative proposition by the manner of the response expected; the problematic form constrains the answer to be an affirmative or a negative, as, for example in the question: "Is it, or is it not the case that animal is the genus of man", while the propositional form simply asks: "Is animal the genus of man?" We see that there are three related aspects to a problem. It is first of all a challenge, a publicly enunciated task requiring a solution in its own terms; secondly, its solution usually has the nature of a construction which may well be a th·e oretical construct; and finally and fundamentally, a problem is characteristically that which requires a solution, that is to say it requires its own aboli tion; a solv;ed problem is no longer a problem, and problems once solved are very legitimately forgotten. Take as an example the famous problem of squaring the circle, attacked in the past with veritably fanatical persistence. When in 1882 this problem was solved, or rather resolved, by being proved to be insoluble, the many clever efforts made in its behalf all, at a stroke, lost their interest except for antiquarians or slightly unhinged characters, like Public Prosecutor Paravant in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, who, laying out a piece of string on the circumference of a circle, attempts to catch the problem napping, as it were, by suddenly pouncing on the string and stretching ,it into the shape of a square. This self-destroying nature of a problem is acknowledged by Bacon and Vico and Kant, who all use for their new method, the method which turns every question into a soluble problem, the metaphor of Ariadne's clue, the thread which lead Theseus out of the laby-17-· �rinth to safety after he had killed the monster at the center. Problems have a fourth aspect, which is the one most relevant in my present context. In the Republic Socrates makes a special point of introducing problems into the quadrivium. He says: "Then in astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems and let the heavens alone . . . . " We have some evidence of what he meant by "employing problems" and "letting the heavens alone," since Plato is said to have set for his students the problem of rationalizing the irregularity of the visible heavenly motions by going beyond them to form mathematical hypotheses. The word "hypothesis" as used here designates the solution of the special kind of problem which calls for a mathematical fiction such as shall, without itself laying any claim to being true, provide a rational underpinning for the errant appearances of nature. What hypotheses are produced is never quite so interesting as that they should be produceable. From this point of view Socrates' call for the use of problems by learners, that is, the demand that they should construct hypotheses, is a demand that they should learn by exercising their skills on questions the answers to which are fundamentally indifferent. We are all very familiar with a rather low example of this teaching device: the practice problem. For instance, an analytic geometry textbook may present a student with the problem (I choose one of a multitude): "Show analytically that the latus rectum of a parabola is of length 4a. " This is the very model of a problem, showing explicitly what every problem at least implies. To begin with, the author and i:he student are both aware t,hat the problem is not waiting for the latter to be solved - his solution is in itself of no interest. Furthermore he is to "show analytically" what is required, and he understands immediately that this means "show by constructing an equation, " "show algebraically. " Just as the arts have in them the seeds of the scientific method, so the very notion of problem has in it an invitation to analysis or algebra; you will remember that analysis was originally a geometric procedure in which a construction is regarded as accomplish ed from the very beginning and then analyzed. But this is precisely what the fundamental algebraic form, the "formula" or equation, does for general numbers, for when I write 3x=l2, I am putting down a mathematical sentence which requires no question mark, much as if I already knew the answer, and all I need to do to make that answer explicit is to analyze out the unknown number by re organizing the equation. Now I can simply read off: x= 12 == 4. 3 -18- �The solution, four, does away with and abolishes the problem, for when I substitute it in place of x, the equation becomes an identity, a useless tautology. But most significantly, the unknown is fourid wholly in terms of the original problem so that the solution reaches in no way beyond it. Now, this procedure, although most nakedly apparent in mathematics, may be used in any art, and, as some people think, even in those human enterprises which go beyond the arts, if only their terms have been compacted into recognized obstacles, outworks inviting attack, that is problems. This is in fact our predominant way. Let me now say what a problem is in terms of all that has gone before. A problem is a sham question, a counterfeit question. For a genuine question is the desire for an answer, and it does not dissolve when an answer is gained anymore than love necessarily disappears because its object is won. A genuine question does not demand an answer in its own terms or on its own level, but seeks its desire wherever it may hope to find it, remaining open to any intimation its object might give. Nor will it rest satisfied by a construct or a fiction fabricated only to set it at rest, for it wants only what is in itself worth having. Problems are ultimately exercises, mere means, but questions are the serious and final hu man business. Let me try to formulate this once more. Is there something which human beings have for themselves, which is so very much our own that if we found a creat:Ure that possessed that same ability we would count it as human, no matter what its shape? Or, to put it in the opposite way, a very contemporary way: is there not something that we can be certain the most complex computer can never do? There is such a thing. The most sophisticated machine can never ask a question. For it can never feel the desire to know, which is the heart of a question. This desire, the desire in a true question, is not for apre-conceived x, hidden but present and entangled with all the terms at hand, but for something beyond. If, for instance, I seriously ask "what human learning might be?" I do not want my question transformed into the . problem of describing learning "systematically" or of "measuring it methodically," or of finding its "correlative phenomena, " or even of "constructing an effective theory" of learning, ·· but I want to gr asp what it truly is whenever it takes place. Here my very question implies that everything that is presented to me about learning, in observation or in books, is external and insufficient; I want to know for myself, and yet, in the common langu-19- �age of human beings, what makes the thing what it is. I am not looking for a pre-conceived x, unknown for the moment but so involved with and defined by the problem itself that I need only to re-arrange the terms cleverly enough to get a solution, but I want something beyond these, namely the reason why the thing is what it is, and I want this reason to be freely communicable. Every "academic" search, particularly the kind nowadays called "research, " moves strictly within the set terms of its discipline, and is therefore usually of interest only to the expert specialist, while many others can live without it: the quest of a question alone is after that without which we can hardly be said to live our lives, at least as human beings. So it is the genuineness of the desire in a question which keeps it open, keeps it from pre-judging the answer by setting it terms. There are no "traditional, " inherited, ques tions; every question is my own, and yet every such question is generic to human beings, insofar as they are human. Here now is the place to say something about "the Tradi tion" and its relevance to the quest for truth and the love of wisdom. The unreflective opinion of the times has it that human wisdom is both cumulative and automatically transferrable. We speak all the time of "our rapidly increasing knowledge," "our recent achievements and advances, " "our breakthrough" in this or that field, as if each contemporary human magically acquired the results of the research carried on by thousands of different people. Ridiculously we talk as if human beings were no longer born as naked little babies who have to begin the learning process at the beginning and who have perhaps a quarter century to invest in it. Now the Pla tonic dialogue The Statesman does envision a race of men born old and, perhaps, wise, who return in the course of their lives to a first childhood. But this race lives when the world's time is reversed, in the Golden Age when a god sits at the temporal tiller of the cosmos. In our present, mortally governed, world we have to begin at the beginning. Undeniably, the disciplines of the quadri vium, more modernly speaking, of mathematics and the sciences, are "progressive," in the sense of being capable of becoming more and more sophisticated and potent tools of research and manipula tion. But this does not for a moment mean that the young man who "inherits" such subjects in their advanced state has inherited accumulated knowledge. The wisdom of babes may indeed be powerful, but it is almost always bought at the expense of a re flective understanding of the terms and first elements of the science in question, for such an understanding becomes almost inaccessible -20- �when the beginnings of a disciplinewhich arose progressively, that i's, as a continuous sequence of problems, are relegated to mere history. Most possessors of such latter-day knowledge are, I say, prodigious babies, Peter Pans of wisdom who, incapable of remembering their past, lightly fly hither and thither over their o\vn fantastic islands, · having lost their mother and the groi.ind under their feet. . Those, on the other hand, who are willing, as you are, to go more slowly in order to keep solid ground underfoot, will soon find themselves involved in the dialogue of tradition. It is a telling fact that a work by the very founder of modern physics; the one which introduces ·the New Astronomy tb the public, is itself written in dialogue form and includes among its participants his Greek predecessor: in Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Chief Two World Systems, Aristotle, the founder of the ancient physics, is literally present in the shape of a book in the pocket of one of the interlocutors; this is Galileo's way of acknowledging that thebasis of the New Sciences is the responsive repudiation of the tradition. On the other hand, in those studies which are not progressive in their original design but only insofar as they are forcibly assimilated to the natural sciences, for instance, in psychology, anthropology and sociology (the accounts of the soul, of man and of community) the tradition is yet more than the grolln.d of the present - it is that present itself, for quite aside from the incidental fact that our times seem to me to show a strong decline of wisdom concerning these matters, the tradition, just because it is not progressive, consists of a conversation in which the participants listen to each other, circumvent, re-invent and echo each other, so that while temporal in its parts, it is timeless, or ever-present, as a whole. It is in this sense that it seems tome possible that our West alone. has a tradition, that this strange dialogue of contemporaries who are yet bound into their times, this sequence .of acceptance and betrayal, can take place only through books in the Western sense, ,hooks of arguable "theory" rather than of spiritual practice. This 'conjecture is supported by circumstances of the following sorts: the the Indians , for instance, seem to have no word for philosophy, for that search for a wisdom which is a communicable activity rather than a silent possession. Now how are · the members of this tradition established? This is the general version of the perennial question: how do we choose our seminar books?, for the tradition comes to us through books. What books are these? Are we entirely at the mercy of our -21- �library catalogues? We are indeed. It seems to me just as possi ble that there are momentous manuscripts which are quite unknown as that unworthy books become canonized. But all in all, I think we can trust the consensus of reading mankind as shown in the quantity of the propagation of a book. We can do this so much the more safely because of a human fact which I have always marvelled at - that worthy works attract the professional industry of legions of people who have no interest in their contents. A principal example of this in my own experience is the crowd of classical philologists, those "scientific language microscopists," as Nietzsche calls them, who fill libraries with comment on the attendant circumstances of wisdom. What single trait dis tinguishes the persons acknowledged as belonging to the tradition? Here we must refer once again to the distinction made between history and tradition. The persons of history, if there be such a science, must be, as Hegel says, nations. The persons of tradition are single and special human souls. If there be such an item as "the Greek mind, " if for instance it was the pervasive quirk of canonical Greeks to believe in visible gods, then the authors of the classical tradition have probably overcome that quirk and are certainly not of that mind. For these authors are usually radicals; this is why they are at worst ignored and at best considered dangerous in their own times. So that if, for instance, the Olympian gods appear in the Homeric poems, they may safely be suspected of playing there a role deeply different from that which they played in the mind of "the Greeks, " a problematic, perhaps even an ironic, role. Hence so-called "historical backgrounds" can never help to understand the central intention of works of tradition (except, perhaps, to set off the foregroundofthought by contrast), since history does not make that which is valuable in the tradition - although the tradition sometimes makes history. For the authors of tradition sound a reflective descant on the common opinions of mankind and the peculiar opin ions of their nation - and so these opinions sometimes modulate. The tradition is, then, always problematic, and it is for this reason that no one is born into it. As children we become entan g led in a web of accepted opinions and conventions; in youth we begin, largely by means of books, to break out of this cocoon into the light of the tradition, and this cannot help but be .a laborious but monumentous phase of our lives. Nowadays most of the earliest serious reading done is contemporary, and this raises a question which I -22- �will put very outrageously: Are contemporary writings ever part of ·the tradition? or, what is the same thing: Are contemporary writirigs ever relevant to the hurtJ.an condition? There seems to be no inherent reason why they should not be, though it is, perhaps, as unlikely for a "contemporary" to enter into the realm of trac:lition as for · the camel to go through the needle's eye, simply because it is'. essentially the agreeably conforming, even if apparently shocklng, which instantaneously fascinates and becomes pbpu lar, while the' tradition is always somewhat uncomfortable, not to say repiilsiv~ . .· · Especially at present, the contemporary, with its accent orl the new, the changeable and the young, tends to be sham radfral, and i.t s problems tend to be derivative and, in fact, antiquated. ·. For to begin with, it is self-defeating to insist on newness 'and youth as independent goods, forgetting that newness and youth are conditions which by their very nature have no future. But more important, the easy revolt of the contemporary scene is an opposition almost entirely determined by that which is rejects, a mirror image of common current opinion; conthlning all the flaws of the older opponent in reverse, a counteraction in the manner of ·a brute body whose reaction is equal to the action upon it. Such mere :qehavior is truly "reactionary." . I will give an example. In 1864 · Dostoyevsky published a manifesto of genuine despair over ciV:i.l:faation,calledLetters from the Underworld, in whieh he wrote: hF solerrip.ly declare to you that I have often wished to become an i'ns'ect; but couldliever attain my desire." In this century, over a ~eneration ago; Franz l(afk~ wrote a dreadful story called "The Metamorphbsis, " in which one young man, a travelling salesman, in silent 'desperation over what present day jargon would call ''middle Class values" painfully turns himself into a great cocktdach'; In . the 19pO's, finally, a whole swarm of youngmen turn therhselves into Beatles with the most exuberant facility, and the fuldej:'ground man emerges in amiable companies, his eyes shield: ed' against the Unwonted sun, his inardculate wisdom pinned to him on a printed button, his ways mildly lawless, his uniform complete• ly determined by opposition to rosily wholesome suburbanity, a harmless, institutionalized latter-day version of the prophetic, criminal outcast of the Western traditicn. It is, then, the very radicality of the tradition which mikes it so· inaccessible. For to become absorbed in the tradition means quite simply to break away both from one's own private idiom and the current public jargon into the language of humanity, to com tntinieate; not in the current sense of "being effective" or "making -23- �contact," but in the sense of entering the human community. The traditional authors, who speak that language, must always seem somewhat forbidding, for this human tongue is much more boldly simple and subtly complex than the dialect of our place and time. It takes time to grow simple and subtle and requires a certain willing trust in the wisdom of these initiators and guides, who are as yet untried strangers, but such an expense of present, youthful time is the best way of insuring a future in which ardour will on the whole outweigh melancholy. For at best a faithful student has hope of sharing the experience of Dante in his journey through the world of the soul, when, in the face of hell, his guide and teacher Virgil "placed his hand on mine, and with a cheerful countenance, which comforted me, led me into the secret things. " And at worst he will have learned to make a knowledgeable and dignified retreat into the decent pleasures of the practical life. But, you will recall, I entered upon this consideration of the tradition after I had defined traditional problems as sham questions, almost as if traditional learning of necessity interfered with genuine questioning. For questioning is that situationofdetermined openness in which the soul, willingly attentive to the apparent and the immediate, encounters even in its deepest delights certain difficulties and perplexities which, out of its very love and concern for things, it is determined to face and resolve, or not think life worth living; it is the "ardent mood" of the soul which is well -composed and free. If this enterprise is carried on with a certain trust in its possibility, it is called the love of wisdom. But the traditional questions come to the learner as "problems, " by which I mean as another's question, which is, if anything is, a contradiction in terms. In sum, all formal study, perhaps even all purposeful conversation, must give up living thought to "formulations." Nay more - evidently Western tradition itself must needs progress along the road, which Nietzsche characterizes as leading from the forms of Plato to the formulas of algebra. I cannot resolve this, the problem of my lecture and the question in my mind. I herewith hand it over to you, without,of course, myself relinquishing it. The study of the liberal arts, which are the public and adequate learning procedures, and of their fruits, which are the various bodies of knowledge, as well as the absorption of the reflective tradition which is based on them, can only provide materials, tools and a language for questioning; the love of wisdom itself cannot be gainedby study; and for that portion -24- �of our life of learning in which our unknown source fails us - for it is more arduous to maintain the condition of openness than a state of levitation - we must expect to be sometimes prey to the mortal's malady, the confusion of the soul induced by the futile passing of precious time. But in this understanding of that sickness there is implicit the suggestion of a cure: .to fix stubbornly and determinedly on that present preparation, that acquisition of the problem-solving arts and the problem -posing tradition, which is certainly at least the pre-condition of a questioning life, a life worth living. In the words of the tradition as represented once more by the Didascalicon of Hugo St. Victor: "Therefore it seems to me that first an effort should be made in the arts, for here are the foundations of everything and in them pure and simple truth is opened up; most of all I am thinking of the seven of which I have spoken which are the instruments of all philosophy . . . . But philosophy is the love and the pursuit and, in a manner of speaking, the friendship felt for wisdom; not, however, for that wisdom which is concerned with some kind of hardware and any sort 9f applied science and expertise - he says: quae in ferramentis quibusdam et in aliqua fabrili scientia notitiaque versatur - but of that wisdom which needs nothing and is living thought and the sole original reason for things - vivax mens et sola rerum primaeva ratio." -25- � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 25 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The student's problem: lecture on the liberal arts Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1967-09-22 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 22, 1967 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1967-09-22 Relation A related resource The Collegian, October 1967 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/21695765030a399c5d9c38253cc31fad.pdf 4fad9d8e3a98172ea169d93407ced55a PDF Text Text A READlNG OF THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS Eva Brann Expanded Version · Friday ~ight Lecture 1968 �Final text of the addre•• delivered at th• dedication of the c..etery at Gettysburg Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on. thla continent, an• natlon, o-•tv•d'ln. Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all •en ar• created equal. Now we are engaged in a great eivll var, testing whether that nation, or any nation ao oencelved and so dedicated, can lo'ftl endure. We are 118t on a great battle-field of that war~ We hav• coae t• dedicate a portion ef that field, as a ft.na~ reatlng ptaee fer those who here gave their live• that that natien •lght .live. It ls altesether fitting and preper " that ve ehould do thl1. . lut, in a larger aenae, we ean net d•d1oat• ... we oan not consecrate • we ean Mt ball•w • thl1 greund• TM brave •en, llving and dead, who 1trugsled here, have conaeerat•d it, far a"v• e>ur· · poor power te add or detraet. the world will little n.te, nar long re11•ber tlhat we say h•r•, .but it oan never for get 111h.at they did . here, It is for ue the living, rather, to be dedicated her• te the unflnlahed · werk which they whe fought her• nave t:hu1 far •• nobly advanced. It la rather for us te be her• dedlt!ated ~ tlut great task reaaln.ing before ua - that fr•• t1-•• honored dead ve take lncr••••d devotion t• that cauae for vhleh they gave the last fwll ••••ur• of devotion • that we here highly reeelve that th••• dead 1hall n.t have died ln valn • that this ~tlon, under God, ahall have a new birth of (rHdoa • and that geverna•nt of the people, by the p.. ple, fer the peeple, shall net perl1h fro• the earth. Abrah.,. Llnceln Nov•b•r 19, 1863 1. the Speech •• a Whal• It la probably beat to .begin by ebaerving what la aoet ebvlous about thle "Address Delivered at the Dedioatloo of the Cemetery at Gettysburg" (p. 734)* - its brevity. It . oen•i•t• of t•n eentenoes which can be spoken ln a little over two airutea. It la ao short that on the eccaslon of lte delivery in the open air, before a orovd of more than 15,000 people, though the speaker delivered hla wurds •tn a cl•ar, full veloe.• he d to have finished before his voice had really begun t• car~y. •re.. Perhaps this very (ugltive character of the live speech has something to do wtth its enduranae as a piece of pro••· We know that Lincoln meant the speech t• 1urvlv• as a written tut, since h• ht.aaelf prepared ••.v eral copies fer publl•ation, the laat ene over three months after its dellvery.2 · And although Lincoln punctuated thi• 1peech, aa he did allhi.1 epeeohea, in the . .nner of an orator, as it was to be heard (cf. P• 47), using especially ~ . At'th•• Ltnqf~na {brary, 62. *All page references to Lincoln's speeches co• fro• Speechee !ml ·· Writ:iD&•• ed. R. P. Bailer, Uni.versa H.ll �the ce...s of grammar to . .rk th• ~o. .as o~ 1peaker'1 pau1e• of the rhetorle, yet there ta ••••thlng peoµl l.&rly .•1et_ dew• and permanent about lt. · •· · · · · · · · ' , . ' ·· furtheraore we know fro• Llneoln hl•••lf that h• ohee• hie format quite deliberately. Fer he answered _Everett- vh9 had , generously· written t• bi• that "I ahould t>e'"sl•d if . I could flatter •yself that I ca- as near te the central ldeae! the oeea1ion in two hours •• you did in twe •11tut•a" that _ , M•n In our respective p&rtl Y••t•rday. ' ye~ oeul.d net ha-.. exouaed te uke • ahort addre1a, no·r I a leng on• (pa 737) • • •~ • J Edward Everett, whe had been·· both a ~·t•a:ler ~t Gr•'• k •t Harvard and a d:l•t inguiahed atate1un 1 bad been oheaen to be the t1aln apeaker at the dedication as a national ce-tery of th• piece of ground beught by the eight~-.n ~orth~r~ ~tat~e ;wtio had l••t aen at the battles ef Getty1burg. · · Linceln, aa chief. of aiate, bad been invited only two weeka be!ore the · oereuny and £verett had court. .usly sent hi• his own two-hour 's peech, 3. ctoapoaed _ the olaaat.alzing lp , style. for which he vaa famous, ao that Llneoln alsl\t 'aenelder lt in writt.rg hie own (p. 738). We •1ght then ...-otL1neoln'• speech to be oo. 1POa•d aa a eounterpol••- t• Everett•• 1 ln !apt, ln eplte of 1 Li.neoln'a expressed adalrat1on (p~ 737) • . it ." •ett•s to be, a tacit· and tactful repudiation : ef auoh learned rnetoric. : . .' Everett be~ina vitha re!erence ·to th• funeral cere•niee for tJ1e so).dlers of ancient· ·Athene, reporte~ by thuc.ydidee in the ~-e~ond ·book of t-h• PtltRtoDI• ttn ~ (para a. · 35 ff.) , ..-:td end a by quoting Pericles• speech, ·aa Thucydides givee it. Evk"•tt'• speech wae thus intended to be, and wa1 readily reeognlzed •• bet.ng1 ••elass1cal • ln t&ne. In a aal iolous but not totally inept editorial, the Richmond ~9111)1r had said of Everett'• perfor•anc~a •so f&J! the play was strictly classtc•1 and then o! Lincoln's 1peeoh .. To suit the gert•ral public, ·however, a little ad•ixtt.Fe .e f the •re irregular ro•antlc drau was allowed"• the latt;.,•r tena •ight conceivably be applied te a apeeon which, in its reveal.,ns brev i ty, was 11.ke the aerteua obverse of a Llncoln!ai\ anecdotfh . .Here are certain other points in whloh the twe apeeche1 differed. Everett'• waa heavtlydaotylica a stress verelon ' of the Greek epie _ foo~ of. one , long and two short ayllablea appeared eften, , beginrill18 with the first words 1 · ·· - I I .. . ' Standing beneath this serene eky, through phrases Ilk•• " the .. - I . . · . , ' . I ~raves , o! our brethren beneath our feet;, ,., I • · I . . I . . the -eloquent ·Silence of God and Nature, · ., c~ .,.. I I .. I I It was appeil'\ted by law in Athens;· · to the final wordsa �·l~ I I I that whtoh r•latel to the Battles of Gettyaburg. Lincoln's speech, on the other hand, has the prevallina diayllabic pattern, . . stly lamba, ·natural .to sober Engli1h apeeah. So after the two long beats of a grave and 11e>urnful apondee the pattern sets ina I I I I I Four score and seven year• age, and in the last paragraph partioularl~ sequences of laablo penta•eter are dlaoernible. In respect t• diction, Everett'• prose vaa «=la11loal and Latinate, while, lt ha1 been reckoned, Llnoalil on thi1 eccaaion uaed only 32 words of Latin orlgin9 in contrast to . his praotlae vhtll'l addressing a aelfM!t body, for instance, Congreaa; aa ln th• pererat. lon of his Annual Heaaage of 18611 With a relianee on Providence, all th• 110re fir• and earneat,"1et i•:: t · us proceed ln the great task which events have devolved upon · It ".'., (pa 635) e . . us Aa for eettl~, Everett conaeived hie effo~t ae part ef a 11onumental tradlt1.on of aeldler~ funeral oratory. He: ende by ••belliahill8 upon P•rlolea• . .snlloquent saying that •tbe whole earth ls the sepulchre of llluatrloua men.• Lincoln,,ln aontra1t, asslgn1 to the dead neither the earth wlth which he end1 hi• apeeeh, nor th& continent with which he begin•, nor even the battle field on which he dwells in the slddle, but soberly, a aere . .deat •postlon of that field.• So also Everett, beginnlng •• Periclea had, with a reference to the law in Athena, aakes aucb of the am;t.que 1anctlon for such cere•nle1 1 whla!h included an ebllsatory funeral eratlen delivered by an orator chosen for th• purpe1e. Llnoelft• en th• other hand, in hia first draft aaya brusquely, -•thle we aay in all propriety do" (p. 736) 1 intiaating that such dedication• are an indulgence of the livl~, and aoderates this in delivery to a brief statement of co11aon propriety• It ls altosether fitting and proper that we ahould do thl•• (p. 734, cf~ P• 728), . only to go on to call the whole cere11e>ny in questlan1 But 1 in a larger aenae, we can not dedicate - we oan not consecrate - we can not hallaw • this ground. The brave aen, living and dead, who 1truggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power ' to add er detract. Lincoln ls lmplioitly ..klng the aignlficant point that it is !!IS the l~w tn Aaeriaa to have such oaaequles and such speaker1, that honor, particularly for the dead, 11 not an ••tabll1hed publics concern 1n A••rlca. �In content, · what la ••t atriking t.1 that Everett touahe1 on a nwiber of •attere .on whioh_L1neoln has . not one exp11clt word. Everett re!era te the Confederate "lnva1lon11 of Maryland and · Pennsylvania and ceaparea 1t te the Peralan invaai•ft~f G~•eae. Lincoln, en th• ether band, ~d. ln a letter to General Ralleek, specl.fically objeeted t• a phr••• ltke ·11 drlv• ti. invad•i' tr•• our 1011•. uaed by General Meade ln hla order thanklng the aray for the victory at Gettyabur· . Fer, Lincoln. · aaid, "th• male country g is our soil,• alndful ef the faot that th• opponent vae not a fore~ner • .. Hence h• aaye nethin.g of the _ atratestc a1.roW11tamea of" th~ battle credited with ending th• danger of a Colilfederat• occupation ef the North which aake up:.:, the bulk of Everett' a tut, nor . doea he, aa Everett, assign reaponaib111ty fer· .the var, _ tak• up epeciflc conatltutienal queetiona or aention explieitly the fundaaenta} issues of alavery and Unt.on. It 11 worth ••ntlont.ng th.ea• oal1alone, because, as will be shown, in a way they ahape the apeeea. · Thus Linooln preeenta an alt•rnatlve te the olaa9loizlng atyle, an unde110cratle style daalgned, at bttttoa, fqr the secret and eeparate satle!actlon of the speaker and conn.laaeura. Thi• appears aost cleaaly at a _polnt in Which Lincoln in~e · algni!loant contrast with the claaaloal •delatheaaelvea, vi.th Thuaydt.d•• and his Pericles, net by way ot .E:verett'a learned fllter, but 1. .edlatelyt nor aa a etudent of the P9lo~ont1110 !!II: (there ls n. evldence that ,_he was), but as an Aaerican vth an Athenian 1tate1un. Everett•• ·- cholce of aedel had, after all, been an aead••ic, a polltleally bl ind cholcje, fer in the Aurlaan tradition P•rloles 11, of neceaaity, a dubious figure, the leader whO, aa Al•xander Haallton aaya tn ~he sixth F1de;9ll•~· was fer peraonal aottvea · ••Ille co••• aucber •f tha• fa-.ua aM -ta1*al , war._ wbl~h •• •• tenlnated in the · ruin of the Athenian co..,,nw•alth. ~h• prl•lalv• ~ It is only necessary t• cal 1 that var a o1v11 var to sn" that . Perie lea la Lincoln'• - roper antique antagenl8t. The queet~n here la1 hov p do they contrast with respect to political rhetqric1 · The single sentence or th• 1peech wbieh had the greateet eff'9Ct at the tiae and was aoat singled out for anecd(>te and quetatlon (for instance, by the P~iJ1d1lpbi1 Pr•10 Ind Htrptr'• Wtfi\y) vas the follovln~ generou• alsehooda . The world vl,11 little n0t:e, ner long re11e•ber what we aay here; but lt can never forget what they did here. The word In 5UJl was the only word underecered (F1tet Draft, P• 736). this emphasis on the soldlers• deed, LtncQln, of oeurn, _expresses hie senae of urgency in that late fall of 1863, vb.en after the SWiiier battles of Gettysburg, auch to his dlsappointaent~ · expressed in urgent letters to his generals (cf. PP• 711-12, 726-27), there had been only indecisive 11aneuvering ln the eaat. Lincoln _ �felt oppressed by unf1nlshed buslnass and had said that hia speech would be "ehort. short. ahert." the "unflnt.ahed wark." "the gr••t task reraalning before ua• curtail the foraat of the a~ech, and in the precipitous elllpsea of the last sentence, .affeet lta gr-.r. for the sentence lacks all the conneativea here eonjeeturally supplied a · It t.a rather for us to be here d•dt.cated .to the great taak reaalrit.~ before ua •[vhlch aeana] that fro• th••• homred dead we take increased devott.en to that cause fer whioh they .8ave the last full •aaure of devotion - [and] that we here hl~ly resolve that these dead ahall not have ·dlecf t.n valn • [aoJ that this nation, under God, ahallheue • new birth of lreedo• • and that govern111tnt of the people. by the people, for the people, shall not perish fro• the earth• But the 110re significant aspect of Linaoln'a depreciation of "what we say here• can be beat seen by contrast with a correepondlng sentence fro• Perlolea' open1"8• He says! · Moat of •Y predecessors t.n this place· have ee-ended hia who •de this speech part of the law,. telling ua that it ia well that it should be delivered at the burlal o( thoae ·who fall in battle. For •Y••lf, I should have thought that the worth which had displayed itself in deeds, would be auff\,ciently rewarded by honours also ahriwn by deede1 such aa yeu now see in ·this funeral prepared at the people's coat. And I oeuld have ·Wished that the reputations .of many brave •en were net to be i•perllled ln the 11outh ef a alngle individual, to stand or fall aooordlng as he spoke well or 111 (II, 35). the deprecating phrases barely hide Periclea• persuasion that the dead must rely on hi• fer their life in the elty•s aeaory, !•r ho,,ar,n~· that his speech ia worth a battle; as Thucydides thought hls history worth a war. With that, contrast Lincoln'• assertion that the dead are beat honored by their own deeds, that they do theiaaelvee honor, that the task at hand overshadows all ceremony, and hie avoidance of the pronoun "I". · Hore of the rhetorical character of Peri.el.••' apeech le writ large in Plato• s d lalo~ue . Htgrcenu1, in. whieh Spcrate1 . recitee to Menexenus an excruciatingly ~own-up caricature of Pertelea• funeral oratory, which he elai•a to have learned fro• Pericles' hlgh•elaaa whore Aepaeia. It ls essentially a pervers ton of the •noble lte• of the Republt.c (414f .) • For tn it the Athenians are•·teld that they are all autoebt:henoue, deseended fro• those whe sprang fro11 the earth, their aether, and so share equally in a h1gh and heroic lineage (M!poxenue, 237 ff.). By th• prolonged repetttlen,·of i thla and other false facts, erateri, .a11 Socrates deacribea . lt, bewitch our soul•·•••o that even I, Henexenus, when so lauded by the• feel thoroughly noble, and eaeh tlM I stand and listen enthralled and think that I have becoae suddenly �bigger and nobler and Mre handso•e• •• And this exaltation re-ins wlth ae for •ore than three days (235). Nov co•pare a speech in which Lincoln deals with the aatter of traditional colebratl•n•, his Chicago speech of 1858 (p. 401). He calls attention to the natl.en'• rutn•aboriginal nature, ta its beginning 82 years ~gor he calla th• faundera,"aen we clala ae eur fathers and ~randfathers," not hereee, but •tron aen"t he apprevea of the annual celebratien of the ancestral founder• ef eur present prosperity and saya drily that "we go fro• these 11eetinga tn better humour with ourselves.• But · then he stops and r--bera that half the preaent citizens of the country a,re not blood descendants of the founding fathers, and he finds that the true co. .on •rather• of all Amerloana is in fact a declaration of "soral principle,• and through lt all AMerieana are "blood of the 'blood, and !leah of the flesh, of the Nen who wrote that Declaratien" (p. 402). · In Lincoln's rhetoric, then, general prosperity take• the place si~nificant founding act replaces continuity of . habitatlont •nd a peraanent 11eed of sober self-approbatlcm subatitutee for the 'exaltati•n of the days a tradition e! principle euperoedes a llnea~e of blood, And fer all these reasons together, the Aaerioa.n speaker ls net a •aster aani.pulator, but a ftlitlcal t11g~.al'• the only course open to a man Who believed, ind etinct eppea tion to the thesis that •so.e ••n are too isnor•nt, and too ylgloul to share in ~overnment" (p. 279), . · of proud deedst a that n:. aan .ls ~ood enou~h to ether' 1 c1 naent ( p. 304) • ~overn another -n, · wttl]!ut . ~ The Gettysbur~ Address will, accordingly, turn out to be a distlllatlen of Lincoln'• political phiteaophy, which he, . en thle occasion as on many others, atteapted tG infuse tnt,o t;he natien at· lar~e. a nation distingulahed by the !aet th&t its proaperity ."hae a philesophical cause" (p. 513). It is !or this reas. n that the vrltt•n o versions of the apeeeh have no foraal ealutat ten. - it la addressed to all citizens. And the brevity that aade its ten sentenc•e at the . ti•• so fugitive in the hearing, aake them a "peraanent peea•••lon• , ln later readings. For because ef it the speech is readily learned by heart, and la, ln fact, learned by ·heart by aany aehool children. But that ••ans that it aay aucoeed in lodging in the ~t in the fora of seund sentl11ent, e! "virtue and v1~1lance" (p~fh, theee very propoeltlons, essential to the national life, which are too difficult - and perhaps too dubleus - to be continually kept in !!.lm!• Lincoln reco~nized that . . In this age, in this country, public sentlaent ls everything, since in A•erica si~nlfloant political action depends entirely on such sentl•ent. Consequently, as a republioan stateeaan, he aade lt his continual rhetorical task t• guide it,- that i1, te ••nvert the founding doauaents' sound principles. into the ot.ti&•n•' sober passion, in unoensclous accO'rdance wlth Monteaquieu•a advice in the §piri!= ~.ll the L!n• For he says in the chapter "Of Educatien in a �-7Republlcan Governaent" that the ~ullar republican virtue, •teve of the laws and of our country,• requtr•• a kt.nd ef aelf•renunolation., a "constant preference of public to private lnterest," and that "to inspire it ought to be the principal business of educatien" (II,S). But such love of things public la precisely the product of propeaition transforaed int• sent1aental Llnoeln'• rhetarlc la ba••d en the conversion of politlc•l principle into "aoral sentlaent" (p. 401). ••Y•• · Thus Lincoln, who deprecates what ht aust •ke every word i>nl8n&nt with a werld of -•nlng, a~ hia eonte.porarlea reoo~nized that he did just that. Th• Spr\ng!lfld Rfpubllean ce~nteda Hts little speech ts a perfect g. . a deep ln feeling, coapact ln thought and expreaalen, and tasteful and .elegant in every word and eo...... Turn ba~k and read it over, it wlll repay atudy as a 1t0del apeeeh. Strong feelings and a large brain were · its parents - a little palnataklr« lta tccoucl\§y[• •ad• The be~innlng of suctiatudy ls beat with a acanning of the whole, which will brlng out the g~and fraaevork of this little speech• · In time it spans the past ("Feur score and seven years ago"), the present ("Now we are engaged in a great civil war") and the future ("this natlen ••• ahall have a new birth of freedoa"), ¥hil• in apace it coraprtaes the battle ground, on which it ls delivered (aiddle sentences), the continent on which the nation was ~rn (first sentencE and the earth which it ls to aave (last sentence). · 11. The First Paragraph Linaeln- begln•• Four scere and seven yea~s ago ••• "Four score," vi.th its long •h's, repeated in several assonancea, and the first of 11any alliteratlena, sounds a abre mourttful and solemn ·, note than the wards "eighty-seven years," but th• choice of the phrase is not only a J1Atter of sound1 it also carries a · speclal iuant.ng. It ta· the language of the Btble, as in Psal11 90, 101 The days 'o f our years are threeacGre · yeara and tena and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is th•ir strength labour and sorrow.a for it is soon out off, and we fly away • . With the psala in mind ·the phrase ••ane- jus~ beyond the .ae•ry of 1 anyone new alive, too long ago for living lleaGry. Now ve know that from youth on Lincoln was concerned with a peculiarly Aaerlcan dangers the death of sound political passion. In hie speech on "The Perpetuati•n of our Political lnetltutlons" of 1838,s Llnceln drew a clear parallel with the early cofllltlnlty e! Christians, whose danger lay ln the fact that the first generation of disciples and eye• witnesses was followed by a second which had only heard by word of �-8- mouth, by a third which had begun only to have read of Christ, and a fourth which had begun t• fer~et. So in the Aaerican co11munityi the ecenes of the revolution J2.! so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they _,,the generation juat gone to r••t (p. 84). CtQDlt ..r. The ••n who had seen the Revolution, who were its "l tving history•• are now genes They were the pillars. o! the temple of llberty1 and now, that they have cruabled away, that teaple 11ust fall, unless ve, thelr deseendanta, .supply their places with other pillars, hewn fro• the aolld quarry of s&ber r~ason (p. 84). The danger that the enthuslaa11s of the Revelutlon aight beco11e mere myths .has advaneed to a fact in 1863, the ti•• of the fourth generation fro• that eventa the national edifice has to be rebuilt "fro11 the solid quarry of sober reason." This la the age for a deliberate 11ining of the ft.rat aceounte, for rereadl~ ·the founding docuraents·. Se, then "Feur 1oore and seven years ago" points to that quarry, that alne, ef reasen. Subtract .87 fr•• 1863 and the result 18 1776. Lincoln cen1idera that th~l natt.gn was both conceived l~ and born with . the Declaration .2! ln1'pt_enc§• ·· on July 7, 1863, in response to a serenade en the eccas ctn o the . victory of Gettysburg. under the influence cf the providential coincidence that both the victories of that battler . and Vicksburg had been announced on the Fourth or July, and that Jefferson and John Ada11s had both dled on that day, he had said1 How long ago ls it • eighty odd years • since -on the Fourth . of July for the first tl•• in the history of the world a natien by its representatives, assembled and declared as a self· evident truth that "all 11en 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 et'ghty or eighty•two years to 1776 (pp. 39!, 393)• In repeatedly fixing on the signing of the Declaration as a crucial date, Lincoln ls making a deliberate pelltieal judgment concerning the 'hierarehy of founding events, different for instance fro11 the of Toombs of Georgia who · had begun a speech ln 1850 in this waya Sixty years ago our Cathers joined together to form a more perfect Union. and to establish justice ••• (of. P• 216), refe.-ring the foun<1log Sl[ ~republic to 1790 (the date when the las~ ori8lna1 , state ratified the Constitution), and quoting frora its Preaable. Lincoln's veraien ~ives rather the birth .2.{ Sh!! nation. �- q .. He goes on~ ••• our fathers brought 'fbrth on this continent, a new natlon, conceived ln Liberty, and dedicated to the propoeltlon that all men are created equal. The "fathers" - he calls them fathers, although they are only forefathers, to bring the Revolutlon close - are a very deflnlte group of men. In another context he had said• I suppose the "t:hirty-nine" who st.gned the original instrrn..nt (here the Constltutiona.ay bf!' fairly called our fathers who t'r••d that part of th• fresent Governaent (p. 517). In this speech, then, "our fathers" must be those men, tn .part identical vlth the signers of the Constitution (p. 305), who devlsed and signed the Declaration, ~specially Jefferson. · · . .. These men "brought forth"• thts is again Biblical dlctiona ' the phrase ls used, for tnstance, . ln ~ 1, 31 in the annunciation of the Messiah's birth. They •brought forth on this continent" (all . versions but the last two had "upon•) L ther.e are undertones here of "begot upon the body of this land,• "fathered on thla .fallQv contlnent a1 aother•a the child nation ts safe tn the ' lap of a whole continent, capable ef protecting it from foreign: interference and o! providing those unlimited riches whlch are ita material condltlon. The new nation was •conceived ln Liberty• ("liberty" being the only noun capital lzed beald,,.~, "God") 1 not conceived in love aa are blessed children, but conc,lVed in the love of liberty as are bleased nations \Cf• P• 315)~ Thus the ~gettirut of this nation was a begetting of reason (so. also "bringing f'orth" can mean · "uttering reasons," cf. 11111!} 41.21), primarily a male acta as in Aeschylus• &U!!ent.deo the begetting of the wisdom of Athens, the conception of Athena, is exclusively male (1. 736)1 America ls a fatherland, not a Henexenean aotherland, and this lend' Lincoln's •patriotis111• a special cast. Upon this conception, thtJ nationchild vaa dedicated to a proposition as in a baptism. The proposition, "that all men are created e.ual," was tn quot,tion marks ln the first draft (p. 735) since it com.ra. from the second paragr4ph of the · Declaration of Independence. · I! these are the tmplications of the first, and shortest, of the three paragraphs of increasing length, what ts its sign1flcance7 Consider ftret the continent, the first Qf a nation's three parts, which are "its territory, its people, •nd its lava" (p. 676). The second Federal1et says Thia country and this people seem to have been made for each other ••• �-10- De Tocqueville makes the s&11e point of the United States1 ••• God hlaself gave the11 the 11eans of remaining equal and free, placing the11 upon a boundless continent, ••• (De10s;racy !n A11eric1, I, xvii). · by Lincoln too, especi-ally in hia ·Annual Messages to Congress, spoke . almost with awe of the continent, "the ever-enduring part" of the nation, whose riches give llb~rty an object, whGae 1.11pregnability fosters an unlnvidious patrl~tls11-, and whose integrity makes secession a chlmaerae Physically speaking, we cannot separate (1861, P• 586) ••• the land we inhabit ••• would, ere lo~, force reunion, however auoh blood and t;reasure the s•paratio!l might have cost (1A62, P• 679). Such a contl~nt makes the fittest ground for a aeed of principle, for a continental spac• is needed te safeguard the first e11bodt11ent of the deaGeratlc ldea. Next• What of the blrthdate of 17767 Censonant . with the second Fedgallst, Lincoln held that the Declaratlcan of Independ•nce ·was . ~~te- by the Union, for~ally established by the Arti~les of Assoc atian 1774, and was ft~~ceeded by the establishment of the Constitution in 1787 (p. 5~. This sequence was of the greatest stgniflcance, for 1.t ·aeant - that the nation's birth was a birth of principle, whose issue was •ads peaslble by the ali~htly . antecedent union of the people, and whose nature was kept safe by allowing the practical . lnstruaent of its life to wait on its conception. · Thus, usln~ phrases borrowed fro• Proverbs 25,11, Lincoln, wrote of the principle .. Liberty to all" as expressed in t:he Declaration• · The assertion of that principle, at .tl!!£ ,.t.111§., was the word .. fltly eppktn .. which has proved an "apple--orgold .. t;o us. The Union and the Constituti•n are the pictut:s! of §ilver, subsequently fraaed around tt ,(p. 513). Herf! "subsequently .. 11t1st, ln the case of the Union, mean not later in tiMe, but in pelltlcal priority. Lincoln. then, held the Declaration ta be far more than a declaration ef independence (cf. PP• 574, 577), and lndeed, it would in that case have been a peculiar docuaent to cite in a war to. fight secessi•n• But 1.t 1§. llUCh mores for its wri.ter, Jefferson, had the coolness, t:orecast and capacity to lntroduce 1.nto a Merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, ••• (p. 489)1 and lt is precisely 'by the o•lssion of this truth that the various ' "merely revolutlenary .. Declarations of Independence adopted by the Union's adversaries are characterized (p. 607). And so Llnceln eaysa �J have never had a feeltng polltlcal.ly that did not sprlng frofti the eentlraente embodied in the Declarat.lon of Independence.,. It wan not the 11ere 11atter of the separat \.on of th" Co lonles fro11 the •otherland1 but that sentiment ln th• D•clar.atlon of Independence whlch ~ave 1 t.berty, not alone to the peopla of thl ; ; country, but~I hop~, to the world, for all future time (Adores~ 10 ~Jl~1J11en!"t1nc,; ll!ll, 186 l, P• 577, cf. PP- 362, 513). Now what l8 of pt·lme lmportance ln the speech ls Wu! these pr lnc lplft~, which mark the tru.t beg hmlng of the nation, are hel d . tincqln denomlnatf!~ t h ers "concrp'lgn§'" nnd "Q!oposi~12n~." In the Of!claratt.on the fftthers hact he rl that they were "ltelf-~vid11a.nt Truths .; So11ftthln~ hae happened between the foundln~ and the present: which forc~u Llncoln to c4ll the axi.011s o! the Declaration mere proposltlo n Th la le 'fhllt had happened 1 tpe Declarat: ton had been cal led ln publ lo. 11 a aelf·evlchmt l le, .. a phrase Lincoln often clted with rfl!pu~nanoe (pp • . '314, 331, 489, cf, P• 275), for i.t qreates a f a tal sltu11tlon1 One would ~tart wlth great conf 1.dence that he coulo convlnc any sane chlld that the et11pler proposi.tlons of Euclid are trueJ but neverthole~se he would fall, utterly, wlth one who should deny tho de!tnltiona anc1 axioms. The pri.nciples cf Jefferson Are the de!inltione •nd axi.01110 of free soctety (p!. 489). That Llncutn hac'I 11ade a epecial effort to study t~xte concerned with . itnrt to ponder the natUJ;e of, axt.or1att.c sel!·evtdence and logical conaequeno• is k.nown. In hls short autoblo~raphy he particularly nientiQne that he had "studt.ed &nd nearlv 11astered the six books of F.:uclld tttnce he wae a me1'1lber of' Co~res; .. (p. 549). He understood that melf~evldence le a peculiarly delicate affair. since once impugned, one~ only dented in publtci · a,self•evtdent truth turns lnto a debatable proposition. Yet as the axtom, precisely by reason <>f lts eel!•evldence. was unprovable, so the . proposition has no · rational proof from hi,gher prtnclples, but can be verified only fro~ its consequences or • draadful prospect - from the fatal consequences of ite oontrary. !hie, then, ts the peculiar danger or a natlon which lives on a tradition of expl{clt prl~ctple rather than of ingrained myth, • prlnclple afflr~ed at its very beginning in one event: whose impact no later ones, wlth l:he unhappy exception of 1Jo11n catastrophe, ce.n match· that it grows blind to the selfevldence of lts conceptiona untll a catastrophe opens lts eyes. And now, what.,more precisely, are these principles whose s tandi r has changed? In the words of the Declaratlon they are1 that all M~n are preated equal, that thoy are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rlghts, that among these are Llfe, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Bere equality of creation, equality before God, precedes, and ls the condltlon of, the other rl~hts, of whlch only some are named. One etrlkln~ o~teslon ls of positive importance, slnce wlthout lt Ltncoln could scarcely have cited thls document ln that year which had be~un, ln the Emanclpatlon Proclamation of January · t, lR63, with what was ~dmitteoly a destruction of the property of many Americans ·1. ·.· �-12- (p. 6At). In Leok•'• teeurrent f•raula .. ll!e, liberty and preperty (or eG.. •qulvalent fer l••t• ni. Itt•t~lf .It C1Y.1l ~'!.!,nuot• ••8• par••· 123, 11,, lli),• •r•en•~ 1ubitltiited ?Or prepert:y .,the Purault ef ff•J>plne11, • l••vlns the , erl9lnal p"ra•e to be pt.oked up in the Con1tltutten (p. 524). Exoept fer thi• sub•tltutlen th• Deelaratlen -.euld b.ardly have been •• t• the heart ef Lt.nceln, wtMI r ...•bered wt.th apprnval th• 11 S•J•?f cl••• that ttw Je!feraon party were foraed upon it• ~UP'8••<t 1upet:'ler devetlen t• the peraenal rtfht• ef aen, holding th• rl1hi• •f property te be eecendary en y, and a•••tly t.nferl•~•·•• (p. •&&). But a ••••nt v•r dead epeelfleally • r • reuin, th• ef natlenal erisle and t~• ee•••lGn •f ••••... rating lt 1earoely an eppertune tl•• te ·dwell en the per1onal rlgftts te life and th• pursult ef happlne••• eut et: th• Deelaratlon, tir•t equality •nd then libert1• Nov Llneeln ••••• in thl1 epeech ta reverae tht1 erder in setting l 1berty as th• orla1M1 ··oe'n.eeptlen, •• he had befere tented "Liberty to all," ~ principle of the Deelaratien (p. 513). Jut el eevhere he 1aya a · · 1 I believe that the deolaratienthat "all "'fin are created equal" l• the gr••~ ('und1••nt:al prlnaipl• upon vhlch eur f9M t i.Qtih.~~l- . i"••~ "f ~ 1 ·479) I . l.t le tha feundt.ng prinelple to be kept: tn vlev, !er ln1t•na•, when the terrlteriea pa1a eut ef a state ef nature and the !•undatiena of aeeiety are latd. What do•• Llneeln censider t:• be the real relatton •f these twe prlnclple•? De Tequev1ll• lri th• ohapter inquiri"' .. Whr10. . .oratie Natlana Shew a More Ardent and Enduring Leve o! lqual tty than •! Liberty•. (n. .1yr11y in AMtlll• II, ii, t) een1lder1 lt.berty and equality two d v•r•• aM in •P•ndent thtng1 1 ef vhloh equality pertain• pri-rlly ta th• •••lat, liberty t:e the pelltlcal sphere. Yet he ad•lta that ultl..tely, radlaally, ceneldered the t"t are what weuld be called tn legtoal ter•a •co•..naurately unlveri,t,• that 11, they i•ply eaoh other• · It la pe•alble t• l••8ine freedom and equallty veuld •••t an I extre•e polnt at which and blend. Lincoln take• exactly tht.a '*extr•••" .ul•• · '.ff8, bbit11-'111"r'i1•t• eut hl1 underatandlng of the prlna1ple ef equal1ty with respect t• the alavery que1tlen, whlch would appear to be prt.aarlly a queatlen of 11berty • On the ether hand, ...h•. lnt~rprete equal lty ef ereat; ion t:• -•n •r•ol••lY the .PO•••••l•n'ef 11 unallena-le rlght•"• chief wh1eh le peilltt.eal liberty. The Deolarat:1en. alttwugh by ne aeana declaring •en equal J.n Ill [!lltct1, ••Iii �- 11- At the Srime time> true t:o the openness_ deman<ted by the prtnc.i.ples he usually abstains from the rhetorlcal compulsion of specific pleas, these sentences of his .last public address, deallng with~ burning problem of the moment, are typlcal1 In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and accompanylng Proclamatlon, I pre~enterl ~ plan of re-constructlon (as the phrase goes) which, I proml!ied, if adopted by any State,- should be acceptable to, and sustalned by, : the Executive gov.e rnment of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which mi5ht: possibly be Rcceptablea ••• (p. 797). · Instead of att~mptinp, to compel the people t:il ·a co1:itse deduced . dogmatically, in the manner of an ideoloe,tst:, h~ presented in the words of the London Spectator, A poli.tlcal transparency, ln which the nation could see an lndivldual character of great power working out the problems set before them all ••• He manages to make these problems supremely absorbing, and he does it by making almost every speech an interpretation of the founding documents, in whlch he reveals at once their inexhaustible radical t.ty and their enduring applicability - by g.lvlng ,Americans a secular complement to the Scriptures (p. 84). With respect to the promissory character of democratic principles, Lincoln 1mder:scores lt by projecting the . growth of the past into the futures There are already among us those, who, if the Union be preserved, wl 11 l lve to see lt contain two hun<1re<1 ann fifty mll 1 ions. The struggle of today, ls not altoP-eth~r for t.oday .. it ls for a vast future also (p. 635, cf, PP• 681, 75f1). The present is thus understood as being the sponsor of the futures yet the future · ts, 1.n turn, nothing but t[le magntftcation of the past (cf. p• 656). But polttlcally the American past ls of a. pecullar sorta it ts not an extensive, unbroken tradition but t:he memory of a s1.ngle, lntense event - just as a fabric of reason beg.1.ns with a principle from whlch lt is derived, so the history of democracy beglns with the Revolutlon. Lincoln intends to assure that that beelnntng ls present to the futur", that that event remains the tradltion which governs the future. For the prlnciples of the fathers are, by their \lery nature, the r.oot of the future insofar as it ls good. An<l finally, wlth respect to the passive and incurious mode in which the democratic principles of equality and liberty tend to be accepted, it is significant that Lincoln himself never attempts to raise the question of their truth, nor even .to supply a defl.nl.tion, exc.ept in extremely slmple, and negative terms. So he says, �-14- state of nature exists, Cengreae. with the aid ef that "standard •axia for free society" (p. l61), the principle of equall.ty, 11 laya tbe foundations ef society" (p. 479) • pelltlca precedes eeciety, not the reverse (p • . 279). Thua, since 1001.ety ls 1ria~qallf based on pell.ti.cal pri.neiplea, which .theaaelves nave a -r• and, finally, a rtl\g11u1 basia, Aaerican lite depends ulttaately en a higher source. And ••• by his reference to the principlet ef equallty, Lino•ln realnda the natl•n which laeka the earth-born equality of coa•n · blrth, teuted for Athena t.n the Her•QUI• ef a coamn high . paternal origins it la a natien equal •un er God." III. the Second Paragraph Now we are enga$ed in a great ctvll war, testing whether that nation, or •ny natten so conceived and .so dedicated, can long endure. In hie •iddle paragraph Llnooln passes fre• "four acere and aev&n years age• and •our fathers" to "nev" and "we•, fro• the Aeneratl•n of the Rev•lution to the generation ef the ' Rebellion, ef the "great civil war", which, ln its enor11lty, he had in the·daya •f the victory ef Gettysburg teraed, in Hiltonlc language, a "stgantlc Rebell ton .. (p. 709, ala• P• 702). Indeed there was to hi• aeaetht.~ ef the .Fall ln the wanten destructien ef our national fabric, with all its benefits, tta 11e11ories and its hopes, •••• Will you hazard ao desperate• step, ••• while the eert·a1n ills you fly t•, are greater than all the real enes yeu fly fre11? (First Inaugural Addreaa, P• 584) Yet in that very a,..eoh Lineoln aaintained the right of revolution (p. 587), whleh he had already aaaerted in the House as a "sacred right" during the war with Mexico, in a speeeh attacki~ the President fer waging, without. consulting Congress, a leng, aggressive and 1..,ral var (p. 209). · But, he aalntat.nec:t,11 the actl•n of the seuthern st•t•• was not revolution, er aecessien, but "rebellion" (p. 602), · · Why was it net seceaslon7 The word, he declared to Congress, i11plles the legality of states leaving the Unien as statea. But, he had said, I. hold, that ln conte•plation of universal law• and ef theCanetltuti.on, . tpe Union of these States 1s perpetual (p. 582)~ This ls · because the Union represents the fundamental social caapact1 aa Locke says in Ihe S~con!! treatise 2f Ctvtl Goverm1ent1 That which ..akes the coaaunity and brings aan out ef the loose state of nature lrito one politic aociety ts the agreeaent which �everybody has with the rest to incorporate and act as one body, and s.o to be one dlsti.nct commonwealth. The usual an.d almc~t only way whereby t:hl9 union ts dissolved is the inroad of for\.'ign force making a conquest upon them ••• (para. 21 t, of, 243). Secession of any sort therefore does violence to pollt:lcal society itself and ts simply insupportable. But formally lt was a theory of statehood .which allowed Lincoln to maintai.n the absolute p..,rpet:ulty of the Union, a theory which again turned about the date and wordi~ of the Declaration of Independence.. He observed that that document first declared the "united Colonies" "free and independent st:at:es" (p. 603), so that the Union, whlch had preceded independence. hlid certainly preceded statehood. Accordingly he denied that the new Confederacy was right ln claiming that the Art i.cles of Coo.federat: ion adopted by Congress in the year af'ter the Declaration, .according to which MEach state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independencett (Art. II), repreeented a kind of prototype pertod, a state of nature ~ so to speak, for the States, in which thelr original sovereignty · dlsplayed itself. For the Union, having prec~ded the Declaration, . !! fortiori preceded any organic law, as shown by the Preamble of tht: Constitution. which speaks merely of ·establishing " a ~ perfect Unton"' (p. 582). The states had never existed 11 out of" the Uni.on, . but had entered it, insofar as they were entitles at all, only as colonies, or, if territories, from the state of nature' (p. 479)1 Our States have neither 11ore nor less. power than that reserved them in the Union by the Constitution - no one of them ever · having been a state out of the Uniona The orlglnal ones passed into the Union even ~fore they cast off thelr lirltlsh colonlal dependence, ••• ,. The new ones only took the designs.ti.on of States on comtng into the Union, while that name '-ra.s f tr st adopted for the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independe < : •••• Having never been States, either in substanc~ 'or in name, outside of t:he Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights", asserting a claim of power to !awfully destroy the Union ltself7 (pp. 603·604. cf. P• 572) • .... " Hence the assumption of the states• power of lawful witttdi:awal ~as a "sophlsm" (p. 603).. Lincoln's term "civil war", i.11pl'les precls~ly the denial of the Confederate view, that it is a "war between the States.• · ' This 1s only apparently an appeal to•er~ dates. · Here history, ln the providential course lt . seeras to run on this continent, dlsplay the nature of the case, for the Unlon comes naturally before the states, b~ing the ground and guarantor of that popular goverl'l.lll,ent which is the incarnation of the founding principles. Thi~ le . expres$ed in its instrument, the Constitution, in two places. Fire ·~.: ln its Preample1 the very phrase, .. We, the people", le meant to ind lcate t,hat only a unlted people, ·speaking in it:e own voice, can sanction republican fundamental law - as Lincoln had pointed out, it: had been precisely this phrase which was altered in the new ,southern �-16document to •we, the deputl•• of the sovereign and independent States•, in aeoerdance with the fact that the new Deelarat1ona had. omitted the words -all ..n are ereated eqwa1.• •Why thla dellberata preaalng eut •f vtew th• rlghta of •en and the authertty ef the pectple7• he ••k• (p. 607). seoendly ln lte bodya the Cenatitutlon provides that "The Unlted St:atea ahall guarantee to every atate ln the Union a republican fora of gever1t11ent• (Art. IV, Sec. 4), •• that if a atato ••Y lawfully g~ out of the Union, having done so, lt uy alee dlseard the relf)Ubllcan for• of Gevern11ont1••• (p. 608, ef, P• 740) • · the Union is reapenalblle not eniy for th• eatabliahaent but al10 for pervasiven••• of republican institution•• But «le T•equev111e ••Y•• Th• •overetgnty ef the Union la an abatract beln.l•••t the sovereignty of the atatea if perceetibla by tho eaally understood, and constantly active {DtlJllC[ICY !D Aurtc1, l, xvltl } , ••n•••• Lincoln's effort ia, without detriment to tho dl1tlnctlveneaa of the states (p. 446), to turn this abstraction into a palpat.le feeling, as 11Uch •• anywhere ln thla speech, ln which out of tactful respect for the fact that .it is a natlerual but not a federal cemetery which is being dedicated, the w.rd "Union• never appears. Now the right ef aeceeaion being rejected, what happens to the right of revelutlen? Lincoln thinks on thi• crucial matter as a radical conservative. That le, when charged with revolutionary vieva he protest• his eeneervatlaa'i What la conservatiaa? ls it net adherence to the old and trl•d• against the new and untried? We stick to, eentend !or, the · identical old policy on the point in controversy which w~s adopted by •our fathers who fra11ed the govermaent ·under which we llve" (p. 528), . · but alnce the controversy referred to is the extension of alavery, which Llnceln opJ>Gsed with all hls ai.ght, his v"ry opposition to change t.1 made in the spirit of the Revolution. ' In other wrda, in this country, whose original government vae cenatituted by revolution, the aoat pregreaaiv• side tries most faithfully to return to the beginnings, so that even innovations are aade in a context of rational arguMent with the fathers (p. 525). It haa once and !or all preeapted the Revolution, embodied in the process of change by majority decision, so t~t henceforth all rebellion is counter- · revolution • . In a well-f11unded pol tty, justice ls almost o•lncident with organic law, and a sense of justice with the intention to preserve it. In practice this means, on the one hand, that bad laws �.. I 7 .. should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they - contlnue 1.n force·, for the sake of exa11ple, they should be religiously observed (p. 81), · even 1.f 1.t is expected that they will be .held unconstitutional (p. 58 ~ and on the other, that no law or decision need become 9• a rule of polit:ical action" (p. 418, cf. p .. 396) until it is judged to harmoniz( with t.he intent ion of the Founders. · The right to revolution does remains however it ls clearly c1rcumscr.ibed, n.nd :tn such tP-rms as to reveal the chief function of the Conatltut'-on in a working democracy c If, by mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a · ~lnorlty c.•f any clearly written constitutional right, le might, tn a moral pob1t of view, justify revolution .. certainly would, if such a !°-ight were a vital one (p. 5'84). The issue mu~t, then, be one of constitutional rlghts dented, or extra-legal action upon i.t constitut~s an upris1ng against the people• So Lincoln says of th~ aecessiqnisttu .These politicians are subt i.l-e and profound on the rlght:B of. mlnoritieB. They are not partial to that power which me.de the Con~t:ltution, and speaka from the preamble. calling 'itself "We, the People_" (p. 606). Thus any sectional or factional uprisif\S, upon a mere feeling of dissent or discuntnet, or ev"n ort a plea of "social just tee", no matter how worthy of sympathy, b~ing dir~cted against that government which ls itself the first living and prospering incarnati.on of the r~volutionary principle, conoucing ~ore essentially to the ends of civil and religtous liberty (p. 76) than any previol!sly known, wi.thout ' vlable alternative, and moreover as Lincoln emphasized, containing the means of lts own a~endmenc wt.thin itself {p. 587)~ ls a catastrophe of a p~culiarly _ allful sort. Llncoln d~cl ined to participate in it even where hla sen•e of jt•stice was completely outraged (p. 3]6). For the man who proposes to abandon such a Government, . would d<.' welt to consider . in deference . to what princ-lple it ls that: he does it' what bette· he i.s likely to get in U:e !l!teach .whether the substltute will 6lve, or be intend~d to give, so much of good to the people? (p. 607). . . The question is thus always, in Lincoln's a<laptat1.on of Hamlet's weighing. of suicide (III, i, 82)• Will you hazard so desperate a step, .... whi.le .the certain llls you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from7 (p. 584). �·18- Thle , v.ar, Lincoln goes on to say., ls a .tJ!.1..k• The oriaia has the nature of a teat, because, aa he had aatd 1.n -iits ..aaage to the Congress vhlch he had called into special session to aeet on that fateful . date e! July .4, at the beginning of the war ln 1861, thla goverruaent ls an experl•enta · · Our pepular govern•ent has often been cal led an experlaent • Two points ln it eur people have already eettled - the auoceaaful t•t•rl19hi~, and th~ eueceaaful 1~11ni•f•{1Dft ef it. one atlll 0 re11a ne • ~. auooeasful 11tifilY'nc1 aga net a foraldable internal . attempt to overthrow 1t (p. . • · . . As a final phase of 4n experiaent the war represents one teat for all cases, a aodel caae of a natl.en established' on expltcit prinoiplea, ln which two rutceasary foundi~ conditions, na•ely the vtade• ef the fathers and the reeeptivity of the contin~nt had been optiaal • lf. this ?14tlon fails then it la de11onatrated that "any natlen• muat fall. Thia ls how the American enterprise had. been underatoed fro• the founding1 lt 1ee11e te have been reserved", says the ft.rat Federal tot 11 to the people of thie country, by their conduct and exaaple, to decide the i11portant question, whether oocletlea of aen are really capable or not, of eetabl iahi"R good govet·!Wetlt fro• reflectlen and choioe ••• , and this very thlng h•d •oved de Tocqueville to write his book (I, xvli9 end). When the Thucydt.dean Pericles calla the whole city "an edueatlen to Greece .. (II, 41)he •eans that Athene 11 the· unique and t.ni•ltable cynosure of the Greeke1 when Lincoln calls the government an experiaent and the present war a teat.1for all natl•n• he offers Amert.ca as a practical poli.tt.cal pattern to the werld. The funda11ental iseue, whlch t.n the course of the war had beoo•e "distinct, staple and inflexible• i1 an lssue which can only be tried by war and decided in victory (p. 787). But how can a war be a teat of anythi.ng? The var vlll, .Llnceln says at lt11 beginntnai, teach th~t when ballots have fat.rly and constitut't.onally decided, there can 6e no succeaa!ul appeal baak te bullet•••• (1861, P• 608). Is Lincoln rutt aelf •contradt.ctory here? How could the suooeasful u1e of bullets tn thi• var preve that there can be ne succeeeful appe•l te bullets in republlca7 Or, lf the argu..ent ia that strength at war ls the converted strength of the ballet box, will it not be necessary to say that every outco•e proves the principle of popular eoverelgnty? Certainly, Lincoln f&und his old "faith that right 11akea might" (e.g., P• · 536) corroborated by the popul.• r aupport the Unlen ' co!Ulanded {pp. 606-7, 764, 786)1 to hi• the solid conservatism of the 11ajortty was a sign of political soundnesa • . But as the war went on �he looked ure often to a higher judge, to .. the God of battles .. of the Revolution (p• 264) ,· who• the theoreticians o! popular governnem: had not been able to aveld invoking. In the Seoon~ Ireatloe g.! Civil Goyer~en;. Locke says, not perhaps with much inner conv1ctlon, but rater driven by the argu. .nt, that where there 1• no judicature on earth te decide eantroveraiea amongst men, God in heaven 11 Judge (par••· 241-242, of. 168). And the Second Inaugural Address (1865) ls a fervent reference to Psalm 19,91 qth• judg••nta of tha Lord, are ttu• and righteoua altegether• (p. 793, of. Letttr ~ A{ G, Qqd111 1. Aprll 4, 1864, Which anticipates · the Inaugura ). . . And in a private ••dtaation on the divine will "net written to be seen of men• in 1862, he ascribes the dlreotlen and the outcn•e of the war entirely te the will of God who uaes the contestants ae his •huraan instruaentalitles" (p. 655, cf. P• 610). While there ls still peaoe, Ged'a juds•ente are ~lven by hie •8Nat tribunal, the A•erlcan people• (Firat Inaugural, P• 587), but ~nee at war, the Almi~hty adjudicates. Frcn• the day Lincoln left for wa·• hington, as Prealdent~e1ect, he did what the A•ertcan people have always expected their fallible fellow citizens who rule the• to do - he co•mitted himself te God, (p. 568), aa the only power htih enough to oversee the tendency •f the whole, and in this spirit he CGnttnued1 I olalm not to have controlled events, but confess that eventa have controlled me. New at the enp of struggle the nation's cenditien la not what either any 11an deviaed, er expected. God alone can clat.11 !2. A, q, H9dge1. April 4, 1864). plainly three y11tars party, or it (LetterI Exactly what the test · was to prove Lincoln had· stated already in his •Perpetuation• speech o! 1838. It was to b~· a practical de•onatratian of the truth of a propositi•n• which had hitherto been cnna1dered, at best no better, than proble11atloal namely, the ~rAtltv 2! A pegple IA gove~n themoelyes (p. 82, cf. P• 1 • "The experiment is successful", he had then added, but as the self• evldence of the axlom · e! equality had begun to fade, se it• practical oonsequence, the gevernaent, was thrown t.n doubt. The more precise forra of. the questlon n.w lsa . ·whether di.scentented indlvlduale, too few in nmnbers to contr•l ad11lnistration. according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the .pretenses 11ade ln thle case, or on any other pretenses, or arb.ttrarlly, without any pretense. break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to . free goverlll'llent upon the earth •• �-20•ts th•~•· in •11 republtoa, thls inherent and fatal weak"-••T• •Huat a Geverftll8nt, of neoe11lty, be too tor the 11bei:tl•• of lt• own peeple, or Kl!k te •alntaifi?ta evn ex1~teneet• n1ou t•• (p. 598). · That • natien, heir te the •tuM••ental bl•••lna•~ •! th• •falr•et portion of the earth•, lnvulnera~l• t• lnva1l•n• •• ~•11 ••tea fref· gover1111ent, eeuld enly "die by auieide• (pp. 76-77) had lene see1ied plain te Lt.nceln, though at ·the t i - (lRl8) 1'• had tboual\t that thi• internal trlal would take th• fer• of that p•rv•,•l•n of de11c .cracy, whioh he called •ubeeracy•, in vhleh. JtMPl• l.Wt.• vldt1ally forget te ~evern thnaelv••• Nev lt tum1 eut that ln hit century the teat of endurance baa taken th• for11 't elvll war, i n whl<·h a whole a•g•nt of the Mtian refuaea td aubaltl 'i• lte !'.'I t• StY!·~~rtl• t:: . ··~. :-::~ .. Lincoln goee ona We are .•et en a Areat battle•fleld o! that war. But he avoids any particularization of the circu••tancea ef the battle of the great . war 1 iV§tC~.~. tit4 treated that at length. p,re~ . test Lo::·-··.-"·"" -' ··- ·" ,::;: . :... - .~---=a:~..--:r..:::::::.-q:;::.r:;ctr.J•P"' We have colle to dedicate a pertlon of that field, as a · final resting place fer thoae who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It ls altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. A pi.rt of the fi.eld, which had, incidentally, been called Ce•etery Hl11 even before the battle, ls being eet aside as the earthly dom .ln of these newly dead soldier• vhe, ae the father• gave the nat1 .on birth insured lt11 continuing life. IV. The Third Paragraph But in a larger sense we can not dedicate we can net consecrate • we can not hallow • this ground. The third paragraph has features of an incantation, repetition and rhy11e, but it ls a negative incantation. It begins by warding off an 4!rror1 fit and proper though it may be in a narrow sense to comtuct dedication ceremonies, there la danger that the present gem,ration, txhat •we", •ay substitute the redundant rituals of ded~ .catlon, censecrat1on and devotion for dedication in the sense of the fathers, 'that dedication of a piece of ground may take the place of 1:he larger ded'lcation to a proposition called for. by the great war. So one can hear tlhe steady lambs of Lincoln's three-line rhyritng ref'raln perturbed by a warntnge11.phasls on "we 11 • �•21- The brave aen, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add ~r detract. With this sentence Lincoln honors at ol'\ee the Union dead, the Union aurvlvora, and genereualy but tactfully, the enell)', fer the phrase "the brave men, living and dead, who atruggled here", with its intranaitlva. uae ef the verb, applies also . to the other alde of whom about an equal number, 23,000 aen, had died (p. 712). Lincoln, unlike Pericles in speaking to the Greek Athenians, always keepe before hl11 the· terrible fact of the civll war, that Alierlcana are fighting Aaerican1. He aaya not one derogatory werd of the transient enemy a -three weeks after the Addreaa, Lincoln issued a Proclaut;.ien ef Aanesty and Reoonstruction giving tull pardon to all ordinary ct.tizena whe would resuae allegiance to the Unt:on (p. 738 f.). As . always, he ·av•lda 11.aklng dlviaiena, fore Our strife pertains to eurselvea • to the passing generatlens of mens and it can, wlthout convulal•n, be hushed forever with the passing of one generation (p. 679, of. P• 588), 1 and What I deal wt.th ta ~9.9 AIJ'.&! .f9!': malicious deal 11)8 (p. 650) • He goes ona The world will little note, nor long remeaber what we say here, but lt can never forget what they dld here. · as It la. known that Lincoln considered the speech a failure a speken speech, for he h.ad told a friend right after its delivery1 •Lamen, that speech won't ocour. It is a flat fallure and the people are disappointed.• The ea11e thing had happened with respect to hls second moat renowned speech, the Second Inaugural, ·about which he had written to a friend• · I expect the latter ta wear as well as • perhaps befter than • anything I have producedf but I believe it is not ilQlediately popular (p. 794)• In view of Lincoln's correct appraisals of hi& ~peeches, the sentence cannot be regarded as a conunent on the Address1 rather, besides carrying the meaning siven above, it serves as the counterpart of one in his previous Annual Messaget We ~ we are for the we say this (p. 688). Union~ The world will not forget that The state11ent of ai11 has been once and for all made, and now all is concentrated on its mil ltary !9.9.~.!e~..!•~Jlli• t:=,";;:, .. ~ ... __ ...... _ ~· • ••.:.::::.:..• ,; ; .;..:.-:.~~.~:.. ··..:·...~....:;;.. ;;;..,1. ~ ;. ;::-,.-:-..:;~..;.:-:;; =-~:::;,.. : ... And then come the last two sentences, . half the speech in length, wh1.ch develop its expl lcit theme - the second dedtcat\qn. of the �-22· natt.nn, ln this consecrated pl•~· ll!Dt (Lincoln reaoved a fourth .. here" fr•• th• ft.ul veraten), "' " · Tt l• f•r ua the llvtns. rat:her, to be dedlcated here to the un!tnlahed WGrk whloh they vha fou,!ht here hav• thua far so nobly advanced. lt t1 r•ther fer ua to be here dedtcated to the great task r•••lnlng before ua • Practt.cal ly, th• "un!lnlehed work"; .. the great t.a11tk r••alntng before 11 , ta the winning o! thtt W'-1" (ef. Jh 791) • bttt in 1lgnlftcance it . ta ao••tht.~ Ar•ater, tl\e 1ueeeelt!ul .PMl'l•t.en ef the expert.11ent nf ~npular !•v•rn••nt. · tJa - ·;·:,.~.":""'~~~~:~· · :-:.';: .~:. ~~"-~~:-~:!.. · ~~t.: : ." ' ;" :'" .~~·;:.·~ ..;~ .-~-J?-~ .• ~ Th• next two clau1e1 1 ·~•lft in that 1pell•l t.ke .diction which gtvea eucee11\ve cola ldentlcal er n••r-tdentlcal endlnge, give the nat.ure qf thl1 new d8dleatlon1 it •••ns · I that frGa these honered dearl we take lnere&$ed devetlon t• that caua• !ftr whleh the~, ~ave the l•st: ful 1 l'leasure of devothm • th.at we her• hi8hly reaolve that these dead shall nftt have dled tn va1.n .. In invok1"8 the dead, Lt.neoln t.a touohing what ln hla Flrat Inaugural he ttalled the 11)'11tlc ohotc1e er •e•ory;'. atret:chlng fro• every battle•.fi.eld and patriot ~rave, to every 1 lving heart and hearth-etol"tt• •• (p, 5ftA). .. . I 'fe '10 thle hf.It al~lftB the la~U&f';t!t of (!hurch and . legielatlve assemhlye 'fhe dedloat:lon, · the eena•cratt.en, .t h• hat lowing, the .devotion Lt.ncoln i1r••• 1.a ofen a h1.s Rf'ttltch pol ltlcal . sort. He had uried lt .already 1n 1R3R, in "The Perpetuation nf our Polltlcltl Inatltl;ltlons .. , Let rfJv«trence for the lawa.~.becol'le thsJ91\t;1 0 alte11~1on of the natl.ant and let the old"!'and the you ·. 1 the rt.oh an ·the po«n'• th8 ~rave a~ the 8•Y• nf all sexes and tca~ues, and oolai-• and eendltlena. aaorlflce unceattln81Y upon lts altars (p. Rt). · nu•an Llncnln ls dftllberateiy ooneecrati.1\A poll.tlc1, and the ~reat agency of reverenee la , •••ery, wtl~fQ .,1 l th\naa .. Se•• hallowed" (p. 191. The laat: two olauaee !lV• the efteot. of that thi.1 f reedoll - nattnn. undf.tr n,.d, ~he new dedicatlona ahalt have a new birth ef �-23The wonds 11 under God" were not in the flrst draft1 they were .reported in the newspaper verslons of the ap•ech as delivered and incorporated by Lineeln later (cf. 1s. 752). Why did he add the117 ·· I¥• Under th_, heading "Of Clvll Reli~ion", the last in Sogial C1ntr15t, Rousseau describes the clvll rell~i•n of repub cs wh{ch it le the business of the acverelgn to set out, not as retl~loua de1t•a1 but as 11 8entlaenta •f 1octablllty". They ought t• be staple, few ln nuaber, preclaely fixed, and without explanation or co••nt. The existence of a powerful, wlae, and benevolent Divlnlty, vhe fer••••• and prevldee .t he life to 0011e, the happlness ef the . juat 1 the puniahaent of the wicked, the .. sanctity of the aeeial contract and the laws ••• (IV, viii). This la precisely the nature of Lincd~'s faith as continually set out tn hla public pronauncMtente (pp. 65~, 727, 757, 793). The natlen 1.a under a "beneficent Father who dvelleth in the Heavens" (p. 728). . It has a double parent•~• • the !ore-fathers and the F•ther above. Wlth the1e words, Lincoln, then~ tnvokes at once faith, the pe1:sonal trust in a auperlitr betng, and religion, the public obligation to reverence. · · Thia natlonwill have .. a ·new birth of freedo•"· Thoee werds were not, at the time, felt to be at all innocuous• Nor are they, if "of freedo•" la read not as an objective genitive, so that the natl.on is said to ~ive blrth to a new freedom, but as a parallel to •conceived ln Liberty•, ae that the nation itself ts said to be rebnrn. The Chteago ~. tnreperttng on the speech, aald that in thia phrase "Mr. LIJ\COin did foully traduce the 11otlves of the tHm who were elaln at Gettysburg", for· they fousht only to preserve the eld govern11ent. Now, as has been shown, Lincoln in fact &8reed with thla conservative vlew of the struggles he bad sai.d so explicitly1 · I ••t I am exceedingly anxious that thla Union, the Constitution, and the libertle1 of . the peGple shall be perpe~uated in accordance with the ori~lnal idea for which that strt.lggle was aade, and I ehal l be raost happy indeed if I shall be . an humble lnstl'Uaent. · in the hand . of the A1111.ghty, and this, . hls almost chosen a people 1 for perpetuating the object of that great struggle ' {p. 57:>). And yet theChidago Times was right to 1.ntentlon, a ra teal oppost.tlon to the conserv.atta• expressed ln their slogan the Union as t.t was". ln 1R54 Lincoln suspect an underlying radical De110crat!.c party' a klnd of "The Constltutlon as i.t is and had satd at Peorla1 Let u~ re-adopt the Declaratton of .Independence, and With lt, .the practices and policy, whlch har110nize wt.th lt. Let north and .south • let all A•ericana - let all lovers of liberty everywhere .. join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Unions but we shall have so saved lt, as to make, and keep 1.t, forever worthy of saving. We shall . have so saved it, that the succeeding mtlllons of free �-24- kappy people, thft worlrt ovt!r, shal 1 rl8e 1.ip, and cal 1 us blessed, to the latest generatlons (p. 315)" The last phrases are a para.phrase of the Hagnlfleat, the words of the ntother-to•be of the Messlah1 "For, behold, front hence forth all ~e""ratlons shall call nte blesse"" (Luke t, 48). It i8 Lincoln's aweso11e lctea that the generatlon of the clvll war, undtitr his leadership, ls 81: once the savior and the par.ent of the . savior nation,· that America is to pol itlca "all'fto.8 t" as Israel was to the spirit• That means that for th& Union side the war ls a kind of second comlnA, a second brlnglng-forth, after four score and seven years. Llncoln has converted Jefferson's extravagant opinion that "a llt:tle rebellion, now and then, is a gt>olt thing" (Letter 12. Hadlsin, January 30, 17R7)- into a serious view concerntng the perlodlc rP-hir.th of the Revolution - to occur, evldently, in fullest force · ln·the fourth g"neratlon, once ln a century. . In this idea Llnooln recognizes that a country founded ln a revolut\on ls bounc1 to have a Aeneratlonal problell• . For the document. con~tltutl~ lts p;overmaent is ordalnerl and · eRtabllshed. as- the prlnclple of popular government demands, ln the ftrst p~rson plural; lt beglns1 "We the penple." Yet thls can mean literally only the · r.atifylng generation, thereafter the fundamental act . of self· govern~nt ls lnherltec1 - but self-determinatlon by tradition ls a ktnd nf paradox. This dlfficulty lay hehlnd Jefferson's advocacy of · re~ular revolutlona Can one generation bind ariother,·ancl all others, ln succession forev8r? l .~hlnk not. The Cr~ator has made the earth for the living, not the dead..... A generatton may bi.mi itself as · long .a s lts majority continues ln l lfea when that, has dlsap• peared, another majority ls tn place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change thelr lawe and lnstltutlons to suit themselves. Nothlrig then ls unch11n~P-able but the inherent anrl unalienable rights of 11an (Letter~ J• Cartwright, June 5, 1R24). · Jefferson's radical solution to the problem of changlnS. generations was opposed hy Lincoln on the ground that majority rule itself as · well as mlnor\.ty rlghts were guaranteed by nothing but a commitment to the fun<Jamental law and the governmP-ntal institutions. The very raaterial success of "the popular principle applied to government" . acerbates the problem • . Lincoln, on several occasions, for instance to Congress ln 1R61 and 1862, had given exultant accounte of the fanta8tlc .increas., of population, elsht-fold ·. since the founding 11nd contlnui.ng, incredibly, even throu~h .. the )lar (pp. 72R, 761), with the expectation at the sAme rate of growth of 250 nitlllon by 1910 ann a proportionately even greater lncrease of prosperity (pp. f.'34-615. 6R1). But when making up Auch an account a quart?er of a century earl ler, ln the speech "On the Perpetuation of our PolttlcAl Jnstltutlons" he had a<t<leda �-25- We, when 11ountins the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessinss. We toiled not: ln the acquirement or establiahllent of them - they are a legacy bequeathed u1, by a ~ hardy, brave, and patriotic, but ~ laaented and departed race of ancestors (p. 77). · The generational. dileraaa raised by success ls that the epigoni, the successor generation•• bred in that most desirable ignorance, the ignorance of anarchy and despotls11, and 11tatak{ng the drained habits of their parents for the tradition, will in the low ef political passion areuae themselves by giving current problems a cataclysmic cast, that they aay, developing an appetite for unknown terror, be · willing to cure dlasatisfaction by catastrophe. A deliberate return to the founding revalut~on alone can forestall · e~ch an event, or if, as in the case ef the Clvil War, it beco. . a a fact, can turn it into an act of salvation. Lincoln bei\tinually mak&a the effort to . convert the war in this way, even coflparing its financial funding to that of the Revolution (p. 602). , There ls, of course, an assuMption in this which goes beyond Jefferson's reliance on the mere principles of 1776. It is that constitutlonal severn11ent is, in fact, the best 11eans of realizing the11, and ts, therefore, to be equally cherished. .. Lineoln held · this asau•ption ln full awareness of the 11lxed and ma1111ath character which the nation was to atta1n in the next century, and this is why . he saw the incidents of the Civil War as "phllosophy to learn wisdom fro11" "for any future great natienal trial" (p. 764). f a .Z:::st.ftW l llH A - - ..f. What then, 1Mre precisely, does Lincoln aean by •a new birth .of freedo11"7 As ·the nation was cenceived in liberty and dedicated to equality, so it ls to be reborn ln freedort• That 11eanethat . ln this speech 11 freedom 11 covers both equality of creation and the Latinate "liberty•, that ls, civil freedom, which Lincoln elsewh~re calls the jewel of liberty within the fartily of freedom1 it stands at once for ••n's riature as a creature under God and for hls means .of fulfill!~ that nature in civil seciety, as part of a natiop (cf. P• 403). , This means ls self•gavernaient, which Lincoln res~ects equ.lly with its end, calling it •rtgN&~absolutely and eternally right" (p. 303). In fact, he defines it coextensively with liberty, which means for "each 11an to do as he pleases with himself" (p. · 748) 1 I trust I und.e rstand and truly estimate the rtght of self• government. My faith in the propost.tion that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which ls exclusively his oWn, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in •e (p. 303, cf• PP• , 394) • . I11pli.ed in this is first, that poltti.cally, where there must be submission to a govern11ent, this must be by the consent of the governed, understood as . A 11ajority, held in constraint by constt.Uuttonal checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentilllents ••• (p. 585), �-26discovered in elect1ens 1 for We can not have .free government without electlonst••• The strife of the electien ia but huaan-nature practically applied to the facts of the case (pp. 763-764). And. secondly·, ·~•no•ically, that a 11an ~•t be abl• to acquire and hold so11ethlng of hia own, -.iat have, not the assurance, but the possibility of acquiaitlena Lincoln 11ade this a1Jit")t aelf• govern11ent a subject of hla firet Annual Heeaage t• Ceqre11 ln 1861 (pp. 633, ef. P• 501). . . ·. of ••t Now when Lincoln in the decade before and durlng the war out his vlews on freedoa, h~ did it almet lnvarla)>ly in refarerac• to lts antithesis - slavery (cf. P• 303 and P• 347). By •a new birth of freedom• Lincoln 11eana the readoptlen of the Deelaratlen in a . very specific sen••• a aenae which the ordinary •conae~atlvea• strongly disapproved. During the war Lincoln expressed his views on the slavery · question succinctly in a private letter. They are charaoterletic of the double nature of his politi.cal opinions, rever•M• for the laws combined with radioa11ty •f principle. He ~alda I am naturally anti•elavery. If slavery la not wrong, nothing la wreng" . .I can not r•••ber wben I did .not so thlrik, and f'eel. ·: .And . ·iy•t 1 I, hA•·· never understood that the Pres idericy conferred upon me an unrestricted rlght to act offlclally upen tlhiai judg11ent and feeling (April 4, 1864, cf. PP• 395, 652). For, as he said in his Firat Inaugural, not only did he have under the Constitution no lawful right to do so, but he even held hl•••lf bound by his oath of office to en!orcethe constitutional provtatpn for the reclai11ing of fugitive slaves (pp. 492, 580-581) - it wae more i.11porta.nt . o preserve the very bas 1 e of 11.berty than to secure t iml'lledlate justice. At the sa11e time he found hi•s6lf. able to base his uncompromising public opposition to slavery~on the ~plnlona e! the . founding father3 (e.g. pp• 272-273) and on the found\ng doouaenta io Whether or not he knew of Jeffereon•a "pblllppic against Negro slavery which Congress had deleted fro• the final draf~. he had no question that the Declaration meant . to include negroes, a view he set · out ln his debate with Douglass I should like to k°"w if taki~ this old Declaration of Independence, which declares th11.t all men are equal upon principle, and raaking exo•ption to it, when will it atop7 If one aan says it· does not mean a. negro • why IlC)t another say it does not 1ftean some other man?" (pp.: 402-403, cf. PP• 360 ff, P• 479). And he had equally no question about the intention of the Constitution He often repeated, the argument from .. necessity .. , that to get the Constitution at all the framers had had to compromise, but that they �-27· had found a way to save in the long run the principle which they could not assert at the J'llO•ent (pp. 304, 313, 358 ff., 403, 423, 479), for When ~he . fathers of the goverruaent cut off the source of slavery by the· abolition of the slave trade, and adopted a systent of restricting lt from the new territories wh&re lt had net existed, I maintain that they placed it wh~re they understood, and .a ll sensible men understood, it waa in the OIJHme ef ultimate extinction (October 13, 1858, et. PP• 394, 416). Accordingly Lincoln whe, as a responsible parti.clpant tn political l lfe, could not support the extre11e of abel ltion, became the laplaeabL~; foe of the 7xttn1ion of slavery • thia single ·issue doatnatea his speeches ·be ore the war (e.g., 170, 339) • a net in !act . brought . him, as lt had Jefferson (p. 272 , back lnto politics, t.n which be had been losing interest (p. 512 • It was an lsaue important to him ln some part because it was so peculiarly connected with the question o .f the axiomatic character of the founding prlnclples, namely wlth the question of their uniyersall~y, (cf. PP• 308, 477). Such proposltlona, ·precisely because they are prlnci.plea of hwu.n nature, pronounced concerning •all 11en", must eventually either altogether fall or altogether preva1.1, both in respect to lnetitutlonet p!. I believe thl& government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free (1858, P• 372), and to (ndlvlduals1 This ls a world of compensations• and he who would lll! no slave, must consent to .b.E!.! no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not fer themeelves1 and, under a just God, can not long retain lt (p. 489, cf. PP• 136, 473). Lincoln. did not regard it aa l11poss1.ble that the nation alght fail, that ls, that the false principle might become generally accepted so that the natien would degenerate into despot·tsm (p. 335) t:o prevent this wa.s precisely hla pol it teal task. So, ance the war had turned out tn be the final means of resolving .the question, for . the very reason that his .. para11ount object.. .wa,s to save the Union, and •••I!S!.t. either to save or destroy slavery (1862, P• 652), he recogni.zed, in hts Second Inaugural Address, that the "ei.ghth of the whole population" who were slaves, were "somehow, the cause of the war" (p. 792), and ·that tn giving freedom to the tlave·, we assure freedom to the ~ ••• (p. 688), for slavery was "that only thing wh:tch ever could brlng thls nation to civil war" (p. 759). And he gave this not only a political but, �-2R· as was in the nature of the case, an economic interpretation, on the principle that bad labor drives out good. So he told a labor dele ... gation that ' ••• the exlsting rebellion 11eans more, and tends to 1110re, than the perpetuation of African slavery • that l.t ta, in . fact, a war upon th~ rights of all working people (March 11, 1864, cf. P• 343). . .· Ihis ls why, just after the victory at Gettysburg, he had been able to call the war a gigantic Rebellion, at the bottom of which ls an effort to . overthrow the principle that all 11en are · created equal•·•. (p. 709). . . . Lincoln had s. veral time.s made a point of the fact that the e word Jtal•v•t!Y"' :de's 'riot appear"·tn; the CofteC:ltutien1 · Thus, the thing ls hid away, lri the constitution, just as an afflicted lll8.n hldea av•y a wen a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death1 with the promise, nevertheless, that the cut·t tng may begin at; the end of a given tl.11e (p. 313). • . ·. . or So also this speech does not contain the word, . but for a different reason1 as the founders had to violate their feelings about it out of political necessity, ao the ti11e had come at the beginning of that year, 1R63, when Lincoln couldlndulge hi.a out of Military necesalty. He used what he considered to be the Prealdent•s war powers to put the Emanci.patl.on Precla11&tlon ln force the states in rebellion (p. 691), a mve he defended with the argUJMnt that the black regl11ents were indispensable to ml.litary success (Letters of Apr~l 4 and August 17, 1864)• Since the Union slave states, l'lke Maryland (p. 749), were proceeding wlth voluntary emancipation, it was plain · that the thing was on the way out. The Union was to be rec•nstru~ted without slavery, . nd so the irgclamat1on. 2.( 6•efta A!!!\ Reconstruotio j. a Lincoln issued three weeks a tftr the Gtt~yabµrg _d_rees provided . (pp. 73R ff., cf, PP• 796 ff). The "new birth of freedom" 11eant for Lincoln the re-adoption of the Declaration ·(p, 315) and the amend11ent o( the Constitution (pp. 679, 785) to make explicit their true intention1 it meant "returning . slavery to the posltiori our fathers gave it" (p. 315), and restoring the republican example to •tta just influence lil the world .. , by · averting fro11 it the charge of hypocrisy (p. 291) • . Llncaln made of the war a purlflcatlon1 · the nation was to be p~ged of inconsistency • for . t.. And now the last clausee and that government of the people, by the.people, for the people, shall not pert:l.h from the earth •. �-29How, to begin with, should we i11agine that Lincoln read this phrase concerning govermaent, a memerable expansion ' on •popular governm~nt''7 Did he streaa the preposltlona •ef•, "by"• "for•• or the noun "people'' which they govern? The diaayllabic rhythm of the speech is best pres~rved by reading trochees• I I I I I I of the people, by the people, for the people, a rhythm which gives equal weight to the people and its relation to the governaent. As was the beginning, se tbe. end of the epeechis directly adapted from the American oratofical tradition, namely fro11 an abol ltioni1t seraon siven_. appropriately, en July 4 of lRSR by the Rev. Theodore Parker1 who had 1•td1 . . De110cracy le direct aelf-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people. Besides changin8 the rhythm, Lincoln had, significantly, softened "over" to •or•, avoiding even a hint of deapo.t ism. Thus the people govern 1. by repre1entatives, 2. chosen fro• aMorig theaselves, 3. who rule in the popular interest - a deacription President Lincoln himself exemplifies (cf. P• 756). · . Lincoln does not .say 11 thle government as he had . said "this" nation, for it ia the preservation of popular, that la, elected, govertlllent anyybere which is at stake, though the i..ediate cause for resortil18 te force was certainly the preservation of this . government. But that came to the same _ thl.ngr thus near the beginning of the war Llnceln had teld Congress, called by hlm into special session, again on July 4 of 1861, that he regretfully found • • , J I the duty of e•ploytng the war power in defense of' the Government forced upon hi11 ••• no popular Govermnent can long survive a · marked precedent that those who carry an election can only save ·the Government from iNmediate destru~ion by giving up · the main point upon which the people gave the election (p. 609). Lincoln had begun with the Revolution an~ its statement of principle, the Declaration1 he ends with government and its instituting docUJ11ent, the Constitution. This represents the dl.fferenr in the commitments of the first and the fourth . generations '( As the patriots of seventy-six did to support the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, le·1 every American pledge his life, hts property, and his sacred honora ... (p. 81, cf. Declaration, end). · · It also represent~ the relation of the Declaration to the Constltuttont the latter ls merely the i.nstrument of the former, as shown tn a sentence Lincoln quotes from the second paragraph of the Declaration 1 �.30:.. . That to secure these rlghts, govern11ent~ are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS -!o""ROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED (p. 304). The gover11111ent ts a metns, and thus a compromise of evils • Madiabwr1 says in the fifty-first Feder1li1t1 But what is gover1111ent itself but the greatest of all reflections ori human nature? If aen were angels, no govern•ent ·vould be necessary. and he warns1 Don't interfere wt.th anything tn the Constitution. • That 11ust be . . tntained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties (p. 345). And so the preservation of . popular goverruaent is linlced · to .the defense of the American Constitution~ I' _ _ ...:u; ..--~ ..- ... ~;;.-:.'.!".=:::::.•.- .............,..,.... -- ··· This goverill'lent "shall not perish from the earth",· that is ~he "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 ekrtha ••d there is none upright amng 11en1 they all lie in wait for bl•ed1 they · hunt every man his brother with a ne• ~M~cah 7, 2), If . this rebellion prevails, this allusion warns, so that "these institutions shall pert.ah" (p. 609), aen will return to that universal state of war, the war of each against all, which prece4es the institution of government1 the Rebellion would undo the Foundlnga for when men, b4f! entering .into society apd civil govertllllent, have excluded force and 1ntaoduced' laws (or the preservation of property, peace, and unity amongst the~selves, those who set up force again ln opposition to the laws do rebellare that ls, bring back again the state of war - and are properly rebels' ••• (Locke, Second Treatise 2.[. Civil Government , para. 226). �-31- Tn Lincoln's words 1 Plainly, the central idea of secess.i.on, is the eesence cf anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and l~mitation~, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentl11ents is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects tt, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or despotism (1861, P• 585). And finally, there is the allusiDn to ·Jere11lah.tO,tl1 The gods that have not made the heavens am the earth, evt!n they shall perish from the earth ••• False gods shall perish, but the ; government of the people shall perish. ~ V• the Speaker After having, at length, considered the speech, it is leglti11ate to consider the speaker. Lincoln ts, at his height, a publtc mane If ever I feel the soul wt.thin me elevate and expand to those dlmen•••ns not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect. it is when I contemplate the cause of my country ••• (1839, P• 112). But the American speake~r who, like Lincoln, means to put his whole heart and ambition (p. "Ill) in the service of the body politic. has a peculiar problem, rooted in the quality of American life, which de Tocquevil l& describes in the chapter "Of Some Sources of Poetry Among Democratic Nations".· -1 Nothing concelvab.le is so .petty, so lnslpbt, so crQwded with pal try interests . - in one word so anti-poetic - as the lt.fe of a man in the United States (pemocracy 1n America, II, t, 17). ' This ls because democracy has given up ln dlst&ste the source of aristocratic poetry. the past, while its very principle. that of equality, deprives it, by maklng ' all contemporaries equally mediocre, of -the present. There remain, de Tocqueville says. only three sources to democratic poets• the nation, the future, and God - and thls precisely anticipates the theaee of Lincoln's public poetry. But, as he observes in · the chapter on "Why Ameri.can Writers and Orators Often Use an Inflated Style'•,, lt is difflcul t to oresent these themes at the middle distancea · ln democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object t namely, hinlself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he p~rcelves only the hnmens., form of society at large or the stl 11 more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either extremely minute and clear or extremely general am1 vaguea what lies between �-32- ls a veld (.i!?JJ1., lR). For thls American proble11 of the middle void the very nature of U1e pr\nciples of equality and liberty is responsible, Flr1t 1 11no~ they are axioms of ~penness, that is, pro.positiona et reaaon wh \ch are yet not ~ntended ' as the .theoretical bases of a tetal 1yste•• they provide ne specific authoritative "public ph1.1i.iitiphy 0 , 10 that each issue. ,.aust be dect.ded ·anew on the basis of prlnolplea whose nature lt' ls precisely to give no univocal guldanciet ~e b• politically aware is to be uncertain. Second, sin~• they ar• . intended precisely to insure "the pursu_ t of happ1.n•••'', that t.~ ,. 1 i a prosperous privacy, they becoae less palpable the . .re euqoe.~tully they are at work, for, ln echolaatic terms, they are prtnclpl•• of pure potentiality.- the possibility of goods but not theileelvea goods, and certainly not public good.as sigrilflcantly 1 Fr•nch "fraternity" has never co11pleaented 1 iberty ~nd equalcl.~y t.n A•erica. And third, · insofar as they are self-evident proposltlnna •f reason they, unlike objects of faith, · become less .and not ao~e objects of hunlan concern as they are more e!ficact.ously at work, •o that they tend to.drop simply out of sight in the dally conslderatlone of national llfe1 private business induces public apathy. · In his speeches, Lincoln wrestles with just. t:hee~ dlfflcultiea, which might be characterized with the aid of a clasalo•l ter•• by the very nature of their . pol itt.cal foundation Amed.cane tend to act not as a p9l\s, a pol t.tlcal colll1lt1nity held togethfttr by .rrt.endahlp (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, i, 4), but •• a aoQlety, a col _ection of private persons who jostle each othetr into 11toae eC'rt l of balances his effort in his speeches is precisely to prove this tendency inessential, to persuade the nation that it la held toge~her by •bends of affectlan" (p. SRR) • . To Lincoln, then, the problem of filling the agitated natto~l · void with sober sentiment •hewn fro11 the solid quarry of sober reaaon" represented by the . founding principle8 is ~ probl•• of the natleth Once the spentlanef)us conimit11ent of the Revolution l11 gontt, he aaya ln his speech· on "The Perpetuation of Our Politi.cal Tnstlt ... tiona"• a n.ev situation arises a · Passi.on has helped uss but . can do so no more. It wtlt 1.n the future be our ~nemy. Reason, cold, calculatt.ni, . unt.11pa1u1toned reason. rwust furnish all the materials fer our future support and defense ... Let those materials be 11oulder1 lnto 11ner1} . intelligence, souQd morality, and, in particular, ! [IY!Itnct for the constitution All2. l.!l!l•••<PP• A4-85). Lincoln's solutien of the "historical• problent, thft recedtng t'lf the moment of greatness for ·succeeding generations., h1 bald 1 he .,fffl!rs a new, sober passion, a passion of reason - reverence, a lawyer-llke love. for the tnstrumentwhlch has accomplished the 11lracle of a stable democracy - his rhetoric incorporates, and so ftllclta tt. �At the same tlmeJtrue to the openness demanded by the principles he usually abstains Crom the rhetorical compulsion of specific plea.st these sentences of his last public address, dealing with the burning problem of the mo11ent, are typical• In the Annual Message of Dec. 1863 and acco111panylng Proclamation, pre8ent~d A plan of re-construction (as the phra•- goes) which, I promiaed, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated . that this was not the only plan which might possibly be 11cceptabhtr ... (p. 797). · I Instead of attempting to compel the people to a course deduced dogt1ultically, in the manner of an ideologist,· he presented i.n the words of the London Spectator, A political transparency, in which the nation could see an individual character of great power working out phe problems set before them alt ••• He manages to make these problems supre11ely. absorbing, and he does it by maki.ng al11ost every speech an interpretation of the founding docu11ents, in which he reveals at once their in~xhaustlble radlcali.ty and their enduring applicability - by giving A11eri.cans a secular complement to the Scriptures (p• 84). With respect t<> the pro11iatmry character of democrat le principles, Lincoln underscores lt by projecti.ng the growth of the past into the future1 There are already among us those, who, lf the Union be preserved ¥. will llve to see lt contain two hundred and fifty mllliona. The struggle 2! today-, is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also (p. 635, cf. PP• 681, 756). ' · The present .is thus understood as being the sponsor of the ,future1 yet the future la, · 1n turn, nothing but the maanlfi.cation of the past (cf. P• 656) • . But politically the American past ls of . a peculiar sorts it ls not an extensive, unbrokentraditlon but the me11ory of a single, intense event - just as· a,fabrtc of reason begins with a principle from which it ls .derived, so the history of del'locracy begins with the Revolution. Lincoln intends to assure that that beginning is present to the future, that that event remalns the tradition wtiich governa the future. .For the principles of. the fathers are, by their very nature, the root of the future insofar as lt is good. And finally, with respect to the passive and incurious mode in which the democratic principles of equality and liberty tend to be accepted, lt ls significant that. Lincoln himself never attempts to rai.se the question of their tcuth, nor even to supply a definition ~ except in extremely simple, and negative terruJ. So he says, �-34- The world hae never had a good definitlon of the word l lberty, and t .h e .A11ertcan people, just now, are 11Uch ln want of one. And he provides lt ln the simple tertae of the possibll ity for eelf-real.lzatien - liberty means for each •an ta do as · he pleases wlth himself, and the product · of hl1 labor ••• ( P• 748) ·1 wht.le he expreasea .hie "idea ef del'locracy" in the for11 of the fa11illar rellsloua precept "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you"• As I would not be a §lt'llh so I would not . be a maoier. Thia expresses 11y idea of de110cracy. Whatever d lffera ~ro11 . thts, to the extent of the difference, it not ~eraocracy (p. 427) I Thus he treata the principles af A•eriean politics as s1.11ple precepts for the . happineaa of hu•anity, which are at the aa11e time standards of llOral perfeotlon, and about whleh he offers no theoretical re f'l ftCt ton• I The Saviour, I eupp«t••• did not expect that· any h1,111an creature could be perfect ae the Fat.her tn Heaven1 but He 1ald1 11 Ae yeur Father in Heaven le perfect, be ye also per!ect."·~·so I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be•• nearly reached as we can (p. 403). Indeed, such public inquiries would not be to the point of ht• rhetoric. Fer the strictly rational basis of democracy ls to be found in the theery of wnatural rights" aet out by Hobbes . and Locke, a theory which regards precisely what ls "natural", that ~~. conrmon, in Mn: and not what ie high, so that it is scarcely conducive to a public feellng of plety. What Lincoln does lnstead .ls, by speaking ln dellberate analogy to Christ (p. 403), to ralee these princlple111 fro11 1elf-evld1tnt propoaltlone to arttclea Q{ faith, thu• returning, as de Tocqueville ahow~d (QR• .cit.•• I, ~). to a . foundation · 1n fact deeper than t.hti! rational begrrlnlngs provided by the found lng fathers. _ . . .· · , . · To explain why "the oolr\t g.i rells1on and the ru"?lrtt !lf l tbert\( are anclently lncorporated wlth each other ln A11ert.ca, de Tocquevil l ~: had appealed to the classical tradltlon concerning the nef'td for public pl8ty to support the body politlc1 · Llberty regatcts religion as its companl.on in all lts battles and ite trlul'llphll, a& the cradle of t.t8 infancp and the divine source of tts . clal•s (21?, • .£!..t•• I, 11). · And he had found this theory corrobor~t.ed in A111erlca1 �-35Religion in Arnerica takes no direct part ln the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political lnstltutt.ons (SlQ• ill•, I, xvii). The older Lincoln came to a view which is. the insenuous converse of this posl.tion of expediency1 not religion serves polities, but the reverse - republican government is itself a great religious lnstitution1 in his own words "the only greater institution• ta the church (p. AS). The rock of reason of Washington's foundation has the sa11e basis as Peter'e church. That reverence for the laws which Lincoln calls "the political religion" of the nation (p. 81) derives froN a trans-political faith. It Nuet be urged that this is not an opinion l .. lncoln holds routinely or perfunctorily .. for .hi.a, the Republic, which puts the sood of the whole finally into the hands of a numerical majority (p. 785), ls plausible to the ••ul only as a community of the faithful, protect~d by a kindly provision that few shall be totally without gracP., that of all those who conte into the world, only a email percentage are natural tyrants (p. 301). Were . it otherwise, democracy would be a continual garAble wtth the body politic at stake. Accordlngly the Gettysburg Addrfi2SR begins and ends not:. only wt.th phrases hftrrowed fro11 American oratory but with the diction of the Bible. To Lincoln.the people of the Revolution ls also the second people of the Boo¥;, the "al11ost chosen people" (p. -575) • All 1\mericans, he said in his Second Inaugural, read the same Bible and pray to the same God ••• (p. 793). Lincoln himself was not only, as 110st backwoodsmen, hr. ught up on o the Bible, but he wrote to hls friend Speed in the year .before his deatha I am profitably engaged t.n reading the J:S1Dle, and in the same year he said to a committee which .had presented a Bible 1 It is the best gift God has given to men. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from Wrong. All things aost desirable for 11.an•s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it (September 9, 1864). Lincoln's commitment to tihe Bible ls not .that of an orthodox Chrietian, for, as he sald, I have neverunited myself to any church, . because I have found difficulty tn.glvlng my assent, without mental reservation~ �-36- to the long• complicated statement 11 of Christ tan doctrine whlch characterize their Articles of Belle! and Confessions of Faith (Remark to H. c. Demig, c. 1R62, cf. P• 186). For h111 the Bible is rather a palit ~cal ••vr•• book, and that in two contrasting respect•• On the one hand it lends hi• a lan~uage at once high and popular, beyond both the de11agogue and the intellectual, a language of salvation with which to ••gnify the A11eri.can enterprise 1 wlth i.ta dlcti.on he speaks as ••Father Abraham"• As the first patriarch of a new generation of founding fathers. And on the other, it supports him in a view of the n•ture of things which, when publicly acknewledged,da11pa the hysterical activity filling the American void, and reduces it to ~hat 11elaneholle deliberateness on which the public buain••• thrivea. F•r Linceln had been fro11 h.18 youth a believer in an inner counterpoise tt> political liberty, which he understood to be called the "Doctrt.ne of Necessity", that is, that the hu•an mind ls impelled to action, or held ln rest by some power, over whtch the raind itself has noi: control ••• (p. 187-188J. . · · . That power ls God who, though •not a person••, can yet directly exercise his will in human affairs• By his mere great power on the 111nds of the now contestants, he could have either eav•d' ( or destroyed the Union without a human contest (Hedltat1.ou 2Ji the . Divine~. 1862, P• 655). This ~od, in who11 Lincoln, by the peculiar power of hla falth, recognizes ·at once •Nature's God" and the God of the Bible, le Lincoln's and the people's political 11B.ster1 he constitute• a direct limitation on the power of hu11an contrivance. 1he humanity . which ls the consequence of Lincoln's view ls embOdled ln Lincoln's last speech to the natlon before his assassination, the Second Inaugural Address, which is evidently the clae~ical American poem drawing particularly on de Tocqueville's third source of democratic poetry, God. · t::.::.;.::.;:;:=.~::;...-..:-:.·- -,........~ .:~::=-~,.::a:=a=::E. '.Z.;l1 The sarne speaker who is so eminently democratic ln theme is, however, the very reverse 1n form. Again de Tocqueville provldes the criteria in h!s chapter on •Ltterary Characteristics of Democratic Times" 1 · . . · Taken as a. whole, literature in democratic ages can never present, as lt does in periods of arlsto~racy, an aspect of order, regularity, science and art1 its form, on the contrary, will ordinarily be slighted, sometimet11 despl8ed. Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and lotn!le, almo8t alwa.ys vehement and bold. · Au~hors will aim at rapidity of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small productions wlll be more common than bulky books ••• (Democracy!!! America, II, i, 11). �Now, thl:s oth;:~rwise sn accurat~e .1k~scrtpUon ti:; ci>rH~picnmrnly ~ nc.tppl tcablG to Linc..~oln° s; h'rit i:ngi The ~;~!·.ttY§..hU£t~ t\d~!tS:!il! is small, to he sure., hut: lt W35 not r·aptrny exf ~cuted - Lincoln had brought a worl\~d .. over tlraft from ~va:~hingtonr he rf~-w1n ·k,z·:rd this in Getty sbtff('.; on t::h1:i ~V(~ of dt:~l t Vt?r~·, and h(~ {!mended e<~ch n f · thf;• thr-e .-~ kn.own co'pi1~s he m~de ovn-r the nf:'xt three m{H1l:bs.. A 1 thoor;hf as he sa ld, not: a master: of langt..H:tge nnr tn po:s1H,:ost.o n n f ;1 flne e<lucat ion ( fh 39:3), be !!~~ careful 1 · · Gentlem(mt' Jud iv:~~ noue;Ias informed you tha.t th t. s Spt~f!'Ch () r In tH <'~ was p1:-ohahly ca1:--efully pre{A11.rede T •:hirnit. i.t wan (p .. 392). By thio ca1:·e he SlK'C<-:eded tn glving hi<> thuu-r~hts their almost unalt.Grahle f,n·nh For..· thts purpose he had 1• ~ft·er t:he agB of twenty~ t:hreef Bet lli.mself t i } study~ E.ngltsh 8~:'.f;\lliffi.:U~~ "lmpl"!-:rff!Ctly~ uf COUt:'Ge~ but so as to speak and l~'i'C:t~ as wGll a~~ he does nuw" (l8hll, p~ 5.'.}9). enabli.ng him to write to a man whn had submit.tH1! t:o h1m an ecHt(~ii ve~·&ion of one of hi.n. speedv:.•81 So f;:ff as ·1.t la tnt:ended me.r~.:, Jy to i mprov'1:" 1n gicarn.rnar, .aml elegancE:-~ .zy.f comp•oslt. l&n,. I. am qul t .e agceed 6 hut I do not. w tf~h the st•nsc~ change.•d, or rii.odifi.ed,. to· a hatr~s .breac\t:h. i\nd you, not havtng ntudi.t.~d parttcular points <:>r~ cl:o1.rnly as 1 haV<:"i·· ,can not be qutte sure that you do not at\8.n!';H the , sens~ whl'.:ln :yo_l clo L ,..lif t:''t: ~ . not. ~t.nten'J ~t ( p., .J4J; ct., p .. c:3 8,) ·• . :> :. .· . . Hts style.I> . ton-t ts the very oppu.sltu of that of t: ~1~ typical cternocrat i c wrltert descrthe-d by dt~ Iucqmwi.lle in hiv chaprer on "How AmerlcHn nemoct.~acy ha6 Morn.n .P.·d the gnslioh :Langua.ge" (J.h.!:S:1~1' IIP L; 16) Wh<~t out of lack of . egre ~ lmH~ of chang~ und <lesire fo:r blgn~ss, us~G old words in indeterminate seasen~ i.ntxodue~s vast rn.m1bf~t-s of rn"w wonlslt usually borrowed · fl.'£.'\'.tn technical vt-.cabul.artes, and 1o<ids hl'8 speech wtth abstract ar.ttt gew:,r.a1. expreastor'\s. ne TocqttevU lo had called lawveis t.he ar:tstocr~'its (}f Am~d. ca (i.bld ... J xvi}" and ln part Li.ncoinf s caN'fu1ness tn that: of a lawyei.=-·1nrt~.r:pr~~i-. ln.~ law. But t .he lapidar·y precisi.tH'l of form which earrh;;s the p:n.:ri.a.rcb3l gran~eur of Ltn.coln~ ~ rhe-toric . ... h. e W<'HJ. Lm~1h~e m•rrniy to 1 P.C1:_ur13 . (p .. 54t) - !.~ sometctnng 1~:H"fd~~ it. is a Blf>;n ot a HO\H~l ki..nd of aristocracy ~ republi.ca.n arlstocracy. L\.nenln had t ..~cttly r<~jected Everett• s cold L~lasslc1..sm a.s inapproi:,wiat:e t.n a, democ.r-r.tt'ic speaker, \.-Knse object must not be to dt:aJ17onstrate or 8xert h r.s (lWn. superior ity. Hts amblth1Tt '\>;t,'lSv r«~ttu~r.·, as he told hlo f1-ien1I H'~ tndont "to bi;~ d}. stinct:1y under.·stood by th~! '('ornmon pt:>op1H'' (p~ ti5)~ dnd to U:'>i".: blfl power as had hts mo~fol, Clay, in t:he tHffvtce of d~mot:rat t c d~c; a r'\ll hiE< i:J;ffortn were mad~ for practtcal effect~ Ho new~r spoke merely to l>e l1eard •. H.e never 't~el i v<~red a .Y11iurth or J111\r cn:ation" o.r an eulogy on an occaGlon 1 Lke tbta U'\!19.Bl'. ~,~.Q lfC'nrv f,lay, July 6, 1'852f cf. P• 269} ~ -- Yet hts rhetori.c Hhow~ pn~ctse1y th~ fundamental chH:CiH:'!terist' i.cs of ancient artstocratic wrltt~rs. of whi.ch de Tncquev) l le, i.n thi~ ch;;ptf"'r �') •· ••ll • ,, 1- "Th~ 'Stucty o:r Greek and Lat t n L i.te. .r.atur c ts Peculiarly Useful in Of:mocrat:ic (}o'Tlmuniti.es" wrtt:ese. · ent ltlect Nothing tn thE::ir wol."ks seems done haoti.ly or .at :candomw · eve:r::y 1 inH is writt:e1'1 ft"H: · the eye of the conno lsseur and i.s shapod after .some \.~cmcept ton of lt'.iea1 . b~m1ty • No l it:e.r ature places tht.rne flne . qu~•t itles ln . \4hteh the wr: i.terc, uf democr:-ach~s . <:i:r.e naturally dHf'].cl.ent in bolch~r relief than trH~-=.l. \'.,f 'i:he .anct.ent:t:11' no l iteraturet thm 'efort• ~ ou:.~ht to be rno.r.e -stud s_,.:>d h1 democrat 1.c t: tmt~s 11, t, 15). <w..si . , Llncoln h\rna.elf ls~ 1: h<.:Hl 10 in de Tncqw?.>vtlle' s s.•~m'!'e an aristoeratic writer\\ cwen tu t:he point ·of flndlng hit~ sourceo tn tru:- par.t. The msn who had had f·r·om y'1'uth the .. pecul lil:r amblti(mn · of betng truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rern.1erl.ng myself . worthy o.f the!.r esteem (p~ 57 v ef ~ Jh 48)), and who Ga id he tnped h1~ UW:it?rStO~tri "th~{.t Which CQlll3t itub.HJ the tns ide c•f a gentleman'' (p .. 414-).c · eould have no quC!rn· .'l wtth thp- essence of , " m-i.stQcracy. In faet11 in the weak~1 ju5t before the d•:>ltvery of the · .Qc-tt~yfil.>~ [likh:e~ he had .had vlsi.tot~s whn urged him a.t ~he (rn,r;-1 t~nt occ~tii.on t<:.i prest:mt the Uni.on. to the 'public ~·a_s . ftght'htf.~ the batt1 e of democracy for .all the wor.tdn and th<... war Hs being one ~~ of 't:JH5 people s.ta tnst the arlstocratsv; l .he had accepted the former ~'lnd rejected the l.att:er st.1.gge~th.;1h F'or hl~ w~H hbnself s eorroboration of Jef.fer~on w o contentton, set out tn hlH .cor.re.operndence with Adams (Octob!!.•r. .2H t 1 Al :J) ~ that md.stocracy an6 dsrnocn~cyi' the t~ule (!~ f the best etnd the rule . of the ,peopl~'" have been marle t:o111patlble in the United St~teG, t:hat the: citize'n~ tn fre~· -eleott6n can and will nln ~enaral •• choose from among · thernselvt~s the "rtatural ~ls,t.Q\ , the best by nature" The ~~q;b_ur.,g iHJQ.rgJ}£. ts thu u'Ctr..~r.ance o.f such an §.X.i§tsu~. t <) man at 'the s-ame thnH ex.celle•nt in the arit i.que sense and good in the common um1eratarLding .. 0 �1 · For a desert pt ion of tht~ events of the Gett.y s hurg ded l.cat ion and a collect ion of crnnmentari.~s on the ~meeches see :Car:l Sandburg r Abraham Ltnool.r!t JJt~ l l i ~.• New York ( l 939), Vol. !I~ PP• ~452-4~ 2 For an annotated col lectlon of the vartous versions seL~ Ihe Colle~t;!Zd ~ ~J.~~~l!l Linc9...ln~ ed. Roy · p, Ih"lsl-01-·" Ne;;-Drunewlck 'CT95"3), Vol VII \.l8b3·lJJb4)t ppe 17~·23 . . 3 Edward Evere,ttf ill.:..E!.'tlOfl..§. ill1f1 .S~fil'Jl.~11 liostun (1892) 11, Vol~ IV, }lp. 622~659. see Harold l:ysklnd, ~'I\ Rhet.ori.~a.l linalyE.d;s of the Geti~'sbur.g Addre·s6 1' , J.21!£.lli!l u.[ Q.ene..r~l J~Qn~ Vol~ IV (1950)., PP• 202-212. 4 5 .For an analys ls whtch .doe-s just ioe to the awesome i.mpl icat ions of the,. speech see. H~!l~Y V ~ Jaffa~ ~JJi ( 1 9 :> 9) t pp c l 8 J"' ~ 3 L ~ tl S.~ l:!Q~~ .Jl};y1d~ , , 61 ' n t h' i ng out these paragraphs J. rec~ 'i ved much . i.nk help from Geor,ge i\naat:aplo. ~§ Q.'l th.«r; f.l!:fil~ t\11\endmett..t .t.g .tl!!t. ~2!1~~1.t:ut .!Q!! J2i. the Un .. cd St;at:es· ~ Ductural. Hisser.tat ton,, Univer~i.ty of Chi~go U 64 v ~l\ppentlix I, 6, p .. 600 'ff~ 7 8 Prom a spee< ch lnd irectly repo1i:t.ed in (1890). Vol~ !I, P• lilS. S~e Carl L. Becker., P• 142 .. J!le: ~:.!]litfu.1~§. !JJ.l~Ql nf Chicago ~la!£!~tiqn ~2( !D&~.Q.fill.£!£11 E~t New "York (1958), ... � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 40 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A reading of the Gettysburg Address (expanded version) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered in 1968 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1968 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b3fab1fcd413e4af76f78ede64084013.pdf a77b3def97e5c30f51e9a5b04b135edc PDF Text Text re~ ~r~mcttf~ ~vee oJ science 6rattn �A Supplement to PALAESTRA April 1968 THE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE Eva Brarm PALAESTRA St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Editors George and Meredith Anthony Associate Editors Steve Forman Masha Zager Assistant Editor Daniel Sullivan Faculty Advisor Eva Brann Cover Design Gabrielle Bershen Miss Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, a small liberal arts school, co-educational and non-sectarian, with campuses in Annapolis, Maryland and Santa Fe, New Mexico. * * * This article reproduces a lecture given to the upper classes of the Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware on January 31, 1968. �ERRATA SHEET Page 3, column 1, line 3 •• change "idesthi" to "idesth~i" Page 7, column 2, line 12 change "mathemetical" Page 9, column 2, line 17 .• change "truest" to "trust" to . "mathematical" �THE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE Eva Brann, Tutor Students of the Tower Hill School, The title of my lecture in your lecture series "Revolution and Ferment in Mid-Century" is "The Elements of Science." In it I shall try to say as exactly and plainly as I can what I mean by this title and this will be what the lecture consists of. I shall use whatever learning or insight! might possess withoutanyreserve for, as you will see, it is part of my argument that these matters, elementary matters, are accessibletoallofusinsofaras we are human. Presumably you are. What, then, is the meaning of the word "elements?" Those of you who study Latin may have heard that there is an untrustworthy, but highly suggestive, derivation of this word, according to which it is to bereadL-M-N-tum, likealpha-betor A-B-C, since 1, m, n are the first three letters in the second row of the old Latin alphabet of twenty letters. An element is, this derivation implies, a constituent of an abc, in short, a kind of letter. This understanding of the word implies that to have an elementary knowledge of any subject is to have some sort of reading knowledge of it. And conversely, a subject which has elements is one of which it is possible to acquire a reading knowledge. Nowwhatis meant by having a reading knowledge -1- �of a subject? An ancient commentator on a certain well-known mathematical work called "The Elements;'indiscussingits title, says: ", .• the term element is applied by analogy to that which, being one and small, is useful for many purposes. " A person, accordingly, who has a reading knowledge, say of books, knows twenty-four small and simple little items which enable him to decipher whole libraries. You may object that not letters are the true elements of books but something else, something beyond and behind the letters, which the readers should get to as soon as possible - that books should not be read "literally." But this notion, that we should at top speed leap beyond the letter to the general idea and, probably, beyond the poet to his tradition and beyond a paragraph to its cultural background, is extremely dangerous - deadly, in fact. -2- Let me illustrate what! mean by analyzing a passagefromapoetwhoclearlywants us to pay attention to the text (a text being a woven texture of letter elements) in all its detail, namely a passage from the Iliad. The Iliad is the poem of the ferment that takes place in Achilles , a man of such terrific aliveness that he has chosen to expend his life in one short, high-pitchedspan, ratherthantoletitwear out quietly and normally. As the time for his death approaches hecannotfacetheideaofnot being alive on this earth, so he shapes his final weeks into an agonizing drama which will drive him inevitably into the death he has, in his heart, chosen . He begins by staying away from the fighting around Troy on a ridiculous pretext and sits singing in his tent. His one close friend, Patroclus, is both ashamed and a little eager to have his own great moment. Achilles allows himself to be persuaded to lend Patroclus his very conspicuous suit of armor, and Patroclus, being mistaken, as is inevitableinGreekarmor, for the man whose suit he is wearing, quickly comes under full-scale assault by the Trojans, particularly Hector, their chief, and is killed. He is brought back to Achilles. I shall read what Achilles says in Greek so you can hear the moaning behind his words. "My dear friend i s dead, " he �says, ,, I / / / I :J'atroklos, ton ego peri panton ti9n hetairon, 1s9n e;n~ keo9a1l. _ton_ap6les,.. teucpea de' Ektor deosas apedyse pel6na, thauma idesthi, kAla ... " Translated: "My friend is daad, who meant more to me than all my friends, as much as my very self. I have lost him, and Hector who killed him has stripped off the tremendous armor which is a marvelous, a beautiful sight. . . . " The Greekphrase"ton apolesa" is always trans"' lated "I have lost him," but if a reader paid attention to what these words literally say - which would, to be sure, mean learning Greek - he would notice that they have another meaning, one in which the terrific meaningof the whole poem is collected; for what Achilles also, and perhaps primarily, says is: "I have murd_ red him" - and that is the stark truth:----e Andfuthermore, a careful reader who makes a mental note of the way the loss of the armor to Hector, who will wear it from now on, is emphasized in th~ whole scene will have a clue for deciphering the climax of the poem. This is the dreamlike chase when Achilles, the fastest of the Greeks, cannot catch his enemy Hector, t~e heavy-set Trojan, as they keep r_unrung around the c1tycaught as in a nightmare, until finally that enemy stops running and turns around. :r~ronlysuc~areader can see in his mind's e ye who 1t 1s that has fmally stopped running and who it is that Achilles is at last facing - himself. Of course, I am perfectly ready to admit that even this sort of close reading is not a matter of merely reading the letters. But, on the other hand it is also quite impossible without that kind of be-' giruiing, and that is the point I want to make. In any case, I am using "reading knowledge" merely as a metaphor for a certain kind of knowledge of the world, namely elementary knowledge , to which it is analogous. Let me try to say more straightforwardly what seems to me to characterize the realm of the elementary. If letters are to books as elements are to the -3- �world, it follows that the latter have this character: they must be absolutely simple, limited in kind, but appearing over and over, as often as you please. They must be equally present wherever you turn, and everything must be made ''out of'' them, though what is made out of them need not be in the least like them, as a word or a paragraph or a book is nothing like a letter. And finally, they must everywhere be combined by similar rules for spelling as it were, by general laws. This elementary simplicity and generality differs from other conceivable kinds of singleness and uni versality found in intelligible things, for ins tance from the main idea expressed in a book, since this idea is not necessa rily very simple, nor present on every page a hundred times over, nor, for that matter, "in" the book in any literal sense at all. The questionisthen, whether the world is, in fact, made up of such elements. I might add here a fact which proves nothing but which is at least suggestive, namelythatin Greek, a language with an uncanny aptitude for telling the truth, the word for letter and for ele-4- ment in the larger sense is one and the same. Let us now look at the meaning of the word "science. " Those of you who study Latin Will know that it is nothing but the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge," knowledge in the sense of t he ability to distinguish things. The Bible, in its deep understanding of human nature, presents as the first science acquired by man the scientia boni et mali, the knowledge of good and evil, acquired at the price of the loss of paradise. Milton in his poem Paradise Lost gives an interpretationofChapter 3 of Genesis, where Eve is tempted by the subtle serpent with the fruit of the tree of knowledge and acc epts it, which makes it seem as if that episode had been written precisely for this decade. For what, according to Milton, the serpentine Satan in the leaves offers Eve is the fruit of experience, or rather a fruit whichinduces "experiences" -the experiences which Eve is promised will put her in a state such " that your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And this i s exactly what happens.In a state of intoxication Eve sees the world with great vividness, sees into the center of things, as she �imagines, where at first the beauty and then all the horrorofher-ownhumanlife is revealed to her. The scene ends with Eve, in the aftermath of herhigh state, squabblingwith Adam over matters of life and death. Meanwhile Satan arrives in Hell and reports his initiation of Eve to the experiences of hell,and the fallen angels, for one dreadful moment, tum into hissing serpents who, greedily reaching after that same fruit, chew dust. This, then, istheoriginalknowledge, a temptationanda sin. But in the seventeenth century, at the beginning of modem times, the world was created over again, sinless this time. On November 10, 1619, a Frenchman named Descartes discovered "an entirely new science," or, as he said, a scientia mirabilis, borrowing a phrase from Psalm 139. (This man, incidentally, had most of his works published byaprinterwhoseemblemwas a tree with a serpentine growth on its trunk from which a pagan wise man is deliberately, and with no sinful look about him, plucking a fruit.) He published the foundation of this new science in an account of a series of meditations hehadconductedover sixdays. Presumably he rested on the seventh. His marvelous new science was persuasive enough to come in time to be called by everyone simply "Science." I mentioned these historical matters only to bring out the blasphemy and arrogance that are, although hidden, always present when we speak of "science," simply. I shall try to show that the "scientists"have no cause for arrogance. Now what is this "science" simply? I shall ill ustrate what I think it is with an example taken from a book written by a contemporary of Descartes called Galileo Galilei and entitled, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, and held - imagine - on six suecessivedays . The two new sciences, essentially the same as that founded by Descartes, are those of bodies under pressure and in motion, in short, modern classicalphysics. "Physics" is a Greek word meaningwhat belongs to nature. The new knowledge is the science of nature. -5- �I shall illustrate the nature ofthis natural science with an example chosen from the first of the six suecessive days of the new creation. Galileo is fascinated by a wonderful coincidence which had been discovered by certain Greek mathematicians: of the tones of our common Western musical scale some, when they are played together as chords, are "concords," that is, they sound well together and are "consonant." Others are dissonant or dicordant. Everyone hears this, and if anyone should claim that he likes dissonance not as a seasoning but by itself, he could only mean that he has gorged on centuries of straight music and isnowpreparedfor a little perversity. Now it turns out that consonant tones ca n be produced by plucking different strings which have the following remarkable property: all such strings have to each other the relation of one small natural, that is, whole, number to another. Thus the octave, for instance from G to Gbelow, achord so consonant as to be in an odd way almost an identity, is produced by plucking a string of a basic unitlengthandanotherof twice that length. A fifth , as from G down to C, is produc ed by plucking -6- the string of double l ength a nd anothe r oftrtple the original unit length. This concord is not quite so smoothly consonant as the octave but, as Galileo says, ittickles the ear and gives "at the same moment the impression of a gentle kiss and of a bite." If now together with the triple string, another string, offour times the unit length, is plucked, we hear the concord of a fourth, from C down to G. Galileo wants t o know why numbers and sensa tions should show this remarkable coincidence. He observes that plucked strings vibrate and that the number of their vibrations in a given time are dependent on, or as we would s ay, vary inversely, with the length of the string, which means that the doubly long string vibrates half as often. He further notices that such vibrations can be communicated by the air to other sensitive bodies, for instance a goblet. He also knows that our ears contain a drum which is sensitive in just this way, and he concludes, thereby incidentally founding the science of acoustics, that we hear a satisfying chord when the sympathetic vibrations set up in our ea r by two strings a re in step or in phase, so tha t , in the case of the octave, on e xactly every second impulse from the shorter, high- �er-sounding string, there comes in a single one from the, longer, lower string. But if the vibrations cannot arrive in phase so very often, which will happen if the lengths do not have small number relations (or if perhaps they never arrive together, which must happen, as some of you will know, if it were possible to cut strings which have no unit in common) then the sound is increasingly dissonant and produces an impression from tickling to torturous. This, it seems tome, is, at least as a beginning, a satisfactory explanation of the phaenomenon, and it is certainly one of the kind called "scientific." What are its characteristics? You will notice that such an explanation demands that there be certain elements present everywhere in the strings, in the air, in the ear drum, and that Galileo sees just such elements in numbers and lengths, in arithmetical and geometrical objects. Their presence alone makes such different things as strips of cat' s gut and our sensory organs capable of being definitely and precisely related . Such math- ematical objects, few and simple in kind, and connected in clearly prescribed ways, are everywhere in nature, and wherever they are, the same general rulesapplyinsucha way that every little occurrence is equally an example of what we call the "laws of nature . " This circumstance is responsible for our ability to experiment, since on account of it we can see in a small room on earth the very same laws at work which hold, for instance, our natural satellite, the moon, in its orbit. The science of nature is, accordingly, mathematical science and the elements of nature are mathemetical elements. What is specially characteristic of mathematical elements? The Greek word "mathematics" means simply "that which is learnable." Why might mathematics have seemed particularly learnable to those who gave it that name (who were, incidentally, identical with those who discovered it)? You will remember that I compared elements to letters, which are simple and everywhere related by general rules. But we all know that no one can tell -7- �by looking at the twenty-four letters what the rules of spelling are, for letters give no clue to their uses and relations, which are agreed upon arbitrarily. Mathematicalelements, on the other hand, do give us such clues; for instance, it is by inspecting a line segment that we know that the whole segment is greater than each of its parts, and it is by thinking about imagined triangles that we know under what circumstances they might be congruent. (I am bypassing here the complicating fac tthat, having imagined and thought enough aboutmathematicalobjects,we ma,y constructa s ys tem which pretends that the rules relating numbers to geometric figures came before these objects and that the objectscomeintobeingonly later, by being construe ted according to these rules, or axioms, as they are called.) Mathematical objects are thus characteristically transparently simple and at the same time rich in built -in relations . This is, I think, why the first mathematical system, Euclid's geometry, was called the "Elements" - geometric objects are, so to speak, -8- the perfect elements, elements par excellenc e, name- 1y simple beginnings whose property it is to enter into a great multitude of things, though these things rna y innowayappearmathematical, as a consonance does not sound like a small number ratio. All this implies that to speak of the " elements of science" is as much as to speak of mathematics, which, in turn, is that which everyone can learn. In oneofPlato's dialogues, the one called Meno, anex periment is performed by Socrates to show that even a totally uneducated boy, if rightly questioned, can discoverwithinhimselfthe answer to a really rather sophisticated mathematical problem, namely how long a line must be used as the base of a square with an area of two square feet. If there is someone here amongyouwho thinks that he has a particularlyhard block against mathematics, I am willing to reproduce this experiment - on the condition that if it works it proves my point, and if it doesn't it proves nothing. My point is essentiaJly that eve ryone can learn the elements of science, simply by reason of having ahumanintellect. The sciences are the pre-eminent �humanities. I rna y here seem to be turning things upside down, but I shall go right on just the same to make a list which might outrage some of you, a list crudely entitled Easy and Hard Subjects. The easy subjects are: mathematics, particularly Descartes' great discovery of analytic geometry; el""mentary classical physics and certain approaches to electricity and magnetism as well as to the special theory of relativity; also, I imagine, electronics, computer science, etc. etc. Hardsubjects are: the science of the soul, sometimes called psychology; the inquiry into the actions of men, called in the English Greek we so often speak, history (which originally meant "inquiry" simply); the study of men in associations, called sociology; etc., etc. You will notice that my "easy" list consists of the sciences of nature and their prerequisites and applications - and I do, in all seriousness, believe that everyone can learn their beginnings, though I agree that at a certain level they quickly get too complex for the unspecialized student. The "hard" list consists of the study of man, of human beings, and the strange fact is· that these are not accessible to any human being by what Descartes called the "unaided light of the intellect," but require something more: a prior knowledge of nature, e:xperience, sensibility and another thing which I will try todescribeina moment. I therefore think my order of difficulty, though it turns the one usually accepted in schools and colleges upside down, is the true one. I mentioned as one of the requirements ofthe study of man the knowledge of nature. An obvious reason for this requirement is that we can know little about ourselves unless we know about the things . around us which support and oppose us. But there is a deeper and more subtle reason too. In order to understand ourselves we have to know how we come to know, we have to know what it means to have or to do science. And this can never be understood by anyone who has nottried to study the scientific enterprise itself - I myself would never truest a historian who talked ofthe "Scientific Revolution" andcouldnottalk, for example, about the old and the new ways of generating conic sections. Happily, an elementary knowledge of science is, as I have tried to show, entirely within the power of any high school and college · student, pre- -9- �cisely because science rests on elements. And I think that such elementary study - by which I do not mean a survey - is sufficient for the purpose. That brings me to that other requirement for the study of man. In studying science we build up from the elements to greater complexity and efficacy, and to get there we accept the elements. The beauty of thiswayisprecisely that it gets us somewhere; by it we become powerful experts. Now it seems to me that the ultimate requirement for the study of man is a firm unwillingness to be stampeded along this road. To know ourselves it is necessary to tum around, to tum on, and not away from, the elements, in the Latin term, to reflect. This kind of patient reflection will not immediately teach us how to do things, but it is indispensable if we want to know what we are doingandwhy. In otherwords, this last requirement for the study of man is identical with the chief requirement for purposeful action. The word for turning things around or upside -10- down is "revolution." The planets in their courses are a t the moment making revolutions. If somebody gets upset and in turn upset s a car, there has been a revolution, and when a man suddenly flips and stands on his head, literally or metaphorically, he has undergone a revolution. All such revolutions, tremendous as they rna y seem, are explicable in terms of the laws ofnature. They occur as do things which are always the same, in mid-century , at the beginning, or atthe end, and the less we attend t o current events i n studyingthem, the more hope we shall have of understanding them. But there is another kind of revolution, a revolution which is an action in the true sense of the word, not a mere happening. It occurs wherever someone turns a matter over in his mind and, all by and for himself, comes to a conclusion which may be - though it need not be - utterly the opposite of what the others think they think. It is the possibility of suchtrulytremendous revolutions which I was really leadingup to tonight, and if there are s!udents here who think that any other revolutions should concern them much at this point i n their lives, I wish they would tell me their r easons later on. Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Collegian Description An account of the resource The Collegian began as a student newspaper; became a college community literary publication in 1952 and continued until 1969; became a student newspaper again in 1969; discontinued publication from 1980 until 1989 when it again became a student literary publication. Click on <a title="The Collegian" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=26">Items in The Collegian Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. 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 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 13 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Elements of Science Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968-01-31 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 31, 1968, at the Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware. Published as a supplemental issue of Palaestra, April 1968. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1968-01-31 Relation A related resource Palaestra, April 1968 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 Wilmington, DE Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Deans The Collegian Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ef3f7b57808aa8eac5f6a1b0ef5f62ff.pdf a98918a3c590427f4323a4f0b93edb48 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. 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Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 8 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Venetian Phaedrus Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered in the Spring of 1972 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1972 Relation A related resource The College, July 1972 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Deans Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a3f0217f2a7fd29b29d8452202164f72.pdf c87307f54d47330a746bd902335468b2 PDF Text Text Ev!I Brenn .. St. John's Callega, Mey 1972 An Appreciation of K•nt 'e Critigue ~ .!:!:!!!.. Reason .. for Students An Introduction ·Pert I. · THE CRITICAL ENTERPRISE a. Tha Problems b. Tha c. Gr~tique The System Part II. THE CRITiCAL HAN 11. b. Tha Pradlc21ta c:: ~ Th• Object · d. (Exp1rience) 11. The Cri tigup The Subject Tha £!! f!.!!!. MQ~rli,,g R!t!!pn in 1ts final f'orm hes 884 pegaa. Of these tho l••t. five ara clevotad tn • history of metephysice. . In 1t Kent c'eete en aya aver ell the efforts prec1ding and eaea·them ell ae structures his~ Then ha cla1ee with these words (my italics): in ruine (8 BBO). critic'l way elone 1e still ap11n. 11 The If the randar hes be11n obliging end patient. anough ta wander over it in mv company, he mev now judge whether, if he le willing to contribute his part in order t _ meka this. foot-path a royal road, a' acmathing which meny centuries heve been unable to accomplish may not be attained before lb!. ct111pletian . gf !b.!, preeent century: I namely, thet human raeson ehall, in thane matters which have et ell times, though before this in vain, engaged ite desire ta know, be given c1311plate aatisfection." The vaer ie 1?87. •A,S : pegin~tion of first end second editions; other works are cited paragraph, where po1eible; P: Prolegcmap] !e, An~ Future Metaphysics. by �I have quoted this last paragraph to establish th·e full tremendousness of this book. It means revolution; more swift, radical, and complete than ' the two great political revolutions in France and Pmerica between which it falls. Kant himself emphasizes this revolutionary character, taking as his paradigm the Copernican Revolution, that change of paint of view which turns the human being from the quietly central spectator of the moving heavens into the circulating observer who sees in nature only his awn restlessness (8 XVI, XXIII, n.). I shall try in this presentation to work out as exactly as possible the effect of our acceptance of this reversal on our humanity, but to do this it will be necessary to try to strip the Critique of those defensive outworks which, while intended to make the newly established position of liberation secure, really turn it into a new orthodoxy •. For like all radical positions, the Critique is meant to be completely and irresistibly compelling, which means that those who yield to its compulsion and join, so ta speak, the party, must come to see their position as given and obvious and in no way wonderful. This lack of wonder is just what Kant aims at when he says that within the next two decades human reason phall have its desire to know completely satisfied. The compulsion of the Critique is expressed by Kant in the sentence: critical way alone is still open.'' "The Therefore, if we want to remain open to the impact of the book, we must refuse to be herded along this road, though we must follow it. We shall try to look at the Cri tigue not "critically", that is, as insiders, but appreciatively, .as outsiders. This has one immediate consequence for our reading of the text -- those compelled to live within the system must tinker with it constantly to make it livable, but an outsider can afford to take it in its integrity. I shall, thGrefore, accept Kant's clear statements to the effect that his system was in every part complete 2 �in the first edition of 1781 and ·that he made no change or addition when he revised the text for the secoAd edition, and desired none to be made subsequently (8 XXXVIII). To avoid the compul_ion of the "critical way" we must see what it i!'>, and s there is only one way to do that, which is to regard the Critigue, as Kant himself does, as a great dwelling, an architectural work (B 736), erected on the ruins of preceding structures, through which we allow ourselves to be led as prospective inhabitants, the while seeing_ more and different matters than our guide intended and thus preserving our inner independence. Let me i~lustrate what I mean by simply launching into . this brief liberating tour of the Critigue. The first part of this presentation will, then, deal with the Critical Enterprise as a whole, under three headings: the Problems, the Critique, the System. Part I THE CRITICAL ENTERPRISE a. . The Problems The outworks and forecourts of the Critigue are the problems through which Kant compelS .: everyone to enter his book. Let me first road them off (B 20 ff.): How is pure mathematics possible? How is pure natural science possible? How is metaphysics possible?, and finally, the translation into Kant's technical language of these three I together (8 19): How are a priori synthetic judgments possible? The first three questions express Kant's two mpin preoccupations for many years before the critical answer came to him, namely the value and trustworthiness of Newton's mathematical · science of moving bodies on the one hand, 3 �en.cf the self'-coritradictoriness ·and uncertainty of metephyai.c s on the other. Vet they constitute not so much the opening of en inquiry as the gates to the straight end nerraw path of a eoiution. unwitting captives of Kant'~ cestle, we must If we ere not to become the ~ecoma ·thoroughly E;11Jere of the constraints the formulations of these .problems impose on our· way. First of ell, whet does Kant imply by asking how such kntldledge is possible? In the case of m~themetics end mathematical physics (Which is sO'iance only as fer as it is methemetic~l (Metaphysical . Principles .E! Ne1turel . Science; Intro.)) the question expresses no doubt whatavar about ite actuality nothing is more cert~in, and requires the reader's assent more es a matter of course, then that methemat1c·a1 ecienca exists end contains binding lewe (8 X ff., 20). What it does express is e· very peculiar Kantian approach to what is actual, namely that precisely bec115uea.iit exists . it must be given a foundation, that we must find the grounds upon which t~et which is actually known can be ours, not only in th13 sense of being ·eveileble ·but else es a firm and certain poe•eaaion (Pra·kegmiena 5). Metephyeics, on the other hand, is not en actual science at ell CB 21), since up tc ' the time of the Critigue there has been, depressingly, no metaphysical ·1ew proved fer whose contradictory an equally convincing proof cannot be constructed; for instance, it can be equally convincingly demonstrated that the world muet have a beginning in time and also that it cannot have such a beginning. Kant calls such parallel opposing proofs "antinomies" or 11 counter-l&.1e" (8 434), and he hed been occupied with the devastating pbssibili ty of ccn_ tructing them long e before he wrote the Critique. Therefore the project of finding the grounde of the poeeibility of metephysice will imply bringing it into being; Kant will have to find the first uneeseilable metaphysics. 4 �:. • . Secondly, what doee Kl!lnt 1mpl'y in using the word "pure" in th11 f'1ret three questions? We must f'iret attand to tha 'vary fact that there.!!, ' ' ' "pure" -- in contrl!et to ca~teminst•d ""... khlJldledge. "Pure" is clear_y a l key concept of the. Cri tigue E!,. f!:!!:!. Reeeon , er:id it does , indeed, es we shall see, meen · 11 uncont$nineted by anything alien" (A 11). · We must expect the irrmsculateness of our conceiving to play a central role in the book. There ·is a further implication: Since pure mathematics and· pure naturel science have indeed long been actual, while msta_ hVsics, by which Kent st this point p understands merely the knabiledge obtained by the pure intellect not yet in ex1etence _ among men, the former mu~t CB XIV), is represent knowledge which . is on the one . hand unconteminat.ed by alien ·eeneation, and on the other altogether inteilectual: !!.2!. the implication is that . there muet be a pure !!2!?,- intellectual knowledge; and indeed, the discovery of a second. faculty of knruledge, tn every way apposed· to the intellect, a nicul ty capable of pure sensing, wee Kant• s first cri ticel find CQ!l !t!!..F~m !!29_ Princlplee Ef. ~. S!npible and Intellectual World, 1770). And finally, what does the juxtaposition of the three questions imply concerning their interrelations? Kant, in expl~ining how he came to the critical enterprise, attributed his awakening frc:m his "dogmatic .slumber", that is, his faith in the traditional metaphysics, to David Hume (P, Intra.). What Kant had learned from Hl.llle was precisely · that his own two orig.inal p;reoccupetione (the success of mathematical phy?ics and the natural human predisposition toward metaphysics) were deeply involved with eech other. For Hume had pointed out that a type of connection between ideas, central to all metaphye1ca, I . namely that of cause .lf'ld effect, could be made neither by mere reasoning, nor by observing events in nature. For no one has ever seen a cause act ar an effect ensue·. · If, for instance, one billiard ball hits enother, which thereupon 5 �begins to. mpve, ·a sequence .of distinct events can be obsar\ied, but no element in this sequence clearly bears any mark of being the "cause" of another which appears as its "effect"; in Hume'e werda: nno object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the effects which will arise from standing IV, 1). ti it;~·· ~he causes which produced it, or (Er!, Enquiry. Concerning Human Under- But if Hume had thus ·showed that the · central notion of meta- . physics is unknowable, he had showed as well that ths central notions of Newtonian physics are superedded to ita observations;. ail our sense experience can give us is that nature seems to be in the habit (Enquiry V, 1) of following certain sequences, b~t that same of the events of such a seq~ence ere the ceusei af others is not an assertion capable pf experimental verification , e,t ell. Hume's attack on metaphysics is also an attack an the certainty and · of science. But because Hume's ~ssault Ttiur aignificenc~ was made with a tw.o-edged &'-'ord, Kent conceived, and so his questions, taken together, imply, that t .he. defense might also secure both metaphysics and experimental science et once; this would be the case if. !t!!!, former physi~were ~nothing .!!!!, .lh!, g_round £!. ~ letter, if the n8W meta- to be pre-eminently what is nbepind physics", its ground (B 8?3). Furthennore, Ht.1ne's peculiar proceeding of elevating experience by attacking its conclueiveneas, conf1:nned Kent in the assumption that there is only one criterion of certainty and that is purity -- nothing that comes to us adventitiously, nothing that is given to us by sense experience from the outsidE can be guaranteed, far yet another observation might reveal an 'alternete eaquenc which will prove our first conclusions to be neither always nor inevitably true, net ther universal !1!-J.r. necessary. certain, then it must procee~ . fran If observational science is to be propositions which are dependent on nothing · alien, which ere pure of aensation, Which is to say : . ~ .!:!!!. !.!:!!!!. first. !!:!! very The Latin phrase fer "fran the very first 11 is "a priori" (8 2-3). 6 �We may now recapitulate the assumptions to which Kant's introductory problems co1T1Tiit us by studying their final enunciation: "How are a priori synthetic judgments possible?" (8 19). We see that this formulaion assumes that there~ a priori judgments, that is, propositions which arise purely out of our own faculties .of knowledge. "synthetic", It assumes also that these are "Synthetic" means "put together". Synthetic judgments are propositions in which, as opposed to analytic ones, the predicate does not merely make explicit what is already thought in the subject, but in which truly different things are put together; we might say simply: new or interesting judgments, precisely of the sort science is expected to contain (8 14). shall leave for later the reason why Kant calls propositions judgments.) (We And finally the enunciation of the problem, in asking about possibility, commits us to the grounding enterprise. This means that we accept in fundamental questions the necessity of perfectly circular argument (8 765). For as Kant explicitly shows, to ground the actual means first to find those elements which make it possible; and when we have, with the aid of a lucky clue, found such grounding elements, to show that on these and only on these grounds we can get what we already consider ourselves actually to possess. Critical grounds are therefore in some sense like the hypotheses, rationalizirg constructs, of astronomy (A XVII) • Here, however, the peculiar aptness of .t he Copernican paradigm begins to come out; just as Copernicus differs from Ptolemy in refusirig to regard his theory as merely another hypothesis but thinks of it as revealing the true nature of the heavens, so those grounds are not intended as mere constructs but as truths (8 800). Thus aware of the constraints under ·which we enter, let us pass straight to the central court deer within the dwelling. on here goes under the name of: 7 The enterprise carried �b. ·.J.b2. Critique E! ~ Reason. Kant uses the word "critique" in a general way to mesn a radical review of knowledge in terms of its grounds (which, it turns out, ere the faculties of . . ., ' knowledge), but in its central use the word h~s precisely the aggressive meaning 1t appears to have. ·. Far in the largest middle section of the Cri tigue, Kant undertakes the negative work which gives the book its nE111e, theexppsure £!:pure reason·, of reeson on its (Hence the title of Kant's book has CliJn. two meanings -- · 1t refers bath to the destruc.t ion of the pretensions of a higher faculty, specifically called the reason, anclthe establishment es a ground of kncwledg. of a lowa1· faculty properly called the ·understanding, though e sometimes cCJnprehended under the general term reason.) The center of the book is, then, ~ha· scene of devastation. Here we sea the ruins of all farmer metaphysical enterprises about which .the new edifice is built. We know fran K nt•e early notee that preeminently this central · a portion .·was called "Critique" and that a suggested title for the whole . work . was "On ·the Limits of Senee and Reason". The critique here practiced is no longer a search for the ground of knowledge but the annihilating criticism of any previous metaphysics. Kant is very explicit about . the centrally negative and destructive · character of the Critique (8 23); it is because of this that Moses Mendelssohn called him the "universal pulverizer". He regards it es a great purification which must precede the new era, as e profound reinterpretation of the Socratic knowledge of ignorance, for while the latter intends to prepare a way into the apparently unkn0bl1, the critical revelation of the impotence of reason is intended to prevent for ever· any venture into the provably unknowable (B 786). In his Philosophy E! History, Hegel, in a penetrating f1 fty page review, calis Kantian philosophy "enlightenment .made methodical" -- the 8 1 �the central Critique is methodical enlightenment. In order to understand why the critique of metaphysics is cast in the f orm of an attack on pure. r e ason it is necessary for a moment to look at the form of the book itself. l ooi c ~ text book of on logic. All but the first part of it is cast in the form of a o vg2~ 1 zed in part like the manual for Kant's own lectures In fact it rec apitu l a t es, with some signifi cant s hifts, the parts of Aristotle's Or !=] c:m-- .. or on - ~· -~ ~ 11 J1 1strument 11 for the acquisition of knowledge. i',s such it deals in orde r with the elements of the fcrms of thought, namely concepts, t heir combinat i on j n ..judgmonts, and finally with inforences, and t he art of argument. Categories, _ On uses the nam 2 (The cDrrr::sporiding Ar :.stotelian treati ses are the Inter' prot a tiL~ , ~} v!J c j: he A nalytics_ and the I_opics ( B 324).) Kant fo:c t\":E! fi rs t two of thes e s ub j Gct matters (which we th c t is, of syllogisns and t h2 c:1 1 of argume nt, in to ;:.he huge middle section -i r .: c1 ? his book which he calls ':Dialectic", or better, wrranscendental Dialectic". The u rd "transcendental " literally mea ns noth i ng more than "going 1n beyond 11 • Jn the language of thE! s chools those terms CJ re called transcendent which intend something bByonci s ens o experience, such as the One, the True, the Good (B 113). Kant chooses t he tradi ti cm; tiJh8t8 11er lJ form of this Lc1ord to ma r k his overcoming of goes beyond experience is transcendent and without r:redi t unl ess it is ;:; trc:msc r:: nd1:2nta l anst<Jer to the c r i t ical question: CJ:., 2 the gro unds of s e:nse exporfo nc e ?" (B 25 , 80). 11 What The opposite of "trans- c i:mdental 11 is "immanont 11 or dtt.1elling "within 11 experience. The critical logic i s therefo re a trans cendental logic, a logic not of the world itself but o f the conditions of knowing it; as Kant says, a logic of truth (B 87). f or the word 11 dialec t ic 11 , Kant completes the degradation which Socratic 9 As �"conversation" had begun ta undergo in Aristotle's Topics (VIII, 1). There the dialectic method of argument is that which addresses itself to the convincing tha interlocutor by likelihoods rather than to the production of · truth. Kant goes further -- dialectic is .simply the logic af illusion (8 349) end transcendental dialectic is the critique cf the production of illusory . argt.nnents in the realm beyond sense experience. We possess, it tums out, a special faculty of deluding ourselves (8 353 ff.). This faculty is "pure reason", reason by itself, without any alien additions: human reason on ite q.m is a faculty for -- illusion. The problems with which the Critique begins, you will remember, could not i~clude th~ fon:nulation "How is metaphysics asa science possible" since no one could exhibit such e science. What I omitted so aay then was that Kant had substituted an alternate formulation based on the human fact that metaphysics has Qlwaya been attempted. Kant therefore regards metaphysics as a universal human activity and asks: "Hru is metaphysics as a natural disposition possible?•• I had in the last section md.tted the very last statement of one of the problems of the introduction, which ia~precisely: "How is metaphysics as B natural disposition possible?" (8. 22). Human beings, this question assumes,· do actually have such an inescapable disposition, for, in the face of never-ending failure, they never cease to attempt to gain purely intellectual knowledge. (I might interject here . the observation that it is a consequence of making a science of the grounds end faculties of human knC1&Jlec1ge that they all become universal; no hunan soul can have a nature basically different in constitution from any other -- this might be c~lled the scientific republicanism of the Kantian revolution (8 859).) We are naturally disposed toward operation of our reason (8 355 ff.). metaphysi~s because of the peculiar The reason, a dubious English substitute 10 �for the German word 11 Vemunft 11 , which originally means a faculty .for "taking in", is traditionally that highest knowing faculty, which sees directly into things. Kant retains its position as the higher of two cognitive faculties, but this ranking is now degraded ~higher means farther removed from experience, from the illll1ediate production of truth -- secondary (8 362). this, its tradition al Latin name, 11 As a token of intellect", is taken from reason and attached to that primary faculty of thought called the understanding which we shall look at later. Reason does no original work of understanding, it merely uses the concepts and judgments which the logic supplied to it and combines them into derivative ones called syllogisms or inferences. This dependent faculty is, however, by its very nature not content to collect and combine the matter supplied but insists an exceeding itself. The Transcendental Dialectic shows haw the faculty of reason, which is beyond experience, is irresistably, by its very ·nature, compelled to lase itself in a definite number of definite fundamental logical illusions of the type of the antinomies I mentioned before. It does this in the fallowing way: . it notices that its chains of inferences seem to run backwards in three ways (B 379): In the first of these, the premises run backward in such a way that each prior premise has a more inclusive subject, as in the syllogism "All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, Socrates is mortal • in which the i, subject of the minor premise, Socrates, is narrower than_that of the major, man. So also syllogisms regress from consequences to conditions as in "if-then" syllogisms, and from a disjunctions to a collection of possibilities as in "either-or" syllogisms. Now reason is inevitably driven by its own "interest" to do what it is not fit ta ~o; ta originate concepts and judgments which it posits as the principles or absolutely first premises of each of the three types of chain. Thus it creates the concept and posits the 11 �existence of 1• . a vary first and all-inclusive subject, 2. every first; unconditional or fraa condition end 3. a being in which all pose1b1lit1as are contained. Such illegitimBte creations ere called 1deas of reason, after the Platonic ideas CB 370). · Different prcceeeesof illusion ere eaeociated . with each of the three ideea; among them ere those antimonies of metaphysice which had early disturbed Kant. Now the ideas of r'aeon are only the logical f01111Ulatiane . . thraa human . concerns which . together exhaust which itself is or . neve~8'11Bra th~ field of philosophy. For th•t subject predicate belonging to another subject but Which -- rather itself supports ell predicates. is the soul, which belongs only to itself . . while an· knowledge but moves unmo~ed, belongs to it; end the condition which itself has no cause spontaneously, describes freedan; and that being perfect in containing all possibilities is God. wh~ch is · In questions concerning God, freedom · and the soul Kant recognizes the totel content of all previ[Jus metaphysics (8 ·? ,826). He has · just eha.iln that substantial en1111ers to such· questions ere beyond our cOD1petence. lie in All the old constl'llctions .of metaphysics ruins within his a.11 . edifice. Thie;than, le the anewar to the problem: Holil is it possible that we have a natural dispositia~ .t werd a study which . brings us nothing .but undemonetrable, contradictory fictions? as naturally . . to lead to excesses: Uur highest faculty is so constituted lt is the business of B critique of.cur reaeon(a way to eelf-knDldledga which gives us a radically new version oT' Socratic ignorance, nemely certified ignorance (A XI, B 22)), to discipline this prapeneitv by .displaying it clearly • .Kant's promise ti1atour desire to kn°"' will c. ~hQrtly be laid t1:1. ,rest is hence fulfilled. The Sy1tBll) · \iav\\ng .briefly surveyed:. the very beginning al")d the middle . of . the Critigue 12 �the time has now come to look at the blueprint of the whole critical edifice, as set out in the last part of the Cri tigue, which, '. Still in accordance with its presentation as a logic, is called the Transcendental Doctrine In his own manual of logic, Kant says: .E! Method. "Just as the Doctrine of Elements in logic has as its content the conditions of the completeness of a knowledge, so an the other hand the General Doctrine of Method, as the other part of logic, must treat of the form of a science in general or of the way and the manner in which the manifold of knowledge is connected ta make a science." (Loeic 96). A doctrine of method therefore teaches how to handle and how to put together the elements or building blocks of a science, how to make them the mutyally supporting parts of a systematic edifice. logic is in a special position. But a transcendental In mathematics and natural science, as Kant observes in a work which is the precursor of the Critigue, the method is the result of investigations in progress and follows upon the science; in - pure philosophy alone "the method anticipates every science" (Sensible and ' . Intelli51ible World 23). the method" (B XXII). And so Kant calls the whole Critique a "treatise on For the transcendental ' philosophy, defined as the of the system of principles discovered in the critical enterprise "id~a" (B 27), is to serve to mark out and secure the paths of inquiry in all the sciem;:es, to be a Prc.Legomena, or preface, .!£. Any Future Metaphysics Which .------- Can Assume the Part of a Science, and this is precisely what a method is. ~ . ' But the critical investigation itself must also be somehow directed, and this is what the Transcendental Method does; it is a method of method. Vet there is something strange about it, for what trustworthy method can show one the way to the grounds of trust? Note, too, that Kant calls the critical system an "ipea", almost suggesting that it is itself one of those dubious constr< Licts of reason. The art -- note, not the science -- of systems is called, in 13 �keeping with Kent's edifice metaphor, "Architectonic", or ~th• master-builder's art 11 , the neme of the next to lest .section of the book. But be~ore Kant can treat the system of knowledge tie muat complate lt; for an ele""\'t is m1~1lng. This ia done in a prior section .called the "canon liilike Bacon •e of Pure Reason". ~ OrQanon ·or science•: wh~ch is qu. ted at'. the o beginning of the Critique, Kant's new organon of pure raeson ie no~ •n inatrum11nt for positive discovery but for the cure end prevention of error, e negative or~~...,o (8 25) or 0discipline" (8 737), ee the first section of the Transcendental Method, which demands that reason be shown ta have. no iegitimete theorsUcel use, is called. But amewhare, K18nt says, reason must be. a sourca of positive knowledge CB 823). A method for rightly using e faculty, 8uch as the reason, is called e "Canon" (8 8241; the section so named ln the Critique d•1covere the positive use of the reeacn, which is the missing element in "precticel" reelm, 1n morality. in the Critique Critique 2!,~ E!. Ptacticel t~e eyst.-, in the It .is therefore, ea it were, e claaring meda fi!asan for the purpose of laying the foundations of the Ra!!Jln. The possibilities of pure reason era now ca111pletely exµaunded end ~ant . . can give t11a legi timete table of retionel hLltll!ln knowledge or ph1loaophy1 (8 869)1 the transcendental counterpert of the Catalogue or histories Bacon had appended , to hie O:menon, which ie intended ta direct empirical inquiry. I shall recount it only fer enough to reveal eClll'lething significant about the Crit1gue ea a whale. All retional knowledge has aither !!p1r1~1l roots, which mB&tna that it is based on the trial and error cf sanes experience, or it la purely rational; only the letter is considered in the Critique. It is to be noted ff. :L~~· ; ~ { .r : r : r.~ ;- 1 1 '. ' that thia fundamental division is entecadsnt .to the inquiry itself. The philosophy of pure reason in its preparatory or "prc:>paedeutic" stage is celled •critiqua!' The principles there d1acovered, when presented completely and eyetewieticelly, · 14 �may then be called •1metpphyeice". Metaphysics hes tMICJ br8'"1chea, the metaphysics of thaoreticel reason which i .a ~ ea we shall sae, . the sane. as the metaphysics of natyra and the of practical reason, or of morale • . The meta- mataph~eics physics of nature· 18 in tum d1v1dad into two parts, one r:tealing with the . sum Qf all obJect19 given to our faculty of knowledge. Thi~ · part Kant cel;J,11 "physiology", the ac. ount of nature. The other part deals with those faculties c themselves, apart from th•i~ ob.jact. Kant calls it "ontology", the acc~t of being. Hera, in the ~h!.~~*~-~' . KB"lt· in the elmoat ·iranically unobtru'eivt traditional ta?me r&\l&Bl.9 . th• t'ull t'o:rca of his revolution; th• quaation of. ' . . Aristotle's, Metaphvaice (VJI, i) Which has well as nru ever pursued end ever lftiaeed: answered by pointing et the queaticner. but bes~, Jl dhet , say~; '~n es he thtl past is being?•· ~ is now !!:!!. science · E! beinQ 1111 to be !!. Ea."!!!. neth1ng !tl! science g! 1n;Jlliring !!!!!!!.• Tli1s brings us ta the ~~.~!f E.~r~. at' this praeantat1an blhich da-.la witli · the Critical MBn under four mo.tinge: the Subject, th11 Predicate, the Object, and the Meaning. Pert . II: THE CRITICAL M~ · The order of presentation will have the farm of en experi91811t in reconstructing the Cr1tigue which is suggested by· the Prolqganana; Kent's introductory sketch of the Cri tigua , which he wrote between 1ts two editions. .In . thie short book Kant pretends to present .analytically, that . . is by reducing the given ~ problems to the conditions they implf, the same material presented in the Critique synthetically, th11t is by starting with the first and highest. principle, and deducing the consequancaa. ( P, Intro; this use of .these ·ilrme must not be confused with that 1) by which judgments are called synthetic or analytic, as described above, (P 5 n.) or 2) by 11.Jhich the dissection of e faculty is is called an analytic, as seen belCl.il.) ·Now everyone who has read both works 15 �1a perfectly ewe're that they are both equally analytic or '*regressive", as !lny work af discovery would be. My experiment will therefore consist af presenting · the elements cf the fLritigue in that ~ynthatic ar progressive order which Kent I . .. never actually followed, I !dill etternµt, es it were ·, tc reed · the C:ritigue backwards, ta derive critical men from hie principle~ The matters I em about to take up ere drawn mostly from those earlier . . ' • sections of t ·ha Critique which I have bypassed so far and which are generally IlllnBdiately after the Introduction end rightly the object of most intense study. comes, es the first part of the "iranacendentel Aesthetic". . ~EP.!r..1~,! P.~. 9..1!.!!?!l~~.. a section entitled •Aesthetic" caries rrm the Greek. bJDrd eistheeie, . . . . sense, end meeris the exposition of the hunem capability for s~aing. . (B 35 n.)~ "Transcendental", you 111111 remember, means •beyond manse experience". ·The Transcendental Aesthetic therefore tl'9•t1 mf our cepllcity fo~ sensing without sensation. The poethunously published work of Kl!lnt ehawa that tha diacavary of this strange capecity came to dminate hie attention. And well it might, for it .holds the key to his peculiar view of human nature. The ·second part in question, the beginning of the logical Critique (which i11111edietely precedes the Dialectic, the "discipline · of reeeon" discussed above) is called the "Transcendental Analytic". It is a "canon of tha Wd1retendiog" (8 ??)and contains the analysis of the grounds of our capacity rar a priori thinking • . The first book of this is called the· "Analytic of Conc•pt•"· In it is found that investigation in the Cri tigua, designed, aa ~ant says, ·•with soma depth" which cast him the most labor (A 98), tha notorious "Trenscendantel Deduction of the pure a priori concepts of the undarstendin~" used above but a grounding ,procedure in ~hich (not a deduction in tha sense certain· critical .discoveries are justified by being ehcui to be the neQsseery .conditioris of the possibility of science (8 11?)). Considered apart fri:Jn its systematic context, it cen ·be 16. �aaid to establish the nature of the transcendental self, the highaat, or perhaps better, the deepest point of the Critigue. I now ctr&.it lerg11ly upon it for my synthetic .beginning. a. ~ The nane for thet which underliee all alee ie Subject In the beginning there is the "I", and the "l" is by 1.teelf. lt is the highest point of . the Critique ( B 134 n .) ; ell else is founded upon . 1t .. In · English we help ourselves over the enormity of such a reference.to the,!. by eeying !b!_ !!!!!,! er ~ ego, but Kant uses no such eubeti tutes. Were in exactly llea this enormity of the highest critical concept? The pronoun which we very aptly call "of the first person" (a parson being defined by Kant. es something conscious of the . numerical identity of its I (A 361)) is precisely of such a nature that no one else, no outsider, can say "l" for or of another. The word "l" is the pure expression of inwardness which cannot become cur D\IJT1 or another's object (8 .321); thus 1n .. ettamptlng to use the noun for which the "pronoun" I stands, cur name, we are constrained to shift to another "person•, the third, just es say "he" or "it". - Ide Hew then can Kant make the I en object of investigation? For Descartes in hie incubator, such a study was still -------- examination (Discourse on Method IV, 8 422 n.). is, as blS must, in speaking of another si~ply and frankly !!!!- One of Kant's greet innovations shall see, preciee'iy to show in whet respects we can and cannot observe ourselves, in what way the I can become its own object (8 155 ff.). But because the I of the Critique is always presented as any I in general (8 ~O~O, a tremendous fact beccanes blurred: there is !!E,WBY the Kantian self can cane to know of another self (B 405). It is explicitly disbarred by its very· firstness, its radical self-sufficiency, from sharing.in the inwardness of another or even receiving immediate evidence of another's depth, hie soul. (Kant ventures the hypothesis that in the world of. ~ppearance inwardness asslll!es . 17 �the fom cf pure' exte:rnality, that ·saule .when they appear to e:>ther souls do ac as bodias (8 428) .) It is tharetare in the te:t111l!I af the Critique perfectly · indifferent or~ whebr ·1ta ·1is151\e or many; · whsthar Kent is exmdning himself I; eech I is universal, all the world there ia. · (This absolute isolation of the self is connacted with Kent's understanding of language, ~ subject which he neglects almost altogether. Souls can cCl!lnunicete with each ether if language conveys beings of thought from one soul Kent, BS we ' shell see, there is no .such being and no such to another, but for convswing~ We can. see et .once that .t his caste •n uncanny light on the book ltsfitlf -- for 1e it nut conveying to us precisely Kant's thought? -- but for us it is at this moment pl'Clfitable only to allow his thought to come to ue, even. if this very ac~eptenc~ should imply its - ref~tation.) How then does the I, the original I, become knOU11 to itself? Kent points out in the beginning of hie AnthroiJology (I, 1) that the original I is not the first person known ta us in time, for children speak of themselves in the third person .as if they . were one a1J1ong many before they oiecover that all their . judg.ments, no matter what ·they ere about , have one and the verb. s!lll~ subject end For all judgments follow after the phrase •I think• (B 131-132, A 354-5). Thia I which thinks is always present (A 117 n.) noting its preserving its sameness .and s\Y1~\t'1(SS l'.ld"I activity, through all passions (A 108), e final end universal subject which underlies all its awn predicates (B 407, P 46). This universal and original person can be active only in self-concern. The name which Kant borrowe from Leibnitz for "self-activity" (B 130), for selfattention, is "apperception•, or self-perception, self-consciousness. This epperception is transcendental, for in attending to myself as a thinking thing I am studying the radically original iqlawin9 faculty (A 114). ( At the same time, if knowing requirea a attaking :i.n" ·of an object;, as the ,word "perception" 18 �implies, I cannot "take in" the vary •ourca end support of ell except in a special way (8 429-30). mv knowing In em anticipation of the methemet.4.cel limit notion, Kent finds s·uch a way. The I which underlies all knwing is itself. knClill as the limit of all kncwledge, as its pure containing form. Hy root faculty, my pure self, 1• planted in an unknDblable beyond and I can - - know cf it only that it is, but never what it is (8 157). Kant smaewhere calls the LD'lconditioned the "abyss cf reason". Since our 01&r1 original condition is inaccessible to us we live over just such en abyss. But if I cannot know whdt my ultimate nature is, I yet know_eomething of its mode and effect • .. It ehOliJS itself as that absolute end pure original ecti vi ty, lltlich !Aient cells spontaneity ( B 130, ·428) • Spon.tenei ty means wilfulness, radical self-determinatiCYl. The activity which has this character is thought, which works its will according to none but its . own laws. At the root to think and to will are the sane, end it ia this identification which makes the critical man bath the th~orizer of the Critique .2!.~ Reason~~ the doer. of deeds of the second Critique, the Critique !!f. Practical Reason. It is . evident ·by nCld that the I has an arena, a kind of theatre, in which it works its effects. (Why this should be so, why there is a faculty of thought is an unenswerable question (A XVII); exactly equivalent to the question why God created for himself, and c0111nunicated with, a world. go further~ We may the deep beginnings of modernity ere nearly all to be found in bold perversions of Christianity -- the genesis of the critical man takes the form of a \ages, a sentence such 118 that by which the !!E£!. of the gospel of John launches hi111Belf into a world; that is the very model we are using in this develaJDent.) The I ie thus a universal subject in need of completion. therefore lllJBt go on to 19 . We �b. The Predicat'e s - ............iiiioiiioi. . . . . The subject and its ve~b . in the words "I think that ••• • danand a completion of meaning, namely the thought which ·the 1· thinks. Whatever the I thinks is ~ thought end ·l:!e1ongs ta 1,t , but whi.le it 18 E.f_ the I it is eleo !2!: 1t. Our original I possesses a secret paiier, which distinguishes us frtlll the beasts, of doubting i teel f, of holding 1ts a.in launches us on our career es knowers. activity before ·. itself, and. this p0bl8r Anything whetsoever ·which is there for the I is celled its nrepresentetion" (8 376). The word; again borrowed frcwn Leibni tz, is unfortunate slnt:e 1.t implies that emething present elsBaJhere, outside, is imaged by us or in us. But this is not whet K~t means. Re-presen- tations ere simply presentations, or what is present to us; there is no going beyond them, and they represent nothing else. ·(Kant's Germen term, "Vorstallt11g•, which means "something set before" 4.s more adequl!!lt•~> Thare ia nothing .fE!.!:!!. - which is not our predicate. ·The trl!!lflacendantal I delimits an isll!llld realm which hes only internal affairs. The first of cur representetion, that is, those closest to the I beyond, are its thoughts (8 42s..429). These come into the world of representations as the effects of the transcendental I regarded as a root faculty of the soul, of ---- - - ----- as its nmodes of expression" (Battle the Faculties, II, end) which Kant calls the understanding (8 93 ff.). It is that primary cognitive faculty upon which the secondary faculty of reason depends, and which, as I mentioned before, is for Kant the intellectual faculty. of activity within its a.in world. It is a faculty of representing representa- tions, thet is, a reflecting faculty. . The understanding.is the I as a source It carries forth the original unity . . of the I into the multitude of .its representations (8 105). It is the primary faculty because it governs by establi!ihing relations among, by uniting, by grasping, by "taking together~', that is, conceiving our many representations. 20 �Its primary and fundamental relating act is that which unites representations by reason of their carranan relation to the thinking I; as Kant says, it is an act "which brings the manifold (that is, the variegated field) of given · representations under the unity of apperceptian. 11 (8 135). This unity :is expressed .in "judgments" characterized by the copula "is" (8 142)~ When I think that "this body!:!, heavy", I have performed an act by which the singular and single empty representation which is expressed in "I think" has become the vehicle or correlate of two other representations which are united within it. This primary relating function is called judging (8 141-142). There is also a kind of incomplete judgment in which representations are related not upward to the apperception, but downward only; so, for instance, "body" comes under 11 heavy", and many mare representations came under "body 11 • Such incomplete judgments are called cpncepts; these are the isolated acts of the und~rstanding (8 94). · . There are a definite number of cefinite downward unifying functions, called the pure concepts of the understanding (8 102). The fact that Kant will name them must not deceive us about the nature of our reflecting faculty; it is a mere or naked power of arranging multitude,.of operating or functioning; the audible names of its products convey no real meaning (A 241). (As Kant observes in his Anthropology, (I, 18) it is precisely because wards in themselves mean nothing that they are apt far characterizing the results of thinking.) Thinking by itself is a mere functioning, an invisible empty ; grasping (A 245); to~ is not to know (B 145-146). · Its grasp must be filled. At the lower end of the hierarchy of concepts there must be some material, something to conceive. And as the Transcendental Aesthetic, from which the following is largely drawn, shows, there is. We have a faculty which supplies the material for the formulations of thinking. 21 �It la the eans1b111ty. Kent opposes the faculties of thinking and sensing ea "outermost extremes" (A 124). Thinking is active end spontaneous; the sensibility is pessiva and receptive. Thinking is an empty function; the aaneibility hes a pure original anntent (8 160). Thinking runs through a manifold, unifying it, and is discursive; the sensibility contains one singular presentation which is ready to receive a manifold, a matrix of particularity and variety. Kant cells this passive power, this faculty for reception, "intuition" (8 33). The prefix "inll has here nothing to do with any any "looking into" -- for that i~ precisely whet the receptive capacity cannot co -- but has the sense of "looking Gemen ward "Anscheuung". "inelght"~ !!l" intently, a sense clearer in Kant's Intuition is a faculty _or format1"• looking, a f capacity for taking in the alien and shaping it into sights for the soul. Here·, at i ta lower limit, the isolation of the I gives way ta certain intimations fram beyond, from'outeide~' It is an undeniable fact that we ere aware of a multitude of alien and adventitious representations, end that there are far. more i:Jf these then of those that we ourselves produce and control. How can this came about? The sensibility is not an organ of sense rut a formative capacity for receiving the given. but 11 !!l the Representations do not came to us through intuition. The sights which occur in the intuition are called appearancea 11 (B 34). In the cOlllllon understanding the appearance of a thing belongs to ll.; hidden being. it is the · appearenc_ E!, the thing and evidence concerning 1ts e But the appearances ln the intuition are famed and shaped by the faculty itself, they belong altogether to us, are through and through - appearances within us, not from without, from another thing. What then does coma .from the outsidel . Just as the sensibility offers material ~o the forming functions of the understanding (8 87),. BO the eppearancee within the ·intuition are 22 89 forms �for a material which Kant calls sensation (8 60, 207). representation of the "thereness" of something alien. I Sensation is a It is that in appear- ances which gives them reality or "thinghood"~ whieh makes them capable of confronting us as alien and independent 11 somethings" (8 375). As our representation, sensation is entirely and forcefully subjective, but it is just thus that it impresses us with intimations of an otherness which is there, outside. What does it tell us of things outside? 'i Nothing whatsoever about their nature. I. ; ~ ' For the appearances of these i things are not with ~' but with ~' so that these outer things have, insofar as they are considered in themselves, no externality, no covering outer skin, no dress,so ta speak, in which to present themselves to us. Things in themselves, outside of us and stript of their appearance, are pure naked inwardness, as inaccessible by nature as our I (8 339). Such pure inwardness, like our apperceptian, is pure thought and Kant calls such things, things ' ./ of thought, in Greek , amena" (8 306 ff.). 11 naumena" , while he calls the . appearances in us "phen- , - our two root faculties And just as Kant conjectured that Of the noumena we know only that they are, but not what I they are (8 XXVI). might be at bottom one (8 29), ~so he conjectures that the I beyond our inner- . mast limit and the things beyond our outermost ken are one and the same, that we are surrounded by one and the same unknown ocean on all sides (A 379-380). : Here is Kant's description of our inner island and the fate of him who tries to take leave of himself (8 295-296): "But this land is an island and locked by nature herself within immutable boundaries. It is the land of truth, (a charming name), surrounded by a wild and stormy ocean, the true seat of illusion, where many a fog ·. bank and much melting ice counterfeits · new lands, and by endlessly deceiving with empty hopes the sea-farer roving about in search of discoveries, involves him in adventures which he can never 23 �forego and never break off. 11 Our inner island, the scene of appaaren.c e an the ---- ocean of darkness, is by nature the land of truth. '· . . What is that truth? Kant's definition of truth is perfectly traditional in form and abeoiutely new in content (8 82 ff.). . Truth is ned~uetio ' intellectus rei", the approach or fitting of the understending to the thing. A thing which presents itself for the understanding to fit itself about, to grasp, is said to be "something throbin out before it~ ·, en "objectum" or object Truth involving objects, or objective truth, is knowledge which matters, mDterial .knowledge which is neither ~mpty is_ that nor blind (8 75). Empty knowledge :tn: which thinking has no object other then itself, the empty catching of thinking et thought~ blind knowledge is the mere unreflected sight of the object. Truth is therefore the · aecure acquisition of something ·worth having. Kant's name for' the process of such acquisition is "experiencen (8 218), a ward in Latin and English reminiscent of the devices for extracting such knowledge, namely the experiments of science. (Accordingly error is no longer, ae in the Theaetetus, the dapply significant complement of truth, but a mere mismating which arises, together with its pseudo-object, nothing (8 347 ff.), on the secondary level of reflection, end for which the critical method can provide a radical cure. For both Ln1derstending end intuition are in themselves infallible_,and error arises only when the representations belonging to one faculty are interchanged with those of another. "amphiboly" (8 316 ff.). Kent cells such an "interchange" by its Greek name, It is particularly the concepts of reflection, the concepts for thinking about thinking, which are prone to such C!lnphibolies, for since our .-.nderstanding must always grasp something, it tends falsely, to turn its own thoughts into objects. The highest concept of reflection is that of ·"something" in general, ·the others are exact! y those which have 24 �kept recurring in my deductive presei\tation: unity, reality, cause, possi- bility which are both names of categd;ries and of prior critical notions (e.g., 8 131). It is characteristic ;of critical thinking that these must all be used on two levels, properly of true objects, and again improperly to describe thinking itself. But with the critical method to guard us against their interchange the perfect truth of our knowledge is guaranteed. For man to know is to know completely and certainly; there is no place for opinion (8 809), Socrates' human way station between exposed ignorance and hidden knowledge.) We see that if we are to be about anything, then at the center of our soul there must stand c. ~Object We ere confronted with appearance~ filled with the feeling of reality. I The German word for such a confrontation is "Gegenstand", "stands up to'.' us · (8 242). something which Kant's usage is by no means rigorous, but he very often uses this word for something given, which confronts the understanding, just as he often uses "thing" for the hidden source of reality in appearances. This confronting given something is there for the understanding; blind in itself, it is the potential object of truth, that to which the understanding equates its grasp (A 104). And now the understanding shows itself to be functioning for a definite end. For in grasping the appearances, in conceiving them, thinking itself makes objects £!:. ~· The pure conqeiving fµnctions of the understanding have no other purpose but to make the givens of our sensibility .into objects, and since the grasp itself molds the thing, the fit cannot help but be an adequate one; to be objectively valid and to be necessarily universal are exchangeable notions (P 19). · our material knowledge is "objective", that is, 25 �both about something and also true, because we ourselves supply ' its material as well as its form (8 137 ff.). This form is imposed by the subjective origin of the functions of .our understanding, which ensures that they cannot bu dltered adventitiously, so that their enumeration is available to us and can be once and for all completed. This is done in the "Analytic" (8 106 ff.), or element-finding part, of the Transcendental Logic, which is therefore a logic Ef. truth (8 87). Using an Aristotelian term, Kant names the pure concepts of the understanding categories. Furthermore he gives names, taken from traditional metaphysics, to exactly four groups of three of them, but it is of the greatest importance to remember that these names carry no meanings and are nothing but labelling characters. We can know nothing objective of our own thinking functions, for to do that would be to grasp our own conceiving, to treat the categories as if they, by themselves, constituted an object, though this "transcendental" object would be a mere something, really a nothing of thought (A 250 ff.), an empty form. Thus thinking would be attempting to overleap itself, to transcend its own activity. first and foremost; But "critique" means the willingness to forego the impossible. And what is impossible is precisely that we should view our own thoughts, which are mere functions, or as Kant puts it, that we should have intellectual intuition (8 307). The expression of legitimate, material knowledge is the judgment which puts t~gether concepts in themselves disparate, on the baqis of an object in which they are united, and . united priori synthetic judgments. from~ very first -- that is to say, a And so we have come to that concluding point in our deduction to which corresponds the Cri tigue 's introductory problem, "How : are a priori synthetic judgments possible?" It is by reason of our very constitutions, now brought to light by the critical enterprise, that we inevitably make objectiv~ judgments, judg~ents 26 which are both about something �and also certain, judgments which examples of such a judgment: 11 are~- Here is one of Kant's own - The sun warms the stone." (P 20 n.). Abstract from all sensation, from the color of the sun, the warmth of tne air. ~eight of the stone, the What "is left is the assertion that one object is related to the other as cause.!£!. effect (P 29). "Cause and effect" is the name of that, for Hume, most notorious of all metaphysical notions, the second of Kant's three categories of relation. The judgment asserts that this relation is objectively the case, not merely seemingly so, as it would be if it depended on sensations, which are empirical, that is, a matter of trial and error, and therefore uncertain (B 142). But all objects, not only sun and stone, are related as causes and effects -- for that is precisely what we I ~by an abject. So also all objects stand under the remaining categories of relation, for all are permanent substances which have accidents or changing states, as when the stone, though remaining a stone, grows EE.!.£ at night, and so also all abjects are related in a community of interactions, for sun and stone attract ~ other. In fact each abject stands under mast of the remaining nine categories, far in Kant's favorite formula: "the conditions of the possibility of the sbjects of experience in general are at 'the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience" (B 197), which means: we can have material knowledge or worth-while truth only insofar as we have abjects to which to fit our thinking, and we have the latter since our thinking itself ·constitutes them. I have said that to come ynder the pure concepts of the understanding is precisely what we mean by being an abject (B 125). But we must recall that the pure categories have no real meaning and that therefore the pure object has no reality (A 250). became embodied. Dur final task will be to shaw haw the categories can This will be the S?ffie as deducing our ability to learn by experience, ta do experimental science or to be capable, as Kant says, of 27 �empirical thinking. The deductive presentation will be drawn largely from the second book of the Transcendental Analytic, which is called the "Analytic of Principles 11 • Every concept is a complex or cnaracterizing marks or "notes" canvnon to many representations and may therefore be regarded as determining a for putting these together under itself. £!:!!! If such a rule comes from the highest concepts and is one of those by which objects themselves are constituted it is called a "grounding sentence", that is, a ground or principle for fo1111ulating laws (8 188). The categories thus furnish a matrix of laws governing the constitution and power of abjects. The system so governed is called nature (8 263), and the c.a tegories are the sources of the ~ Ef. nature, and these are the results of the legislative activity of the understanding. Thus the sentence "the sun warms the stone" is very aptly called a judgment, for all of nature appears before the court ·of our understanding to be interrogated and judged by its self-given laws (A I 126)~ The highest principle of the understanding is that every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the manifold of 1 intuition in pos sible experience (8 1~6). This means that we can have exper- ience, namely pronounce objective synthetic judgments upon our sensationfilled appearances, only because the manyness in our intuition has already been ' unified, has been put together in a ·synthesis. The necessary condition for this synthesis which 'first makes synthetic judgments possible is furnished by a mediating faculty whose very nature it is ta be a common ground (A 124). For in order far a representation to fall under a concept it must be somehow similar to the concept. · But the categories differ from the appearances which they are to organize as radically as do the two faculties of understanding and intuition. The "third faculty" is responsible for that 28 �interpenetration of these two which produces a synthesis, a ''structure of , unity". In Kant's words it is "a blind but indispensable function of the soul without which we wouid have no knowledge at all but of which we are, seldom even as much as conscious" (8 103). It is the imagination. As the common ground of the other two faculties, imagination is the same as understanding in being actively unfying (8 162 n.), and the same as intuition in having a given multiplicity of material (8 164). (Hegel, intending to deliver a devastating criticism, describes it simply as Kant's intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition (History of Philosophy XV, 570)). This double character is evident in the fact that the imagination alone is "productive", that is, while itself remaining hidden, it produces sdmething compacted of form and matter, an appearing object. "schemata" of the imagination (8 177). Kant calls such objectsthe Ta understand what a schema of the imagination is, what that "mediating third" which is on the one hand similar to the intellect, and on the other to intuition, is, we must briefly review and complete the development of the other two faculties of the soul. The tinderstanding, the faculty, so to speak, on the inner side of the soul, had two aspects: the transcendental apperception belonging to the single I beyond all appearance and the understanding by which that I grasps the many representations of sense. Now it must be the case that the ·eensi- bility at the other extreme also has two aspects. One of these faces toward the outer limit of the soul and is ready to receive ever new sensations issuing from beyond, under the form of externality, which is, as we shall see the triple extension of space; the other is turned toward the transcendental I and receives it as an appearance under that single intensive . dimension which is most appropriate for its original unity, namely time. The intuition therefore has a form of outer sense (of which we shall say more soon), 29 �and a form of inner sense; the reflective concepts "inner" and "outer•i -- describe both whence, in the topography of the soul, the two senses receive -- sensation and also what form they give it (8 373); so ou~er sense both receives what is alien to us (8 32) and also gives it that form which we call. "being outside'', by which we mean that the parts of the object all lie stretched out away from and outside of each other, that is, .!!::!. spa.c s. But it is the inner sense which is crucial at this juncture. material self-knowledge first becomes possible, for here~ In it appear !E, ourselves; here we can become . our own objects (8 156 f .). Kant regards this discovery of the doubling of the l, .which enables the thinking I to come I appearance~ to itself as an • both as a mystery and the fundamental fact of psychology (8 334), '; since it accounts for the very possibility of such a science. In self-attention I affect myself and em revealed to myself in a sensual appercaption (8 68 ff.). But such attention yields first of all. a representation of passing time. My inner appearances, my feelings, imaginings and thoughts, are borne along an a steady . flux in one direction, from past through present to future. This is the form of every inner. representation and since all representations are to begin with~ representations, all appearances have first of all the form of inner sense -- they are temporal (A 99). nothing b~t As Augustine says: 11 • .".time is a stretching out, but of what thing I know not, and I marvel if it be not of the mind itself'' (Confessions XI, 26). In particular the thinking l casts its timeless transcendental functions into the inner sense, where they appear as our ordinary temporal thinking, that synoptic scanning, comparing, reflecting by which we finally abstract from all the differences of objects to obtain their common concept. It is in temporal thinking alone that· change can be grasped (8 48), for in successive times alone may contradictory predicates belong to a subject (providing they both obey the law of 30 �non-contradiction, the highest formal law of thought, which is that no predicate must contradict the subject (8 189)). Time is here not as for Aristotle (Physics IV, 14), the soul's measure of motion, but its very condition. Now how can the thinking I be said to cast itslef into its inner sense? Each of the forms of the intuition, as formative receptacles, contain a kind of pure content, a pure single manifold which is nothing but their readiness to be determined or conceived in a certain way, a material which is nothing but a potential structure, a system of relations, not altogether unlike the contents · of the receptacle in the Timaeus (50 ff.). Kant terms these contents "pure intuitions 11 , using the name of the faculty for its material as well ( 8 160 n.) • . In entering the pure manifold of outer sense, the faculty of conceiving constructs the empty but determinate objects of geometry., as when we define a triangle and then imagine it, intuiting properties additional ta those in the mere concept (8 271). Thus an a pr. ari synthetic mathematical science i becomes possible, and since in sense experience it is this very same geometrically determinable manifold which is now also filled with sensation, pure geometry is always empirically applicable (8 206). But because the inner sense is the sense of senses, the first and crucial interpenetration of the extreme faculties is that in which the pure concepts of the understanding enter the inner sense, that is, when the categories determine time, or, what is the same thing, when time determines the categories (8 177). Just now it was natural to speak of imagining the construction of a concept in space; similarly it is precisely the imagination which introduces concepts into time, and its ,_schematic products are nothing constructions of the pure concepts .!D_ pure ~· ~general £!:.guiding Clearly the imagination is the central faculty of the soul, because it is nothing but the soul's capacity for combining its extremes; it is the common ground of intellect 31 �and. intuition. And since the inner sense is, as it were, at the topographical center of the soul, it does its hidden first work deep within it (8 181) there showing itself ee the ground and bedrock on which the. island of our awn epiphany to ourselves, ·which l'Dl,lst precede all alien appearances, if founded. The imagination .can introduce the pure conceiving functions into time . . ' •because the pure manifQld, being nothing but a eyetem of potential relations, . is not, as Kant observes in a pre-critical work, so unsimiler to a concept <Q!:!.:!l!:!.!. ~eneible ![!!!.Intelligible World 15). In fact, since the imagination i'e .understood es a faculty of representing in the intuition a confronting a.bJect w1-i~out its confronting presence (a ~Gegenstand" without "Gegenwart" (8 151))t pure time es en ·intuition empty cf sensation, is the inrnediete "ens imaginor°I.UTI" or imaginary being (8 347). Hence, just as Kant calls the . schema the mediating "third" between intellect and intuition (817?) the "third" which, as the beare~ so he calla tirrie of all our representations is the medlun in which they are put together or synthesized (B 194). Thie synthsaie is the work of the ~magination, and its products, the echemeta, , are those general . constructions or pettems into which concepts organize time irrrnedietely and space derivatively. Kant calls them "pheniJrnena" in a special sense (B 186), because they are a kind cf pure appearance, a pure object, or rather object structure, which although it is a no-thing of the imagination, "calling for an object" to be realized in it by sensation, is yet distinguished from the not transcendental object by being en empty fabrication of mere thought, but the "' first ·step in the "realization" of the cataglldes. They are the mediating th~"'~ 'lo which the synthesis of concepts in judgments can be referred, reminding us that an abject is the necessary correlate of the truth seeking subject. If we have not listed the categories so far it was were meaningless; they were mere concepts of reflection. 32 becaus~ their names But by echematizing �them, by steeping them in time, the imagination has endowed them with meaning (8 185 ff.). And now the principles of the understanding which give, as you will remember, rules for using the categories to constitute the objects of experience, can, by employing the schematized or temporalized ca.t egories, also become meaningful .. thinking" We are therefore ready to show adequately how "empirical arise~~or the deductive presentation of its genesis requires only that the transcendental elements already presented be worked out in detail. The following section is therefore somewhat technical. In order to bring out the coherence and even elegance of the critical technique, I will conflate and reverse the developments presented in the Analytic of Concepts and in the Analytic of Principles. The result should be a synthetic account of the genesis of "empirical thought". This is an .awkward phrase by which Kant means that reflective employment of the understanding on appearances which is called d. Experience The genesis of experience has two sides: synthesis of the object by which experimental EI. experience (A 115 s~ience we may develop the step-wise ff~), or we may follow the stages as a system of judgments arises (8 197 ff.). Of course, this does not mean that either the synthesis of the object of truth or the formation of the corresponding principles of judgment is a psychological process of the appearing I going on in time. On the contrary, this synthesis · first makes the analytic work of temporal thinking possible (8 130); insofar as temporal learning has discernable stages, their sequence is apt to be the reverse of the transcendental order, for what is first for us is not first in the order of nature. The synthesis bf t~e object is thus rather a single timeless product of the imagination which, because of the mediating nature of the imagination, has a triple aspect corresponding to all three faculties: 33 �understanding, imagination, sensibility (A 99). The fundamental rM1"8 •f · judgment, that is, the principles of the understanding, themselveQ r1veal these three aspects .,. to u_s, or we would never recognize them. (This correspondence between the genesis of the object and the rules far judging it is to be expected since it is the imagination in fact which plays the role of a faculty of judgment in the first Critigue (Critigue £!!Judgment 212)). Now since the principles of judgment arise when the imagination introduces the categories into time (since they are :,-.> ic , :; in fact nothing but rules for . applying the schemata), their number and nature is determined by the categories. Each qingle category is " a concept of something put tagehter", which means a concept of something synthesized in a definite way, a concept of an object.• But while with ~eference to the sensibility the categories are object concepts, by themselves they are also concepts of reflection. This is indicated by the fact that they come under four headings, which, now that the categories . assumed a meaning, it first makes sense to name: there are three categories each of modality, relation, quality and quantity (8 106). classes are no longer concepts fa~ h~ve These categortcal constituting the object, but concepts for refleftinQ on this cansti tution; they give the relation which the object. has to the faculties of the soul insofar as the single categories in a · particular class have contributed to its constitution. Accordingly there are fol,.!r principles of true synthetic judgments (8 200) which say at the same time what role each of the four categorical :classes plays with respect to the faculties in constituting the whole of possible experience and haw the single categories constitute aspects of objects. reason of being 11 Therefore, precisely by the source of all truth" (El 296) in the material or real sense, these principles are also the transcendental truths, the metaphysical principles of knowledge. Here then is· the new metaphysics, a metaphysics of physics. 34 �Kant's names for the judgments following from the principles are, as we shall see, carefully chosen to trace out the steps of the genesis. It is I there f ore right ta · fallow the transcendental synthe.t ic act and its expression as knowledge simultaneously, which means, as was said, reading the .&\~!Y!!E. qf Concepts, particularly the Transcendental Deducti_ in version A, together an with the ,Rn,C3J.Y.~i~ . !2!. Principles. . I ; In fact, this way brings cut something I fundamental about the critical man and his enterprise: I the constitutive 111ork ' of his soul. and his knowledge are ultimately indistinguishable -~ the Critigue cannot distinguish between a judgment as an act and as an expression, far in view of the isolation of the self ta wham would what be expressed? Let us, then, fallow the 9enesis of experience, ordering it from the Subject outward to the Object~ The I is the original source ' of unity in representations, since all thinking is~ thinking and belongs to one self. identical . in origin. All thinking is therefore This identity or self-sameness first makes possible those diverse unifying functions by which understanding conjoins the many representations of the I, for self-consciousness, by acknowledging all representations as its awn, gives them that vertical unity of which. the categories are different horizontal aspects. The unity of apperception is what necessarily accompanies every synthesis, simply by reason of the selfconscicusness of .the intellect which enters into it. Since it is contributed by the thinking I, this aspect cf the synthetic product is called the intellectual synthesis (8 151, A 103). And since an object is something in whose concept a manifold of given representations is united, this synthesis, in bringing unity into representations, first makes ' cognition of an object possible. Consonant with the transcendental nature of the I, this unity is purely formal, and is therefore formally distinguishable from the synthesis 35 �~tself9 in which diverse concepts together with a sensible manifold constitute a material object (8 131). The intellectual synthesis yields the highest synthetic principle, which, stated in terms of the apperception,is=: · all empirical consciousness, all my appearing representations, must be conjoined in one self-consciousness (A 117 n.). In terms of representations this means that there must be one which comprises all others and that is the general one called "something"; we must first of all know in what ways this something can be in self-consciousness, that hqw a thing may be related to the unity of apperception. i~, These ways are known through the last set of categories, those of modality, namely: possibility, actual existence, and necessity, and their schemata, which are: something consonant with time in general, something actually there at a definite time anq something existing at all times (B 184). The judgments employing these schemata are called the "postulates of empirical thinking in general" (8 265 ff.). They are these three: whatever corresponds to the fonnal C8nditions of experience (namely concepts and intuitions) can exist at some time and is possible; whatever is connected with the material conditions of experience ' (namely sensation) exists at a definite time and is actual; whatever is related to something actual by the general conditions of experience exists at all times and is necessary. The last refers only to relations of. appear• ances according to the laws of causality, and means that if something is actually there, ~we can always make the hypothesis that there must be something else actually existing which is its effect. They are called . •postulates" because they merely demand the genesis of something but do not anticipate its nature. Thus the postulates of modality add nothing to the concept of the object itself but merely relate it to its generating faculty of cognition, for each of my representations is in my self-consciousness in 36 �a different mode, depending on its source. The contribution of the postuia~es is therefore entirely on the subjective side'; in particular, they guide us in employing the most fundamental of all the concepts · for transcendental reflection, form and material. They are called postulates of "empirical · thinking" because they require that all faculties take part in the full . theoretical activity of experiencing. Thus if something is only of the under- standing, it is merely possible; if it is connected with the material of sense, sensation, it is merely actual; but if it is the result of the conjunction of perceptions through concepts, and therefore attributable to the imagination, it is necessary -- consequently the most complete kind of empirical judgment is the necessary hypo~hesis. The second stage is that of the synthesis proper, where synthesis means the product of the synthetic work of the imagination viewed not as the union of the extreme faculties, but independently, on the ground of the imagination itself. This synthesis is distinguished from the foregoing as an objective result from its subjective unifying act. It is a determination of the whole manifold of inner intuition considered as a given pure material, an original ordering arising not so much in the pure intuition as along with it. Kant calls it . the figurative synthesis (8 151), for it consists in the schemata or time organizations which together constitute the pure but sensible structure of objects, that temporal form which relates appearances in a regulated time order; the imagination, in producing this structure of object relations, works that a thoroughgoing ''affinity" (A 122) of appearances which gives them their systematic aspect and constitutes the "form of experience". The categories involved are therefore those of relation, namely substance and accident, cause and effect, and community or interaction (action and passion). 37 Their schemata �are organizations of time into detenninate pennanence, . succession, and simultaneity (8 183). The principle according to which objects are judged in this aspect is: experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary -conjunc.t ion of sense perceptions. The judgments based an it I are called "analogi. s of e experience" ~ An analogy, understood mathematically, is a proportion, that is, a form for finding an unknown; · for instance, a:b = c:x, so that x ~ ~ • Interpreted as a kind of metaphysical algebra, .the sameness of the relations involved is not quantitative but qualitative, hence the unknown term cannot be constructed from the analogy, but the latter oan be regarded as giving a rule as well as a justification for seeking it in experience and a mark for finding it (B 222). Clearly the analogies of exper~ence are really instructions for forcing unknowns to disclose themselves, for experimenting. ( There are three leading principles far making analogies, incorporating the three schemata: in a~l ·' changes of the appearances substance is permanent and has a fixed quantity; all alterations occur according to the law of connection of cause and effect; all substances, insofar as they are perceived in space as simultaneous, stand in a rela~ion of thoroughgoing interaction. An example of an analogy based on the first · principle would be the .judgment: "As accident is to substance so is the altered form of burnt matter to the matter itself" (8 228); this analogy therefore implies that the quantity of matter is conserved in combustions and in general is the source of all coriservation laws. The second principle clearly yields, once matter ha:;i been properly defined, the first two Newtonian laws of motion, th 0se of _inertia and force, while the third yields the law of action and reaction~ And indeed, once the critical grounding enterprise is completed, Kant w rks o out the deduction of the laws of motion in .Tb.§. Metaphysical Principles Natural Science of 1786; the axioms of Newtonian science are thus mere 38 .Ef. �theorems of the Kantian system! The principles of modality and relation are only "regulative", _which means that they rule the relation of objects to the subject and to each other, while they .add nothing to the constitution of the objects themselves. Kant also calls them "dynamic", because they involve those powers and relations which objects . must h~ve whenever they exist, but which, since their existence is contingent, have no being apart from actual experience. principles, on the other hand, are 11 The remaining com;iti tutive 11 and "mathematical 11 , because they do refer to the objects themselves, and because they apply to all possible experience since they concern the pure and the affected material, that is, the mathematical constitution of objects (8 199). This brings us to the third and last synthesis • . This third synthesis, in which the objects of experience are, so to speak, filled out, is the synthesis .Q.f apprehension (A 98 ff.). As the imaginative synthesis includes the .unifying act of the transcendental self-consciousness as a separable prelude, so the imagination performs the concluding act of "apprehending" or taking direct possession of intuitions, that is, of bringing them into empirical consciousness (A 120). Apprehending is the generation of original inner mirror of 11 the action of the subject 11 • motion~ the phenomenal In "running through" and 11 taking up" the manifold of the sensation-filled intuition, the imagination at once activates it and gathers it into a unity of intuitions, a connected inner experience. The categories for this phase are those of the first set, of quantity (unity, plurality, totality) and of quality (reality, negation, limitation). The categories of quantity have the schema of number (8 182), for quantity in time is precisely such ordered succession as is apprehended 39 �in counting. °The apprehensive synthesis may .then be · understood as a connected awareness of the pure manifold of time . and spi;ice, arising in the so1,Jl :'by a kind of original counting. · The principle based on this schema is: appearances are extensive magnitudes. all Extensive magnitudes are precisely . those whose parts lie outside one another so ' that they can be counted. This principle governs the "axioms of intuition". They are called axioms not only because they are the source of the axioms of mathematics (8 204), but also because they apply directly to intuit~ons and are therefore immediately evident, for the intuition is the place of evidence; what is "intuitive" is patent to inner sight (8 762). The combining activity is now complete. There is no additional synt~esis, :·;· but there is one more set of categories, those of quality, which make it possible for the synthetic structure to be filled with sensation. · is that of degree Ef reality (8 182). Their schema "Reality" is that which corresponds to sense impressions, that in our consciousness which convinces us that we against something alien of a definite sort; a "real" object. a~e up "Degree" is the quantity of influence which the outside exerts, a quantity not &uccessively accumulated but all there at once as an intensity of awareness.· The principle . ' i is: I in all appearances the real which is an object of sensation has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree (8 207). "anticipations of perception". The corresponding judgments are called They are anticipations because of the remarkable .fact that we can know!!. priori one aspect of something which by its .very nature we must wait for and receive !!. posteriori, namely sensation~ For example, when I come on a body in the dark I can anticipate that its coloration will have some degree of intensity although I can say nothing about its particular color before I see it. "Perception" is empirical awareness, that is, consciousness attended by sensation. Sense perception therefore stands at the opposite extreme 40 �of pure apperception; but it is to the former alone that the name "perception" (and Kant's German word "Wahrnehmung") properly applies, for it signifies not an activity but a passive "taking in" (attended · b~ awareness), corresponding ta the unpredictable givenness of sensation. This is the threefold synthesis given in the order of transcendental priority: the apprehensive synthesis pre-supposes the imaginative synthesis as a condition, and the latter, in turn, depends on the intellectual synthesis (A 121-122). Each of these transcendental aspects can now appear in time as stages of empirical knowledge, namely knowledge which is 11 a posteriori", or subsequent to, experience and which uses what is adventitiously given. However, the faculties come into empirical use in an order of imu1ediacy which is the inverse of the transcendental priority: In the learning process of children for instance, sense perception precedes empirical thinking and the latter, the power of making objective judgments, precedes full self-consciousness (l~nthropology c~itical I, 1). Hence arise the various versions of the universal pre- illusion which took the child's course far the human way, and regarded truth as somehow given 1E, rather than constituted ~the soul. To recapitulate the empirical syntheses in the order of temporal priority: When possible experiences are, so to speak, activated, the empirical self first becomes conscious of the synthesis of apprehension as a scanning process consisting of a succession of instantaneous views by which it takes hold of the manifold spatial scene and the sensations it brings with it; this means quickly running over and picking up a series of aspects, for instance, of a house, including its dimensions and colors, ta obtain a synopsis (A 97) of the accessible whale. The synthesis of the productive imagination appears as memory in which past representations, connected by association, are related to the present self, so that it can encompass stretches of time; Kant calls this process imaginative 11 ~production" 41 (A 100). Finally . the intellectual ' �. synthesis, the source of cognition, has its empirical counterpart in our ordinary thinking process in which we scan our representations far what Kant calls a "!£c6gnition" (A103) of their affinity. But such recognition is precisely the proces s of forming concepts on the basis of experience (B 134 n.). ~nd so we.have fina l ly come to actual empirical thinking, which is the temporal beginning of all our knowledge, though not, as we learn on the first page of the Critique (A 1), its source. Empirical thinl.ing is now fully grounded and we have come down to the point where the first problems with which the C!'itigue begins can arise. now we must ask: Wh;L_ did Kant undertake this great grounding enterprise in the course of which the critical man arose? certainty of sciencE? themselves. Was it really to secure the But that was assumed to begin with by the problems Perhaps it is not the certainty but the significance of the new science which is at stake. ~ri tigue And c:;nswers is ; If thot is so, the ultimate question which the "What is nature to us that 1i1e should need to know her?" This is the very question whose answer Kant emphasizes in a short addition he made in the second edition to the end of the section from which this s ynthetic presentation is reconstructed, the Tran_s,c.erid.,ef!.t p l ~n-~~..Y.:P_c. This brings us to ~2. The Meaning Our inner sense is the sense of senses (8 50), but, as the steady unchanging form of our flowing inner appearance, as ~ime, it does not itself appear (8 219). Our one-dimensional temporal self, ever slipping away, is by itself incapable of duration; measurEd time, detc~1inate durations, can appear only against m empirical representation ot' permanence. ;0 Ksnt remc:irks how empty a science pure psychology mus t evor bs since in its singl o dimEnsion that which makes ;; science scientific , ths use of mathematics, is 42 im rP ~ sibl8 (A 381 ff; �Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science, Intro.). appearance is needed. For that a substantial The metaphysical place of "phenomenal substances" is outer sense (8 291 ff.). The form in which we intui. otherness is that of t externality, of three-dimensional space. It is crucial to understand that things are not "outside" us because they have a place within space but that they appear spatially because they appear in that sense which is receptive to othernes~ (A 385). Nowhere does critical self-knowledge demand a more dizzying revolution than in making us aware that we do not look out into the outside because it is in itself and absolutely there (A 375), but that our seeing is altogether an inner capacity for receiving unshaped sensations in a spatial form (A 370), for we have the satisfying uncritical illusion that appearances come to us of sight. .f!:E!!!. things through our organs of sense, particularly Our outer sensibility is no such organ but more like Newton's divine sensorium (Optics, Quest. 31) in which the whole spatial world is at once and present !£God, as h:iS self-created representation. iu. The critical man is just such a divinity; a connection of which Kant shows himself aware in the work which is the precursor of the Critique (On World 23). ~Sensible ~ Intelligible Kant's formulaic description, which draws attention to the full force of his revolution, is that space is empirically ~, for it contains intimations of an outer reality in the form of definite given appearances, but transcendentally ideal (8 44), . for it is a mere idea and, apart from being a form of knowing, a nothing of thought. Appearances in space have therefore a certain structure merely by reason of the spatial form which received them, first of all, of course, their three dimensions (8 41), a structure seen in its pure form in the mathematical objects which the understanding functioning with concepts such as "three-sided rectilinear figure" may "construct" in the intuition (8 741 ff.). And this solidifying dimensionality of space, though 43 �not the source, is yet the condition of possibility of a matter anchored in the three extensions of space and pennanent in quantity, and therefore capable. of appearing as a substance underlying all changes 1n state. · The system of all . . such permanent things with their alterations, with their relations of c£Lsality and community is, as we have seen, precisely what Kant calls nature (P 16, 8 263), while its delimitable parts, the things or objects of nature, have the name of bodies. (A 106). Bodies alone furnish us with that pennanence against which we can measure our own duration and flux; bodies, again, teach us all we can know of cause and community; !!:!_nature (8 276). alone . ~~ ourselves Nor ought this to be very surprising, since pure nature herself was constituted by the transcendental I functioning within itself, and is therefore nothing but the diversifying mirror of its unity. Kant significantly uses the same language in describing both the transcendental I and body , as p8rmanent appearing substance, for he calls both the steady correlate of all my appearances (A 123, 183). So also the thin, flowing, appearing I seeks to find itself in extensive solidity (A 381). This is why Kant calls not only the transcendental I but also the question concerning nature the "highest point" of the Critique (P 36). The true purpose of the Critique £!:.Pure Reason is therefore not ta guarantee the certainty of science, for this certainty is itself its mast certain assumption, but rather to insure that science be an ever-lasting enterprise in self-knowledge,~ never completed human activity (A 1), in which alone the self can determine itself, can procure for itself the stuff through which it feels itself to exist, the mirror in which it assumes a shape. For the enterprise of metaphysics is shortly to be completed, and thereupon the human desire to know what is beyond nature will have been completely satisfied by being shown its hopelessness • . There remains the 44 �inexhaustible indulgence of our curiosity, insatiable for that experience which alone makes us appear to ourselves (8 255, 334). This ia :tha final significance of Kent's "Copernican Revolution": that men literally and exactly finds himself in the bodies end their motions which constitute nature, that neturel science alone provides a sort of self-knowledge. fDr in studying the world of nature man studies his own creature and image; here he rinds whet he can ~PP.ropriete, because it is his awn.-- In the poethumously published notes for the work on the transition from the metaphysics of nature to physics, which Kant, significantly, regarded as his most important and final achievement, there,occurs an isolatedphrese, revealing and ' ewe-1nspir1ng. It says simply: "I, the proprietor of the world.'' Schriften, Preueeische Akademis, XXl, 45). 45 (Kent's Geeamialta � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. 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Title A name given to the resource An appreciation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-05 Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered in May 1972 by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context lec Brann 1972-05 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Deans Friday night lecture Tutors